Angelinus

Chapter 22

Raid

The Fellmate industrial complex was a hive of activity in the bright summer evening, even though it was well after seven. The big trucks hauling scaffolding moved in and out of the yard in a seemingly never-ending chain. As one truck disgorged its load of beams and scaffold pieces another loaded up with other bits and pieces to be hauled away. The second warehouse received and sent out smaller trucks with loads of boxes which had 'Fine China. Handle with Care' marked all over them. Occasionally an unmarked utility vehicle would pick up a single cardboard box, sometimes two, driving off into the evening sun. Those utilities were the ones Ron wanted watched and traced back to where ever they were going. A couple of the broomstick mounted aerial squad were told to track and report on their final destination.

Information on the inside of the warehouse was thin to the point of non-existent. They guessed it was two stories at the back and perhaps three at the front, the roof was sloped and there were small windows just under the roof peak. The front of the building had a couple of offices on the second storey. They knew that because one of the secretaries had turned on all the lights before closing the blinds, giving them a good look at the interior. One of the Auror operatives had gone in through the front door to enquire after the fine china only to be told the building was just a clearing house for wholesalers. If she wanted to make a purchase she had to go to one of the retail outlets in London.

"There wasn't much to see sir, just a reception counter where the drivers were passing over bills of lading. Through the door there was high rack shelving with a forklift moving about but the shelving cut off sight of the back of the warehouse, so I couldn't see much at all," Olivia Breton reported.

"Humm, okay, thanks Olivia." Ron sighed and flipped open his phone to make a call.

A few moments later a small, mousy brown man apparated in and grinned at his boss. "What do you need sir?"

"Jonah, can you get into that warehouse and case the joint for me?" Ron asked with a grin.

The small man turned to look at the distant warehouse and smiled cheerfully. "Piece of cake," he declared, shrank to the form of a sparrow and flew off cheeping wildly.

"Bird Animagus, registered even," Ron told Harry as they sat down on the soft, springy grass to wait.

When the sparrow returned, it perched on a branch for a second, puffing then morphed back into human form. The two accompanying sparrows flew off indignantly. Jonah Molinski fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a packet of sandwiches, devouring them before he said a word to anyone. "Fast metabolism," he muttered, stuffing another into his mouth. "Sorry about that. When you eat like a bird, it usually means stuffing your face twenty-four/seven. Okay! There are seven people in the warehouse, none of them wizards. Two have guns, both security guards, and another one has a taser I think, but is not in uniform. The building is divided about twenty feet from the south end, cutting off a space that seems to be sealed from the rest. I'm not sure of that but I saw no traffic between the two sections. There are twenty five rows of shelving split by a central aisle with one flit, which is about fifteen feet between each rack. There are huge harvesters moving about, drivers but not security people. They pick up boxes off the shelving and bring it to the small trucks that leave regularly. There were five drivers waiting near the loading dock and one of them had wholegrain breadcrumbs, which was really.... Sorry." The animagus blushed a little when one of the listening Aurors giggled softly.

Ron smiled too, nodding his approval. "Have to stay in character, humm?" He dropped his chin onto his chest thoughtfully, contemplating the leaf mulch under his feet. "Did you get any sense of the magic or Muggle devices protecting the building?"

"No sir. Sorry sir, my bird form doesn't recognise anything not living."

"No problem. Harry? Want to give it a look over for me?" Ron asked of his oldest friend.

"Yeah. Point me," Harry nodded, pulling out his wand and cocking his head expectantly.

Severus stepped up behind Harry and laid a long fingered hand over his shoulder. "Would I be a better pointer?" he asked softly near Harry's ear. Harry stiffened, nodding jerkily. "Will you be able to cope with it? That is probably more to the point," Severus added grimly.

For a second, Harry refused to move then sighed deeply. "It's too important for my reticence," he said, a miserable smile threatening to break as he conscientiously forced himself to relax.

"Ready?" Severus asked, gripping his shoulder and laying the other hand on his messy black hair. "Legilimens bifocala teltos."

Harry gasped, Severus stiffened and they both turned carefully, Harry's wand moving with them. He looked up, Severus following the move exactly, then looked around and over to the far end of the building and back again. His survey was comprehensive and encompassing before he turned and smiled wryly at Ron. "That is one really stupid moustache Ron, worse than the one you grew when we were in training."

