Torch Phoenix, a fan of STAR and SS, has drawn some fanart of Lee and Reg. They're really good! Check them out: / torchphoenix .deviantart. com / art / Leandra-Regulus-STAR-164409350 (get rid of spaces)


Unusual Suspects

Mr. Crouch did not move or speak as the Ministry wizard deposited the elf on the ground at his feet. The other Ministry wizards were all staring at Crouch. For a few seconds Crouch remained transfixed, his eyes blazing in his white face as he stared down at Winky. Then he appeared to come to life again.

"This – cannot – be," he said jerkily. "No –"

He moved quickly around Amos and strode off towards the place where he had found Winky. "No, point, Mr. Crouch," he called after him. "There's no one else there."

But Crouch did not seem prepared to take his word for it. They could hear him moving around, the rustling of leaves as he pushed the bushes aside, searching.

"Bit embarrassing," Amos said grimly, looking down at the elf's unconscious form. "Barty Crouch's house-elf… I mean to say…"

"Come off it, Amos," said Mr. Weasley quietly, "You don't seriously think it was the elf? The Dark Mark's a wizard's sign. It requires a wand."

"Yeah, and she had a wand."

"What?"

"Here look." He held up a wand and showed it to Mr. Weasley. "Had it in her hand. So that's clause three of the Code of Wand Use broken for a start. No non-human creature is permitted to carry or use a wand."

Corvus frowned. Could an elf even use a wand? He'd never seen Coco pick up one, and his mother let their house-elf do practically anything she wanted. But if they have a law against it, it means it can happen to some effect, he decided privately.

Just then there was another pop, and Ludo Bagman Apparated right nest to Mr. Weasley. Looking breathless and disorientated, he spun on the spot, goggling upwards at the emerald green skull. "The Dark Mark!" he panted, almost trampling Winky as he turned enquiringly to his colleagues. "Who did it? Did you get them? Barty! What's going on?"

Crouch had returned empty-handed. His face was still ghostly white and his hands and his toothbrush moustache were both twitching. Was this all it took to reduce Barty Crouch to shambles, an unconscious house-elf? He couldn't explain why, but Corvus suspected there was something else behind Crouch's anxiety. He stared at Winky, trying to think what it could be.

"Where have you been, Barty? Why weren't you at the match? Your elf was saving you a seat, too – gulping gargoyles!" Bagman finally noticed the elf lying at his feet. "What happened to her?"

"I have been busy, Ludo," said Crouch, still talking in the same jerky fashion, barely moving his lips. "And my elf has been stunned."

"Stunned? By you lot, you mean? But why –"

Comprehension drawn suddenly on the man-child's round, shiny face. " No! Winky? Conjure the Dark Mark? She wouldn't know how! She'd need a wand for a start!"

"And she had one," said Amos. "I found her holding one, Ludo. If it's alright with you, Mr. Crouch, I think we should hear what she's got to say for herself."

Crouch gave no sign that he'd heard the Ministry wizard. He took this for assent. He raised his own wand, pointed it at Winky and said, "Enervate!"

The elf stirred feebly. Her great brown eyes opened and she blinked several times in a bemused sort of way. Watched by the silent wizards, she raised herself shakily into a sitting position. She caught sight of the Ministry wizard's feet, and slowly raised her eyes to stare up into his face. Then, more slowly still, she looked up into the sky. The floating skull reflected twice in her enormous, glassy eyes. She gave a gasp, looked wildly around the crowded clearing and burst into terrified sobs.

"Elf!" said Amos sternly. "Do you know who I am? I'm a member of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures!" She began to rock backwards and forwards on the ground, her breath coming in sharp bursts. "As you see, elf, the Dark Mark was conjured here a short while ago," said Amos. "And you were discovered moments later, right beneath it! An explanation, if you please!"

"I – I – I is not doing it, sir!" she gasped. "I is not knowing how, sir!"

"You were found with a wand in your hand!" he barked, brandishing it in front of her.

"Hey – that's mine!" said Potter.

Everyone in the clearing looked at him.

"Excuse me?" said the Ministry wizard, incredulously.

