Chapter 5:

The Demon Calvary

Severus thought that his first class with the first years had been pretty successful. He had managed to instill fear inside all of them, and a bit of hatred in the case of Potter. He had paired off the students so that each pair consisted of a Gryffindor and a Slytherin as a way to try to combat the hatred between the two houses.

Perhaps some of Dumbledore's cunning was starting to rub off on him.

Severus had paired Potter with Amarantha. Now she had an excuse to spend more time with the young boy, and Severus also hoped to try to have her show the young Potter that not all Slytherins were evil.

Since his classes were done for the day, Severus decided to head to the library to try to fish out some more information from its depths. There were only a few more books to check before he would have to resort to the various espionage tricks he had learned as Itachi Uchiha.

Entering the library, he noticed Potter and Amarantha working together for their assignment, and he didn't notice any signs of hostility between the two. So it seemed that Severus's plan was working, at least up to the point where they were working together.

Severus quickly went through the few final books on the subject he needed, skimming through the pages to quickly get through it. Unfortunately, he found nothing that would even come remotely close to helping.

Severus mentally cursed, how was he supposed to do anything when he didn't have any information to go on.

Well, now that he had exhausted all the resources in the library, it was time to go back to where he had first met that strange man and try to glean some clues from there. On his way there, he passed by Quirrell and felt a strange sensation in his stomach.

'Just you wait, Quirrell," Severus thought as he stared at the other teacher's retreating back, 'I'll find out your secret, and when I do you are going to wish that you had never come here.'

Finally making it to his classroom, he quickly checked to make sure no one was inside before he began inspecting every square inch of the room. He picked up books, looked under the seats, and checked behind bookshelves.

Then his hard work began paying off. Stuck to the back of one of the bookshelves was a strange magical seal, and Severus sat down and began studying it, before realizing that magic seals had unfortunately been one of the few classes that he hadn't really been good at.

"But Tonks aced it," he said aloud, and ran to go get his former student. After dragging her away from talking to Ms. McGonagall, which had been really difficult, he began to explain to her on the way back to his classroom.

"So you need me to figure the purpose of a magic seal?" She questioned before tossing a sly smirk over at him. "Does that mean that you can't do it?"

Severus remained silent, not willing to reply to that question. However, that just seemed to fuel her fires, and she began to laugh not so silently. Severus sighed in annoyance, Tonks would never let this go. She was going to hold this over his head forever, or at least until he found something on her that was on equal terms.

Tonks was so consumed in her humor that she didn't notice the person in front of her and ended up crashing into the unfortunate person.

"Watch where you're going," the person, who happened to be another teacher, exclaimed. She had long blonde hair and blue eyes, which regarded Tonks coldly.

"Yeah, sorry," Tonks apologized. "It was an accident."

Severus regarded the woman and nodded lightly. "My apologies, Narcissa, I am partially to blame for Nymphadora's lack of attention." Tonks's hair turned red, but she refrained exploding at Severus for calling her by her first name. "Now, if you'd please excuse us."

She walked away, and Severus gave a sigh of relief. Dealing with Narcissa Malfoy, who had taken over the position of the Head of Slytherin after the previous head retired, could be extremely tiring if you managed to catch her at a bad time. Luckily, they had been spared today.

Tonks also realized just how lucky they were, and she copied her teacher in sighing. "That was close, that's one Slytherin that could have made a whole lot of trouble for us."

Severus silently agreed, if followers of Voldemort were involved with this, the Malfoy's were definitely not people that they wanted to catch onto their investigation.

"Let's hurry up. The sooner we figure out that seal, the better."

Tonks nodded, and the two continued their way to Severus's classroom. Once inside, Tonks got to work on analyzing the seal. She muttered several things and pointed her wand at the seal. The seal began to glow a brilliant amber before the markings separated from the paper and floated in the air. Tonks then stood up and began inspecting it closer, using her wand to make the markings bigger or isolating certain sections.

"I think that's a "Ruh" symbol. No, wait, it's a "Mir" symbol. Phew, good thing I noticed that," she muttered, and began skimming through the symbols quickly while writing a few things down.

