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𝐀 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐋𝐄 𝐒𝐈𝐋𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄 𝐇𝐔𝐍𝐆 𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐀𝐈𝐑 as the witches and wizards watched each other closely to see who would make the first move. It was Willow. Raising the lead pipe above her head, she charged Thomas, but before she could reach him she tripped on something and fell to the floor, the pipe clattering out of her hands and rolling to a stop at Thomas's feet.

"Stay away from me!" Thomas shouted, wielding the lead pipe and waving it around before him wildly. The others kept their distance but they watched him carefully, calculating his every move.

It was Jesse who capitalized on Thomas's first moment of weakness, sneaking up in his blind spot with the candlestick held firmly in his grip. Jesse swung at Thomas, the candlestick coming within inches of Thomas's head when it was met with the lead pipe. Thomas deflected the blow, Jesse's candlestick bouncing off the pipe and vibrating in Jesse's hand.

Jesse growled, gripping the candlestick tighter and swinging it towards Thomas with a ferocity that the whole room could feel. Once more, Thomas blocked it, and the two ensued in a makeshift swordfight of clicks and clangs as metal met metal.

With Thomas's attention focused on Jesse, Madelynn seized her opportunity to strike. She lunged for Thomas, the tip of her silver dagger slicing a shallow line through Thomas's abdomen as he turned to avoid it. Scarlet blood soaked through Thomas's white shirt and though he wasn't seriously injured, the cut burned with a white hot rage.

Finding an opening, Thomas ducked away before Jesse and Madelynn could strike again, but he didn't make it far when he felt a weight on his back and a tightness at his throat. Willow, who had found her feet again, had jumped onto his back and was fighting him for control of the lead pipe. The two continued to wrestle with it until Thomas lost his balance and fell face-first to the floor.

Thomas tried to clamber back to his feet but a knee pressed into his back kept him on the ground. Defenseless, since Willow had succeeded in prying her prize weapon away from him, Thomas covered his head with his arms and awaited the worst. But the worst came slowly...and it was preceded by the sound of footsteps as another set of shoes joined them in the dining room. Thomas craned his neck to see but he wasn't able to glance any higher than the newcomer's kneecaps.

"Nice try, Wadsworth," Luc's voice echoed around him. "Or should I say, Thomas Hill."

"You were the host this whole time, weren't you?" Thomas growled as he attempted to push against the knee still firmly lodged into the center of his back. A hard smack to the back of his head stopped him.

"It's true that I organized this weekend, but I can't take all the credit..." Luc answered. "I had some help in the end."

Laughter echoed in the air above Thomas's head, floating, flying, fleeting. A symphony of sneers and snickers, a chorus of chortles and chuckles.

"A.S...." Thomas muttered to himself as the realization struck. "You're the Azkaban Six."

"And you're the auror that's been working undercover at Hogwarts to investigate us," Luc replied, meeting Thomas's eyes as he squatted down to his level. A smug grin decorated his face, his eyes darker than Thomas remembered.

"A little fresh-faced for an auror, don't you think?" Willow's voice taunted from above him.

"'Azkaban Six' is quite the nickname. A little on-the-nose given that's where you're going to end up, don't you think?" Thomas retorted and Willow dug her knee in deeper.

"Oh, you know how it goes," Luc said with a click of his tongue. "If you don't start the club you don't get to pick the name. We're the fourth generation."

"Always six?" Thomas grunted, fighting for his breath.

"Always six," Luc confirmed. "When a member wants out, they choose a new witch or wizard to take their place."

"To kill?"

"To take care of problems," Luc corrected him. "Each other's problems."

"That's right," Thomas mused. "You don't kill your own target, you have somebody else in the club do it so it's harder to trace it back to you. You also never communicate in-person, only through written letters signed with monikers that are left at designated drop-off spots. Which if I'm correct, means that this is the first formal meeting of the Azkaban Six since the founders."

Luc didn't respond but Thomas didn't need him to. The answer hid in the mischievous glint in his eye.

"Those 'problems' had friends and family that loved and cared for them." Thomas's anger brewed in his chest like a thunderstorm, leaping from his mouth like lightening. "And you stripped them of life, played them like puppets, and made a mockery of them all for your little game."

"It was them or us," a new voice snapped, drawing Thomas's eyes towards the red high tops of Jackson, which stomped angrily against the ground. "They weren't so innocent either."

"I wasn't going to give up my quidditch career for some snotty little Ravenclaw keeper who couldn't hold on, even if I did curse his broom," Luc spat. "So Miss White saw to it that he went from on the mend to on his deathbed."

