8 Raiding the Raiders

The moment gravity hit me, I mounted the broom and steadied myself midair. Hedwig took off from my shoulder and started scouting the area immediately. Due to her increased strength, it seemed like apparition did not bother her much. And because of the illusion, she would be almost impossible to spot.

I looked through her eye and saw that the Bones residence was a few hundred meters in front of the advanced party. Other clumps of Death Eaters were positioning themselves around the house in different places. They were mostly squads of three. In total, I could count fifteen of them. The one leading this raid was Bellatrix. I let out a sigh of relief when I heard that. She was formidable, but in canon, Fudge speculated that Voldemort was the one leading this raid. No matter how vicious Bellatrix was, she was no Voldemort. I was prepared to just employ hit and run tactics, but it seemed that now I had a better chance to make lasting damage.

The Azkaban breakout hadn't happened yet, so most of the high ranking Death Munchers were still in Azkaban. The ones here were most likely grunts, or so I hoped.

"Dobby!" I called. He popped right next to me, and I caught him before he could fall to his death. I propped him on the broom and I could see that he was not scared one bit. On the contrary, he seemed to shake with excitement on the prospect of accompanying me in a fight.

"Can you get us inside?" I asked. He concentrated for a moment and shook his head.

"No sir. The home has protections against even elves. Even old bad master did not have these protections."

I cursed under my breath. Bones was wise in putting up such protections. Not many wizards thought to ward their dwellings against unknown elves. Even Hogwarts didn't have that protection. From what Dobby told me, the only places that had these specific protections were Gringotts, St Mungo's and the Ministry. But it made sense, she was the head of the DMLE after all.

What other options did I have? The moles inside the ministry would have already shut out the floo connection to this place. The Death Eaters would have already set up an anti-apparition and anti-portkey jinxes. The patronus messages were created by Dumbledore and were exclusive to that group. Bones didn't have any way to get help now. She could use her elf to escape though.

"Can you contact the house elf inside the house somehow?"

"Dobby has worked with Noddy on a party before sir. But that was under bad old master. But the elves know that Dobby was freed by Harry Potter sir. Dobby can try."

Before I could say anything, I could see from Hedwig's vision that the house was now being bombarded by the Death Eaters. They would break the protections soon.

Dobby understood the urgency of the situation and disappeared, trying to do whatever he could to contact the house elf inside.

Instead of waiting around for that avenue to bear fruit, I dipped my hand into the artillery pouch tied to the broom handle, and brought out a handful of pebbles. Wandlessly, I levitated the pebbles while I reduced the altitude in order to get better bearings on their position.

While diving downwards, I snapped my wand towards the pebbles and cast enlargement charms on them. It was tough, casting a spell when I was already maintaining another one wandlessly, but I somehow managed and then guided them right above the targets.

Since I already knew the position of the spiders, I could already target two groups easily. Then I positioned myself right above one group, so that was also an easy target. Hedwig was right above a group while she was watching another one. So, I managed to place the boulders above those two as well. The latter two groups, I had to eyeball it a bit since Hedwig could not float in place, but I hoped it would be enough to at least cause some damage. All of them were busy hitting the protections, but even if they looked up, with the dark sky and the distance between us, they would be hard pressed to spot their doom.

I sped up my dive and let the boulders go and gave control over to gravity. Dobby appeared next to me suddenly and started tumbling down. He then quickly popped once again and appeared on my shoulder. I swerved a bit due to the sudden increase in weight, and then turned to the side abruptly to avoid a falling boulder.

"What happened?" I asked.

"Dobby spoke to Noddy. Noddy says his mistress has a lot of traps and wants to stay and fight. He wants to take the little mistress, but she wouldn't leave Madam Bones alone it looks like." I kept an eye on the falling boulders using the shared vision while I was speaking with Dobby.

"Little?" fuck. Susan Bones was also inside then. This didn't happen in canon. Amelia Bones was supposed to be alone on the day of attack. But then again, there were already so many changes at this point that I didn't care much.

As I was thinking, the boulders crashed on the unsuspecting groups. I caught the group directly below me and a group with the spiders. But the other team with the spider had Bellatrix, and she managed to shield herself just in time. Crazy witch had some scary instincts. I had also managed to miss the other two targets.

