Chapter 163. Fury.
Half an hour later, the screaming finally stopped. The body hit the stone floor like a discarded puppet, spattering blood across a meter-wide area. It had been seeping from every wound throughout the ordeal. Now, it showed no further signs of life.
Severus did not look satisfied or relieved. Torturing others gave him no pleasure, and who knew better than he that vengeance never brings joy or relief, only emptiness. Nothing that had been done could be undone.
Toby was alive. He would be confined to his bed for another week or two, but he was alive. Severus felt no particular warmth toward the wolves, either. What he had done was a momentary impulse, sparked when he saw what the Necromancer intended and felt helpless in the face of it. If not for José, he might have lost one of his most loyal companions. This was not vengeance. He had discharged the negative emotions that, if left unaddressed, might have driven him to some other, more foolish act, which he very much wanted to avoid.
A heavy sigh escaped him as he looked down at the now thoroughly and permanently dead Necromancer.
More problems to deal with, and he'd only just finished with the last one. Searching the man's mind had yielded almost nothing of substance. The reason was a seal embedded in his consciousness, one designed to erase all memories of its host upon their death. But because Gorby had applied the Stasis Charm almost immediately, it had not managed to clear everything before the reanimation reactivated it. The seal, now confronted with a host who was both dead and not dead, simply didn't know how to respond, and while it was trying to work that out, Severus had found and destroyed it.
But the most important information had already been scrubbed.
"The second one will probably be empty too." He raised his palm toward the body and a powerful torrent of crimson flame erupted from it, consuming the corpse entirely.
"Still, it had to be checked. But first..." He looked at the flinching leader of the Steel sub-group. "Do you know anything about 'the Queens'?"
"No. First time I've heard that name." He swallowed and lowered his eyes.
"Understood." Without sparing the Black Star members any further attention, Severus turned to the second body.
He could only piece together a partial picture of the organization. It called itself the Queen. Its location, strength, and leadership had all been erased. But from the fragments of the man's memories, he could say with certainty that there were roughly forty such small groups, and the one that had attacked him ranked among the ten strongest. That meant there was a real possibility some of them possessed middle-rank Magister cores. Where the Black Star relied on numbers, the Queen relied on quality.
Adam, the Necromancer, had led Group Five, which specialized in intelligence-gathering and swift elimination of targets. As Severus had suspected, they had been given orders to discover the method of concealing runes on the cubes. They had a full dossier on him, but they had not taken him seriously, and that had cost them.
Amelia, the woman with wind magic, was Adam's deputy and normally handled all negotiations. She had been preparing to take his position, since Adam was soon due to be transferred to headquarters. The information about the headquarters had also been scrubbed clean, but Severus found one thing: the direction from which they had come. West. To the west was the sea, and beyond the sea, another continent.
That meant, at least for the immediate future, he didn't need to fear a sudden assault by a large force. He had time to prepare. And this group had moved with extreme caution throughout, which could mean they knew about the Black Star's presence in the area and did not want to be detected. They had quietly dealt with Macmillan for that reason, and had planned to do the same with Shafiq, until a terrifyingly capable house-elf had quickly forced them to reconsider. So they had waited for things to settle and attacked at night, after reviewing his dossier more carefully.
If ihiros had appeared, Adam was to stall him and capture him alive if possible. But the primary target had been Severus himself: it was far simpler to extract everything from a "boy" than from an elderly mage.
Everything had gone wrong from there. The wolves had been a genuine shock, and even after killing around twenty of them, more kept coming without pause. Adam had ordered his people to cover him while he raised the fallen animals as undead. But at the moment he fully concentrated on the spell, a single strike took his head, and the man who had raised a barrier around them paid for it with his life when Agnes's claws tore through every barrier he could form. That was how they lost the mage who had been one step from the middle Magister rank.
As for the second body, Severus finished within ten minutes and without incident. Just as he had expected, the memories there were scrubbed as well, but he found enough to fill in the remaining gaps. It concerned the spies who had reported the unusual artifact and sent a sample to headquarters.
He now knew their location, their appearances, and their call signs. He intended to pay them a visit, though not immediately. He would go in a few days, once he had recovered. He could not use his magic at full strength and had no desire to strain his core further before it had fully recovered from the forced strengthening.
Besides, there was no rush. From Adam's memories he had learned that the Queen's people had complete faith in their embedded seals, so the remaining members of the organization were unlikely to flee the country right away. Knowing Amelia's cautious nature, they would most likely go to ground and wait for things to quiet down, then make another attempt on him. Failure carried heavy consequences in their line of work.
