Wrath of the Caesars

SoraSummers

Rating: PG13
Genres: Action & Adventure, Mystery
Relationships: Harry & Hermione
Book: Harry & Hermione, Books 1 - 5
Published: 20/12/2009
Last Updated: 08/01/2010
Status: in_progress

Years after Voldemort's demise at the hands of Harry Potter, the world is at peace even as its government displays stains of corruption. It is then that a league of men calling themselves Caesars seek to eradicate the government's corruption with Machiavellian ideals, intent to live up to their namesake as the rulers of men.

Chapters

1. The Great Gryffindor Eight

2. The Plebs

3. Chapter Three

4. Deciphering the Plan

5. Chapter Five

6. Research

7. Searching for Answers

8. Chapter Eight

9. Chapter Nine

10. Compromises

1. The Great Gryffindor Eight

A/N: Okay, so this is a story set a few years after the demise of Voldemort, but is essentially AU in that I never read the seventh book and didn’t like the way the sixth went, so you can basically disregard anything from cannon as far as deaths, etc. The general premise is that Voldemort is dead, Harry and the group of students he defeated him with are famous, and soon are coming face to face with an organization far more dangerous than the dark lord ever could have hoped to be. Think of this as an AU story that is set after the seventh book in basically the same world; just forget about who died in the novels and who ended up with whom, the characters are still essentially the same. Stick with me and hopefully you can enjoy the ride as far as it takes us.

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The cheers of forty-thousand strong fans was deafening, and exhilarating, especially for the man who currently sat anonymously among them, something he was incapable of doing in many parts of the world where he was most revered. Today, the twenty-five year old man was able to sit back in a mildly comfortable chair flanked on either side by a collection of similarly aged men and women whom likewise would be unable to find reprieve of privacy within their own, secluded society.

This release from the public eye, the ability to live amongst the common people was something they cherished, for as important as they were to their own society, an entirely different populace existed outside their own whom were completely oblivious of their existence.

“When you walk, through a storm,”

The man couldn’t help but smile; the lyrics of this particular song were powerful, and meant a lot to him and the friends surrounding him, even if they were written by a muggle, and even worse sung by the fans of the team about to play against the team he called his own.

“Hold your head up high,”

Scanning his emerald-shaded eyes to both his left and his right, Harry Potter glanced upon those friends of his who’d stood by him on so many occasions, through the thick and the thin, he knew without any shadow of a doubt he would not be enjoying himself in this stadium today had he not had these people by his side through the roughest years of his life.

“And don’t be afraid of the dark.”

Those words struck home as strong as any for Harry, as well as his friends. Fear of the dark would have gotten them killed; but persevering through the light is what got them to today, and would help them continue to survive and see countless tomorrows. In the corner of his eye he caught his curly-haired best friend Hermione Granger silently mouthing the words to herself, and couldn’t help but smile.

“At the end of the storm, there’s a golden sky.”

If that wasn’t the truth. He still remembered that morning; he always would. The sunset the lit the new day after Voldemort’s fall in the black of night was the most glorious sight his eyes had ever fallen upon. It had signaled the dawn of a new life for all of them

“And the sweet silver song, of a lark.”

Well, not every verse could be perfect for his past experiences, but all the same, every line that crept closer to the culminating chorus brought a moistness to his eyes that no other song could ever hope to do.

“Walk on through the wind,”

Harry noticed smiles finding their way to the faces of all the friends around him, from the red-headed Ron Weasley on his immediate left to the his sister Ginny all the way on the end of the row on his right.

“Walk on through the rain,”

All of them were grinning at each other now; the group of friends that shared a bond that may never be broken, who’d faced tasks unlike any that any group of people their age had faced before them, or thanks to them, would face again.

“All your dreams be tossed and blown,”

By now all the Great Gryffindor Eight were smiling ear to ear, sans the one who was not in the stands with them, although still in the facility. Even knowing he’d face the wrath of the eighth member should he ever see it, Harry opened his lungs and bellowed the last line of the song along with all of his friends and the forty-thousand red-clad scousers encircling Anfield Stadium in Liverpool, England.

“Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart, and you’ll never walk alone!”

Truer words would never be spoken for Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, Ginny Weasley, Neville Longbottom, Seamus Finnigan, Luna Lovegood, and the one member who was not in the stands with them but rather on the field below them, Dean Thomas. Never had a group of Hogwarts students ever formed such a powerful bond; a bond so strong that together they conquered the Dark Lord Voldemort, and as Aurors had kept the wizarding world peaceful in the years since his fall, with nearly all his death eaters having been caught or killed.

The crowd exploded in applause as they finished their melody and the teams lined up to take the field in the opening game of the 2009/10 Premiership season, Liverpool FC versus West Ham United.

While Harry, Ron, Neville, Ginny, and Seamus had all become Aurors, Hermione and Luna had taken the scientific route and worked in the Wizarding Scientific Development Headquarters where they were renowned for their discoveries and remedies to a slew of previously believed incurable and indefensible maladies.

Dean, on the other hand, had gone back to his muggle roots, and was now staring across the pitch at Fernando Torres, Steven Gerrard, Jaime Carragher and the rest of Liverpool’s enormously talented squad.

Harry had not followed football prior to the fall of Voldemort; chiefly for the reason that he obviously had more important things on his mind and secondarily because his now-deceased aunt, uncle, and cousin had kept him from enjoying any kind of liberties while under their roof. Despite their injustice towards him, Harry would forever feel guilt and responsibility in their demise. He believed in telling Voldemort, as his wand was pressed against the quivering throat of his Aunt Petunia, that the woman meant nothing to him, would sway him to spare her life. But as it was, those were the last words she would ever here, the same as his cousin Dudley and Uncle Vernon as well. Voldemort executed them all right in front of a helpless Harry, the last words they ever heard were those of the boy they’d always despised proclaiming them meaningless and in their final moment giving them reason for all the hate they bestowed upon him for so many years. That was one thing for which he would never forgive himself.

It had taken Harry a long time to learn to cope with that guilt, and the men and women sitting by his side and the one running around on the field below him were the people who’d managed to get him through it all. Like so many other things, he never would have been able to do it without them.

The game, sadly, was brutal. Torres proved himself in top form, netting a brace before the break, with the talismanic Gerrard smashing home one of his trademark long-distance stunners in the dying minutes, and Dean’s West Ham fell by three to nil. Dean himself in all honesty had a sub par game, his first touch failing him on an opportunity in the penalty area as well as an ill-advised attempt on goal when he had a streaking teammate calling for the ball at the far post being the particular low-points of his day.

“Tough one out there today man,” was all Harry could think to say to him at Hogsmeade that night, as the Great Gryffindor Eight, a name christened upon them by Rita Skeeter and not themselves, enjoyed a beer or two as they always did after one of Dean’s games. The nickname in and of itself was not entirely accurate; Luna Lovegood was a Ravenclaw, and there had been fourteen students who made the trip to the London Underground that night. Terry Boot, Susan Bones, Cho Chang, Ernie MacMillan, Padma and Parvati Patil did not return from the encounter.

Time healed all wounds, and as such each passing year the GGE’s annual toast of their fallen friends got slightly easier, but they would never be forgotten, nor would the multiple aurors who’d lost their lives in the battle, it was written down on the calender as the greatest day in wizarding history, and those who’d lost their lives on it were now legends of the past.

“Bloody tell me about it mate,” Dean replied, guzzling a butterbeer entirely to quickly considering how many he’d already consumed. “Capello was in the stands today, and that wanker Agbonlahor hit for two against Hull today. I’ve got a year to make my case for the Cup next summer and days like today aren’t cutting it, especially in front of the bleeding gaffer himself!”

Dean was always very critical of himself since he’d essentially left the wizarding world to live as a muggle footballer, but even the purest of pureblood wizarding families respected his decision. He was the man who claimed the life of Bellatrix Lestrange, after all.

“Oh don’t fret on it mate,” Seamus assured him. “Hull City is shite; and them scousers are title challengers and could go deep in the Champion’s League as well. Capello knows that.”

“I’m sure he does,” Dean grumbled back, wiping foam from his latest beer from his mouth. “Screw this mates, I need some real, muggle-style, hard-up whiskey, tequila, anything. This ain’t even giving me a buzz. I’ll talk to you guys later.”

With a soft pop he was gone, presumably back to his mansion in Northern London where he had an endless supply of hard liquor for days like these.

Ginny groaned. “Ugh, I’ll stay out with you guys a bit longer. I don’t want rough, depressed, drunken sex tonight. Hopefully he’ll pass out before I get back.”

Seamus spit his butterbeer all over the counter in front of him while Ron’s face turned all sorts of red. Hermione gave Ginny an exasperated look while the rest of the boys chuckled at her honesty. Ginny and Dean had become an item late in her fifth year, and had been on again off again ever since. They’d been steady for a while now however, and most of the gang was hoping they’d finally stick it out and make it last.

“Well speaking of matters on the home front, Sarah is probably up waiting for me,” Neville proclaimed, referring to his wife, a Hufflepuff alum three years their junior who’d never taken part in any of the groups more adventurous journeys. Neville and her had been paired on a mission to track down a death eater hiding in central Africa a few years back and they’d been together ever since.

He was gone with a few polite goodbye’s, and soon thereafter Luna and Hermione bade their farewells as they needed to catch a late meeting at the Ministry, leaving just Harry, Ron, and Seamus together at the bar.

“So what do ya say boys, muggle bar tonight? The chase is always more fun when the women don’t have posters of you hanging over their beds.”

Harry and Ron shared a laugh at the playboy of the group’s comment; Seamus was a dedicated bachelor who claimed that he’d never settle down, always boasting about the number of women he’d pulled even before his fame, not to mention after the epic battle in which he’d famously fended off three death eaters at once to allow Harry, Ron, and Hermione the time they needed to face Voldemort on their own. Despite his boyish smile, playboy attitude, and occasional bending of laws Seamus was a powerful wizard not to be trifled with.

“You go for that mate, think me n’ Harry’ll just hang the two of us tonight.”

“Queers. Don’t forget your lube.”

With a laugh he was gone, and the two remaining heroes shook their heads at his antics, but they loved the guy regardless.

“Just the two of us in Hogsmeade, good times huh?”

“Good memories.”

Smiling, the boys quietly sipped down the last of their beers before bidding the bartender goodbye with a healthy tip, apparating off to their respective flats ready to rest and get ready for work in the morning, as aurors there was always something that needed to be done.

Neither of them knew that the Great Gryffindor Eight would never be all alive and well together again.

2. The Plebs

A/N: Well here we go, chapter two. Bear with me, I’m a big Dean Thomas fan so naturally he is going to feature in anything I write, and soccer is my life, so there’s that =) Hopefully I have the table set well enough and the really interesting things should start happening in the next update. Let me know what you think!

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Knock knock.

“Come in.”

Pushing the door open, Dean wiped some stray beads of water from his freshly shaved head he stepped across the threshold and into the gaffer’s office; he‘d been summoned just as he’d hopped out of the shower after training. The West Ham shield hung on the wall behind his desk, which the manager currently sat at, pouring over some notes through his reading glasses that he’d no doubt taken during the Liverpool game two days ago.

Taking a deep breath, fearing his starting position was already in jeopardy, Dean said blankly, “You wanted to see me boss?”

Gianfranco Zola, current manager of the Hammers, lifted his eyes from the notes and greeted his young striker warmly. “Thomas, please, have a seat.”

Nodding, Dean took the invitation and sat down in one of the dark red lounge chairs situated directly in front of the gaffer’s desk. Hands clasped together, Dean took a deep breath and lifted his eyes to meet those of his manager.

Zola took that as an invitation to speak.

“So what did you think of your performance yesterday Thomas?”

Swallowing his nerves, Dean spoke honestly, something Harry Potter had taught him was always the best thing to do in situations such as these. “Not my best effort, if I’m being honest sir,” he leaned back in the chair and massaged one of his temples with a steady hand. “I really felt like I let the team down on that long ball John played me in the box, I don’t know what happened, I just took my off it and it glanced off my toe, should have caught it on my laces, lost my concentration. And then I guess I just had a rush to the head later on, we were down three, I didn’t see Carlton, kept my head down. Otherwise we would have got one back there.”

Taking off his glasses, folding them, and laying them down atop the papers on the desk below him the gaffer picked up a pen and twirled it between his fingers before speaking again in his thick Italian accent. “Have you had a chance to see the Castrol rankings from Saturday?

“No sir, I spent the night out with some friends and spent the rest day yesterday with my girl, just woke up today for breakfast at the clubhouse and practice so I never got the chance, I was going to look over some of that tonight after tactical.”

By tactical Dean referred to the night meeting where the manager and players went over game tape and discussed tactical changes they needed to make for the next week’s game.

“Understandable; how are things with Ginny these days? Your problems are in the past, are they not?”

