HP: A Magical Journey

Chapter 278 - The Failed Assault

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The residents of the small township, Rosensten, were peaceful people. The community only held two dozen families, and it was a place where everyone knew everyone. If there was a fight in a household, and the heated discussions leaked out the four walls of their home, then the entire village would know every word exchanged the next day. All would meet in the township Church on Sunday mornings, and then the people would file into the sole pub after the sermons with the Church priest along with them. It was that sort of place. Simple people living simple lives.

However, that didn't mean that Rosensten was a dull and uninteresting place. To the eyes who could see beyond the veils that hid the things outside the norm, there were plenty of things of interest in Rosensten.

For one, there were a large number of empty houses in the town. That itself wouldn't be strange — Rosensten was far from the city; thus, it wasn't a place that one would consider prime real estate. No. The thing that seemed strange was that all the houses looked ready to move in from the outside — the bushes always seemed to be in shape, the lawns freshly mowed, and not a single sign of abandon on the properties.

The residents assumed that the owners, whoever they were, had hired someone to maintain the properties — though it was strange that no one from the township was hired. . . maybe someone from outside came into doing the maintenance — they sure hadn't seen them.

The village goon, Bobby Burton, had once bragged in the pub that he would go inside one of the houses and spend the night as a dare between his good friends, who all believed that the house was haunted. The entire friend group saw Bobby jump the walls that fenced the house boundary and run inside with a flashlight beaming light over his grinning face.

The next day.

"Wha' are you talkin' about?" Bobby put down his pint glass to look at his friends. "I went into no house yesterday."

"What are spiffin', Bobby boy," said one of his friends. "We all saw you climb the walls and run into the house." He looked at the others, who nodded. "See? We even saw you open. . . . open — wait. . . ."

Bobby glanced at his friends and burst into laughs. "If you clowns were trying to stitch me up, then at least have your plan straight. I went into the house? Yeah, right!" he finished with a scoff.

The friends exchanged dark looks.

"We saw him, right?" asked one of them.

"I did. . . I think," said another, frowning. He ruffled his hair, "Maybe we had too much to drink. . ."

". . . or maybe the house is really haunted," said a third one; he gulped with a fearful look. It didn't look like Bobby was lying, and if he was indeed telling the truth, there was only one possible explanation.

The house was haunted, as they had joked about.

As Bobby and his friends talked, another person was sitting beside him with a fedora over his head and an overcoat on his body. He raised his wand, and a beer mug behind the counter flew up towards the tap in the wall. The tap twisted, and golden beer came sloshing out, falling into the mug with white foam topping it off. The filled mug flew over the bartender's head and landed in front of the man.

The man took a gulp of his self-served beer with his ear listening on the boys' conversation. They had stopped talking about foolish Bobby and his more foolish attempt to squat in the 'empty' house and had moved over to haunted houses.

He took another gulp before picking up his wand from the bar counter and waving it towards the group of boys. One by one, their eyes went dull, blank, and far-looking, and they stopped talking. The man observed them for half a minute before lowering his wand, and the moment he did, the boys started talking again; however, now they were talking about the butcher's daughter.

The man stood up from his barstool as he took a big gulp to finish the beer and slammed the mug on the counter with a throaty sigh of satisfaction.

The bartender picked up his rag and started wiping the counter when he found an empty beer mug sitting in front of him. 'Did I pour this one?' he wondered as he picked up the mug, but he couldn't remember pouring one.

He chuckled. Maybe it was the ghost from the haunted house the useless boys' group talked about.

The fedora-clad man walked through the village, gazing at the calm village. He liked places like these. They were much easier to work in; he rarely faced any problems like he did in the big cities. Plus, it was so much more easier to work alone rather than in groups.

He walked into the same house Bobby had trespassed yesterday. There was a tingling feeling as he stepped past the property gates. He knocked on the double doors with a bull-shaped door-knocker.

The door opened, and a woman dressed in wizarding robes appeared from within.

"Mrs. Westen," said the man, placing his removed fedora on his chest, "the matter has been cleared up. The muggle boy and his friends won't be talking or even thinking about your house anymore."

The town of Rosensten was a mixed village that housed both muggle and wizarding-kind.

