The Aurors who arrived first to reinforce the scene did not immediately charge into the epicenter of the explosion.
Instead, led by the Head of the Auror Office, they began casting large-scale Muggle-Repelling Charms.
The deafening explosion, loud enough to be heard across all of Paris, and the blazing flames that lit up half the sky had already drawn the attention of every Muggle in the city.
The Muggle police responded immediately, dispatching patrol cars toward the direction of the abbey. However, upon encountering the Muggle-Repelling Charms left by the Aurors, the officers all turned their vehicles around for various bizarre reasons and decided to return to the station!
The furious chief of the Paris Police Department personally grabbed a walkie-talkie and roared into the police frequency:
"Why are you turning back?! Go in with the firefighters! We need to find out what happened!!"
At his command, the patrol cars, which had been about to retreat due to inexplicable thoughts of trivial matters, reluctantly turned back around. Along with three fire trucks that had already arrived with sirens blaring, they attempted once more to approach the explosion site.
Yet this time, not only the police but even the firefighters began coming up with excuses to retreat after entering the charmed perimeter!
"Sir! I just remembered the fire truck hasn't been inspected this month!"
"My wife told me if I'm not home on time tonight, she'll divorce me!"
"I'm about to retire, sir… I refuse to take on such a risky job!"
"My boots are broken! Something's poking my foot inside! I need to go back to the station and change them!"
"I have to go back and get my badge, sir! Without it, I can't complete this mission!"
Listening to the chaotic, absurd reasons flooding the frequency, the police chief felt his back drenched in cold sweat.
If it had happened once, it could've been dismissed as a coincidence. But this was the second time, with dozens of people collectively disobeying orders with ridiculous excuses to retreat...
How could this possibly be explained away?
Just as the chief's mind began spiraling into wild speculation, his secretary hurried over with a phone call.
"Chief, it's the President!"
"Who?" The chief shuddered and turned to the secretary.
"The President, sir." The secretary whispered.
Quickly straightening his uniform, the chief took the receiver. After a brief conversation with the person on the other end, he immediately redeployed his officers.
"Recall everyone! Set up a perimeter outside and barricade the area… no one else is allowed in!"
"Including the firefighters?" A deputy chief asked, baffled.
"The fire department has been informed. They won't attempt to enter either."
"But what do we tell the public?" Another deputy chief protested, "The people will never accept us doing nothing!"
"Announce now that we've identified the cause of the explosion!" The chief took a deep breath, "Blame it on a gas pipeline accident!"
"There isn't even a gas pipeline there!"
The morally upright deputy chief grabbed the chief's uniform.
"What's the meaning of this?! Who just called you?! Who's involved in this explosion that you'd make such an outrageous decision?!"
"If there's no gas pipeline, say it was an oil or natural gas pipeline!" The chief glared back, "If you disagree with my orders, feel free to gather anyone willing to follow you and charge in! If you succeed, I won't stop you!"
…
"Are those Muggle officers still trying to get in?"
"No! The Minister must've contacted their President! The Muggle police have given up and are instead setting up barricades to keep other Muggles away!"
At the heart of the explosion, near the ruins of what was once a monastery, nearly all the Aurors of the French Ministry of Magic had gathered, with Girard personally overseeing the operation.
"What on earth are they trying to do?!"
Yuma, standing beside Girard, stared in disbelief at the scene before him.
"This level of destruction… who could possibly survive?! Weren't they trying to capture those Squibs?! If they wanted prisoners, why cause so much destruction?!"
"We should be grateful there weren't more Muggles living near this monastery. The aftermath could've been far worse."
Though her expression was grim, Girard remained composed in front of the Aurors.
"Prepare to extinguish the flames! Stay alert for enemies and begin search and rescue!"
Aurors on broomsticks flew toward the sea of fire, casting Aguamenti to summon water from the Seine River. Torrents of water quickly doused the flames.
Then, ground teams of Aurors began advancing toward the massive crater where the abbey once stood, encircling the area.
At that moment, a pale hand suddenly emerged from the soaked earth!
