Chapter 330: Price Of Failure

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Dobby wrapped his fingers around Voldemort's girthy. . . .

A man appeared out of nowhere on a moonlit lane. For a second, he stood still, his eyes roaming around the area; he stowed his wand beneath his cloak and strolled down the lane bordered on the left by wild, low-growing prickly shrubs, on the right by a high, neatly manicured hedge.

The man's long cloak around his ankle as he turned right into a wide driveway that led off the lane. The high hedge curved with them, running off into the distance beyond the pair of impressive wrought-iron gates barring the man's way. His steps didn't break: in silence, he raised his hand in a kind of salute and passed straight through, as though the dark metal were smoke.

The yew hedges muffled the sound of the man's footsteps. There was a rustle somewhere to their right: he drew his wand again, pointing it towards the source, but it proved to be nothing more than a pure-white peacock, strutting majestically along the top of the hedge.

The man thrust his wand back into his cloak, breathing out a breath as he shook his head at the presence of the peacock.

A handsome manor house grew out of the darkness at the end of the straight drive, lights glinting in the diamond-paned downstairs windows. Somewhere in the dark garden beyond the hedge, a fountain was playing. Gravel crackled beneath his feet as he sped toward the front door, which swung inward at their approach, though nobody had visibly opened it.

The hallway was large, dimly lit, and sumptuously decorated, with a magnificent carpet covering most of the stone floor. The eyes of the pale-faced portraits on the walls followed the man as he strode past. He halted at a heavy wooden door leading into the next room, hesitated for the space of a heartbeat, then turned the bronze handle.

The drawing-room was full of silent people, sitting at a long and ornate table. The room's usual furniture had been pushed carelessly up against the walls. Illumination came from a roaring fire beneath a handsome marble mantelpiece surmounted by a gilded mirror. The man lingered for a moment on the threshold.

As his eyes grew accustomed to the lack of light, he was drawn upward to the strangest feature of the scene: a person sitting near the head of the table with his arm outstretched on the table with a Dark Mark eerily glowing in a dark sludge green— the arm trembled constantly along with the rest of the person whom the arm belonged to. None of the people seated were looking at the trembling person.

"Lock," said a high, clear voice from the head of the table. "You are very nearly late."

The speaker was seated directly in front of the fireplace so that it was difficult, at first, for the new arrivals to make out more than his silhouette. As Rivers Lock drew nearer, however, the figure's face shone through the gloom, hairless, snakelike, with slits for nostrils and gleaming red eyes whose pupils were vertical. He was so pale that he seemed to emit a pearly glow.

"Beside Dolohov," said Voldemort, pointing to a place near the middle of the table's length.

Rivers took his allotted space. Most of the eyes around the table

followed him, and it was the second he took the seat that Voldemort spoke.

"So?"

"My Lord, all of our captured troops are being moved to Azkaban from St Mungos tomorrow, at nightfall."

The interest around the table sharpened palpably: Some stiffened, others fidgetted, all gazing at Rivers and Voldemort.

"Tomorrow. . . nightfall," repeated Voldemort. His red eyes fastened upon

River's dead-black ones with such intensity that some of the watchers looked away, apparently fearful that they themselves would be scorched by the ferocity of the gaze. Rivers, however, looked placidly back into Voldemort's face, not daring to move it away; after a moment or two, Voldemort's lipless mouth curved into something like a smile.

"Good. And this source of information comes—"

"— from my Novellus Accionite source in Rufus Scrimgeour's camp," said Rivers.

"Bartemius," called Voldemort to the pale young man with straw-colored hair and freckles, sitting closer to Voldemort in the upper half of the long table. "You will take some our own and free the unjustly captives from the Auror entourage— I expect that you won't fail me. . ." His red eyes glanced at the platinum-blonde-haired man who still trembled without stopping as the Dark Mark continued to glow.

Rivers' eyes turned from Voldemort to Bartemius "Barty" Crouch Junior. Rivers knew the man to be Voldemort's most rabid follower— his devotion only matched if not surpassed by the crazy witch Bellatrix Lestrange. Barty had been sent to Azkaban after his untimely reveal at Hogwarts and had been busted out by Voldemort at the same time as Rivers had been. Rivers could recall the moans and grunts of Barty that went for nearly a year before finally going silent as the Dementors had feasted on the new, fresh meal.