Severus waited somewhat patiently for Tonks to finish, and then she came up to him with a grin on her face as the glowing marks in the air vanished.

"So, what did you find?" He questioned, and she held up the paper seal.

"Based on the markings, it's some kind of projection seal that allowed him to project an apparition like hologram anywhere in this room," she explained as Severus took the paper in his hand.

"That's nice to know, at least we're fighting something with flesh and blood," Severus commented, pleased to finally have some more good news.

"That's not all," Tonks replied, "this kind of seal requires that the user be somewhere near while using it."

"Tonks, you wonderful, shapeshifting girl. Get Amadi and start looking for wherever he was transmitting from."

"Aye, aye, teach!" She exclaimed, and both began looking for secret passages, Tonks rushing out of the room to get the others and check nearby halls and rooms. MInutes later, Amadi burst in the door and had a large grin on his face.

"I think we found it, Severus," he said. "Hurry up and get out here."

Severus followed Amadi out into the hallway, where Tonks was standing in front of a painting, which, as Severus got a look at it, he realized that the painting was unfamiliar to him. HE walked over and joined up besides Tonks.

She turned to face him. "This must be it. I even asked Filch, and he said that the painting shouldn't be here."

Amadi's eyes grew wide. "You approached Filch and asked him something on your own accord. You have more guts than I thought," he told her, getting a smug look in response. He then looked over at Severus. "So let's get in there and hopefully bust this dude."

"Right," Severus replied and pressed his hand against the painting, watching as it disappeared and was replaced by a doorway. The three stared at the dark passage beyond for a few seconds.

"How did you know that would work?" Tonks asked.

"Lucky guess," Severus answered. "I'm going first, you two stay close."

Severus closed his eyes and did something that he hadn't had to do in a while. Ever since coming to grips with the fact that he had once been Itachi, and accepting that part of his life, he had made sure to see if this body still had chakra. He had been pleasantly surprised to see that it did, and had made sure to train himself back up to the level where he could use it like he had as Itachi.

So he channeled the chakra to his eyes, and opened them to reveal his blazing red Sharingan eyes, thankful that both of his teammates already knew that he had them. That wasn't to say they all about his past life, all they knew was that he had weird eyes that gave him strange powers.

Amadi shivered. "I hate it when you do that, it's not natural."

And with that, the three started through the dimly lit tunnel, with Severus using his eyes to check for traps or illusions.

Several meters later, the three exited the hallway and came into a relatively small room. Inside was various other magic seals, a small desk, and an entire wall with a bookshelf filled with books on various subjects.

Tonks pointed to one of the magic seals inscribed on the floor. "And there's the transmitter seal."

Severus nodded, deactivating his sharingan now that it was no longer needed. Then the three began searching through the room to find anything that could give them an identity of their villain. They combed over everything with a fine tooth comb,

Over at the desk, Amadi held up an envelope in the air. "Found payment and contract over here."

"Can we trace anything?" Severus called over.

"Unfortunately, no. Whoever they are, they're good," Amadi replied, looking at the letter. "But with this, it does seem that were dealing with a merc or merc group."

"See if you can find anything that can help us identify which group."

A few minutes of searching later, Tonks pulled through with something. Severus and Amadi rushed over, and looked at the letter with a strange symbol on it. It was the image of a skeletal horse riding through pitch black flames.

"Well, that sure looks like the marking of a group. Either one of you recognize it?" Amadi questioned.

Severus stared at the mark before placing his finger on it. "I do. That is the mark of the mercenary group known as the Demon Calvary."

Tonks's eyes grew wide. "I've heard rumors about them. They've never failed a mission, so the only one's who know their faces and abilities are six feet under."

Severus shook his head. "That's not entirely true. I've met the leader, and it only makes me more certain that this is the group we're looking for. The man who approached me tried to pass off as a wind demon, and the leader of this merc group specializes in wind magic."

"That's great! That gives us somewhat of an advantage," Amadi said, but Severus shook his head.

"No, it's been years since then, and I have no clue what level his abilities are on now. Besides, he works with a group, and I have no clue about any of them."

Severus walked into the center of the room, and looked to look at the other magic seals littering the room.

