Mather's Treaty

"AVADA KEDAVRA!"

There was a flash of bright green light and searing pain that ripped through the forms in the meadow. Farming implements like hoes, pitchforks, and scythes being brandished as weapons were dropped as their owners screamed with the pain burning through their mortal bodies. The weapons thudded softly to the ground, followed only seconds later by those who once wielded them for a deadly purpose.

Two forms continued to run, entering the woods at a dead run, pushing through the undergrowth, heedless of the bramble and thorns. They were fleeing for their lives, they knew, and though nothing would stop death from coming after them, they were determined that death would not have an easy hunt.

"I will stay the mob," panted the man. His wife clung to his arm, panting as well, but her head was shaking in emphatic denial. "One of us has to warn the others. Go." He pushed her away urgently. When she budged no further, merely staring at him with wide and terrified eyes, he pointed in the direction they had been running. "GO!"

She pressed a hard kiss on his mouth and turned to run. He watched her until the darkness swallowed her completely and then turned to face their pursuers. Their hunters were late in arriving, no doubt detained by the corpses in the meadow, but he'd had no doubt they would have come any way.

Mobs were dangerous in any circumstance, but hatred and fear made them especially dangerous. Though the lone man knew that his people were powerful, they were not powerful to take on a whole belief structure determined to eradicate his kind from the planet.

He drew in a deep breath and jumped into the fray. He hoped that his sacrifice would not be in vain, that his beloved could warn their people in time to make a difference.

"HE HAS INCITED A MOB!" came the scream. Heads poked from the small houses and huts of the people of Hogsmeade. There were screams and cries from inside homes and the small village was alive with activity mere moments later. Children were hidden, the most powerful positioned themselves in concealed places from which they could attack but not be attacked without difficulty. Someone was dispatched to the castle up the hill to warn the children and adults in residence there of the impending danger.

No one had to ask who 'he' was, for it was well known. Rufus Mather, notorious witch hunter, was well known to the magical community as a zealot and butcher. Somehow he had discovered a way to counter many a witch or wizard's ability to beat the burning at the stake, the drowning in the river and the drawing and quartering. When Mather was involved in a real witch or wizard's execution, magic rarely worked to help the victim. Rumors abounded how the zealot accomplished this but no one had concrete ideas or proof. This, more than anything, inspired terror when the name Rufus Mather was spoken.

The huge mob reached the outskirts of Hogsmeade, weapons and torches held high over their heads, the bloodlust gleaming in their eyes. Cries of outrage and vengeance spilled forth from their lips, inspired by the invigorating preaching of Mather only a few hours earlier.

The man himself was unimpressive as he strode ahead of his peasant army. His balding head, long beard and insanely bright blue eyes topped a stature that was less than regal. Rufus Mather was a short, compact and pudgy man. There seemed to be little muscle on him, yet he was a powerful man in other ways. His presence alone was mesmerizing. Men and women blindly followed where he led. When he spoke people vowed to die for his beliefs, whether it went against what they believed themselves. His charisma was so strong that no one disbelieved what he said, so convincing and confident was he.

No one saw the zealous insanity in him. Those that did often lived short life spans, eliminated by Mather's followers as a heretic, a witch, the ultimate evil. No one opposed Rufus Mather and lived to tell of it.

Hogsmeade was now a fortress without visible walls. Mather's mob could see no living being except an occasional chicken or dog roaming the street. Mather himself surveyed the scene with the merest twitch of a smile on his lips, his eyes glinting in satisfaction.

"See!" he suddenly boomed to his followers. "They flee from us, the righteous! If they are not witches, wizards and beasts of the Devil, why do they hide? Our pure minds would have detected their innocence, their God-given purity if they are not! Yet here we see, do we not? They show their guilt by not showing themselves!"

