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Harry Potter Squib Tales Chapter 28: Christmas Crimes (Finale)
🕑 Added 2024-02-14 17:00:10 +0000 UTCChapter 28: Christmas Crimes (Finale)
Delilah and I peeled ourselves away from the window, plans for escaping swirling through our minds. Eventually, a crazy thought popped into my mind, and I turned to my new partner in crime.
“How sure are you about getting out the window safely?” I asked. “And then climbing down to the street?”
“Not very,” Delilah muttered, squinting at the window in question. “I’m not really dressed for it, either.”
A glance at her dress told me it would be a hindrance, and I discarded the first plan I’d cooked up.
“Well, we have to get out of here somehow, we have less than a minute before they storm up the stairs,” I muttered. The gunmen from the van had left, and were no doubt in the process of heading up to this floor.
I reached down and grabbed the gun from the man who’d shot me, stealing a spare clip from his pocket and then took Delilah’s hand and led her out of the office. I also looted the downed men in the waiting room, taking weapons and ammo as well before leaving.
“Into one of the other rooms,” I said in a hiss as we crept out into the hallway, an eye towards the stairwell I’d come from, and was expect the gunmen to emerge from.
“But the doors are locked!” she hissed back.
‘Now I really wish I’d made some Alohomora Ofuda,’ I grumbled in my mind, before taking a boot to the nearest door, kicking it down.
“Inside!” I ordered, and Delilah scrambled inside, before I followed in after her and closed the door, taking the time to stack some furniture in front of it to block the way.
“That will hold for a moment or two,” I said, satisfied, before looking around the new room we’d hidden inside. It was laid out like the previous one; a front room leading to an office in the back. This one had a printer near the front desk, however, and I eagerly pried it open and removed two sheets of paper and one of the ink cartridges.
“What are you doing?” Delilah demanded.
“Saving our bacon,” I replied, pulling open the cartridge. “Find me a pen, please!”
She did after a brief bit of searching, handing me a fancy ballpoint pen. I nodded, then stabbed my thumb with the tip, letting my blood drip into the ink from the cartridge. Delilah gasped in shock – and no small amount of confusion – at what I’d just done.
“What the-?!” she uttered, before I shushed her. I then mixed my blood into the ink as best I could, before taking my index finger and dipping it into the concoction.
It wasn’t the best mix, and home-made ink worked much better than mass-produced stuff, but it would suffice, and I quickly drew two crude but hopefully effective Floating Ofuda.
“Here, hold this,” I told Delilah, shoving one of the sheets of paper into her hand. Bewildered, she did, holding onto it carefully while staring at it in confusion. I went over to the window at the back of the office, and peered outside.
We were a couple doors down from the one we’d previously been in, and the suspicious van was still parked outside. I smirked, then motioned for Delilah to come over.
“We’re leaving I said,” grabbing her waist and pulling her close to me. “Hold on!”
Wuh?” she uttered, before yelping in shock as I pulled the window open, cold December air buffeting us. Then her eep turned shriller as I dragged her out the window with me.
To her shock, and my relief, the hastily made Ofuda in our hands began to glow, and we didn’t plummet to our deaths. Instead, we fell slowly to the sidewalk. It was still a jarring experience to land feet first after jumping from a second story window, but there was no danger of broken bones or anything.
“How the-?!” she exclaimed, confused. Her bewilderment only grew as the crude Ofuda I’d given her burst into flames and turned to ash in her hands alongside my own, its work done.
“I’ll explain later. For now, we need to leave,” I told her, and she nodded.
We’d left the office building just in time, as I could faintly hear the door I’d barricaded being broken down and it wouldn’t be long before the gunmen entered our previous hiding spot and found we’d escaped them.
Taking her hand into mine, I quickly led Delilah over to the van, and in my other hand, pulled out one of the guns I’d stolen.
“Out of the van!” I shouted at the driver, who was still behind the wheel, waiting for the earlier goons to come out.
“What the shit?!” he uttered, flinching back as he realized he had a gun pointing at his head.
“Out of the van!” I repeated, and fired a warning shot into the air to scare him. It worked. He screamed and dove out the van from the other side, scrambling away.
“In, in, in!” I shouted at Delilah, pushing her into the van. She did so, stunned, though from what I was unsure of. Maybe the fall, maybe the gunshot, but whatever it was, she was running on autopilot. I scooted her over, and took the wheel.