"So what do we do now?" Tonks questioned, crossing her arms in front of her.

"Now, we wait for our opponent to make their move, we inform Amarantha of what we found out here, and we keep a close eye on Potter," Severus informed and stood up. "From now on, this room will be our base of operations. Tonks, check these seals and get rid of anything that could allow them to spy on us. Amadi, just in case they come back in here, set up traps."

Both immediately got to work, and Severus went to find Amarantha to tell her about the new information they had.

Severus couldn't help but smile a little. Today the enemy had tipped their hand slightly. But the question was whether they had done it on purpose. Well then, Severus was just going to have to raise the stakes and see...

Quirrell charged into the room hidden underneath the grounds of Hogwarts, which was the secondary base for the mercenaries. His face was contorted by anger as he marched to the center of the room, and looked around the dark space.

"Why did you let him get into that room? What if he figures out our plans?" He shouted, but got no response. "Come out, Taranis!"

A young man hovered to the middle of the room. His long black hair flowed past his shoulders, and his features were very soft for a man. His green eyes were sparkling, as if he thought all this was just some sort of game. He wore a pair of dark green cargo pants and an opened blue vest.

"Whatever, you need to learn to lighten up, Quirrell. You're gonna end up getting wrinkles if you keep it up."

"This is serious! If Snape finds out what our plans are, then all of this will have been for nothing, you idi-"

Quirrell stopped talking as a needle grazed past his face and embedded itself in the floor. Quirrell turned to face a young woman sitting in the rafters. Her light brown hair went to her waist, and her blue eyes were trained coldly on him. She wore a blouse covered in the designs of intertwining vines and flowers, and a dark grey skirt.

"I will not tolerate anyone who insults my master," she said, her eyes those of a killer. "This is your only warning."

Taranis began waving his hands at the woman. "Now, now, Zinnia. It's okay, I'm sure that Quirrell meant it in the best possible way."

She humphed and turned her head towards an area from which strange sounds were coming from, and the scent of blood hit their noses.

"Hey! What do you think you're doing, performing that vulgar ceremony in here?!" She exclaimed. "We all agreed that you couldn't do that in here anymore; we just got rid of the smell from the last time."

"Shut up, you stupid woman!" A voice shouted, although his language had been much harsher. "You can't tell me what to do. Besides, there's nowhere else around here for me to sacrifice to Jashin-sama without you morons getting on my case."

Quirrell could now make out a man laying on the ground with his silver hair slicked back, and his violet eyes held a sociopathic air to them. He wore a black cloak with red clouds on it, but it was currently getting ruined by the onyx colored pole stabbed into his stomach, but he seemed to be unaffected by the pain. No, that wasn't right. He noticed the pain, but he just seemed to like it.

Quirrell then noticed the blood covering the ground and the presence of another person- no, wait, that was a centaur!- on the verge of death, hanging from the wall by black poles similar to the one imbedded into the man on the ground.

"She's right, ya know, Hidan. Go make your stupid little sacrifices to your stupid little god somewhere else." Another male voice broke out, but Quirrell couldn't locate the source of it.

"What was that, Idris, you stinkin' scumbag! You asking for a fight, cause I'd be more than happy to personally send you to meet Jashin-sama myself."

Quirrell now knew that the people he hired to help complete this job were veritably insane, and there was a high possibility that he could be killed if he didn't tread carefully. He was starting to think that it might have been better if he had just stuck with his original plan of going it alone.

And another chapter completed, now onto the few notes I have for this chapter.

Magic Seals: I know that this isn't actually mentioned in the books, but I wanted to add in this element into the magical world, which will make for some interesting things down the road. I'm not going to go in-depth right now, but I will just go ahead and say that the subject is deeply connected to runes.

Demon's Calvary: And so now we finally get a name to the bad guys who are after Harry. I hope you guys enjoy this new little plot element. Most of the group are original characters, but I decided to throw in another Naruto character into the mix. And who else would fit but the immortal, sadistic, Jashin follower known as Hidan.

Now that the notes are done, I can finally stop writing for tonight. And next time, prepare for the first conflict between Severus's group and the Demon's Calvary.