"Bzz... your... signal has been lost for three hours... the... bzz... Dark Mark in the sky... bzz... what happened?! Headquarters will dispatch a special... bzz bzz bzz... operations unit to investigate... Any surviving personnel stationed there, respond immediately!"
"This is... an emergency communication from the Ministry of Magic?! Why?! Why is it sounding now? Why didn't it sound earlier?!"
He clutched his head and screamed hysterically, the panic in his voice undisguised. Ignoring the finger pricked by the pin, he grabbed the badge, tore it off, and hurled it beyond the dock, where it vanished into the seawater.
"That's it, that's it. The barrier broke just now, so communications were restored. Headquarters noticed something was wrong here, and we'll be saved soon... No! That's not right! How am I supposed to explain everyone else's deaths?"
The Auror captain fell to his knees on the dock in despair. The wand in his hand dropped with a sharp crack, splitting in half and exposing a section of silvery-white core.
He lowered his head and glanced at the broken wand. Instead of picking it up, he petulantly kicked the half with the exposed core into a crack between the stones.
The joy of knowing headquarters' rescue was about to arrive vanished, overwhelmed by the fear that the truth might be exposed and that the dark wizards had escaped en masse. He gnawed irritably at his fingernails and paced in circles, still unable to think of an explanation for all this.
"Ow! Damn corpse! Corpse... corpses? Hahaha! I can do it. I can do this!"
The Auror captain, who had accidentally tripped over a corpse at his feet, scrambled up in embarrassment. While desperately wiping the filthy blood from his face with his sleeve, he vented his frustration by kicking the subordinates who had