The crowd rumbled its agreement. Shouts of "find them" and "burn the Devil's village" erupted in the crowd, the catalyst in making the mob surge forward like a tidal wave and wash over the village. Flames licked the sky within minutes, casting a red/orange glow on the scene. Shadows danced demonically as the mob moved to and fro, seeking their intended victims.

There was an occasional flash of green, blue and white light from discharged wands. There were occasional screams from captured witches and wizards and from targeted mob members.

"FIND THEM! KILL THE SERVANTS OF SATAN!" screamed Mather maniacally. He danced on the edge of the town, watching in masochistic glee the deaths of those witches or wizards found. Finally the fanatical gleam dulled from his eyes and he drew from his side a book that he had been carrying.

Mather's Treaty In the Purging of The Morning Star's Followers it was called, or Mather's Treaty. Those of magical ability often cringed in disgust at the book's mention. Within it, many reckoned, were words of hate and death so strong that even the Unforgivable Curses could not be compared as its equal. It was said that at each attack he incited, Mather would then stand at the witch or wizard's house or execution site and read from it. What exactly was read, no one really knew, for he spoke in a language that no one understood. It was said by non-magical people that it was the divine language spoken in Heaven. Magical people claimed it was the rantings of a lunatic. All agreed the words held a power of some sort.

Mather's voice droned on, becoming frenetic as he read, then suddenly his voice dropped in pitch and stopped altogether. With a satisfied look around, he nodded once and looked up the hill at the castle perched in the distance. Before only he had seen it; now his followers gasped in horror as a huge many towered castle appeared in the parting mist.

"THERE!" thundered Mather. "THERE YOU SEE THE DEVIL'S EARTHLY RESIDENCE! INSIDE ARE THE HIDDEN DEVIL'S SERVANTS! THEY MUST BE DESTROYED!"

The frenzied crowd merely stared in abject terror, unsettled by the huge castle that appeared from nowhere.

Angry that the mob didn't immediately charge to attack the castle as he desired, Mather began to badger and abuse them into motion. The people moved but not in the direction that he wanted. They retreated quickly, almost crushing each other in their haste to depart.

"NO!" screamed Mather, enraged, the maniacal glint alighting in his blue eyes once again. He grabbed a nearby farmer and harshly turned him around. "KILL THEM! THEY MUST DIE!"

The farmer's fear was palpable yet his sense of self-preservation, heightened by his own ignorance and belief in superstition, was stronger than his desire to follow Mather's orders. He shook his head and shouted his denial.

Angry beyond sense, Mather grabbed the farmer's scythe from the man's lax grip and sliced through the farmer. Insanely emboldened by the death, Mather waded into the crowd, slicing here and there. The mob, sensing a new and dangerous element among them, turned on Mather in blind fury. When they had finished and had fled in mindless haste, they left Mather's broken body lying beside his trampled book.

When the residents of Hogsmeade emerged with the daybreak from their hiding places, they stood around Mather's body, unable to bring themselves to rid their street of it. Their fear was great of Mather, but even more so was it of the book.

Finally the headmaster of the school within the castle's walls apparated the deceased Mather to a spot within the forest just beyond the castle and the village. He buried the body deep and cursed the ground in the hopes that whatever impurities tainted the soul of Rufus Mather would never be freed. The book was taken to the school and kept within a vault in the headmaster's chambers.

Each successive headmaster at Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was shown the book's location but none ever dared to even open it. Each one had heard of the story of Rufus Mather and his Treaty and none wanted to mess with something so potentially horrible.

Only one man dared to even open it up. He flipped through the yellowed pages with an intent glint in his watery blue eyes. He closed the book with a shrug and placed it back in the wooden box it had been stored in for centuries. It seemed harmless to him physically, but legend and rumor often how more power than anything else in the world.

Albus Dumbledore swore like his predecessors that the book would never emerge from the darkened vault and see the light of day. While Dumbledore believed the legend that if the book saw the sun's rays Mather would return was merely silly superstition he was wise enough to know that you never tempted Fate.

You just never knew what Fate might do to throw your world awry.