"And I wasn't going to let the Ravenclaw prefect rat on me when they found out that I was selling test and homework answers," Penny sneered, her polished Mary Janes pressed firmly together. "So Professor Plum helped him to realize that Tabby Cat beats rat every time."

"Just like Colonel Mustard assisted me when one of the Death Eaters I accidentally overheard discussing an infiltration of Hogwarts found me out," Jesse added, his dirty white sneakers tapping in haphazard patterns. "She helped to acquaint him with the first part of his organization's name."

"Of course I couldn't allow Yvette, who supplied me with the dragon eggs for my smuggling operation at Hogwarts, to cut me off," Madelynn snickered, her tan leather sandals shifting her weight from heel to heel. "So Miss Peacock assisted in turning her from an esteemed dragon trainer to a dragon's lunch."

"And when the auror who arrested my Death Eater uncle began investigating the rest of my family," Willow began, her knee digging farther into Thomas's back. "Miss Scarlet helped her to discover her own demise before she could discover that there was more than one Death Eater in the family."

"It was easy," Jackson scoffed. "Especially considering I had more malevolent mixture left over from when I poisoned my mom's abusive dick of a boyfriend with it. And round and round it goes, to Mr. Green, who was able to tie up loose ends for me by giving the Gryffindor girl a dose of the very medicine she sold me."

Luc snapped his fingers, diverting Thomas's attention back to him. A vicious smile cut across his cheeks as he spoke. "And soon you'll be gone too. I can see the headlines now: 'The Undercover Auror Who Blew Their Cover and Was Put Six Feet Under."

Thomas thrashed under Willow's weight, fighting to at least get his arms underneath his chest so that he could push himself up but Willow was too strong. It was looking like he was going to die on the dining room floor of the decrepit old Shrieking Shack when suddenly salvation came...and it came in the form of a cat.

The other witches and wizards had been too enthralled with sharing their secrets to notice Mr. Boddy lurking in the corner of the room, silently creeping closer until he was near enough to leap onto Willow's back. Hissing, he sunk his claws into Willow's skin, her shriek piercing the air as she dropped to the ground beside Thomas, angrily swatting at the feline until he let go.

Finally free, Thomas jumped to his feet, but he soon found a new obstacle before him. The other witches and wizards were still surrounding him, their weapons gripped firmly in their fists. But luckily for Thomas, salvation struck twice, this time clattering against his shoe. His wand.

Where it had come from, Thomas had no idea, but he wasn't about to question it in that moment. He grabbed it off the floor before the other witches and wizards could make a move.

"Expulso!" Thomas shouted, a bright blue light exploding from the tip of his wand and washing across the room. Luc, Penny, Willow, Madelynn, Jesse, and Jackson were blasted off their feet, dropping to the ground in painful grunts and groans.

Thomas grabbed Mr. Boddy and clasped him tightly to his chest, his wand held firmly before him as he tried to apparate them away, but whatever hexes or curses had been put on the Shack to keep them locked inside were stronger than his magic. He was stuck. The only option left was to run.

Thomas bolted into the foyer but it took less time for the others to recover than he had hoped. They were close on his heels.

"Stay back!" Thomas shouted, waving his wand around at them. Madelynn's dagger came hurtling towards his face but Thomas was able to use the shield charm to deflect it. "L-let's just talk about it, maybe we can come to some sort of an arrangement!"

"Your time is up, Wadsworth," Luc replied, gripping his axe firmly. He glanced around to the others and they all collectively took a step forward.

"I don't want to hurt you!" Thomas warned but this didn't deter them. They still crowded in closer, only faltering when his wand pointed their way. He could hit them with Expulso Curse again but there were only so many places he could run. There was still no way out and the alternative was something he didn't want to consider. He wasn't like them, he wasn't a killer.

So he came up with a third option: stalling.

"Hey, hey!" he called out, his feet searching the ground behind him while his eyes remained glued forward. The toe of his shoe hit a wall and with a drop of his stomach, he realized that they had quite literally backed him into a corner. "You never told me how you pulled all this off...the Inferi, the enchantments like the one on the Shack...it all seems a little beyond your schooling."

A fleeting look passed across Luc's face and Thomas could tell that he was hooked.

"There is a book that has been passed down to each generation of the Azkaban Six from the generation before," Penny answered after exchanging a glance with Luc. "A book of the darkest magic to ever exist. Perhaps you've heard of it?"

A bead of sweat rolled down Thomas's forehead. "The Necronomicon," he whispered, the words lingering in the stale air.

