Chapter 41
"You can't possibly think that killing us here will work out for you," Harry scoffed, drawing on his magic as he waited for Liam or the house-elves to begin attacking. "Our families know where we are."
"Oh, I'll be sure to take care of them as well," Liam sneered.
"Why are you doing this?" Hermione asked. "You know what Declan did to your mother, what he did to…"
"Oh, do you ever tire of hearing yourself speak, you irritating little creature?" Liam hissed, making her flinch. "Merlin, this is why I don't bother dealing with people anymore. Sinead was just like you, convinced she was smarter and more capable than she was, to the point it drove her to think she knew better than everyone."
"Hermione was consistently at the top of her class at Hogwarts," Luna pointed out, backing up with the others to avoid being surrounded, "so at the least, you're wrong about her thinking she's smarter than she is."
"Well, for all her apparent brilliance, she's missed out on one little fact," Liam replied. "I am not Declan's victim, girl."
"He murdered your mother and tore you from her womb, forcing you to grow up without her," Hermione scowled. "What would you call that if not making you his victim too?"
"Progress," Liam smiled.
"Progress?" Rias asked, confused.
"I'm a full four inches taller than Declan, my eyes are a paler shade of blue, my hair slightly fairer, and my jawline more square," Liam replied, smiling as he felt his jaw, "and I managed this without losing his quite strong cheekbones…"
"What the hell are you talking about?" Akeno asked, baffled as Harry gasped.
"Wait...you're not saying…" he breathed, and Liam chuckled.
"I did figure it would be the one man in your group who figured it out if any of you would," he sneered. "Say it boy; tell them all of my brilliance."
"Harry?" Hermione asked.
"Diarmid?" Harry asked and Liam laughed.
"Ah, it is good to hear that name again," he chuckled. "I might actually name the next one Diarmid just so I can again for a while."
"Wait, what?" Rias asked, looking at Harry in confusion.
"Don't look at me," he replied. "From everything Voldemort knew, this kind of long-term possession shouldn't be possible, but the way he's talked about Diarmid's wife more than once…"
"Your Voldemort was a rabid dog," Diarmid muttered. "He was powerful, of course, but I always got the sense that he was his own worst enemy and figured that he'd get himself killed in the end, which, it would seem, he did."
"How could you possibly be Diarmid?" Hermione asked.
"After my daughters died and I was left with nothing but a drunken wretch as my heir, I began to look into...ways to safeguard my legacy," Diarmid replied.
"Why did you not just make a horcrux like any normal psychotic wizard would?" Harry asked. "You could have even sacrificed your son."
"Oh, I contemplated it, but in the end, I couldn't stomach the idea of leaving my soul torn apart like that," Diarmid replied. "Such...blemishes would have bothered me immensely. The solution I found was based on the horcrux ritual, though, as I found a way to split my soul temporarily, placing the removed part not in an object like you normally would, but in a living vessel, one that I could then take control of entirely, pushing out the host soul."
The sheer pleasure in his voice as he spoke suggested that this was something he had wanted to discuss for a long time. He was proud of the horrors he'd pioneered, of the depths he'd sunk to in his evil, and even Rias, an actual born devil, was taken aback by him.
"You possessed your own son?" Hermione asked.
"His body was a half-pickled ruin by the time I finally figured out how to deal with him," Diarmid spat. "His heart was strained, his liver nearly shot, and his brain had degraded, though whether that was the fault of the alcohol or that it had simply atrophied from disuse, I cannot say. Repairing the damage took years, and it wasn't until I sired a new vessel and possessed him that I truly felt like myself again."
"You did father Liam, then?" Luna asked, horrified.
"You raped that poor, innocent girl, let your spawn develop inside her, and then murdered her?" Akeno asked, her glare downright murderous.
"I didn't rape her," Diarmid scoffed. "I seduced her, impregnated her, and then told her that an opportunity had come up on the other side of the world that would take me away for the next several months."
"You did murder her, though," Harry replied. "Why?"
"For one thing, I have no desire to live with a woman again," Diarmid muttered. "I did that once, and it didn't go well. Beyond that, though, I refuse to allow a woman's influence to ruin a perfectly good heir again. Sinead never failed to coddle Desmond as a boy, and I, focused as I was on my work, didn't notice until it was too late just what a weak-willed, useless creature she turned him into. I tried to help him, to get him to see what he was doing to himself and to his family, but nothing ever worked, and in the end, there was but one possible solution."
"You're insane," Hermione hissed, and he chuckled.
"I prefer to think of myself as a visionary," Diarmid replied. "With every generation, I grow more and more perfect. Eventually, once I'm fully satisfied with a body, I will begin to just clone that one, using a technique I stole from an old acquaintance and have very nearly perfected, but that will probably be at least three generations from now. As much as I have enjoyed this rare opportunity to discuss my work, and as grateful as I am for that opportunity, I can't exactly let you leave alive."
"Leaving is the last thing I'm doing, you son of a bitch," Fleur glared, her eyes black with rage and her voice downright avian. "I will have my father's blood sample, preferably taken from your roasted corpse."
"Such fire," Diarmid chuckled. "I do so wish your kind could have sons. I'd sooner kill myself than be a woman, but the benefits of being a Veela would be nice."
"You know, Diarmid, there is one thing you probably shouldn't have told us just now," Harry chuckled, and the other man just furrowed his brow.
"Oh?" Diarmid asked. "What's that?"
"Your whole body swapping technique relies on your splitting your soul and then somehow putting it back together in the new host," Harry replied. "As you've just disposed of Declan and thus haven't had a chance to create a new successor yet, you're mortal right now."
Diarmid flinched just slightly at that before sneering, saying, "Mortal I might be, but I'm also more than up to the challenge of taking down a host of schoolchildren. You might have bested Voldemort somehow, but I am far older and far more knowledgeable than he was."
"You're certainly just as arrogant as he was," Rias muttered, summoning the power of destruction and unleashing a wave of it at him.
Diarmid dodged deftly, and his eyes went wide as Rias' wings appeared, going even wider when the rest of them showed off their own wings.
"Devils?" he breathed. "How?"
"Still think we're just schoolchildren?" Harry spat as Fleur held forth her hands and sent a jet of fire right at him.
Diarmid froze it in mid air and shouted, "Avada Kedavra."
Rias destroyed the killing curse with ease, and just as Akeno was about to respond, the house-elves, which had been standing behind their master through that entire exchange, jumped forth and were suddenly replaced by clones of Diarmid's current form.
"What the fuck?" Harry asked.
