Dramatis Personae

* * * * *

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Chapter 6

By Diocletian

* * * * *

Hermione sighed discreetly and continued her half-hearted attempts at feigning interest in the conversation going on around her. It didn't strictly concern her, really, aside from the fact that she was supposed to be over-seeing it and taking notes about any progress that was being made, and her mind was elsewhere. Maybe it was because her pregnancy had her hormones completely out of whack, but she just couldn't seem to pay attention today. She was also more than a little distracted by the Albanian Head of the Department of Magical Games and Sports, who was in possession of a number of large chins which waggled furiously whenever he spoke and upon which there were three very unfortunately-shaped birthmarks. Trying to pretend that she hadn't noticed, she wondered idly what Ron was doing at that moment.

She was in the middle of realizing that she should be the one trying to settle a dispute that had erupted between the Albanian, Bulgarian and English JD Heads of the DMGS when a blaring announcement suddenly sounded out of nowhere, echoing throughout the entire Summit building.

"Attention please, honorable members and representatives of the International Confederation of Wizards. At this time, we grievously regret to inform you that we have just received news of a potential threat of explosives being located inside the building. We ask that you please waste no time in evacuating the building in a neat and orderly fashion and keep your ears open for any further announcements. This is not a drill, ladies and gentlemen. Repeat, this is NOT a drill. Please evacuate immediately and do not panic."

Hermione didn't even hear the last part of the announcement because the room she was in had very quickly become loud with the sounds of people panicking.

She knew well enough to head immediately towards the door. She tried to be patient as the many other occupants of the room all tried to squeeze through the small space at the same time, but it didn't take very long for that fragile patience to break and force her feet to move her forward to try to break up the pack, simplifying the process of escape. They were unfortunately on one of the top floors of the building, and if they didn't at least try to be organized or sensible about things, then they would probably all kill each other before they managed to get outside.

As the crush of people surged outwards at the door, a few people still remained by the conference table, carefully gathering their files and forms and placing them back into their proper folders before they would leisurely make their way out. These were the ones who apparently believed so highly in the security the Ministry had set up that they thought the evacuation was only an extra precaution to be taken in a situation that was already completely under control. Most of them were anyway.

Two of them, however, stood almost imperceptibly away from the others. They spoke quietly to each other and were inaudible to anyone but themselves, thanks to the noise. Marcus Flint stretched slowly across the table to reach for a blue report folder, looking over at the Head of the Department of Magical Games and Sports. Darius Melforth furtively pulled something wrapped in a kerchief out of his case and handed it to Flint.

"Richards, Bethel and Weasley should all be in Conference Room K-9," he muttered. "Get to them before they get downstairs. We cannot have any witnesses. I do not think that I need to stress for you how very important it is that those three are dealt with quickly and with utmost discretion. We will not be lenient to a failure in this matter, Flint. You've got about ten minutes. This is the only warning you'll get about it. I hope it shall be the only warning you need."

Flint nodded and tucked the wrapped .45-caliber handgun Melforth had given him into the back of his waistband. He quickly finished gathering his things and joined the now-orderly throng heading out the door. Melforth waited for him to disappear before heading off himself.

First, Flint separated from the crowd, which was mostly congregated around the mid-floor staircase, and headed for the staircase at the end of the wing, going down two floors and then striding through some corridors, finding another staircase and heading back up in the direction of Level J. He knew, of course, that the Department of Magical Law Enforcement heads would by now have already departed from K-9, which was only on the floor above Level J, but if he was lucky and took the right staircase, he might run into them before they got more than a couple floors down as they tried to leave.

He ran over the floor plan layout in his head, figured out which staircase on this level would be the most convenient escape from Conference Room K-9, several floors above, and proceeded towards it. Checking behind his shoulder to make sure no one was watching him as they frantically scurried towards the nearest, easiest exit, he pushed open the stairwell door and went through. He immediately went to the railing to make sure that his targets weren't already below him, quickly retreating to avoid being seen, and breathed a sigh of relief. The nearest people were just as frantic as those in the hallway behind him had been and were not paying the slightest bit of attention to him as they drew further and further away.