"That's my wand! I dropped it!"

"You dropped it?" the wizard repeated in disbelief. "Is this a confession? You threw it aside after you conjured the Mark?"

"Amos, think who you're talking to!" said Mr. Weasley, very angrily. "Is Harry Potter likely to conjure the Dark Mark?"

"Er – of course not," mumbled Amos. "Sorry… carried away…"

This was disgusting; Corvus was beginning to greatly doubt the brainpower behind his country's Ministry of Magic.

"I didn't drop it there, anyway," said Potter. "I missed it right after we got into the wood."

"So," said Amos, turning to look at Winky again. She cowered at his feet. "You found this wand, eh, elf? And you picked it up and thought you'd have some fun with it, did you?"

"I is not doing magic with it, sir!" she squealed, tears streaming down the sides of her squashed and bulbous nose. "I is… I is… I is just picking it up, sir! I is not making the Dakr Mark, sir, I is not knowing how!"

"It wasn't her!" said Granger. She looked very nervous, speaking up in front of all these Ministry wizards, yet determined all the same. "Winky's got a squeaky voice and the voice we heard doing the incantation was much deeper!" She looked round for everyone's support. "It didn't sound anything like Winky, did it?"

"No," said Potter, shaking his head. "It definitely didn't sound like an elf."

"There's no way that voice was hers," said Corvus.

"Yeah, it was a human voice," said Weasley. Max nodded.

"Well, we'll soon see," growled the wizard, unimpressed. "There's a simple way of discovering the last spell a wand performed, elf, did you know that?"

Winky trembled and shook her head frantically. The wizard raised his wand again, and placed it to tip to tip with Potter's. "Prior Incantato!"

Granger gasped, horrified, as a gigantic serpent-tongued skull erupted from the point where the two wands met, but it was a mere shadow of the green skull high above them, it looked as though it was made of thick grey smoke: the ghost of a spell. Corvus stared in awe.

"Deletrius!" the wizard shouted, and the smoky skull vanished in a wisp of smoke. "So," he said with a kind of savage triumph, looking down upon Winky, who was still shaking convulsively. Corvus grimaced. Watching the wizard bear down on her like that was beginning to get uncomfortable…

"I is not doing it! I is not, I is not, I is not knowing how! I is a good elf, I isn't using wands, I isn't knowing how!"

"You been caught red-handed, elf! Caught with the guilty wand in your hands!"

"That doesn't mean she did it," Corvus blurted out. The attention was turned on him. It was pure instinct, a natural reaction for when he felt the pressure of an authority figure's reprimand. "She just had the wand with her, she could be a victim of circumstance."

He looked to Max, who he knew had used that line before too like him.

"Amos," said Mr. Weasley, "think about it… precious few wizards know how to do that spell… where would she have learnt it?"

"Perhaps Amos is suggesting," said Mr. Crouch, cold anger in every syllable, "that I routinely teach my servants to conjure the Dark Mark?"

There was a deeply unpleasant silence. Amos looked horrified. "Mr. Crouch … not … not at all…"

"You have now come very close to accusing the two people in this clearing who are least likely to conjure that Mark!" he barked. "Harry Potter – and myself! I suppose you are familiar with the boy's story, Amos?"

"Of course – everyone knows –"

"And I trust you remember the many proofs I have given, over a long career, that I despise and detest the Dark Arts and those who practice them?"

"Mr. Crouch, I – I never suggested you have anything to do with it!"

"If you accuse my elf, you accuse me, Diggory! Where else would she have learnt to conjure it?"

"She – she might've picked it up anywhere –"

"Precisely, Amos," said Mr. Weasley. "She might have picked it up anywhere. Winky?" he said kindly, turning to the eld, but she flinched as though he too was shouting at her. "Where exactly did you find Harry's wand?"

She was twisting the hem of her tea-towel so violently that it was fraying beneath her fingers. "I – I is finding it… finding it there, sir," she whispered, "there… in the trees, sir…"

"You see, Amos? Whoever conjured the Mark could have Disapparated right after they'd done it, leaving Harry's wand behind. A clever thing to do, not using their own wand, which could have betrayed them. And Winky here had the misfortune to come across the wand moments later and pick it up."

