*Safe far away from the smell of disinfectant and imminent death, Regulus has designed a wall-to-wall map just for St. Mungo's. Illegal portkeys have been spaced along its floors and a series of invisible doors in the very air wait to be activated and sheppard anyone caught between them for better or for worse
( ... )
*Sirius' setup is much less elaborate or dignified than a map carefully pinned to a wall. He's in an alley next to Purge and Dowse Ltd, and the Order is poised and hidden around the area near the entrance in preparation to storm in. He's got his own map, though it's laid out on a bin lid. The map illuminates as Regulus brings up the wards, and Sirius instantly begins the tricky process of unraveling one of the many doors and opening its mate just outside of the walls instead of inside of it.
But Sirius didn't help create the Marauder's map without knowing a thing or two, and he finds that they the principles Regulus' wards function on are almost identical. All in all, it's only about five minutes before Sirius manages to crack one of the doors, and he lets out a whoop when he manages it. If he's does it carefully and well--and he thinks he has, though heaven knows--then Reg shouldn't even notice until he really tries to use this particular door. He steps to the entrance of the alley and gestures, come here, ready to show them
( ... )
*Fabian's ready and waiting, and at Sirius's gesture he's right there. His being here at all was a matter of some debate; three months is not a terribly long time to heal werewolf bites and ruined muscle, but he's nothing if not stubborn, and eager to do something actively useful. So he peers down into the cupboard, face alight with grim excitement.*
*Gideon is right behind him. He's shrewd enough to recognize a lost cause when he sees it, so he'd given up just about immediately on trying to get Fabian to stay home. But that doesn't mean he can't keep an eye on his brother--and his brother's slightly slowed reaction time--while they're out there.
Still, there's no use having a chat while God-knows-what is happening on the other side of that broom closet door. He tilts his head at his brother, his smile grim.*
*Alecto and Amycus appear, naturally, together, holding hands over the grimy coathanger that brought them to the hospital. When they appear, they break apart, both wands snapping forward to curse the startled nurse. The force of both of their spells lifts her fully off her feet and sends her, spinning and screaming, against a wall. They're on the third floor--potions and poisonings--and already cackling as they move out of the little room and out toward the hall.
Alecto stops to open drawers, inspecting labels on the various bottles of potions and stuffing a few down the front of her robes and shattering the rest. She is giggling when she calls to her brother.*
Amycus--finish that girl off, would you, I'm going to go for the other medicine cabinets. I'm going to get some special bits for our personal stash.
*Alecto finishes rifling through the next cabinet and moves onto the last, tossing an irritated look over her shoulder.*
Quit playing around and finish her off, she's giving me a headache.
*One of the wizards in his bed is saying something and struggling to sit up, trying to stop them or something equally foolish. Her Killing Curse hits him squarely in the chest. The rest of the room is stirring awake, though, and the girl's screams must have attracted some kind of attention.*
*They did. Andromeda's department is the next floor up, but she'd needed something from a store room and so happened to be within earshot of the screaming. That's not such an unusual noise in the hospital, really, but there is a marked difference between screams of pain and screams of fear - and screams that come from both. This was the last kind, and, concerned, she quickens her stride and steps into the ward with her wand in the pocket of her robes and her hands full of potions
( ... )
*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
( ... )
*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
( ... )
*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.*
*The glove is the only thing that remains the same, clutched in his hand, he watches as the world dissolves into strips of shapes and colours around it, the atoms of his body spaghettifying and rearranging as if he's just stepped over the event horizon of a black hole. When the world takes form again, tentatively becoming solid around him, greeting his re-proportioned body with ease, he's already prepared. Wand at the ready, mask grinning ghoulishly, Barty lands with all the stage presence of an action film star, robes fanning out around him with perfected drama. He discards his glove, hearing its soft leather skid on the tiles. And really, that's all he hears. There are no screams, no wails of horror, no burgeoning panic. In fact, the only thing that seems to take note of his grand entrance is a florescent bar of light, which flickers overhead, interrupted by his magical arrival
( ... )
*The fight upstairs looks good on papers, and down in the basement porthole windows in double doors stare out at Barty not far down the corridor from where his overenthusiastic portkey deposited him. Behind them the air is colder, the walls are fitted floor to ceiling with cupboards that almost look like the doors to safes, and on Regulus' map one of Voldemort's personal specialties is just about to be given the spark of life.
Regulus wants to refuse, to keep that chilly room as quiet and effectively empty as it would normally be, but Voldemort had known better than to tell a mapmaker the entire plan too soon. Only after the portkeys were made and the wards laid down and Regulus had showed up to begin his conducting of the attack had this particular piece of the puzzle been revealed to him, and he has no choice now but to comply
( ... )
*Barty's corridor isn't to remain deserted for long, for more than one reason. Sirius's spellwork lets Remus in a dozen yards down from him, near the morgue doors. Totally unaware of what's happening behind them, he spares them only a glance before looking the other way. There, as promised, is the one Death Eater - but what about the other dots? What was that all about?
Chalking it up to a glitch in the map, he fires off a curse at the masked figure, not waiting to lose the upper hand of surprise.*
*Barty is hardly done his pouting when the curse is hurled his way. It seems incredibly, well, rude that on top of his wasted entrance he's been met with someone clearly prepared and competent. Though it's unlikely he'll ever admit, or even remember it later, he visibly flinches as the spell collides with an unused IV rack, splintering the metal open until it resembles a half peeled stick of cheese strings.
