CHAPTER 14 – The End of Voldemort and the Greater Good

After a quick awards ceremony, the group organized around Harry heading to the castle to begin the celebrations. Or so they wanted the rest to think. Arriving at the castle, Alastor and Harry mounted on their brooms, the boy under his cloak of invisibility and the auror under a spell with similar effect, and they departed out of the anti-apparition protections of the castle. For these two, the day had barely begun, there was still much to do!

Far away, in Little Hangleton's cemetery, groups of three or four mercenaries stood in their positions, waiting vigilantly for the arrival of their prey.

They did not have to wait long. A few minutes after the start of the third task of the Tri-Wizard Tournament a young man is brought by a portkey near a tomb topped by an angel statue playing a long wind instrument. The boy, who held his wand in one hand and the tournament cup in another, still confused by the unexpected trip, was stunned by at least three spells before he even realized where he was.

The nearest mercenary, a blond man who had lost part of his nose and left face, bowed down beside the young man, took his wand and nodded to one of his companions, who immediately cast a warning spell toward the mansion that stood at half a mile away.

Soon a small procession left the mansion and headed for the graveyard, led by the blond with the half-mask who had hired them and a big nose, oil-haired man who seemed to be carrying a baby in his arms. The rest of the mercenaries followed behind, two of them levitating a large cauldron.

As soon as the great cauldron is placed on an improvised campfire, a strange ceremony begins. The baby is placed in the cauldron as soon as its contents begin to emit vapours. Bones are unearthed from a nearby tomb and also directed to the cauldron. The master, with a howl of pain, cuts off his own left hand, which falls into the cauldron. Finally, blood is taken from the boy, who remains unconscious.

Sparks of various colours fly out of the cauldron while the liquid inside it undergoes strange changes in colour and viscosity. Everyone's eyes are locked on that scene, accompanying those various changes. That's why no one notices the most distant personnel falling unconscious to the ground. Only Nagini, Voldemort's pet snake and his last horcrux, noticed the arrival of strangers. She came up close to her master, whistling an alert. But his master was in the cauldron, and he did not hear her. And all those other bipeds around her ignored her, those idiots who did not know the true language.

Snape is the first to realize that something does not go well. First, it was the potion. The behaviour of the potion was very strange. Then, at the edge of his peripheral vision, he notices the fall of three of the mercenaries, unconscious. As he pulls out his wand, he looks at Potter, still bound and unconscious, but not Potter anymore! He was one of the mercenaries, the one who had been sent to observe the Tournament final and then report the reaction of public and personalities to the arrival of the corpse of the precious Potter!

"It's a trap!" he shouts, and tries to apparate, without success. He then places a bubble-head spell around his head, which is copied by two of the mercenaries. They are the only three to remain conscious.

From the cauldron a strange figure begins to rise. The most grotesque figure anyone could ever see. Its entire back was covered in white wool, while the front appeared to have been scalped by a blind Indian with an even blinder knife. It was disgusting to the extreme!

Snape's quick mind soon concluded what should have gone wrong with the ritual. Sheep bones, apparently. Blood of an admirer of the cause, rather than an enemy. And finally, that idiot Malfoy sacrificing a burnt and disfigured hand instead of sacrificing a still good part of his body.

Aurors appeared everywhere, British, French, and Bulgarians, and Snape threw his wand to the ground and raised his arms in surrender, followed by the two mercenaries. From the middle of the Aurors a different figure takes the lead and casts a cutting spell. Nagini's head falls to the ground. Another sharp spell and the body of the snake, wrapped around the cauldron, is divided into three parts.

Potter! Snape almost dived toward his wand in the hope of being able to kill his torment before being incapacitated by the group of Aurors. It helped to avoid that suicidal task seeing the facts occurring at his side. From the dead snake rose a dark smoke that quickly dissipated with a cry of pain that was more human than ophidian. This seems to have been the signal for Voldemort's body to begin to rot in ashes, first slowly, but with increasing speed. Another dark smoke rose from the cauldron, another piercing scream of pain and fury, and Snape realized that the black mark on his arm, still raised in surrender, was also gone.

'Good,' he thought. 'Finally free from this megalomaniac! Now a little help from Malfoy and I can dodge the prison and live the rest of my life away from all this mess.'

