Chapters 31-35

Chapters 31-35

Barty turned around and glared at me, probably for calling Diagon Alley a dump. I could only shrug in response; I only called it as I saw it. Everywhere I looked, the streets were littered with trash. Almost all the shop windows were boarded up, and the ones that weren't needed to be because they had been burnt to the ground. There were also signs in front of those burned-out shops claiming that 'mudbloods were no longer welcome to do business in the Alley.'

"I admit, the Alley has seen better days," Barty said. "It'll be fixed up real soon though! You'll see. As soon as the Dark Lord finishes taking over completely, then everything will change!" He explained with a look of reverence on his face when he spoke about the Dark Lord. I could hear Natasha quietly cursing about how annoying tearing down cults could be.

As Barty continued leading us towards Gringotts, I spoke up. "So what do you mean 'when the Dark Lord finishes taking over?' Hasn't he already?" I asked, using my acting skill and ability to speak any language to match Natasha's Russian accent.

Barty just kept walking as he responded, his voice carrying a hint of irritation. "Not quite yet. We've completely taken over the Alley, and the ministry has fallen. Unfortunately, the majority of the magical people are still resisting. Many have fled to Hogsmeade and Hogwarts for sanctuary. That bastard Dumbledore activated Hogwarts' wartime wards, and we haven't been able to breach them yet. All we can do is sit outside them and cast unforgivable curses. Too bad those spells all fall off after only a few hundred feet. The Dark Lord is currently preparing a special ritual to take down those wards. Once he does, we'll take the castle and kill the old fool!" Barty finished his explanation just as we reached the steps of the bank. I was expecting to see Goblins out front guarding it, but to my surprise, there were Death Eaters instead.

When we entered the bank, I found out the reason. The goblins were inside, but they were not looking as regal as they did in the movies. All the goblins were wearing pillowcases, the same as house elves would. The Goblins had all been enslaved! I could see the simmering fury in the various goblin's eyes as Barty strode into their bank like he owned the place. Their hatred turned to confusion when they spotted me and Natasha following behind him. Multiple pairs of Goblin eyes locked onto me as I continued through the bank. One of them looked like they were going to speak up to me, before another goblin smacked and shushed him. Maybe, as members of the Fay, they could see what I really was even with my wings currently hidden.

"You two came just in time. Rosier has got a special demonstration prepared for the new recruits. I'm sure you'll love it," Barty introduced us before he turned and left towards the bank entrance.

I could feel all the eyes of the wizards in the room raking Natasha and me over. I wanted to leave or just conjure a light spear and start hacking at them all. I held myself back, though, as we were here for information. So far we had gleaned that a lot of the 'good' magicals were holed up in Hogwarts, which would soon be under siege, but that wasn't enough.

"And who might you two witches be?" The Death Eater called Rosier asked us. I wondered if he was one of those so-called Lords of Wizengamot. I'm pretty sure that wasn't actually canon though. Then again, I clearly wasn't in a canon world.

"Hello," Natasha answered, still with her accent. "I am–

"I don't care," he rudely cut her off. "You may address me as Lord Rosier. I am a member of the Dark Lord's inner circle and from now on, your superior," he said while glaring at not just us, but everyone.

I was about to shout at him in anger for daring to treat us like that, but Natasha grabbed my arm and stopped me. "Just ignore him. That's a typical power play that recruiters use on new soldiers. He's trying to establish a chain of command," she whispered to me.

"...You're right," I replied. I almost blew our cover right there. Frankly, it was a small miracle that every Death Eater we'd met hadn't recognized my face yet. Other than Malfoy and Pettigrew, I wasn't aware which Death Eaters were even at the graveyard.

While I was momentarily distracted by Natasha whispering to me, Rosier had ordered a nearby goblin slave to bring out a 'prisoner.' Both of our attention returned to him at that moment. My eyes widened in surprise when a supernaturally beautiful girl wearing rags was dragged out in front of everyone. Steel chains were clapped on all her limbs. I could see dried tear stains leftover on her face.

"Please let me go. I have done nothing to you people," she pleaded in French. She had long blond hair and bright green eyes. Her features were perfectly symmetrical and too flawless for her to be completely human.

"Layla, is she an angel as well?" Natahsa asked me hushedly. I might have suspected that myself except I could sense no holy power from the chained girl. I shook my head no at Natasha.

"Shut up with your sniveling French, you disgusting half breed! You know I don't understand it!" Rosier shouted at the girl with an angry red face. He was about to raise his hand to smack her, before one of the prospective Death Eaters spoke up.