Flint stood back from the railing as he heard a door being flung open somewhere above him and recognized the loud tone of Hank Richards's voice. He tapped the wall behind him with his wand, effectively locking the rest of the doors leading into this stairwell to prevent any unwanted witnesses. Then he waited patiently as he heard half a dozen pairs of feet shuffle down the stairs towards him while their owners spoke worriedly amongst themselves. As the first people came in sight, Flint drew his wand and aimed.

"Stupefy!"

Before most of them even realized that they were under attack, they were unconscious. Only three of the seven who had come down the stairs remained standing: Hank Richards, Darcie Bethel and a skinny blonde Auror whom Flint didn't know. Dougie Kibble, the Auror Flint hadn't recognized, had pushed Darcie and Hank behind him so they could head back up the stairs, but Flint raised his wand almost straight upwards and conjured a wall of green flames onto the steps directly above him. Now there was nowhere for them to go but through him.

Dougie's quick reflexes enabled him to shoot off two or three curses towards Flint, who easily dodged them, before Flint finally managed to stun him, too. But by this time Richards had managed to draw his own wand and pointed it at Flint. "Expelliarmus!"

Flint's wand flew from his hand and into Richards's, who pocketed it. "Now, see here young man! What the devil are you trying to do!" Behind his back, Flint pulled the gun Melforth had given him out from his waistband and flicked off the safety. "Don't you realize we have an emergency in progr--"

Flint whipped the gun out from behind his back and fired twice directly into the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement's chest before he had a chance to finish his last sentence. Richards staggered backward from the force of the impact, the wand in his hand clattering onto the floor as Darcie's scream pierced the air. He stumbled slightly and fell to his knees. A red stain began to blossom on the front of his robes and he slid onto the floor, his eyes glazing over with death's blank stare before he even hit the ground. Flint turned slightly and aimed again.

Darcie stopped screaming when she saw the gun was now being focused on her, but she could not stop her loud, erratic panting. Her wand remained useless at her side. She would never have time to raise it and pronounce an entire curse without being shot. Flint, obviously knowing this, stepped threateningly towards her. "Drop the wand." She obeyed reluctantly. "Where's Weasley?"

"What?" She backed away slightly even though she knew there was no point to it. She had run out of options.

"Where is Ron Weasley!?" Flint demanded again. His frustration was beginning to get the better of him and he stepped over the growing pool of crimson that was seeping down and across the stairs from Hank Richards's motionless body, and grabbed hold of Darcie's collar, pushing the gun against her ribcage. He glanced down at her wand for a second and then kicked it under the railing, turning back to Darcie as it tumbled down to the bottom of the staircase. "Weasley, woman! Dreadfully aggravating bloke with red hair and a shitload of brothers! Where the hell is he!?"

Darcie glanced down at the hand that was forcefully pressing a gun into her abdomen. There, beside the joint of his right thumb, she saw it. Miniscule, but still visible if you knew what you were looking for. A tiny, cursive black 'Q'. The Questor Society was behind this whole affair. She should have known. Darcie looked back up and spat in Flint's face. "He's not here, you son of a bitch. I don't know where he is, but I'll bet it's far away from you!"

If Flint hadn't instinctively pulled the trigger at that moment, sending Darcie crumpling backwards onto the steps, he probably would have slapped her first.

He cursed under his breath. Weasley wasn't there. The Society was not going to like this. The entire mission turning into a failure because of the absence of a single man, a single man that Flint had assured them was going to be there. No sir, the Society wasn't going to like this one bit.

Flint bent down over Richards and withdrew his stolen wand from the man's pocket before straightening up and heading downwards. He stilled for a moment when he remembered that the unknown Auror had seen his face. It was not acceptable for him to be recognized, even on the off chance that the fellow would survive after Melforth set the bomb off. Flint turned around, pointed his wand at the man and muttered, "Obliviate." No need to waste bullets on a man who probably wouldn't live another five minutes anyway. He would be saving his next one for Weasley.

