Blood-Soaked Succession Chapter 27 (Patreon)

Chapter 27:

-

Daphne sat at the dining table with one ankle hooked behind the other, her silver heels still strapped to her feet. They felt almost as absurd as her matching dress now.

Silk clung to her legs from sweat and blood, and the revealing Muggle style had been uncomfortable physically and mentally from the start. Astoria seemed completely nonplussed by her even skimpier red strapless piece, even cheery despite the gore on her.

Across from them sat Viktor and Elena Malkovich. They had looked far more animated several hours earlier. The couple remained upright through a combination of binding charms and rigor mortis, posed as though awaiting breakfast save that their faces had settled into expressions of mute surprise. Each corpse ended at one elbow.

Their missing arms lay on the table between the salt cellar and a bowl of bruised oranges. The Dark Mark burned into their forearms still glowed faintly.

The Malkoviches had possessed appetites that polite society preferred to call eccentric. They liked young women. Girls, really. The younger the better, provided they looked old enough to enter whatever club had caught their interest that evening. Astoria had served as bait, being underage, while Daphne had been her handler.

For seven nights they had moved through Moscow after dark, visiting bars, private clubs and underground lounges where the Malkoviches often hunted. Astoria laughed at every bad joke, accepted every drink while Daphne quietly vanished the alcohol contents from afar and watched her sister dance close enough to encourage assumptions.

At three in the morning, the Malkoviches finally approached.

They thought Daphne and Astoria were Muggles, and thus helpless. So the Greengrasses put on a good show of carnal interest, which had been sickening, but effective. The Malcoviches invited the sisters back to their flat with smiles, expensive vodka and promises of a private party. Their intentions had remained entirely sexual.

The distinction mattered, at least to Daphne.

Viktor and Elena had never murdered anyone, save whoever they killed to get their marks. Which was a crapshoot whether the victim deserved it or not. They had never forced themselves on unwilling partners. They preferred their brand of charm – to them – alcohol and selecting willing partners.

Hardly saints. Hardly the worst Death Eaters either. Their crimes against Muggles mostly involved treating them as disposable swinging partners. Muggles did much the same to one another every weekend without their ideology.

Unfortunately, the Malkoviches had still taken the Mark. Now the sun rose upon a world freed from them.

Daphne scowled towards the sound of a pan scraping.

Astoria stood barefoot at the cooker, humming as she folded eggs over themselves with a wooden spatula. She had kicked her heels beneath the counter and tied her hair back with one of Elena’s silk scarves. A streak of blood crossed her cheek like war paint.

The smell of butter and toast filled the flat as Daphne continued organizing the mountain of documents.

These had been the real target, not the Death Eaters. The Malkoviches had only been a priority due to their status as businessmen. After killing them, and torturing information out of them, the sisters had spent the rest of the twilight hours ransacking the place for anything showing the movement of Death Eater money, supplies or movements. And had found some. Probably found more than some but didn't have the expertise to identify what they were. But there were no fewer than forty possible safehouses, out of the hundreds the couple managed. Elena's documents on her real estate half of the business were much easier to decipher than Viktor's purely money handling.

For now she only organized them by type of transaction and files she found suspicious. Like low-value properties in the middle of nowhere in Siberia. But all of it was going into the expanded suitcase.

All of this had been according to the plan of that "Pizza boy" that Potter kept in his inner circle. That's what people called him. Potter's strategist.

Astoria divided the eggs between two plates, added toast and carried breakfast to the table. She placed one plate before Daphne and took the chair beside her.

“Eat,” she said.

Daphne looked down at the eggs. Then at the severed arms. Then at the blood dried beneath Astoria’s fingernails.

“How do you have an appetite?”

Astoria had already filled her mouth. She chewed, swallowed and pointed her fork toward Daphne’s untouched plate.

“We were out all night!” she said. "And I burned a lot more calories than you. Between all the dancing, and the adrenaline from dealing with those two, and then the hours of paper pushing. How are you not hungry?"

“We committed cold-blooded murder and the corpses are right there.”

“Assassination,” Astoria corrected, with a shrug. "And we've eaten after magical creatures, or herbology, or potions class before. And those were all much more disgusting on an average day."

Astoria had always adapted quickly. Hogwarts, war, exile, recruitment, training. Each new horror entered her life, found a place and became ordinary.

She watched her cut through another mouthful of egg. She dragged a piece of toast through the remaining yolk and pushed the plate away. She stood up and walked to the window.

Outside the windows, Moscow emerged beneath a pale blue dawn with sunlight just starting to peek over the buildings on the horizon. Cars moved along the streets below. Early workers descended toward the subway. Shopkeepers lifted shutters. A tram groaned along its rails.

