*Walden drops the Portkey and before the empty beer bottle even shatters on the smooth tiled floor he's moving, briskly and efficiently, through the swinging door and into the coma ward, third floor.
As he expected there are no Healers and only one nurse, a stout and florid-faced man in his fifties bent over one of the patients, fluffing a pillow beneath the woman's head. Avada Kedavra hits him squarely in the back of the neck and he goes down silently. Next, Walden takes a moment to collect himself, to glance around the ward, before he begins. There are no Healers in this room, he remembers, because the little vegetables need maintenance, not treatment. They won't have taken potions, so he's been sent here to clear the ward the old-fashioned way. He's no stranger to this kind of work but it gives him far more pleasure now, in his mask and robes, disposing of vermin of the human sort. Or nearly-human.
He's methodical and precise, going down the silent ward. Each patient has a chart affixed to their bed: with gloved fingers he pages through it, finding their surnames. The ones he recognizes, the pure-bloods, he passes by without a second glance. The others don't even make noise when the flash of green light hits them, don't even move. They are nearly-dead to begin with, silent and unmoving as corpses already, so there is no visible change. He lets their charts fall to the floor one by one. After awhile, the floor is almost carpeted with the loose leaves of parchment.
He clears one row of beds, and then another. After tucking Philip McKinnon's chart back into its sleeve and moving on to Sarah Plover and dispatching her, he pauses to crack his neck. It's tedious work--but he's smiling faintly, beneath his mask: the expression of a man watching a re-run of a favorite television program, or reading a beloved but slightly boring book.
*Realizing they've gone, Andy takes a second to strip out of her ruined Healer robes, leaving them a charred mess on the floor. They smell of burnt Mr Dalton. In skirts and bodice and high-heeled boots she's hardly dressed to handle whatever is going on, but she didn't leave for work this morning anticipating a battle. She'll just have to manage.
She also had not anticipated a wall of thorns. Sealing the ward behind her, she quickly sizes up the obstacle and then sets about working her way through it. She's always been one for magical finesse over force, and within moments she's cut a neat doorway through the bramble, and passed through it. Throughout the whole war so far she's gone out of her way to avoid fighting, but she will not stand by and let patients get slaughtered. She won't.
The corridor is silent - too silent - except for dim whistling coming from the far end, where the coma patients are housed. Trying not to let her boots click on the floor, wand raised, Andy creeps down it with her back to the wall, hardly daring to breathe as she slowly looks around the doorway.*
*Walden's still whistling, and he's got a good rhythm now: tucking Lawrence Parkinson's chart neatly back into the sleeve at the foot of his bed, moving on to the next, withdrawing and paging through the chart, killing Esther Lennon with a swift curse, letting the parchments fall as he moves to the next bed. He is completely unaware of the Healer's presence behind him, so engrossed is he in his task.*
*What she sees is worse, somehow, than Mr Dalton being set on fire. For a moment Andy's too horrified to do more than stares as the Death Eater systematically murders some patients and not others, but she can't say she's shocked. That nonchalant attitude toward selective violence is something remembered from childhood - flashes of memory resurface, long ignored, about Muggle hunting and the like. She just hasn't actually seen it in a long time, and never to this degree, but she knows this. She's lived it.
The other two Death Eaters are still unaccounted for, but she can't let this one get to the next bed. Stepping into the middle of the doorway, she levels her wand at his back, braced in both hands. She made the mistake of giving fair warning last time - not again. Instead she casts a blasting curse at his back - violent, maybe, but justified.*
*As he leans forward to fetch the next chart, a shadow falls across it, and it's that and only that that saves Walden's life. He recoils reflexively and half-turns and the curse takes a chunk out of his shoulder instead of his head or spinal column. As much as he knows he has to stay anonymous he can't help it: he swears viciously, something bellowed through the mask that sounds like fucking sideways cunt, and turns and fires off the Killing Curse--but it's the shoulder of his wand hand that's injured, and the curse goes wide, gouging a hole in the bland institutional wall behind the woman.
His reflexes are good, though, and always have been: he knows even before the curse leaves his wand that it'll miss, and in the next moment he throws what he's holding in his left hand into the Healer's face--it turns out to be the man's chart--and ducks.*
*Alecto and Amycus had been working their violent way down the hall, careful to dodge Andromeda as she passed and keep their victims silent, this time, putting their fingers to their lips and grinning wildly at each other, faces lit up with flash after flash of green light. A gaggle of nurses goes down silently in a labratory for synthesizing antidotes, and their uniformed bodies piled so neatly that Amycus couldn't resist gluing them together and rolling them out toward the door like a huge wheel.
