(Warning: This chapter may be considered excessively violent. If you enjoy reading with background music, I recommend the soundtrack from the film "28 Days Later": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8QNTsOJ1kc&list=RDc8QNTsOJ1kc&start_radio=1). There is a link in the comments to copy.
***
A dozen wizards surrounded the manor grounds. The flat terrain allowed them to see each other at a distance.
Aside from those ten, stationed a couple of hundred meters away on a small hill, stood the rest. Exactly twenty wizards in black robes, like Death itself, were here today to punish those who had presumed they had the right.
In the center, leaning on an exquisite cane, stood Lucius Malfoy. His pale, aristocratic face was an impassive mask, only his eyes smoldering with cold sparks of anticipation.
The silence preceding the slaughter was deceptive and viscous, like thick syrup. The orange sunset, which in summer signaled almost night-time rather than evening, was still so beautiful...
Beautiful, until this wondrous place was painted with human cruelty. As if in tune with the event, the sky was being covered by thick, stormy clouds threatening to unleash rain.
He was in no hurry, and so his people waited quietly. When he gave the signal, his subordinates began to act. Everything was coordinated by his two loyal hounds: Lord Crabbe and Lord Goyle. Heads of what seemed like two noble families, but the civil war and the defeat of the Death Eaters had threatened them with the loss of all family wealth and eternal confinement in the lower levels of Azkaban, just like the Lestranges.
Except their school leader, Lucius Malfoy, had once again emerged unscathed and managed to pull them out too, albeit at a high price, but they were already accustomed to Lucius Malfoy's leadership all their lives. Having become their suzerain, he was able to help them, and now they were loyal vassals of the Malfoy family. This had even improved their financial situation. So, there was no room for complaint.
At Lord Malfoy's command came a sharp, dry click, and the air seemed to gasp in a suppressed manner. Through the combined efforts of five wizards, an invisible wall closed over the Unsworth estate. It was an anti-Apparition barrier, cutting off all escape routes via Apparition and the Floo Network.
Next, a signal was given, and the obsidian beacons placed around the perimeter were activated by those surrounding the manor. The beacons flared with a sinister crimson light. The air groaned, compressed in the grip of an invisible force — the first, primary barrier had snapped shut. Almost instantly, a second, duplicate one flared. Now the Unsworth estate had become a perfect trap. No one could enter or leave. Nothing would help them escape now.
Meanwhile, slowly but inexorably, the rain began. Just small, sparse drops for now, but the clouds threatened to turn them into a downpour. Lucius slowly, with theatrical ceremony, took out a gold watch from his waistcoat pocket and clicked open the lid. He gave exactly three minutes for his subordinates to break through the manor's protective shields.
And while Lucius walked with his two personal guards, all the others had already flown on broomsticks to the manor. Exactly after the allotted time, hell would begin.
At the barely perceptible nod from the heads of the two noble families, the breaching of the defensive charms began. Lords Crabbe and Goyle, two massive, burly giants, stepped forward. Their wands swept up, and with intricate movements, they began creating a dual, combined spell, something a single Spell Master would struggle to manage alone. Their joint magic took the form of a huge, spear-like clump of red-blue light that took a couple of seconds to fully coalesce.
Two magical streams of different polarities, harmonizing, became one, and the pointed clump of destruction shot forward.
Before the spell, with a deafening roar, could crash into the manor, multi-layered protective barriers momentarily appeared in front of it.
The impact was so bright and powerful it seemed it might collapse upon the very casters of this mighty spell, who were still a considerable distance from the manor.
A monstrously powerful attracting and repelling effect, upon contact with the first layer of defense, scoured it away, penetrating further. The manor's shields shattered one after another with the deafening crack of a giant crystal ball. The echo hadn't yet faded when the shockwave washed over the faces of the two bulky figures. At the same moment, a dozen wands shot upwards. The simultaneous assault of ten combat mages erupted into a roaring whirlwind of explosive and piercing spells. Pure destructive force fell upon the remains of what had seemed like the manor's reliable defensive charms. The last, strongest protective layer of the Unsworth manor tried to withstand the monstrous onslaught, but soon, with a hideous crack, it opened the door to those who had come to kill.