"But then, she'd have been feet away from the real culprit!" said Diggory impatiently. "Elf? Did you see anyone?"

Winky began to tremble worse than ever. Her giant eyes flickered from Diggory to Ludo Bagman and on to Mr. Crouch. "I is seeing no one, sir… no one…"

"Amos," said Mr. Crouch curtly, "I am fully aware that, in the ordinary course of events, you would want to take Winky into your department for questioning. I ask you, however, to allow me to deal with her."

Diggory looked as though he didn't think much of this suggestion at all, but it was clear that Crouch was such an important member of the Ministry that he did not dare refuse him.

"You may rest assured that she will be punished," he added coldly.

"M-m-master…" Winky stammered, looking up at Crouch, her eyes brimming with tears. "M-m-master p-p-please…"

Crouch stared back, his face somehow sharpened, each line upon it more deeply etched. There was no pity in his gaze. "Winky has behaved tonight in a manner I would not have believed possible. I told her to remain in the tent. I told her to stay there while I went to sort out the trouble. And I find that she disobeyed me. This means clothes."

"No! No, master! Not clothes, not clothes!" she shrieked, prostrating herself at his feet. It was pitiful to see the way the house-elf clutched at her tea towel as she sobbed over Crouch's feet.

"But she was frightened!" Granger burst out angrily, glaring at Crouch. "Your elf's scared of heights, and those wizards in masks were levitating people! You can't blame her for wanting to get out of their way!"

Corvus agreed with her, but didn't say anything. Crouch wasn't going to be any kinder. He took a step backwards, freeing himself from contact with the elf. "I have no use for a house-elf who disobeys me," he said, coldly, looking up at Granger. "I have no use for a servant who forgets what is due to her master, and to her master's reputation."

Winky was crying so hard that her sobs echoed around the clearing.

X
X

The campsite was quiet again. The masked wizards had Disapparated the second they'd seen the Dark Mark, the Ministry had just been able to catch the Robertses from falling in their wake. Several ruined tents were still smoking, crafters were working furiously to mend them – but most of them were too outraged by their tarnished fabric.

Leandra shielded her face as the shredded flaps of one tent tried whipping her. The tent had been reduced to countless of frayed pieces; it resembled an octopus more than anything else. Worse still was that its tentacles were burning hot from the recent extinguished fire.

"Protego!" she shouted, her voice unusually voluminous. The tent's tentacles were blown back. Leandra quickly twirled her wand, her eyes unblinking staring at the tent. Suddenly all the tent's flaps were tied into a knot. That would make her job a little easier. It definitely provided her with space to think for a moment.

What was happening? First Métis goes missing for three weeks, only to reappear with a new life plan. Then she gets word that her brother is seeking forgiveness. And tonight someone cast the Dark Mark after thirteen years…

She was forced to put the strange thought out of her head. The tent shuddered violently; it was untying itself since Leandra had let her concentration slip. The Madame Crafter sighed angrily; she made a slashing motion with her wand.

There was a loud clap and a burst of blue light. The frayed pieces untied, unrolled and fused back together to drape over its frame again. She was halfway there, the tent twitched rebelliously again. She made a complicated motion with her wand, her eyes unblinkingly staring at the tent again, and there was a tremble through the earth underneath the tent. A ripple passed through the tent and finally the construct was still.

"Lady Leandra!" she heard Coco shriek. She turned, hoping to see her house-elf with her son, but instead she found Coco with Louis Vaisey and a young girl she didn't know. They were running towards her.

"Coco – where's – where's Corvus?" she asked immediately.

"Ms. Black it's all our fault," panted Louis. The handsome boy looked sick with worry, his face ghost pale. The girl next to him was sobbing. "We – we lost him and Max, before everything started –"

The girl broke down into louder tears.

"Lady Leandra, please, Coco didn't know where Master Corvus was… and – and I is scared, Master Corvus's friend too –"

"I – I asked her to stay," Louis confessed. Leandra could tell he felt enormous guilt about it. She bit her bottom lip. She had to keep her cool, no one was hurt. Chances were Corvus and Max were in the wood… where the Dark Mark had been conjured!