"It is the one I grew in training," Ron protested mildly then realised what his friend had said. "You can see me?"

"Yeah, and it's really hard on Severus." They quickly moved to the plan Ron had been drawing on the slate he had brought, prodding various lines with his wand tip. "Now listen carefully. See the south end, here? There are a number of alarm spells covering it, cast by at least three people. The warehouse itself has a Muggle electronic system but it should be disabled if you cut off the mains power and take out the back-up batteries that are located under the counter. Cast ex Tenebris and you'll get around fine in the dark. I have to let Severus go now, we're getting tired."

Severus reeled back and was caught by Remus as Harry released him from the thrall he had cast to loan out his eyes. It was a very difficult and advanced spell very few managed. While Severus was skilled enough to initiate the connection, Harry was powerful enough to sustain it for more than a few seconds. They both stood panting while their various supporters held them up then grinned crookedly at each other. It had taken a leap of faith the first time they had ever tried the spell and they didn't try it often.

"You okay?" Remus asked gently as his husband panted as if he'd been running for miles.

"Humm I will be in a second. It's not easy doing three things at once when two of them are in direct opposition to each other. Legilimency and Occlumency at the same time while leaving the part of your mind that controls the senses free. Harry has to pull the same trick, and then we have to match our senses up so he can use mine. It's one of the reasons I am so fond of the Potter children. Having seen them both through their father's eyes, while he was seeing them through mine does make a difference," he murmured so softly only his partner's werewolf keen hearing could pick up the words.

Ron was continuing the briefing of his people.

~~<*>~~

The plan was simple, they would split into four parties, one to take out the electricity, one to take out the drivers on the loading dock, one to take out the workers inside the building and the final party to neutralise the spells on the hidden part of the building. Once they had the place secured, three parties would enter the hidden portion and secure it for evidence. Hopefully they would be able to rescue Louise's sister and any other captives and not find they had become casualties.

Severus, Remus, Harry and a young Auror called Sarah Dimitrios were given the task of neutralising the spells on the far end of the building, much to the surprise of the older Aurors. Dimitrios was told to guard Harry's back first and foremost, her abilities lying in the area of shielding charms and hexes. Remus automatically guarded Severus without orders, leaving him free to turn his whole mind to the alarms and guarding spells on the building. As they approached, both Harry and Severus carefully studied the spells, twin puzzled frowns pulling at their brows.

"Are you getting the same thing I am Severus?" Harry was finally moved to ask suspiciously.

"Bloody amateurish spells of low power but put together in a rather unique and extremely volatile way. Yes? This is the sort of mish-mash you would expect from third years after they have had a Hogsmeade weekend and are full of Honeydukes sugar," Severus commented acerbically and all three wizards sniggered although the Auror simply looked puzzled at the reference.

"If we take out the envelope spell - as in something to go around an owl scroll - we should be able to neutralise the squawk spell," Harry mused.

"No, we would have to take the movement detection spell at the same time or it will collapse and set off the squawk very efficiently."

"A bit like playing Jenga, isn't it?" Harry laughed as they stopped at the edge of the chain-link fence and continued to study the problem.

Remus jumped up and landed on the top strand of wire over the fence, balancing there for a second before he jumped down on the other side. A flick of his wand and an invisible knife followed the path of his jump, slicing through the wire as if it was made of butter. The two halves peeled back neatly, leaving a wide, unimpeded path through the fence. The Auror nodded her approval as she guided her charge through the gap. Severus thanked his partner with an absentminded kiss as he continued to discuss the problem with Harry.

"So, you dissolve the envelope and I'll stabilise the motion detector. Then we'll deal with what's left," Severus murmured.

It was the work of a few moments to dismantle the spells then, to their astonishment, the rest dissipated with barely a whimper. "All air, no substance. What sort of idiot protects a hidden facility with school kid type charms and spells?" Severus protested.

"Someone who doesn't really know the difference?" Harry hazarded softly. "The more I hear and read about this great conspiracy, the more I get the feeling of smoke and mirrors. Think about it. How many magical fingerprints are you seeing on this plot? And what sort of calibre are they? They are amateurs, poorly trained amateurs at that!"