“Yes sir.”

He and Gin had nearly broken up a few months ago, towards the end of the Premiere League season when he’d opted not to take a personal day the manager had offered him to attend Hogwarts for Mark Evans’ graduation. Mark was Harry’s maternal second cousin, a fact not discovered until Harry had already graduated from Hogwarts and defeated the dark lord. As the only blood family Harry had left, the whole eight of them had somewhat adopted Mark into their posse and his graduation was a big deal that all of the eight had attended sans Dean, who opted to play instead in West Ham’s largely meaningless final fixture the same day.

It had lead to yet another argument between them about Dean’s decision to leave the wizarding world behind in pursuit of his boyhood dream of playing professional football. All of his friends and even the most critical of the wizarding media had supported his decision, and ever since recent polls showed that football popularity in the wizarding world had skyrocketed over 100%. The Gryffindor common room even had a West Ham poster hanging above one of the couches. Quidditch was still King, and as Ginny had so furiously reminded him, both Harry and Ron turned down lucrative, record-breaking contracts with multiple teams all across England in order to enter the Agency and continue their pursuit of dark wizards as Aurors.

The gaffer, of course, knew none of this; Dean’s cover was that he’d been in a military family which had traveled all over Europe before finally settling in Northern London, where Dean had finally been able to be discovered at the very late age of nineteen, for a footballer that is. By twenty-three he’d broken into the full team and this had proved to be his first year as a starter after Dean Ashton had suffered the dreaded metatarsal injury in training three weeks before the season.

If only he knew what kind of inner turmoil Dean faced every day listening to his friends talk about the wizarding world he had abandoned; he’d not even picked up his wand in more than a few weeks. Dean was never the strongest of his friends, in fact he’d openly admitted himself even before leaving the wand behind that he was the weakest of the group, but reading about feats Harry or Ron accomplished in the Diagon Daily that was sometimes the only contact he had with the other world for days or even weeks at a time constantly made him question his decision, and his destiny.

“I’m glad to hear that son,” Zola continued. “In Italy, family is always the most important thing; the happier you are outside of the game the better you’ll play on the pitch.”

“Thank you sir.”

“Anyways,” the gaffer picked up his reading glasses and gazed over what Dean presumed to be the Castrol rankings from Saturday. “considering your elevated position on the field, your movement is impressive, only three players on the field did more running than you Saturday. I love a workhorse Dean, and I believe you have immense potential.”

“Sir?”

“With that said,” Dean’s heart fell, knowing what was to come. “our beginning fixtures are intimidating. We are playing at Stamford Bridge next week, and I’m going to go with Carlton as a lone striker so we can keep our shape in the back.”

“I understand sir.”

“But, don’t think I’m dropping you. We have Hull, Portsmouth, and Fulham in the following few weeks, and you are still my number two striker. Keep your head up in training and you’re still going to get your minutes to prove yourself. Capello is a good friend of mine, and he has his eye on you son, we all know your potential.”

The news that Fabio Capello, the manager of the English national team, had his eyes on him the year before the FIFA World Cup in South Africa this coming summer was exhilarating. Dean would do anything to find himself on a plane to South Africa, even if a portkey could do the job much quicker.

After a few more moments of small talk and minor tactical ideas Dean left the office far more confident than he’d entered it, ready to go home and talk to Ginny about the good news.

***

This was not going according to plan. They’d received intelligence the night before that a terrorist sect of dark wizards had a hideout in the wizarding town of Asheville just off the southern coast of England. The intelligence claimed there was a group of four or five wizards buried underground in a facility protected with a complicated array of security hexes and curses that Hermione Granger herself had deciphered in the lab.

The plan had gone as scheduled at the start, but once the strike team penetrated as far as the last security grid they came across a previously undetected security system that had obviously alerted the wizards inside to their presence. All five apparated into the open at once, flinging hexes and curses at the aurors before they’d even realized they were under attack.

Two of the rookies went down in convulsions immediately, while the rest of the more seasoned aurors managed to get guards up quick enough to save them from the same fate. Harry knew immediately these were not wizards to be taken lightly; they used dark curses that caused pain but not death; while less powerful than the nearly extinct avada kedavra that Voldemort had made so infamous, they were quicker, and easier to cast. Had the wizards cast the killing curse from the start all six aurors would have easily evaded the attack and launched into immediate counter attacks, dismantling the wizards in seconds.

As it was, because of the quick nature of the attacks the dark wizards were able to fire consecutive spells immediately that kept the aurors on the back foot. Harry’s group-wide protego spell absorbed most of the initial damage and allowed Neville to use the time to put up his own spell -- Neville was the foremost authority on protective magic in the wizarding world -- and when that was secure Harry felt confident enough to attack.

“Reducto! Accio!” With two quick maneuvers Harry used the powerful destruction spell to destroy a portion of a brick wall behind two of the wizards, then immediately used the attracting spell accio to pull the destroyed bricks forward and into the wizards backs, the forty and fifty pound slabs of brick rendering each of the men unconscious.

Picking the remaining bricks out of the air and motioning them into a circle around him with his wand, Harry used the brick shield to block to curses from the final standing wizard as Ron flung powerful numbing hexes at him from the side and Ginny smashed through his protective shield on the right.

After a few moments, Harry was able to beat him down with a powerful stunning curse and Seamus immediately wrapped all five wizards up in one of his trademark binding hexes, unbreakable by any wizard including Harry himself. Neville was immediately at the side of the two downed aurors, each foaming at the mouth and shaking uncontrollably from the heavy-hitting curses placed on them.

Ginny joined Neville in tending to their injuries while Harry, Ron, and Seamus chose one wizard at random for questioning.

“What was your purpose here?”

The smile the wizard gave him was chilling, to say the least.

“We are, the beginning.”

“The beginning of what?”

“The end of your world as you know it.”

Although he’d heard numerous amount of claims just like this one, somehow Harry felt something different, something legitimate about this one.

“Are you acting on your own? Who is your leader?”

The wizard laughed, and Harry noticed that his eyes were growing glossy, and his nose had begun to bleed. Coughing, the man replied, “That, is not something you are ready to understand, Mr. Potter.”

“Enlighten me.”

“I wouldn’t pretend to understand myself, even if I knew of their plan.”

“Neville! Get over here now!”

Harry screamed across the field at the team’s medical expert as he realized each of the men they’d trapped were bleeding out their eyes, ears, and noses, all while knowing there was nothing the brilliant young wizard could do for them.

“My death means nothing,” choked out the dying wizard, a curious smile giving his bloodied face an eerie glow. “for I am only a pleb…I am…nothing. They will annihilate you.”

By the time Neville got there the plebs as they identified themselves were gone.

Sighing, Harry brushed a few strands of his long hair aside. “How are Chris and Jordan?”

“They’ll live; I’ll have them brought to Mungo’s tonight for observation just to be safe.”

“Good. Now what the hell just happened?”

“I have no idea mate,” Ron said, eyes confused and lost on the bodies of the four deceased wizards. “something killed them, obviously. But it wasn’t anything that we did.” he paused. “They wanted us here, didn’t they?”

“It sure looks that way, and as such I think we need to vacate these premises immediately. Get Greggory and his team down here for forensics. Have the bodies shipped to Luna and ‘Mione. We’ve gotta figure out what killed them. Research the word ‘pleb’. I’ve never heard it before.”

“I have.” Seamus said, scratching his head. Everyone looked at him in a mixture of expectancy and surprise. “My father is a muggle, he was into muggle history and all that. Plebeians were a sort of lower-class people way back in Ancient Roman times, plebs was just a nickname. But that doesn’t make any sense; they’re just a social class from an ancient society.”

Harry pursed his lips, having no idea what it all meant. “Well, we aren’t gonna figure anything out here. I’ll report to Kingsley; Neville, Ginny, get the rookies to Mungo’s. Seamus get these bodies to the Ministry for Hermione and Luna. Ron, you stay here and tell Greggory everything he needs to know, I’m giving you on-site authority; find out what they were doing here.”

Everyone nodded in affirmation and immediately got to their tasks, Ron and Harry taking one last look at the bodies before getting on with their own duties.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

3. Chapter Three

A/N: Don’t expect these updates to come so quickly anymore, back to work in the morning. Now we are gonna kind of start seeing the beginnings of the plan coming to life.

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“Tell me exactly what happened!”

Neville and Ginny were holed up in the most urgent of Mungo’s ER wards, trying to explain just what had befallen the two aurors restrained on the operating tables in front of them.

“It happened too fast to hear the incantations,” Neville explained, while Ginny tapped her feet with folded arms, chewing on her bottom lip. “it was a quick-cast curse, never intended to kill. These two didn’t have the reflexes to guard themselves, the rest of us got out of the way fast enough. In the ensuing battle I fended off two variations of a stacio curse and one green-tinted hex I couldn’t hear the incantation for but assume it was some kind of lower-body bind. That’s really all I’ve got.”

As the doctor used this minimal amount of information to check over his patients, Ginny, who’d been quiet ever since arriving at the hospital, finally spoke up.

“One more thing,” she said, staring straight ahead and seemingly deep in thought. “there were five wizards, but I can’t recall more than just the two curses being thrown at first apparition. My memory retention rate is very good, and I’ll use a pensieve memory recovery charm to be sure, but I believe the curses that took out Chris and Jordan were thrown first. I’m not sure the other curses were ever even intended to harm us.”

The doctor largely ignored her comment as it did not in any way effect his medical treatment, but the words resonated with the soft-spoken Neville. “You know, now that you mention it, I think you’re right.”

“I know I am.”

Neville bowed his head and shook it back and forth. “Nothing from this night is making any sense whatsoever.”

“Not at all, but there is something much bigger going on here, I can feel it.” It was on the tip of her tongue, but Ginny just couldn’t grasp what it was about the night that eluded her. “It all just seems very…calculated.”

Exhaling, Neville confirmed her belief in his own opinion. “I know exactly what you mean.”

“Okay, well I’m going to get to the Ministry and see what help I can offer Luna and Hermione; and I gotta text Dean and make sure he locks himself up good tonight. I’ll catch you later…I know you are gonna want to stick around a while longer.”

Squeezing his arm affectionately Ginny parted from Neville with a gentle, sympathetic glance, knowing full well that there were two other Longbottoms in this hospital he would be eager to visit. Neville watched her leave while typing on her cell phone; a muggle device that Dean had convinced each of the eight of them to purchase so they could be in constant contact. Although most purebloods would never admit to it, this cellular device was actually far more advanced than any method of correspondence wizards had available to them.

Nevertheless, he knew full well what Ginny had been referring to, and as such he slowly made the long walk to the Mungo’s Mental Ward, he hadn’t paid his parents a visit in far too long.

***

Dean plucked his cell off the coffee table upon which it rested when it vibrated; he was laying back on the couch watching film of the Liverpool game and wondering when Ginny would be coming home.

Strange attack tonight, working late. Make sure you activate the security guards around the house, be on your guard, just in case. I’ll text you again later if I hear anything new. I love you.

The urgency of Ginny’s text startled Dean, but he knew his girl could handle herself. Regardless, he activated the security hexes they had implemented around the house before returning to his tape, an uneasy feeling forming in the pit of his stomach.

***

“Well it certainly wasn’t a poison, and none of them had any kind of chemical reaction to the curse itself,” Hermione commented, speaking into a voice recorder to keep notes. “Each of the victims experienced a quick aneurysm, some nerve impulse from Seamus’ curse triggered a reaction in the brain that set off the sequence of events that lead to their deaths.”

“I’ve never heard of anything like this before.”

Coming from Luna Lovegood, that statement meant a lot. The brilliant young blonde woman had heard of a large array of exceptionally extravagant stories, theories, creatures, and the like. While she believed in many strange and outlandish myths, Hermione had discovered through the years that many of those fables had come from past truths, and more than once one of Luna’s Quibbler articles had lead them to an important discovery. It was not enough to get Hermione to read the magazine herself, but she now at least restrained herself from admonishing the publication like she had done so many times at Hogwarts.

“Not in practice, anyways.” Hermione commented, continuing to speak into her recorder and allowing her brilliant mind to wrap itself around the library of knowledge she’d accumulated from years of research. “in theory, I’ve heard speculation of putting a curse on someone that will cause a reaction when activated by a specific hex or spell, but it’s still in developmental stages, and was never intended to be so sinister.”

“We are not the only authorities on spell development and discovery Hermione,” Luna said softly. “we have to be open to the fact that someone has discovered this technique and just displayed it with brutal success.”

“If that is true, than this situation could be bigger than the worst of the apocalyptic scenarios we’ve dreamed up ever since Voldemort died.”

“You are not suggesting the dark lord had something to do with this?”

