.
"Uncle, I'm going to London," said Quinn as he peeked inside Elliot Dalton's study inside the West Manor. The older man was focused on his work.
Elliot looked up from the documents on his desk. Quinn was dressed in his non-magical-styled clothes, which he wore most of the time, except when he needed to wear clothing prevalent in the magical world for appropriate occasions.
"London? May I ask why you want to go there?"
Quinn raised his hand. He had a ticket stub in his hand. "I'm heading to the cinema. I might return late, so please don't wait for me at supper. I will eat dinner at home, though. So please ask Polly to set up something for me."
"I see, be careful with the time, then, and try not to stay out too late," nodded Elliot. "Return home before your grandfather goes to sleep."
"Understood," said Quinn.
As Quinn left, Elliot's eyes caught a glimpse of something white around Quinn's neck. Nonetheless, the door closed before he could get a clear look. He shook his head and assumed that it would be some sort of non-magical style clothing. He forgot about the matter and returned to his work.
Outside Elliot's office, Quinn started walking towards the manor's door. He looked at the ticket stub in his hand that showed today's date. August 25, 1994. A week before he had to leave for Hogwarts. Today, however, the day itself was of great importance.
'Sorry for lying, but I had to do it,' thought Quinn as he pocketed the ticket stub that was going to go unused.
Determination flashed through Quinn's eyes as he thought of what he was about to do and the possible repercussions that his actions might cause. Among such thoughts, Quinn wished that today went without a hitch, that nobody would know what he was about to do. Everybody would be better if that was the case.
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- (Scene Break) -
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*Pop*
With a popping noise as if it was a plastic bag popping, Quinn's feet touched misty moor. He had apparated in a familiar place. His eyes immediately looked around to check for any living and observing presence; after carefully observing his surroundings along with the Human-presence-revealing spell (Homenum Revelio), Quinn concluded that he was alone in the deserted stretch.
He looked at a line of wooden posts that were placed consecutively creating a line. Between the consecutive posts there were broken barbed wires. When they had been intact they had formed a fence.
Quinn blinked and casted the Point-Me Charm In front of him, an arrow appeared pointing north. Then he set off across the deserted moor. He was unable to make out much through the mist, so he simply relied on the north-facing arrow to guide him. After about ten minutes, a small stone cottage next to a gate swam into focus. Beyond it, Quinn could make out the ghostly shapes of hundreds and hundreds of tents. They rose up to a slightly sloping large field. On the horizon, a dark forest could be seen.
He dispelled the Point-Me Charm, and stopped before he was too near to a stone cottage. The custom-made disillusionment charm he had made from his knowledge of sensory illusion magic covered his body and made him invisible to all five senses. After making sure that he was invisible, Quinn resumed walking and passed by the stone cottage, ignoring the muggle who lived inside and the ministry employee who hid in the cabin in case he asked too many questions and needed to obliviate him.
Quinn entered the gate of the campsite. He trudged up the misty field in the middle of long rows of tents. Most looked almost ordinary; their owners had clearly tried to make them as non-magical as possible. Some, though, slipped up by adding chimneys, bellpulls, or weather vanes. On a side note, there were tents so obviously magical that Quinn wondered if its owners were even trying to hide that they were magicals. Halfway up the field stood an extravagant silk like miniature palace, with several live peacocks tethered at the entrance. A little farther on, he passed a tent that had three floors and several turrets, and a short way beyond, there was a tent that had a front garden with a birdbath, sundial, and fountain.
'Showoffs,' thought Quinn. The blatant disregard of the Statute of Secrecy in this place made Quinn realise once again the huge disconnection there was between the magical and non-magical society. The law to separate the two communities had isolated the magical society so much that they didn't even know what was considered non-magical. An apparent fault from the education system failing to educate their students about the one thing they are supposed to hide from.
He reached the very edge of the wood at the top of the field and stared at the litter of magical tents blocking his vision of the horizon. Every four years, only one event would cause this many magicals to gather in one place, and that event was today. On August 18, 1994, magicals from the six continents gathered at Dartmoor, England, to attend the Quidditch World Cup, and today was the finals between Ireland and Bulgaria.
The man in the stone cabin that Quinn passed by, Mr. Roberts, owned and operated many campsites in the area, and one of those campsites had been booked by the British Ministry of Magic for the Quidditch World Cup. Quinn had come here because today was the day the Death Eaters would ravage the campsites and prey upon muggle-borns for sport.
Quinn looked up and wondered whether the Dark Mark would make an appearance. Barty Crouch Junior had been the one who had launched the Dark Mark to the sky over the campground in the original books.
Quinn knew Junior's backstory, and if the current events followed the original path, then he would be here at the finals, beneath an invisibility cloak under the Imperius Charm. Junior would regain control here and come upon the scene of Death Eaters destroying everything in their way. In response, he would get angry and cast the Dark Mark. His anger would stem from their lack of initiative in finding their master, which he yearned to do and yet was unable.
'An emotional, yet stupid decision. Bringing him here is foolish,' thought Quinn. Time made people slack, and it was the case in this situation.
