"Could it be—"
Group after group of Ministry of Magic heads slipped out of the banquet hall, and group after group drifted back in, like a slow tide moving through a doorway.
At the front of the hall, a band of unknown origin was still playing remarkably well. Nobody had been able to say who had hired them, and nobody had thought it polite to ask, but the music they made was sophisticated far beyond what a hotel banquet deserved: cellos and violins were weaving together in deep, honeyed phrases that climbed to the ceiling and rolled back down the walls.
Rich, mellow notes leapt through the glittering hall. The wizards were still raising their glasses and trading toasts, and their smiles had not dimmed by so much as a candle's worth. Laughter still rang out in the right places.
Only, the harmony that had filled the hall at the start of the evening had quietly curdled and everything still looked sweet while tasting faintly of something wrong.
Anyone who watched from close range would have noticed it: beneath every smiling face lay a cold, coiled wariness, and above every raised glass, eyes that kept sliding toward the doors.
"So that's their game. The Death Eaters mean to wait until tomorrow, when the conference formally opens, and strike then?"
Even Sirius, who had trusted Bryan's judgment without reservation, felt his confidence begin to slip as he looked out through the window at the peaceful, tranquil night.
"If the Death Eaters mean to raid this place, tonight is the best chance they'll ever get, Sirius."
And Alastor, who had begun the evening reserving judgment, was now the one steadying Sirius's restless heart. He kept his voice low and level, his magical eye still turning in its socket.
"Tomorrow's session is held in the Confederation's own council chamber, and the defences there are twice as tight as these. Besides, rats like the dark, lad. They come out when they think nobody's looking."
Sirius heaved an impatient sigh. He was just about to say something, the words right there between his lips, when—
Boom, boom, boom!
A few low rumbles reached his ears, rising up through the soles of his feet, and Sirius's face changed in an instant.
It was not only Sirius. Alastor beside him, the dignitaries of every nation lost in the glow of the ball, even the musicians drawing their bows across their cellos—in that single moment all of them were pulled up short by the sudden tremor.
They stopped what they were doing and swept their eyes around, tense and alert!
As though someone had pressed a pause button on the world, the banquet hall, so lately full of laughter and cheer, fell silent in an instant.
Crack, crack, crack—
A string of small, crisp sounds from across the hall dragged every eye toward them.
A few plates that had been resting perfectly well on the tables had, inexplicably, begun to slide, and now tumbled one after another to the floor and burst into white shards.
And this was only the beginning.
Crash!
A champagne tower more than three feet high toppled with a roar, and shards and pale golden wine spilled in a glittering flood across the expensive wool carpet.
Ting, ting, ting…
A pleasant clinking, like the chiming of wind chimes, drew everyone's gaze together once more, this time up to the great chandelier above their heads.
Thousands of gleaming crystal pendants hung from it, and like a cauldron of Felix Felicis brought to exactly the right heat, every one of them was leaping and knocking against its neighbours, so that the whole vast fixture trembled and sang with a sound that was lovely and horrible.
The first cry of alarm did not come from a wizard.
It came from a knight in medieval dress, inside a painting on the wall that stood six feet tall. He scrambled up onto his stubby-legged pony, hands and feet flailing, and fled in a panic from the cliff beneath him, which had begun, very slowly, to tilt.
Tilting—
With each breath, Sirius's breathing grew a little heavier than the last, and he realized with a cold lurch that it was not the painting that was tilting at all.
A terror as of some great natural calamity bearing down pressed upon every heart in the room, and left no one able to make a sound.
When the knight in the painting and his beloved steed went screaming over the cliff, Sirius, who had kept his footing only by clutching the window frame with both hands, at last tore a roar from his chest.
"RUN! The building's coming down! GET OUT!"
In an instant, the world tore itself out of the abyss of silence & magic and returned to the clamorous human realm with screams and shouts!
Apparition no longer worked!
Three seconds after Sirius's roar, nearly every wizard in the hall had discovered this despairing fact.
Alastor paid no attention whatever to Minister Bones, who had stumbled and fallen to the floor. He raised his wand with swift economy and pointed it at the wall beside him.
Boom!
The instant the spell's light touched the wall, there was a violent explosion, and flying rubble and dust quickly spread through half the hall, hiding the chandelier and the tables and the crowd in a single whipping cloud.
"Everyone, jump!"
Alastor roared, and then, hauling Sirius along by the collar, hurled himself out of that toppling world.
Luckily, the banquet hall was on the hotel's second floor, soft lawn lay below, and with a hasty cushioning charm cast on top of that, no great harm was likely.
Inside the hall, the wizards came to their senses one after another.
These dignitaries from many nations, who had always lived in pampered comfort, now displayed a startling competence.
They stripped off their needless dangling ornaments, sashes and chains and medals, with brisk, impatient tugs; they drew their wands; they blasted one side of the building's wall to ruins together, with a roar of mingled spells; and then, like swimmers diving into a pool, they jumped into the garden, one after another.
