Nothing Gold Can Stay
Prologue: Rumors
It had been five year since The Battle of Hogwarts and life in the wizarding world had returned to normal, well almost.
Many had lost loved ones, many lost restful nights to nightmares, lost their childhood and lost money as they continued to rebuild. Many lost time still chasing death eaters, mainly aurors.
Once thing that was not lost was fear, hidden by most, but still present. And that was thanks to Montague, he was the new number one undesirable and he wanted to be the new Voldemort. No, he wanted to be better then Voldemort.
Montague had been at Hogwarts when Harry was a student, he was a Slytherin and was two years ahead of Harry. Once he had graduated from Hogwarts he had dived head first into the life of a death eater, not a big surprise, but what was a surprise is he had basically replaced Lucius Malfoy. Lucius had been Voldemort's right hand man for years, but once he learned of Draco's assignment to assassinate Dumbledore the stress of having a child in danger evidently had become too much for him. He had attempted to protect Draco as much as possible, even sending information to Aurors to stop planned death eater attacks. As a result he lost all his credibility with Voldemort and the death eaters, this allowed young Montague to slide into power.
Montague's use of power made Lucius a distant memory, he was vicious, unforgiving and many compared him to Bellatrix Lestrange. Most said you couldn't compare him, because he was worse then she ever was. No one survived Montague's wrath and he followed Voldemort's orders with passion, and he did not try to hide it as Lucius did. At the fall of Voldemort, Montague had vanished and no clue of him has ever been found. Many Auror's thought he had died in the battle, perhaps turned to dust by an incendio spell.
This was the belief a month ago, now rumors of Montague were out in the open causing wide spread panic across Europe and the entire wizarding world. It was like living in Voldemort's reign of terror again, some even believed it was worse. Montague known to be unforgiving and bloodthirsty, those that survived were because he needed something from them. Anyone else was simply killed, according to rumors. As a result Montague has a tight group of followers, not a large group of death eaters like Voldemort, each follower contributed something necessary for Montague and work to continue being necessary to him. Once Montague deemed them unnecessary he killed them, again, according to rumors. This caused former death eaters to fear him and stay clear out of his way. It was either be necessary, stay out of his grasps or run if you wanted to survive, according to rumors.
It wasn't a surprise that another threat came along, life is all about-facing challenges. What people were surprised about was how Montague was getting away with it. After Voldemort any literature on how to create horocruxs was locked deep within Gringotts. Any other literature about becoming immortal or gaining extra amounts of power was also sealed within Gringotts. Only a few had access to the vaults and for one to open the vault called for all members to be present and a vote from the Wizengamot court . In other words, impossible.
It was impossible for Montague to avoid death like Voldemort did. So why had he not be killed? What allowed him to continue apparently untouchable? Something had to have been helping him, but no one could figure it out. The main problem was most of the information the Ministry had on Montague was based on rumors, arrested death eaters and dead ones. He hadn't done anything yet, well besides killing death eaters, no really minded that, but what is he going to do next?
How do you chase a rumor?