“Not at all,” Hermione closed her eyes and dropped her voice. “but the research and experimenting to discover that type of technique would take years and could only be done by someone of the utmost authority. It is very possible whoever did this has been in play since long before Voldemort fell; and has only just now chosen to reveal themselves.”

“Well, let’s not immediately jump to conclusions here.”

An uneasy silence settled in as they each pondered just what might have happened this night, and whether the threat was over or had only just begun. If it had been planned this far in advance, there was no telling how much more could still be in the cards.

A beep from the overhead comm interrupted the quiet. “Miss Granger, Miss Lovegood; Miss Weasley has arrived and is requesting access, I need one or the other of you to come up here for authorization please.”

“I’ll go,” Hermione moaned, as she saw Luna head towards the door. “I need to stop by the loo anyways. Try a memory tap or a prior incantum on their wands, see what you can find out. I’ll be back in a few.”

“Yes ma’am. And Hermione?”

“Hmm?”

“It’s all going to be alright, no one will outsmart us.”

Hermione smiled back at her friend and long-time lab partner as she slid her identification card through the door lock and proceeded towards the lobby to see what news Ginny had for her.

***

Luna pulled her wand out from her waistband holster and went about getting to work. She had a special technique she liked to use for curious cases such as this one. Steadying her mind, she slowly touched the tip of her wand to one of the deceased wizard’s temples, and slowly allowed the remnants of his last streams of consciousness to flood into her.

Violent images from the battle appeared before her eyes, followed by the wizard being defeated, then bound, then…a curious eagerness was born. She pressed deeper, retracing the man’s last few thoughts. When he’d begun the bleeding from his aneurysm and he knew he’d die, his mind wandered again; my death, transport to lab, analysis, trap…

Before she could register shock her wand hand was suddenly struck by an immense pain that shot up her arm and froze her neck before pouring into her brain, a pain like nothing she’d ever experienced before. Then she saw a final, blindingly hot, white flash, and then she felt nothing at all.

***

“Find anything out?”

Ginny was to the point right away, as the girls walked down the long corridor towards the lab. Their heels clacked on the marble floors, echoing down the silent hallway.

“Not really,” Hermione sighed. “best we figure is someone discovered how to implement a reactionary death curse within their system that activates on a trigger which must have been Seamus’ binding curse. The idea has been tossed around for a while in theory but--”

“LUNA!”

Ginny screeched like Hermione had never heard her scream before, and instantly saw the reason why. Crashing in through the outer door to the lab the girls rushed to Luna’s side, who was laying in a puddle of blood on the floor beside the main observation table.

“Oh no no no she doesn’t have a pulse Hermione!”

“Ennervate! Ennervate! ENNERVATE!!!”

Clicking the comm Hermione screamed, “Get medical personnel to lab one now!”

But it was no matter, they both knew, as Ginny clutched the still bleeding body in her hands, rocking back and forth, tears streaming down her face and uncontrollable wails echoing across the room, that it was too late. Hermione stared at her lab mate of more than five years form in disbelief.

Luna Lovegood was gone.

4. Deciphering the Plan

“Hey Thomas mate, your phone is vibrating again!”

Walking back towards his living room, Dean caught the cell as his strike mate Carlton tossed it to him, fumbling with it a bit before opening the message. He’d invited a few of the boys over for fish and chips before he’d received the first text from Ginny, and a small collection of West Ham footballers were gathered around his living room watching game tape of the Liverpool match again.

Carlton, who’d tossed him the phone, was seated next to their goalkeeper Robert Green on his long couch directly across from the television. The American, Jonathan Spector, was seated in a La-Z-Boy just to their left. A couple of the other lads were supposed to have shown up but bailed out on them.

“Is it that wanker Gabby ribbing you bout that brace he had today again ya?”

If only it had been. The message sent ice through his veins and knocked him back onto his rear on the living room floor, his eyes instantly welling up, alerting his fellow teammates that something was very seriously wrong.

Luna’s been killed. We don’t know how yet. Get somewhere safe. I love you.

“What is it mate?” Green asked him, suddenly on his feet. “You seen a ghost?”

“I…I…,” He stammered, choking on his voice. “My friend Luna was killed.”

Their expressions were crestfallen. Chiefly for his loss, but secondly for the fact that they’d known her somewhat as well. Dean had invited the gang out with his boys a few times before, and as such they’d come to be at least somewhat acquainted with all of the GGE, including Luna.

“Jesus mate…she was the scientist right?

“Yeah, the blonde one.”

“What happened?”

Dean shook his head helplessly. “They don’t know yet, some kind of accident in the lab. Sorry guys, but I’m gonna have to go meet them at the hospital.”

It was somewhat of a lie, as he knew they’d all still be in the lab and not at Mungo’s, but he could apparate to the medical lab much quicker than he could drive there; and apparating was out of the question while his muggle teammates were still around.

A few minutes later they’d all climbed into their Porsches and Lamborghinis and left the premises, and Dean immediately apparated to the Ministry’s experimental sciences department.

***

At his flat just outside Hogsmeade, Seamus ignored his buzzing cell in favor of a long, warm shower. He’d dropped the bodies off at the girls’ lab and hadn’t bothered sticking around to observe their work, the duel with the ‘plebs’ had taken a lot out of him, as short as the fight may have been.

Wrapped in only a towel after finishing in the shower, Seamus made his way to the living room and absentmindedly flipped on his television, scanning through a few random channels; the television was certainly one of muggles more ingenious inventions. Finally settling on a replay of England’s latest rugby test against the All-Blacks of New Zealand, Seamus kicked his feet back and absent-mindedly watched the game. It was then his cell buzzed again; groaning, Seamus picked up his wand and whispered a soft accio to bring the phone to him.

The message waiting for him was the last thing he’d expected; minutes later he was fully dressed and apparated straight to Hermione’s lab.

***

“Where’s Harry; and Neville?”

The whole group, minus Harry and Neville, was standing in the cool lab burrowed deep within the Ministry’s underground, where Luna’s body lay on one of the adjoining tables to the men whom somehow managed to kill her, even in death. Covered by a plain white sheet, only the gentle curves of her face, chest, arms, and legs gave evidence as to who it was under the sheath.

It was Ron who asked the question, as he was the last to arrive; he’d left the ‘plebs’ hideaway before fully investigating it once Greggory arrived with the news of Luna’s fate. Ron, Dean, and Seamus seemed to be handling the situation better than the girls…Ginny still had Luna’s blood stained on her robes while Hermione was an uncontrollable mess in her own right.

Sobbing on her own in the corner, Hermione blamed herself for Luna’s demise. In lieu of the abstract circumstances of their deaths, she felt she never should have left Luna alone to examine the bodies. The group let her be; they knew Harry was the only one who’d be able to console her.

“Harry’s still with Kingsley,” Seamus said, voice strong but with hints of a quiver. “it’s likely he doesn’t even know yet. There’s no cell service in HQ, and Harry doesn’t bring his phone in there anyways.”

“And Neville is quarantined in Mungo’s.” Ginny spat, obviously very unhappy with the most recent development in their predicament. When Neville had learned of Luna’s demise, he immediately attempted to apparate to the lab, but found it an exercise in futility.

It was soon after he was told that the hospital was in lockdown; the two rookie aurors had carried in an unknown plague only recently detected. While not deadly, it was severe enough that the staff could not allow anyone to enter or exit the facility. The more concerning facet of this was that again, it had been planned from the start. The five ‘plebs’ were obviously intended as martyrs; and had already claimed the life of one of their number, and secluded another from them. Had Ginny not left Mungo’s so quickly, and Seamus and Hermione stayed in the lab, who knows what could have happened.

“What are we going to do guys?” Dean asked, leaning his head back against one of the Plexiglas walls of the facility. “It seems whoever has done this is a step ahead of us already.”

“Or two or three.”

“Anyone else getting the feeling this night isn’t over yet?”

Six voices answered ‘Yes’ in unison.

“Well let’s do this the old-fashioned way…what do we know?” Ron said, trying to take the mantle as leader in the absence of both Harry and Neville, and the inconsolable Hermione.

“Well, for starters, we know the wizards were martyrs; they were planning on being killed.”

“But not by regular means,” Dean reminded them. “the girls said Seamus’ binding curse initiated a chemical reaction that killed them.”

“Which means they were expecting to be bound by Seamus.”

Ron nodded as they worked the pieces out. “By extension; one would presume they anticipated exactly which strike team would be used against them.”

“Precisely,” Ginny replied, her voice far from even. “their first attacks were meant only to take out Jordan and Chris; and now we know why.”

“They planned to have Mungo’s quarantined, with at least a few of us inside it.” Seamus said, following the evidence. It was damning and startling, to be sure.

“And they obviously intended to have their bodies brought back to this lab; and they knew full well it would be Hermione and Luna who examined them.”

“L-Luna had a special technique,” Hermione chimed in, her voice nearly unrecognizable, from her corner across the room. “I think it’s safe to assume they knew about it, and expected her to use it to uncover their last few moments of life. They used it to kill her.”

Trying to keep from losing concentration, Ron pressed forward. “So it would follow that they had a safeguard against her technique, a curse that elicited a seizure out of her.”

“It was an aneurysm, not a seizure.” Hermione squeaked, still unable to make eye contact with the group or speak in a steady tone.

“Whatever the case, the technique she used specifically is what set off the reaction; it sounds like the exact same type of curse as what killed them in the first place.”

“There’s too many coincidences to call this chance.” Dean stated, plainly, with Ginny tucked into his chest against the wall. “Someone targeted us specifically.”

“But who in the name of Azkaban is capable of this kind of sorcery?” Seamus wondered, banging his fist against the wall. “A dumbed-down version of something similar to this is in the developmental stages here in the experimental sciences lab, but obviously there is a wizard or witch or someone out there who’s already mastered it beyond our comprehension.”

“What person outside the Ministry could be capable of that?” Ron asked, perplexed. “How could they possibly elude our intelligence agents?”

“Wait, we’re getting ahead of ourselves.” Ginny said, wiping her eyes and brushing long strands of crimson hair from her face. “Let’s recap what we’ve got.”

Ron began ticking points off his fingers. “We know they wanted to be captured, and knew their capture would lead to their deaths. They knew the cursed aurors would release a plague in Mungo’s and we have no way of telling how serious that might be. They knew exactly what lab and what technique would be used to perform their autopsy, and they used that to…” he paused for a breath between words. “to kill Luna. It would seem they know each of our positions in the Ministry and managed to bring us together…”

Ron’s voice trailed off, a horrible thought coming to mind. “Guys…if they had this all planned out in advance…then it would follow they expected us to all convene together, here, in this lab, once we found out about Luna’s death.”

A silence as heavy as any he’d ever been part of before took hold of the room, as each of the witches and wizards realized how much truth there was to the statement.

It was Seamus who broke the silence by voicing what all of them were thinking.

“Fuck me.”

***

“And I’ll have the written report on your desk in the morning.” Harry finished, completing his report to Kingsley Shacklebolt, head of the Auror Division in the Ministry of Defense.

“Very good, I’ll be in touch with Greggory soon to see what he has uncovered. Furthermore-”

The Head Auror’s words were cut off when the solid oak door to his office was thrown open and a winded assistant officer flew in, obviously in distress and having come in the utmost of haste.

“Sirs, we’ve just had a report from the lab,” He eyed Harry warily, and the only surviving Potter wondered what he might have meant by it. “Luna Lovegood was killed while performing autopsy in a presumed pre-planned attack.”

“What!?” The aurors screamed in unison, Shacklebolt’s voice in shock over the impossibility of such a feat, Harry’s wracked with emotion.

“Are you sure?” He asked, keeping his voice steady, unwilling to belief one of his seemingly untouchable friends was no longer among them. “You’re sure it was Luna!?”

“Yes sir, they say-”

“What about Hermione!?” Now his voice cracked audibly, he made no attempt to hide it. “Answer me dammit!”

“S-she’s fine sir,” the assistant stammered, shaken by the fury in the wizarding world’s golden boy’s eyes. “Distraught, wracked by grief, but healthy and well.”

As shocked and saddened as he was by Luna’s murder, the word that Hermione was alive and well allowed Harry to relax…but only long enough for a second assistant to burst into the room.

“Sir! I’m sorry for the intrusion sir!” The young blonde man panted, eyeing the obvious tension in the room. “But we’ve received word that another attack has taken place back at the original site of these so-called plebs; Gregory has demanded immediate assistance…”

“I’m on my way.”

And with that, Harry apparated away without even the slightest sound of a pop, leaving the two assistants momentarily stunned.

“I-I thought we had the world’s strongest anti-apparition wards here sir; its supposed to be impossible to apparate anywhere on these premises.”

Kingsley snorted and waved a dismissive hand at the shocked interns, even while being impressed himself. “What do you expect? He’s Harry Potter, for Christ’s sake.”

***

“Protego!”