"That's a really gorgeous bird there!? Do we get to play with her some?" A man shouted out. I felt disgust well up inside meat hearing that. The other men in the small crowd all started to look excited at the prospect.

Rosier smiled menacingly at everyone. "Allow me to introduce you to Fleur Delacour. A half-breed Veela. Daughter of the French minister of magic. The country that will fall next as soon as we finish unifying our own great empire. She was captured a week ago when we took control of this bank. It seemed the half-breed wanted to work for the goblins. I brought her out here for a special purpose. It's time to see which of you has what it takes to join our ranks. One by one, you will each come up here and cast the cruciatus curse on this girl. Those who succeed will join our noble cause, and those who fail to cast the spell will be shown the door. Afterwards, you can have your fun with what's left of the girl..." Rosier finished. The dirty prospective Death Eaters all cheered in excitement as they scrambled to form a line.

[Quest Issued: Tough Decisions→ Will you choose to save Fleur Delacour or Will you choose to let her die and continue your infiltration?]

[Rewards: ?/?]

Well shit... I already knew which one I would choose. I glanced at Natasha and we were on the same wavelength. I could see that she was already making a move to shed her cumbersome robes as she pulled out a pair of handguns.

XXX

I watched as a line of eager prospective Death Eaters had now fully formed in front of the terrified Fleur Delacour. She was begging them not to hurt her in both French and fractured English. The line of 20, along with Lord Rosier, simply laughed at the chained up Veela.

"Alright little bird. This is going to hurt a lot." The first man in the line leveled his wand at Fleur. "Cru–" He never got to finish casting his spell.

BANG

A loud gunshot echoed out in the chamber. There was a spray of blood and the man about to cast the torture curse dropped dead. Natasha hit him with a perfect headshot. The other men behind him in the line couldn't even register what had just happened before she was already pointing both her pistols at them. She proceeded to open fire...

BANG BANG BANG BANG

"Fuck! He's dead!" One man shouted in fear.

"Agh, it hurts! What is this magic? It went right through my protego!" Another man grunted out. He was clutching his shoulder in pain after a bullet tore right through his flimsy shield.

"That's not magic! It's a muggle weapon. They're muggle spies! Kill th–" He wasn't able to finish. His head whipped backwards when a bullet hit him right in the forehead.

After a few more seconds, both of Natasha's guns made clicking noises. Signaling they were empty. Of the original 20 men, only 5 were left standing. Off to the side, 'Lord Rosier' was looking on horrified. Fleur also looked terrified from the sudden violence, but I could see a glimmer of hopefulness in her eyes as well.

"Her muggle weapons are completely spent. Kill her now!" One of the remaining men shouted out. He leveled his wand towards us and a familiar green spell started to form on his wand tip. Before he could complete the two word incantation, I had already formed a light spear and let it sail across the room, where it had impaled him through the chest. His spell fizzled out and he could only look down in shock at the spear sticking out of him.

Natasha let out a whistle of appreciation for what I just did. Even I was surprised, with what just happened. I had formed that lightspear far faster than I ever had, and thrown it even faster. Was that because I had 6 wings now?

[It's not just that. Have you forgotten that your Strength stat is also up to 20 now? That stat doesn't just encompass how much you can lift or how hard you can physically hit. It encompasses all of your physical attributes including speed and agility. Physically, you should be on par with Captain America right now.]

After quickly reading the pop up in front of me, I wanted to kick myself for ignoring Strength and focusing solely on Intelligence. If I had known I could have been on par with Captain America at only 20 strength, I would have thrown some of my free stat points into strength sooner.

Rosier looked at me with fear in his eyes. "No... that spear. It's you... how did I not recognize you sooner!? You're the Angel who's been clashing with our Lord! I need to get out of here!" With a panicked look, he raised his wand vertically and tried to do something with it. He momentarily flickered in place before he gasped in failure. "Dammit! I forgot apparition is impossible under Gringotts wards. Fucking goblins!" He cursed. I laughed internally that he just tried to run away. Probably to go and tattle to Tommy boy about me.

No longer needing to hide myself, I let my 6 wings freely manifest behind me. A light spear appeared in each of my hands as I took a step towards the other four men. We had no use for taking any of them alive. They weren't even real Death Eaters yet. They had no useful intel for us. On top of that, they were scum...

"What is she? Even one of the Dark Lord's inner circle is terrified of her."

"It doesn't matter, kill her before she kills us!"

BANG BANG BANG BANG

I was about to rush forward and finish the four of them off, but they all dropped dead in violent sprays of blood. I turned to Natasha and gave her a pout. It seemed that while everyone was distracted, she had taken the time to reload her guns...