The building tipped faster and faster. Bent concrete and steel bars let out tooth-grating groans, like the night itself wailing in grief.
The wizards who had leapt clear scrambled on hands and knees toward somewhere farther off, and then, dodging the falling bricks and glass, got to their feet and ran for their lives toward somewhere farther.
"You were right, Alastor!"
Sirius's strained face was still flecked with grass clippings, and his breath rasped like a working bellows.
"They really are a pack of lunatics!"
Boom!
Perhaps some had not yet made it out of the building, but it was too late for everything now.
The toppling colossus finally crashed heavily to the ground.
In an instant, it was as though a thunderclap had burst right over everyone's heads. The ponderous roar, deep and resonant as the great bells and chimes of some ancient ritual, left many faces deathly pale and some on the verge of rushing blood.
But the wizards had no time at all to catch their breath. Like a tidal wave, a rolling wall of dust and shattered debris came surging toward them and, in a single instant, swallowed the wizards in the garden, who stood hunched with their wands thrust out, each holding up a shimmering shield.
With a commotion like that, even the Muggles could tell that something terrible had happened.
The young couple who had walked past the hotel earlier were now crossing the Jena Bridge, about to visit the Eiffel Tower on the far bank, and the shaking of the ground and the booming roar quickly pulled both their eyes back to the hotel they had passed a few moments before.
The bridge itself thrummed under their feet.
After a long moment, the girl, who had gotten past her own shock first, shrugged and looked blandly at her boyfriend, who stood rooted to the spot and dumbstruck.
"Honestly, it's no big deal. It was long overdue to fall."
The boy turned his head, panting rapidly, struggling to steady himself. But before he could get a single word out, the sight that met his eyes froze his expression once more, and his body began to quake like a leaf in a gale.
The violent wind from the collapse nearly blew Sirius clean off his feet. Apart from Alastor, right beside him, the dust hid everything in his field of sight, as though the whole world had been wiped out with a grey cloth.
"DESCENDO!"
Alastor roared, his wand slashing through the empty air with whistling cracks like a whip—and he was far from the only wizard doing so. All through the garden, wands rose and fell in the murk, and spell after spell hammered at the cloud.
With so many hands working together simultaneously, the dust of the fallen building was, in the end, kept from spreading across a wider area, pressed down onto the lawn like a lid onto a pot.
"What concerns me most right now is—!"
Alastor's face was savage and contorted, his magical eye was turning constantly in its socket.
"Where those scum are hiding! And ah… the one thing Bryan did that I like least was shutting down Azkaban!"
"Anyone who has spent time in Azkaban would find it hard to quarrel with Bryan's decision."
Sirius, too, kept waving his wand like Mad-Eye to drive off the dust, watching for Death Eaters who might at any moment come leaping out of it.
"But I'm with you on this, Alastor. I can't wait to carve up the bastards who brought this building down!"
"I wonder how many old—"
Alastor, who had been grinning savagely, broke off mid-sentence. His whole body gave a jolt, his scarred face went rigid, and the magical eye in its socket swung around to point at the back of his own skull.
Sirius, whose nerves were strung tighter than anyone's, instantly sensed that something was wrong with Alastor. But before he could ask, an inexplicable feeling dragged his gaze round to look behind him—and with a single glance, it was as though he had been plunged into an abyss.
Because of the hotel's sudden collapse, the Muggles on the several commercial streets nearby were screaming and running in all directions.
No matter how the patrolmen in the street shouted, no matter how they blew their whistles, they could not restore the order that had already broken down.
Clang!
And at that very moment, beneath the curtain of night, a tooth-grating, metallic ring—the sound of steel being twisted—echoed over both banks of the Seine. Everyone who heard it froze where they stood, their faces as if struck by a thunderbolt.
"Those lunatics! Those madmen who ought to be sent to the gallows!!!"
At the Gringotts World Bank headquarters, on the fountain plaza at the heart of Twin Moons Town, Minister Nash of the French Ministry of Magic, who had been moved there for safety, was cursing at the top of his voice with purple face.
"Quick—"
After a brief silence, the shock on Vipor's face finally melted away, and in near-hysteria he roared,
"Quick, everyone! Stop those lunatics, stop them now!!!"
"It's already too late, Vipor…"
Minister Bones, who had never lacked a statesman's nerve, stared now at the outside world projected on the screen, her head shaking slowly, dazed and hollow.
"At least a hundred thousand people saw it….."
Thud!
Thud!
Thud!
Amid the earth's shrill, anguished cries, the wizards and Muggles on both banks of the Seine bore witness to something that no one living would ever forget:
The Iron Tower, which Paris had always held up as its pride, stood up!
————————————
For More Chapters; [email protected]/FicFrenzy
Tip: replace @ with letter 'a'.