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Inside a house in Hogsmeade, three men sat in the dark back room around a round table in utter silence. All three men had their wands in their hands, ready to exercise their gift of magic at a moment’s notice.

There was a creaking noise, and all three men tightened their grips on their wands as they silently stood up and stepped into different corners of the room, disappearing into the shadows. Footsteps closed in towards the room until a man entered the room. The moment he stepped in, the three men stepped out of the shadows and sat themselves back on their tables.

“How was it?” asked the short man named Bernard. A man quick on his feet and quicker with his wand.

Thomas, who had just arrived from outside, loosened a strap on his dragonhide armor. He sighed, “It’s bad. . . they are everywhere. Stations on every corner. . . organized patrol in groups of three. . . sentries on rooftops. . . these guys are not joking around.” He looked at his companions and asked, “What should we do?”

Samuel, the bulkiest of all, leaned back on his chair, making it creak. “Greengrass girl is inside the castle. We obviously can’t get in there. . . and from the looks of it, we can’t walk out of this mess,” he said.

Then, Anthony, the final member, suggested, “How about we go to the Dark Lord and offer our services— enroll if it is needed. I mean, right now, we don’t have a problem with food and water— but as the time passes, we will run into that problem. . . . It’s a good suggestion, what do you all think?”

“Food and water?” Bernard quirked his brow. “We are four people in a village full of empty houses. We can horde enough food that will last us a while. Why are you thinking about food and water now?”

“We need to think about those things. We don’t know long we will be here.”

“You think we will be here for a while?” voiced Thomas. “I saw Aurors flying over the ward. I think it’s only a while before they breach the ward, and we apparate right out of this shit show.”

Anthony scoffed, “You saw it, right? The Dark Lord cast the ward. The Aurors ain’t going come in here no way soon. We will be trapped here for a while. If we don’t go now, he might not take it kindly. . . and I don’t need to say about his reputation.”

“Or he kills us anyway,” said Samuel. “We can find a Labyrinth and get the hell out. Someone in this town is bound to have one.”

“Uhmm,” Bernard shook his head, “that’s not as easy as it sounds. People hide their Labyrinth doors in their houses, and everyone puts their own sort of locking mechanism on them— even if we find them, we don’t know if we could unlock them. With every house we go to, the risk of us getting caught increases. I don’t like it; too much risk.”

“So, what you guys say we do?”

“Well, for one, when we get out of here, we don’t take any more business from George West. The Dark Lord is not part of any services we offer. This was supposed to be a simple watch and sit,” scoffed Thomas. “I am going for a vacation after this, so you three are on your own.”

“I say we should sit and wait it out,” said Bernard. “Horde some food and water to last us a while and just stay out of sight. All agree?”

“Disagreed.”

All set of eyes widened, and all four in the team whipped their heads to the voice. Standing by the door was a skeletally thin figure with waxy and reptilian features, bone-white skin, and blood-shot sclera with dark scarlet eyes with cat-like slits for pupils. He had a chalk-white face that resembled a skull, snake-like slits for nostrils, and large hands with unnaturally long fingers like spider’s legs.The four mercenaries immediately moved their wands towards the intruder, whom they recognized at once even without ever seeing him.

“No,” said Voldemort. One word and a bare twitch of his wand from him caused all four to rise up into the air from the chairs. Their wands left their hands as they went to their throats as their mouth foamed. “I will generously impart you a never-ending vacation.”

Their eyes trembled in world-ending, mind-shattering, heart-thrashing panic.

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– (Scene Break) –

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Quinn looked at the silver dome with large veins spreading in all directions across the surface. He looked down at saw the Hogsmeade village from the sky. He had to apparate to an area along the railway track on which the Hogsmeade Express ran because Voldemort had warded an area so huge that he couldn’t remember an image of the place to apparate, so he had to apparate to a place where he had seen during seven years of travel and then fly from there to outside Hogsmeade.

That’s a big ward, Quinn thought. He could feel a magical pressure emanating from the silver ward. He roamed his eyes to the ground and spotted an area with dense trees, and lowered himself to the ground in the middle of the trees. He didn’t want anyone to see him, and while he had flown around, he had seen an Auror base on the ground and multiple Aurors on brooms in the sky. The trees were the best place to take cover.

He pushed aside a bush and stepped near the ward boundary. His brows wrinkled when he saw the trees and plants that had been dissected and carved up where the ward had touched them as if it as a laser blade.

“Okay, let’s see what we can do here,” Quinn muttered as he dismissed his mask. He raised his hands near the glowing silver, and his skin beneath his gloves tingled from being so close to a magic that his body could tell was dangerous. The magic gently flowed out of his fingertips and quietly caressed the surface. His magic interacted with the ward and sent him back inputs that his brain translated into information.