Potter and the real Moody were already distancing themselves. They would go back to Hogwarts and pretend they had been there all day.

Snape's mind was divided into two parts. One continued happily thinking about his near future somewhere far away. The other began to worry about some discrepancies he noticed. The Aurors, for example, were not at all anxious to immobilize the disgruntled mercenaries. Would the gas they used have a long-term effect? This part of Snape's mind made him look at Lucius, to see if his friend was already waking up. No, Lucius was not waking up. Looking better, Snape realized that Lucius was not even breathing. That's when he heard nearby a "Finite Incantatem" and saw that his bubble-head spell had been undone. He felt a burning in his chest, then nothing more. He was dead, like all the rest of those who aided Voldemort.

-o0o-

Harry and Alastor returned safely to Hogwarts. All the group had to do was look at the big smile that the boy was wearing so that the party really started. Voldemort liquidated once and for all!

The only sad point in all this was to say goodbye to little Gabrielle. That little girl had conquered a privileged place in the hearts of all, especially the Boy-who-lived. But the separation would be for a short time, since summer was coming and the Delacours invited everyone to stay part of it at their summer home in Cote D'Azur.

-o0o-

Albus Dumbledore did not follow his students' party. He had a lot to think about. Too many things ran out of control this past year, and he, always so close to everything and in complete control of the situation, had spent these last few months like a ship adrift, aimless and uncontrolled, thrown to and fro by waves that he could not anticipate where they would come from or where they would go to.

It had all started with young Harry refusing to return to his relatives' house. Where had he gotten the strength for that rebellion, and where had he spent the summer? Everything pointed to the involvement of the Greengrass sisters, including his strange and unexpected engagement with the youngest of them, but their parents knew nothing, as he had learned through legilimency. The girls were as young as Harry, how could they in such a short time have done so much damage to his plans and altered so much the behaviour of the heir of the Potters? After the young man had spent more than a decade under total submission in the hands of the Dursleys such change couldn't happen so fast!

Pettigrew's capture and Black's exoneration took him by surprise. Sirius and Harry concealed Peter's capture from him, and the date of the trial, with the reversion of Harry's guard to Sirius, had conveniently fallen on a date when he was out of the country. Had they gained Amelia's support so quickly? But if Amelia was in collusion with Potter and Black, what about Alastor? He and Dumbledore were long-time friends, but Amelia and Alastor had at least three decades of continuous contact in the DMLE, something far more intimate than the casual encounters between Alastor and Albus. Was Alastor against him, too?

These sad thoughts led Dumbledore to review the situation of the other two people he had always counted as allies. Minerva McGonagall had been with him at Hogwarts for decades. She had a strong temper and did not hesitate to disagree with him when she thought it necessary, but in the end he had always been able to persuade her to follow his plans. Always, except this last year. Between the attacks he had received in the press and the problems faced during the Tri-Wizard Tournament, his deputy headmistress was not as easy to persuade as in years past. She had even thwarted some of his direct orders, in a rebellion he had never seen before. Yes, she still acted with certain deference and totally within the attributions of her position, but Albus could not help feeling some insubordination, perhaps even betrayal, on her part.

But McGonagall was not his biggest concern. Severus had left the castle without even saying farewell, and until that moment he had not contacted him once! Had that poor tormented soul fallen again into despair and sought after his former master, falling in the path of Darkness? That was an alarming possibility! With a servant as qualified as Severus, Voldemort could quickly regain a physical body and spread terror across the Island in no time at all! The government was far from being prepared for such a threat! He wanted the confrontation, yes, since it was a necessity that eventually Voldemort was defeated once and for all, but if Tom Riddle acted too fast there could be a quick seizure of power that could cause many unnecessary casualties and put his plans in jeopardy. He needs to put Tom in a stalemate, so Albus could adjust the conditions of the final defeat of Voldemort.

Albus was very unhappy with his behaviour during the year. It was a strange feeling, and rather unpleasant, to feel 'out of the game', so to speak. Knowing that important facts happened without any warning, without any control of what happened from his part, and he could only react after the event surprised him. This could not go on like this. He still had some trumps, such as full knowledge of the Prophecy, his research into the horcruxes created by Tom, the terrible fate awaiting Harry for being one of the receptacles of a soul fragment of Voldemort. Tom's own survival after that fateful Halloween of 1981 was still an important secret, at least for the vast majority of people.