But the remnants of the destructive torrent of spells had not yet been spent. The piercing spells struck the manor first. They drilled into the manor, leaving gaping holes in the masonry. The explosive charms began literally destroying the walls. Numerous windows blew out into thousands of shards, the stone masonry threatened to collapse, and cracks crawled across the still-intact walls of the manor. Part of the right wing of the two-story manor was left completely destroyed when a powerful variation of Bombarda hit the edge between the roof and the wall.
But if the goal had been to destroy the manor, another couple of dozen such spells would have followed. But no. Seven wizards, like a pack of hungry dogs, rushed to storm it.
Lucius finally reached the manor. Without changing his expression, he nodded to his loyal vassals with a smile full of gloating towards the Unsworths.
And then, in a final desperate surge, the powerful barrier-piercing Portkey prepared by Godfrey Unsworth activated. In the basement, the portal piercer roared, trying to punch a breach through the established barriers. And it worked... partially. But the two magical domes, layered upon each other, came into play and caused an unpredictable resonance with the piercing attempt.
The result surpassed all expectations in its horrifying brutality.
Instead of the characteristic crack of teleportation, there was a low-frequency, bone-penetrating crunch — the sound of a breaking Portkey. Spatial magic, finding no exit, turned inward, towards those who were supposed to be transported. In the spot where the Portkey was used, the manor subsided from a powerful impact. A monstrous roar accompanied it all.
***
The roar of the collapsing manor barriers was only drowned out by the howl of the portal piercer in the basement. Godfrey Unsworth, having gathered all the family present in the manor at that moment, felt the stone floor trembling under his feet. His uncle, a seventy-year-old man, clung tightly to his shoulder, while Oliver's wife, pale as a sheet, pressed the family head's younger son to her chest. Godfrey placed a hand on his son's shoulder. His own wife squeezed their seven-year-old daughter's hand, pressing close to her husband.
"Hold on tight!" Godfrey rasped, activating the Portkey.
In the next moment, the familiar world for the Unsworth family exploded into pieces.
Instead of the familiar jolt of transportation, there was a deafening, low-frequency crunch, as if space itself were breaking. The portal magic, reflected by the double barrier, struck inward, into the very midst of those gathered.
Godfrey saw it all with his own eyes, etching it forever into his memory. His uncle didn't have time to utter a sound — his body simply evaporated, turning into a cloud of fine crimson-pink dust. His younger brother's wife was torn diagonally from shoulder to waist, thrown out of the transport circle.
The worst was what he saw to his left. His wife was still squeezing their daughter's hand when the spatial rupture passed right between them. The girl didn't even have time to scream — her small body crumbled as if made of sand, right in her mother's frozen fingers. Godfrey's wife stood frozen with wide-open eyes, staring at the emptiness where her daughter had just been, and at her own hand, still clutching the tiny, blood-sprinkled palm. Only then did her gaze notice what had happened to her own arm — it hung by shreds of skin and muscle tissue, almost severed above the elbow by the invisible blade of distorted space.
Godfrey himself felt only blinding pain and a strong jolt.
The Portkey, unable to break through the anti-Apparition barriers and transport them to the safe location set during its creation, literally spat them out on the outskirts of the barrier, hurling them to the ground.
He regained consciousness from wild, pulsating agony — his left arm, which had been on his son's shoulder, was torn off at the elbow, a scarlet stream gushing from the stump. Gritting his teeth, he convulsively pulled out his wand and, pressing it, cauterized the wound, stopping the bleeding. Rising through the ache in his whole body and the darkness repeatedly threatening his vision, he finally looked around, hoping they had been moved to the right place. But no…
The rain, still slow, was beginning to sprinkle the ground. The sky seemed to weep for the family tragedy.
Nearby, unable to rise, lay his wife. She moaned and wept, clenching and unclenching the fingers of the hand that was still intact. Her face was diagonally slashed across the nose. The clean cut of the rift apparently wasn't too deep, but the almost-severed arm with protruding bone dangled like a doll's.
A meter away from them, in a quickly growing puddle of blood, their son writhed. The boy was alive, but it was a miracle worthy of a curse. The rift had passed through his torso, tearing open the chest cavity to the left shoulder. Through the horrible wound, shattered ribs and dark, pulsing viscera were visible. His quiet, intermittent whimpers... were terrifying for a parent to hear.
It was at this moment that two attackers approached on broomsticks. Seeing the survivors, they grew alert, and their wands immediately aimed at the remnants of the Unsworth family.