He reached into his robe pocket and pulled out a shot glass wrapped in thick velvet. He cast the spell which unlocked the staircase doors and tucked the gun back into his pants before pulling the velvet off of the small portkey, touching his wand to it and disappearing.

---------- ----------

As it was, Ron wasn't very far away at all. He had been trying to get through security when the warning had initially been given, and at that point he basically gave up any hope at all of getting in. So when the masses streamed outside by the dozens, he merely allowed himself to be pushed along with them as they tried to put some distance between themselves and the Summit building.

As more and more people began to pour out, Ron was forced to wonder what was going on. He hadn't yet made it into the building when the announcement was made, after all, so he had been unable to hear it. He tapped a nearby Unspeakable on the shoulder.

"Hey, Huckins. What the hell's going on?"

Mario Huckins, a half-Italian man that Ron knew only because he worked in the same Department as Ginny, turned and gave him a look that Ron found vaguely reminiscent of what a person's face would look like if they saw you using live lobsters for earrings. Ron ignored it and put on his "Boss" face, which usually told people that it would be no problem for him to see that they never worked for any respectable organization ever again, so he'd better get the answers he was looking for--Now. Huckins gave in.

"They said there might be a bomb inside. They wanted to evacuate, 'just in case,' or something like that." He frowned. "They made the announcement about five times. Where have you been? Mars?"

Ron ignored him and began to push his way through the crowd. He was on the lookout for any Aurors or other DMLE reps that were supposed to be there, or maybe Ginny or Hermione. Even Colin would work. But there was no sign of them that he could see. No big surprise. By now there were a couple hundred people surging together in a limited space, dozens more joining the throng every minute. The chances of him finding one particular person in this mass were not good.

"Weasley!"

Then again.

"Weasley, I'm talking to you!" Only Ron's slightly panicked state kept him from rolling his eyes at the sound of his least-favourite Auror's prissy tone being directed at him in such a way. He turned and, again, he carefully scrutinized the surrounding crowd, this time for the face of Zacharias Smith. He was vaguely startled when Smith appeared to his left instead and firmly grabbed onto his shoulder, so as not to lose him in the crush.

"Smith! Where are Darcie and the rest?" he asked, loudly so that he could be heard over the pandemonium. Zacharias could only shrug. "What? Did you lose them!? HOW!?"

"In case you hadn't noticed, *Sir*, this place is currently in chaos. It would have been only too simple to lose them," Zacharias replied snarkily. "But for your information, I haven't seen them since before the damn warning was even given."

Ron glared at him accusingly. "Well, where were you? You're an Auror. You were supposed to be here to keep an eye on them."

Zacharias glared right back. "Don't you lecture me about duty! *I* had to piss, so I was in the john. Where were you? Because you sure as hell weren't where you were supposed to be."

Ron, already feeling miserable, exploded.

"You watch yourself, MISTER Smith, because I'm in a foul temper and the fact that YOU are the only person I can find in this godforsaken crowd is not helping! I am your superior and, as such, you will speak to me with the respect that position dictates. If this were any other day, or if I were Darcie or Hank, you would probably have been fired this very minute for insubordinate behavior. Another toe out of line and I'll do it myself, and don't you think for a bloody SECOND that I won't! So either smarten up, or you can find another line of work. Is that clear?"

Though originally startled by the display of backbone Ron was giving, the look Zacharias gave him as he tried to catch his breath could only have been described as lethal. But Ron didn't care. He was mad and confused and worried and he already felt as guilty as he would have if he had placed a bomb himself. He needed a release. And Smith was right there: Smarmy, weedy, annoying, sarcastic, intolerable Smith, who was always trying to get his goat, and who couldn't stand not getting the last word.

But finally, after glaring into Ron's equally furious eyes for almost a minute, Zacharias looked away. "Sorry, sir," he murmured. And for the first time that Ron could remember, there wasn't even a discernable trace of sarcasm in the blonde's voice.

