章 50: C050 - Quidditch World Cup Finals

[POV of Talion Macnair, like god intended]

I needed to enlarge the table in my home to fit all the items I prepared to take with me today. I already wore a white hoodie from the brotherhood and one of the turtlenecks under it to hide the bottom half of my face after pulling it up that I will transfigure into regular wizarding robes before taking the portkey to the stadium for the Quidditch finals.

On the left side of the table, I counted twenty-one blackout stones that I will need for the attack. Next to it was a small bag with candy from Zonko's Joke shop that would color my hair elderly grey and give my face wrinkles. I'd bet good money that those sweets were never used for what I intended to do tonight.

Then, I had two cameras, one of them being a backup, that worked in magically saturated environments but didn't do moving pictures longer than a single second. A real cheap knock-off from the real magical cameras. It was all I needed for what I planned. I wanted to sow some chaos.

That was sadly it for consumables, but next to those items were my weapons, and they were by now countless. My unicorn-rosewood-goblinsilver wand laid freshly polished next to my kelpie-birch wand I got in the Room of Lost Things. Next to both were their holsters, one for my wrist, the other for my thigh. The thigh-holster came with an additional quick-release knife-quiver I bought in Italy. For that 'quiver', I had a total of fifteen throwing knives that were sharpened to a level that they easily beat even the scalpels in the best equipped surgical suites.

One old wristguard with a hidden blade and a one-shot pistol on top that I got from Sir Frye. The blade was freshly polished and sharpened with magic, the pistol loaded and could be triggered by pulling the ring at one end of the barrel.

One bracelet with the modern wristblade I got from the brotherhood that I modified personally with the small smithy I had my elf prepare at the back of the shack. Thanks to magic and permanent transfiguration, also known as transmutation, whatever I did in that forge turned out to be esthetically pleasing. I was sure I'd still learn countless things to make the end result better eventually, but I also lived through dreams of Heimdall, an alleged god, crafting things. I knew my work was solid after weeks of fiddling around.

I did have a whole host of old blades fished out of the ocean by merfolk and sold to me by the hag to practice with first. I even encountered some very rare metals under thick layers of rust and barnacles, including a broken blade made of what I later identified as orichalcum. My modified wristblade had a coating of orichalcum that was by far the most challenging addition in my crafting endeavors.

But it also made the blade potentially able to cut through dragon scales and armor made out of it if the book on magical materials didn't exaggerate. So the effort I put into it and the money I spent was well worth it.

And weirdly, the orichalcum blade, which I bought from the hag because it had a golden outline in my magical vision even before I freed it from century old crust and sediment, wasn't even the craziest things I, or rather Patrick, bought from Hag Lucillia in Leeds.

I found an item Heimdall and Tyr created in my dreams. A discarded, failed creation that eventually led Odin to have a dwarf craft the desired item for him. I remembered that dream well and even somehow knew that the item in question was 'Gleipnir', an item able to bind Loki's son, the invincible Fenrir destined to be a cornerstone in the fate of Ragnarok... according to Lara, who is much more knowledgeable about mythology than me.

Of course, what I found wasn't Gleipnir itself. It was 'merely' a rope that the hag and merfolk were curious about and figured was worth some money because it was incredibly tough. They thought it to be a mere fishing line with heightened durability that some fishers in the north created for one reason or another. And maybe that was all it could really do for others.

But the moment I touched the rope, I knew what I held and how to activate it. Heimdall and Tyr thought that if durability wasn't a feasible option, they could hold the wolf in place through pain. The more the wolf thrashed against his bindings, had Odin used this item, the more the rope would cut into him. Eventually, Fenrir would have been so thoroughly weakened by pain and blood loss that he would have had no power to fight back.

Odin, of course, realised that it would never work for long enough or even just fast enough, so the item was discarded. That it somehow made its way to me was an absolute ridiculous circumstance, but a happy one, in my opinion. Because I knew how to make this rope cut.

I trained how to throw this rope efficiently for my purposes for weeks and even had Patrick buy a whip so that I could practice whip movements with it without destroying my immediate surroundings and I reached a decent level of efficiency with the item.

For anybody I couldn't reach in the smoke if the attack happened, I knew I could harvest a few limbs, at least. Since they could be reattached magically, I even dabbled in herbology a little and milked a particularly ghastly and dangerous plant to gain its juice, which would eat the flesh on a cut rapidly.