"Yes, My Lord," Barty bowed his chair. "I will shoot the Aurors from the ground, straight into their unmarked burial grounds, and bring your servants back home."

"See that you do."

As Barty smiled deeply in delight, Rivers turned back to Voldemort. "My Lord, I have heard another piece of information, something that DMLE and even the Minister's camp buried away from reaching the papers."

Rivers waited, but Voldemort did not speak, so he went on, "The papers wrote events of the night as the Dumbledore, his band of professors, and the Aurors," from Order of Phoenix, "responding quickly to the infiltration and containing our team— with only Severus Snape being the sole casualty—"

"Get to the point, Rivers," said Voldemort with a tinge of irritation in his eyes before he went back to the trembling man. River's following words made Voldemort look back at him.

"Dumbledore, the Hogwarts Professors, or the Aurors, it was none of among them that put a stopper to our plans," he paused, "it was the Invisible Vigilante."

If there weren't any pair of eyes on Rivers before, now he had warranted the attention of the entire room.

"I met another contact— from St Mungos— they told me that the team was being treated in an isolated ward with Aurors guarding it around the clock, which is not unusual, but only a small portion of the staff knows what's happening inside that ward— all the records are sealed. My contact is one of the people who attend to them. I was told that the Death Eaters in the ward had their arms disabled with the same magic that was used on the day of the Quidditch Finals. . . ."

A discussion broke out in the room. The Invisible Vigilante being the reason for their efforts to get rid of Dumbledore, didn't fare with the Death Eaters leaders present in the room.

Voldemort held up a large white hand, and the talks subsided at once, all eyes returning to him. He stayed with his eyes staring slanting down and one boney thumb tracing a circle on the table.

"Does the Invisible Vigilante have any connection with Dumbledore and his Order of Phoenix?"

"It doesn't seem so," said Rivers. "There isn't a single indication that the Invisible Vigilante is someone from the Order of Phoenix or that he's someone from outside who works with them. His scarce and unannounced appearance makes it hard for anyone to get a trace of his identity."

"Anyone else?"

"DMLE and the Ministry also don't know about his identity," said Nott Sr in contribution. "Auror Dawlish is a part of the task force created by Amelia Bones in her last days as the Head of DMLE with the aim to find the Invisible Vigilante. The efforts to find any clue, but their efforts have turned no fruit, even with the Minister assigning additional resource in hopes of finding him."

The yellow flame of the fireplace behind Voldemort turned blue, roaring up in size and fury. The Death Eaters held their breath, not willing to attract even a fleeting moment of attention to themselves.

"My Lord," all eyes turn to Peter Pettigrew, who sat well into the upper half of the table. "If it is true, then I suggest that we don't attack the Auror transport to free the failures. Their identities are ruined, and now they can't even wield magic, making them as useless as a squib, if not less."

Rivers didn't know if Peter Pettigrew had balls of steel or he was just plain stupid. When he glanced around, he knew he wasn't the only one with those thoughts; all had their heads dipped or averted. Everyone in the room knew that Voldemort had broken out those affected during the Quidditch Finals from Azkaban. Not because they were his Death Eaters, but because Voldemort wanted to find a cure or counter-curse to the Invisible Vigilante's magic. But till this date, Voldemort hadn't made any progress with half of those people dead or as good as dead because of the experimentation.

Pettigrew continued, "I'm sure Dumbledore and the Ministry are rearing to go on a tour; if we stay away and let the transfer to Azkaban as they planned, and nudge the papers in the right direction, we would be able to derail their efforts."

While Rivers had no intention to speak his thoughts, he couldn't help but agree with Pettigrew's reasoning. There was no benefit in rescuing people who had no use.

Rivers sighed internally. He could feel the glare from Barty. It wasn't his idea to pour water over his 'big' moment.

"No. . . the rescue will still happen," said Voldemort, making some in the room think that he won't abandon them if they ever got into trouble. But then Voldemort said, "I want to see how the Invisible Vigilante's curse reacted with Greyback's Lycanthropy. I don't care what happens to the others; I want Greyback in the basement the morning of the day after."