"Noddy is calling for Dobby," he said and disappeared. I swooped down to ensure that there were at least no survivors in the group below me. Meanwhile, from the shared connection, I saw that each remaining team had a Death Eater, casting a shield above them while two of them continued with the bombardment. I sent over Hedwig to look at the other crash site and see if there were any survivors.

The boulder had shattered and what was below it was a mass of blood, bone and gore. Bile rose up inside me on seeing that but I immediately clamped my mouth shut and rose myself to a height just above the trees. I quickly flew towards the closest group and landed a little bit away from them. I shrunk the broom and started approaching them.

I got confirmation from Hedwig that the other group that got hit also left no survivors. So six dead, nine alive. If I had not trained my occlumency so much, I would be openly freaking out right now due to the fact that I took so many lives. This was not the time to try to come to terms with what I had done, that could be done later. I took a deep breath and peeked out of the cover.

Hirudo formed in my hand with a meagre thought and a bit of my blood. I levitated the blade and banished it hard towards the one who was maintaining the shield. The blade sung as it pierced the air and lodged itself on the Death Eater's upper back. I immediately took cover as the Death Eater gasped and began clawing at his back. This caught the attention of the other two and they started looking around with nervous expressions. Too late. Hirudo had injected my magic into his blood the moment contact was made. All conditions were met.

I shut down the connection I had been maintain with Hedwig all this while. One possession was the best I could do now. I channeled magic into the sixth path and took possession of the downed Death Eater. His eye reflected the sixth path, as he got up to his feet. He got up too quickly for someone who was supposed to be injured. Hmm, just because I did not share the pain, didn't mean that the body wasn't damaged. I must take more care not to make the body unusable while possessing it. I hadn't tried this before, but now was a good time as any. This was the true purpose of the second path after all. I forced more magic to the possession and triggered the second path into the possessed Death Eater.

The next moment, all his skills were available to me. Which was pathetic to be honest. This was a mediocre wizard with average NEWT level skill. The only things he knew that I didn't were the unforgivables. While the two others were busy looking around for the assailant, I made him lift his wand and cast the killing curse on the comrade standing closest to him. As the other one turned around, I moved out of the cover and shot a piercing curse at his skull. I was once again not prepared for the gore that followed. The curse struck true and drilled a huge hole into his head. The resulting shower of brains and blood sprayed all over the one I was possessing. And I got to see this spectacle from two different points of views.

I summarily pulled up the balaclava and emptied my stomach on the forest floor. As I was busy spilling the contents of my stomach, there was a huge boom as the protections around the house came undone. I had no time to waste. I quickly cast a cleaning charm on my mouth and closed my mask. With a wave of my wand, the vomit disappeared from the ground and I walked towards my new lackey. I yanked Hirudo out of his back and then blasted a hole through the compound.

The blade was happy that it finally got to taste blood. And I was sure that it knew that there was more to come. I made the minion walk in front of me as I followed, eyes sweeping the place for any opposition. The shared senses allowed me to look at two places at once and in situations like these, it was a boon. Thankfully, these idiots wore masks and hoods. It wouldn't be that easy for others to spot their eyes and make the obvious connection to me. Suddenly, Dobby appeared in front of me. For a second, he was about to hit my minion. But I shook my head, telling him that he was under my control. He immediately nodded his head. How nice it was to have an ally who wouldn't question your abilities. I was sure that I would have been bogged down with questions if it were anyone else.

"Since the protections are down, Dobby can now take sir to the family."

"Where have you been going all this time then?"

"Dobby and Noddy were meeting outside the house since only Noddy could pop inside."

"They know we are coming right?"

"No sir. Noddy knows that sir wants to help. But Noddy was under orders not to let anyone inside. But Noddy said that Dobby was under no such orders." Cheeky fellows, the lot of them.

"I suppose they won't appreciate me bringing in the gimp?" I pointed towards the minion. Dobby shook his head vigorously. I wandlessly plunged Hirudo to the Death Eater's forehead as I released the possession. I once again started sharing Hedwig's view and could see that the remaining Death Eaters, led by Bellatrix had just made their way inside the house from the other side. I levitated Hirudo back to my hand as Dobby grabbed me in preparation to pop us towards Noddy. The moment the blade left his head, a fountain of blood began raining on me and Dobby. I should have known that would happen. Shaking my head in exasperation, I wiped the goggles and gave Dobby the signal.