With wands, blades, knives, 'magical Norse Pantheon rope', and my stones, candies, and potions ready, I looked at the last item on the table that I would take with me to the finals.

A basilisk scale glove.

I'd need to mind my disguise to make sure Isobel, her family, and I wouldn't face any backlash for what would happen later. When I learned two days after my birthday that Isobel's father was furious because the girl had more or less stolen the item from the family vault to gift to me, I was about to give it back. But Lord MacDougal looked offended before I even opened my mouth. Saying things along the lines that he would never make a boy return something given with care. And his 'brat' was the heiress and entitled to her choices. He still cursed under his breath that it was a stupid choice when the dinner ended and the MacDougal's left the restaurant they talked at for hours. Isobel had a nice family.

I was sure that I wouldn't want to go into a fight against dozens of enemies without the glove, now that I had it.

"Are you ready, Patrick?"

My elf popped into view next to me dressed in a casual but well-kempt outfit. He still looked ghastly with his vicious smirk and scars, but since he made me a literal millionaire, I would never allow him to run around in rags. Plus, I didn't want to take Isobel or anybody else with me for the second ticket I received from the ministry since I planned to go hunting. So my second ticket went to my loyal elf.

"Patrick is ready. This is Patrick's first time traveling by portykey."

I wore the hidden blades, donned the holsters and filled them, packed all my other belongings I prepared, and then transfigured my outfit. Pocketing my second wand so that everything was in order, I looked at my elf.

"You'll bring the food and drinks? I want you to enjoy yourself before you kill some bastards with me tonight," I asked since I knew Patrick had his own extended pouch - a luxury I gladly allowed him for all he did for me.

"Patrick will enjoy himself twice tonight," my elf confirmed with a stupid smile that slowly started showing more and more teeth.

The old elf had been mistreated and even tortured by my grandfather for years, and all of Walden Macnair's friends didn't treat their own elves any better, I'd bet. Well, if they had any. It seemed my express permission to go for my enemies made him the happiest elf on earth.

He even had his own piece of barbed wire that he used to tie around the necks of some of the criminals he went after when he 'cleaned up' the muggle world. It was absolutely revolting, technically, but since he strictly adhered to my code of who to go after, I was honestly fine with it. However, nobody was allowed to connect what happened tonight back to us in any way, so I gave Patrick my own prototype of the rope Heimdall and Tyr created so that nobody would know the deaths tonight had anything to do with the countless muggle criminals that died since last year.

My creation greatly lacked in durability, but its cutting power was okay enough to tear through human muscle with barely any effort, and it was quite long. Even if Patrick broke it, he would just have two wires instead of one.

I confirmed everything was in order and walked outside with my elf. We held the ministry portkey together, a broken fireplace poker, and uttered the activation code.

One stomach-churning spatial travel later, Patrick and I found ourselves in a clearing overlooking a giant tent village with an even more disproportionally large stadium in the back on the scale of the Colloseum I saw in Italy.

I decided then and there that I would learn to apparate this year and work on the spell until the side effects disappear. Usually, it was only allowed for O.W.L. students and above in this world, but emancipated youths were excluded from that law.

The two of us quickly made our way out of the designated arrival spot so that nobody would land on our heads or splinched into us, and then we leisurely started walking around together. Many people looked at me weirdly because I was so openly walking around with my well-dressed elf, but even more people recognized me and enthusiastically greeted me.

Plus, this day was a gift to Patrick, and I didn't care much. I wanted him to enjoy himself, so if he wanted to disappear if he hated the attention, he could do so - but he didn't.

Using my Eagle Vision came to its limit for the first time since there were simply way too many people, all of them magicals, around me. I squinted a lot because of it, and people probably thought I was weird, and some recommended me eye drop potions for whatever they thought ailed me. But I also didn't want to stop using the Eagle Vision and risk getting ambushed, so I endured. I just hoped I would quickly get used to the sensory overload before the attack happened.

Walking around the stalls, buying my elf and I some snacks, we walked into a bunch of acquaintances. My Ravenclaw Quidditch teammates came together minus Roger Davies and Harry, but plus two of our benched reserve players. Both beaters secretly held hands to confirm for me once and for all that they were indeed together, not that I judged or cared.