‘Okay, it’s been a while since I’ve driven. Not since my last life, in fact,’ I thought to myself as I checked and saw that yes, the driver had left the keys in the ignition. ‘And I never drove anything bigger than an SUV, or in any country that did it backwards like the UK does. But how hard can it be?’
I soon found out that the answer was unfortunately ‘very,’ and that I was rather rusty with handling vehicles. The drive was a mad rush through the streets, and I thanked every god I could think of that it was so late at night on Christmas, and there was nobody else around. I did nearly run over a taxi, but that was fine!
“Where the bloody hell did you learn to drive?!” Delilah shrieked as we narrowed missed a lamp post.
“I’ve never driven before!” I shouted back, which was technically true. Sorta.
“Oh God, we’re gonna die!” she uttered in horror. “WATCH THAT FIRE HYDRANT!”
“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered, spinning the wheel so we didn’t smash into the object in question. “So, where should we go next?”
“Wait, I thought you knew where you were going?” Delilah demanded. “And how come I couldn’t recognize you earlier? And how did we get out of the building safely?”
“Ha! No, I’m completely winging it,” I replied. “And sorry, but those are trade secrets!”
She swore under her breath, before taking a deep breath. “I need to find a phone,” she told me.
“To call your parents?” I asked. “Whoops! That was a close one!”
“Y-yes,” she gurgled, white-faced. Which was totally unfair! There was at least a whole inch between the van and that other parked car!
“Hmm, I saw a payphone back there,” I muttered, turning around and driving back to a spot I’d seen earlier.
There was indeed a payphone, proud in its glass box waiting to be used. It was in front of a parking garage, and I screeched the van to a halt near it.
Delilah staggered out of the passenger’s side and wobbled over to the payphone, only to pause.
“Um, do you have and change?”
“I do not,” I replied. “Just some bills. Hang on, let me check something.”
I fished around in the van, trying to find some change for the phone, but all I found was lint, old French fries, and a crumpled cigarette. There wasn’t even anything in the glove box!
“Shit,” she muttered when I told her I’d found nothing. “Okay, Plan B. Is there any place open we can get some coins?”
“Delilah, it’s past midnight on Christmas. There isn’t a single store open,” I told her.
“Then what do we do?” she demanded angrily.
“We could mug someone,” I suggested.
“No!” she shouted at me. “No violence! Not unless they try and mug us first!”
“Fair,” I shrugged. Then frowned. “Um, do you think we could find something in the parking garage?”
“Maybe,” Delilah mumbled. She then shivered.
“At the very least it will be out of the wind,” I said, turning off the engine then getting out of the van.
“Fine,” she muttered as she walked into the concrete edifice behind the payphone. It was better, but not by much, and we looked around on the floor for any dropped coins. There was nothing, just a couple cars parked overnight, and I sighed in annoyance.
“We should leave,” I said with a grunt as I kicked an empty can across the ground. “Take the van and find somewhere safe to hide. Hit up the bobbies, see if they can help?”
“The police won’t help,” Delilah said with a scowl. “I have a suspicion I know who it was that took me, and they have friends in high places. No, I need to contact my father. That’s the safest thing to do.”
“Fudge buckets,” I grumbled. “Then should I drive to your home, then?”
“Yes, I think that would be the best,” she began, but froze when she heard a car out on the street. “Edward, please check on that for me.”
I nodded and walked over to the edge, only to frown.
“Shit, they found us,” I uttered, glaring outside. A pair of cars had driven up and had boxed the van in, preventing it from leaving. I could see several men getting out, handguns out, and I stepped away.
“Go! To the top, and hide behind one of the cars,” I ordered her, getting my own weapon out while passing her one as well.
“What about you?” she asked fearfully as she took the gun I offered her.
“I’ll hold them off,” I told her, sinking my mind behind my Occlumency shields. I couldn’t afford to be distracted by my emotions at the moment. “And I’ve got plenty of tricks up my sleeves.”
She nodded, having experienced what I was talking about, and ran off. I meanwhile stalked off to the lower levels and took up position behind a car that was parked near a concrete pillar.
“Come on, you sons of bitches,” I breathed out.
Soon, a man in black ran up the ramp towards me, but in the dark, he didn’t see me taking aim. I twisted my runic ring, and as time slowed around me, I pulled the trigger, and down he went!
