WHO: Gerald Avery, Layla Fairbourne, Chelsea Corner, Gwendolwyn Vane, and Barnaby Snell. WHAT: Tinworth intimidation continues. WHEN: 20 December. WHERE: Tinworth. WARNINGS: Violence and fire.
The Dark Lord’s requirements for voter intimidation had been loose enough to create some air of creativity; the environment in which Gerald Avery flourished. He knew that the intimidation undergone thusfar had been useful - if not mildly civil, though Travers would probably argue with his definition of his altercation with Dearborn. Apparating to the edge of the town, he dusted an errant flake of snow from his velvet jacket and turned to give his companion an arched brow.
“Masks or no masks?”
This outing Layla was looking more forward to, or at the least dreading less than some of her previous ones. None of the people she and Avery were speaking to this evening were friends of hers, and that was a relief. At the question, Layla resisted the urge to look at the Inner Circle member incredulously. “Masks, I think. Or I’m going to, anyway.” Layla had precisely less than zero interest in outing herself campaigning for Hugo Nott with Gerald Avery. Quickly, she tried to cover with a reason other than her own sensitivity: “We’ve built the brand, it’s a shame to not use it.”
“Good answer. There is little point in implying Hugo doesn’t have the full backing of the Dark Lord. After all, we are His tools. And he is to be feared, not reviled.”
Besides the illogical quality of being anywhere near Layla outside of their respective organization, Gerald appreciated being able to move freely in society. And what was more, he was more than ready to up the ante and give the good people of Tinworth a show. He snapped his fingers smartly and his grey suit melted into black robes with its gleaming silver mask.
And with that, he began to move forward, black smoke trailing in his wake as he walked down the lane.
All Layla had to do was affix her mask in place as she’d come dressed in regalia otherwise. She pulled up her hood despite there being little wind or snow, and made off after Avery until she felt in step with the older man. “Exactly my thought.” It wasn’t, not really. She didn’t precisely care what people thought about Nott having the Dark Lord’s backing in the election — everyone had already figured out who to vote for anyway and suspected Nott’s Death Eater ties or support regardless if the man was one himself. “Do you expect them to fight back? Some of them have been feisty.”
“My darling,” Gerald replied with a smile. “I hope they do.” Coming abreast on the road, Gerald noticed a political sign for the Robards campaign. With a wave of his wand, it became a sign for Hugo. Smiling gently behind his owlish spectacles, Hugo winked at them and a scroll of text erupted beneath him. A vote for Nott is a vote for British values.
The home to which the sign belonged began to smoke, belching tongues of flame from the windows.
* * *
Chelsea was lucky she was home today. She was luckier that she wasn’t napping or distracted. Instead, she was in the living room, playing with Toby. The smell of smoke wafted through first and she wondered — evidenced by her shout, “Is someone burning cookies or something?” — if someone was burning cookies in the oven. It took only a brief moment to realize that it wasn’t the result of the oven — rather, it came from the windows behind her, where flames were curling in all directions.
Eyes wide, she fumbled for her wand, moving Toby away from the windows as she did so. Extinguishing the flames came next, in between shouts for Gwen and Baz, and only once they were out did she notice the two people — the two Death Eaters — standing outside. Chelsea felt the fear immediately, but she held onto her wand tight. “Go find Gwen and Baz,” she instructed Toby as she made her way outside.
“This is private property,” she said loudly. “Please go away!”
Obscured by his mask, as well as a well-timed charm to extend his voice, Gerald’s laughter could be heard in time with the crackle of flame behind Chelsea. As if please ever managed to get someone anywhere except stuck in a burning home without recourse.
“You have extremely poor judgment. ” Gerald paused and lashed his wand out toward the doorway, meaning to crumble some of that hot stone over Chelsea’s head. Then, his voice grew deep and he growled out an Imperio. He meant to require this Robards sympathiser to sit quietly in her burning house until the fire around her was fully quenched.
Everything happened at once, or at least it felt like it did. There was the worry that Gwen and Baz and Toby were trapped, especially with the other Death Eater unoccupied. There was the fact that their house was falling apart, and of course, there was the Death Eater standing in front of her, aiming an Unforgivable at her, a curse she only just narrowly missed. Scrambling back up, she pushed aside her worries to concentrate on her main goal: getting this Death Eater away from them.