Before he could even see the destruction brought on the forensics team Harry through a powerful guard up; not as strong as one Neville could conjure but it would have to do for now, he was sure his portly friend would be along shortly as it was.

“Forget them!” Bellowed a commanding voice. “Go after Potter; now!”

No less than six wizards turned their attentions away from the outmatched forensic scientists and onto the boy who lived. Not good odds.

For them.

Channeling his fury, Harry tore a tidal wave of soil out of the ground in front of him and hurled a few hundred pounds of dirt at his enemies. All but one apparated through the wall, one of whom Harry immediately incapacitated with a point blank stunning spell.

Even before the dirt had settled Harry finished another series of complicated wand movements and transfigured a handful of rocks from the soil into massive boulders, hurling them at the two nearest dark wizards, crushing them.

He used an advanced reflective spell to glance one particularly nasty dark hex back at its caster, and the man dropped to the grass with an agonizing scream. Now only one foe remained, at least in front of him; there was another wizard on the premises who seemed content to stand a safe distance away, watching the battle with a burning intrigue.

“Accio!”

Displaying his trademark ability of manipulating spells to perform tasks they were not meant to do, Harry used the spell against a heavy brick wall just behind his last assailant; and do to the mass of the wall he was pulled towards it rather than the other way around, and at an alarming pace.

Before the dark wizard could even flick his wrist in attempt to put up a guard Harry smashed an elbow into his windpipe as he flew by; shattering it. He cut off the spell in time to avoid smashing against the wall at breakneck speed and turned around to watch the writhing wizard clutch his throat and take a few last vain attempts at breath before finally succumbing to his inevitable death.

“Very impressive, Mr. Potter.” Chimed in the only wizard who had not engaged him, nodding his head and clapping in mock amusement. “You truly are as powerful as they say; even if these men were a little green.”

“You would send your own men to a certain death against a superior wizard? Why?”

“Why not?” The cloaked man countered, his face shielded by a hood. “They knew they were coming here to die…such is the honor of our order.”

“And what order might that be?” Harry asked, stalling for time. This man was clearly more intelligent, resourceful, and powerful than any of the others he’d just slaughtered.

He could feel the man’s smile beneath his cloak. “We are the Caesars, young Potter. Remember the name, for it shall soon become the object of your fury.”

Before Harry could demand any more answers the mysterious stranger summoned a rock to his hand and muttered “portus” instantly disappearing and cleverly keeping his trajectory from being traceable by not apparating.

Plebeians? Caesars? Who were these people and what were they playing at?

5. Chapter Five

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.”

6. Research

Hermione Granger could scarcely recall a time she’d been more intense about her work. Guilt over her fallen friend motivated her, and a motivated Hermione Granger was capable of anything within the realm of wizarding science.

In the hours since Harry’d assigned her this task, Hermione had completed thorough examinations on all of the original five bodies brought to her lab. They were all male, all aged between twenty-five and thirty years of age, all reasonably fit, and all were completely healthy before their deaths.

Using a technique she’d developed long ago, Hermione used a variant of a specific medical brain-scan spell to trace the most recent paths of thought used to perform magic in the past twenty-four hours; thankfully she’d been able to perform the analysis before the traces were completely absent from their inactive minds. While nothing out of the ordinary jumped out at her, Hermione was able to confirm that the spell that killed them was not one they had cast themselves.

With that knowledge, Hermione was able to do a full-body and mind autopsy to determine the cause of death, which had been from aneurysm, as she’d previously assumed, although somehow the wizards had been cognitive of the aneurysm and it had not been instant, as was usually the case.

Aneurysms could be caused by a litany of hereditary conditions, undiscovered tumors, epilepsy, among many other things, all of which Hermione was able to rule out as unlikely. There were very few spells that could cause an aneurysm, and after an hour of agonizingly precise and complicated testing, she was frustrated to find that none of these spells had been cast on the wizards.

Knowing the source of the aneurysms to have likely come from the application of Seamus’ binding curse, Hermione immediately went about testing that very curse upon each of the corpses, with a full bio-metric scan recording the data. Infuriatingly enough, the results proved inconclusive; there was nothing in their systems that responded to the binding spell. Although their brain activity, heartbeat, circulatory systems, and all other bodily functions had stopped, magic still allowed her to test biorhythms and as such if the curse had been the cause of death it would have shown up in her results.

“Shit.” Hermione rarely cursed, and when she did it was usually because of something profound. Not only had she gotten nowhere in more than six hours of research, but she’d actually taken a step backwards; if Seamus’ hex didn’t kill them then what in the name of Merlin did?

***

Despite the urging of his friends and permission of his manager, Dean found himself on the training grounds early in the morning the day after Luna’s death. As he’d explained to them, the pitch was his one true home, where he could leave everything behind and focus on nothing but the ball and those preventing him from putting it in the net.

“Line! Line! Line!” Without even lifting his head to see where he was playing the ball, Dean placed a deft chip over the last defender and towards the corner for John’s overlapping run, and immediately broke inside towards the penalty area.

He feigned a run to the penalty spot and then streaked towards the near post, pulling two defenders with him. When Spector’s cross came in it went back towards the far post, but with two defenders on Dean and the goalkeeper forced to cheat to the near side, Carlton had nothing but glorious white netting to shoot at as he out jumped his marker and slammed a header into the back of the net.

“Good work boys!” Yelled the gaffer, blowing his whistle to signal the end of the drill. “That’s what we need more of; overlapping runs from midfield and late crashes of the box on the far side. Thomas; great job distributing and pulling the defense on you, and nice finish on the end Cole. And a solid cross Johnny Boy, I may have to make a midfielder out of you yet.”

John laughed, jogging towards the middle of the pitch with the rest of the boys. “That was a one in ten cross boss, normally I put that one in row z.”

Everyone laughed, as was the training-ground humor and the always enjoyable joke about the defender who couldn’t hit the ocean from a port; they were there for defense, after all. Not everyone could be Roberto Carlos.

“Alright lads, that is enough for one day I’d say. We’ll meet in the tactical room at seven o’clock sharp tonight, don’t be late.” Glancing at Dean, he continued. “Also, on a more somber note, as you all know Dean lost one of his closest friends in a terrible accident just last night, so please keep her and her family in your thoughts and prayers.”

A few of the guys offered him pats on the back and words of condolence, all of which he accepted with a heavy heart.

After showering up and pulling out of the training facilities Dean drove to the nearest bookstore and purchased everything he could find about the Roman Empire. His car was filled with the volumes of Cassius Dio, Suetonius, Pliny the Elder, and countless others who’d actually lived and written during the reign of the Caesars; it was going to be a long night.

Gaius Julius Caesar, Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus, Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus, Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (Caligula), Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus…

Well, if he’d learned anything about the Caesars so far, it was that they weren’t very original when it came to names. After the original Julius Caesar, who Dean realized embarrassingly was not an emperor of Rome, there was Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero. And that was just the first five. Caesar was a term used by Roman Emperors for centuries. In fact, by the rough timeline Dean had worked out, Julius Caesar came to power in about 49 BC, was killed astonishingly only five years later in 44 BC, and the Roman Republic itself essentially became the Roman Empire in 27 BC when his adopted son Augustus was given exactly that name and proclaimed a consul for life.

Shakespeare may have made Julius famous, but from just an hour’s reading Dean realized that Augustus was the man. He was younger than Dean was now when he came to power, then he essentially forced his way to the top, destroyed his rivals through civil war and brought forty years of peace to his people. Julius may have been the popular figure in literature, but Augustus was the one who actually accomplished something great.

It will probably never be concretely agreed upon when the Empire fell, but remnants of it survived at far as the eventual fall of Constantinople in 1453! If Dean considered that the fall of the Empire, and the origin of Rome being with Romulus who founded the city itself in about 753 BD, that was a time span of more than 2000 years of civilization, most of that time being spent as the absolute power of the Mediterranean!

Although not a history buff by any means, the information enthralled him; he had to continually remind himself that his research was of the Caesars and only that, not the entirety of the Empire. But the enormity of the use of the Caesar name by Roman Emperors made the task of researching all of them an enormous endeavor, one that would take him months, years even to complete. Entire historical biographies, novels, plays, movies, poems, everything he could imagine had been written about dozens of the Caesars.

But there was one phrase that caught his eye during his fourth or fifth hour of research, just before he had to return to the training grounds for tactical. It was by Suetonius, and called ‘The Twelve Caesars,’ referring to the first twelve Caesars of Rome. Book-marking it, Dean rushed off for tactical hoping he’d stumbled upon something significant.

***

Dean bustled his way out the door just as Ginny was apparating in; she was sad she’d only gotten to see her boy for a few minutes time but knew she’d be better off studying without the distraction. Dean’s study was filled with endless volumes of Ancient Roman History, and Ginny smiled at the sight, even living as a muggle, Dean was still one of them.

If it were possible, the books Ginny spread all across the crimson sheets and carpet of her and Dean’s bedroom probably numbered higher than the endless volume of text in the study. Wizards had developed a lot of unusual spells over the years. Fortunately, she was looking for a very specific curse. Unfortunately, she had to wade through a swamp of bullshit to find a fragment of what she was looking for, then repeat the process as many times as it took to find out how they killed Luna.

She’d sorted her books into three piles; Developmental Hexes, Curses, and Spells, Biographies of Controversial and Ingenious Wizards and Witches, and Breakthroughs in Spell Creation. Then she cross-referenced and poured over the data for hours deep into the night, well after Dean returned and mumbled something about ‘The Twelve Caesars’ before getting to sleep early due to an early-morning practice he’d be having.

By two in the morning London time, she’d written nearly a novel in notes, read more material than she ever had in years of studying at Hogwarts, drank more of Dean’s muggle energy drinks than she thought could possibly be healthy for her and could find nothing in her research that resembled anything even remotely close to what she needed to know.

Like Hermione had said, theories of latent magic curses only activated by certain triggers had existed for decades, but in practice nobody had ever been recorded as having any success in their endeavors. She was missing something. Something huge. They all were…something smelled afoul about this entire situation, and Ginny feared if they could not grasp what it was about this whole mess that eluded them, Luna’s death would not be the last she mourned among her friends before this was all over.

***

Neville watched Hermione’s frustration, and it did nothing but compound his own. Here he was, in a room with the world’s most brilliant witch, surrounded by bodies, and neither of them could conjure up anything resembling a rational cause for their deaths. Oh they’d had aneurysms, or at least some kind of wizarding version of them, but deciphering what it was that caused those aneurysms was an exercise in futility. They were stumped.

“I’m letting her down,” Hermione sobbed, her cheeks stained with tears as she sulked into a corner as far away from the bodies as she was able. “someone murdered my friend right under my nose and there is nothing I can do to catch them.”

She began sobbing even harder, her shoulders shaking heavily and her cries audible for anyone within the vicinity to hear. Neville rushed to her side on the cold, marble, floor and wrapped his arms around her, trying to console her as best he could. She resisted at first but quickly relented, wrapping her arms around his broad shoulders and sobbing into his chest in an uncontrollable fit.

It took him a few seconds before he noticed it. Her arms were shivering. “Hermione, are you…” he let his words trail off as the bushy-haired witch violently wrenched herself away from him and vomited on the floor between them, crying even as vomit dripped from her lips, and it was only now Neville noticed her knees quivering, her chest shaking back and forth, her eyes flitting in and out of focus.

At first, his heart stopped. He thought they’d managed to get to her, and that she was dying in front of him. But soon thereafter his medical instinct kicked in and he realized exactly what was happening.

“Hermione! Mione, look at me!” He pleaded with her, as her breaths became rapid and harsh, whilst she still spit vomit from her lips and cried uncontrollably. “Hermione, you’re having a panic attack! You need to calm down, please Hermione just -- shit!”

He cursed as Hermione retched again all over the floor, splashing vomit up onto Neville’s robes, and he immediately grabbed her and apparated to Mungo’s, praying she could snap out of it. If not, then the wizarding world had just lost their two brightest minds in the span of 36 hours.

***

“Report.”

“I’m here to ask permission to interrupt interrogation of the prisoners sir,” A senior auror, probably in his mid-thirties, with short dark hair and high cheekbones, asked the head of his division.

“What interrogation?” Kingsley Shacklebolt responded, suddenly alert and aware that something may be very wrong.

The tall, lean auror looked decidedly confused. “Of the two captured dark wizards from tonight’s battle in Asheville, sir. Harry Potter himself told me the interrogation would be administered at headquarters.”

Slamming a fist on his desk, Kingsley was up in a heartbeat. “Dammit Potter!” He exclaimed, furious at what he knew must be going on at this precise moment. “Get a team together Giggs, and meet me in Asheville in ten minutes time, we need to trace their apparition.”

“Sir?”