"Take them back to their families, Coco," she ordered quickly before Disapparating.

X
X

A large crowd of frightened-looking witches and wizards were congregated at the edge of the wood. When they saw Mr. Weasley coming towards them, many of them surged forward.

"What's going on in there?"

"Who conjured it?"

"Arthur – it's not – him?"

"Of course it's not him," said Mr. Weasley impatiently. "We don't know who it was, it looks like they Disapparated. Now excuse me, please, I want to get to bed."

He led Corvus, Max and the Gryffindor trio through the crowd and back into the campsite. "Corvus, I think you should stay with us until your mum finds you," said Mr. Weasley, looking over his shoulder at Max and him. "There's enough people out there searching for their families in the dark – it's better you stay in one place and this way you two can rest for a while."

"Thanks." Corvus liked the sound of taking a break, but he'd rather see his mother. As the group fell into a silence, he turned to Max and whispered, "You okay?"

His friend briefly glanced back at him, but didn't reply.

One of the Weasleys, Corvus vaguely remembered he was either Charlie or Bill, had his head poked out of their tent as they approached. "Dad, what's going on?" he called through the dark. "Fred, George and Ginny got back okay, but the others –"

"I've got them here," said Mr. Weasley, bending down and entering the tent. The others followed after him. The other older Weasley was sitting at the small kitchen table, holding a bedsheet to his arm, which was bleeding profusely. Charlie Weasley had a large rip in his shirt, and Percy was sporting a bloody nose. The twins and Ginny Weasley looked unhurt, though shaken.

"Did you get them, dad?" said the oldest sharply. "The person who conjured the Mark?"

"No," said Mr. Weasley. "We found Barty Crouch's elf holding Harry's wand, but we're none the wiser about who actually conjured the Mark."

"What?" said the three eldest brothers together.

"Harry's wand?"

"Mr. Crouch's elf?"

Mr. Weasley explained what happened in the woods. Potter, Granger and Ron Weasley assisted at points, but Corvus and Max remained silent.

"Well, Mr. Crouch is quite right to get rid of an elf like that!" said Percy Weasley. "Running away when he'd expressly told her not to… embarrassing him in front of the whole Ministry… how would that have looked, if she'd been had up in front of the Department for the Regulation and Control –"

"She didn't do anything – she was just in the wrong place at the wrong place!" snapped Granger. "A victim of circumstance, like Corvus said!"

Percy Weasley looked very taken aback, regarding Granger and Corvus. "A wizard in Mr. Crouch's position can't afford a house-elf who's going to run amok with a wand!" he replied pompously.

"She didn't run amok! She just picked it up off the ground!"

"Look, can someone just explain what that skull thing was?" said Ron Weasley impatiently.

"I told you, it's You-Know-Who's symbol, Ron," said Granger. "I read about it in The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts."

Corvus had read about it too in The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts. He'd read sections of that book when he visited Flourish and Blotts for the first time, back when he was eleven years old. Ironically he'd also learned about his own family for the first time in that book, there was an entire chapter dedicated to the Stirling Massacre.

"And it hasn't been seen for thirteen years," said Mr. Weasley quietly. "Of course people panicked… it was almost like seeing You-Know-Who back again."

"I don't get it," said Ron Weasley. "I mean… it's still only a shape in the sky…"

"Ron, You-Know-Who and his followers sent the Dark Mark into the air whenever they killed," he said. "The terror it inspired… you have no idea, you're too young. Just picture coming home, and finding the Dark Mark hovering over your house, and knowing what you're about to find inside… everyone's worst fear… the very worst…"

There was a silence for a moment. Max had his arms crossed over his chest. The liight quivered across his still eyes.

Then the oldest Weasley removed the sheet from his arm to check on his cut and said, "Well, it didn't help tonight, whoever conjured it. It scared the Death Eaters away the moment they saw it. They all Disapparated before we'd got near enough to unmask any of them. We caught the Robertses before they hit the ground, though. They're having their memories modified right now."