To that end, Chelsea had to sacrifice the three Robards (one of them now defaced with Hugo Nott) signs Baz had been so adamant on keeping. A wave of her wand and they all flew towards him.
Gerald fell to one knee to deflect the signs, his shield charm growing as each one shattered against it. Behind the shield, he started to lose patience. Even blood traitors and sympathizers had their own kind of talent when it came to surviving. But instead of letting it fill him with rage, he stood and folded his arms before him.
“You can save your house now. You can save whoever is in it. But it is going to require you to step back from your principles and understand that voting for Robards only leads to death.”
This far away from the house now, she couldn't focus on both the Death Eater in front of her and her friends, but she hoped they were fine. In any case, she wanted to buy some time. "This isn't necessary," she tried to reason. "The Wizengamot has already endorsed Mr. Nott! Everyone else is —" Chelsea wanted to say too scared, but she stopped herself, "Everyone else already understands who they have to vote for!"
Maybe the flaw in the design was that they expected everyone to bend to the Dark Lord’s will and do it happily instead of acknowledging the truth that there would always be layers or pockets of resistance whose few and piddling resources would ensure little true meaning for those who simply wanted to live.
But their instructions were clear.
“But you don’t.”
Her response was a quick, panicked shake of her head. "No, I do!" It wasn't a lie, either, because of course she knew who the Death Eaters wanted them to vote for and why. "I hadn't made my mind up about the vote yet. The signs —" she paused, "They were just around."
The Death Eater stretched out his hand, and the heat began to sap away from the home, swirling in the air to create a fat little vortex of flame next to him, saving the structure from any further damage. After all, they did have to have a workable address to vote for Hugo. But as the vortex swirled next to him menacingly, he reached out with his other hand and pointed his wand toward the witch’s throat.
Chelsea Corner. Hitwitch. How gauche and trifling that this was a fact he needed to possess.
“Who put them around, Hitwitch?”
There were no good answers to a question that had no appealing answers. Either she could tell him the truth — that it was her and her friends — or she could name someone else and move the target onto them. Both options had significant drawbacks. "I did," she answered, hoping that it sounded certain. "But only because I felt bad for Auror Robards. I've just known him for a long time."
Excuses and attempts to dance around truths and placate was obvious to an old man. And Gerald, an old man, was beginning to lose his patience. Instead of speaking further, that flaming vortex which had swirled next to him now flew toward Chelsea, intent on letting the flames rid her of her purported sympathy.
Her shield came up too slow to block the flames completely and her mistake allowed them to burn part of the skin on her arm. She gasped and almost dropped the shield, but it thankfully stayed up. "I'll take the signs down," Chelsea promised. "I was going to before, I'll do it now!"
The flames died abruptly.
“And who will you vote for?”
Chelsea had principles, but she was also practical. Faced with a non-choice, her attempts to reason and coax a compromise faltered. She had more important things to worry about at the moment and the sooner she answered, the sooner she could go back to her friends. “Mr. Nott,” she said.
“A good answer, Hitwitch. And a promise you had better keep. Believe me that election day will tell the tale, and I will continue my work should you fail to keep your word.” Gerald inclined his head toward Chelsea and became that immaterial puff of smoke.
Layla would inevitably triumph in her own ordeal, and he could deal with her later. But as such, he sped over the top of the house, knocking the chimney down as he went as reminder of his promise.
* * *
Gwen stumbled away from the Death Eaters the second she saw them, their swinging black robes, the gleaming masks. Fear crawled instinctively up her spine, seizing her for a moment and she reached out, grabbing onto Baz’s arm. “Oh my god,” she said, tugging at him, nearly toppling over backwards in her haste. “Oh my god.”
“Look,” Gwen said, to the Death Eater, “I’ve only just — please don’t come in! We’ve only just got our decorations sorted how I like them!” It was daft, but there was undeniable panic working its way through her.
Unperturbed by Vane’s excuse, Layla took a few more steps and corralled Vane and Snell away from where her cohort was dealing with Corner. Her wand was in gloved hand, pointed at the duo although she made no move to turn this violent. “Don’t worry — I’m not here to talk about Christmas decorations.” She paused, eyes glancing around the room. “They’re nice, however.”