"You have no idea what you're facing, boy," Diarmid spat, the seven copies of him speaking in unison as they raised their hands towards him.
A barrage of killing curses, organ-melting curses, bone-breakers, and blood-boilers was sent their way, and Rias moved swiftly to defend them. Bolts of lightning raced towards the copies of Diarmid from Akeno, joining Fleur's fire, and Harry's variety of increasingly dark curses, but nothing got through their seemingly impenetrable defenses. Hermione and Luna worked to help Rias in stopping their enemies' own assault, barely managing to hold them at bay.
"What the hell is this?" Hermione asked.
"Illusion magic," Harry shouted over the deafening roar of the magic. "None of them are wielding wands, see? Even the real one isn't, either because he doesn't need it or because he's fucked off to let the elves kill us."
"This isn't elf magic," Luna said, conjuring stones to throw in front of the killing curses that Rias couldn't destroy in time. "He's…"
"Channeling his magic through them," Harry concluded grimly, increasingly convinced that they were facing more elves than the the seven copies of Diarmid they could actually see.
Redirected spells hit the walls but caused virtually no damage, and he wished that he had the luxury of trying to figure out just how that was possible just then. Diarmid's assault was relentless, his magical reserves clearly being near devil level, another mystery to be solved later. It was less like facing one opponent or a group of opponents, and more like facing a united, incredibly powerful hivemind, and even Rias and Akeno, the heaviest hitters among them, were hard-pressed to get a single hit in.
"I have an idea," Luna announced.
"Just about anything would be nice right now," Rias muttered through gritted teeth, focused on destroying incoming spells as quickly as she could.
"It's something I found in one of those books, called fireball," Luna replied.
"Wait, is that the...Luna!" Hermione exclaimed as the short blonde unleashed the spell right at the center of the room, engulfing the entire thing in an explosion of fire.
"Fucking hell, how has no one thought to use these little fuckers to take over the world before?" Sirius asked himself as he ducked under yet another flying axe conjured and lobbed his way.
He had been on the defensive from the moment Kreacher and Dobby started attacking him, both of them looking like they were in a trance, and if he didn't know that Koneko and Kiba were upstairs and likely about to join the fray, he'd have been more than a little concerned just then. As it was, he knew that his best bet was holding firm and letting the devils sneak in and deal with them quietly, something that they did a moment later, hitting both elves upside the head so hard that they fell unconscious.
"Well, clearly someone has," Kiba muttered, and Sirius chuckled.
"Yeah, but I mean other than the prick who created them," he replied. "There have been so many dark lords who tried to take over various countries, and I don't think any of them have ever tried to use elves as foot soldiers."
"This is hardly the time for this," Koneko hissed. "If you've been attacked…"
"Then the Delacours almost certainly have too," Sirius muttered. "Take me with you."
"Why?" Kiba asked.
"Because I'm not a devil and might actually have a better shot at talking to them," Sirius replied. "What are we going to do with these two?"
"They're sturdy enough that they should be fine, but we're going to need to get…" Kiba went to reply when a sudden alert made both him and Koneko freeze.
"That was from Rias' familiar," Koneko breathed. "We need to go now."
Kiba grabbed Sirius, and the three of them disappeared in a ritual circle, hoping that they'd only have to deal with the one elf they knew about.
"Oh, Sebastian," Apolline said mournfully as she helped her husband hobble along into their home.
"It's...okay," Sebastian replied, his every breath sounding labored. "The pain is...subsided. I just need...to rest."
Apolline helped him into his chair and sighed, saying, "I still say you should be in bed."
"Later," Sebastian replied. "I've spent most...of the last few days in bed...when I wasn't in an ice bath. I just want to spend...an hour or so...seated instead. Where is Gabby?"
"Upstairs," Apolline replied. "I didn't tell her you were coming in case you just wanted to go straight to sleep."
She also hadn't known how bad he'd look, and the reality was almost as bad as what she'd envisioned. His skin was pale and his face gaunt, as though he'd lost even more weight than he apparently had. Healer Allard claimed that on top of causing damage that she couldn't even let herself think about yet to his reproductive system, the third wave of the curse began to drain him terribly. He thought that Sebastian would likely recover some of his strength in the coming days but couldn't say much more. He didn't need to say that he wouldn't survive another wave at this point; that was plainly obvious.
"Bernadette?" Apolline asked tiredly.
"Mistress calls Bernadette?" the family elf asked dutifully.
"Bring Gabrielle downstairs," Apolline replied, "and tell her her Papa has come home."
"Bernadette will, Mistress Apolline," Bernadette replied, disappearing with a pop.
A moment later she returned, having brought the excited little girl with her, and she jumped into her father's lap before Apolline could stop her.
"Papa!" Gabrielle exclaimed, tearing up immediately. "Oh, Papa, are you alright?"
"Just a little tired, little dove," Sebastian replied, straining to get that out in one breath as he hugged her. "Sorry for scaring you."
"It's going to be alright, Papa," Gabrielle whispered, tears running down her cheeks. "Mama says Fleur and 'Arry are working to stop the bad man who hurt you."
"What?" Sebastian asked, glaring at Apolline.
"I didn't say that?" she said, looking down at her daughter in confusion.
"Yes, you did," Gabrielle replied. "You were arguing with that mean auror lady and you said that Fleur and 'Arry had gotten closer to finding the man than they had. You're going to be okay, Papa. 'Arry is a hero; he'll save you."
"I didn't know she was nearby," Apolline muttered, looking at Sebastian apologetically. "Elodie stopped by with a few questions about Fleur."
"I s...get down!" Sebastian exclaimed, reaching for his wand despite how exhausted he felt as a knife came barreling towards Apolline's head.
She ducked under it and barely managed to stop the next one as she whipped around, looking down in horror and confusion as Bernadette continued to lob their kitchen knives at her.
"Bernadette?" she asked, conjuring shields to catch them. "What are you doing?"
The elf didn't answer, and Sebastian forced himself to his feet, pushing Gabrielle behind him as he prepared to try and engage the elf.
"Her eyes," he said. "Her eyes are...clouded over...like."
"Enough," a new voice said, and both Apolline and Sebastian watched in bewildered confusion as a small bat creature appeared in their living room and transformed into a beautiful woman.
She held out her hand, and the knives all turned to ash.
"Get back, all of you," the bat girl said. "Reinforcements will be here soon."
"What are you, and how did you get in here?" Apolline asked, her eyes widening as she watched Bernadette send a concussive blast of energy at Sebastian, which the bat girl vanished.