And that made River's worst dream come true. Among the things that Rivers wanted to avoid, coming across Invisible Vigilante was the last thing he wanted to happen. He would not only lose his magic and have one or two of his limbs removed but also would be hunted by the Dark Lord with the terrible fate of turning into a lab rat (it was only time when Voldemort ran out the people to kill.)

The company around the table watched Voldemort apprehensively, each of them, by their expression, having the same thought as Rivers. Voldemort, however, seemed to be speaking more to himself than to any of them.

"I have been careless and so have been thwarted by luck and chance, those wreckers of all but the best-laid plans. But I know better now. I understand those things that I did not understand before. I must take the matters into my own hand. There have been too many mistakes where Harry Potter is concerned. Some of them have been my own. That Potter and even Dumbledore lives is due more to my errors than to his triumphs."

At these words, seemingly in response to them, a sudden wail sounded, a terrible, drawn-out cry of misery and pain. Many of those at the table looked to Voldemort, startled, for the sound had issued from the man who had been trembling. . . the man who owned the house they sat in.

"Lucius," said Voldemort, with no change in his quiet, thoughtful tone, "first, you made the egregious error in my absence, and now your family has betrayed the cause by running away with the Dumbledore's bird club. Am I right to punish you for their wrongs, Lucius?"

"Y-Yes, m-my Lord," gasped the man who would die rather than be seen in anything less than perfect in appearance, but the same man had seemingly lost all of his dignity and polish.

"Dumbledore is alive, and that complicates the matter more than before," continued Voldemort; he watched his wand twirling in his fingers. "I thought with Dumbledore gone, I would be able to get my hands on Garrick Ollivander, but that doesn't seem to happen anytime soon. . . I still don't know why my magic doesn't work against Potter— though I do think that it is because of my wand.

For that reason, I shall need to borrow a wand from one of you."

The faces around him displayed nothing but shock; he might have announced that he wanted to borrow one of their arms. Asking a wizard to hand over their wand? From all the things one could ask for, it was one of the last things one should ask for from a wizard.

"No volunteers?" said Voldemort. "Let's see. . . Lucius, I see no reason for you to have a wand anymore."

Lucius Malfoy looked up. His skin appeared yellowish and waxy in the firelight, and his eyes were sunken and shadowed. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse.

"M-M-My Lord-d?"

"Your wand, Lucius. I require your wand."

"I-I. . . . "

"It was because of your son that Yaxley, Carrows, and the others lost their arms to the Invisible Vigilante. . . so it is only natural that the father must pay for his son's sins."

Voldemort waved his wand, and like a guillotine during the french renaissance dropping on heads, a wide silver blade dropped on Lucius' marked hand, cutting clean through the bone and the Dark Mark.

Everyone in the room averted their eyes as the scream pierced through the room.

Even Pettigrew drew in a breath and felt a phantom pain prick through his silver hand.

"There," said Voldemort, "you won't be needing your wand anymore. Now give me your wand as I asked you to do."

Malfoy, who had grabbed his hand with his other hand, painfully removed it, put his hand into his robes, withdrew a wand, and passed it along to Voldemort, who held it up in front of his red eyes, examining it closely.

"What is it?"

"E-Elm!"

"And the core?"

"Dr-rag— Har. . . ring. . . ."

"Dragon Heartstring, good," said Voldemort. He drew out his own wand and compared the lengths. Finally, he waved Lucius' wand and waved it at Lucius' stump, and a fire erupted around the wound, searing the flesh and cauterizing it shut.

"There, Lucius, a thank you for lending me your wand. Are you grateful?"

"Y-Y. . .Yes, mY LoRd!" said Lucius through tears.

"As you should be, Lucius, as you should be. . . it very well could have been green rather than silver."

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Voldemort - Dark Lord - A kind and compassionate lord.

Rivers Lock - Death Eater - Has assumed somewhat of a Spymaster position.

Peter Pettigrew - Wormtail - Didn't get a hand buddy,

Lucius Malfoy - Death Eater - And what did that get him?

FictionOnlyReader - Author - It might be late, but that was my contribution to April 1.

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The link is in the synopsis!