But he had no intention of standing still and waiting. He already had plans for them.
After finishing in the cellar and instructing a house-elf to attend to the former Black Star members, Severus returned to the sitting room, collected Nagini, and together they left Gloucestershire.
John sat on a bench outside a small, solitary Victorian-style manor surrounded by woodland, stroking the head of a girl of about thirteen with platinum hair and a white dress, who was sleeping peacefully against his knees. He looked utterly exhausted, worn to the bone.
A great deal had fallen onto John's shoulders in a very short time, and he had only just finished school. On top of his father losing his mind and falling into a coma, he had been forced to assume the role of head of house, with all the obligations that came with it.
He had not slept in two days, drowning in work, and hadn't even found time for a proper conversation with his own sister. Only now had he managed to carve out two hours for her, something that had brought her great joy, which only deepened his guilt. There was nothing he could do about it.
As for who was responsible for all this, there was no need to guess. He would be a hypocrite if he claimed not to blame Severus, and if he had appeared before him that very day, John might have attacked him on the spot simply to have an outlet for his grief and rage. But having cooled down somewhat and thought it through, he understood that Severus had not been the only victim. And if there was anyone to blame, it was the people who had done this to his father.
While John was still turning all of this over, he flinched sharply as someone appeared on the path before the house. His wand was in his hand almost instantly, aimed at the visitor, but a few seconds later he lowered it with a stiff, unnatural smile. The visitor was Severus, and the fact that he did not look like his usual self but instead wore a dark, heavy expression eased the spike of emotion inside John, at least slightly.
"S..." John started to say the name, but Severus gently shook his head and raised a finger to his lips. Then, in the air before them, written in fire:
"Forgive me. Will you let me see him? I may be able to help."
Those words, combined with the certainty written on Severus's face, first brought surprise, then slowly rising irritation. The finest healers who had visited over the past day and a half had all said the same thing: nothing could be done. And now this "boy" was making such a serious claim, as though mocking their grief.
"You..."
"I don't have the skill to save him myself, but my teacher may be able to. I want to examine your father and send the results to him," he wrote again, noticing the irritation and clearly understanding it. He knew exactly what John felt, even if he was trying not to show it.
The second message stopped John cold. He gave a barely perceptible nod. His father had told him more than once that someone extremely powerful stood behind Severus. A boy could not have achieved what he had on his own. And Severus himself had mentioned a teacher who was currently in Brazil hunting for some ingredient.
Remembering that, a small flame of hope quietly began to kindle again somewhere inside John.
Severus entered the house and moved towards the staircase without paying much attention to the startled maid who passed him in the hallway.
Why did all this have to happen at the exact moment I chose to work on my core? As if someone decided to have a laugh at my expense. It's been a long time since I've felt guilt toward another person. For an instant, an image surfaced in his mind: a smiling young man. A heartbeat later, it was replaced by another: the same face and expression, a sword protruding from his chest, his eyes staring directly at him. A shudder ran through him. And my mood was already bad enough without dredging that up.
"Severus... I'm here with you, and whatever happens, I'm always on your side." Nagini's warm voice reached him as she slipped out from beneath the dark cloak and pressed herself against his cheek. Seeing him like this was hard on her. No matter how bad a situation they had found themselves in before, he had always managed to smile at her.
"Thank you." He smiled gently, stroked her head, and walked into the room where the elder Macmillan lay on a large bed with a green canopy, his face peaceful, as if he were simply sleeping.
Severus crossed to him without delay, placed his palm on the man's forehead, closed his eyes, and sank into his mind. Less than a minute passed before his eyes opened again, and he let out a heavy breath.
"What is it?"
"This is... impossible." His voice was low and bleak. What lay in the bed before them was nothing more than an empty shell. The person, his identity, every memory he had ever held, all of it had been destroyed without a trace. In this situation even a Grand Archimagus would be powerless, let alone a peak Magister. Had he been home that day, perhaps something could have been salvaged. Now it was simply beyond reach. The fury that had been smothered and subdued ignited again with a fresh, colder intensity.
You just couldn't leave well enough alone, could you? You thought that because I don't go looking for trouble and don't throw myself into pointless conflicts, I'm someone you can just step on. You want to play? Then let's play. But I swear you will not enjoy this game.
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4.Harry Potter: Reborn as Draco Black = CHAPTER 126
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