The Pureblood Coup

Sheherazade: It will not matter that Percy saw Voldemort kill Scrimgeour. Nobody except a few order members will beleive him anyway, and he is only one, young person they won't respect. Or at least, everyone would definitely pretend they don't believe it if Percy goes blabbing. Ministry people and everyone are fearing for themselves and their families at this time, and they can't go against the media, and proclaim you-know-who killed Scrimgeour. Percy would not do that either as he knows it will put his family and himself in danger, too. I'm sure you knew that...I'm just explaining...



Chapter Four: Goodbye Blue Sky


Percy Weasley skidded to a stop outside the entrance into the Auror Headquarters on the second floor, clutching a stitch at his side, and with his other hand massaging his knees. Percy had just went through the Minister’s emergency escape route, hidden behind the curtained wall. He had traveled down a chute and then crawled through narrow tunnels.

Through the tiny cubicles of the office, he searched for the Senior Auror.

He was turning green with fright, as the thought of dispensing the news made him nauseous. Percy hated making it even more a reality.

But Percy tapped the Auror on the shoulder. Kingsley jumped from the chair as though scalded, raising his wand.

“Shacklebolt, it is only Percy Weasley. I saw the Minister die. You-Know-Who killed Scrimgeour himself.”

At these words, Shacklebolt looked like he had just received a walloping punch in the stomach. He had known this was coming. It had only been a matter of time, a question of when. There was nothing he could have done to prevent it.

“The Order must be informed,” he whispered and stood up. Kingsley seemed to steel himself, rising above the calamity that was apparently taking place. “Expecto Patronum!,” he roared.

A jet of pure white light erupted out of the auror’s wand, in the form of a wildcat. It was a beautiful lynx Patronus, semitransparent. The lynx sprinted, swiftly and gallantly through space, traveling at the speed of light.

In a loud, deep, slow voice Kingsley announced, still aiming his wand where the Patronus had went, “The Ministry has fallen. Scrimgeour is dead. They are coming.”

Seconds later, Death Eaters were storming the party for Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacour's wedding day.

A dozen Death Eaters and Wizengamot members arrived on the scene, breaking the protective enchantments on the property. There were dozens upon dozens of guests fleeing the white marquee at the Weasley family’s burrow, screaming in terrified pitches. One of the Death Eaters used a spell to break up the tent and it collapsed. Luckily, nobody was inside.

The Death Eaters, now in their masks, unlike before at the Ministry ran around catching the few whom they could get their hands on, before they disapparated.

They managed only a couple of people, and then they set off towards the crooked little house, knowing some of the order members were currently inside. A couple of the Death Eaters dragging the few guests of the wedding they had manage to catch.

Dolohov and Rowle had formed a pair as partners working together. Rowle, yelped suddenly feeling the back of his left forearm prickle. Dolohov shrugged, feeling the same thing on the back of his left forearm as well, but ignoring it.

Rowle grunted to his other burly Death Eater cohort, “Hey…my Mark just burned. Someone dared say the Dark Lords name!”

“I doubt it matters in this situation, Rowle. Seeing as we’re ordered to interrogate anybody that knows anything, and that is what we are to do.”

“We better go see who it was. Maybe it was Harry Potter.”

“Alright…Let’s go then,” Antonin Dolohov relented.

Both of them used their wands to point them like a compass, and they disapparated from the burrow's landscape to where the Taboo is signaling, leaving the sun gleaming in the trees behind them towards a forest.

Where they arrived was London, outside a pub on Tottenham Court Road, hundreds of miles from Ottery St. Catchpole, which is in Southern England. It was cloudy and rainy here in London….

Meanwhile…During these exact moments, Lord Voldemort was striding still invisible out of the Ministry. He strode with that sense of purpose and rightness about him inside the reception hall.

He past the Security desk, the confunded receptionist must have left in terror. Everything was strangely silent. The Atrium deserted.