An Auror, caught off guard by the sudden turn of events, had his ankle seized by the pale hand emerging from the earth. With a scream, half his body was dragged underground!
Soon, more and more arms burst through the soil!
Countless bloated, pale, and slimy corpses, looking as if they had been soaked in water for too long, crawled out of the sodden ground like monstrous creatures.
"Inferi! It's Inferi!!"
An Auror shouted in alarm.
At the same time, a blinding, sickly green light shot up from the center of the massive crater!
Under the night sky of Paris, the Dark Mark, a skull with a serpent protruding from its mouth, loomed over the Aurors struggling against the Inferi, as if mocking them in silent contempt.
"It's those Death Eaters! They're too brazen! Too damn brazen!!"
Girard's entire body trembled.
Not from fear, nor from tension… but from a mix of fury, relief, and exhilaration.
Yuma looked at Girard in confusion. He couldn't understand why the other party behaved like this!
'Was the appearance of the Dark Mark supposed to put her at ease?!'
'Were the atrocities committed by Death Eaters not atrocities? Were the lives they took not lives?!'
But what Girard was thinking was far beyond Yuma's comprehension.
The moment she saw the Dark Mark rise into the sky, the suffocating dread that had weighed on her since this afternoon, when she compared the photo Severus had given her to the contents of the Minister's secure vault, finally lifted.
Death Eaters were still scum, still trash, still monsters!
But at their core, these were dark wizards who operated primarily in Britain under the Dark Lord's command. They were a threat born and bred in Britain.
The people in that photo, however, were different.
Those people once swept across Europe!
They had once swept across all of Europe.
Their master had nearly become the ruler of half the Wizarding Europe.
Perhaps their destruction hadn't been as frenzied as the Death Eaters', but the psychological scars they left on the wizards who lived through that era were far deeper than anything the current Death Eaters could ever inflict.
'Thank Merlin it was the Death Eaters.'
'Thank Merlin Snape's suspicions were wrong!'
Relieved, Girard began directing the Aurors to suppress the Inferi crawling from the ground while dispatching reinforcements to capture the masterminds behind tonight's devastation.
…
While the Aurors were entirely preoccupied with the chaos at the monastery-
French Ministry of Magic.
With alarms blaring and all Aurors deployed, the Ministry had entered lockdown.
Ordinary employees were sent home immediately, while the black cats that usually lurked in the shadows during the day emerged early, standing guard over every inch of the building.
With Severus away, and especially with something unpleasant happening in the afternoon, there was no need for Lupin to get involved in the Auror operation.
He stayed in the bedroom, watching over Draco and Harry. The latter paced restlessly, repeatedly asking where Severus had gone.
"Relax, he went back to Hogwarts to discuss something with Dumbledore. He's perfectly safe there."
Lupin had just managed to calm them down when a pale-faced, red-eyed Marie knocked on the door, carrying two boxes of cookies.
"These… these are from Patrick. He wanted to thank you."
She set the cookies down, then hesitated, her face twisting with anxiety and fear… as if she were debating whether or not to speak.
Lupin immediately noticed something was wrong with her.
"Madam, what's the matter?"
"I-I don't know what's happened to Patrick… I should trust him completely, but he told me to bring these to you and then… find an excuse to stay with you. He said being near you was the safest option…"
Tears streamed down Marie's face as she looked at Lupin and the boys with nervous desperation. She didn't know what consequences her words might bring, but she had a terrible feeling-
If she wanted to keep her husband safe, she had to tell these people the truth.
"I knew he was going to do something dangerous. I begged him not to go, but he said… he said if he didn't, we'd have no future!"
Lupin completely held his breath at this moment!
A massive conspiracy… one targeting the French Ministry, planned long before Nicolas Flamel's abduction… was unfolding before his eyes.
Rosier's scrambled mind, ravaged by Memory Charms and Confundus spells, might not have been the result of torture… but a deliberate act.
'Those Memory Charms might not have been forced upon him.'
'He and his accomplices might have cast them on themselves beforehand, to evade the Ministry's scrutiny.'
'And to ensure their plan succeeded, Rosier had willingly sacrificed his own mind… irreversibly.'