"I am the familiar of Rias Gremory of the great devil house of Gremory," the bat girl replied, "and I have been tasked by my master with protecting you."
"Devils?" Sebastian asked, beginning to wonder if he was still in the hospital and experiencing some kind of fever dream. "Why would…"
"Piss off, you little gremlin," Koneko muttered, kicking Bernadette across the room and into the wall.
"Bernadette!" Gabrielle exclaimed. "Why did she attack us? What's going on?"
"Koneko?" Apolline asked, jumping back as bat wings sprang from the white-haired girl's back. "What the hell?"
"You're not wrong," Sirius chuckled. "There's a lot we need to explain to you, but first off, I'm Sirius Black, Harry's godfather, and this is Kiba, a friend of his and Fleur's. You've already met Koneko"
"Stand down," Bernadette said robotically. "You're not among my targets."
Koneko launched herself at the elf, getting blasted into the ceiling for her trouble, and Kiba conjured a blade to slice through the table that Bernadette sent their way.
"The one who cursed you is a man named Diarmid Lynch," he explained. "He controls all of the house elves, and he's ordered Bernadette to kill you."
"But she would…" Sebastian went to say just as Koneko managed to punch his elf in the face, knocking her out cold.
"That won't keep her down forever," the white-haired girl sighed. "We need to get all of you to safety."
"I am not going anywhere with you," Apolline hissed. "What have you people gotten my daughter mixed up in?"
"At the moment, the rest of your family is more mixed up in trouble than Fleur," Sirius explained. "Wait, did you say Diarmid Lynch? I thought the current one was named Liam."
"They're all Diarmid," Kiba replied. "He's been possessing his sons for generations, siring them with women he intended to dispose of and raising them to be his next vessel. He's the one who murdered Maelle Devereux back in the sixties, and he cursed you because you wouldn't let the case go."
"He stole her child...so he could possess him?" Sebastian breathed, feeling like the very blood in his veins froze. "That's…"
"Psychotic," Koneko replied. "He used Bernadette to switch out your quills and then cursed you from afar, intending to frame those two numbnuts he killed. I know you guys don't like devils, but I imagine you'd like dying less, so if we could get the hell out of here..."
"He's here," Kreacher hissed, appearing outside the door.
"Oh, fuck this," Koneko muttered, grabbing Sebastian and Gabrielle and teleporting them away.
Kiba did the same with Apolline and Sirius, and soon all six of them were standing in the courtyard of a grand castle none of the humans had ever seen before.
"Where have you taken us?" Apolline demanded.
"The Underworld," Koneko replied.
"What?!" Sebastian exclaimed, stumbling as he tried to step forward, and being caught by Sirius.
"Hey, easy does it, big guy," he wrapping one of Sebastian's arms around his shoulders and helping him forward.
"Why would Bernadette attack us, though?" Gabrielle asked, confused and scared as she looked around frantically. "She's been my friend all my life."
"She's not in control of herself," Kiba explained gently. "The man who makes all the elves is a very, very bad man, and he has the ability to take control of them at will. Your elves will find you anywhere on Earth if I understand how their magic and the bonds they form work, but this place should be far enough away that they won't be able to find you, and you'll be surrounded by guards here,"
"Devil guards," Apolline spat, pulling Gabrielle back and looking around warily. "How in the world did Fleur and Harry even come to associate with you people?"
"Long story short, Harry summoned Rias when he realized he was completely screwed in that tournament he was forced into, and the two hit it off," Koneko replied. "She then introduced them to Akeno, their shared lover, they seduced Hermione and Luna into their relationship, and then finally Fleur joined."
"Darling, is there any chance that I'm just having a truly bizarre dream right now?" Sebastian asked.
"Only if we both are," Apolline muttered. "Where is Fleur now?"
"She's with the others confronting Diarmid," Koneko replied. "They managed to get invited into his tower in Ireland."
"This is...agh," Sebastian cried, stumbling forward only to catch himself on a staff that appeared in his hands.
"You must be the curse victim," Venelana sighed, descending towards them, having conjured that staff. "Rias mentioned it weeks ago, so you are rather far along by now, yes?"
"Who are you?" Apolline asked, stepping back and pulling Gabrielle behind her. Whoever this beautiful brunette was, she was more powerful than anyone she'd ever met, and the Veela could barely fathom what she was sensing.
"I am Venelana Gremory, mother to Rias, your daughter's master," Venelana replied.
"What?" Apolline and Sebastian both gasped.
"You can fly?" Gabrielle asked, staring up at the buxom beauty with wide eyes. "Could I learn how to do that?"
"Maybe when you're older," Venelana chuckled, earning a glare from Apolline.
"What do you mean your daughter is Fleur's master?" the Veela demanded.
"She gave Fleur the gift of devilry," Venelana replied before turning to Koneko and Kiba. "I take it Rias ordered you to bring these humans here if things got particularly unpleasant back on Earth, yes?"
"Yes, Lady Venelana," Koneko replied, nodding her head. "Rias is facing the wizard responsible for all this now with the rest of her peerage. He should be dead within the hour."
"Excellent," Venelana smiled. "In that case, you four are welcome to stay in my castle until this dreadful business is concluded. Come along; I'm sure you have further questions."
"You knew about this?" Apolline asked, glaring at Sirius as Sebastian just stood there leaning on his staff, seemingly in shock.
"I did," Sirius nodded. "Devils aren't as bad as we've all been told in my experience, not universally, anyway. Keep an open mind here, and remember that they did just save your lives, and you might be pleasantly surprised."
"Fleur is off fighting one of the worst things I ever investigated, and you want me to keep an open mind?!" Sebastian exclaimed, growing shocked a moment later as he realized that his fatigue had waned.
"The Underworld is richer in magic than you can imagine," Venelana explained, not needing to read his mind to know what he was thinking. "If you were feeling drained because of your curse, those symptoms will be greatly reduced here. As for Fleur, throw that staff into the air for a moment."
She spoke with such authority that Sebastian didn't even hesitate to do as she said, tossing the staff arcing upward, only to freeze as a blast of crimson energy more powerful than anything he'd ever witnessed collided with it and destroyed it utterly.
"Rias can do that too," Venelana smirked, enjoying the way that all three human adults looked at her in terror, while the little girl just looked excited. "Trust me when I say that your assailant has more to fear right now than your daughter does. Now, come inside, and I'm sure that these two will be able to answer any other questions you have."
With that he flew back towards the castle, and Koneko and Kiba gestured for Sirius and the Delacours to follow, knowing that Rias would want them to answer their questions.