“He is abandoning protocol,” Kingsley explained, furious even in his understanding of Potter’s actions. “he is interrogating the prisoners away from the facility, if he’d brought them here I would have known. I’m sure he is using a few…unique tactics in interrogation.”

The pieces finally fell into place in the head of Kris Giggs, a well-respected and powerful auror who worked directly under the Master. Harry Potter wasn’t just interrogating the prisoners…he was torturing them. Immediately he fled the room and went about assembling a team of his most trusted aurors, praying that this situation would not escalate any further.

Back in his office, Kingsley Shacklebolt stared across the room at his powerful but aging form in a full-body mirror that lay juxtaposed to a few moving pictures of past Master Aurors. Rubbing his black and balding forehead, he shook his head before apparating away and muttering, “I’m getting too old for this shit.”

7. Searching for Answers

A/N: Hope everyone is enjoying the fic so far let me know what you think =) Things are gonna start getting interesting! ;-)

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A long time ago, in his fifth year at Hogwarts, Harry stumbled across the Room of Requirement. Within it he’d begun Dumbledore’s Army, and then in seventh year he’d used it as a base to train for his inevitable battle with Voldemort. From time to time he would return, when he deemed it necessary.

This was one of those times.

Harry, Ron, and Seamus stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the spacious room, with the two surviving dark wizards from Harry’s most recent battle strapped to a pair of hard, wicker chairs, their hands bound tightly behind them with rope rather than a spell, and a gag stuffed in each of their mouths rather the use of a silencing curse.

Ron and Seamus had shown some resistance to this tactic at first, but quickly relented. Harry was determined to get the information he needed by any means necessary.

There were plenty of dark curses created over the years for torturing purposes, but they had no way of knowing whether these wizards were ridden with latent curses like the last batch of them had been. Likewise, they didn’t know what a silencing curse or binding curse may do considering earlier developments, and as such, Harry chose to do this the muggle way.

“Have either of you heard the legend of Prometheus?”

Neither man flinched, although Seamus shuddered a bit at Harry’s side.

“I’ll take your silence as a no,” Harry continued, twirling his wand around his fingers. “He was a titan, who were considered stronger even than the gods, but imprisoned by Zeus in the deepest hells of Hades.”

Ron played his part well, standing stoic and emotionless at Harry’s side, despite having no idea whatsoever what his raven-haired best friend was up to. Seamus, on Harry’s other side, however, struggled to hide a grimace; he knew the story.

“Allow me to cut out all the boring parts -- Prometheus gave mankind the gift of fire,” The two wizards remained expressionless, even as Harry let a flame grow and flicker from the tip of his wand before extinguishing it. “as punishment for this transgression, Zeus condemned the once mighty titan to an eternity of agony; a gigantic eagle named Ethon fed on his liver constantly every minute of every day.”

For their part the captured wizards took none of the bait, even as Ron and Seamus grimaced in front of them. “Under normal circumstances, the titan would have died on the first day. However, Zeus made sure the titan, and his liver, were healed completely just as Prometheus was taking his last few breaths, allowing his torment to continue as long as Zeus saw fit.”

Still, the captured wizards showed no signs of distress or fear. Not that that bought them any respect or sympathy from Harry. If anything, it only frustrated him more.

Walking slowly and deliberately, Harry laid his wand down on the table the room had provided him and picked up a long strand of athletic tape, slowly and purposefully wrapping it around the knuckles of his right hand. “Thanks to the wonders of modern magic, Prometheus’ torment can now be your own.” Harry gave the men his most sinister smile as he let his words sink in. “But I am not as cruel as Zeus, gentlemen. Tell me what I want to know, and your torment will come to a swift end.”

If the dark wizards had been any more still, they could have been mistaken for mannequins.

Taking a deep breath, Harry turned to Ron as he finished wrapping his right fist, whispering so as the two wizards could not hear him, “Stop me if I start to get out of control.”

Ron grimaced, knowing now what he’d feared before; Harry was dangerously close to going over the edge. Seamus glanced over at him with a mildly frightened expression, and Ron new his fear all to well. They’d all seen what Harry was capable of in a controlled rage when he’d defeated Voldemort.

But out of control? Ron shuddered at the thought, and prayed to Merlin that his friend would never reach that state.

***

Kingsley Shacklebolt was in one of the more frenzied states of his life. He had to stop Potter, and fast. If he tortured those wizards, and details were leaked to the public, the wizarding world might never recover. Amongst the aurors and his closest friends it was well known that Harry had developed a dangerous temper over the years, but to the public, his reputation was squeaky-clean. Politics were in turmoil right now, with multiple men and women jockeying for the position of Minister, and corruption was rearing its ugly head.

The world he’d spent his entire life protecting did not need to lose its most cherished hero in this time of crisis.

As it stood now, Kingsley stood impatiently outside Madame Puddiefoot’s in Hogsmeade, the fourth apparition stop they’d made so far. Harry had obviously planned this out well in advance, and knowing he’d be followed, had preformed a series of rapid apparitions in succession before arriving at his destination. While easily traceable, the spells required to track the routes were time-consuming, and Harry had apparated from one point to the next without pause, probably reaching his final location in less than a minute. For the aurors, they were forced to spend close to five minutes for the spells to track each successive jump, giving Harry a long head start.

Kingsley just hoped they’d catch him before it was too late.

***

“I hope you’re ready to talk,” Harry threatened, pulling the gag out of one of the wizards’ mouth.

“You will learn nothing they don’t already want you to know.”

“We’ll see about that.”

Without bothering to elaborate, Harry turned away from the wizard whom he’d ungagged, brought his fist back, and slammed a right hook across the jaw of the other bound wizard. His outcry was muffled by the gag, but his pain was obvious. Without pausing to allow him a respite, Harry brought his fist back again and delivered a crushing blow to the wizard’s midsection, doubling him over in his restraints.

The beaten man’s counterpart only laughed. “The famous Harry Potter; oh how you will fall.”

Ignoring the taunt, Harry continued his assault; elbows, kicks, right hook after right hook, were all rained down upon the same wizard as his fellow pleb shrugged each attack off without any sense of disgust for his partner’s distress. Infuriated, Harry pulled the gag out of the beaten wizard’s mouth.

“What about you? Got anything to say?”

The blonde-haired wizard’s only response was to spit blood at Harry’s feet. His counterpart only laughed.

“Harry, they’re not gonna-”

“Everyone talks!” Harry spat, backhanding the bleeding wizard across his face. “Everyone has a breaking point!”

“Yes they do, and you are far too close to yours!” Ron yelled, finally stepping in. “I’m ending this; they aren’t talking. We’ll take them to Azkaban tonight. Seamus, fix this poor bloke up; Harry; Get. Over. Here. Now.”

Submitting to defeat even in his fury, Harry bowed his head to the ground and walked to the corner of the room with Ron, while Seamus tended to the injured wizard. Once backed into the corner, Ron whispered to him in a tone few wizards would ever have the courage to use in front of the great Harry Potter.

“You are out of line,” Ron spoke, sternly, shoving Harry in the chest for emphasis. “I’m taking you off this case for the night. Get out of here before Kingsley shows up. He’ll only be a few more minutes now.”

Having enough humility to understand when he’d been in the wrong, Harry nodded. “I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

Across the room, Seamus realized the dark wizard’s injuries were more severe than he and Ron had originally realized. As he treated him, the other wizard whispered softly while eyeing Harry and Ron’s conversation in the corner. “Potter will be the end of you all, you know that, do you not?”

“Shut up,” Seamus muttered, not even considering the man’s words. “Damn it, Harry really messed you up didn’t he?” Seamus continued, speaking hypothetically to the beaten man, the wizard’s wounds would make certain that he be placed in Mungo’s for the night. As for now, all he could do was cast a simple recovery spell on the man to cull the bleeding and keep him breathing.

“Sano.”

The effects of the spell came into focus quicker than Seamus could curse. It happened much quicker than it had the first time; blood spilled from the man’s nostrils, ears, mouth, and eyes while he convulsed wildly for a few seconds before ceasing movement altogether.

Harry and Ron ran over to Seamus’ side immediately, aghast. “What happened!?”

“I don’t know!” Seamus cried, kicking a chair over in frustration. “He had lost a lot of blood so I cast sano on him and bam! he was gone.”

“Why the hell did you use magic on him!?” Harry demanded, furious. “When you know full well what happened to the last five of them!?”

“Oh bugger off Potter, you put too much of a beating on him!” Seamus snapped back, taking a step in Harry’s direction. The tension was palpable. “If you could control your god damned temper this shit wouldn’t-”

“Enough!” Ron shouted, shoving the two wizards away from each other, while the remaining dark wizard looked on in interest. “This is exactly what they want! They aren’t afraid of being martyrs! They are allowing themselves to be killed to rile distrust and distress between us! I am NOT going to let that happen!”

Just as Ron finished his spiel, Shacklebolt, Kris Giggs, and a few other lower-level aurors busted through the door to the Room of Requirement. Ron was thankful it was August and school was not yet in session. Turning to face the Master Auror, it was Ron who stepped forward and spoke, rather than Harry.

“The prisoner died after interrogation sir,” Ron reported, his voice calm, as he saw Kingsley and the other aurors gazing at the dead body in disbelief. “Head Auror Potter used a special set of tactics in attempt to force information out of the wizards, which failed. I have since removed him from duty, I am in charge here. After the interrogation I ordered Auror Finnigan to tend to the injured prisoner. His attempts at alleviating the man’s pain lead to his death; I would presume that an autopsy will reveal another latent curse laid within this man that activated on a trigger, this time being that of a restorative spell. It would follow these men were anticipating exactly this type of interrogation, and the need for recovery after.”

Kingsley put his hands on his hips, looking first at Harry, who looked down at the floor, and then back at Ron, shaking his head. “It would appear we have been out thought again,” he pursed his lips, knowing his next words would be some of the toughest he spoke in his wizarding career. “Potter, you are removed from duty, and will report to my office immediately. Auror Giggs, you will assume his position; Weasley, you will be his second in command.”

Harry closed his eyes and lowered his head, accepting his fate. All the while, it had not been easy to hear. Giggs dutifully thanked Shacklebolt for his promotion, as did Ron, although the red-haired wizard was stunned. He was now the third most senior auror in the chain of command; that meant he now held the highest level of office within the Ministry of any Weasley in his family’s history. Despite the situation, he shivered with pride.

“As for now, all of you will come to Headquarters for debriefing, we’ll throw the remaining prisoner in a cell; unless, that is, he finally has something to say?”

Ron snorted, and Seamus shook his head, while the dark wizard gave Kingsley a sinister smile, shocking them all by speaking. “The first thing you need to know, is that we have people, everywhere.”

***

Hermione awoke groggily, slowly, and with great regret. Her body ached, her mouth frothed, and her head throbbed. It was entirely too bright in her room, and the sound of an opening door didn’t help her migraine at all.

“Miss Granger,” the doctor spoke, as he folded his white robes under him and sat by her bedside. “how are you feeling this afternoon?”

She groaned. “Not well…what happened?”

“You had a panic attack,” he said promptly, while flipping through her chart. “a very bad one, in fact. If your friend Mr. Longbottom had not brought you in with such haste things may have been much worse.”

“Oh,” she managed, sitting up straight in her bed, arms shivering. “where is he now?”

“Don’t worry about that,” the doctor responded, smiling, and Hermione realized he was decidedly attractive. Tall, with dark hair, his million-galleon smile had no doubt won him many women in his past. Not that Hermione had any interest, she didn’t have time for such distractions, especially not now. “for now your recovery is the most important thing.”

Something right then struck her as being off about the man, but she dismissed it as her symptoms facilitating paranoia. “When can I return to my lab?”

“You will be able to return to your work soon enough,” he said, and now his tone did invoke paranoia from her. Something about this man was definitely wrong. “we just need to discuss a few things first.”

Taking a breath and an involuntary gulp, Hermione pulled her sheets closer to her body. “What kinds of things?”

He smiled, seemingly sensing her discomfort. “Well for beginners, I don’t believe I have formally introduced myself,” His smile no longer appeared so attractive. “my name is Domitian; Domitian Caesar.”

8. Chapter Eight

A/N: Sorry about the wait between chapters, but its gonna become a common theme soon. I’m working a lot, and when I’m not, I’m teaching myself Latin, studying ancient rome, and even trying to have fun every once and again =) I hope all you guys reading and reviewing like the way things are headed, feedback is always well appreciated =) I hope you all like this chapter things are really kicking into high gear now!

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“You sonofabitch!”

Hermione screamed at the man who was at least in part responsible for her best friend’s death, lashing out at him in the cold medical ward. The effort proved too much for her, and she soon felt her arms and legs feel heavy, her head dizzy. Despite her fury, Hermione was intelligent enough to realize she’d been drugged.

“I do apologize, for the venenum, but I felt it most appropriate for you to remain calm.”