A normal city beginning a normal day.

Daphne waited until Astoria scraped the last egg from her plate before she walked over and reached across the table, picking up Viktor Malkovich’s severed arm. The limb felt heavier than expected. His wedding ring remained on his finger.

She removed it and placed it on the table in front of Elena. She repeated the process with Elena's wedding band and engagement ring, placing them in front of Viktor. She then carried it, and the trunk, to the window and released the latch. Cold morning air poured into the flat, lifting the loose strands of her hair and carrying away the lingering smells of blood and breakfast.

Daphne raised her wand.

“Morsmordre!”

Green fire erupted from the tip.

It climbed over downtown Moscow, spreading into a vast skull whose jaws opened to release a twisting serpent. The Dark Mark cast its sickly light across glass towers, apartment roofs and the crowds gathering below.

Shouts rose from the street as people pointed upward at the glowing mark hovering directly above the subway entrance. Thousands would see it. Millions would hear about it. By noon, every marked servant of Voldemort in Russia would understand the message and they would be working overtime to continue their failing battle to keep the Statute of Secrecy functional.

Daphne lowered her wand.

“Time to go.”

Astoria rose and picked up Elena’s arm. She tucked it beneath one elbow as casually as a handbag, then placed her free hand on Daphne’s shoulder.

Daphne reached into her dress and closed her fingers around the portkey.

They reappeared a moment later in the Russian wilderness, hundreds of kilometers southeast of Moscow.

Green foothills rolled into the distance beneath a cloudless sky while dense woods concealed the old railway cutting through them. These rails had not seen maintenance in decades. Rust covered the steel and several wooden ties had begun to rot.

Daphne stepped onto the tracks and held out her thumb like a Muggle hitchhiker. Beside her, Astoria cocked one hip, stuck out one leg through the slit in her dress and puckered her lips towards the empty railway.

Daphne rolled her eyes at her sisters shenanigans.

They kept their gaze to the northwest. Moments later, the air above them shimmered.

The clear morning sky rippled like disturbed water as something impossibly long descended through the illusion. First came the locomotive, then carriage after carriage until the entire Hogwarts Express emerged from beneath the invisibility charm. It bore little resemblance to the train that had once carried children to school. Crude armour plating had been welded across every carriage. Thick sheets of steel protected the engine while reinforced shutters covered most of the windows. Only the faded red paint beneath reminded Daphne what it had once been.

The locomotive settled onto the rails first. Each wheel struck the track with a heavy metallic clank like magnets slamming into each other until the entire train had grounded itself. It continued another hundred metres before braking, screeching loudly enough to send birds scattering from the surrounding trees. The final carriage stopped directly in front of the sisters.

The door slid open and Colin Creevey leaned out, hanging from the handrail with one arm.

"Welcome to the Knight Train Service!" he announced. "Entrance fee is one severed Death Eater arm."

Daphne handed him Viktor's without comment and brushed past him. Astoria kissed Colin on the cheek before placing Elena's arm into his hands and followed Daphne.

He blinked once.

"...Thanks."

The sisters stepped aboard and moved through the carriages.

The interior of the train was an even greater blasphemy than the exterior.

The larger communal carriages had been stripped of every seat and converted into cargo bays resembling the inside of military transport aircraft. Tie-down points lined the floors while crates, motorcycles and an old World War Two jeep occupied several compartments. Harry had somehow found abandoned military depots across Europe and slowly emptied them into the train, or was repositioning them to other places.

The private compartments had fared little better. Their beds folded into the walls to create barracks while every exterior window had been replaced with armoured shielding containing firing ports. The weapons themselves had yet to arrive but the joinery for their placement was visible on the floors.

Efficient, but hideous.

The second-to-last carriage had once belonged to the prefects. Daphne remembered Percy Weasley, then Draco, gathering everyone there before the start-of-term feast to explain their duties for the coming year. Now it served as the mess hall.

Beyond it lay the trolley compartment, where the wonderful woman who once exchanged treats for coin had called home. Arthur and Molly Weasley had claimed it months ago, transforming it into both their home and the train's kitchen.

Molly emerged almost the instant they arrived.

"Oh, you poor girls."

She fussed over Astoria first, brushing dried blood from her cheek with a damp cloth before either sister could protest.

Daphne looked past her into the compartment beyond hoping to get a glimpse of the cloak and its housing.

She had never seen the cloak itself, but everybody knew Harry possessed it. Either from their time at Hogwarts where it was the worst-kept secret in a school famously bad at keeping them, or from deduction. Flying an invisible train halfway across Europe left little room for doubt as to what the artifact powering the vessel was. Most also suspected he possessed the Resurrection Stone too. Daphne certainly did.