"Luna?" Rias asked in annoyance, only having barely managed to shield them in time because Akeno, Harry, and Hermione all helped.
Their little section of the room was untouched, but the rest had looked singed and charred, with at least a dozen little burned corpses littered about.
"I read about that spell too, and it clearly stated that you should always make sure that the room you're in is large enough before casting fireball, lest you get caught up in the fire too," Hermione muttered, glaring at the blonde, who winced and tugged at her collar.
"Oops," Luna laughed nervously. "I guess I skimmed over that part. I'll be sure to check the size of the room first in future."
"Merlin, that was so many house elves," Hermione said mournfully, looking around at the bodies. "Not one of them had a choice in this fight."
"Neither will any of the others Diarmid's going to send once he realizes that we're still alive," Harry replied, turning himself invisible. "We should keep as silent and unseen as possible."
"Just a second," Rias said as they all turned themselves invisible. Working as quickly as she could, she cast the same communication charms on all of them that she'd used on Harry throughout the last year before finally linking them all together.
"If you can hear me, reply mentally," she projected, smiling when all of them replied affirmatively. "Then let's get…"
"My tower!" Diarmid exclaimed as two house elves popped in to view the scene. "I don't see Potter and his devil whores either. When I get my hands on them, I'm going to boil them, skim the fat, use it to make soap, and then use that soap to clean this up! Find them at once!"
"Yes, Master," the elves replied in unison, and, taking advantage of their distraction, Harry and the others flew across the room and up the stairs, groaning when they saw that that flight of stairs only took them up to the second floor.
"The stairs don't go all the way up?" Hermione asked. "Why?"
"Given that Diarmid seems to just apparate around his home, we'll be lucky if there are stairs that lead all the way up," Akeno replied, and they all groaned mentally at that.
"Keep in mind we did attend a school with moving staircases, and that was much dumber," Luna pointed out.
"It really is a wonder we never lost any students to those things," Harry muttered.
"Do you have any idea how he managed to possess his descendants like that?" Hermione asked. "From what I've read maintaining possession of another person for decades shouldn't be possible."
"No, it shouldn't," Harry relied. "Voldemort had to create a new body for himself from scratch before he found a stable physical form and Reinhardt goes to the trouble of actually cloning himself for the same reason. To possess a different body, even one related to you, and keep it going for sixty-odd years like he must have with Declan, is unheard of. He must prepare them some way that I can't fathom."
They flew out into the hallway as they discussed Diarmid's unusual solution for mortality, staying high enough to be able to avoid any house-elves who might also be invisible, and looked around. The second floor seemed to be home to the kitchens and dining room, both large rooms being perfectly round things.
"For a guy obsessed with perfection, he sure has wasted a lot of space here," Hermione snarked. "Having round rooms carved out of a round tower is just silly."
"To be fair, Mione, Diarmid is, and I can't stress this enough, clearly not all there," Harry replied, and she snorted, remembering to silence herself once she was sure no elves had heard that. "I swear the S.O.B. almost makes Voldemort look normal by comparison."
"Sona's going to love this one," Rias said. "She's always loved to hear about the really insane figures other devils come across, and it doesn't get much more nuts than a narcissistic lunatic, so convinced that he didn't fuck up with his loser son that he decided to possess him to extend his life and then kill all the mothers of his future descendants and vessels so they couldn't ruin them."
"How many women has he killed through the centuries?" Luna asked. "How many boys did he raise to be just like him only to kill them in the end too?"
"He needs to be put down," Hermione replied harshly, and Harry smiled at how much she and Luna had both changed over the last year. There was a time when both of them would have at least hesitated to express what had to be done here, but both of them had grown up since then.
"Sometime figures are so evil that they really do just need to be put down before they can hurt anyone else," he thought to himself, not projecting that particular thought to the others as they reached another staircase and flew up to the next floor, finding that it also only took them up a single floor.
"Bloody hell," he thought, and the others all agreed with the sentiment.
"Even after we kill him, we're going to need to find Papa's blood sample," Fleur thought. "It could be anywhere in this tower."
"Should we keep him alive for questioning then?" Luna asked.
"We don't know how exactly he controls the elves, so leaving him alive for a moment longer than it takes to kill him could easily be a mistake," Akeno replied.
"You're right," Fleur replied. "I hope that my family is okay."
"They are," Rias replied. As she expressed confusion, the redhead added, "I'm sorry I didn't mention it sooner, but the fireball distracted me. Bernadette attacked your family, but my familiar stopped her without killing her, and then Koneko and Kiba brought them and Sirius to Castle Gremory. They're safe now."
"So they know about me," Fleur sighed. "At least they're safe."
"I'm sure they'll accept you in time," Luna soothed, "especially since we're about to save your father and kill Diarmid."
"Mumbles doesn't sense anything," a house elf murmured, looking around. "Master Diarmid is certain that they survived the explosion?"
"There were no bodies, at least that Grubby saw," another elf replied. "The master wants them found, and so they must be found."
The two elves continued their patrol, and Hermione sighed while Harry wondered just how close the elves had to be to Diarmid for him for him to project his magic through them directly.
"Even if I had succeeded in freeing the elves like I wanted to last year, they still wouldn't have been free," she thought, shaking her head. "Those poor creatures have all spent their entire lives in servitude to random families, while a far darker force held their actual reins."
"I hope the secrets of the elves are all here," Luna murmured. "I'd love to know how in the world he actually managed to make them from whatever he found here."
"Once he's dead, I will have my family's servants tear this place apart looking for whatever treasure we can find," Rias replied. "He's lived for centuries and enjoyed a global monopoly on a product sold in multiple countries. I might not have to bother my father for money for years if this place is as rich with potential loot as I expect. You'll all get your shares as well."
"What are we going to tell the authorities?" Luna asked. "It was one thing when we were just rooting through random safehouses that no one alive knew about, but the Lynches are a big deal in the wizarding world and directly involved in a case high-profile enough that I'm sure multiple countries are aware of it by now."
"We can guarantee that, given that Dumbledore had heard about it," Harry replied. "As for what we tell them, we can say he accidentally cut his head off while shaving for all I care. It's not like human authorities really mean much to us at this point."
"Actually, it might be best if we could not tell them that he's dead," Hermione replied.
"What?" Rias asked, confused.
"We say that Diarmid, or Liam, invited us over and tried to kill us, confessing to his crimes in the process and show them the memories of his bragging," Hermione replied. "We say we fled, and the authorities come here, finding the place completely cleaned out, Diarmid nowhere to be found, and everyone in the wizarding world then thinks that this lunatic, who can command their house-elves at will, is still out there right as your father launches his automaton business, offering wizards and witches discounts if they trade in their elves."