Hilliard also brought his ever-silent brother, the prefect, and apparently the freshly graduated keeper did get his dream job at the Daily Prophet and was given a booth to watch and report on the game with some room to spare, which was where the team and the keeper's brother came into play.

We had a little banter to see if anybody would play half-chaser-half-beater like I did during the first year of Hogwarts, which happened during the World Cup occasionally to little success, and Hilliard was even able to coin the bicycle kick that was repeated by some professional players in an article. It was now forever called the 'Macnair Aerial' or, if you were 'too chicken' to let go of the broom like I did so that you had to catch it after losing upwards momentum, it was just a 'Macnair Move'.

I didn't have much going for me with enemies in every corner and no friends in the DMLE, but at least my name would live on in Quidditch. They officially named a move after me. How endearing.

After wishing them fun with the match, I slowly made my way to the booth I would be sitting in. On my way, I saw plenty auror patrols, including even Tonks and Moody walking and limping together. I also saw Auror Perkins together with another auror. Both of them were red in my vision. I gave Patrick some signals so that he would know who he could kill if he had time and opportunity later.

I even saw plenty of my fellow yearmates, but they hovered around Harry and Neville, so I dodged the group and walked around them. No need to humiliate myself or them on such a fine day that promised to be so much... fun.

"Ve were told ve vould be 'atching together-"

"I raised you bilingual. Drop the non-sensical accent, dear," an impeccably dressed man with the pointiest, yet coolest-looking mustache I had ever seen chided his... daughter? as he flicked her forehead when I entered the booth my tickets pointed to.

"Hello, Talion Macnair. I was told I'd be sharing the booth with another tournament winner and their family?" I asked as I stretched out my hand toward the blonde frenchman. His accent was faint, but after the girl next to him spoke, it came as no surprise that I knew who he was and who his two blonde and beautiful daughters were.

"I know who you are. My daughter might not have watched, too busy with her own reflection and preparations for her own bracket, but I saw you cut through your competition like a hot knife through butter. Very impressive, young man. Monsieur Pierre Delacour. My lovely daughters Fleur and Gabrielle."

I gave both girls - one looking to be in her early twenties and the other like a teenager around fourteen years old - a small bow, and looked around the room. It was just going to be the five of us if Patrick counted. How intimate.

But I wondered, I would actually watch this competition in the presence of two veela and a French dignitary? Ugh, even a gift is an obligation with these ministry bootlickers, but at least Fleur was just as stupidly pretty as I hoped she would be after remembering canon. Thankfully, I was also apparently immune to her veela allure with my occlumency, or both girls had a better handle on it than the story implied and I wasn't yet made to experience the full brunt of it. Because I just chatted with their dad instead of drooling over the two.

Fleur was apparently pouting that her father praised me and gently chided her in turn and quickly took her sister to the side where the two girls began chatting incessantly. I, in turn, started talking with Pierre, who was an avid fan of dueling. Though his daughter, too, showed impressive skill winning the 18-21 bracket as an 18 year old, my feat of beating everyone in the younger bracket at 14 was a level above that, according to him. And Pierre was of the same opinion as I, I would have crushed the bracket that Fleur competed in, his daughter included. She mostly won by virtue of every boy grinning at her like a lost kitten in love with a bowl of milk at the start of a match.

Flitwick would have slapped me back to Britain if I had behaved like that.

Patrick remained quiet as he just watched around curiously from the little throne I transfigured for him as we all enjoyed the snacks I had prepared with Patrick earlier.

Ignoring the veela cheerleader, which got a reaction out of all three Delacours - I learned that the wife and mother Apolline was back at home with no love for Quidditch - as they regarded me in various degrees of looking impressed by it, and also ignoring the fool's gold from the leprachauns, the match between Ireland and Bulgaria started just as it had in canon.

Of course, we didn't get the chance to miss getting a speech by Minister Fudge, and when his unsightly face appeared on a giant projection, I keenly noticed Harry and Sirius in the same booth with him - as well as Lucius Malfoy and his family.

Since I already saw Fleur, I wasn't too surprised that I also saw Viktor Krum. He did play seeker for Bulgaria, despite barely being 'just' a fourth year student at Durmstrang.

The game was won by Ireland in the end, though it wasn't a close match like it happened originally. Krum caught the snitch so that they could get stopped getting humiliated with an ending score of 390 to 230 for Ireland. But I didn't care to find out why that was because I was still talking with Pierre Delacour about all kinds of things. I really found a kindred spirit in the man.