"Sorry..." Natasha trailed off. "I know you were trying to look cool just now, but we don't really have the time. That guy over there did something with his arm." She said as she pointed at Rosier.

I looked over at him and could see that the snake on his Dark Mark tattoo was moving back and forth. I had no idea what he did.

"The dark mark is our Dark Lord's greatest creation! Not only does it let him know where we are at all times, but it also allows us to call for help wherever we are!" He bragged as he waved his arm and showed off the mark. I guess he was feeling a bit braver now that backup was coming for him.

I looked down at the remaining light spear I was holding in my hand. I shrugged to myself before I hurled the spear at the arm he was so proudly showing off to us. With a sizzling squelch noise, the spear tore through and cauterized his elbow. Rosier's forearm, with the mark on it, dropped to the ground. It took the man a second to even comprehend I had just disarmed him before he started screaming in agony as he clutched his new stump.

"And now his magical tracking tattoo is worthless. Nice aim, Layla." Natasha praised me for my violent display. She then proceeded to march over to the wailing man and knocked him clean out. "We'll take him with us as we escape and we can interrogate him later." She suggested and I nodded.

I walked over to Fleur who was still lying on the ground in chains. She looked back at me with apprehension. "Don't worry, we're going to save you now." I said in perfect French. Tears started forming in her eyes as the remaining spear, in my offhand, shrunk in size and transformed into a small light dagger. I used it to start cutting through her chains. It didn't take long for her to be free and hugging me tightly in thanks.

"I hate to break it to you all," I said to the goblins, "but the battle is over, and all the Wizards are gone or captured. You all missed it..."

Another Goblin nearby looked all over the place before he turned to the one who shouted out. "The dark angel speaks the truth, Lord Rock Crusher. All the Wizards are gone..."

"Fuck!" The goblin known as Rock Crusher yelled out. "You lot took too long to put on your armor! You all spent too much time as pencil pushers and forgot what it means to be warriors!" He yelled at the other goblins. We couldn't see their faces because they were wearing helmets. Their helmets were still facing to the ground now, so I speculated that they all were ashamed.

"No need to be so hard on them all. You all were just enslaved..." I said gently to Rock Crusher. He scoffed in reply.

"The only reason that happened in the first place is that we have gone soft! Our rivals, the dwarves of Nidavellir, would laugh at us if they could see how far we've fallen as warriors..." He said dejectedly.

Hearing about the dwarves from another realm drew my interest. "You all have a way to access Nidavellir?" I asked.

"Dwarves?" Tony questioned aloud.

"Aye, we had ways of traveling there over a millennia ago, but that method was cut off when the great sundering came upon our world!" The goblin explained as if everyone was supposed to know what that was. I assumed he was speaking of God splitting the world in half.

"What was the great sundering?" Tony asked. Natasha and the other Shield agents were also looking very curious.

"Ask your winged friend over there. The calamity was caused by her father!" The goblin replied. The humans all turned to look at me questioningly. I gave the goblin a small glare for throwing me under the bus.

"The great sundering, as they call it, was..." I started to explain to everyone, "A really shitty move that was orchestrated by the higher-powered beings of Earth over a thousand years ago. I'll go over more of what it entailed to you all later." It was a whole big thing to explain. This wasn't the place for it.

"Sounds like it was a pretty big deal," Natasha commented.

"Yeah, it would pretty much destroy a lot of people's faith if they found out about it..." I said. All I received in return were shocked looks from all the humans in the room.

"So if this happened over a thousand years ago, how come you're talking about it like you remember it?" Tony asked Rock Crusher.

"We goblins are members of the Fay... we live forever unless we are slain in combat. I remember being able to travel all of the 9 realms freely at one point. There was adventure and combat around every corner; it was a glorious time to be alive!" The goblin explained. That was the second time they mentioned that they were members of the Fay. I guess that's why they crafted Goblin silver instead of using steel like everyone else for their weapons. Iron was literally toxic to them.

"Wow," Natasha commented. "You've been around for over a thousand years? Why has your race stayed hidden from us all this time?"

The goblin just looked at her like she was a fool. "Why else? Because every time we revealed ourselves, you all tried to kill us! Even in your modern media and movies, we goblins are nothing more than evil vermin that need to be exterminated." Rock Crusher said.

"Yeah!" "That's right!" "Fuck Lord of the Rings!" The other goblins all exclaimed.

"So... I'm guessing you all don't like D&D very much?" Tony asked jokingly.