Maybe it was time to start hunting those horcruxes. Who knows the destruction of some more would weaken Tom to the point of making his return to power more time consuming? It was an interesting possibility, but difficult to confirm theoretically, and putting the hunt into practice might risk alerting Voldemort that his most precious secret was not so secret.

The Prophecy was a weapon to be used with care. He would need to think of a complete plan, in every detail. It might well be his only chance to get some control over the young Harry. It could give Dumbledore two chances to get that control. One directly with the boy and his godfather. Albus could reveal the Prophecy to them and hope that common sense prevailed and they saw the need to obey Albus' advice so that the best result could be obtained, even at the expense of young Harry's life. Or, failing this alternative, he could reveal the Prophecy at a Wizengamot session, and put a decree into ballot that gave him guardian power over the boy to be able to prepare him for his destiny.

As for hunting the Horcruxes, Albus decided to do an initial check in three places that he thought might be harbouring one: the Orphanage where Tom had been left at birth, the Riddle mansion, and the residence of his maternal family Gaunt. As soon as the school year was officially closed, he would pay a visit to those three places.

-o0o-

Although the previous day's mission was kept secret by all participants (except for Potter's group of allies), it was inevitable that two of the deaths would surface quickly. And it happened the next morning while the Hogwarts students were having breakfast.

With the arrival of the morning mail, a student of Slytherin received correspondence from Gringotts offering condolences for the death of his father and his godfather and marking the date for reading of their Last Wills. As this student was too emotional and too untempered, it was not long before the news of the deaths of Lucius Malfoy and Severus Snape was known to all present.

-o0o-

Finally the school year was over, and Dumbledore was able to begin his investigations. In the Orphanage he found nothing, not even the building that had housed the Orphanage. In its place now stood a modern apartment building. In the old hut of the Gaunts the story was quite different. Albus found signs of ancient and powerful magical wards deactivated recently, and inside the hut near the hearth there was still a disgusting concentration of black magic that might well be the sign of a Horcrux standing there for several years. These discoveries troubled him greatly.

The Riddle mansion also had many signs of recent use, by many people, but only very subtle traces of the presence of a Horcrux. Either that Horcrux had been removed from there long ago, or it had not stayed there for an extended period. He was about to leave when an idea occurred to him: to check the nearby cemetery. Dumbledore knew that many macabre rituals such as those needed to give Tom a new body could involve the remains of his father or grandparents buried there.

After using all the detection spells he knew, and analysing the (few) physical clues he encountered, Dumbledore sat down in one of the tombs and summed up his findings: 1) there was a horcrux in the Gaunt house recently withdrawn; 2) Lucius Malfoy and Severus Snape were in the Riddle mansion, with several other people; 3) the tomb of Voldemort's father had recently been violated; 4) there were signs of a recent fire near that tomb; 5) Lucius Malfoy and Severus Snape died a few days ago.

In the old magician's head a certainty formed; a certainty that made him very apprehensive: Voldemort had achieved his resurrection. For this he had consumed one of his horcruxes, the bones of his father, and the lives of two of his followers. Why two? One seemed enough. Had Voldemort murdered Lucius as punishment for losing the diary and then used poor Severus for his resurrection? Yes, it seemed most likely.

Then Voldemort had returned and sacrificed two of his most esteemed servants, but Albus had detected a large number of wizards and witches in the graveyard. Too tenuous and indefinite to analyse individually, but at least a hundred people should have been present for that macabre ceremony. Voldemort had not only returned, but already had at his command a considerable force! The British magical government was in danger of impending downfall at the hands of the greatest maniac in modern times!

-o0o-

"If you try to sell me like a submissive slut for the pleasure of this disgusting little brat I'll kill him as soon as I see him again!"

"Daphne, behave yourself!" shouted Graham Greengrass to his daughter. "With Lucius' death it will be a matter of days before Draco is emancipated and takes the place of head of the family! We have to act quickly or we will miss this great opportunity! He, Nott and now Potter are the best wedding options for the next ten years!"

"Sell me to Potter, then! At least Potter will treat me decently!"

"Potter is not pure blood, as you well know! And he's already committed to your sister! It would be indecent for you to share the same bed as her!"

"Well, the bed of Malfoy or Nott I will not share! One of us will be dead or far away when that has to happen!"