Hermione only glared at the man, venom ready on her tongue and hate teeming from her eyes.

“I do not expect any understanding, nor sympathy, from you; but perhaps I could offer some of my own.”

“You have nothing to offer me.” She spat, sweat beginning to build upon her brow, Hermione could feel her entire body heating up in anger, and doubted it had anything to do with whatever the venenum might be.

“Quite the contrary,” the man replied, conveying no emotion on any spectrum whatsoever, which infuriated Hermione further. “I offer you my condolences, for the passing of your friend.”

“You murdered her!” Hermione screeched, frothing at the mouth in want of destroying the man who sat so calm and smug in front of her. Domitian. She would remember the name.

“I most certainly did not,” Domitian replied, his tone calm and collected. Calculated. “but she was a necessary sacrifice. For that, I am sorry.”

“Bullshit!” She snapped, knowing she was losing her composure but not caring at all. She could feel her limbs relaxing, the drug was kicking in; she probably only had a few minutes of consciousness left. “I suppose now is when you tell me the ends justify the means?”

“Machiavelli was a very intelligent man,” the Caesar responded, ignoring her barbs. “sacrifices must be made for the greater good of the people. Miss Lovegood was one such sacrifice. History will remember her as a cataclysmic martyr, a death that spawned a new era of greatness.”

Hermione couldn’t believe the words that came from the delusional man’s mouth. “And I suppose you and your friends fancy yourselves the harbingers of this ‘era of greatness?’”

“My colleagues and I,” Domitian stated carefully, as if each word held a great significance. “believe an apocalypse is in order. Occasionally you must destroy something, in order to save it.”

“Or rebuild it in a way you see fit,” Hermione snorted, seeing through his supposed righteousness. “just like all men whom crave power.”

“And yet, we crave nothing, Miss Granger,” he replied, emotionless, passively, letting the words speak for themselves rather than being forced by a suggestive tone. “we only want to root out the corruption that stains the very essence of your magical world; we seek to annihilate this corruption and replace it with piety -- an everlasting peace for your leaders to govern, while we return to the darkness, until the times call for our return.”

The man’s words chilled Hermione to the core, as the drugs started to take her over completely, her vision tunneling as darkness poured in, threatening to consume her.

“How does the murder of a virtuous witch, one of the world’s most beloved and revered women, contribute to this supposed peace?” Hermione managed, the drugs and emotional grief putting a strain on her voice. “What purpose did it serve?”

Domitian bowed his head towards her. “It brought us together in this moment, as it will bring countless other moments to others in the future. Everything has been predetermined, our blueprint for your society is absolute; there is nothing you can do that will stop us now. Your apocalypse, your destruction, your salvation, is inevitable. One day, should you survive to see it, you shall thank us for what we have given you.”

With those words the man disappeared back through the door from whence he came, leaving Hermione in a dizzied state of emotion, confusion, and helplessness as her body succumbed fully to the sedatives, casting her into a long, restless slumber.

***

Tensions were high and moral was low, while the two aurors searched for a medium ground upon which to speak with one another. The past half-dozen master aurors of the last century or so bore disapproving glares into Harry’s back from their portraits on the wall around him, but it was with a sense of restraint. How does one punish the man responsible for an entire civilization’s survival? How does one forgive a man who’s violated everything his agency stands for? Where is a level ground upon which both parties can walk together in harmony?

“I’m sorry,” not Harry, but Kingsley said, feeling a legitimate sorrow for the young auror whom had accomplished so much, and experienced so much pain. “for your parents, for the Dursleys, for Cedric, for Sirius, for Cho, for Ernie, for Padma, for Parvati, for Terry, for Susan, and for Luna.”

He watched as Harry’s face, emotionless and passive, was betrayed by the haunt in his eyes, a pain that grew deeper with each name. His parents, who’d taught him love; the Dursley’s, who’d taught him forgiveness; for Cedric, who’d taught him courage; for Sirius, who’d taught him how to be a man; for Cho, who’d taught him happiness; for Ernie, who’d taught him restraint; for the Parvati’s, who’d taught him to enjoy life; for Terry, who’d taught him cleverness; for Susan, who’d taught him lawfulness; and for Luna, who’d taught him what it meant to be a great friend. No man should ever have to experience such pain, suffering, and all while under the intense eye of public scrutiny. That intensity would soon become unbearable, should word of tonight’s events ever reach the ears of the public.

“As am I,” Harry responded, downtrodden. “I have no excuse for my actions tonight sir; I will humbly submit to whatever punishment you deem necessary.”

Kingsley sighed, rubbing his eyes as his mind tried to swim through a hurricane of thoughts to find the correct solution. Harry was the best at what he did; there was no doubting that. He was also emotionally compromised; there was no doubting that either. The world’s most powerful man consumed by rage was a far more dangerous enemy than that same man as an ally consumed by kindness. And yet Kingsley now found himself in the greatest crisis since Voldemort, he needed his best men.

“I’m afraid I have more bad news Harry,” he finally said, skirting the subject for the moment while he tried to coil his mind around what needed to be said. “Miss Granger suffered a panic attack while working in her lab-”

Kingsley held up a hand as Harry shot out of his chair, his face a mixture of grief and alarm. “Not to worry Harry, she is resting now, the doctors say she will be just fine.”

“I still need to go see-”

“Sit down, Potter.” Kingsley commanded, motioning to Harry’s chair. Begrudgingly, Harry slowly lowered himself into his seat, emerald eyes still burning with intensity.

“I apologize sir.”

“That’s quite alright,” Kingsley replied, wishing he could prolong the conversation further and allow himself more time for thought; but that was a luxury he did not have. “I find myself in a rather curious position Harry. You are the best I’ve got, no question. I need you for this Caesar crisis, no doubts there. But can I trust you to keep your composure?”

Harry took a long time to reply, his expression impossible to read. “I don’t know sir.”

Pressing his hands together, Kingsley prayed he was making the right decision. “Okay then, here is what we are going to do,” Harry looked at him expectantly. “you are hereby removed from active duty until after Miss Lovegood’s funeral service, after which time you will be reinstated on a probationary basis. Aurors Giggs and Weasley will retain their positions, I am demoting you to the rank of Class One Auror, effective immediately.”

“I understand sir.”

“Furthermore, any more outbursts, any derelict of duty or disobeying of orders will subject you to permanent termination from this office and possible threat of court martial. Is that understood?”

“Yes sir.”

“Good, now get out of my sight.” With those final, stern words Kingsley spun around in his chair and waited for Harry to leave, ignoring his muffled thanks while gazing out his office window into the black of night, hoping the future of the world he loved so much would prove to be much brighter than the sight before him now.

***

“I hope you’re making more progress than I am,” Ginny told her boyfriend, collapsing in Dean’s lap as she did so, and together they laid on the couch in their flat each with a book in hand, Dean’s being The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius, and Ginny’s Magical History and Spell Creation volume XIV.

“Perhaps,” Dean replied, turning from one page to the next, finding the life of Julius Caesar from the perspective of Suetonius to be fascinating. “this is an old history book written way back when the Romans were still in power, it’s essentially the life story of each of the first twelve rulers to use the name ‘Caesar’”

Ginny nodded in approval. “That’s gotta be more helpful than this rubbish,” she tossed the book aside and stretched, Dean wrapping one arm around her waist as she did so. “I’ve found nothing of use in hours of research…I honestly don’t think there is anything in the archives that can help us.”

Dean opened his mouth to respond before his phone started vibrating on the coffee stand in front of them. Despite Ginny’s groans of protest he reached over and swiped it off the table, flipping it open without bothering to check who was calling.

“Yeah mate?”

“It’s Seamus.”

“You sound awful.”

“I am. Another pleb is dead, Harry’s been removed from duty, and Hermione had a panic attack and is stuck in Mungo’s as we speak.”

“Mother of God…”

Realizing something was very wrong -- again -- Ginny shot up off Dean’s lap at full attention. “Put him on speaker.”

Doing so, Seamus continued for both of them to hear. “Kingsley promoted Giggs to Head Auror and Ron is his number two,” Ginny gasped. “we’re all meeting at Mungo’s to check on Hermione and have a brainstorm. Be there in twenty.”

The line went dead before they could even say goodbye. The couple spent a moment looking at each other in disbelief.

“A week ago we were untouchable,” Ginny said, shaking her head and pulling at her hair in frustration. “now we’ve lost Luna, Harry’s been removed from service, and Hermione is in the hospital; and we have about as much knowledge of the people doing this to us now as we did then.”

“Well wallowing in self-pity and despair will get us nowhere Gin,” Dean said, rising to his feet and beginning to look around for his wand. “let’s get to the hospital and figure out what we’re gonna do next.”

***

Twenty minutes later the couple occupied the saddest hospital room in all of Mungo’s. Hermione still slept on her bed, chest rising and falling slowly. Harry sat closest to her side, resting his elbows on the bed with his head in his hands, no doubt blaming himself for Hermione’s predicament. Neville was a few feet away, his face impassive, almost as if the emotions of the past few days had drained him of his capacity for emotion altogether. Seamus stood with his back against the wall wearing an angry scowl; twice now he’d inadvertently been responsible for the deaths of wizards during interrogation. Dean and Ginny sat side-by-side on the floor, waiting for Hermione to wake up. Ron appeared the calmest of the bunch, his eyes burning with resolve.

No one spoke for a long, uneasy fifteen minutes before Hermione finally awoke, her eyelids fluttering open like the wings of a butterfly, her soft groans of morning discomfort music to the concerned ears of her friends.

“Hermione!”

“Harry…” She responded, smiling at the heroic wizard, looking far more the concerned friend than the terrifying savage he’d been just a few hours before. Their heart-felt moment was shattered when she suddenly bolted upright in her bed, remembering her conversation with the Caesar.

“Harry! I met one of them, he was here!”

“What!? When? How?”

Hermione had the full attention now of everyone in the room. “I don’t know, a few hours ago,” she gazed into the distance, trying to recall the conversation. “his name was…Domitian, he said.”

“Really?” Dean interjected, suddenly very interested. “Domitian was the last of the twelve Caesars…written about in a book I found at the local store.”

“Coincidence?”

“Let’s hope so,” Ron said, speaking what was dawning on the minds of the rest. “because if there is a correlation, that would mean we are dealing with an organization comprised of twelve leaders.”

“He claimed that…” she still found it a struggle to say the words, even now a few days after the fact. “…that Luna’s murder was a necessary evil, that in time she would be recognized as a ‘cataclysmic martyr.’”

“Well that’s an interesting perspective.” Neville commented, tongue dripping with sarcasm.

“There’s more, he…he said that an apocalypse is coming, and that the events are already in motion; there’s nothing we can do to stop it.”

“That would be mildly disturbing.” Seamus commented, his own unique wit still shining through despite the circumstances.

“And also, that his organization, they don’t crave power,” all but Harry in the room snorted. “but rather they want to destroy corruption, reinstate justice, and slink back into the shadows until they are needed again.”

“Interesting,” Ginny said, before allowing Hermione to continue.

“He said the apocalypse, and our subsequent salvation apparently, was inevitable. He’s mad. He thinks he is doing the world a favor.”

“Why are the insane ones always the most intelligent?” Seamus wondered allowed, obviously not happy with the information.

“Anyways,” Ron interjected, keeping everyone on subject. “What are we going to do about it?”

“What can we do?” Harry finally spoke, surprising everyone in the room. “Look at what they’ve accomplished -- Luna’s dead, I’ve been demoted, Hermione’s been incapacitated; and all of us are clueless as to what these guys have planned for us next.”

Nobody said anything after that, what could they say? Silence dominated the room for a prolonged period of time before Ron spoke up again. “Well, perhaps this isn’t the best thing to be doing right now.”

“What?”

“Brainstorming. Thinking, scheming, planning. None of this is going to be beneficial while we’re all still reeling from Luna’s murder. I think we should take some time off, grieve on our own, and after Luna’s funeral Friday we get back together and figure out what can be done with clear minds -- they want us to plan under duress, scheme without the full use of our brains. We need to be emotionally stable before we can hope to counteract against these men whom have obviously planned this out a long while in advance.”

It was as if the hot-tempered, fiery young boy had finally grown up right before all their eyes. Through the years, Ron had matured and become a very formidable wizard, both physically and intellectually. And now is when they needed him more than ever; with everything that had gone wrong in the past week, Ron was the only one of them who’d had something go right.

He was the leader now.

9. Chapter Nine

The morning was warm, but their hearts were cold. Leaves rustled and tumbled around in the wind by their feet, little critters chirped and squawked nearby; but where they wanted to see life the most, there was only silence.

Luna’s casket was lowered into the ground alongside her mother’s in their family burial grounds, just outside of Godric’s Hollow; the very same graveyard Harry’s own parents rested within. But this day wasn’t about them, or Harry himself; it was about the young witch who’d lost her life so tragically.