After a while, Quinn groaned and backed off. The ward was. . . tough. It was exceptionally well made, and he could tell it was exotic magic with roots he could barely recognize. “Why couldn’t he just be some dumb brute,” he sighed.

The ward was strong. From the initial look, there were no clear points to exploit. He could probably find things to exploit if he gave it time, continuous effort with a worry-less concentration. . . things that he didn’t have. He didn’t have time because Voldemort was similarly working to break the Hogwarts defenses, and he had to make sure to keep a part of his mind alert to keep hidden.

He had to find a different way to get inside.

Try to get in with Aurors? No, they themselves might take too much time to get in if they ever did.

What else?

There was only one option he could think of.

Labyrinth.

They were Labyrinth doors inside Hogsmeade, which he could target. But there came a problem with it. The Labyrinth system was made in a way that, when opened a door was opened, it would open to a random exit point placed around the country. However, the doors couldn’t be opened the other way around. The doors could only be opened one way— even Quinn himself couldn’t go to one of the exit points and open the door to get into someone’s house. Labyrinth doors were supposed to be extremely safe— and if Quinn added a key to open the doors from the outside, he would be giving a keyhole to the world— which someone eventually be able to make a key for.

But there was one thing he could do. He had made every door and exit point by hand personally and thus knew every one of them had a unique signature that only he could make out because of his situation as the creator. And while he couldn’t open the doors from outside, he could connect a door to a specific exit point for a single turn. And because he knew which door went to which home, he could pinpoint a door and connect it to his preferred choice of exit.

But the problem started after that. Even if he could connect the doors, there was no way for him to open the door from inside. So he needed someone from inside to open the door, which meant he needed to make contact with someone from inside.

He looked at the ward, and the chances of that happening were low. Not to mention, even if he met someone, there was no telling if he could convince them— there was a ward that stopped magic from going through. . . but there were always exceptions. . . no magic was perfect.

There was something he could do.

He sighed, “It would’ve been so much easier if I just installed a Labyrinth inside Hogwarts,” he had not done so and was regretting it dearly.

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– (Scene Break) –

.“Give me a report, Shacklebolt.”

Kingsley turned back and saw Robards walking to him. He turned back to the ward-covered Hogsmeade and jutted his chin to the silver barrier that stopped him from going inside. “The experts we got are already working on how to breach the ward,” he said.

“How is that going?”

“. . . It’s a tough ward, sir. I talked to them after they had worked on it for a couple of hours; they weren’t optimistic about a quick entry— it’s not looking good.”

“How fast can they enter?”

“Days. . . a week if nothing goes wrong, and things always go wrong. I think it might take two or even three weeks. . . that is if we don’t call in someone better?”

“Do I have to call in Unspeakables?”

“Or you can call someone from outside the country.”

“That. . . can work, but that’ll take time. You can’t just find people who will be willing to come work on a ward cast by the Dark Lord,” Robards sighed. Any person who came here had their lives in danger— it was possibly one of the most dangerous situations currently in the world. “Unspeakables will be better in this situation,” he sighed. “I will contact them— I’m sure they’re waiting right for it to come. . . or maybe they are already here, hiding somewhere, already working on the ward.”

“I would like that,” said Kinglsey. “How’s the Invisible Vigilante situation going?”

“. . . He killed a kid.”

Kinglsey turned to Robards with a shocked expression. “What,” he uttered. “What?” he said again.magic

“Not really a kid— twenty years old. . . but that’s still a kid. He has taken the kids of Death Eaters hostage and demands their parents in exchange. Both of Barnaby Lee’s parents are Death Eaters. He made an example out of him— kill the boy before Black could utter a word. All the kids he has, all of their parents, are in there.”

“The Dark Lord won’t budge from that.”

“I know. I always suspected he was a madman. It will take a day for Black to get in there and take him out.”

“Does he need back-up?”

“Hit Wizards will be backing him up when they enter. They want to get the credit for taking down the Invisible Vigilante. . . they’re sending a lot of themselves down there to take him down.”

“Should we also—” Kingsley stopped. “Sir. . .”

Robards followed Kingsley’s line of sight and his back straightened, and his entire body tensed from head to toe. His hand went straight to his wand and pulled it out, and so did every person the moment they saw the Dark Lord walking towards them.

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Quinn West – MC – I need to get in there.

FictionOnlyReader – Author – Today is Quinn’s birthday. Wish him well.

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The link is in the synopsis!