"Accepted," he said. "Now let's go find the others."

---------- ----------

Darius Melforth kneeled on the floor of the last stall of the men's bathroom that had been meant to service Conference Rooms C-1, C-2, and C-3. The toilet, which had been secretly disconnected from the plumbing pipes a week before, was never used. There was never any water in it, after all. But Melforth had entered the stall anyway.

He pulled the cover off of the back of it and carefully extracted a large amount of home-prepared explosive from it. He set it on the floor beside him and got to work on setting the makeshift timer. When it was about as close to finished as it needed to be, Melforth glanced at his watch. It had been eleven and a half minutes since he'd seen Flint leave the unofficially adjourned Magical Games and Sports meeting.

Melforth pulled a tiny velvet-wrapped packet out of his pocket and set it on his knee. Then he pushed several small buttons on the timer until it displayed a blinking red, "00:10sec."

He checked the wiring on the detonator, the explosives and the timer one more time. Then he picked up the bomb, opened the stall door and set it down on the counter beside a sink. He gripped the velvet packet anxiously and pulled out his wand from his pocket. He tapped the timer three times. And all of a sudden--

--00:09sec.

Melforth took a deep breath and pointed his wand at the detonator.

00:08sec.

"Expandimenta," he muttered.

00:07sec.

The tip of his wand glowed. Then the improvised TNT and detonator seemed to shimmer. And then the whole room filled with light for just a moment, a rapidly spreading light that sped through the entire Summit building, bulleting towards other bundles of explosives located discreetly around the building, causing them to shimmer brightly in unison with the one Melforth was looking at. The light that filled the entire building disappeared, but the numerous bombs scattered around it continued to glow.

00:06sec.

Melforth pulled the velvet off of the spoon-turned-portkey in his hand. He gripped it tightly, tapped it with his wand, felt an unpleasant tugging feeling at the back of his navel, and was gone. The timer clicked on.

00:05sec.

---------- ----------

Hermione hated crowds. She hated evacuations even more. They always reminded her of that dreadful day back at Hogwarts when Voldemort had tried to lay siege to Hogsmeade and, by extension, the school. That had been horrible, but this day at the Summit was no better. Already, she had tried to get through to a staircase with a locked door, been pushed into a table which had bruised both her ribs and left knee, and then when she finally found a staircase that wasn't locked, she had been jostled so hard by an unidentified elbow that she had stumbled down half a dozen steps, twisting her ankle.

So now she was being forced to slowly hobble down the stairs as other people practically raced by her. She was half-tempted to stick out a leg, tripping people, and then ask how they liked it. She clutched the railing tightly as she made her way down, trying to ignore the pushing and shoving of the crowd around her.

"Where's Ron being over-protective when you need him?" she mumbled, grimacing as somebody else knocked into her. Unable to help herself any longer, Hermione lashed out and, with her good foot, kicked the man in the ankle. The fellow either didn't notice or was too distracted to care and he continued down the stairs with the rest of the crowd, heedless of who he banged into.

Hermione scowled and kept going. But she had only gone down a few more steps when she was once again assailed with danger, this time taking the form of being narrowly missed by a rapidly opening door. She leapt backwards and tripped on the stairs behind her, yelping. "Bleeding hell," she heard someone mutter as she rubbed her sore backside. She glanced up at the people emerging from the door, who were looking concernedly right back at her. "Hermione?" she heard one of them ask. "What are you still doing here?"

"Ginny?" And indeed, Hermione's future sister-in-law was standing beside the open door with Colin and Nadia Something-or-Other the lab worker from the DM, staring at her worriedly. "I've been having a bit of trouble getting down the stairs. Why are you three here?"

"We were in the Security Office." Ginny stepped forward and extended her hand to help her, but did not elaborate. "Come on, 'Mione. We've got to get out of here. They're starting the bomb search in a couple minutes and they want the place completely evacuated by the time they start." She bent down and gave Hermione her hand and pulled her up to her feet. "We should have been long gone by now."