Her father was calm at the head of the procession, now watching his daughter be lowered into the same dirt he’d been forced to place his wife within nearly twenty years prior. The gathering was small; only Luna’s family and closest friends had been allowed at her final burial, the public ceremony had been held the night before. Tens of thousands of wizards and witches had paid respects to their fallen heroine.

Hermione looked the most distraught of the bunch, tears had run freely down her cheeks throughout the entire ceremony, and only now had they ceased, as her face was buried in the shoulder of a comforting Harry, his face as somber as any had ever seen it. Dean likewise was holding a woman in his arms, Ginny’s grief-stricken face heartbreaking to see, while she leaned backwards against the striker’s chest. Neville stood silently alongside his pretty wife and their only child, a two year-old daughter Athena. Ron and Seamus flanked Harry on either side, their expressions grim but resolved.

All of them were on edge, wands concealed and ready to be pulled at a moment’s notice; if there was ever an obvious time or place for an attack, this would have been it. Even with the assurances of the now-imprisoned pleb, who’d told them no attacks would come to them during the funeral, they were still wary of an ambush.

The man’s questioning revealed close to nothing; all he’d told them was their organization was vast, and their victory inevitable. He’d even gone as far as to apologize for future deaths and destructions brought upon them by the Caesars before this all came to an end. Despite his promises of restraint, the seven friends remained cautious at all times. As bad as this menace seemed, the Caesars had still only claimed one life.

When Luna’s casket was firmly underground, each of them picked up a shovel and covered her completely, magically sealing the grave so that no one or no thing could ever enter it. Luna was entirely gone to them now. Never again would they see her face in the flesh, even if it was in death. Never would they again hear her voice as it came from her lips, or gaze into her beautiful eyes, once so full of life. A part of all of them had died with her, something they could never get back.

After the burial was complete all but three of the group apparated away, the original trio with one more stop to make. It wasn’t far, Harry could have found the graves with his eyes closed, he’d visited them so often. Hermione held his hand all the way as if guiding him anyways, with Ron walking close by their side.

No one spoke, as they hadn’t all day, when they reached the graves of Lily and James Potter. Harry fell to his knees on the soft dirt in front of them, never before having been so ashamed of himself in the ‘presence’ of his parents. Hermione kneeled down beside him, wrapping her small arms around his waist, while Ron laid a comforting hand on his shoulder.

“You know,” Harry said, gazing over the inscriptions etched on their tombstones. “I’m older now than they ever were; and I feel like they deserved their lives so much more than I’m deserving of mine.”

“Don’t say that Harry!” Hermione chided him, tightening her grip on his waist. “They would never accept that kind of thinking from you; you know that.”

“But am I wrong?”

“Don’t search for the rights and wrongs in situations like this one mate,” Ron said, squeezing his shoulder reassuringly. “your parents certainly deserved better than what they got, and you deserve everything you’ve got to live for as well. Don’t think about things like who deserved what more; all of you deserved to live -- but they gave their lives to protect yours.”

“Sometimes, I wish they hadn’t,” Harry replied, truthfully. “if I didn’t have the two of you, and the rest of our friends, I don’t know what about this life would be worth living.”

“Well we’re not going anywhere mate.” Ron assured him, his voice quiet like the calm winds sweeping through the hollow. “So you’re always going to have something to live for.”

“Thanks Ron,” Harry said, pushing himself to his feet and clapping the dirt from his palms. “it’s just rough, from time to time. I mean, I’ve never lost someone close to me from anything but murder…I don’t even know what its like for people who lose close ones in an accident, to cancer, to a heart attack, anything-”

“Merlin’s beard!” Hermione exclaimed, clasping a hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry to interrupt you Harry, but I have to leave! I need to get to the lab right away! I’ll call you later!”

And with a pop she was gone, leaving the two wizards staring at the spot where she’d been standing in an amused silence.

“I hate it when she does that.” Ron commented, after a moment. “C’mon mate, I’ll buy you a beer, we need to toast to Luna.”

***

“Jordan!”

Sprinting into her lab, still throwing her white lab coat over her shoulders, Hermione shouted at her assistant, a young man of dark complexion who’d just wrapped up his seventh year at Hogwarts. He was a Slytherin, but Hermione didn’t hold those same petty grudges as she did back in her schooling days. During the war with Voldemort, when more than half of the Slytherins at Hogwarts openly supported Harry, she’d discarded many of her past prejudices.

“Hermione? I thought you were-”

“Shut it!” She didn’t have time for explanations. “Get all the bodies, all of them, prepped for another autopsy. Now!”

“Yes ma’am.”

Hermione had an idea, and prayed that she was right, though she wasn’t entirely sure what to do with the information if her hunch was correct.

***

After apparating back to his apartment, Seamus was surprised to find the young witch he’d brought home from Conviviam -- a wizarding nightclub -- the night before still in his flat, seated cross-legged on his couch with a bucket of ice cream and the remote control.

“Hi Seamus,” she smiled at him warmly, and he was struck by just how sexy she looked wearing nothing but one of his oversized t-shirts. “are you doing okay?”

Knowing he’d just returned from burying one of his best friends, she gazed at him with concern, looking as cute as any girl he’d ever seen. “Not especially,” he admitted, looking away from her. “I have a lot going on right now, more than just Luna, even.”

Putting the ice cream down, the young girl, who’s name Seamus embarrassingly could not remember, motioned him over to sit next to her. Obliging, Seamus crashed into the couch next to her and let her run her small, smooth hands over his shoulders.

“I’ve got you baby,” she whispered, and Seamus found himself liking this girl more and more by the minute, despite how he felt at the moment. Slowly they turned so that he lay in her lap, back against her chest, while she massaged his shoulders. “talk to me, you can trust me.”

“I barely even know you.” Seamus said, resting back against her, unsure of whether he should open up to her.

She playfully nibbled on his earlobe, whispering, “I know you intimately, so why not let me get to know you emotionally?”

Despite all the women he’d had in his years of playing the field, he was still a sucker for seduction. And this young blonde was a master of it. Now he just needed to find some way of getting her to say her name so she wouldn’t realize he’d forgotten it.

He sighed. “What do you do, for a living?”

“Oh,” she said mischievously. “I’m going to be a seventh year at Hogwarts this fall.”

“WHAT!?” Seamus yelped, sitting up straight and spinning around to look the young witch in the face, horrified he’d slept with a woman more than seven or eight years his junior.

Laughing hysterically, she smacked him on the back playfully, grabbing his shoulders and wrenching him back to her. “I’m kidding!” Seamus let out a deep breath of relief. “I work in accounting at Gringott’s; I was a second year when you all defeated you-know-who.”

“Voldemort.”

To her credit, she didn’t shutter like many wizards and witches still did even though the menace of Voldemort had been vanquished. She simply nodded, her lips against his neck as she continued to rub his shoulders and occasionally work down his back.

“Then I’d assume you’ve never killed a person before.”

She paused a moment, her hands flinching on his ribs, but she quickly continued the massage, shaking her head, long blonde hair tickling his shoulders. By her posture, Seamus knew she was suddenly more serious than playful.

“Talk to me…” She whispered, lips next to his ears while she brought her hands across his chest, hugging him back into herself as she laid down with him in her arms.

“In the war with Voldemort,” he began, reminiscing. “I knew there would be deaths, I knew I’d either kill or be killed; but nothing really prepares you for that first kill. I still see his face from time to time, hear his voice, the fear in his eyes, the despair on his face as he realized he couldn’t be saved; its something you can’t understand without watching it happen yourself.”

“I won’t pretend to know what it’s like,” she whispered, sensing his obvious vulnerability. “but I can hold you and be a good listener.”

“Back then, it was them or us,” he went on, finding the words difficult to come by. “and in the time since, yeah, once and a while, there was a wizard who wouldn’t go quietly and I had to end a life. But I’m mainly a capture and interrogation guy; I’m not a dueler or a powerful spell user like Ron or Harry are.”

Seamus liked this girl more and more by the minute, as she said nothing but tightened her grip on his waist and waited for him to continue. So many girls talked in all the wrong times, this one knew when to be quiet.

“But now; six wizards have been killed in three days by my hand.” Only now did he begin choking on his words. “And there is nothing I can do -- I bound five of them together for questioning and they all hemorrhaged and died; two days later I tried to heal a wizard and it killed him.”

A single tear rolled downwards from his right eye, the young girl, so warm and soft beneath him, brushed it away.

“Of course we found out later in both cases that it was my spells that killed them. I killed six people this week; more than a dozen in my life. But these past few were different, it wasn’t me versus them, one of us lives and one of us dies…they were helpless. Even if I didn’t know it would happen…” his voice caught in his throat, and he could feel his body shivering slightly while his newfound friend did her best to hold and console him. “I still killed them…it’s just, it’s so hard. Harry, Ginny, and Ron, they’re brawlers, they can brush it off. Even Dean and Neville got over their kills easily enough…but I just can’t do that…it haunts me.”

Turning over, he gazed into the beauty’s eyes before laying his head down on her chest, allowing her to run her slender fingers through his hair and sooth his pain.

“You’re a hero to me, Seamus,” she whispered, rubbing her gentle fingertips over his temples. “you all are…you have no idea how much the rest of us look up to you…I owe you my life. Without you guys you-know…Voldemort would have killed all of us. No matter what you think of yourself, to me, to everyone in our world, you’re never going to be anything but a hero we all admire.”

Nodding, her words calming him even if only a little bit, Seamus snuggled his head in close to her, satisfied with the conversation, and realizing that between her undeniable beauty and kind demeanor she very well may be a keeper. As he pondered whether dropping his playboy persona for a girl he was surprised had even been in his apartment this morning, she picked up the ice cream again and began chipping away at it, feeding him every once and again with a sly smile on her face.

“Thanks for being here, for talking to me,” he told her, propping himself up on his elbows and smiling at her. “I guess I needed to relieve some stress.”

Smiling, she licked the last drops of ice cream off the spoon, then tapped him on the nose with it, giving him a wink.

He grinned.

***

“Athena you take those boots off before you start running through the house!”

Neville chuckled at his wife’s antics as their energetic two year-old zoomed around the house, tracking leaves and dirt behind her. Sarah groaned as she followed in her tracks, casting a cleaning spell to pick up the trail left by the young girl.

Distracted as he was from all that had happened the past few days, Neville missed a few of the tell-tale signs he would have caught on a normal day; the security wards were down, but he’d not noticed. A pillow or two in the living room was not in the position it had been before they’d left, but he didn’t notice. His wife and child became uncharacteristically quiet a few seconds after they’d run in the door, but he pushed that aside as nothing more than his wife catching and quieting their little sparkplug.

What he did notice, after walking into the kitchen, was the robed man sitting at his table. Young and polished, he held something in his right, gloved, hand that kept Neville from immediately pulling his wand.

“Have a seat, Mr. Longbottom.”

His voice was polite, non-commanding, not something Neville would have expected from a man holding what appeared to be some kind of detonator…a muggle device.

“What have you done with my family?” Neville demanded, still on foot, clearly stating he would not sit until he was assured of their safety. Years of auror training and experience helped him stay calm and swallow his heartbeat, so furious he could feel it in his throat.

“They’re fine; honestly, believe what you like, but we wish no harm on you or any of your friends.”

“I just came from a funeral with a father who would certainly refute that claim.” He responded, sitting down and placing his hands on the table. He was a great auror, probably capable of defeating this man in combat. But this wizard had chosen the location, the time, incapacitated his wife, and held a weapon he was not completely familiar with. His disadvantage was absolute.

“Sacrifice is a necessary evil.”

“So I’ve heard.” Neville snapped, sweat forming on his forehead, recalling that Hermione said the Caesar she’d spoken with said something similar. “So then why Luna? Why not one of the other thousands of witches or wizards out there?”

The Caesar smiled. “Come now, what grabs the attention of a populace more than the death of one of their most beloved?”

“Then again,” Neville fumed, the Caesar essentially confirming they had targeted the Gryffindor Eight specifically. “why Luna? Why not me? Or Harry? Ginny? Ron? What made Luna so damned deserving of death?”

“She was…expendable.”

Neville’s jaw quivered with anger. “Enlighten me.”

Infuriatingly, the Caesar smiled again. Had they no humanity? “It is all part of the plan; for your salvation.”

“What if we don’t feel the need for salvation? Things were going well before you all showed up.”

“Men far greater than you or me believe differently. And it is their opinions I cherish, not yours.”

“Then why are you here?”

He smiled again, pulling down the hood of his robe so that Neville might see more of his face. Nothing about him flickered even a hint of recognition. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“Go on.”

“I bring you a message, one you will not want to hear, but that you will have no choice but to act against.”

“You all seem to think your plans are infallible, that you have this planned to perfection.”