They hear the blast, though, and come running, their grisly shield soaring along ahead of them. Alecto can't help but crow, though, peering around the edge between an errant leg and a head.*
Look who it is! It's our friend from before, she still wants to play!
*The chart is enough to keep her from firing off another curse, as she reflexively ducks and knocks it away. And then there's a female voice, and all she can do is keep the man covered with her wand while turning to see what's happening. The sight that greets her is one she won't forget for the rest of her life.
While selective violence isn't new to Andy, corpse shields are, and she knows those nurses. Colleagues, friends, people she's worked with for years - the light catches on Verity Crestwell's engagement ring, her hand limp and dangling. She was to be married in a week.
There's no time to mourn, though. Andy's got the man in front of her and the pair behind her, which means she's trapped, but she'll be damned if she goes down like this, if Ted has to find her body rigged up in a bloody great shield. And if help's not coming - she's got no reason to assume it is - then it's on her to get out of it.
So. Alright. Forcing herself to remain calm, Andy shifts position so she can keep an eye on the man while addressing the other two. They sound like teenagers, and they reacted (frankly) stupidly before, so they seem the logical ones to try and play. Better the devil you know to dive under beds than the one who whistles while he kills. So she draws herself up to her full height, looking down her nose at the pair for all the world as though not disturbed by their amalgamation of bodies. Her voice goes very haughty and cold, and she intentionally tries - successfully - to sound like her sisters, her mother.*
Do you have any idea who I am?
*This is not a ploy she likes, and she hasn't used it in a long time, but she'd rather feel a bit dodgy later than be dead.*
*Nothing else could have stopped them. The corpse sheild slows, and stops, and wavers a bit before coming to rest with a crunching, snapping sound of dead bones taking the weight of the entire structure on the floor.
It's Amycus who gathers his wits quick enough to say something first, but it's to his sister.*
*So they didn't buy her as Bellatrix - fair enough - but her lineage is still enough to frighten the occasional shop keeper, and with good reason. She'll monopolize on that now if she can, even if it's by family reputation more than her own merit.
That, and the fact that she's subtly casting a charm on the bodies to adhese them to the pair wherever they're touching them. In the meantime she laughs (forced but realistic enough), wand kept carefully low.*
As though they'd speak to the likes of you about anything important. Whether they acknowledge me or not is beside the point.
*The wheel of corpses is irritating enough. The fact that they are standing there conversing with the Healer on the subject of whether she ought to be killed or not while his shoulder's smoking and burning and bleeding and the simplest fact of their orders is that they are to kill Healers is another thing entirely.
Children.
Still, the pair of idiots buy enough time, enough distraction for him to cast a hurried healing spell on his shoulder--his aim isn't great and the spell isn't much, some branches of magic have always been beyond him, but it's enough at least to bring his wand hand back under proper control. In the next instant he's found cover and fired off a few curses at the Healer-woman. They are rapid and nonverbal, twisted, ugly juggernauts, and they come so quickly he isn't even sure which curses they are. He's furious, partly at her and partly, truth be told, at the moronic children he's sharing the mask with.*
*She's hit this time, but she's no more sure what the spell is than the man is. It tears along her left arm nastily, and she reflexively ducks back behind a bed, gasping in pain. But anger's close on its heels, and she leans out to fire back viciously with the first curse that comes to mind, without even really thinking. It's a particularly nasty one as it turns out, learned at the knee of a parent or aunt or grandparent, no doubt, long ago.*
Paritero!
*It's meant to fuse internal organs, but any horror on Andy's part that that was her knee-jerk reaction is stifled, delayed; she just ducks lower behind the bed and hisses, examining her arm.*
*The hastily-thrown Shield Charm isn't half bad, but he still feels a twisting and impossible pain deep in his gut, as if all the bad tinned meat he's ever eaten has come back to haunt him at once. And just like that, the fight is out of Walden: he has had quite enough of this. He prefers killing to fighting and coma patients to weird dippy cunts with Black cheekbones and spells he's never even heard of.
Besides, the room is mostly clear of Mudbloods and it looks like it's about time to save his own neck. She's taken cover, distracted, and he has enough time to make the blasting curse directed at the ceiling a very, very good one. Perhaps it'll take care of the Healer, and even a few of the vegetables, if he's lucky. The Carrows will simply have to get out of the way.