Voldemort looked up to appraise the statue of his regime. Above the whiteness of Voldemort’s head was a stately witch and wizard, carved with ornate detail in black stone. They peered down at the place with sinister, remorseless expressions. Underneath them, in gigantic capital letters was engraved onto a plaque: MAGIC IS MIGHT. The atrium seemed much darker than ever with this new imposing presence of a monument. The former light the Fountain of Magical Breathen had exuded in the past was non existent. All was darkness.

The witch and wizard statue was currently seated on nothing to support their weight. Later, as Voldemort had planned they would repose on thrones of the rotting carnage of muggles. He smiled at this thought, thinking how artistic it was for him to come up with this work of art. What an imagination...to see Muggles in subservience. Transformed into furniture for the magical race to sit on!

He went on, gliding out the marble decked floor of the atrium. He stopped, pausing to disapparate. He could disappatate as he knew the spells to lift the anti-disapparation enchantment hold on himself, inside the ministry.

At that same moment like a flock of birds, a mileu of paper airplanes streamed through the atrium, soaring past the statue. It was Thickness’s memos traveling up to every employee that was on the highest level, level nine the Department of Mysteries.

Voldemort appeared in the desolate sky above the ministry after apparating out of the location, located deep underground. He was now high in the sky…and once again visible. He swooped along over London at a relatively fast pace. His cape flapping behind him as he flew up-right.

He was heading north looking down at the industrialized muggle city of London. It was disgusting what they had invented, he thought. He had hated this city since he was a small boy, when he had took the trains around it, by himself all the time. From Greenwitch to Sutton to Westminster to the very heart of London itself. He despised it as much now, as he had growing up in it, then.

But today he was flying over the city at such a great height, all the muggle buildings were just little dots to him.

Fury mounted in his heart at the thought of the Elder Wand, the Deathstick, the Wand of Destiny. He was terribly impatient for it, and thoughts of it consumed him for a moment.

He continued to fly in that most strange upright posture, his body whipping effortlessly through the raindrops, like they were an illusory mirage. He came close to a muggle airplane, but they probably could not see him through the rain and clouds, anyway.

Lord Voldemort, the hideous vulture of death continued to fly, the vertical slit-pupils fixed on the city below.

He saw in his mind’s eye the indelible, infamous symbol of his murders: the Dark Mark. How he wanted to cast it, so proud he was, that all of Brittania that mattered was his! He saw the Dark Mark fill with blood, the blood of muggles leaking out into the sky. Let their shortage and ineptitudes rain down on them!

After five minutes or so, he was in the area of London where Diagon Alley and Knockturn Alley would be, of course unseen to all but the magical race. But he found it easily enough, and as he came closer he descended upon the fray.

He hovered, just above the edge of the narrow alleyway that separated Knockturn Alley and Diagon Alley. He was waiting for something…

A moment later, he saw them emerge. The first band of the newly acquired Snatchers! The henchmen had a status beneath the Death Eaters. As in the hierarchy the Snatchers were like Nazi Storm-Troopers of World War II.

They were marching like soldiers, with their wands pointing to the sky above their heads.

There were other people around that they could have preyed on. But that was not the goal, yet. For today, they were instructed only to parade and only to establish the people's awareness that they were present.

They arrived at the end of the Alley way, right near the entrance to Diagon Alley, when the man, at the front apparently the leader screeched, “HALT!”

It was the Death Eater in charge of the Snatchers, Scabior. He was clad in magnificent yellow embroidered robes. It appeared that all the snatchers were wearing a similar uniform of yellow and black robes as well.

The snatchers all looked up, to Voldemort, less than fifty feet above them. Instantly they lowered their wands and kneeled. Whilst Scabior rang out, “Hail the Dark Lord!,” and he signaled with his left hand exposing the Dark Mark under his sleeve, making the ninety-degree salute.

It was custom that Death Eaters do this formal salute, while all suppporters beneath, like snatchers were to kneel before Voldemort.

They watched as Voldemort raised himself, slowly, back into the sky. To the Snatchers and Travers it was like the resurrection of a christ figure. Indeed, in a way Lord Voldemort was their own hideous christ.


The good thing is...this is the end of the chapter. Next scene is a little snippet of what Lupin reported: how the Death Eaters spent hours interrogating them after they smashed up the wedding!