Sydney Thomas, Lindbergh Finnegan, Linda Manson, Donovan Carter... All targeted because they were muggleborn. It seemed to be a never ending trend in the wizarding world, the "pure" preying on the newcomers.
Potter knew of course. He was at the damn site for chrissakes. Right in the middle of the Great Hall, when Hogwarts was celebrating the tenth year of Voldemort's defeat with a grand ball. All of a sudden, at the height of the festivities, all muggleborns were targeted. The impenetrable darkness descended upon the Great hall, no one seeing anything, save the perpetrators of that heinous act.
The victims didn't die, surely. Subjected to immense pain... both physical and psychological, was a given. His wife, his lifelong companion Hermione Potter as well as his son, Joseph, were amongst them. Thankfully it didn't take long until his family was in full health and, with his wife's unwavering support, the Potters planned.
Until that evening Harry Potter led a normal life. Well, as normal as someone like him could have. He was an auror, had his fair share of successes and near misses, but at the end of the day, he always came home. No situation, no matter how pressing it might've been, would be worth his life. He had a family now and nothing would ever be above it, not even his duty to the fellow wizard.
Harry was a hero, yes, but he was not omnipotent. He couldn't change the wizards' way of being. Abuses against muggleborns continued while he was in the auror department. Oddly enough, no such cases ever went to his desk for investigation. In all cases, never a shred of evidence was found. It's hard enough to make a case based on circumstantial evidence, at best, but not even that the aurors could find. And miss them they did, they all did.
He was not naive nor careless anymore. Truly, he couldn't be, having Hermione for a wife she would tolerate nothing less from him than to use his abilities and most importantly his brain to the fullest.
That attack was a warning. A warning that the purebloods were out for blood, if necessary, to regain the control they lost when Voldemort was beaten for truly the last time by the hands of Harry Potter, back in that gory September the first, nineteen ninety-eight.
Harry Potter left the auror corps the day after the attack on his family, along with every other auror or worker of the DMLE that had strong ties with the muggle world.
The Ministry, bless their stupidity, never thought that this was something worth watching. Losing Potter was bad but he was a hero, and heroes, by definition, were an eccentric sort. The rest... well, they were mugglebons or muggle lovers after all.
A week after the attack at Hogwarts, Draco Malfoy was nurturing his twenty-one year-old scotch while musing the next steps that he'd need to make to ensure that the DMLE was kept blind to some upcoming actions that his group would carry out the next month. The complete extermination of everything muggle would take time, unfortunately. It would take time, yes, but he would give his all to make his father's dream come true. A world where the muggleborn had no place other than being servants of the purebloods.
His musings were cut short by the flapping of two nondescript owls, those commonly used in the wizarding post offices throughout the land, carrying parcels. The first one dropped a thin, oval shaped parcel that clang upon making contact with the table.
Curiosity taking the better of him, after muttering several incantations to check for hidden curses, he was satisfied enough to unwrap it. A silver, circle shapped platter was now before him. It wasn't big, maybe fifteen inches diameter at most. A single note was attached with it.
"Unto others as you'd do to yourself".
Puzzled and at the same time arrogant enough to be oblivious at the ominous sign of the note, Draco Malfoy, heir to the Malfoy line, turned to the second parcel. This one was heavier and square-shaped. The ritual to detect curses once again performed and, as with he did with the first, he opened it.
There, in that square-shaped box was the severed head of Scorpius Malfoy, his son.
Like a man possessed, he ran every possible counter curse he could, "it had to be an hallucination a jinx of some sort it had to..." but it wasn't. After fifteen minutes of wand waving, muttering, sputtering every counter curse the could, his son's head remained the same. Unmoving. As he gingerly pried his son's head from the box, an action made on impulse rather than logic, he found another note, this one in black parchment and red ink.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus".
Despair coursing though his veins, Draco released the hold on his son's head and it fell back inside the box. "someone at that damnable school did this! I.. I am going to rip them all apart, I´ll shred every limb, tissue, carve their eyes out... I'll have my revenge!"