"We're in," Remus told them softly as he closed the phone Ron had handed him. "These are handy little devices, we should get one," he muttered in an aside to Severus as he slipped the mobile into his pocket.

Severus smiled indulgently. "If you want one, then there is no problem. Now what?"

The assault on the building was going smoothly with only one casualty, and not a terribly serious one at that. One of the Muggle security guards had fired at one of the Aurors and hit him in the leg with the pellets from his shotgun. Fortunately they turned into foam rubber when they hit the spell field around the Auror. Unfortunately, it was a close range shot. They hadn't finished the transfiguration nor had they lost their momentum when they hit, knocking the Auror down and breaking his leg. The guard had been hit by a couple of Petrificus Totalus spells before his victim had even hit the ground.

The rest of the assault teams were in by the time Severus' team was in place and all were ready to break into the sealed part of the building. Harry and Severus re-surveyed the building, finding no nasty surprises, much to their disgust. If they had been setting the security, it would have been many layered and much, much nastier!

Remus used his wand as a cutter to create a new door in the wall closest to them, Remus was very good at those sorts of spells, slinking though the opening with the barest of movement. Nothing stirred amongst the tall, stainless steel tanks as he entered the lower floor of the building. Machinery sighed quietly to itself, a rhythmic throbbing that was so low it was felt rather than heard, like a heartbeat deep in the darkened space. Moving forward, he sensed rather than heard Severus, Harry and Sarah follow him, knowing they were using ex Tenebris to see with. He spotted movement to his left and froze, sniffing delicately before gliding away, his instincts leading him. Without even thinking, he stalked up behind the Muggle and tapped him on the shoulder with his wand, murmuring stupefy almost soundlessly. He caught the body as it collapsed, easing it to the ground. Sniffing again, he couldn't catch any further Muggle scents but he did smell blood, lots and lots of it!

Thanking Merlin that it was new moon, he continued to ghost through the area, checking for stray personnel. The area was clear, a murmur into his cell phone passing the message on to Ron who was holding his parties outside until the all clear came. A second doorway was cut from the warehouse into the hidden space and the Aurors came though, wands at the ready. There was a flurry of small hand signals too subtle for most to catch as the main assault forces sidled up to the staircase, heading for the top storey at the far end of the twenty by one hundred foot space. The phone vibrated once in Remus' hands, giving the all clear and everyone began to relax when a bitten off yelp made them all drop into combat crouches.

Instinctively, Remus added a levo to his jump that took him up to the balcony, a hand on the rail allowing him to vault into the space from an unexpected angle. One of the Aurors was down, a trickle of blood seeping out of her hair, the other was arched backward, a crazed set of eyes flashing wildly over his shoulder, a wand gouging a dent in his neck.

"We have a situation," someone muttered from the direction of the stairway and the two in front of Remus twitched uneasily.

"Hello," Remus said cheerfully. "Would there be a Jennifer Anderson here?"

There was a startled, disbelieving pause then a small uncertain voice from the back of the space replied 'yes?'

"Oh good, your sister said you had been taken too. Its Professor Lupin here and we've brought some Aurors to get you all out."

"Don't believe him, it's a hallucination. That's a werewolf I tell you, he jumped like a werewolf," a male voice said with wild hysteria.

"Professor Lupin is a werewolf, didn't you know?" someone else said and giggled. "Is that really you Sir?"

"Yes, it's really me. Watch your eyes people, I'm about to cast lumos," he warned, making it soft and gentle then slowly gaining strength.

The circle of light crept over the huddle of wild eyed and terrified young people dressed in what appeared to be an eclectic mixture of street and night clothes. They were all very frightened and a couple seemed to be watching things others couldn't see. The ghostly shapes of hospital beds drifted out of the darkness, also curtains, shredded bandages and a layer of bloody gore over the floor.

"Oh Mama! You lot made such a mess!" The soft exclamation was so incongruous there was a spate of giggles from both sides of the standoff. With the tension running out of the victims, they released their captive and allowed Remus to approach.

Ten people had been held in the facility, some of them longer than the others. As soon as they could be calmed down enough to be reasonable, Ron called for the medical teams to come in and treat them on the spot before taking them away. Each medical team was assigned an Auror who was charged to guard their patients with their lives and to record anything they said.

