A/N: Thanks to everyone who has been reading and reviewing, I'm always a sucker for feedback =) For those of you interested in possibly reading anything else I've written, I'm about two years removed from having a lot of stories on this site; most notably Harry Potter and the Arithmetic Theory (which is sadly incomplete like two chapters from its culmination), and two completed fics, Harry Potter and the Gryffindor Sword, and The Cruelty of Fate, a Lily/James story about their evasions of Voldemort, the betrayal of Peter, and their ultimate deaths. All that said, this is probably the most enjoyable story I've written so far so I hope you all like it, let me know what you think I can be doing better!
Enjoy!
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Frustration was paramount in the bustling medical lab of the Ministry's experimental sciences wing. Immediately after their sudden, group-wide realization that whomever planned out the sequence of events of this night so far had probably anticipated them all being in this very room, they'd naturally attempted to exit it. The doors were locked automatically from the outside, and anti-apparition wards had been put in place, and the comm systems were muted; effectively trapping five of the world's most prominent wizards and witches in a very vulnerable position, with no hope for escape.
"How could we have let this happen?" Ron asked, hypothetically, as he laid back against one of the ward-proof glass walls. Next to him sat his sister, her head rested comfortably on Dean's shoulder while he leaned against the wall in a very similar position to Ron's.
Across the room Hermione had straightened her posture and wasn't crying as heavily as before, but her tear-streaked cheeks and guilt-ridden eyes said everything her words did not. Seamus stood with his arms crossed and feet tapping a few paces away from her, looking extremely agitated.
And he wasn't the only one. The only expression, or emotion, any of the five felt this night aside from a profound sadness was agitation. And perhaps, to a smaller extent, helplessness.
"How could we have not?" Ginny countered, not removing her head from Dean's shoulder. "What would we have possibly been expected to do differently, considering the circumstances?"
"That's exactly the problem Red," Seamus responded, pounding a furious fist against the thick glass at his side. "they knew exactly how we would react and exactly when we would do so. And they played us for fools."
"I wouldn't go so far as calling us fools," Dean interjected, gazing towards the ceiling before returning his sight to the friends around him. "everything you all did was in perfect accordance with Ministry Law and common sense; we had no idea of knowing there was more to the plot than met the eye. A first-year at Hogwarts could have anticipated every move we made tonight."
"And yet we have come as far as we are today because of our unpredictability." Hermione stated, head resting atop her knees, which were curled in close to her chest. "The day a dark wizard can anticipate our actions is the day our world is in apocalypse."
"Changing the world as we know it." Ron said, paraphrasing the definition of apocalypse. "And here we are, powerless to stop whatever it is that's happening outside."
"Harry is still out there," Hermione reminded him, the first hints of resolve finding its way into her voice amid the emotion. "It will take more than organization and cunning to thwart him; especially if they've managed to piss him off."
"How are we so sure we are talking about a 'them'?" Dean questioned, tightening his grip around Ginny. "What if it's all being done by one man?"
"Completely illogical," Hermione argued, sounding a little more like her old self. "The resources, planning, and execution required to pull off such a consecutive string of events in such rapid succession requires the utmost precision and coordination. Not to mention the ability to simultaneously cast latent curses on five wizards activated by precise triggers in precise moments. And the 'plebs' claimed to be part of an organization, did they not?"
"True, but deceit is certainly a plausibility," Ron pointed out, ruffling his thick red hair in exasperation. "Who's saying these weren't a secluded sect of suicidal wizards bent on leaving the world with a little bit of chaos as their legacy?"
Hermione snorted, shaking her head and flinging curly brown locks through the cool laboratory air. "Honestly."
Seamus chuckled at her admonition, while Dean and Ginny each managed to crack a slight smile.
"Well okay, so that may be unlikely," Ron continued, mildly embarrassed at his idea being dismissed so quickly. "but it doesn't mean they could have been untruthful with us. I mean, 'plebs', seriously? How many wizards even know about the Roman ages?"