Godfrey, consumed by pain, loss, and fury, forced himself to do something.
His intact right hand gripped his wand with insane force. His eyes burned with the fire of pure, unadulterated chaos and grief.
"Protego Maxima!" he rasped, and a pale, trembling shield, shaky from his condition, barely appeared before the hail of spells reached them. Until he could gather his strength and drink the combat-stimulating potion stored in the expanded pouch on his belt. A simple, harmful, but very effective potion he always carried with him. A habit from his youth. Soon, the effect dulled the pain, and survival instinct and rage smothered other emotions.
After stopping his wife's bleeding with fire, he was ready. The Protego Maxima was soon replaced by static charms into which he poured as much magic. The Protego Statum Maxima was to protect his wife while he fought.
And he began to fight. He fought like a cornered beast, driven only by the instinct to protect what was left. The attackers circled in the air until he managed to take one down with an area attack. The second fighter rushed forward for another attack run, but Godfrey blew him out of the sky with a precise Confringo.
But this was only a delay. The first one he had downed had already risen without serious injury and was now not such an easy target. Godfrey barely managed an equal exchange of spells, but time was not on his side. There were clearly many, many more of them...
Two more arrived at the scene of the fight. Godfrey's shield, put up with the last of his strength, shattered under a barrage of spells. Four powerful stunning spells simultaneously, with clear coordination, hammered him into the ground. He lay there, pinned down, so helpless...
Wheezing and choking on his own blood, he merely raged at why fate was so cruel to him. Why, after all this, life had played such a painful joke on him. Deep down, he knew the answer, knew why... and knew who had done all this.
They lifted him, bloody and almost broken, with magic and dragged him back into the half-destroyed, collapsed manor. But he saw... saw how these bastards roughly seized his inconsolable, weeping wife, torn by pain and grief. How they dragged her by her hair, hauling her across the ground. He saw how the body of his almost-dead son, whose death throes had finally ceased with a Sectumsempra, went limp.
And the rain kept falling, only gaining strength. Drops streamed down his dirty cloak, falling onto the already wet earth.
In the end, they threw him at Lucius Malfoy's feet. Godfrey knew... had known from the very beginning, known from the moment he learned from his brother that this bastard had dared to kidnap the heir of the even more bastardly Malfoys.
Yes... the head of the Unsworth family knew it would come to this, but he still pushed the thought away, covering it with belief in his own skills and cunning. And even if not, he had hoped that luck, which had saved him dozens of times during combat missions as a mercenary, would save him once more. Would smile... one more time... but life was cruel. And it had become so at the very moment when everything seemed to be going perfectly and life was wonderful. Not when he had foolishly not even minded if he died accidentally on a mission, but right now...
Soon, only his eldest son and his half-mad younger brother would remain of the Unsworths. It was good that his son had gone shopping for school in the morning and, as every year, apparently stayed out late with friends.
The important thing was for him not to return before these people left, and beyond that, Godfrey hoped that his eldest son, whom he had so often berated for everything and nothing, had inherited at least something from him and could hide. And the faster and farther he got away from Britain, the better; otherwise, the Unsworth line would truly end.
***
Lord Malfoy stood in impeccably clean attire amidst the ruined main hall of the Unsworth manor. With a satisfied, yet slightly disdainful gaze, he watched the unfolding spectacle. His gaze indifferently slid over the mutilated Godfrey, over his weeping wife; here, his people had brought up from the basement the remains of those bodies that hadn't completely disintegrated.
Godfrey Unsworth watched all this with a dead look inside. Here were the remains of his dead daughter, whom he had loved so much; here was the torn torso of Oliver's wife; and here they brought his dead son. In less than half an hour, his entire family had been slaughtered, and soon he would die too.
"Where is your younger brother?" Lucius asked, his voice cold and even, without a single note of anger. "Where is your brother and your eldest son?"
Godfrey, spitting a clot of blood onto his polished shoes, hissed a refusal. Pain and hatred were stronger than fear. And what was there to lose? They'd kill him anyway.
Lucius sighed almost imperceptibly, as if tired of an uncomprehending animal. He nodded to Crabbe. The latter, without a word, raised his wand.
"Crucio!"