In the flickering greenish-light, along the length of the corridor, it's difficult to make out who this new challenger is, other than the fact he seems to be a he and one that clearly knows what he's doing and who he's after. An Order member. There's something distinctly less fun about fighting the Order, mainly because past experience has taught him it usually ends in ugly scars and Regulus' voice becoming wavering and overly-concerned
( ... )
*Evan appears, holding an empty beer bottle, in a hall. He doesn't drop it--it'll make too much noise, and surprise is crucial--and instead it is placed gently on the floor. He's got a large selection of toys and selects the first from a bandoleer he wears over his cloak. It's a muggle invention, originally, but Muggles have nothing if not skill for killing each other, and it's only been enhanced by the Rosier & Sons cursemakers. There's nervous chatter echoing down the hall from a break room, something about heard something weird down the hall and no response from downstairs and what do we do. No one willing to lead the little lambs out yet, though. The door's invitingly cracked, and Evan approaches silently, pills the pin, and gently sends the cursed grenade bobbing in like a tiny, pinapple-looking balloon
( ... )
*The hall they're in is largely administrative--few patients, mostly Healers and nurses and mediwizards. A robed and masked Death Eater appears suddenly, clutching an old boot, and they incapacitate the man before he even lets go of the thing. Poor bastard probably never saw it coming
( ... )
*There's no need to spell it out, and Fabian nods once before moving silently toward the noise. He's in very much the same mindset as Gideon - the 'zone', he likes to call it in a melodramatic voice, when talking about it - where everything is narrowed down to the immediate situation and his wand and his brother. He's at his best like this, he loves this, and it shows.
Leaning out just enough to look around the next corner, Fabian quickly takes in the scene - a door open with dust in the air and what looks like something burning inside, and a masked figure standing holding something. He glances at Gideon with the unspoken question of how to go about this.*
*It's mostly quiet, no obvious victims or assailants--he misses the twins entirely--and Evan moves to the next room. The grenades kill and incapacitate just as effectively as they shatter potion bottles, and it's faster than going through and breaking them by hand. He opens a door to an empty storeroom, lobs the primed grenade in, and shuts the door, moving across the hall to peer into the next room--an office, and not worth a grenade. A small fireball from the tip of his wand ignites the papers on the desk. He leaves the door open in hopes the blaze will consume the office, and keeps moving methodically, efficiently, silently, unaware that he's being watched.*
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But Sirius didn't help create the Marauder's map without knowing a thing or two, and he finds that they the principles Regulus' wards function on are almost identical. All in all, it's only about five minutes before Sirius manages to crack one of the doors, and he lets out a whoop when he manages it. If he's does it carefully and well--and he thinks he has, though heaven knows--then Reg shouldn't even notice until he really tries to use this particular door. He steps to the entrance of the alley and gestures, come here, ready to show them ( ... )
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Well done, mate. Good luck out here.
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Still, there's no use having a chat while God-knows-what is happening on the other side of that broom closet door. He tilts his head at his brother, his smile grim.*
--if you're good and ready, darling.
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Alecto stops to open drawers, inspecting labels on the various bottles of potions and stuffing a few down the front of her robes and shattering the rest. She is giggling when she calls to her brother.*
Amycus--finish that girl off, would you, I'm going to go for the other medicine cabinets. I'm going to get some special bits for our personal stash.
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Looks like that hurts.
*He pokes his wand into the wound where a broken bone protrudes from her arm and gives it an experimental wiggle.*
And this too, probably.
*He jabs it into her eye, not quite enough to pop it and squeeze it out, but enough to make her scream take on a more desperate pitch.*
Now, ask nice and I'll make it stop--
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Quit playing around and finish her off, she's giving me a headache.
*One of the wizards in his bed is saying something and struggling to sit up, trying to stop them or something equally foolish. Her Killing Curse hits him squarely in the chest. The rest of the room is stirring awake, though, and the girl's screams must have attracted some kind of attention.*
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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 ( ... )
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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 ( ... )
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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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Regulus wants to refuse, to keep that chilly room as quiet and effectively empty as it would normally be, but Voldemort had known better than to tell a mapmaker the entire plan too soon. Only after the portkeys were made and the wards laid down and Regulus had showed up to begin his conducting of the attack had this particular piece of the puzzle been revealed to him, and he has no choice now but to comply ( ... )
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Chalking it up to a glitch in the map, he fires off a curse at the masked figure, not waiting to lose the upper hand of surprise.*
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In the flickering greenish-light, along the length of the corridor, it's difficult to make out who this new challenger is, other than the fact he seems to be a he and one that clearly knows what he's doing and who he's after. An Order member. There's something distinctly less fun about fighting the Order, mainly because past experience has taught him it usually ends in ugly scars and Regulus' voice becoming wavering and overly-concerned ( ... )
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Leaning out just enough to look around the next corner, Fabian quickly takes in the scene - a door open with dust in the air and what looks like something burning inside, and a masked figure standing holding something. He glances at Gideon with the unspoken question of how to go about this.*
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