Ever since Thomas had started working for the Ministry of Magic when they recruited him during his fourth year as part of an undercover operation at Hogwarts, The Necronomicon had been a chilling whisper on the back of Thomas's neck. The dark book had been safely secured and stored away in the deepest depths of the Ministry until seventy years previous, when a group of witches and wizards had pulled off one of the greatest heists in the magical world. They were caught, but the secret of how they had done it and where they had hidden the Necronomicon had disappeared with them when they escaped Azkaban.

This group would later be known as the Azkaban Six.

"It's provided us with so many interesting spells, hexes, curses, and potions..." Jackson smiled.

"With it, our problems are no longer problems," Jesse continued.

Thomas's eyes tracked across the room while he processed this information, his brows furrowing and his nose scrunching as he drove himself deeper into perplexity. Thomas retreated to his mind to recap the weekend, from the moment he first arrived with a letter in his pocket and a secret to keep to the knee wedged in his back and the weapons pointed at his face. The soundless deaths, the staged corpses, the grand theatrics all for an audience of one. No matter which way he put the puzzle pieces together, there was still one missing. The picture wasn't clear. "But why?" he asked. "Why do all of this just for me? There were plenty of opportunities to kill me long before this. Easier opportunities. And the closet, somebody let me out...and my wand, just now...where did that come from?"

Luc's mouth set in a grim line and the others shifted uncomfortably around him.

"This weekend wasn't just for you," Luc answered for the group after a moment of contemplation. "It didn't take long for me to figure out that the Ministry had planted a spy at Hogwarts and with that knowledge, it became clear that there were more problems than just you. Nobody knew about the Azkaban Six's presence at Hogwarts except for the Azkaban Six. We have a rat amongst us."

Willow, Penny, Madelynn, Jesse, and Jackson shifted uncomfortably, casting accusatory glances at each other. It was clear that Thomas wasn't the only one to hear this information for the first time.

"So on top of getting rid of you, I planned this weekend to snuff the rat out," Luc continued. "I watched and waited at one of the drop-off sites to surmise the identify of my fellow club members, then I sent them anonymous letters warning them to be here this weekend or risk their secrets. And of course, it worked like a charm. I figured that with the bodies and your presence that the rat would slip up and expose themselves, but they've been craftier than I anticipated."

"It wasn't until the ruse with the giant squid that Mr. Green revealed himself and his plan to us, that he had staged this whole weekend because our precious secrets really were at stake and that you were the one threatening them," Willow said, her eyes gleaming with malice as she stared at Thomas. In a quieter voice, she added, "Although he neglected to mention that he suspected one of us of being a rat."

"It was time to take a new approach. If the rat wouldn't reveal themselves willingly, then I'd force them to," Luc explained, ignoring the last part of what Willow had said. "They're the ones who let you out of the closet, who stole the wands from the chest before we could get to them. They've been protecting you this whole time...so I thought, let's test whether they'll continue to do so."

Having been distracted by the influx of new information, Thomas let his guard down and hadn't realized how close Luc had gotten to him until he had finished speaking. Thomas gripped Mr. Boddy tightly to his chest and raised his arm to point his wand at Luc but within a blink the wand was gone...and so was his hand.

A fountain of red erupted from Thomas's wrist, splattering to the floor where his hand now laid, the wand still firmly in its grip. The bright red axe hung at Luc's side, now redder with Thomas's blood.

"Kill him," Luc instructed.

The blood loss made Thomas dizzy, his vision blurry. The people before him turned into unrecognizable blobs, molding together into one mass as they swarmed towards him. Thomas had one last realization before the darkness took him: he wouldn't even have the dignity of knowing who killed him.

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"Thomas, Thomas!" a voice echoed around him. The darkness had faded slightly but everything was still a haze. "Thomas, wake up!"

"Wh--" Thomas choked, only managing a syllable. A warmth spread through his body, chasing out the coldness that had inhabited it previously. "What?"

"Thomas, Wadsworth, whatever your name is," the voice continued. "Can you hear me? You need to get up!"

"Wh-who...?" Thomas fumbled, the words shriveling up in his dry mouth. "Wh-where...?"

"You're still at the Shrieking Shack, you idiot!"

Thomas's eyes burst open.

His first instinct was to look at his hand, or the spot where his hand used to be. A strip of white gauze was wrapped tightly around the stub that was left, stained pink with his red blood. His next instinct was to look at his chest, where he expected a dagger or a pair of garden shears to be firmly embedded. His hand then fluttered to his neck, where he expected to find a rope, and then his head, where he expected to find a large gouge created by a candlestick or an iron pipe. Each time, he found nothing.