Without hesitation, Walden Apparates somewhere down the hall outside, putting a healthy chunk of distance between himself and the Healer. A particularly level-headed candy striper levels a curse at him and he reacts instantly: an expert dodge, a flash of green light. As she falls, the adrenaline spiking his veins is enough to numb the pain of whatever that curse did to his works, and in a swirl of black robes, Walden sets himself to easier targets.*
*Alecto had grabbed onto the wall of corpses for a better vantage to curse from once Macnair's curses reminded them that, oh yes, they weren't here to make nice but to kill. She lets out a high-pitched whining squeal when she finds both of her hands immutably fused to the inner thigh of a dead woman.*
Get it off, get it off!
*She squirms violently and only just barely keeps hold of her wand even as the ceiling trembles and threatens to come down on their heads.*
*Amycus only manages to get one curse off, which goes incredibly wide and explodes a vase of flowers sitting on a table next to a dead man. He tries to yank Alecto's hand off the thigh, and it's only by providence that he does it with his nondominant hand, because he finds himself just as irrevocably stuck.*
Oh, fuck. I hate that Healer bitch.
*His spell slices messily into the dead woman's body, freeing both Alecto's hand and a jagged chunk of flesh. It's messy and bloody and disgusting and Alecto whines incoherently about it. But Amycus figures if it worked once with one body, might as well try it with a whole pile. The pile of bodies goes flying toward Andromeda and Amycus and Alecto scarper as well.*
*She lets them go; she's busy hiding under a bed herself, now, as the ceiling crashes down and her arm bleeds and oozes something black. She's curled on her side face to face with the upper half of Verity Crestwell, severed at the ribcage, dead eyes staring. Andromeda can only stare back as rubble collapses down around the bed, obscuring the light and, mercifully, the sight of what's left of Verity. When it's stopped she lies absolutely still, listening, but the only sounds are muffled screams from other floors, other wards.
She should go help, she knows. But she waits, arm cradled against her chest, focusing on the radiating pain working a spiral up her arm toward her shoulder. Whatever the curse was it's nasty, but she can't try and fix it right now. Not in the dark, not when they might be back any moment.
But they don't come back, and after a few minutes she digs her way out of the debris surrounding the bed. She casts a ward at the door that's more alarm system than lock, and, bleeding and shaken and furious, starts checking on patients, trying to block out the screams. She was lucky to run them off once; she won't risk making Ted a widower when there are patients right here.*
As he expected there are no Healers and only one nurse, a stout and florid-faced man in his fifties bent over one of the patients, fluffing a pillow beneath the woman's head. Avada Kedavra hits him squarely in the back of the neck and he goes down silently. Next, Walden takes a moment to collect himself, to glance around the ward, before he begins. There are no Healers in this room, he remembers, because the little vegetables need maintenance, not treatment. They won't have taken potions, so he's been sent here to clear the ward the old-fashioned way. He's no stranger to this kind of work but it gives him far more pleasure now, in his mask and robes, disposing of vermin of the human sort. Or nearly-human.
He's methodical and precise, going down the silent ward. Each patient has a chart affixed to their bed: with gloved fingers he pages through it, finding their surnames. The ones he recognizes, the pure-bloods, he passes by without a second glance. The others don't even make noise when the flash of green light hits them, don't even move. They are nearly-dead to begin with, silent and unmoving as corpses already, so there is no visible change. He lets their charts fall to the floor one by one. After awhile, the floor is almost carpeted with the loose leaves of parchment.
He clears one row of beds, and then another. After tucking Philip McKinnon's chart back into its sleeve and moving on to Sarah Plover and dispatching her, he pauses to crack his neck. It's tedious work--but he's smiling faintly, beneath his mask: the expression of a man watching a re-run of a favorite television program, or reading a beloved but slightly boring book.
As he resumes, he begins to whistle.*
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She also had not anticipated a wall of thorns. Sealing the ward behind her, she quickly sizes up the obstacle and then sets about working her way through it. She's always been one for magical finesse over force, and within moments she's cut a neat doorway through the bramble, and passed through it. Throughout the whole war so far she's gone out of her way to avoid fighting, but she will not stand by and let patients get slaughtered. She won't.
The corridor is silent - too silent - except for dim whistling coming from the far end, where the coma patients are housed. Trying not to let her boots click on the floor, wand raised, Andy creeps down it with her back to the wall, hardly daring to breathe as she slowly looks around the doorway.*
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The other two Death Eaters are still unaccounted for, but she can't let this one get to the next bed. Stepping into the middle of the doorway, she levels her wand at his back, braced in both hands. She made the mistake of giving fair warning last time - not again. Instead she casts a blasting curse at his back - violent, maybe, but justified.*
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His reflexes are good, though, and always have been: he knows even before the curse leaves his wand that it'll miss, and in the next moment he throws what he's holding in his left hand into the Healer's face--it turns out to be the man's chart--and ducks.*
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They hear the blast, though, and come running, their grisly shield soaring along ahead of them. Alecto can't help but crow, though, peering around the edge between an errant leg and a head.*
Look who it is! It's our friend from before, she still wants to play!