"ENOUGH! Go to your room and do not leave until you are called or re-judged. And you're forbidden to use owl or the elves to communicate with anyone, young lady! You will learn your place even if by force! We'll talk soon."

-o0o-

"Daph?" called a timid and almost inaudible voice.

Daphne went to the door of her bedroom, opened it, and saw her sister's tearful face. Looking over her head, she confirmed that no one was around and said to her, "It's enough for me. You come with me?"

"Ten minutes?"

Daphne nodded, and Astoria hurried off to her room to pack her luggage. Daphne did the same as she contacted Harry telepathically asking for asylum for two people.

In the end they took almost forty minutes, but with the open portal they were able to carry pretty much the contents of the two rooms. As Daphne levitated everything that was around her through the portal, Astoria took the opportunity to collect some more things as a form of 'anticipated inheritance': she did not have access to the best part of the library, but took what she could of the rest, as well as two crowded jewellery boxes that her mother almost never wear and therefore would not miss immediately. She also took the picture of her maternal grandmother, after explaining the situation to her and asking if she would like to go with her granddaughters. Her grandmother had died only three years ago, and she had been a constant and much more affectionate presence in the girls' lives than her father and mother. Tori actually thought she had spent more of her life with her grandmother than with her mother.

-o0o-

Harry had welcomed the girls in the newly rebuilt and modernized Potter mansion, but he had left with Sirius shortly after signing rooms for the two to stay. The sisters instructed Dobby and Winky about how they wanted their rooms to be remodelled, and went into the foyer to await the return of their host, curious as to what might have been so urgent to justify that exit in a hurry when both girls were so shaken.

They did not have to wait long. Soon they were back, smiling a lot. Harry opened his arms and then hugged a Greengrass in each.

"Where did you go? We needed you!" Daphne asked as her sister preferred to ask, "What made you two so happy?"

"We went to Gringotts," Harry replied, leading the two sisters to a couch and helping them sit before sitting between them. "With Draco being emancipated and assuming the position of head of the Malfoy family, Sirius had talked to me about emancipating myself and taking over the leadership of the Potters in order to maintain a balance. With your arrival we resolve to anticipate the process so that I can offer you some security."

"The contract!" exclaimed Astoria, "You will activate the clause 'Et addidit securitatem sponsae'!"

"Yes!" replied Harry. "But do you remember the exact text as it is in our contract? Sirius and I wrote it, with the support of our lawyer, so that Daphne could be included as well. For security reasons, I can not only require your custody in dangerous situations, but also any minor relative of yours. "

"But, Harry, what security reasons are you going to plead?" asked Daphne, "My father selling me as a piece of art at auction is not exactly a crime or a major security reason for the current laws."

"We need to plan," Harry replied, "Sirius got the idea of using Dumbledore, but we're not sure yet."

"Dumbledore, what about him?" Astoria asked. Harry looked at Sirius, letting his godfather respond.

"It seems that Dumbledore has been doing some investigations on his own in Little Hangleton, and has come to the conclusion that Voldemort resurfaced in a new body and is ready to attack with dozens of wizards at his command."

"Dumbledore would never attack my parents!" Astoria commented.

"But we can make a simulated attack on the Greengrass mansion, pretending to be the work of the Death Eaters. The danger against you would be attested by the attack and confirmed by Dumbledore, who would run the risk of striking against Fudge, who will not want to believe Voldemort's return," commented Sirius.

"It would have to be quick, before Dad had time to contact Nott or Malfoy," Daphne said apprehensively.

"And what would be the excuse of the Death Eaters to attack my father?" Astoria asked. "They were not attacked the first time Voldemort showed up, were they, Daphne?"

"No, but it was a narrowly escape," replied Daphne. "Daddy supports purist ideals, but he has never directly supported Voldemort, though he has been asked to collaborate at least financially on several occasions."

"Okay, we can use that as an excuse," Sirius commented. "We attack, we destroy the protections, but we do not invade. Instead, we send a message that if a certain amount is not deposited in a certain account until a certain date, we will return to complete the service. As soon as we get out of there we send a message to Albus and his fried chicken club. They arrive in time to see the damage and will be able to testify that a tragedy didn't happen only because that was not the intention at that moment."

"What account will we be using for the money?" asked Daphne.