Godfrey's body arched in a silent grimace of agony. Every muscle, every nerve burned with hellish fire. At first, he bit his lips until they bled, trying not to scream, but a moment later he was screaming, screaming so loudly and for so long that he soon lost his voice, and now only a choked rasp came from his throat.
But even after that, he said nothing. He didn't care about his brother, but let him at least inconvenience Lucius a little by forcing him to search for Oliver. Not for long, but he would have to. If there were a way to rip the knowledge from his head, Malfoy's people would have done it already. Except Unsworth was skilled at Occlumency. A Master Mentalist, before turning him into a vegetable with the crude Legilimens spell, would only get fragments of the needed information.
Lucius made a slight gesture towards Godfrey's wife.
"Try her," he said with icy calm.
Crabbe shifted his wand.
"Crucio!"
The woman's scream was piercing and soul-rending. Full of such animal terror and pain that even some of the hardened fighters, selected from among the most despicable, flinched. Godfrey growled, trying to rise, but he was held down.
"ENOUGH!" he roared, broken. But he seemed to be ignored — another Crucio, and another round of horrifying shrieks from the woman he sincerely loved. The woman writhed, scraping the ground with her remaining hand, her body arching so violently that at one point, the crack of a bone was heard.
"Oliver! My brother, he's in... in a private clinic in Britain! Being treated by a Mentalist! STOP! Please!" Finally, Godfrey broke down in tears of helplessness.
Lucius raised his hand, and Crabbe stopped the spell. The woman collapsed limply to the ground, her body convulsing in silent sobs. Then he had to tell them where his brother was, more specifically.
"Cooperating is easy, isn't it?" Lucius said quietly, almost tenderly, approaching Godfrey. "But you made me waste time. And cause pain to a lady. That's... impolite."
Saying this, he struck Godfrey across the face with his cane. Soon, blood trickled from his nose.
Afterward, Lucius exchanged a glance with Goyle. The latter, without changing his stony expression, waved his wand. The Sectumsempra spell sliced through the air and severed Godfrey's right leg at the knee. A new, rasping cry of pain erupted from his chest. Blood gushed onto the ground. Soon, the wound was cauterized.
"And now, tell me where your eldest son is?"
The question... Godfrey would not answer this one. They would find his brother anyway, even without his words, but his son... he had a chance to survive. But Malfoy, seeing this reluctance, began asking about everything else. And the broken Godfrey told them everything. He told them where the ransom was, where the keys to the family safes were in the house and their numbers. He told them about everything valuable in the manor, and also told them the Renfro brothers were dead. Information poured from him in a waterfall; he spoke long and in detail about who had arranged the kidnapping and why.
He dragged out the telling until his wife finally breathed her last from her grievous wounds.
Unsworth understood that it was harder to remain silent not after seeing a loved one suffer, but after experiencing that suffering yourself again. At least, that's how it would be for a woman who had never broken a single bone or received a deep wound in her entire life. Until today...
She wouldn't have withstood another Cruciatus and would have eventually revealed the location of her last child. Despite all maternal love. The pain of the Unforgivable was too monstrous.
When she finally died, Godfrey was only relieved that his wife would no longer suffer. As for the pain, he no longer cared. He still did not reveal where his last son was. He died during another round of Crucio; otherwise, they would have burned him alive at the end. Fortunately, he never learned which hurt more — being burned alive or the curse of absolute pain, the Cruciatus.
This was a reminder. A reminder to all who dared raise a hand against the Malfoy line. The Unsworth family would soon be completely erased, and they would serve as a living lesson on why members of noble and ancient families were untouchable for ordinary mortals. Especially the Malfoys.
As soon as Godfrey breathed his last, a message was sent via the Floo Network to the right person. The right Aurors would arrive here a little later, exactly when the attackers had already vanished. It made no sense to hide the exemplary punishment, only to conceal the obvious hand of the punisher. Otherwise, it wouldn't be exemplary.
Everything valuable was carried out of the manor, including the colossal ransom that lay in Godfrey's half-destroyed study, as well as the keys to the safes. Of course, these were mere trifles, except for the three million Galleons that would return to the Malfoy capital. Everything else, including part of the gold from the safes without blood-tracking curses, would be distributed among those who were here today. The Malfoys had always been generous to their loyal subordinates and vassals.
All this time, the rain fell, having long since turned into a downpour. Water streamed down the ruined manor, flooding everything.