Rock Crusher just gave him a glare in response to his rude comment. "We thank you for assisting us in our freedom, but now... all of you get out of our bank! We're closing down and leaving this racist country. We'll be joining our Brethren overseas in the American Gringotts branch. What the British Wizards and witches did to us was clearly a declaration of war. It was a violation of our peace treaty. You can inform the Wizards that all of their gold and other items in their vaults are hereby forfeit to us as recompense." The goblin said with a malicious grin.

That was going to completely annihilate the Wizarding economy. They literally just lost all of their money.

XXX

I toweled off my hair as I stepped out of the hotel bathroom. I needed to rinse off all the blood and dust that had accumulated all over me from the fighting. Following our liberation of Diagon Alley and Gringotts, things went fairly smoothly. SHIELD took control of the area until the British armed forces could arrive to take over.

As I had suspected, the magical wizarding citizens had no idea that the statute of secrecy had been blown apart by Voldemort a few days before. The civilians had all fled for cover when the fighting started, and the bullets and spells went flying everywhere. Once the fighting ended, they slowly returned to see who had emerged victorious. Many of them thought that it was Aurors or even the Order of the Phoenix that was fighting the Death Eaters. When they found out it was actually Muggles, needless to say, they were shocked. Then they were even more shocked to find out that Muggles had defeated the Dark Lord and wiped out his forces.

Following that, the armed forces decided that it would be better to fully evacuate Diagon Alley, Knockturn Alley, and the Leaky Cauldron. There weren't more than a hundred or so civilians anyway, so it only took an hour to complete the evacuation. Even if the Death Eaters return to try and reclaim it, they'll find everything abandoned and all of the businesses closed down. I also imagine that the goblins will be moving as quickly as they can to leave as well. With magical shrinking charms and bags of holding being real things, the goblins will probably have all those vaults emptied before morning.

I sat down on the comfy bed as I finished drying my hair off. Once again, I had shamelessly used the Stark company card for this five-star hotel room. I really needed to get my own place, though, soon. Now that my intelligence stat had reached 50, I could start practicing with the sling ring again. According to the system, it should start working for me.

[You won't be crossing galaxies anytime soon, but traveling around the planet shouldn't be a problem anymore.]

I pulled the small sling ring out of my inventory and held it in my palm. I always thought the MCU was pretty comical when it came to these things. Asgardians, people of an advanced magi-tech society, were only able to teleport with the power of the Bifrost or dark magic. Meanwhile, humans, who all the other space-faring societies look down upon, have figured out the best and easiest method of teleportation in the whole verse.

[It is pretty funny. Even for high-level gamers, an instantaneous wormhole that can open up anywhere in the universe is an extremely effective method of travel. There's not much that can top it.]

I put the ring back in my inventory before I spoke up. "All right then, system. I completed my latest mission; it's time for me to get my reward."

[You got it. Mission complete! Now distributing the reward.]

There was a flash of golden light in front of me as something materialized from thin air. A second later, a heavy metallic object plopped down on my lap. I looked down at what I had gotten...

'Is this really all I got for that quest?' I complained in my head. I honestly was expecting more. Not that this wasn't nice and all.

[Not all the rewards can be bangers...]

I looked at my reward in front of me that I had gotten from saving Fleur. It was a golden sword. A sword made of actual gold. "What exactly am I supposed to do with this?"

[It's a sword... Use it for sword stuff. Or you can sell it.]

"It's made of gold. You can't use gold as a weapon. This is pretty much worthless for anything except being a trophy. Even as a trophy, it just comes off looking gaudy..." I said as I held up the hundred-kilo gold blade. I suppose it could look cool if I ever decided to cosplay. With some minor alterations, I could get it to look like Excalibur. Then again, the system might just give me the real Excalibur as a reward in the future. I stashed the gold sword in my inventory. I'd probably just end up selling the thing to Tony later. He likes gold. I'm sure he'd get a kick out of it.

[QQ... Just so you know, that sword is made of 100% pure gold... It's worth at least a few million dollars. It was a very generous reward for such an easy mission.]

That made me pause for a moment in thought. That was a surprisingly easy mission. The entire time, I never felt myself in any real danger. Even when facing up against Voldemort, I wasn't nervous at all. In fact, I was itching for revenge.

[...Had you stabbed him anywhere but his gut, you probably would have one-shot him. You should have–]

"Don't say it!" I exclaimed with a whine.

[You should have gone for the head...]

"Fuck you, system."

KNOCK KNOCK

Someone was knocking at my hotel door. I stood up from the bed and went over to see who it was. Through the small eye hole in the door, I could see a familiar redhead on the other side. Layla opened the door.

"Hey, Layla. Just so you know, we have a briefing with everyone tomorrow morning. They all want to know more about the Great Sund–WOW!"

XXX