Hermione gritted her teeth. "I'm coming, I'm coming," she said tensely. Ginny and the others went to hurry down the stairs, but it didn't take long before they noticed that Hermione was not keeping up. Colin had watched her struggle for a moment before he realized what had happened. He bounded back up the steps, causing Ginny to look back too. He then positioned himself under Hermione's left arm and, practically carrying her, helped her to quickly hobble down the stairs two at a time. Ginny gave them both a reassuring smile and scurried down beside them. After giving them all a brief glance from over her shoulder to make sure they were still coming, Nadia had disappeared into the crowd ahead.

After a few minutes of almost-silent struggling to get downstairs, Ginny tossed Colin a questioning look. "What level are we on?" she asked. "Are we almost out?"

"Almost," he replied. "We just passed the door to Level B. So, we've only got Level A left before we hit ground level." Ginny nodded and kept going, managing to make her way past Colin and Hermione and through a substantial part of the crush of panicking people.

When they saw the door leading off the staircase and out to the lobby, Hermione stared. She'd thought that the throng on the stairs was crowded, but it was nothing compared to this door. There must have been close to a hundred people trying to pack themselves into the space between the steps leading up to Level A and the ones leading down to Basement One alone. That was saying nothing of the rest of the crowd that surrounded the platform. It obviously wasn't meant to have that many people on it at one time and it was all Hermione could do to keep from yelling at everybody line up in an orderly fashion, though no one would have heard her if she tried.

Trying to keep calm, Hermione leaned against the railing to ease her aching ankle, releasing her tight hold on Colin, and closed her eyes, taking deep breaths. There was no need to panic. They had plenty of time. People just have a tendency to become frightened when they hear things like the fact they are currently sharing a building with a bomb. But the security workers would have started searching for it by now, Hermione assured herself. They'll find it in no time.

Taking another deep breath, she relaxed and opened her eyes. The crowd hadn't shrunk noticeably, but people waiting on the steps were inching slowly forward, so that had to be a good sign. Ginny and Colin conversed quietly; something about someone named Croaker and muggle chemicals. Hermione was about to ask what they were talking about when something small, wet and warm landed on her face.

She reached her hand to her right cheek and gently rubbed the spot that had been hit by whatever it was. She looked at her hand intently as her fingertips came back stained with red. It was blood. But not hers.

All of a sudden the staircase was filled with a bright but silent flash of light, which disappeared as quickly as it had come. The crowd spun around wildly, wondering where it had come from and Hermione heard as Ginny muttered, "What the hell was that?"

Another drop of blood fell from above and landed on the back of Hermione's hand, which was still upheld near her face. She glanced up. She didn't see anything, just a small addition to the crowd joining right behind her, murmuring about the strange flare of light. Then she saw a small flash of something falling from high above her and another drop of crimson landed beside her shoe. She leaned out over the railing and looked straight up towards the staircases to the higher floors. "What on earth is..."

And then the world exploded around her.

---------- ----------

Ron and Zacharias were still outside searching frantically for familiar faces when the first roar of fire erupted from the far side of the Summit building.

The volume of the initial explosion was so intense that not even the frightened and hysterical screaming that broke out in the crowd they were immersed in, now about 2000 strong, could hope to compare with it. The windows that hadn't been shattered by the bomb blast itself were blown out instead by the noise, and people who hadn't gotten far enough away from the building in time were showered with cascading shards of glass.

But if anyone thought that the situation couldn't get worse, they were very quickly proven wrong. Within seconds, another explosion sounded on the other side of the building on one of the upper floors, and then another from the back and then a series a smaller ones across different levels near the front. More glass and debris rained down on bystanders, and the crowd ran further away, almost as one entity, a sea of faceless people whose only main similarity was that they all had the same goal in mind for the foreseeable future--to get as far away from the Summit building as they could.