We went from dueling to law to establishing oneself despite having an unfavorable upbringing, all the way to how to fight back without being seen as an aggressor. Pierre was an absolute genius of what it meant to be passive-aggressive and petty.

I understood that whatever I did to Draco last school year wasn't enough. It was okay that I humiliated him publically and stopped when everyone had already formed an opinion in the Great Hall. But I completely missed churning the rumor mill of the school after these interactions. I accused Malfoy of kissing his two overfed shadows on one occasion to point out how ridiculous an accusation made by him was. But I could have spread rumors afterward so that my joke would eventually settle as 'truth'.

I fought back when nobody looked and helped others from getting bullied by senior students throughout the year, but I could have escalated things by playing the ignorant muggle-raised boy and poked out a few eyes with my wand in a confrontation. Or just kicked them in the nuts really, really hard.

I should have also pointed out the hypocrisy and uselessness of my professors much more openly once I established myself as a 'good boy', according to Pierre. Something I will do next year. I tried to hide myself from Dumbledore so much that I barely interacted with Flitwick and Sprout during my extracurriculars and none of the other professors - it was time to make more connections and have my enemies punished through them.

I was a genius dueling prodigy with outstanding grades and an unofficial record for most house points as a first year, after all. They would now have to listen to me.

The younger Delacour sister was looking at me with rosy cheeks starting around the half-time of the Quidditch match, but Fleur was much more composed. All-in-all, however, I left quite the favorable expression on all three Delacours when they excused themselves and retired from the box to join the festivities outside. Pierre was in the box for the 'underage dueling champions' to accompany his daughter, but he was also here as an official of the French government and he still needed to at least show his face, no matter how much more he wanted to stay and chat with me.

I couldn't give anything away about what was to come, so I merely wished them to stay safe for the night and their travel home. Once they were outside the booth, Patrick and I checked for people watching, turned up with nothing, so I un-transfigured my clothing, dyed the white hoodie a dark grey for good measure to blend better into the night and got ready for the attacks.

Swallowing two pieces of candy to dye my hair and get wrinkles, I pulled the turtleneck up to my nose until it covered the long horizontal scar and disappeared into the celebrating crowd outside the stadium.

Inconspicuously walking from shadow to shadow, marking everybody red and orange in my vision together with their relative position and sharing what I learned with Patrick, I stalked around the tent village for a good hour until I saw a group of people I knew.

Sirius Black and Arthur Weasley were drinking in front of a tent, watching the children 'argue'. Harry and Ron were talking heatedly about who was a better seeker while Lisa behind Harry just disdainfully mocked every opinion of Ron's, and Ginny, Ron's little sister, mocked everything Lisa said in return.

I eventually saw Neville, most of Ron's brothers and a bunch of girls come out of the tent, too, and immediately stopped caring about whatever I saw. If the boy didn't come to apologize at the start of the school year, Longbottom was dead to me - even if that sounded quite edgy.

"What's it even matter? Talion could just beat all of them anyway," I suddenly heard as I saw Hermione stand among the group of girls. She had meant to just talk to Mandy, Susan, and Hannah at the back, but apparently had a few possibly spiked butterbeers too many already and speaking way too loudly. It was crazy to me that all these girls had joined Neville, Harry, and the Weasleys, and I wasn't invited yet again, but for today, I wouldn't have agreed to join them either. I had something to do, after all.

Not that it didn't sting anyway.

Looking back in Hermione's direction as I gave her a silent thumbs up, I saw everybody else in the group freeze before the Weasley twins started laughing uproariously. They agreed with Hermione and jokingly asked Harry if he would try out for another position in the coming year.

Ron scowled deeply, saying that I should just retire for the dirty Slytherin-like way I played such a noble sport. But then I saw Harry tightly clench his fists and thinly press his lips together instead of defending me.

"Oh god, he actually carries a grudge for that?" I muttered under my breath as I saw Mandy, Susan, Lisa, and Ginny console the boy-who-lived while the twins kept making jokes at his expense.

Lisa visibly recoiled when the other girls started consoling her boyfriend, but just rolled her eyes - hard, instead of saying something. So something more was going on there, too.

One last silent, unseen nod for Hermione later, I turned around and made my way to another side of the tent village. I had seen and heard enough. I wasn't here to learn more gossip.

