This is just a small chapter I wrote to give that one chapter a bit more backstory and "umpfh".
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In a time redacted and forgotten.
The manor was too quiet, noted Auror Carrow. He used to dread the silence, because it meant that danger could be around every corner, but all that changed when the attack happened. It was broad daylight when they came, a weekday even. Nothing could have prepared anyone for the sheer destruction and ruthlessness that the elves brought with them.
Unfortunately, he was out on a mission when it happened so he wasn't able to protect the thousands of innocents that lost their lives. He still curses himselves for it, not that he could have made a difference.
The house elves, broken and reforged by a still unknown madman, were unhindered by the hundreds of security wards meant to protect the ministry. In a moments notice one could appear right next to you and snap you out of existance or inside of a wall if you weren't ready and powerful enough. Most adults weren't able to fight back, strong armed by the elves' own magical capabilities.
It was a bloodbath with half of the personnel of that day still missing. Some had been found at this point, a majority of them had suffocated inside of the ministry walls or under the floor.
But that was merely the start, once they had aquired the murdered wizard's wand all hell broke loose.
Explosions flew left and right, whole corridors were crushed, people were folded like they were origami, skin was flayed, time loops were created and so much more atrocity happened.
One man had it especially hard, according to the reports he rapidly aged and regressed over and over again with every loop overworking his body until only a soup that expanded and shrank remained.
The worst thing was that the elves only undid their invisibility right before attacking.
So you never knew from where you would be torched, dismembered, disemboweled, liquidated, crucified, strangled, boiled, impaled, stoned, hanged, flayed, whipped, eaten, drained, vaporized, petrified, smited, devoured, transfigurated, electrocuted, drowned, and so much more.
On top of that, the elves didn't distinguish between anyone, neither muggle nor wizard was spared. Everyone had been a target. After the attack the conclusoin was that the attack's goal was terror. Pure and unadulterated terror.
Auror Carrow moved deeper into the dilapidated manor.
"Clear downstairs," muttered Auror Dawlish from behind him as silently as humanly possible. His wand light flickered like a nervous heart.
"Upstairs, then," Carrow said. His own wand trembled slightly in his hand. He would never admit it, but he was scared too.
The two person team climbed up the stairs, never breaking their back to back formation. They weren't the only team present, but all of them moved in the same way. It was deemed to be the safest and most efficient way to move around.
The other one, consisting of Auror Spinks and Auror Marrow, was farther back keeping an eye on the first team as well as the exit.
They had been sent here on a tip. This building had been standing unoccupied for years, the perfect hideout for a madman and his experiments.
Upstairs only one room remained, the last one in the house.
The corridor to the door was choked with dust, no one had been here in years. Carrow reached for the door handle, but it creaked open before he touched it.
Both their postures tensed up.
A room stretched beyond, bare but for a single chair facing the window. On it rested a doll, stitched from rough burlap, runes burned into its face.
"Trap," he breathed.
The dolls head expanded and exploded in thick black smoke.
The first elf dropped from the ceiling.
Carrow's shield charm shattered like glass, and he screamed as he was yanked inside the room away from his partner.
Dawlish barely felt the reassuring pressure on his back disappearing, when he heard the loud bang of the door closing.
"Ambush!" he yelled without looking back and bolted down the stairs to the other team.
In the meantime Carrow screamed, "STUPEFY!"
But his spell fizzled midair as he heard a snap from the left side, followed by another one from the right.
His hand and arm holding his wand abruptly twisted and turned in unnatural ways coupled with the crack of his bones shattering. His wand, however, never landed on the floor, instead it floated into the hands of the first elf, whose face twisted into a grin that promised a world of pain.
Dawlish hadn't even made it halfway down the stairs when the screams started.
Neither did he have the luxury of grieving his colleage, because an elf appeared right next to him on the stairs. His heart sank into his stomach and he knew he wouldn't be fast enough to turn and cast a spell before the elf snapped her fingers. In that moment he saw his life flashing before his eyes only for the elf to paint the staircase red in her blood.
Spinks had reacted fast enough, yet before he could thank him he had to cast a spell of his own to defend the other team from the appearing elves. He was just in time as the ceiling broke down and tried to impale them.
Dawlish's shield charm flared bright as a lance of sharpened wood splintered against it, shards slicing his cheek. "DOWN!" he roared.
Spinks didn't need to be told twice. He rolled aside just as another spear of wood punched through the shield where his head had been. The crash was deafening, dust exploding upward in choking clouds. Through the haze, he caught a flicker of movement.
"THERE!" he shouted, firing a spell that ripped half of the manor apart, obliterating anything that moved on that side of the building.
Marrow gritted her teeth, back to the wall, wand raised spewing bright blue flames. "From above! FROM ABOVE!"
A charcoaled elf fell through the hole that had been caused by the earlier ceiling attack, yet she saw at least two more waiting for the right moment. There were always more.
"There's too many!" she gasped, her voice almost lost in the chaos around them.
Dawlish barely reached them, when a blue jinx came dangerously close to his back, only to be redirected by another shield charm. The spell bounced of and hit a wall, which briskly evaporated.
There was no pause as the stairs themself shot at them like cannonballs. The shield flaired up every time, but it held.
For now.
Above them, something giggled.
All three looked up.
A mistake that would cost them dearly.
They were a split second too late and failed to notice the teeth forming around them on the floor.
A gigantic maw had formed that snapped shut, devouring them with their shield still up.
"FUCK!" all three yelled in unison.
The elves successfully cut off their perception.
Dawlish was about to reinforce the shield, when it shattered in a deathening boom.
A single insanely powerful curse tore through Spinks face leaving behind a fist shaped hole, his lifeless body crumbled to the ground.
"RUN!" Marrow screamed as she chose a random direction and shot the most powerful bombarda she could muster out in the hopes of clearing a path.
Yet, after she took her first step out of the hole of the maw her whole body was squished to paste like a fly between two hands by two elves standing on opposite sides.
Dawlish just stared at her as the realisation settled in that no one would be able to make it out of here alive.
The last thing he heard was a giggling behind him as his blood started to boil.
His scream never left his throat.