Zacharias, however, couldn't move, even after Ron grabbed onto his sleeve and attempted to pull him along with him as the redhead stumbled defiantly through the terrified crowd and back towards the Summit building. The young Auror could barely feel the persistent tugging, could do nothing more than stare in horror as the smoke from the fireballs dissipated and the raging flames licked across the face of the building. More pleading shrieks and hollering could be heard from inside. "Oh my god," he said. "There are still people in there!"

"Yes, there are," Ron vehemently agreed. "And we're going to help get them out, so COME ON!"

Finally regaining control of his body, Zacharias followed Ron, noting that the explosions seemed to have stopped for the moment. The noise of the riot outside, of course, did not diminish, though some people appeared to finally be having the same thoughts as Ron and were starting to head back to the Summit building to help the survivors. And some could do nothing more than simply pray that there were still some left to be helped.

---------- ----------

Ginny coughed roughly, choking on the thick smoke and dust that swirled through the air around her. She blinked furiously, trying to keep the tears and blood out of her eyes, and used her left arm to wipe at her forehead where a twisted piece of metal, probably part of the railing from the stairs a few stories above, had slashed open a wide gash across her skin. She twisted frantically, trying to free her right arm, which was screaming with pain, from underneath a large chunk of broken stone step. She let out a shrill cry when it finally came free and tried unsuccessfully to hold back any further tears of pain.

She panted heavily in the dusty air as she struggled to stand, her right arm hanging uselessly by her side. Her knees seemed to have suffered more than she had originally guessed, however, and were fighting her attempts to straighten in every way conceivable. She gritted her teeth together and braced herself against the nearby wall, pulling herself forcefully onto her unsteady feet. Ginny held still for a few seconds, counting silently to herself with her eyes closed for ten seconds before she even tried to start walking.

She then placed one foot carefully in front of the other and began moving, trying not to think about how much effort she had to put into her actions just to keep herself from falling over. She stumbled clumsily about, not caring exactly where she was going as she searched helplessly for Colin and Hermione amidst the moaning, rubble and debris-covered crowd.

Spotting a patch of brown with blonde highlights not too far away on her left and praying to any deity that was listening that it was Colin's highly-recognizable mop of hair, Ginny pulled herself unsteadily through the many hunks of shattered stone and metal framework. Around her, a number of others were apparently doing the same thing, checking to see if their own friends and co-workers were hurt or trying to figure out how they were going to get the stairway door open again. Neither of which, the redhead noted despairingly to herself, appeared to be positive prospects. At least half of the crowd who had been trying to get off the stairs was still buried beneath tons of dangerous and twisted debris.

A sudden thought occurring to her, she frantically patted at the right pocket of her torn and bloody dress robes, feeling for her wand. She didn't think she had ever been quite so relieved in her life as she was when she realized it was still there, in one piece. Now, as she tried to use the sore and trembling fingers of her left hand to pull it out of her pocket, she began coughing again, tears continuing to stream down her face through the thick dirt that coated her cheeks.

She fell to her knees again, relinquishing her tentative grip on her wand so that it fell back into the safety of her pocket and brought her hand up to her face to try and hold back her hacking, choked coughing. She could see spots forming in front of her eyes, but there was nothing she could do about it except to try and get a hold of herself again.

Through the haze she now found herself sinking into, Ginny heard the rubble, over by where the door had been, begin to creak and groan under pressure. She closed her eyes for a few seconds in an attempt to clear them from the dust and tears and opened them again to see several of those who had managed, like she had, to burrow themselves out of the traps the debris had tried to pin them into gather at the door and begin to pry away the stone chunks in front of the opening.

'I should go and help,' she thought to herself desperately. 'Or maybe I should keep trying to get to Colin and Hermione. I know that I should so SOMETHING, but it's so hard to get up, so hard keep moving, so hard to keep breathing in this place, this deathtrap. What happened?' Her wheezing breath was strained already and, as she tried to pull herself onto her feet again, her suffocating lungs failed her and she collapsed onto the uneven, stone-strewn floor.

* * * * *