"Father quickly corners the market on automatons as elf replacements, and you get to gather the elves all together in the Underworld like you wanted," Rias smirked. "We have been delightfully devious influences on you, Hermione."
"I just want to give them a chance to live on their own terms," Hermione replied. "Once Diarmid's dead, we may very well end the house-elf production altogether, depending on what goes into them, since it wouldn't shock me if it wasn't also terrible at this point, but either way, it will be nice to see what they make of themselves once given the choice."
"You get that they may very well seek to serve us, right?" Rias asked.
"If that's the only thing they want, then so be it," Hermione replied. "It will be up to them."
"Well, I'll try and talk Father into it," Rias promised, making Hermione smile.
They continued flying up through the tower, finding more and more house-elf patrols as they went. The little creatures seemed to be growing more and more unhinged as time went on, almost as if they could all feel their master's growing frustration, and while the group all thought that when they finally reached the top of the tower, that would be where they were most concentrated, it turned out to be almost suspiciously empty.
"I don't think Salazar Slytherin was as obsessed with himself as this guy is," Hermione projected as they reached the final hallway. "Given your descriptions of the chamber."
"I'll admit, this does kind of remind me of the chamber," Harry replied, looking around.
There didn't appear to be many rooms on this floor, as the hallway before them had only a single door at the very end. What it did have, though, was a number of portraits lining the wall, each one depicting one of Diarmid's bodies. The first one, he recognized both from Dumbledore's files and from the identical one downstairs, but this one had, rather than the family motto inscribed under it, a number of figures.
"Five foot eight, bald by forty-five, vision started going at sixty-two, bad chin, sandy hair," Rias read in her mind. "Diarmid really did this at least in part to correct his physical failings."
"He's even harsher about Desmond," Hermione added, reading through the similar notes under that portrait. "This is what he meant by progress. He's been selectively breeding himself for generations, picking women who he thought would contribute positively to his genetic makeup. I'd compliment him for having so unusually scientific a mind for a wizard if he wasn't a murderous lunatic."
"With every generation, he got taller, stronger, and less harsh in his descriptions," Luna murmured, flying across and looking through the portraits until she reached Declan's. "Six foot two, hairline didn't recede, perfect vision, strong, square jaw, fair hair, bright blue eyes."
"That brings up something I've wanted to ask for a while," Akeno piped up. "Does Britain not use the metric system? I've heard you all use imperial multiple times now."
"The muggle side of the country spent decades undergoing metrication," Hermione replied. "Like most muggle innovations, though, the wizarding world has either never heard of it or dismissed it outright as nonsense. My parents still used some non-metric measurements while I was growing up, so I wasn't completely taken aback by it, but Hogwarts and the other magical schools are going to run into issues down the line over it."
"I was curious," Rias chuckled, reaching the door at the end of the hall and reaching out to check for defenses.
Owing likely to Diarmid arrogantly assuming no intruder would ever get this far, there really weren't any wards on this final room, and as Rias discovered, the door wasn't even locked, so she, after creating a quick noise-destroying barrier around it, threw it open and rushed inside.
"His bedroom," Harry guessed at once as he looked around.
"It seems to loop around both ways around the hallway, which is honestly par for the course here," Hermione muttered. "I don't think he's here, though."
"Papa's blood sample could be," Fleur smiled, flying towards the nearest chest and checking it for traps.
"It might be worth looking around," Rias nodded. "Stay on your guard, though. Even if he didn't expect us to get in here, he could return at any moment."
"You, Fleur, and Luna look around the left path, and we'll go right," Harry said, and Rias agreed, flying off towards the left.
Harry quickly found Diarmid's bed and immediately went for the trunk at the foot of it. It was well warded, and as Akeno started searching the various drawers in the numerous armoires on that side of the room and Hermione looked through his extensive bookshelves, he focused on getting through the wards without setting anything off. It took him a couple minutes, but soon he was convinced that he could safely open the trunk and was about to do so when he heard Fleur and Rias panic through their bonds.
"What's wrong?!" he exclaimed.
"It's Luna. She's…" Fleur went to reply when another voice reached them.
"I'm okay," Luna replied. "Wow, that was weird."
"What is this?" Rias asked, and Harry, Hermione, and Akeno flew over, wanting to see for themselves what had so frightened the others.
What they found was an open armoire full of a silvery-looking mist. It stayed contained within the wardrobe, swirling and roiling around, and just as Harry reached it, Luna popped out, having undone her invisibility spell.
"What is this?" Hermione asked aloud, revealing herself as the others did too.
"A portal of some kind," Luna replied. "It's sort of like the doors that the Room of Requirement could create that would take you wherever you want, except this took me to some dark cave. There's another armoire there just like it, and the two seem to be connected."
"Vanishing cabinets," Hermione replied. "I've read of them. They're exceedingly rare."
"A cave under the tower, perhaps?" Rias asked, eyeing the portal curiously. "Interesting."
"That could be the place that Diarmid mentioned finding back in the seventeenth century," Hermione breathed. "Where he found the elves."
"It could also be where he is," Fleur scowled, her fingers practically itching to unleash flames.
"It's possible, but I think we should finish looking around here before we try venturing in there," Harry replied. "I had just finished unlocking a trunk at the foot of his bed when I felt you two panic."
"I can help with that," Fleur murmured. "There's nothing on this side other than basic chests full of junk."
"Most of them weren't even locked," Rias added.
"Well, this one was, and quite heavily too," Harry said.
The six of them flew over to Diarmid's bed, and Harry threw the trunk open, revealing that it had quite an extensive interior.
"You three stay here and make sure we aren't disturbed," Rias instructed, looking at Akeno, Hermione, and Luna. "Fleur, Harry, and I can search through here."
"If the blood sample is here, it will feel like the darkest of magic," Harry explained. "In hindsight, we should have brought Koneko to look for it."
"We'll manage," Rias said confidently, and Fleur flew down into the trunk.
"This is quite the trunk," Harry commented as he joined her. "I'd wager it's quite old too."
"I sense some pretty dark magic down here, but it's not coming from just one source," Rias sighed.
"Stay well away from this," Harry muttered as he looked down at the viscous green liquid simmering away in a cauldron in the corner. "If I'm right, it's one of the worst poisons ever devised."
"Harry!" Rias hissed, looking through a cabinet she'd just opened. "He's got a fair few books in here."
"He had quite the library in his bedroom," Harry murmured as he joined her. "These must be personal."