"I'm not dead?" Thomas exclaimed, the corners of his lips stretching to reach the corners of his eyes.

"No, you're not," the voice confirmed and when Thomas turned to meet it, the smile dropped right off his face.

"Miss White?"

Penny sat beside him, a red slash stretching from her eyebrow to her cheek and her arms tied tightly behind her back. Thomas tried to push himself away from her but the searing pain that ripped through his body prevented him from making it very far. It was then that he noticed the commotion around them, the witches and wizards in sleek suits and shiny shoes marching around the foyer.

"You won't hold us forever!" a voice shouted, drawing Thomas's attention towards Luc, who was being accompanied by a witch out the front door. Like Penny, his hands were bound behind his back. "Our organization has escaped Azkaban once before, we'll do it again!"

"Silencio," the witch muttered with a wave of her wand. Luc's mouth continued to move but no sound came out.

Willow, Madelynn, Jesse, and Jackson were paraded behind Luc, each accompanied by another witch or wizard that Thomas now recognized to be aurors. The Ministry of Magic had found them.

And with this realization came another: the enchantments on the Shrieking Shack were gone, leaving Thomas to imagine the magic it took the Ministry to reverse everything Luc had done. The bright red rug that had met him when he first opened the front door was now a dull gray, torn asunder with ragged holes that indiscernible insects climbed in and out of. The golden sconces that had once breathed life and light into the Shack were now dead and dark, the paintings hanging in limp shreds from their frames.

The warmth that had met Thomas when he first entered had turned cold and the smell of burning pine and lemon had faded from his nostrils, replaced with the scent of dampness and decay. Every last ounce of life and color that had been there the last time Thomas's eyes were open had been drained, leaving behind only a darkness that threatened to steal the life and color from him too. Yet somehow, it brought Thomas a sense of relief. Things were back to the way they should be.

"What happened?" Thomas asked.

"I saved your life," Penny answered, huffing a piece of hair out of her eye. "You're welcome."

"You're the rat..." Thomas replied once the dots connected. "You're the one who told the Ministry that the Azkaban Six was at Hogwarts, who let me out of the closet and gave me my wand. You tripped Miss Peacock too, didn't you? When she first lunged to attack me?"

Penny nodded her head.

Thomas cocked his head in confusion. "Why?"

"Come on, Miss Tanaka," a wizard said, appearing over her shoulder and reaching down to help her to her feet. "It's time to go."

"Wait, give me a few more minutes with her," Thomas pleaded with his colleague. "I need to know."

The wizard scowled, seeming to contemplate whether it was worth the time and effort to argue with him and ultimately ended up walking away.

"I couldn't live with the guilt any longer," Penny answered after a moment of silence, her voice small. "When I was invited to join the Azkaban Six I accepted because I had a problem and they had a solution. But now I can't sleep and every breath hurts. I thought maybe...maybe if I tipped off the Ministry that the new members were being initiated at Hogwarts that I'd feel better, that it'd help. It didn't."

Thomas's mouth sat in a firm line, his mind busy. "It doesn't excuse what you've done...but thanks," he said quietly. He moved to get up, trying his hardest to fight his body which wanted him to stay put, but Penny stopped him.

"The Ministry," she began. "How did they know that we were here?"

"Let's just say that I wasn't working alone," Thomas answered with a secretive smile, finally finding his feet. He whistled and a black blob of fur raced to his side, winding around Thomas's feet and rubbing at his ankles. "Come on, Mr. Boddy. Let's go home."

The auror came back to collect Penny, leading her towards the rest of her comrades and a life behind bars, but she was unable tear her eyes away from the cat as the gears clicked in her brain. Right before she exited out into the cold, dark night, she could have sworn that she saw him wink and wave a paw at her.

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A/N: Whoo! Even though I kept having to re-write this chapter because I kept forgetting stuff, I was looking forward to this ending! My favorite ending in "Clue" is the ending where everyone is guilty and Mr. Green turns out to be an undercover agent so this ending was inspired by that, albeit slightly tweaked.

Out of the two endings so far, which one is your guys' favorite? I think I'm going to write one more, maybe two if I can think of more ideas, and then the story will be complete! The last ending was more Jackson-focused and this one was more Luc- and Penny-focused so I promise the next ending(s) will have more of a focus on Madelynn, Jesse, and Willow!

As always, thanks for reading! ♥