Draco was much of a Slytherin to carry out such motions by himself. He needed allies, sympathizers, people like him, that harbored the same ideals. It would be no different than the plans that he already set in motion a week ago at Hogwarts. But no holding back this time.
Mind made up, he tossed a bit of floo powder to contact his wife, Pansy Malfoy, who had been visiting the Greengrasses. As an ally, far more than a wife, he needed to contact her and devise a proper retribution.
Blinded as he was with his ideals of blood purity and hatred towards all things muggle now more than ever, Draco Malfoy didn't see – or rather couldn't – the small fuse protruding from his son's head. He also failed to realize when it started burning.
He could, even in his blind rage, smell.
He just had a little time to turn towards the vile scent emanating from where his son's head now lay before his world was encased in fiendfyre.
The unstoppable, chaotic green flames, consumed all of Malfoy Mansion and grounds. No living being could withstand the destruction of those infernal flames. It would be months before anything could be discovered and even if it was, it would be of no consequence. It was, for all intents and purposes, an accident while experimenting in spell creation. And no accidents, specially those related with spell creation, merit much investigation. It was an accident after all, nothing more, nothing less.
In the space of twenty-four hours, the Notts, Zabinis, Greengrasses, Goyles, Parkinsons, Crabbes, Borgins, Burkes, each and every family that once supported Voldemort, received two similar packages.
Intense investigations were made in the months following these atrocities but they, sadly, remained inconclusive. The most credible explanation was that the late, illustrious members of society, were experimenting in cutting edge magic, being blessed, as they were, with unquenchable thirst for knowledge and the power to almost control it. Alas, it was foolish of these demigods, so pure and so noble, to dredge upon powers that only Gods themselves were fit to withhold and control. They would be sorely missed.
Jebediah Smith, one of the muggleborns at the DMLE that politely declined Harry's offer to accompany the hero of the wizarding world in his future endeavors, was the lead forensic expert during the investigations and was present in every scene where the most uncontrollable fire spell known to wizardkind was unleashed. All his reports were the same: no stone untainted, no timber left, nothing stood the blazing inferno.
A few weeks after finishing his investigations and realizing that a change of scenery would be best for his family, Mr. Smith boarded the BA 01402 flight to Wellignton, New Zealand with no intention to ever return. He would have to relate to his fellow friends that the fiendfyre application was a complete success. Specially so when he could note the absurd precision that said flames took in avoiding certain cabinets, boiler rooms and every nook and cranny where house elves inhabited within the crumbled pieces of once mighty strongholds of prejudice.
Meanwhile, the Potters as well as all muggleborns, those that they could help at least, were having a lazy, comforting stroll in a beach somewhere close to New Zealand. It was one of the many Potter properties, now made a refuge – or resort, if you will – to as many muggleborns as they could bring.
Reclining in his comfortable beach chair, Harry Potter watched his wife and son at the distance. Joseph, now an exhausted four year-old from playing at the beach all day, was resting in his mother's lap. Hermione was also tired he could see. Gently scraping their son's scalp, lulling him into a blissful sleep and humming a sweet lullaby as the soundtrack of their infant's dreams... she was happy.
"I am going to put this one in the shower and then to bed." She said all the while lowering herself a bit to peck her husband's lips. "Don't be long darling, we have dinner in an hour."
After muttering a quick yes in agreement, Harry Potter resumed his previous activity. He was no scholar, but the gist of the book in his hands he could understand. It was one of his last actions while still working at the Ministry, to clean all possible records concerning his family, save those that were notoriously public, like OWL and NEWT scores. Post-Doctoral theses were not. These, along with all the rest he made sure to clean. The title was a mouthful but then again, no one could say that his wife wasn't thorough.
"Fiendfyre Control Mediums
Arithmanthic descriptors and Runic operators
by
Hermione J. Potter"