“No,” the man said, shaking his head. “there is one variable that we cannot predict; but that is not for you to know.”

Their discretion irked him to no end.

“Then give me your message and get out.”

Cocking his eyebrows at Neville’s rudeness, the Caesar continued. “Very well; but first, I do apologize; I never offered you my name.” He smiled. “It is Titus, Titus Caesar, as I’m sure you have surmised.”

“I don’t give a shit.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. My message is simple.”

Neville said nothing, choosing instead to glare at the man seated across from him.

“The Ministry elections will be postponed as none of the candidates are worthy of office.”

Neville bit his tongue for fear of agreeing with the madman; none of the men and women running for office of Minister of Magic were worthy, not by a long shot. Before this crisis with the Caesars, the corruption in the government had been the main source of public attention and intrigue. But he wouldn’t give the Caesars the pleasure of being right, so he simply nodded.

“Furthermore, the current system is inadequate and will be disbanded.” Neville snorted. “The current heads of the major ministry departments will be shepherded into a single senate that will rule by committee until a competent Minister can be appointed.”

“And if we say no?”

The matter-of-fact tone in which Titus responded lit a fury in Neville he’d scarcely felt before.

“Another of your friends will be killed.”

10. Compromises

Politicians were impossible enough to deal with without attempting to discuss the impossible with them.

“Preposterous!”

That was Diedrich Bruta, a Scottish wizard who governed a few wizarding provinces in his homeland.

“We cannot give in to the demands of terrorists!”

Sally Hatchet concurred, speaking from the back of the room. She was a cabinet member in the former minister’s regime, before he got sentenced to three months of Azkaban for allotting state funds to his own pockets.

All in all more than thirty political wizards and witches bickered and argued among themselves in the great hall of the Ministry’s Law Department, none of them willing to give in to the demands of the ‘mad men.’

Harry, Ron, Neville, Ginny, and Seamus were exasperated. Obligated to be present as the top aurors on the case, they’d laid out the demands Titus had provided Neville with two days earlier, and ever since had leaned back against the wall and listened to the arguments and conversations cementing the notion that the Caesars were right on at least one subject; the Ministry needed a change in leadership, and none in this room were worthy of the title Minister of Magic.

A compromise appeared an exercise in futility as well. None of the politicians were willing to give up their posts and allow ‘inexperienced’ heads of the Ministry’s departments to govern the people. Their argument was that they had no political savvy and were experts in only their own field. The Ministry heads, however, pointed out that no one was being asked to leave their posts but rather modify how they were operated, to which the politicians chided and claimed no one outside of politics could understand how the system was run.

Harry was exasperated at everything; it was obvious to everyone in the room that no agreement would ever be reached. And on top of that, why should an agreement be met as it was? Why should they give in to the Caesars’ demands? The threat of murdering one of Harry’s friends apparently wasn’t severe enough to force them into action.

It was then, in the middle of this explosion of conflicting ideals and arguments that a literal explosion suddenly rocked the conference room.

***

Shifting uncomfortably, Dean craned his neck for a better view of the pitch from the substitute’s bench, the hard steel always a literal pain in the ass. It was late in the first half and they were already trailing Chelsea 3-0. The gaffer was furious and Dean figured he’d probably get some playing time as Carlton had been utter rubbish up top, unable to create anything for himself all game long.

The weather was warm and the crowd boisterous, but the atmosphere on West Ham’s bench was palpable.

“Thomas!” Zola spat at him, as Carlton clumsily kicked a long ball out of bounds with a poor first touch. “Start warming up; you’re going in at half for Cole.”

Doing as he was told Dean hopped to his feet and began going through his paces, loosening his muscles up and gazing towards the visitors section where most of the group was supposed to be sitting.

To his disappointment, only Hermione was seated among the visiting supporters, apparently taking a break from the discovery she’d supposedly made back at the lab regarding the Caesars, and she waved warmly at him. He knew the rest were stuck in a meeting discussing the threat of the Caesars back at Ministry Headquarters, but was hoping they’d be able to come before the end of the game. Plus, Seamus apparently had some new girl he wanted everyone to meet, and since they had an extra ticket due to Luna’s untimely death, she was going to come to the game if they could get away.

Before too long the whistle for half-time came and Dean headed into the locker room, giving Hermione a small wave on the way, ready to come out and do his best to make something happen in the second half, and mentally prepared himself for the tongue lashing Zola was sure to heap on them in the dressing room.

On the opposite side of the stadium, a distinguished-looking man kept his eyes on Dean until he disappeared into the tunnel.

***

“My name is Vespasian.”

A dark cloud swirled above the conference room in the midst of the explosion, which Harry and the other aurors had quickly been relieved to realize was only a sound, and this cloud the only evidence of something being amiss.

Giggs barked orders from the second the explosion took place and Harry was now stationed alongside Neville by one of the two exits, keeping a keen eye for a flicking wrist or muttering lips, anything that would give away the perpetrator of whatever this plot may be.

In the cloud above them was the head of a hooded man, claiming to be this Vespasian, most certainly a Caesar. He’d never seen magic like it before, although it bore some resemblance to Voldemort’s dark mark. But instead of a symbol, it was a projection, capable of speech.

“Obviously, if we wished it, you would all be dead.”

The uproar and insanity following the apparitions appearance vanished, becoming an eerie silence as they all realized he was correct. If they could create an apparition in this conference room they certainly could have cast a powerful, destructive spell instead. How were they doing this?

“And that is exactly the fate awaiting all of you if you do not heed our simple demands. Disband your government. Adopt a temporary senate. You will know when the time is right for your new leader to be chosen. That is all. Should your senate not be in practice by the end of the week, we will destroy one of your Ministry Departments every other day until you have nothing left to govern. Good bye.”

The cloud dissipated and the hooded man’s form disappeared, leaving the room in chaos once again. There seemed to be two distinct groups; one who believed the Caesars could not possibly carry out their threats and one who knew they were capable of everything they claimed and more.

What nobody knew, however, was how they managed to infiltrate the Ministry and create an image with a message for them all to hear.

“Stupefy!”

Whipping his head around, Harry had just enough time to see a middle-aged man fall under the stunning spell, which Harry had recognized immediately as having come from Ron. Sprinting to the center of the room, Harry was astonished to see Ron already tracing the past few spells from the wizard’s wand, the final incantation being the dark cloud that filled up the ceiling of the conference room. From there, by the time Harry had kneeled by his side, Ron was already rummaging through the man’s robe pockets and pulled out a small device he’d never seen before.

Ron pulled his head up and looked across at the rest of them. “It’s a mini-projector; a sophisticated muggle device. I’d assume it’s a recording and everything we just watched was a tape. The cloud was just for effect and to give the projector something to display the image on; I saw him sliding it back into his pocket after the message ended and I wasn’t taking any chances.”

Everyone knowing his father was the wizarding world’s authority on muggle society and technology, they took his words as absolute fact. Giggs and Shacklebolt nodded, and Harry cocked his head with a wry smile at his best friend of nearly fifteen years; the clumsy red-head from Hogwarts was dead and gone, Ron Weasley was a fantastic auror.

“Bind him and get him into interrogation; I want to know everything we can about him and how he got into this room.”

***

“As the footballers trot out onto the field for the second half we are being informed of only one change from the sides that entered the dressing rooms at half time, and that is the young striker Dean Thomas on for the dreadfully useless Carlton Cole. Cole really showed nothing today did he Andy?”

“Not at all; as you said Derek a truly dreadful performance from West Ham’s number one striker but now the up-and-comer is going to get a run out against some of the league’s best; this of course will be the young man’s first game since losing one of his closest friends in a terrible accident earlier this week.”

“Yes, details are scarce but our thoughts and prayers are with the family of the unnamed young woman who lost her life so tragically in what has been reported to be an accident in a scientific laboratory.”

As he stepped onto the field Dean brushed the touchline with his fingers before kissing them and pointing to the air in honor of his fallen friend. If he scored at all today, it would be for her.

Ten minutes past half-time however, he’d seen very little of the ball, Chelsea having the defense pinned back for much of the second half. Dean had so far spent his time mindlessly drifting back and forth between the final two defenders, cutting off passing lanes and tracking down the occasional long ball past midfield.

“And a relatively dire start to the second period for this young Hammers side, they really have been able to grab no momentum whatsoever, pinned on their back foot. It would seem Gianfranco Zola will need to make another substitution or two early on here, as Thomas has been largely invisible, unable to get any service of the ball.”

“And even more trouble now for the Hammers as they must drop back to defend yet another Chelsea corner, the football fumbled over the line by Robert Green…he really should have held on to that one.”

Tracking back, Dean came to the near corner of the penalty box, about a hands width of separation between him and Michael Ballack, his mark on the play. Suddenly the German captain sprinted towards the corner flag and Dean had to dash after him.

“And they’re playing it short to Ballack with Thomas close on his heels.”

Realizing that Lampard, the man taking the corner, had underestimated his speed, Dean accelerated towards the ball and cut in front of Ballack, shouldering him off the ball and intercepting the pass. His momentum was taking him straight towards Lampard however, and knowing the man’s tendency for leaving his feet Dean swiftly tucked the ball back under his left leg by sweeping it with his right, avoiding the tackle altogether and opening up space down the sideline.

“And it’s Thomas with the interception and an incredible display of individual skill to elude Lampard and the young striker breaks into space!”

Eyes scanning the pitch around him, Dean realized he was going to be on his own as the whole team had been pulled into the penalty area, he figured he had at most three men to beat before the keeper.

“Carvalho closes down on him and the youngster manages to shake the tackle and push it by the veteran defender! Oh this is truly a magnificent run from the young striker!”

Taking long strides and pushing the ball far out in front of him, Dean crossed the halfway line at a pace he knew none behind him could match. The central midfielder Alex had taken a bad angle and was going to be unable to close him down, which left only John Terry to beat down the center of the park. Closing in, praying that Luna would help him with this one, Dean pushed the ball towards the right flank with the outside of his right boot, before flapping his laces around the other side of the ball and pushing it back the opposite way. Terry bit hard on the initial maneuver and Dean was in on goal.

“It is a tremendous display of skill from the youngster! Oh my the elastico works to great effect he has only the keeper to beat…”

Having watched an hour or so of tape on Petr Cech, the Chelsea goalkeeper, the night before, Dean knew exactly how far he could get in before he committed and…boom just as he expected the keeper went to ground just as Dean pulled his leg back, allowing him to deftly chip the football over the keeper and watched it roll beautifully into the back of the net.

“Oh my! It’s a mesmerizing strike from the young Dean Thomas! That could be the goal of the year in the Premiership! One cannot underscore how brilliant that goal was! What an effort by West Ham’s rising star!”

Screaming like he never had before, Dean tore off towards the visitors section, pointing at Hermione in the stands, who was jumping, clapping, and screaming with the rest of the West Ham faithful. Dropping to his knees and sliding to the endline, he ripped off his jersey to reveal the undershirt below.

Luna Lovegood (1987-2009) Gone But Never Forgotten

And under the caption was a symbol that none in the stands sans Hermione would recognize, a shield depicting a single raven perched on a branch, the lettering Ravenclaw underneath; Luna’s alma-mater at Hogwarts. He might get a sanction from the Ministry of Magic for that stunt but he didn’t care, as he was mobbed by his teammates in the corner, he saw Hermione crying and smiling in the stands. That’s why he loved this game, for at least one moment, he was able to honor his friend and bring a smile to faces that had known nothing but depression for a week.

Across the stands, the distinguished man, always having a keen eye trained on Dean in particular, smiled. The boy had no idea what the future would hold for him.

***

Mildly agitated but refusing to show it, Harry stood guard just outside the interrogation room while Kingsley, Kris Giggs, and Ron interrogated the captured wizard inside. He knew his demotion was going to be rough to take some times, but he never expected it to be like this.

He’d never been left out of something as important as this before. The other auror stationed outside the door was a bloody rookie less than two years out of Hogwarts who’d gotten an Average on his NEWT Defense Against the Dark Arts test. The man who’d ended Lord Voldemort’s life had been relegated to standing guard next to run-of-the-mill aurors. Infuriating.

The obviously inept guard jumped when a small beeping sound came from Harry’s pocket. Harry rolled his eyes and pulled out the cell phone, checking his text messages. It was from Hermione.

Dean just scored!!! It was brilliant! Wish you were here I have so much to tell you about the autopsies!!! xoxo

Harry smiled; Way to go Thomas! Harry knew that goal would raise his stock quite a bit having been against one of the big clubs like Chelsea. He was snapped from his thoughts as the interrogation door swung open and both Giggs and Ron came tearing out of it.

Storming down the hall, Kris began yelling orders while Ron grabbed Harry by the robes and pulled him towards the exit.

“We have to get to Gringott’s -- now!”