5th of June, 2023
Gloucestershire, England
Gloucestershire, England
10:48 PM
Overlooking the Bristol Channel at the mouth of the River Severn, an old mansion of Georgian design stood silent upon one of Britain's many wide and grassy cliffsides. It was no Malfoy Manor, per se, but it was beautiful in its own right, and far enough away from civilization for its owners to worry about pesky muggle activity. From within, its two floors were connected by an ornate and carpeted staircase in the main lobby, and featured enough furnishings for an entire extended family to live lavishly and comfortably within its walls.
The only active chamber within this expansive manor was its meeting room, connected to the lobby via a pair of oaken doors carved elegantly in the form of great serpents, and was lit by a gorgeous chandelier easily a metre in diameter. The walls, towering seemingly sky high before meeting the paneled ceiling, were extravagently decorated with portraits, trinkets, and the mounted heads of dangerous magical beasts. An enormous clock hung as a centerpiece on one of the walls, its signature deep ticks and tocks echoing throughout the entire room.
A long table ran perpendicular to the doors, lined with eight elegantly crafted wooden chairs on each side. It was set with various bottles, glasses and fine china, all filled to the brim with expensive wines. At the far end of this table, facing the double door entrance, stood a padded throne-like seat. Upon it was a man. Not any ordinary man, but a man part of what was once the most powerful and dangerous group of people in Wizarding Britain.
Corban Yaxley was his name. He sat rigid in his chair, his haughty and domineering demeanor evident by even his posture, complimented further by his hard features and perpetual glare of disdain upon his face. His long hair was a pale blonde, the scruff tied into a single neat braid that hung down his back.
It was long past the aging Death Eater's prime. His idle thoughts drifted back to his memories of serving the Dark Lord. He silently recalled his days of grandeur, when it was he that infiltrated the Ministry and put the Minister Pius Thicknesse under the Imperius Curse. Reminiscing his part in the Muggle-Born Registration Commission - at the thought of holding the power of so many muggle-born lives within the palm of his hand - he almost smiled. Almost...
And to come so close to delivering even the great Harry Potter to his late master. He was so close to having it all...
Yaxley was not alone in this meeting room, however. In fact, all sixteen of the chairs before him were filled.
To his immediate right sat Antonin Dolohov, a man easily responsible for more atrocities than the rest of his peers combined. His curly black hair drooped over his pale, twisted face as he stared ceaselessly at the surface of the meeting table, idly scratching at his unkempt beard. Like each and every one of them, one look was enough to tell that the years in Azkaban took its tolls upon even the Dark Lord's most fanatic of killers.
Next to Dolohov was an enormous hulk of a man, with fair complexion and platinum blonde hair - Thorfinn Rowle. As cruel and bloodthirsty as the Death Eater at his side, Rowle glared at the wall ahead of him, his entire body expressing impatience.
Yaxley's gaze drifted to those on his left. Walden Macnair, the long-dissolved old Ministry's executioner, sat closest to him. Once a muscular man of towering stature, he now sat with a hunch in his back. One of his bony, callous hands constantly clutched at a spot where his ribs never healed quite right. And though he seemed haggard and weak, a resentful, maniacal expression hung upon his face.
Further down were the Carrow siblings. Amycus, much like his sister Alecto, were of stocky stature with stubby fingers and a pallid, pig-like face. And while Alecto held a disposition of power and authority, her brother sat hunched over, his face conveying that of fear and despair.
But these were only the most prominent of the few remaining Death Eaters that still survived to see freedom yet again. The eleven remaining chairs were occupied by black-robed, hooded figures. Some wore masks, hiding their scars and brutalized facial features after decades of battle and torment within Azkaban, passively fighting the weakness that both age and history had brought upon then. All of them said nothing, and waited patiently, and some impatiently, for their meeting to begin.
Minutes passed in utter silence, with naught a peep from the chamber save for the ticking of the clock...
...Tick...
...Tick...
...Tick...
Eventually, Yaxley looked up, his steel gaze scanning the table up and down. With an inward sigh, he finally spoke.
"Here we are yet again."
They all turned to look at him. Yaxley's tone was almost dismissive, as if they had been here before...
"You all...are likely aware as to why we've come together once more. Azkaban lies in ruins. What none of us could have come close to accomplishing over decades...a single boy managed in mere weeks. Perhaps the rumours were true all along. They've only become stronger over the generations..."
"But even this was not enough," he went on. "From the ashes and ruin of the mudblood uprising, a new regime has emerged. Even with the ceaseless diversions and panic caused by Darkenstone's carefully-executed schemes...he failed. And now? Grey's power and strength over Britain is nothing short of absolute--"
"And now he caters to the mudbloods!" Alecto butted in. "Even after all they've done!"
