The fact that the Ministry of Magic lay beneath London was no secret in the British wizarding world.
But very few people knew that after winding through a maze of underground passages, the Ministry's true location was actually beneath Whitehall.
And Whitehall, in turn, was one of the main roads in Westminster, the very heart of the British government. Many important departments, including the Joint Operations Office under Tver's leadership, had their offices there.
That was why, the moment Cynthia saw the suddenly appearing Inferi giants smashing through those buildings, she urgently wanted Tver to come at once.
An incident this serious, one involving Muggles, was already beyond what she, or anyone else there, could deal with alone.
"Before Tver gets here, we have to reduce the severity of this situation as much as possible!" Cynthia said, her face grim as she drew her wand.
Under normal circumstances, unless they had been lurking near the Ministry all along, those Inferi giants could never have appeared here so quickly.
But she had never expected Voldemort to personally lead the giants instead of sending vampires or Death Eaters.
She had no time to notify the Aurors scattered elsewhere, which meant that the only wizards likely able to reach the scene right now were her and Percy.
"Madam Cynthia?!"
Suddenly, Viktor came running out of a damaged office building, filthy with dust and holding his wand up warily. It was only after he recognized the two of them that he lowered it with a sigh of relief.
He had thought the attackers were them.
"What are you doing here..."
Cynthia's eyes followed his line back to the office building behind him, and understanding dawned at once. A delighted smile appeared on her face.
"Where are the other wizards from the Joint Operations Office? Where's Marvolio? We need their help here!"
She had already tried a few spells, but against giants that had been made into Inferi, they did not meaningfully slow them down at all.
Her magic could keep damaging the giants, and she did not fear taking a hit from their lumbering attacks, but the giants now felt no pain. Under Voldemort's command, they were completely focused on tearing the surrounding buildings apart.
By the time she and Percy finished dealing with them one by one, even if the buildings here had been built unusually solidly, the center of the British government would already be in ruins.
So the best solution was to gather as many wizards as possible. They did not need to be especially strong, they only needed to protect the area while attacking the giants to ease the pressure here.
But to her disappointment, Viktor shook his head awkwardly.
"It seems Mr. Marvolio received some news and left the office. Crystal is helping the Muggle officials evacuate."
"But we do still have some helpers..."
He pointed at the Muggle police and government security who had already reached the scene. But the terror on their faces, and the small pistols in their hands, were useless against giants. In this chaos, they might not even be able to protect themselves.
Cynthia gave a helpless, bitter smile and asked in confusion, "Then where did Marvolio go..."
"He went to reinforce Azkaban's defenses."
Tver appeared behind them soundlessly, his face grave as he looked up at the more than twenty giants swinging their clubs.
Every time one of those clubs crashed into a building, the impact sent a violent recoil through the structure, yet layers of concrete cladding were still smashed away. Under the giants' repeated blows, the exposed walls split open with long cracks that spread crazily outward.
The government employees in their suits had lost all their usual calm. They could only flee from the swaying buildings in blind panic, terror written all over their faces as they looked at the hideous Inferi giants.
Before Cynthia or the others could even ask anything, Tver spoke first.
"You too, Cynthia. The pure-blood families need you over there now."
Cynthia immediately remembered the arrangements they had made earlier.
"You mean... the vampires?!"
"Exactly. Lucius and the others haven't sent any news, but the vampires still haven't shown themselves. There's no way they'd pass up an opportunity like this."
Tver spoke quickly, and the act of laying out the analysis seemed to sharpen his own thinking.
Defending the pure-blood families and defending Azkaban had always been part of the plan. That was why Cynthia had been unable to gather the Aurors at once. They had all been sent off to guard those two locations.
But considering Voldemort's lethal move tonight, Tver refused to believe that all he intended to do was send giants to attack British government buildings.
That meant the attacks on those two locations might be no lighter than the one here.
The moment that possibility struck her, Cynthia's face changed. She did not dare waste another second. Without even bothering with a word of farewell, she vanished on the spot.
Percy watched the place where she had disappeared with a thoughtful expression. As for Viktor, from the moment the giants appeared to the moment Tver arrived, his confusion had only grown heavier rather than clearing at all.
"Viktor, go help Crystal evacuate the Muggles here..."
Just then, another figure came stumbling out of the shaking building, except this one was not a wizard.
"Mr. Fawley!"
It was Evans.
He ran toward them, waving the bulky mobile phone in his hand frantically. Clearly, some important person wanted to speak to Tver.
Tver flicked his hand and shielded him from the falling chunks of rubble.
"Thank you. The Prime Minister wants to speak with you..." Evans said, shoving the phone toward Tver before he had even caught his breath.
"He already knows some of what's happening here, and he's absolutely furious."
Evans tried to warn him in a low voice, but unfortunately the Prime Minister on the other end heard him anyway.
"Thank you for that description, Evans. I trust you still remember that you are employed by the British government, not by that wizarding world that spends all day causing trouble!"
The moment Tver heard the Prime Minister's anger, carefully suppressed beneath his words, he knew this conversation was not going to go smoothly.
Which was fair enough. Even in the wizarding world, a sudden attack by a group of Inferi giants on the center of power would be a disaster difficult to handle.
And this was the Muggle world, which had never truly been tempered by magic.
"Good evening, Prime Minister," Tver said in a familiar tone.
If the giants in front of him had not still been hammering away with booming crashes, his voice would have sounded less like crisis management and more like casual conversation between acquaintances.
That only made the Prime Minister angrier, though it did take some of the edge off his urgency.
"I'm not having a good evening!" he shouted, as though sheer volume could vent his fury.
"Why are those damned pale giants there? Do you have any idea that Whitehall is the political center of Britain? If news gets out that it was attacked, Britain will become the laughingstock of the world!"
In truth, neither the Prime Minister nor Tver was especially worried about casualties. One look at the giants, rampaging like a demolition crew, made it obvious that they had no interest in attacking people.
And since it was already late at night, even departments that ran twenty-four hours a day only had a small number of relatively unimportant staff still on duty.
To put it bluntly, even if the place really were destroyed, the damage to Britain's reputation would far outweigh the actual material loss.
At that thought, Tver felt as though he had finally grasped Voldemort's purpose in launching this attack.
Did he want to destroy the cooperation between wizards and Muggles that Tver had been steadily promoting all this time?
Or was it something else...?