"A totally new one," Sirius replied indignantly. "We'll open a new one for you two. Early inheritance, how about?"

"Astoria has already taken some 'anticipated inheritance,' but the more the better," agreed Daphne smirking. "Shall we use that runic scheme your mother invented to short-circuit passive magical protections from the inside?" she asked Harry.

"Do you know anything better?" the boy replied in defiance.

-o0o-

Two days later a meeting with all the key members of the group took place in the Potter mansion.

"First issue on today's agenda, the attack on the Greengrass mansion," Harry began as soon as they were all seated around the immense dining room table. "Daphne, please."

"For those who were not aware, my dear father decided to auction me at the highest price, and the two main competitors were Theodore Nott, who became head of his house last August, and Draco Malfoy, who recently became head of his house. There were others interested, like an octogenarian Baron from Hungary, but my father counted on the interest of these two above any others. To improve the bargain, there would be no waiting clause in the contract, the marriage could occur at any time after the contract is signed, at the discretion of the groom. Dad thought these two would like to immediately start producing heirs, for safety, or pure adolescent horny, and thought he'd get a bigger sum of it."

"Would not your father even want you to finish your OWLs?" Susan asked uneasily.

"And lose the chance to earn more?" Astoria replied with obvious contempt.

"So the attack on the Greengrass mansion ... was it you?" asked Hermione.

"Yes," replied Daphne. "Tori and I fled the same day. So that our father could not compel us to return, we needed protection. There is a clause in Harry's contract with Astoria that allows him to put under protection of Potter's house his fiancée and her underage relatives if they were in danger."

"So you just created a simulated danger, just to activate that clause?" Amelia asked, rather irritably. "Do you know how much work this attack has created to me?"

Daphne stared at Madame Bones. Was she really saying she'd rather see Daphne in one of those horrible marriages just to avoid some work? It was then that the serious director of the DMLE burst into laughter. "Oh, the astonishment and horror in your expression ..." commented Amelia, making everyone but Daphne laugh with her. "Just explain one thing to me. How did you get the protections to fall so quickly and completely? The ones I have in my residence are similar; if there is any problem with them I need to know."

Still a little bothered by the prank she was victim, Daphne replied, "No need to worry. That was only possible because Tori and I acted from within the protections. It would not have been possible from the outside."

"Good! I'm great relieved, "Amelia commented before asking, "On your side are all the issues resolved?"

"Yes," confirmed Daphne. "Dad got so scared of the attack that made the deposit requested, accepted our new status as protégées of House Potter, hired Gringotts to redo the protections in the mansion and flew out with Mom. They will probably only come back when they were sure there is no danger anymore. But what about the repercussions in the government, Madame Bones?"

"If it had not been for Dumbledore it would probably have been buried as an 'accident', some kind of overload on the mansion's protections," commented Amelia. "But you warned him of the attack, and he put it all in gigantic proportions. He arrived at the site moments after you left, apparently, and was able to record the remnants of the fall of the wards. Assuming that it was destroyed from outside, he calculated that it should have been the work of a force between 350 and 400 wizards acting together, and the Unspeakables of the Department of Mysteries confirmed his calculation. However, no one seems to believe in Albus' theory that Voldemort has returned. Fudge even started a campaign on the Daily Prophet saying that Albus is too old and getting senile. But the main point is that during the peak of Death Eaters' activity, their numbers were estimated at between 200 and 250. The news of the attack has not yet reached the press, but is already known to all Ministry officials and members of the Wizengamot. The consensus is that there is a new Dark Lord out there with twice the strength Voldemort has ever had. If it was panic you wanted to create, you did a great job."

"A great opportunity to ask for more money and revitalize your department, isn't it, Madame Bones?" Harry commented wryly. "But I don't think we should worry about the possibility of panic unless a new psychopath really comes up to take advantage of the situation. Otherwise, we'll be in a good position: Dumbledore busy with an already dead and extinct Tom Riddle; the people and government attentive and vigilant, but not in real danger; your department with possibilities to grow and we with time to see more important issues. Any success with those two points we raised?"

"I could not found anything about your idea of one or more 'hidden magical societies', hiding from the government on our soil," Amelia said calmly, preparing the bomb: "But as to Dumbledore's Greater Good, which you thought could favour Muggles against us, we have some surprising results."