Another man came running up behind the first thug and grabbed his feet, dragging him away while firing blindly in my direction.
“Bring it on, wankers!” I shouted out, my mental shields slipping for a brief moment. “COME UP HERE AND FACE YOUR DOOM IF YOU DARE!”
&&&&&
And that was how I ended up here, trapped in a parking garage while being shot at by murderous goons as I attempted to rescue a kidnapped young woman from being sold into slavery. Or worse.
“I should be getting ready for Christmas morning right now!” I snarled angrily as I ducked back down behind a car as bullets pinged off the trunk after shooting at the thugs chasing after Delilah.
My Occlumency was weakening the longer I fought as well. I simply wasn’t used to keeping up the emotion dampening side of this discipline for as long as I had been. I mainly used it to calm down or sort and look through memories. But having it active in the middle of combat? It was stressful, and not very easy. Little bits and pieces of emotions kept slipping through, from anger to fear to excitement, and when they did they widened the cracks, meaning more emotions inevitably flowed into my mind. If I wasn’t absolutely certain that lowering my mental shields would result in an immediate, hysterical breakdown I would have.
Ignoring the flare of emotions that rose within me as a bullet pinged off the car’s hood, I then twisted my runic ring, slowing down my perception of time for the fourth time that night.
As the gunmen moved in slow motion, I rose up from behind my cover and pointed my stolen handgun at them. I could see where they were aiming, and deftly stepped aside to avoid the path of the bullets, while also popping off a few shots of my own.
Two of them dropped, holes blown open in their arms and legs, and I ducked back down, untwisting my runic ring, undoing the spell. I let out a gasp as my vision flickered.
‘I’ve been using my Bullet Time ring too much,’ I realized, shaking the fatigue off. ‘No time to worry about that, though! I took down two, but there’s still three left!’
And that wasn’t counting the other thugs I’d taken down earlier or the unknown number who were still waiting to come up here. It hadn’t even been ten minutes since the shooting started, yet it felt like an eternity had passed.
I peeked out, flinching back as a bullet pinged off the bumper of the car I was hiding behind. Then, I heard a rumble of a car engine, and grimaced. I’d been worried they would try it, and reached into a pouch to get a Rune Bomb out.
As one of the thugs drove a car up the ramp to ram through the little blockade I’d made, I tossed it up and over towards the vehicle.
“Burst,” I intoned solemnly as it drove over the tiny pebble, and my words triggered the imbedded runic inscription upon it. It sounded like a light bulb exploding, but it did far more damage, obliterating the tires and shredding the front bumper while causing the windshield to shatter.
The driver screamed in pain before the car slammed into the concrete pillar, coming to a halt, metal and glass flying everywhere. I ducked and covered my face reflexively, and felt little bits of shrapnel ping off of my back.
I stood up when it was safe to do so, and after taking a look at the poor sod behind the wheel, winced and shot the driver in the head, putting him out of his misery. No man should be forced to live with a broken neck or all that glass in his chest. At least this way he died fast, and not slowly from bleeding out. It might have been my own experience with a cold, slow, inescapable death, but I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
I tried to force down the guilt that tried to overwhelm my mental defenses as I stared at the man I’d mercy killed. This was the second life I’d taken in both this one and my previous existence. And unlike that bastard Erroneous Hunch, did this man deserve it? Sure, he was a kidnapper, and had tried to kill me, but this man… I’d only ended his life because it was the kindest thing I could have done for him, given the extent of his injuries.
“Fucker’s got grenades?!” I heard one of the goons scream, breaking me out of my stunned state.
“This wasn’t what we agreed on!” another one shouted, and I realized he was speaking into a radio.
“And I’ve got more where that came from!” I shouted back, hoping to intimidate them.
That broke them, and the survivors fled, running away from the floor of the parking garage I’d claimed as my own.
I could hear the squeal of tires a few seconds later as the survivors drove away, taking the wounded with them while the dead stayed on the ground.
“Ugh, finally,” I grumbled, panting heavily. I then hurried up to find Delilah and reassure her that the danger had passed. I reached the top level of the parking garage, a faint grin on my face.
“Hey, Delilah? It’s safe now!” I called out. She peeked out from her hiding spot behind a pickup truck, and smiled widely, only for her expression to twist into one of shock.
“Look out!” she screamed at me, and I froze, turning around as I heard a crunch of gravel. One of the suited goons hadn’t left, and snuck up behind me. He unloaded several rounds into my chest and face as soon as I was facing him.