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While selective violence isn't new to Andy, corpse shields are, and she knows those nurses. Colleagues, friends, people she's worked with for years - the light catches on Verity Crestwell's engagement ring, her hand limp and dangling. She was to be married in a week.
There's no time to mourn, though. Andy's got the man in front of her and the pair behind her, which means she's trapped, but she'll be damned if she goes down like this, if Ted has to find her body rigged up in a bloody great shield. And if help's not coming - she's got no reason to assume it is - then it's on her to get out of it.
So. Alright. Forcing herself to remain calm, Andy shifts position so she can keep an eye on the man while addressing the other two. They sound like teenagers, and they reacted (frankly) stupidly before, so they seem the logical ones to try and play. Better the devil you know to dive under beds than the one who whistles while he kills. So she draws herself up to her full height, looking down her nose at the pair for all the world as though not disturbed by their amalgamation of bodies. Her voice goes very haughty and cold, and she intentionally tries - successfully - to sound like her sisters, her mother.*
Do you have any idea who I am?
*This is not a ploy she likes, and she hasn't used it in a long time, but she'd rather feel a bit dodgy later than be dead.*
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It's Amycus who gathers his wits quick enough to say something first, but it's to his sister.*
She's not--?
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*The sneer in Alecto's voice is for Andromeda, and her volume goes up to make sure she can hear.*
She must be the muggle-lover. What's your name again, pretty? Your sisters won't say it in company.
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That, and the fact that she's subtly casting a charm on the bodies to adhese them to the pair wherever they're touching them. In the meantime she laughs (forced but realistic enough), wand kept carefully low.*
As though they'd speak to the likes of you about anything important. Whether they acknowledge me or not is beside the point.
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Children.
Still, the pair of idiots buy enough time, enough distraction for him to cast a hurried healing spell on his shoulder--his aim isn't great and the spell isn't much, some branches of magic have always been beyond him, but it's enough at least to bring his wand hand back under proper control. In the next instant he's found cover and fired off a few curses at the Healer-woman. They are rapid and nonverbal, twisted, ugly juggernauts, and they come so quickly he isn't even sure which curses they are. He's furious, partly at her and partly, truth be told, at the moronic children he's sharing the mask with.*
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Paritero!
*It's meant to fuse internal organs, but any horror on Andy's part that that was her knee-jerk reaction is stifled, delayed; she just ducks lower behind the bed and hisses, examining her arm.*
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Besides, the room is mostly clear of Mudbloods and it looks like it's about time to save his own neck. She's taken cover, distracted, and he has enough time to make the blasting curse directed at the ceiling a very, very good one. Perhaps it'll take care of the Healer, and even a few of the vegetables, if he's lucky. The Carrows will simply have to get out of the way.
Without hesitation, Walden Apparates somewhere down the hall outside, putting a healthy chunk of distance between himself and the Healer. A particularly level-headed candy striper levels a curse at him and he reacts instantly: an expert dodge, a flash of green light. As she falls, the adrenaline spiking his veins is enough to numb the pain of whatever that curse did to his works, and in a swirl of black robes, Walden sets himself to easier targets.*
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Get it off, get it off!
*She squirms violently and only just barely keeps hold of her wand even as the ceiling trembles and threatens to come down on their heads.*
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Oh, fuck. I hate that Healer bitch.
*His spell slices messily into the dead woman's body, freeing both Alecto's hand and a jagged chunk of flesh. It's messy and bloody and disgusting and Alecto whines incoherently about it. But Amycus figures if it worked once with one body, might as well try it with a whole pile. The pile of bodies goes flying toward Andromeda and Amycus and Alecto scarper as well.*
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She should go help, she knows. But she waits, arm cradled against her chest, focusing on the radiating pain working a spiral up her arm toward her shoulder. Whatever the curse was it's nasty, but she can't try and fix it right now. Not in the dark, not when they might be back any moment.
But they don't come back, and after a few minutes she digs her way out of the debris surrounding the bed. She casts a ward at the door that's more alarm system than lock, and, bleeding and shaken and furious, starts checking on patients, trying to block out the screams. She was lucky to run them off once; she won't risk making Ted a widower when there are patients right here.*
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