"Yeah, your mum was one of the first on the scene," said Charlie Weasley, looking to Corvus. "Faced them head on by herself for a while."

"Is she okay? What happened?" he asked immediately. Why hadn't anyone told him this before?

"She's fine, just a headache and a bloody nose," the oldest replied. Corvus didn't trust him, figuring they were probably trying to ease his nerves. He made to get up, but then the flap to their tent was thrown open.

Leandra came crawling into the tent, breathless and her glasses askew. Corvus saw the blood stains on the front of her nightshirt. But there were no visible signs of the brawl otherwise. "Corvus!"

She got up and flung her arms round him. She held him so tightly; it was an effort to breath. Then she changed it up by kissing him repeatedly on the cheek. This was too much; Corvus pried her arms off him, blushing in front of the Weasleys. But in the light of things, none of them scoffed.

"I've just been to Ludo and Amos, they told me everything," she explained. "When Coco told me she couldn't find you two – I had to make sure whoever conjured the Dark Mark hadn't – oh, this is too much," she gave a shaky laugh. Corvus smirked back, relieved to have her back. "Thank you Arthur for keeping them safe."

"Of course, Leandra," he assured her.

She sighed, shaking her head and muttering, "Damn those Death Eaters."

"Death Eaters? What are Death Eaters?" asked Potter.

"It's what You-Know-Who's supporters called themselves," said Bill. "I think we saw what's left of them tonight – the ones who managed to keep themselves out of Azkaban, anyway."

"We can't prove it was them, Bill," said Mr. Weasley. "Though it probably was."

Leandra snorted, "It felt all too similar not to be them."

"But what were Voldemort's supporters – " began Potter. Everyone except for Leandra flinched at You-Know-Who's name. "Sorry," he said quickly, "What were You-Know-Who's supporters up to, levitating Muggles? I mean, what was the point?"

"The point?" repeated Mr. Weasley with a hallow laugh. "Harry that's their idea of fun. Half the Muggle killings back when You-Know-Who was in power were done for fun. I suppose they had a few drinks tonight and couldn't resist reminding us all that lots of them are still at large. A nice little reunion for them."

"Hn," huffed Corvus's mother. There was something behind her expression, it was indiscernible but Corvus felt his mother was withholding something. "It's late, and I've got to check on the repairs to those tents. But Corvus and Max will be able to get a few hours of sleep… thank you again, Arthur."

She shook Mr. Weasley's hand, and then his eldest sons who had been involved in the fight with her. She led Corvus and Max back to their tent, explaining along the way that Coco had found Louis Vaisey earlier and all their friends were safe.

Waiting by their tent's entrance was a sobbing Coco. She immediately gave both Max and Corvus a big hug. It took a while to convince her that they didn't hate her for not finding them, and finally Corvus and Max went upstairs.

They got to the second floor landing; their rooms were across from each other. Both had queen sized beds, it would be like sleeping on clouds. Corvus felt exhausted, nothing about the night felt real.

"Tomorrow," began Max, before Corvus slipped into his bedroom, "I want to go back to Manchester."

Max was supposed to spend the last week of summer vacation at Corvus's house in Bristol. He'd actually been excited to show off his massive house to Max. Besides, he'd stayed at Max's place twice, it was time he repaid the favor. But it was clear Max was resolved on this matter. He was tired, he was shaken and he was in need of his home.

"Okay, Max."


...

...

Okay so I have some annoying news... I'm away from home until mid June, and I planned on still writing BUT... I forgot my copy of GoF... I have the next two chapters written up, but the rest I have to wait until I get the book back... I could try writing without it, but ew, that would feel so wrong haha. SO I plan on posting the next two chapters, but I also wanted to know if you guys would be interested in like a filler-chapter. It would basically be a compilation of unseen scenes, maybe for each character... Like I've written the scene where Max meets Cho for the first time (I wrote that for myself :P) and I wrote a scene where Daphne discusses the Salesmen with Pansy and Tracey (that scene was going to be used to open the sequel)

If a filler-chapter sounds like fun, let me know! Either in a review or on the poll I'm going to create in like ONE-minute...

Hope you enjoyed this chapter though!