"R-rather than purge them from society..." Amycus followed her point. "...'e has the audacity to l-let it all go unpunished? T-th' half-bloods too--!"
Yaxley, meanwhile, hadn't budged an inch. He only brought a hand up. Amycus went silent.
"Which is PRECISELY why we are here, Carrow," Yaxley interrupted. He leaned back in his chair.
"Permit me to state the obvious. This new government... This...HIGHLORD, cares not for the purity of wizardkind. To cleanse the filth outright would leave him weak - and weariness of another war would leave his followers lacking in both the will and manpower to enforce his rule. And even if it was his end goal, It would take years...decades-- perhaps centuries even...to finally see the pure magical regime that our beloved master so desired. And with so many flocking to Grey's cause, be it for their loyalty or fear, a single great battle cannot hope to turn the tides in our favor. The mudbloods tried and failed. Darkenstone tried and failed."
Yaxley, ever so slightly, hung his head. "Dare I say this, brothers and sisters, but we are now but a mere obstacle in the way of Albion's rise. And like the mudblood rebellions, he seeks to purge us like chaff..."
...Tick...
In the outer courtyard of the manor, laden by the darkness of night, a figure sat hunched forward upon a wooden bench. A hooded cloak covered his form, and a cloth mask concealed his face from the nose down. In one hand was a pocketwatch, and the other, a small photograph.
A photograph of the manor's empty meeting room.
The man on the bench had been staring intently at this photograph for what seemed like hours, studying each and every tiny detail of that chamber.
And listening to the time go by...
...Tick...
As the realization of their predicament set in, the room was silent once more. The echo of grandfather clock thumping ever closer to the eleventh hour was almost deafening. With the Dark Lord's last exchanging both worried and defeated looks, Yaxley finally stood, and stepped up to the end of their table.
"But I, for one, am not about to throw down my arms. Even to this day, the cowardly mudbloods continue to shudder at the very mention of our master's name! And the Highlord's attempts to denounce and dismiss our cause as archaic, and our sacred bloodlines of a bygone age, only serves as evidence of the mudbloods' poisonous influence over them!"
...Tick...
The man upon the bench, after being still and motionless for so long, finally looked up from the photograph. Furrowing his brow, he folded it up, and stuffed it and the pocketwatch into a pouch on his belt. He stood up straight, and shed his cloak upon the bench.
The dark grey military uniform he wore seemed almost Victorian in design, with black leather padding stitched onto the fabric for the protection of its wearer.
Strapped to his chest was a half cuirass, bearing Albion's coat of arms.
...Tick...
"Where once we dwelled in shadows licking our wounds, we held greatness within our grasp! And even as they snatch victory from the Dark Lord's grip - and seek to imprison us like cattle - it will not destroy our resolve. For so long as one of us survives, our cause shall live on forevermore!"
As the Death Eaters looked about the room yet again, their previously worrysome murmurs turned to nods of approval. Some clapped their hands. Others openly cheered.
"For the Dark Lord!" they yelled aloud.
...Tick...
Standing rigid within the courtyard, the masked figure stared blankly into the horizon in front of him for a long time. His eyes fluttered shut and, as he drew a wand, a seemingly tranquil expression came over him.
He took a deep breath, and disapparated.
...Tick...
With the speech and clamour of his comrades echoing around him, Dolohov sat still and silent within his chair. His twitchy gaze was frozen in a mile-long stare across the table, over Macnair's shoulder, and into the wall ahead. An ominous chill shook down his spine.
Yaxley took up a glass, and many others followed suit. Dolohov craned his neck to look to the head of the table.
"Brothers and sisters," Yaxley announced, holding the glass high.
...Tick...
"To a new age!"
Dolohov blinked. A masked man was suddenly stood behind him.
"CORBAN--"
But Dolohov's warning came too late. With a single deft swipe of the auror's wand, the glass shattered in a flash of light, and the entire room was dashed with wine and blood. One moment the congregation was up in celebration. And in but a blink of an eye, they now watched in horror as Yaxley's headless corpse fell upon the table...
The room suddenly fell to silence as the celebration ceased. Immediately, many of them shot up from their chairs. Yelling and screaming in a mix of shock and anger at the man now standing where their comrade once stood, several more drew wands. But amidst this danger, the masked man stood tall.
Dolohov was first to send a curse his way, causing the entire room to light up in a flash of green light. But in an instant, the auror was gone, and the curse tore a chunk off of the wall. With the room still in a panic, Dolohov gritted his teeth and looked frantically about the room.
But by the time he saw the figure now standing at the other end of the table, it was far too late.
A wave of the man's wand prompted a blast of wind to explode outward. It came with such force that everything - from the contents of the meeting table to the entire congregation of Death Eaters - were swept into the air and hurled at breakneck speed into the back wall of ornate, chiseled stone. As bodies slammed against it with the sickening cracks of broken bones and screams of pain, glasses and chairs snapped to shards and pieces, raining upon them like shrapnel and debris. Many that hit the ground did not get up again.