“Oh, thanks,” Baz shot back sarcastically, sounding much bolder than he felt. Talking was something he was good at, even if it was likely a dangerous thing to do when facing a Death Eater. With Gwen clutching his arm and Toby growling at his ankle, he knew he ought to do something. His fingers were bone-white as they gripped the handle of his wand, but it was as if all the spells he knew had simply slipped out of his head.
“This is about our signs, yeah?” He jerked his head in his direction of the front door, to the Gawain Robards signs standing in the yard. “Why get this worked up about an election you’re going to steal?”
“I’m not worked up,” Layla answered simply, tip of the wand moving towards Snell now that he’d taken a bolder stance. “You’re smart enough to know it’s about the Robards sign, and why.” She paused to let that sink in. She didn’t think either of Vane nor Snell were ignorant enough to not understand why the Death Eaters couldn’t allow this in principle. “Blah, blah, vote for Nott.”
“No thanks!” Gwen said, quickly, looking from the Death Eater to the room at large, searching for something she couldn’t quite pinpoint. Something that would tell her this was one of her terrible nightmares and not a reality — but then she nearly bumped into Baz and her dreams never had this degree of clarity, never had people looking so pale or the faint almost-there touch of someone nearly treading on her foot. Oh.
“I think we’ll exercise our right to vote for who we want!” she said, brightly, too cheerful, forced and a little false. She couldn’t control her voice. “It’s part of the process! I still think you should exercise your right to leave and then you and all your masked friends can vote for Nott instead and we’ll not. Not Nott here.” Gwen was babbling. She pressed her mouth shut.
“Vote for whoever you want, sure, Vane,” Layla sighed, growing more annoyed by the second. “Just know there’s going to be a lot of consequences for that!” she added, trying to project more cheer into her voice than she felt. She slowly directed her wand from Snell, to Vane, and then finally to Toby before settling back on the woman who kept babbling. “I’m just impressing that point on you right now. Really, no one needs to get hurt.”
“No one but you,” Baz found himself saying, the words slipping out before he could reel them back in. Before he could second-guess himself, there was a flourish of his wand and the bright flash of the first spell that popped into his head: the Singing Jinx. Then, in a caustic voice, “Don’t point your wand at our dog again.”
“Are you going to hurt me with a singing jinx? Because your spell book really stinks!” Layla sang, sing-song, despite her bubbling anger at the gall these idiots had. Tutelage under Bellatrix was harsh and demanding, and Layla reacted instantly. Wand flourished and flared with a harsh, yellow light: “Your choice in spells is rather bland; let me break every bone in your hand.” Even then she took a step backwards, setting herself, and cast Finite Incantatem to remove the stupid mortifying singing jinx from herself.
Baz made a strangled noise as he folded in half like a jackknife, clutching his now shattered hand.
“Stop it!” Gwen shouted and, on instinct reached for the nearest thing, grabbing a lamp off the end table and bringing it down towards the Death Eater’s head.
Layla ducked out of the way a split second too slowly and the lamp hit — shattering — the side of her masked face. With a grunt, the Death Eater stumbled backwards half a step, shook her head, and then stood up to her full height. Furious, all she could see was red and her wand whipped up at the reporter in a lightning-fast reaction to the attack: “Angor!”
“Oh,” Gwen said, or started to say before she could feel her throat closing, a heavy, invisible weight pressing in on her. Her hands went instinctively to her throat, though it did little good and she choked, her eyes burning with the inability to draw breath.
The Death Eater took a step forward and held the spell. “This silence is so peaceful.”
Pain ricocheted up and down Baz’s left arm, but, as he glanced over at Gwen, his mind pushed past it. Sucking in a deep breath, Baz ground out a pained, “Let her go. We’ll vote for Nott if you just stop.”
But Layla wasn’t ready to let Vane go. Her growing frustration and anger over the past few weeks had boiled over. This was the first time in weeks she’d been able to let it out in earnest. Despite Snell’s anguished pleas she waited several long seconds, glancing between the suffocating Vane and the WWN DJ before waving her wand and letting it drop. “Was that so difficult, Snell? Couldn’t we have gotten to this point without trading spells?” She sent a burning curse at Snell’s throat. “Of course not, because you’re an idiot,” the Death Eater continued, working herself up further with every word.
Nonetheless, it was time to leave, Layla knew. She took a few steps backwards, turned to leave, and then stopped halfway. A well-aimed singing jinx hit Toby before the Death Eater finally left through the front door, robes billowing.