"Oh honestly Ronald, did you even pay attention one time in History of Magic class?"
"I didn't have to 'Mione, that was way back when you still let me copy all of your notes."
Exhaling in irritation, Hermione went on. "Well if you had any kind of retention rate for history whatsoever, you would remember that wizards did exist during the Roman Empire, in fact it is common belief that a few dark wizards may have even affected the course of events."
Holding a hand in the air, Dean spoke while shaking his head. "Seriously, no disrespect Hermione, but I'm in no mood for a history lesson. I have muggle schooling too you know; I remember Julius Caesar and Brutus and the fall of the Republic and all that; I don't see what relevance it has to tonight's events, however."
Hermione rolled her eyes and put her head back to her knees, not wishing to start any arguments. The question was in all their minds, however; just how many wizards were behind this plot, and how had they gone undetected?
And not to mention…who was keeping them isolated in this lab, and what did they have in store for them?
***
"No one touches them!" Harry bellowed, referring to the wizards he'd incapacitated just moments before. Four dead, two in critical condition, Harry's fury lay on display across the dirt grounds for all the gathered aurors to see.
"We have no idea what kinds of hexes or curses or plagues they may be carrying. I don't want anyone near them until Hermione gets here to perform the autopsies herself. Now where the hell is she?"
Some of the aurors shifted uneasily around him, never before having seen the infamous temper of Harry Potter. Rumors circulated and stories were told of the few times the famous Potter boy had gone over the top and annihilated his enemies in a rage, but none had ever actually witnessed the aftermath of such destruction.
"Are you all deaf? Where is she? Who is in charge of correspondence here? Get to it!"
The menace in his tone set the aurors to work, a few of them setting up a perimeter around the bodies while others scurried about trying to discover Hermione's whereabouts. Coming down from the adrenaline of battle, Harry sat on the ground and held his head in his hands, with the threat at least temporarily culled, he no longer had anything to take his mind off Luna's untimely and unanticipated death.
Harry of course was no stranger to losing loved ones. But he never expected to lose another one to murder in what was supposed to be a relative time of peace. He'd known Luna for more than ten years now; as loony as he may have thought she was at first take they developed a strong bond over their last few years at Hogwarts that had carried them into their adult years.
And as strong as his friendship with Luna had been, Harry knew that Hermione's friendship with the blonde Ravenclaw was absolute. The two spent fifty hours a week in labs together, shared a flat in London and spent nearly all their holidays together with one another's families, both of whom had become very close.
Harry couldn't imagine what his bushy-haired best friend could possibly be going through right now. There was nothing he'd rather do than apparate to her lab and console her, but his duty as the Ministry's top auror kept him from doing so. Through the years Hermione had helped to pull him through so many rough spots that he couldn't imagine not being there for her now, possibly the roughest time she'd ever gone through.
Harry no longer cried, on the loss of a loved one. Luna meant the world to him, just as all his closest friends did, but through the years he'd been privy to so much death and destruction that his emotions were blunted to non-existence. Such was the cost of being the boy who lived.
***
"How much longer are we going to be on lockdown!?" Neville demanded of the Mungo's head doctor he'd managed to corner and was currently reading a riot act to. "I can NOT sit idle in this facility for any longer! These people are showing no symptoms, the infected aurors have gone stable, and-"
"Doctor Thriss! Sir, I've been looking everywhere for you!" Exclaimed a pretty, blonde-haired nurse who's cheeks were red from presumably having run all across the hospital looking for this one man that Neville had cornered in seclusion. The thought made the Longbottom cringe internally in guilt. "I need your authorization to drop the quarantine; it was a false alarm -- the two wizards recently brought in initially showed signs of wizarding meningitis but after some observation it was determined the symptoms were only temporary; some kind of curse we've never seen before that only made them appear as if they were contagious, when in fact they carried no strands of the virus at all."