He didn't blame Senior that much, though. It had been over a decade since he had kept his son holed up in the house. And only because of the continuous insistence of their house-elf, Winky, and his son's love for Quidditch, did Senior allow Junior to come to the finals.
Quinn didn't know if the events of the original books would occur today. He knew that Barty Junior was out of Azkaban because both Mrs. Crouch and Barty Junior were legally dead, which meant that the events of the original books were followed to some extent. However, he didn't know whether the Death Eaters would attack or if Barty Junior would be able to regain control of his body. There was a chance that things might go south, though. Because of that, Quinn was there.
'Let's see how many I can take down today,' thought Quinn. He sat down near one of the trees, still invisible, waiting for the Death Eaters to arrive.
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- (Scene Break) -
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The game was over, and people started to return to campsites from the stadium that had been set up by the Ministry. Raucous singing could be heard on the night air as he stepped back a bit into the woods, where the leprechauns' lantern's light couldn't reach as they kept shooting over his head, cackling and waving their lanterns.
'It's time,' thought Quinn, he turned himself visible again and started to remove his clothes. He removed all of his non-magical styled garments. Under them was stark white spandex that stuck close to Quinn's body. The spandex had white patches stuck all over: two on the chest (one on each pec), two on the abdomen, two on each arm (one above and below the elbow each), one on each of the back of his palms, four on each legs, one on each feet and, finally, three patches that covered his back.
Luckily, no one was there to see him, or Quinn would've died of sheer embarrassment. Fortunately, Quinn wouldn't be wearing only white spandex. He tapped his chest, and blue waves of energy traveled throughout the white fabric. After the wave traversed the entire material, the fabric changed.
The white transformed into multiple colors; green-brown, olive drab, dark chestnut, and fern green covered Quinn's body. The spandex that had been stuck to Quinn's body expanded and turned into cargo trousers and a hooded military-style jacket. All of this was over a black skin-tight full-sleeved shirt that covered his head, hiding all of his hair, and on the bottom below the cargo pants were black compression pants.
Quinn raised his hands and saw them covered in tactical gloves. If you looked down at his feet he had tactical boots, both in dark green camo that suited the night and the forest. Every inch of his body except his face's front was covered. And even his face was hidden beneath the shadow of the hood.
「Project Noir」
A project Quinn had launched in his second year, just a few days before Quinn had ventured into the Sin vault. The project had been put on hold by sin-Quinn, who didn't like the prospect of hiding himself. However, regular Quinn wanted his identity hidden whenever he desired, so he reinitiated the project. Furthermore, he had started researching and developing a rotation between his projects after the day he encountered in Hogsmeade the Novellus Accionites trying to kill first-gen magicals.
He had been lucky that day as no one identified him or shot a Revelio charm his way to disable his invisibility. But Quinn knew that luck was fickle. As such, he prepared a transformative set of tactile attire which Quinn would design to change according to his needs. The spandex and patches over the spandex held enough clothing to transform into practically anything Quinn wanted to wear: if Quinn wanted swimming trunks, the material would retract until he was wearing just trunks, or if he wished to don layers of winter clothing, the extra material inside the magically expanded patches would release the required material.
The version Quinn was wearing only held non-magical fabrics and didn't contain magic-resistant leathers because Quinn couldn't fit those materials into the designs. Those materials didn't interact with Quinn's magic and would malfunction. Sometimes, the fabric would eject out randomly. Quinn, personally, didn't like transformative clothing like that because they were unstable, and an ample enough magical interference would cause them to break down. Nonetheless, Quinn had managed to accomplish just enough resistance with charms so that this setup wouldn't malfunction.
However, for now, if for some reason Quinn's disillusionment was turned off, then his identity wouldn't be instantly revealed.
Suddenly, Quinn heard some commotion from the campsite.
'Time for the invisible vigilante to return.'
A plume of smoke appeared in his palm, a front mask appeared in front of his face. The gear was complete.
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- (Scene Break) -
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Quinn entered the campsite, his invisibility back on as he moved in the dark, unseen. He could only be noticed under the light of the torches as a negligible distortion, and that was only when Quinn sprinted.
Under the light of the few fires that were still burning, he could see people running away into the woods, opposite to the direction he was running towards. People fled en masse, running away from something that was moving across the field toward them, something that was emitting odd flashes of light and noises similar to gunfire. Loud jeerings, roars of laughter, and drunken yells could be heard; then, a burst of intense green light appeared, illuminating the scene.
A crowd of wizards, tightly packed and moving together with wands pointing straight upward, was marching slowly across the field. Quinn squinted at them... They had their heads under a hood, and their faces were masked, just like him.
High above them, floating along in midair, four struggling figures were being contorted into grotesque shapes. It was as though the masked wizards on the ground were puppeteers, and the people above them were marionettes operated by invisible strings that rose from the wands into the air. Two of the figures were very small.
More masked Death Eaters joined the marching group, laughing and pointing at the floating bodies. Tents crumpled and fell as the marching crowd became bigger. Once or twice Quinn saw one of the marchers blast a tent out of his way with his wand. Several caught fire. The screaming grew louder.