The few that did rose to find their wands, most stolen from their captors to begin with, being pulled from these piles of debris away from them. They came to a halt floating just above the man's head, and a single flick of his wrist snapped each one in two.
A sense of panic was instilled in the remaining Death Eaters at the other end of the room, prompting several of the weaker ones to make for any semblance of cover they could find. Dolohov, riddled with scrapes and cuts, practically seethed with fury.
"You..." his growl quickly turned to a raving scream. "YOU DOG!"
He took off running across the room, but the auror simply pointed his wand towards him, instead using his free hand to hold the broken wands aloft. Dolohov was immediately swept off his feet and lifted into the air, before being hurled kicking and screaming behind his assailant. He violently crashed through both the meeting room's doors and those of the room at the far end of the lobby before finally going out of sight.
The man turned and, before his remaining foes even had time to process the carnage around them, flicked his wrist again.
The several broken wands shot across the meeting room like a volley of deadly arrows. In but another second, more of the Death Eaters fell lifelessly to the floor. Rowle stumbled to a knee as one embedded itself in his shoulder. He reached to grab Macnair by the shoulder, only for he too to hit the ground. For a time, Rowle could only stare blankly at his own wand jutting from Macnair's eye, and the resulting pool of blood forming below him.
Rowle twitched, before turning his hateful gaze to the man responsible. Rising to his feet, he recklessly tore the broken wand from his shoulder and, bellowing a beastly roar that befitted his barbarous nature, charged. He brandished the snapped wand like a crude dagger.
The figure, however, lowered his wand, and as Rowle lunged to run him through, he disapparated yet again. The brutish Death Eater then fell face-first to the ground. But as Rowle pushed himself back up and looked over his shoulder, he found the same figure standing over him.
Amycus, on all fours, struggled to even scramble to his knees. The only thing that finally tore his eyes off his sister's impaled corpse was the second flash of green light that illuminated the entire room. His fearful eyes drifted to its source, where Rowle now lay still upon the ground.
A single outward gasp escaped Amycus' lips before the masked man's wand was trained on him now. And in another instant, a conjured rope was shot across the room, wrapping itself around his neck.
He choked on his initial words as the auror began to slowly step ever closer, his wand trained on the Death Eater's bound neck. Amycus attempted to splutter out any semblance of words to plea for mercy, but the rope only tightened. Before long, the man was close enough to look him in the eye. As his pallid face turned a bright shade of red, the auror's icy gaze bore daggers into Amycus' watering eyes.
The auror slowly rotated his wrist, and Amycus felt the rope press ever tightly into his throat. He clawed frantically at it to no avail, even going so far as to meekly reach out for the man's outstretched wand. For several seconds he choked and coughed up spit onto the floor, tears streaming down Amycus' face as his terrified eyes practically bulged from their sockets. But the man before him only continued to tighten his rope.
Until Amycus was finally silenced with the chilling snap of his neck...
When he hit the floor, the chamber was finally silent. The auror slowly lowered his wand and, taking a deep breath, scanned the room - now a mess of bodies, debris, blood and wine. He looked at the clock that somehow survived the mayhem.
The eleventh hour...
It was then that a thought occurred to him. Without missing a beat, he ran to the broken-down doors of the meeting room, and peered into the lobby. A thin trail of blood lead from the opposite room out the front door. He disapparated, reappearing in the doorway outside.
Across the courtyard stood Dolohov, shambling sluggishly down the central path towards the outer gate. Clutching a bleeding wound on his stomach, he turned, seemingly unsurprised by the auror's sudden reappearance.
"You think this is over, don't you?" Dolohov spat. "Rid Grey of a few loose ends, and that's that? Hah!?"
The man said nothing, beginning to walk towards him. Dolohov, however, came to a stop.
"Or maybe you believe you do this for the...greater good? To bring peace!? Once you outlive your usefulness, Grey will throw you to the WOLVES! You only replace one tyrant with another..."
Dolohov outstretched both arms, a maniacal grin forming on his haggard face.
"You change nothing..."
The auror's gloved hand snatched him by the jaw.
"NOTHING--!"
His words were cut short as a wand was driven into his neck. Dolohov blinked twice, his wide eyes boring into those of the man before him. The masked auror, however, didn't even dignify the Death Eater with another word. Instead, he violently tore his wand from Dolohov's neck, and disapparated.
Suddenly, Dolohov was now all alone in the beautiful courtyard, surrounded by naught but the tranquil sounds of nature. He dropped to his knees, and finally craned his neck to look at the full moon above.
And as the warm sensation of his blood flowing down his chest sent a final chill down his spine, he fell into the grass.
