Cassius Warrington (![]() ![]() @ 2016-01-17 17:43:00 |
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Entry tags: | 1999 january, cassius warrington |
Who: Cassius Warrington
What: Doing a favor for a friend - and himself
Where: The potions lab in the dungeon - primarily where ALL THE CURE WORK IS TAKING PLACE
When: Sunday night
Rating: Explosive
Cassius had spent the greater part of nearly a week coming up with this plan. At first, he had thought mimicking the explosions from the Great Hall would be the way to go. Set a delayed Charm, lie in wait until it went off, quickly swooping in before help could arrive to erase all forensic traces of his magical trail. Or really, any magical trail. He had been on enough cases, been part of enough investigations and knew the way of the Aurors well enough to know exactly what they would be looking for, exactly what to cover up.
But then... then something brilliant happened while he had been watching Slughorn work secretly. The man was quite obviously brilliant, he'd give him that. Some may not have thought they'd come far regarding the virus, but from the notes he had managed to get his hands on when he made his way to the lab alone, covering his traces and tracks in the process, the research and time he had put into this was astounding. The virus was complexity at it's finest, making any sort of progress a small miracle. He had to had it to the professor, who really just seemed like a bumbling buffoon most of the time...
And so part of him felt guilty for what he was about to do, but not enough to deter him from his current path. The Quarantine needed to stay up as long as possible. It was the only way to continue to ensure Lucius' freedom, and really, Cassius' as well. A necessary evil or something. At least, that's what he had to convince himself of.
So on Sunday evening, the plan had really already been set, all Cass needed was the execution. Watching silently as Slughorn finally took his leave for the evening, Cassius easily bypassed his wards, having messed with them earlier in the week anyway, which had gone unnoticed by the oblivious potions master, thankfully. It's not like it had been painfully obvious anyway. A simple tweak here and there, enough to allow him into the protected inner sanctum without so much as an alarm or registering of his presence.
Making sure there was no one else in the lab for absolute certain, Cassius went to Slughorn's main workstation, looking around to see how close the samples of virus were, the equipment and chemicals that needed to be destroyed. The piles of important and invaluable research. The radius of the blast had to be just perfect....
It would be. Definitely. A small smirk spread across Cassius' face as he took out three small vials of volatile looking liquid. Swishing them around in his gloved hands he went to stand in front of the current potions Slughorn had been concocting. With the use of his current notes, Cass knew just what needed to be added to specific ingredients in order to create a violent reaction. Taking out his wand he muttered a small charm, each vial hovering above the main potion, timing the disintegration perfectly and making sure that once the spell was over, all traces of magic would be removed. It was an extremely tricky bit of magic, and had caused the Auror department plenty of trouble. Thankfully for Cassius, it was a spell that his own father had taught him. One of the few useful things he had ever learned.
Everything was set. There would be no mistakes. There couldn't be. Cassius was careful, and he made one more sweep to make sure everything was in place, everything was perfect before taking his leave, setting off the timer charm and waiting patiently from a far away place, though close enough to ensure Slughorn wouldn't return suddenly.
Thirty seconds passed. A minute. Two minutes.
His own internal timer hit five minutes, a bright flash and an incredibly loud BOOM shook the dungeon. Thankfully though, this explosion wasn't violent enough to bring the castle above crashing down into the basement. No, Cassius was going for total incineration, and he knew without looking, he had managed just that between the billowing smoke and the dancing shadows of faraway flames. And without another sound he disappeared, already hearing running footsteps in the distance.
The fire wouldn't be difficult to put out, but he also knew from the intense heat the concoction would have provided, nothing of use would be left. No virus. No notes. No supplies. No ingredients.
Total annihilation. And it all looked like an accident. A simple miscalculation. Exactly what he was going for.