My Armor Bubble (patent pending) caused the bullets shot at my head to bounce off, but the rest of the shots hit my chest and I was fairly certain something broke. One of my ribs? The only consolation was that I wasn’t dead, which I would have been if not for my rune-armored suit. Still hurt like fuck, though.
“Argh!” I cried out, falling flat on my back. Stunned, I could only struggle a bit as the man who’d opened fire on me dashed over and jumped on me, trying to pummel my face and cave my skull in with his fists now that his gun was empty.
And, now that I got a better look at him, it turned out that it was none other than the same bastard who’d tried to shoot me back at the office!
Unfortunately, this revelation didn’t help much, as I was much weaker than him, and even though my gloves enhanced my strength, I couldn’t react in time or get into a position to use it, as his barrage of blows dazed me and I couldn’t focus, only struggle pathetically.
“Get off of him!” Delilah shouted, running out from behind cover and tackling the man, trying to get him to stop.
‘You have a gun I gave you, use it!’ I thought at her weakly. But she managed to buy me some time, and I reached up and managed to punch him in the chin.
It was a poor hit, even with my increased strength adding some extra damage, and it merely knocked him back for a moment.
He recovered faster than I could, and punched Delilah, knocking her away from him, before wrapping his meaty hands around my throat.
‘Shit!’ I gurgled, and punched him in the side of the head. It didn’t work, and I tried again, this time successfully knocking him off of me.
Gasping for air, I tried to sit up and deal with the man, but before I could, Delilah came back to the fight, this time with a cinderblock in her hands.
‘Where did she find one of those?’ I wondered.
“BASTARD!” she snarled, slamming the brick down onto the man’s head where he lay, dazed by my hit. It collided with a sickening “CRACK!” but she didn’t stop. Delilah kept swing the piece of masonry until it broke apart. The man’s head had been pulped long before that.
“Jesus Tap-Dancing Christ!” I hissed in awe, staring at Delilah as she panted heavily, the blood that’d splashed onto her face and hair making her look like an avenging angel under the parking garage’s lights.
‘Or maybe that’s my head wound talking,’ I thought to myself.
“We’ve got some stuff to discuss,” she told me, shooting me a glare as she got up off the man she’d clobbered to death.
“Yeah, fair,” I said with a wince. “Um, can you help me up? My vision is swimming.”
She got me back onto my feet.
“So, don’t freak out, but, uh, INKY!” I called out. Delilah flinched when my House Elf popped up next to her.
“Young Master Eddy should know better than to call me around Muggles!” Inky scolded me.
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” I grumbled. “Take us both back to the apartment, please.”
“Young Master Eddy knows I cannot do that! Missy Delly is not family!” Inky protested.
“Missy Delly?” Delilah muttered under her breath, even as she stared at us.
“I don’t give a flying fuck about the Rules right now, Inky,” I grunted. “She already saw me use magic, and she’s a Squib, I’m pretty sure.”
“But, but the rules!” Inky pleaded.
“Fine!” I grumbled, before turning to Delilah. “Hey, wanna get married?”
“Bwuh?!” she uttered.
“You didn’t say no!” I said with a pained laugh, then I turned back to Inky. “There, she’s now my fiancé. That means she’s part of my family according to the Rules! So you can use your magic on both us!”
“Young Master Eddy shouldn’t be bending Rules,” Inky grumbled, but he complied and snapped his fingers all the same, teleporting us back to my cozy little flat.
“What is going on?” she whispered as she looked around wide-eyed. I could see that the events of tonight were starting to catch up to her, and I sent Inky to get a Calming Draught before she broke down.
“Long story short, magic is real. Tada!” I said with a grunt and Jazz Hands before forcing the potion into her hands. “Drink this! And afterwards you can help me get some medicine onto these wounds of mine. You can call your dad afterwards.”
Delilah took a deep breath, but nodded, drained the Calming Draught into her throat, grimaced, and then looked at me with a firm expression as it kicked in. “Okay. Tell me what to do.”
It wasn’t how I expected my Christmas to end, but what could you do? I sagged down into a chair and pulled out a few of my bottled potions while reinforcing my Occlumency so I didn’t have a breakdown of my own. There was time to jibber and cry hysterically later!
“Okay, so, this one heals cuts…”