"Like a grimoire," Rias smirked. "You do still owe Reinhardt for his help."
"I wasn't even planning to think about that until after we'd dealt with Diarmid," Harry replied, pulling out one of the leather-bound books and flipping it open. "Secrets of the Darkest Art. Can't say he's not a fan of the classics."
"Junk," Fleur hissed, shutting another cabinet and trying to open the next one, only to flinch back, having noticed just in time that it was cursed.
"To Serve Swine, by the sorceress Circe," Harry murmured, closing the book and putting it back.
"Harry," Rias breathed. "I think this is it."
"Could I get some help here?" Fleur asked. "This curse is beyond me."
"Just a second," Rias replied, handing him the book and rushing over.
"Hmm," Harry murmured to himself as he flipped through the book.
It was definitely a spellbook of sorts, and one that had been given no title, which was always a good sign when looking for wizards' or witches' grimoires.
"Soul transference," Harry breathed as he read through a lengthy section on a subject that both looked familiar and very much didn't. "Oh, that's why he killed the mothers. Sacrifice them to split off a piece of his soul, having first taken precautions to ensure that it would remain in complete stasis within the child, awaiting its reunion with the rest of him."
He hated that he found this sort of thing fascinating, but with all of Voldemort's knowledge in his head, it was hard not to be intrigued by such innovations, even if they did still revolt him.
"There," Rias muttered after a moment, having destroyed the various curses on the particular cabinet Fleur had called her to. "Now, let's see what was so important."
Opening it up, she looked at the various magical artifacts kept within, though her attention was quickly drawn to a small vial of what was clearly blood. Fleur spotted it a moment later and gasped, grabbing it and trying to get a feel for the magic contained within.
"This...this is his," she breathed, feeling her heart race in her chest as a smile formed on her face. "I'm sure this feels like Papa's magic."
"Let me see," Rias commanded, holding out her hand, and she grimaced when Fleur placed the vial on her palm. "This is singularly wretched. If it is what we're looking for, I understand why Koneko was so disgusted."
"That feels like Nathresia's Bane," Harry nodded, checking it closely. "Rias, if you could?"
"Gladly," Rias smiled, focusing her power into the vial.
A moment later, it and its contents were completely destroyed, and Fleur stumbled back, tears filling her eyes as relief overwhelmed her.
"That was the only one, right?" she asked. "There couldn't be more?"
"Any other blood samples he might have had by now would have had their connections severed," Harry nodded. "Only the cursed one could have remained, and any attempt he might have made at redundancy would have failed because of the sheer power of Nathresia's Bane. It's done."
"Oh, thank you!" Fleur exclaimed, embracing them both.
"I said I'd do everything I could to save him," Harry smiled, running his fingers through her hair, and she kissed him deeply before kissing Rias as well.
"Come," the redhead smiled. "Our work isn't done yet."
"No," Fleur agreed, her eyes hardening. "We still have a monster to slay."
"Fortunately for us, that is somewhat of a specialty of mine," Harry grinned viciously, putting the grimoire in his mokeskin pouch.
The three of them flew out of the trunk and explained what had happened, leading to ill-advised cheers.
"Oh, that's wonderful!" Luna exclaimed, hugging Fleur.
"Thank goodness," Hermione smiled.
"Uh, guys?" Akeno asked. "I'm pretty sure I just heard a few pops outside."
"The portal, now!" Harry hissed, turning himself invisible and flying off towards the portal.
"The master doesn't allow elves in here," a house-elf said, sounding frightened.
"Master told us to search everywhere for the devils," another one said. "Would that not include his chambers?"
"Let's ask," the first one replied.
Rias, who had stuck around in case she needed to kill anyone, smirked at that and quickly returned the room to its prior state, closing the trunk and armoires still left open, before flying off and heading into the portal, pulling the wardrobe's doors closed behind her.
"I am so glad that we can see in the dark," Hermione muttered as she looked around the cave they had entered. "Lumos is nice and all, but it's not exactly subtle."
"I actually found a more useful spell for that called darkvision," Luna replied, "but we all have that naturally now, so…"
"Be very careful down here," Harry muttered. "We have no idea what traps that lunatic has set up."
"I don't disagree, but think of how few traps or wards there were in his room," Akeno replied. "I'd wager he really didn't expect anyone to ever come here."
Quite wary, they flew through the winding tunnel, trying to sense anything that might have been set up to stop them, though they ultimately didn't find anything. After a while they did reach a door that seemed to be simple enough to open, though they quickly realized that it was completely unmovable.
"Is this thing just stuck?" Rias asked, trying to tug it open. "I don't sense any magic on it."
"Oh look, a window," Luna murmured, having looked further ahead, and they noticed that it wasn't so much a window as a natural hole in the wall just barely big enough to see through.
Looking inside, Harry noticed that the room on the other side was quite large, with a sizable staircase leading up to a platform that seemed to extend back along either side. He tried to teleport to the other side, only to realize that he couldn't, the wards around the room stopping him in his tracks, and he scowled.
"Oh, there are actually several layers of wards here," Rias muttered. "It's even enchanted to make them hard to detect. Between that and the protective spells on here, I'm going to need to destroy everything layer by layer before I'll be able to get to deal with the door.
"Diarmid's in there, and...I think that's Deirdre with him," Luna said, still looking through the slight hole in the stone wall.
"What is this place, Mister Lynch?" Deirdre asked.
"This is my ancestors' greatest secret," Diarmid replied. "It was in this very chamber that he discovered all he needed to produce the elves centuries ago. It's been tradition in my family for generations now to show this room to retiring employees as an additional reward for their years of loyal service."
"You're already being more than generous, Mister Lynch," Deirdre replied. "I never expected anything as grand as an all-expenses-paid trip to Australia. I've always wanted to see the place, honestly. I do have to get going soon, though, as my portkey is enchanted to activate in a few more minutes."
"Worry not, Miss McAllen," Diarmid smiled. "I'll make absolute certain that your arrival there is recorded on time."
"What?" Deirdre asked, not sure she'd heard him right.
"Oh, shit," Luna swore under her breath. "I think we need to get in there."
"Tell me, Miss McAllen, what do you see in this little sarcophagus here?" Diarmid asked, reaching down and wiping something with the sleeve of his robe.
"Working as quickly as I can," Rias muttered, sweat beading her brow as she destroyed enchantment after enchantment.
"Is...is that a house-elf?" Deirdre asked.