Which raised an obvious question. Who exactly occupied Harry's inner circle?

She had met that strange confidant everyone called the Pizza Boy once before and had been reminded of a certain handsome redhead. Beyond that she knew nothing. If Harry truly possessed the Stone, that man could be anybody. General MacArthur. King Leonidas. Hell, it could be Tacitus doing all of his military planning for all she knew.

Harry certainly wasn't telling.

"Daphne?"

She turned back.

Molly held a serving spoon in one hand.

"Breakfast?"

"I already ate," Astoria said.

Molly raised an eyebrow.

"I'm absolutely starving," Daphne admitted. "But I'd rather wash first."

"Of course, dear."

Daphne set the expanded trunk onto the nearest table.

"Financial records from Moscow."

Molly produced a clipboard and several forms out of thin air. Daphne signed the chain-of-custody sheet before sliding both it and the trunk across the table.

"Please make copies of everything before it goes to Fletcher."

Daphne still distrusted Mundungus Fletcher. She doubted that would ever change. Unfortunately nobody within Harry's organization understood hidden money trails better than a lifelong thief. If there were irregularities hidden among the Malkoviches' paperwork, Fletcher would find them.

"Oh believe me, I will," said Molly, reiterating her shared distrust of the man.

With the paperwork complete, Daphne excused herself and headed towards the baths to scrub away the dried blood before finally eating.

-

Harry stood opposite Cho in the old gymnasium while Cresspool watched from several rows up in the bleachers. The healer sat with his medical case beside him and wand already drawn, prepared to intervene if either of them misjudged a spell.

Cho raised her wand.

Harry relaxed his shoulders and met her eyes.

“Imperio!” she cast.

Euphoria washed through him.

The pain in his body faded beneath it. The stiffness in his joints, the burning beneath the withered flesh and the constant awareness of organs struggling to function all became distant concerns belonging to somebody else. He could have broken the curse before it fully settled. His mind already strained against it from instinct, seeking the flaw in the command and the path back to freedom.

He resisted that instinct instead. The connection had to remain.

Cho’s reluctance bled through it first. Concern followed close behind, mixed with the familiar anger she always carried into these sessions. She hated casting the curse on him. She hated that he asked her to. She hated even more that part of her enjoyed the power it gave her over him.

“Duel me,” she commanded.

Harry obeyed.

Cho opened with a stunner aimed at his chest. Her intention reached him an instant before the wand movement finished, coloured by the hope that he would dodge to his left.

Harry stepped right and parried the spell into the floor.

A tripping jinx followed. She wanted him to jump over it. He cancelled the spell before it reached his feet and answered with a silent cutting charm that forced her behind a shield.

The duel continued.

Intent, expectation and emotion arrived ahead of each spell she cast. Cho wanted him to duck beneath one curse, so he raised a shield instead. She expected him to block the next, so he sidestepped and countered. Sometimes the impressions were so precise that they almost felt like additional commands entering through the Imperius Curse.

Left.

Duck.

Block.

Retreat.

Harry resisted each suggestion without disturbing the curse itself.

That had been the difficult part at first. Breaking the Imperius was easy. Remaining under it while refusing individual impulses had taken weeks.

Cho increased the pace.

Stunners and binding charms gave way to spells designed for actual combat. A jagged purple curse struck the shield before Harry’s face and spread across it like cracks in glass. He twisted his wrist and shed the damaged barrier before the curse could crawl around it.

She followed with a dark charm aimed at the ground beneath him. Harry felt the intended pressure before she finished the movement.

The earth around his boots compressed. Dust flattened into stone and the air itself pressed inward, trying to crush his feet and ankles against the floor. Harry traced a circle around his body with his wand and created an opposing pressure. The charm was a companion to the Bubble-Head Charm, designed to protect the body from the crushing pressure of water.

The force around him equalised and his bones remained intact.

Cho had already begun the next spell.

Harry felt her satisfaction at the sequence. The crushing spell broke the floor, producing dust while trapping the victim in place. The second spell would then banish those particles into every pore in the body before detonating them beneath the skin. Thousands of tiny explosions, each too small to kill alone, would leave every inch of the victim bleeding.

A nasty piece of magic.

Grindelwald had selected it for their curriculum.

Before Cho could cast, Harry swept his wand through the air and filled the space around himself with moisture. Water condensed onto every suspended grain of dust, clumping the particles together and making them too heavy for the spell to drive into his skin.

Cho fired anyway.

The wet dust struck him like specks of mud and clung to him.

Her frustration sharpened.