Eventually, I settled to wait for the attack while lurking in the shadows of a tree where two aurors were apparently waiting for someone to come and take their spots so that they could continue their patrols. Both of them were drinking from flasks they hid in their breastpockets.

They just stood there silently, both of them hadn't said a word in ten minutes.

Both were red in my vision. One of them, the one on the right, was the auror who had argued that I should spend the night in the holding cell when I was attacked at the start of the summer break.

I might be too harsh in dealing with someone in law enforcement when so far they hadn't done anything other than inconvenience me, but they simply did it one too many times. I silently unfurled my Norse Pantheon rope and got ready to deal with these two first in the middle of chaos - should chaos come to this place.

Five minutes where I quietly stretched my body to be able to show my peak performance later, I saw the first signs of chaos. Fire above one of tents, and it wasn't firework or a boastful wizard showing his prowess to impress a girl.

I heard people screaming from that direction.

And both aurors just did nothing.

That was all I needed to start my night.

My boots, charmed to make no sounds, crushed a branch as I appeared behind the auror on the left. My footfall made no sound, but the branch did.

That was the difference between the scarred auror seeing my dark-blue eyes instead of the last thing he saw being the aftermath of the attack he ignored. The auror next to him wasn't so lucky.

My rope bound his arms to his sides as it snapped around him, and even just that momentum already cut into his robes as the first blood was drawn when I yanked him to fall where I stood before I started the attack.

"Wha- Release me this instant!" The man screamed, but Patrick was there to silence all sounds around us.

I took out the hidden blade from the first dead auror's neck and took a step toward the auror I bound that I dragged into the shadow of the tree where I waited to start the bloodbath.

"You don't want to do this! I'm a decorated auror, a good fifteen years on the job! I know many people! They'll find you if you do something to me!"

In a muffled, changed tone of voice, I asked, "And how many of those years did you spend getting bribed, told to look the other way like tonight, working against the innocent and for the rich?"

The man immediately turned fearful. His partner had spent many of their years together with him on the take. They weren't pureblood bigots originally, but pretending to be one simply paid better, granted better connections, better deals.

"I swear I had to!"

"I swear that I will only kill you if you are truly unrepentant," I countered as I tried to sound benelovent as I stood over him. Patrick propped him up against the tree as the elf slowly made the earth and greenery swallow the dead auror.

"I swear! I'll resign! No, I will make everything right! I, I, I-I can't give the money back, but I can report what Bellows did all those years," the auror quickly stammered as he looked at his dead partner, who apparently went by Bellows. Seeing him getting swallowed by nature was a powerful blow to the man's psyche, just like I intended. I wanted him to feel horror.

His red aura in my Eagle Vision, however, did not change the more he promised to change. Not that I thought it would. Not that I would have cared if it did. I had merely hoped he would give me some names quickly, but I didn't truly need a manifest. I saw their allegiance with my own eyes and chose to trust them unconditionally.

"Who paid you?" I asked just to get an idea where to start, if possible.

"I can't tell you! They'll kill me!"

I mockingly looked back to the dead auror at our feet that Patrick had almost gotten out of view.

"I! No, I have family!"

"So did all those innocent people your corrupt ass oppressed over the years," I argued and plunged my hidden blade into the man's throat. Patrick handed me the wand he had taken out of his clenched fist.

With a quick wave of the dead auror's wand, I made the two cuts I left behind with the hidden blade look like a result of a cutting curse, carved the word 'traitor' into their foreheads, snapped the wand in half and threw both halves in different directions.

I undid the rope binding the second auror to die and walked out of the shadow to look at the tents in my vision. Three fires flickered into the skies and three sources of chaos. So apparently, the Death Eaters split into a minimum of two groups, maybe three, if none of the fires is their starting point.

I could work with that. I would appreciate it, even.

By the sounds of the screaming, one group even had the decency to spare me a long run. They were on their way to me. So I gave Patrick some silent instructions and stalked forward while hopping from shadow to shadow.

None of these civilian wizards and witches fought back. They all ran like headless chicken as a group of thirteen robed, masked wearing terrorists with their pointed cone heads laughed as they hurled spells into the groups of fleeing magicals. Two of them carried unconscious girls on their shoulders from the middle of the group, hands on the girls' bums, their fate obvious to anyone who had seen how Slytherins were allowed to act at Hogwarts before.