"The very first, or the last remaining unchanged one," Diarmid replied. "The first bunch were an unruly lot, nothing like the loyal, magically capable ones we know today. This one was the eldest of them, and entombing him in here was necessary to bind them to my bloodline. Would you like to see one be born?"
"Mister Lynch, this is…" Deirdre breathed, taking a step back as her seemingly young boss just smiled at her.
"Watch," Diarmid said, pointing towards a point in the ceiling.
They heard a chicken cluck and then squawk loudly as it seemed to fall into something that made Dierdre jump.
"What in Merlin's na...what?" Deirdre breathed.
"These massive vats turn whatever living things I feed into them into pure, unadulterated life force, which is then used to spawn these little creatures," Diarmid replied, summoning a newly formed elf towards him.
"What the fuck?" Hermione gasped, trying and failing to get a simple spell through the gap in the wall to see if she could do anything."
"The number of creatures needed to make an elf depends on the size and complexity of the creature," Diarmid continued. "I need fewer cows, for instance, than I do chickens, but the most perfect source of all…"
Deirdre screamed as she was hurled forward, and though Hermione and Luna both tried to reach out and catch her, they couldn't. Her screams went chillingly silent a moment later, and Diarmid brought another elf into his arms, cradling the newborn creatures as he sighed.
"Tis a shame, as it always is, but she knew too much," he sighed. "There was a time when I thought she might make a good mother for this form, but I couldn't abide her dreadful eyesight."
"That son of a bitch," Hermione growled.
"What?!" Diarmid demanded. "What do you mean you...oh, do I have to do everything myself?"
His fury was as sudden as his subsequent departure, as he vanished with an audible pop.
"Finally," Rias hissed, getting through the final defenses on the door and destroying the whole thing.
"Why did he do that?" Luna asked. "That woman was nothing but loyal to him."
"Possibly because she knew about us," Harry replied, "though it might just be that he kills off all his employees when they're no longer useful to him. He doesn't hire many people, by the sound of it, and if the odd person goes missing on vacation, I guess it wouldn't be hard to get the authorities to just dismiss it.
"What in the world?" Fleur asked, rushing up the stairs and landing next to a bronze sarcophagus small enough to fit a young child. It had a glass window in it about three-quarters of the way to the top, showing what it contained.
"That's a house-elf?" Hermione asked, furrowing her brow in confusion.
The creature inside bore some resemblance to the elves they knew, but he was also quite different. He had a white beard, for one thing, and bushy eyebrows, whereas elves often had little hair at all and certainly never had facial hair, and his skin was slightly darker than that of the elves Harry had seen. Most peculiar were his ears which, while long, and bat-like, seemed more rigid than normal, looking like they wouldn't droop at all if he were standing up.
"If that thing has been alive since the seventeenth century, he looks pretty good," Akeno murmured.
"There are ways to preserve life by keeping people in perpetual stasis," Harry replied. "Voldemort read about them, though even he wasn't willing to go that route to stave off death."
"Oh, fuck," Hermione breathed, flying up and looking down into the vat that Deirdre McAllen had been flung into. Inside it was a swirling vortex of golden light so plainly dangerous that she didn't think for a moment that there was a chance to save the innocent woman.
"So house-elves are made by sacrificing living beings, feeding them into these vats, and then repurposing their energy," Luna surmised. "I guess we really are going to be shutting down production of them."
"No, you're not," Diarmid snarled, walking into the room and swiping his wand across it. They all watched in horror as their invisibility spells were nullified, revealing them to his eyes. "In fact, I think you'll make fantastic sacrifices. I've never thrown devils in the vats before. Who knows how many of them each of you will create?"
"It's over, Diarmid," Harry bluffed confidently. "I have an enchanted quill in my pocket linked to another one that has been transcribing everything I've heard since I got here. I've already ensured that the British and French DMLEs will receive copies of every single document, as will Albus Dumbledore."
"You're bluffing," Diarmid chuckled, "and even if you weren't, it wouldn't matter. My elves are indispensable to the wealthy of Ireland, Britain, and a host of other countries. Any investigation into me would be shut down faster than you can believe, for after all, without me, who would fluff their noble pillows and serve their food and drink?"
"You're insane," Hermione hissed.
"You're naive," Diarmid spat, "but enough talk."
Dozens of house-elves appeared then, taking on the illusionary visage of the lunatic before them.
"That fire spell of yours was quite inspired, Lovegood," the many Diarmids said in unison, "but I'll know to watch for and counter it this time. Stand down, and I'll make your ends quick despite what a collective pain in my arse you've all been. You are hopelessly outnumbered."
"How about you stand down?" Rias asked, hovering her hand over the sarcophagus, smirking when she saw a hint of genuine fear in one of their faces. "I understand this is rather important to your entire operation."
"We wouldn't know that if you didn't insist on monologuing to your victims," Harry chuckled. "Voldemort always did that too. Does overexposure to dark magic just give you lot the compulsion?"
"If you overheard that, then you spent a great deal of time getting through this door," Diarmid grinned, "meaning that you can't just blast your way through my defenses on it either."
Rias didn't let her irritation show, but deep down she knew he was right. For as devastating as the Power of Destruction could be in a fight, and as skilled as she was with it, she couldn't yet just look at an enchanted object, ignore the protections on it, and destroy the whole thing and its many protective enchantments at once. Sirzechs could, she knew that, and her mother could have, but she wasn't on their level yet. She needed to examine something this heavily enchanted and take out protections on it before she could just blast it away. Luckily for her, she had been since the moment she laid eyes on it.
"This is the most heavily warded, enchanted thing I've ever seen," Rias thought to herself, sharing that with the others. "He's likely been tinkering with it for centuries, layering more and more enchantments on it in the process."
"Can you get through it?" Harry asked.
"Not while under fire," Rias replied. "Keep me protected, and I'll destroy the enchantments on this thing as quickly as I can. I think I've found something on it that might give us an edge too."
"I've always hated making messes," Diarmid sighed, "but clearly you lot aren't going down without a fight. "Avada…agh!"
Harry and the others, tensed and ready for a fight, watched in confusion as the many copies of Diarmid all flinched, all but one of them flickering in and out of existence for a moment.
"What did you do?!" he demanded, and Rias laughed.
"That was blood I sensed," she practically purred. "I think he's been bleeding out his old bodies onto this sarcophagus to restrengthen the bond between him and this elf."
A sickly purple curse, radiating malice, raced towards Rias, and Harry conjured a stone shield to stop it, hurling the broken pieces right at the real Diarmid, who vanished them all.
"Kill them!" he roared, and the elves, having looked confused for a moment, all glared at them through their false visage.