The floating people were suddenly illuminated as they passed over a burning tent and Quinn recognised one of them. Mr. Roberts, the campsite manager. The other three looked as though they might be his wife and children. One of the marchers below flipped Mrs. Roberts upside down with his wand; her nightdress fell down to reveal voluminous mounds, and she struggled to cover herself up as the crowd below her screeched and hooted with glee.
'They are alive,' thought Quinn in relief, and then he moved his head above and watched the smallest child, who had begun to spin like a top, sixty feet above the ground, his head flopping limply from side to side.
'Good, good, good,' thought Quinn as he took in deep breaths. 'This is helping; this is clearly helping. These f**ckers are helping me... helping me to bring their doom.'
Emotions were a tricky factor in magic. A wizard or witch couldn't use emotions any time they desired; things weren't that simple. If a magical user wanted to draw upon the emotion of anger, but they were happy and didn't have a powerful enough source that would provoke anger, then they wouldn't be able to draw their wrath at all.
Any wizard or witch needed to feel the emotion to use said emotion. And currently, Quinn was brimming with rage. He wasn't a person with a solid moral compass and didn't mind inflicting pain to those who deserved it for his own avail, but the scene in front of him wasn't right even under the most loose morals.
Mr. Roberts and his family had been subjected to multiple memory spells because the magical population gathered here didn't understand how to act like the non-magicals. Because of the magical people's incompetence, an innocent family had their memories altered for a week just so that the wizarding society could enjoy a sports tournament.
Now, they were being levitated above and made a joke out of. The children were man-handled so roughly that Quinn feared that they would be injured, and this entire thing was making him feel so angry that the magic was bubbling with fury inside his body.
Quinn raised his hand, and the family of four stopped in midair; they stopped flopping around and became rigid. The Death Eaters that were puppeteering them stopped because the muggles they were playing were suddenly out of control, causing the entire march of Death Eaters to stop and stare up.
The Levitation Charm (Wingardium Leviosa) wouldn't levitate living objects, but there were spells created to levitate living beings. The problem with those Charms was that the target's internal magic interfered heavily with the control of the Charms. If a target's magic was more potent than the caster's, then the Charm wouldn't work correctly, or in some cases, outright fail without even working for a second.
The family of four didn't have magic, so they could be easily controlled, and Quinn's magic was leagues more potent than any Death Eater present in the campsite. Exhausting the core every day for nearly eleven years was nothing to sneeze at. And out of those eleven years, roughly half of the time had been when Quinn's body was in a flux of accelerated growth because of his physical age.
The Death Eaters saw the muggle family being floated away and tried to get them back in control, but their magical attempts were thwarted and snapped as if they were thin, dry branches.
"Shit! Why isn't this working? Hey! Help me out here," shouted a Death Eater, getting frustrated.
Multiple of them banded up together. However, they weren't able to get a hold of the family. It felt as if they were trying to oppose an unstoppable force. They could only watch as the four captives floated away from their reach.
"... What's happening?"
"How is this possible?"
"Why aren't our spells working?!"
The answer came to them in the form of a violet spell-light coming straight towards them. One of the less drunk Death Eaters pulled up a shield charm against the upcoming spell, but all that did was spread its effects. The violet spell-light came into contact with the transparent shield and didn't cut through it but created an immense explosion that blasted half a dozen Death Eaters.
"... Who is it?!" yelled one of the Death Eaters. All of them had their wands out, ready to curse the one who cast the spell.
The response was another two violet spell-lights screeching towards them. This time they were ready, and four Death Eaters in front pulled up their Shield Charms, but once again, the violet spells exploded and made them tumble like bowling pins.
The onslaught wasn't over; this time, the violet spell came from their left instead of the front. And it scared them because the intensity and size of the violet spell light were thrice as large as before. When the light came in contact with them, the Death Eaters were blasted away like they had been hit by a hippogriff at full speed.
Seeing that the Death Eater march was broken, Quinn moved in closer, and as he did, his hands showed in a pale icy-blue light that was capable of giving a chill to anyone who saw it. His steps were silent as a wild feline going in for a kill, his stone-grey orbs shining with a calm fury and his magic stirring, deadly.
Spells started to shoot out from the disorganised Death Eaters; they tried to take out anyone near them by making a barrage of attacks, but Quinn would simply swat them away like they weren't dangerous charges of destructive magic.
The Death Eaters then heard a voice. It was a throaty whisper, distorted beyond what could be perceived as human. It sounded like it came from just behind their ear, yet it seemed like it was everywhere, surrounding them like a blanket. It crept over them like vines of Devil's Snare, but instead of strangulating them, it told them a single word.
"Run."
Then hell broke loose as a dozen ice spikes whistled towards them. Screams filled among the Death Eaters as one of the spikes nearly tore an arm out of one of their members. Others weren't that lucky as some instantly lost their legs and arms as the ice spikes pierced through flesh and bone alike.
The voice once again sounded near them, like it was standing among them. Just like the ice spikes that tore through them, it was cold and triggered a dread inside them.
"Too late."
It was time for the hunters to be hunted.
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-*-*-*-*-*-
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Quinn West - MC - Dressed in full camo-gear - in Silent Fury.