There were two types of mixed-villages. The first type were the ones where the wizarding families lived among their muggle counterparts without completely hiding and pretended to be part of the muggle society — usually occupied by families of muggleborns or halfbloods.

Then there were mixed-villages like Rosensten, where the wizarding families preferred to live in complete obscurity. The houses that were believed by the muggles to be empty were homes to the wizarding families who lived under the guise of wards and charms that kept them hidden from those who weren't supposed to know. They traveled through the floo and at most went out to their gardens which too were obscured.

"Thank you, Mr. Whyte," said Mrs. Westen, bowing to the Ministry Obliviator. "Would you like to come in for some tea, Mr. Whyte? My husband and I would be delighted to host you."

"I appreciate the offer, Mrs. Westen, but I'd like to decline," said Whyte, putting his fedora back. "Please don't hesitate to contact the Oblivator Department if someone else decides to barge into your house."

Whyte tipped his hat to the lady and walked out of the house. There was no rule barring him from having some tea, and Mrs. Westen was beautiful enough for him to thoroughly enjoy her presence, even if her husband was present. However, her husband, Randolph Westen, was the problem — he couldn't offend the Head of the Floo Network Authority. . . so it was wise for Whyte to stay clear of the big man.

Whyte withdrew his wand, and the three Ds of Apparition surfaced in his mind.

"What do we have here. . . An Obliviator? What a coincidence."

Whyte turned towards the deep voice and saw a group of men dressed in black robes over identical dark uniforms. He found the uniform familiar, but before his mind could find why, it directed his attention to the man's face. Whyte's heart started to bang in his chest cavity as his throat went dry, and his eyes started to shake ever so slightly.

"A-Augustus Rookwood!"

There were few Ministry employees who didn't recognize the ex-Unspeakable and the now on-the-run Death Eater. All Ministry employees had been given repeated seminars on alerting the Aurors Office the moment they spotted any of the known Death Eaters — every Ministry Employee had Death Eater faces memorized by heart.

"Ah, so you know me, that makes it easier," said Rookwood with a placid smile. "We are here to pay Randolph Westen a visit. Seeing that you're here with anti-muggle charms covering your body," the ex-Unspeakable's knowledgable eyes roamed Whyte's body, "would you be so kind as to lead us to the Westen household."

Whyte gripped his wand tighter in his hand. His head throbbed as his face started to feel hot — what was he supposed to do here? He couldn't escape; there were half a dozen Death Eaters in front of him. He couldn't call for Aurors, and he was alone. . . . His thoughts ended there as he felt a jolt on his body, and everything went dark.

Rookwood eyes followed the collapsing body before looking up at the source of the Stunning Charm. The man was matchstick think, pale as a vampire and eyes dead like those of a fish.

"Why are you wasting time with an Oblivator?" asked Rivers Lock in his flat voice as he lowered his wand. "I know Westen's home and, so do you."

Rookwood shrugged, took out his wand, and pointed it at the fallen man. "Avada Kedavra" — a green zap flashed out of his wand. Rookwood pocketed his wand and turned to the Death Eaters behind him. "Bring him along; we will dump him at the Westen's."

There was nigh a change in the group's expression as a Death Eater from the group levitated the soul-less body and brought it along as they moved towards their destination.

When they reached the destination, Rookwood frowned at the house. His gaze looked into the air around the entire property. He turned to Rivers. "Didn't you say that the Westen's didn't have a protection ward?" he asked, his eyes expecting an answer.

"They don't," said Rivers. "I had sent people a couple days back when no one was at home for scouting — the report clearly said no wards."

Rookwood raised his wand, and a cloud of soft blue dust shimmered out of the ex-Unspeakable's wand. The blue dust which was flowing freely in the wind suddenly came to stop mid-air and rested against an invisible wall.

"Then answer me, what is this?" Rookwood pointed his wand at the blue dust illuminating an invisible wall. "Why is there a ward around the property?"

Rivers gazed at Rookwoods magic silently before answering, "The wards might have set up in the time between the scouting report and today."

"Thank you for stating the obvious," said Rookwood in his gruff voice. He sighed deeply and closed his eyes for a moment before speaking, "Very well. . . I will disarm the wards and then continue as usual."