An onslaught of spellfire flew towards them, and as they moved into position to shield against the multitude of colored lights, they were shocked to see them all fizzle out as a globe of translucent energy formed around them.
"Oh, cool, globe of invulnerability works too," Luna beamed, earning looks of shock from everyone in the room.
"Luna, remind me to look through those spellbooks in more detail later," Harry replied, wondering if these odd spells from another world could help him against Riser Phenex in a few weeks.
"Okay," Luna replied.
Diarmid watched in frustration as virtually every spell he used was blocked outright by the short blonde's seemingly impenetrable shield, and he snarled, "Avada Kedavra."
Figuring that Luna's spell probably wouldn't stop that, Harry conjured a flock of birds to get in the way. One of them was struck and fell as Akeno and Hermione responded with lightning bolts and blasting curses that forced Diarmid onto the defensive. Forced to use only unforgivables, since nothing else seemed like it would work, Diarmid and his hivemind of elves unleashed a barrage of killing curses and cruciatus curses, frustrated by the need. There was a reason why, even among dark wizards, only magical heavyweights like Voldemort ever used the unforgivables excessively in fights, since they were more draining to cast, but he knew that the crimson-haired devil behind the others was still looking over the sarcophagus, and he couldn't allow her to break it.
Rias worked as quickly as she could, reaching out with her senses and trying to find more traces of older blood in the sarcophagus. Banking on her theory about it being right, given how there had seemed to be a momentary disruption in Diarmid's control of the elves after she destroyed Declan's blood, she sought to destroy the rest, figuring that would be easier than trying to parse through the insane number of protective enchantments he had placed on it.
"Look out!" she heard Akeno shout, and she looked up just in time to see a house-elf flying towards her, a runic belt around his neck that she highly doubted wasn't lethal.
Sending out a wave of destructive energy, she atomized the elf and the belt, though the faintest hints of the explosion it would have delivered still showed, and she glared at Diarmid, who returned the look.
"What the hell are you?!" he shouted, lobbing more kamikaze elves at her while those around him continued to exchange spellfire with the others.
Harry started redirecting them towards the vats, hoping that the explosions would damage them, but to their frustration, the vats absorbed everything that entered them, rendering them harmless. Even worse, new elves formed for every one that went in.
"Rias, it would be great if you could hurry up," Akeno muttered, blanketing the area with lightning, which the elves managed to shield against.
"I swear I'm going to kill him," Hermione muttered, focused on shielding against incoming attacks as she watched him sacrifice elves with wanton disregard for them.
"You and I will have to fight for that privilege," Fleur replied, desperately trying to land any hits on the illusionary copies of Diarmid.
Harry continued to conjure fake birds to catch the barrage of lethal curses coming their way, watching the bodies accumulate on the floor, and once he figured he had enough, he took a page from Luna's book and tried one of the few spells from those odd books that he had tested out. He wasn't sure if the grease formed by the grease spell was flammable or not, so he transfigured it into thick oil as he spewed it forth onto the ground around the elves and Diarmid, and then, lighting the bird bodies on fire, he sent them hurling towards them.
Diarmid realized what was about to happen, and the many copies of him sought to stop the flaming birds from reaching the oil, giving Akeno and Fleur the openings they'd sought. By lightning bolts and jets of flame, the elves began to fall one by one, and though they succeeded in stopping the flaming birds from reaching the oil, once Fleur realized what Harry had done, she focused all of her power on a single strike towards the slick, making the whole area go up in flames. Diarmid managed to flee in time, apparating onto the upper platform to their right, but several of the elves caught fire and fell.
"I hate this, but there won't be any reasoning with them until their master falls," Hermione thought to herself mournfully as she glared at Diarmid, who was swiftly joined by the dozen or so elves he had left.
"I am getting sick of this," the man snarled. "That sarcophagus can survive much, so perhaps it will even survive this. Pestis…"
"Get back!" Harry shouted, preparing to do battle with fiendfyre, when Diarmid stopped in his tracks and gasped.
"No!" he shouted, his wand leveled at Rias, but it was too late.
"Got you," the redhead laughed.
While Declan's blood had only been spilled into the sarcophagus days earlier and so hadn't fully settled in, the others had been bled into it, at minimum, decades earlier, and they had all melded together in the recesses of the magical device. That meant that finding even a trace of one of them was finding all of them, and she swiftly destroyed the lot, jumping back when she saw the bronze vessel swing open.
"What have you done?" Diarmid breathed, sounding horrified. "Elves, defend me!"
"Elves?" a new voice wheezed, sounding exhausted and also oddly disgusted. Harry and the others all turned and watched as the old-looking house-elf opened his eyes, yellow orbs that glared balefully at Diarmid as he stepped forward. "I think...not."
He snapped his fingers, making a wave of magic billow through the room and beyond, before promptly falling forward and nearly landing on his face. Hermione caught him just in time, and they all watched as the illusionary images of Diarmid vanished, leaving only house-elves, who looked around, blinking in confusion.
The evil wizard stared down at his servants, fear evident in his eyes, and said, "I am still your master, and you will kill these intruders."
"Master?" one of the asked, either not understanding the word, or not understanding how it related to Diarmid.
"He's not your master," Hermione hissed, standing up. "He's a pathetic old man who's taken advantage of you all for too long and you deserve to have your revenge on him. Kill him, kill him now."
"Yes," Fleur added, quietly conjuring weapons at their sides. "Kill him; he couldn't possibly deserve it more."
"You're fooling yourselves if you think my elves will ever AHH!" Diarmid screamed in pain as one of the elves behind him stabbed him through his left calf, making him fall to his knees. He went to raise his wand, fully intending to roast the traitor elf alive, when another one lopped off his hand with a razor-sharp axe.
"Kill the false master!" one of the elves screamed, sounding more manic and bloodthirsty than any of them had ever heard any elf sound before.
Surrounded by a dozen armed, very violent creatures, and with no weapon of his own, Diarmid Lynch fell to the ground screaming as he was stabbed, gouged, and bludgeoned over and over again by the cackling creatures. The group of devils just stood there for a moment, watching as the pool of blood around his flailing body grew larger and larger. None of them felt a single iota of sympathy for what might have very well been the most evil man any of them had ever encountered, and even Fleur, who had wanted to tear out his throat with her own teeth for what he'd done to her father, couldn't help but think that it was a fitting end.
As they stood there, deep under the ground of the Lynch tower, watching as its master finally stopped twitching, Harry voiced the one question on all of their minds. "Where the hell do we even start to deal with this?"