Harry had come to recognize the differences between Cho and Ginny during these sessions. Ginny favoured elemental magic. Fire, lightning, ice and spells that transformed the battlefield itself. Cho preferred dark charms. Subtle effects that crippled the body or turned the victim’s surroundings against them.

Both had been ordered to learn one new combat spell each day from separate lists prepared by Grindelwald and Dumbledore. The lists contained magic Voldemort might know or use. Anything instantly fatal had been excluded, but little else had.

Cho and Ginny succeeded more often than they failed.

Harry learned the spells through them.

The Imperius connection carried the intent behind each incantation, the gathering of power and the pattern of movement needed to release it. Once he had felt a spell enough times, his body began recreating it. At first he managed crude imitations after the duel ended. Then he began casting them during later sessions.

Now he matched Cho spell for spell.

A chain of black light snapped towards him. Harry cast the same spell and the chains collided between them, wrapping around one another until both lost their shape and dissolved.

Cho sent a narrow cone of invisible pressure at his throat. Harry mirrored the movement and their spells met halfway, exploding outward and scattering loose stones across the arena.

She tried a nerve-severing curse next. Harry cast its counter before the light reached him.

That exhausted nearly everything she knew yesterday.

Harry waited for what had changed.

Cho’s irritation grew with every failed attack. Months ago she had regularly knocked him unconscious, broken bones and left Cresspool repairing damaged organs after their sessions. The Imperius had once been a crippling handicap.

Now she struggled to touch him. Anger had long since displaced her concern. Then came anticipation. Something unfamiliar formed in her mind.

Harry felt the shape of the spell before he understood its purpose. A violent compression of the air. Power gathered into a single point before the caster and collapsed inward until the pressure could no longer contain itself.

Cho raised her wand and Harry stopped consciously resisting the connection.

He allowed the Imperius deeper access and let his body respond to the feelings passing through it. Her intended movement became his movement. The swish of her wand guided his own. Magic gathered along his arm in the same pattern as hers.

The incantation reached them both.

“Tonitrus!” Harry shouted.

“Toni...”

The air directly in front of Cho imploded.

A deafening crack rent the air as the compressed space exploded back outward. The shockwave struck Cho before she could complete the spell herself and threw her across the arena. Harry took the edge of the same blast and landed hard on his back.

The crack had been deafening. Literally. All he could hear was a constant ringing.

His vision shook as he pushed himself upright. Cho lay farther across the arena, sliding to a stop amid a trail of disturbed dust.

Cresspool shouted something from the bleachers and ran towards them. Harry heard none of it beyond a dull, distant murmur.

He raised one hand and pointed towards Cho.

“Check her!” he ordered.

The vibration in his throat told him he had shouted. His own voice barely reached his ears.

Cresspool stopped beside him long enough to point his wand into Harry’s right ear. He cast a short diagnostic charm followed by another Harry did not recognize. His ears popped and the world regained sound. Cresspool repeated the process on the left ear before hurrying towards Cho.

“I said I’m fine!” Cho yelled as he helped her sit up.

“You were struck by a concussive spell at close range,” Cresspool answered. “Your confidence is irrelevant.”

Harry climbed to his feet and tested his balance.

“What spell was that?” he asked.

Cho and Cresspool both looked at him.

“You cast it before I did,” Cho said. “Are you telling me you didn’t know it?”

“That’s right. I learned it from you just now.”

The anger left her face for a moment.

Cresspool looked from Cho to Harry. His expression changed as he reached the same conclusion Harry had, though neither of them voiced it.

Harry shook his head once.

Later, was his message

Cho pushed Cresspool’s hand away and stood defiantly.

“What is the point of all this?” she demanded. “I should be out there doing something! I think I’ve trained enough, and you seem to be getting more out of these sessions than us.”

Harry assumed that by "us" she meant herself and Ginny. Which was odd, as his two exes seldom referenced each others existence.

“Good news, then. We may be finished with this training. You will both be needed on missions as soon as the last of us return from theirs.”

Cho’s posture straightened.

“For what?”

“I will consult with Cresspool and my advisers before finalising our next course of action.”

The answer only deepened her irritation.

“You are dismissed, Cho.”

Sadness entered the connection. It arrived beneath the anger, sharp enough that Harry almost reacted to it. She hated the formality. Once, he would have called her by a nickname or spoken to her with the familiarity of somebody who had kissed her and mourned with her.

He had forgotten the curse was still in effect, so he broke it.

Cho staggered slightly as the borrowed euphoria and control vanished from her. She shook her head, regaining ownership of her thoughts and body.

“Right, then,” she said.

She turned and stormed from the arena without looking back.

Harry watched her leave before turning towards Cresspool.

“Tell Ginny our evening spar is cancelled. We must go tell Ron of the success of his training regimen.”