"Will you be able to do it without alerting the Westens?" asked Rivers plainly.

"Unlike you, who was a lowly clerk, I was an Unspeakable," said Rookwood and narrowed his eyes when Rivers showed no response. "I have studied Goblin wards; I'll be able to disarm them without notifying the insiders."

Rookwood began chanting magic, and his wand sent out soft spotting orbs of light drifted towards the wards, but the moment they touched the wards, they turned into a vile yellow color.

". . . What?"

Something unexpected to Rookwood happened as the invisible ward turned an angry red, and a dome appeared over the Westen's property.

"What did you do, Rookwood?" asked Rivers as he caught a shift of a window curtain from the first floor of the house. They had been seen.

Rookwood's eyes remained fixed on the red ward as he studied the flow of the magic and the sudden unexpected change that had occurred.

"These wards. . . they aren't goblin wards I know of," said Rookwood.

"We are aborting the mission," said Rivers.

Rookwood removed his eyes from the ward; his gaze bore holes into Rivers as he warned, "That's not for you to decide, Rivers. You're stepping your bound—"

Pops sounded around the Death Eaters, and when they turned away from the home to look, they were greeted by the sight of a team of Aurors surrounding them.

"Drop your wands!" said the Auror in the lead. "Death Eater, I repeat, drop your wand!"

Rookwood brandished his wand towards the Aurors and was about to launch magic when he heard a sound. He turned to see the vanishing visage of Rivers Lock as he touched a ring on his hand. Just before disappearing, Rivers glanced at Rookwood with his dead eyes as if not a bit bothered by his actions.

A growl escaped Rookwood's throat. The inner-circle Death Eaters were all provided with a Portkey that keyed to a safe location in case they needed to escape in time of peril. Even though their Master had been hindered by Dumbledore in at the Ministry, the Carnival mission had been successful — pleased by Rivers' performance, their Master had provided him with a Portkey, which Rivers had just used.

Rookwood's eyes went to his raised wand hand and at the ring identical to Rivers on his thumb. He eyed the Death Eaters before him and then closed in Aurors. Rivers was right in his decision, he thought and pointed his wand at the land between him and the Death Eaters and let out an exploding spell which sent out flying bodies and earthen rubble towards the Auror, who weren't expecting the sudden change.

Rookwood touched the ring on his hand and muttered, "Walpurgisnacht."

By the time dust settled and Aurors dealt with the flung Death Eaters, they found that the Azkaban escapees Rivers Lock and Augustus Rookwood had disappeared.

. . . . .

The day the Dark Lord Voldemort had attacked Ossuary, the house to the Bones family, to kill the now Minister Amelia Susan Bones, the company Aegis Warding Solutions, whose wards the Dark Lord had brutally ripped apart, reached out to the DMLE.

Aegis put together a proposal for collaboration between Aegis and DMLE. They proposed that if an Aegis ward over property was triggered and the owners didn't cast a simple spell in case of a false alarm, then Aurors would arrive at the scene. Amelia Bones, who was still the Head of DMLE at that time, approved the testing of the collaboration as her last command before her promotion to the Minister's chair.

To test if the system worked, certain members of the Ministry's upper hierarchy were approached, and among those, a number willingly volunteered to have Aegis wards around their homes.

Randolph Westen, the Head of Floo Network Authority, just so happened to be one of those volunteering test candidates.

When asked by Amelia Bones, who came up with the idea, which she thought was brilliant. The Aegis representative answered that it came from a person higher up in the organization, someone who had a part in creating the Aegis warding scheme.

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Quinn West - MC - It's obvious, isn't it? Goblins won't work with the Ministry, but Aegis surely can. . . so here you have it.

Rivers Lock - Death Eater - My life takes priority.

Augustus Rookwood - Ex-Unspeakable - A new type of goblin ward?

Whyte - Obliviator(Dead) - Was keyed in the wards when he first called.

Voldemort - Dark Lord - Hmm? Why would I study a ward during an assassination when I can rip it apart.

Westens - Wizarding Family - Chose not to have their wards target muggles. Muggles aren't capable of hurting those who have magic.

FictionOnlyReader - Author - I hope you got why the Death Eater targeted Randolph Westen.

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The link is in the synopsis!