"Is Dumbledore really thinking about helping the Muggles against us?" Morag asked in amazement.

"Worse! I think he already did everything he needed for them," commented Amelia. "To understand better, let's go back to the great feat of Albus: his victory against his lover Grindelwald. This was the longest, most generalized and deadly of wars, both for wizards and for muggles. Grindelwald was controlling Hitler and his top aides. It was inevitable that some knowledge of the magical world would come to the Muggles no matter how much we wizards endeavoured to avoid. But the worst occurred after the war ended.

"Dumbledore was the hero who had finished the carnage; was quickly elected as head of the International Confederation and his opinion had enormous weight. Many Ministers of Magic and representatives to the International Confederation of Wizards were elected by his endorsement and support. And Albus took advantage of this to propose and approve two pieces of international legislation that may well be the beginning of our defeat for the Muggles. First, it was declared the total non-intervention of the wizards in Muggle governments. Wizards around the world were forbidden from exerting any influence or monitoring on the non-magical governments of their countries, under the pretext of avoiding a new war in the manner of the recently completed. Second, an exception to this rule has been created. Magical governments should maintain strictly regulated contact with the Muggle governments: magical ministers should introduce themselves to their Muggle counterparts whenever one or another takes office, and inform the Muggle counterpart whenever any event in the magical world causes or may come to have some effect on the Muggle world."

"Fifty years!" Hermione complained loudly. "For fifty years all non-magical governments know of the existence of the wizarding world and could study and plan and prepare for any eventuality without the magical government could even fathom what they have been doing!"

"You can be sure that every non-magical government has at least one secret department studying ways to deal with the 'magical threat'," commented Harry.

"And they're having help, you bet," Hermione said, surprising the group. She then explained, "The way magical societies tend to belittle muggleborns like me, you can be sure that some are returning to the Muggle world, where they are co-opted by their governments to aid in these secret departments! With seven years of delay in their normal education, the offer of a job at a military facility as a low-ranking officer as lieutenant or captain and the corresponding salary would be too tempting to be refused."

"That's what I thought," Amelia commented. "At least we have the magic on our side to hide, or we could have already been defeated."

"Hide? Wait a minute ..." Hermione said worriedly. After thinking for a while the girl explained an important detail: "No, I do not think we can hide so well, Madame Bones. Fidelius or Notice-Me-Not spells are psychological. They act upon people's minds, preventing them from understanding what they see. They will have no effect on the satellite cameras..."

Hermione had to stop to explain to most what were artificial satellites and how cameras installed in them were able to take accurate pictures of regions below them, even being so high in the sky to the point of being almost invisible. She also explained how these pictures would not be affected by the spells. A person handling a camera would be affected to the point of not wanting or not being able to photograph the protected area, but satellites would take photos automatically, there was not a mind to be affected. And the pictures taken would not carry the effect of the spells: anyone could look at them and see everything they contained.

"That's bad, really bad!" said Alastor. "Diagon Alley, St. Mungo's Hospital, Hogsmeade, Hogwarts... even the mansions of the old families. The Muggles may know about the country's top magical places!"

"The island?" asked Daphne worried.

Harry could only shrug. He had not seen in detail the protections on the island, but he had no reason to believe there was anything significantly different in use there.

"For security, it is best to assume Muggles know their location," warned Alastor, "Constant vigilance!"

"Fifty years!" returned Hermione to the point. "How it was possible for no one to have perceived this danger for so long!"

"Not many people know about this legislation," Amelia explained. "And most of the people who know are high-ranking government officials, that is, purebloods. This means that they are accustomed to seeing Muggles only as a nuisance, never as a serious threat."

"What shall we do?" Astoria asked, always practical.

"We should not rush," suggested Susan. "Let's look for some information and take some time to think of suggestions. We can meet in a few days to establish a plan of action."

-o0o-

A/N: I've always been intrigued by JK's emphasis on obliviating any Muggle who sees magic and forbidding children to use magic outside of Hogwarts while Fudge runs to the British Prime Minister to warn of Sirius' escape or of importing dragons for a Tournament. It was one of the paradoxes of the story that asked to be used. I have never encountered a story that used this contact between the two Ministers to get the Muggles into readiness to at least watch over the magical world, and maybe to prepare for a possible confrontation. If you know any stories like this, please send me a PM or review stating which one.