Besides Jennifer Anderson, there was Morgan Jeffires from sixth year, also Muggle born and very disorientated. He thought he'd been there for three weeks but he wasn't sure. He recognised both Remus and Severus, but he seemed paranoid to the point of scary when it came to the Aurors. He had been the one to club down Penny Madrigal and capture her partner Patrick O'Connell. Even when the medical teams apparated in he was more inclined to run away and hide than stay and be treated. Only Snape, grabbing his arm and ordering him to behave like a man, stopped him trying to jump out of the window as Remus gently removed the wand from his slackening hand.

Of the ten people who had been held in the warehouse, six were from Hogwarts, either present or graduated students and the other four were graduates of other schools who had been working in London before their capture. Each of them was as dazed and as disorientated as most direstium addicts, having been held much longer than the Anderson girls.

The wand he was holding belonged to Jennifer Anderson who had also concealed it in a pair of large, handmade earrings as had her sister. Jennifer had attached herself to Remus' arm and was not letting go for anyone. She clung to the man like a life-raft and wouldn't be moved from his side even when the medical team tried to remove the drip canellas from her arms. Shrugging, Remus patted her arm reassuringly and signalled Severus he was going to stay where he was for a while. Each of the patients had the same needles buried in their veins, one side to remove the blood, the other to pump the replacements in.

~~<*>~~

Severus followed the blood lines down from the ceiling to the stainless steel holding tanks on the ground floor. They were quite large and when Acclaro was cast, they sparked brightly with concentrated direstium. From the tanks, the blood was pumped though to a separator. The sophisticated centrifuge allowed the different levels to be siphoned off into their own holding barrels, blood fractions at the top, the direstium down at the bottom.

Following the charmed spark lines, Severus traced the direstium to what appeared to be a bottling plant. There it was deposited into flasks, padded in polystyrene foam then packed in plain boxes. He stared at the concentrated death in a bottle grimly, before slipping a small flask into his inner pockets. No doubt it would come in handy at some point in the future. He didn't class it as stealing, any more than he classed picking up fresh comfrey when out walking with Remus in the Forbidden Forest; just his natural urge to garner potion ingredients wherever he may.

Just for curiosity, he traced the blood fractions back and realised they were split up. The red cells were discarded and the straw coloured fluid bagged, ready to be pumped back into those poor sods who had been strapped to the beds upstairs. The concept of recycling was not one that wizards gave much thought to, but this was diabolically clever. By using old blood, they did without having to conjure up a substitute potion, which only a master brewer could have produced. If a Potions Master had been approached to brew a blood replacement potion in the quantities they would have needed, it would have stirred up quite some suspicions around the country.

Rubbing his chin thoughtfully, Snape made his way back to the main body of the rescue party.

~~<*>~~

Draco looked around the office space, pulling open drawers in the filing cabinet and peering into cupboards, visually inventorying everything he could see. Well versed in the use of computers, he was quick to power the closest one up and scan the file system, making a mental note of some of the file names. Nodding decisively to himself, he pointed his wand at the computer server, the terminals and then the filing cabinets, quickly placed the shrunken objects into his pockets and checked the time on his fob watch.

Not three minutes later there was a sudden drop in temperature and a sickly, prickling feeling to the air as two men materialised in the darkened office. The taller of the two saw Draco standing there and nodded in his direction as they engorged the contents of their pockets. He replaced the filing cabinet against the wall, while the shorter of the two hooked up the newly restored computers and flicked them on to test with easy competency. Checking that all was in order, the two nodded to Draco once again then disapparated, the office left in pristine condition.

Smiling to himself, Draco checked his watch again then silently ghosted away and rejoined the group he had been attached to by Weasley. He did not want to put the Aurors in an awkward position. He knew very well that the Aurors would possibly be just as efficient at sorting out the information. His people, however, would be a lot more ruthless in acting on it than the 'powers that be' would allow! Using time turners was, of course, highly illegal but only if you were caught. Besides, if Hermione didn't have something to work on she would be very upset with him and he really didn't like upsetting his darling wife.

* Ex Tenebris: 'See in the dark' spell. I think it was invented by A J Hall. I hope she doesn't mind.