Doctor Thriss breathed a sigh of relief, accompanied with a puzzled expression. "What would be the purpose of making us believe there was a contagious virus in the air?"
"Because the wizards that orchestrated these attacks wanted Mungo's to be shut off for an extended period of time!" Neville nearly screamed the words, clearly exasperated. "They are showing us what they're capable of without actually hurting anybody -- they've done enough of that for one night."
Choosing not to respond to Neville's remark, Mungo's head Doctor swiftly removed the anti-apparition bindings enveloping the hospital and Neville immediately popped away to be with his friends in their collective moment of grief.
***
Half an hour later, the entire group was convened on the battle site where Harry had defeated the six dark wizards; by now forensics had -- with Hermione's permission -- examined enough of the wizards' outer clothing to find the word 'plebeian' sewed into the hems of each dark robe.
As soon as Neville had left Mungo's the wards on Hermione's lab were lifted as well; almost as if the two spells were linked in some way. They'd all immediately left the site of Luna's murder and discovered Harry's whereabouts, which is how they'd come to be here now. Presumably, the Caesar, as Harry claimed the man called himself, had simply used the false alarm at Mungo's and lockdown of Hermione's lab as a means to face Harry alone on the battlefield. Why he wanted to see Harry without any of his friends was anyone's guess, not that they could even be certain this was his intention as it was.
All they really knew was that the man behind this plot had laid out an ingenious plan that, so far, the Eight had fallen into and followed out step-by-step, and it had cost Luna her life. For now, the seven remaining GGE's stood side-by-side on this warm August night, surveying the fields upon which two battles had been fought tonight with expressions of utmost helplessness.
"How much worse can it get?" Ron asked, more hypothetically than anything else.
The thought plagued all of them. Luna was dead, and five of them had been at the mercy of the Caesars for more than an hour in Hermione's secluded lab, where these wizards certainly could have initiated an attack. Mungo's was at their mercy as well, and yet the Caesars let the false alarm be just that -- false. There was no doubt they could have released something within the hospital walls but chose not to; either way, their point was crystal clear.
They were capable of anything.
"Here's what we are going to do," Harry said, his voice stern, devoid of emotion. The rest of the group had only heard him address them like this once before; the night he'd killed Voldemort. "I want every wizard on this field in Hermione's lab by the morning. Mione you don't rest until you have personally performed an autopsy on every last one of them, and provide me with a written report immediately."
Although Harry held no commission over her whatsoever due to their different branches of government, Hermione simply nodded and bustled off to complete her task.
"Neville, I want you in that lab with her, every second of every day, use every last bit of your medical knowledge and expertise to figure out exactly how these wizards implemented latent curses within themselves and why the ministry hasn't discovered these spells for themselves."
"Understood boss."
"Ginny I need you to get into the Ministry records and find me every last piece of information available on any curses, hexes, or spells that even mildly resemble the ones we've seen used by these wizards and implemented within them. Then I want the name of the witch or wizard that created the spell, how and when they did it, and what their relation to the ministry was."
Normally, Ginny would protest vehemently at such a task, but given the enormity of the situation, she simply apparated away, and was now probably already walking into the Ministry's deep archives.
"Dean; I know you're in a tough spot here, and I'm not asking you to leave your muggle life." Dean nodded at him appreciatively. "With that said, I need you to research every last damn thing anyone ever wanted to know about Caesars and the Roman Empire. Every Caesar, every society, their rises, falls, structures, morals, everything they stood for. These people seem to have a deep belief in whatever it was Caesars meant to the world a long time ago."
Dean took a deep breath and nodded; thankful this was a task he could complete while still focusing on his training and team; he would need those distractions to keep his mind going in lieu of all that was happening.
After all had left, Harry fixed Seamus and Ron with his most serious of expressions, emerald fire burning in his eyes and temporal lines framing his intimidating face.
"Luckily enough, two of these 'plebs' survived my fight with them."
"And why is it good that there's still two?"
Harry's tone, face, and posture was absolute.
"One to make the other talk."