Chapter 37: Plans and a reconnaisance

For disclaimer and author notes please see chapter 1. AN: OK I lied; some names are not randomly chosen :)

1988-09-20 09:00 UTC, Hogwarts

It had all started innocuously enough. Rowan Keele was a young auror who was beginning to make a name for himself as a bit of a brown-noser - a fitting replacement for John Dawlish when that (un?)worthy eventually retired (Dawlish was not the kind of auror who would ever be killed in action, so there was no danger of that!)

Auror Keele had been in the auror contingent guarding the Wizengamot chambers, so of course he had heard the entire story. He had decided to go and meet Minister Bones - cutting through at least 3 layers of the hierarchy - and impress her with his enthusiasm, initiative, and commitment, by approaching her with an idea for how to find and re-capture the missing dementors.

His idea was pretty far-fetched, though on the face of it it had some merit. He was going to suggest that the unspeakables should be asked to invent a charm that maps out temperature across a wide area. Then, on a reasonably warm day, they should run this charm in sweeps across the land, looking for "cold spots".

We will never know how this idea would have been received, because several events - each one pretty minor by itself - conspired to make this a moot point, and gave him a different avenue for his brown-nosing instincts. (Besides, there was a very good chance that Minister Bones would see right through his sycophancy and send him packing with a flea in his ear, so maybe this was for the best!)

The first event in this little chain was that Minister Bones's secretary, a young woman called Selma Kasbek, had stepped out to "powder her nose". Normally, she would be back within a few minutes, and thus did not worry too much about informing Minister Bones. In any case, Minister Bones was a nice person who did not get annoyed by little things like that. But this time she took a lot longer, and was pretty much away from her desk outside Minister Bones' office for the better part of twenty minutes.

(Curiously, the reason she was out so long was connected to the dementors' disappearance. While powdering her nose, she ran into her friend Marie Kinsey, who appeared to be in an absolutely great mood. Marie's husband Jason was one of the aurors on Azkaban, and he was on shore leave last night. The euphoria of never having to be near a dementor again was enough to put young Jason on a "high", and Marie and he had "celebrated" long and (occasionally) loud. Naturally, it fell to Selma, as her best friend, to tease her about it, and when a few other friends landed up, to continue to make her friend blush and giggle.)

The second thing that happened was that Auror Keele chose precisely this time to come to Minister Bones' office with his idea, and decided to wait for the secretary. Normally, people wait a few minutes, then they would either leave, or - if they felt brave enough - knock on the minister's inner office door anyway. Keele did neither, choosing instead to wait.

The third thing was that Amelia, from force of habit, used the wrong silencing charm when Sirius entered her office.

Amelia had two versions of the silencing charm. The first, which was most often used, included her outer office so that her secretary could her hear floo or other conversations and - like a good secretary - bring her the appropriate files or some relevant information, without being asked. The other, less often used, excluded her outer office, and her secretary's desk, entirely.

Today, however, Amelia was distracted by the Wizengamot session, her observation of Sirius's behaviour and its implications, and the need to get to the truth, and so on, so she had absent-mindedly used the more common version. Sirius only noted that she had silencing spells, and did not realise the scope of the spell.

The end result was that our young brown-noser was fascinated by what he could hear going on inside, and the incredible things he was now privy to.

The dementors had been destroyed.

It was the Phantom that had destroyed them.

But he had used muggle methods to do so.

The Phantom had access to a seer.

And oh by the way, you-know-who would be back. Auror Keele was not a brave man, and only his fear of being discovered made him bite his tongue and suppress his own scream echoing Minister Bones' shriek.

In any case, he ran from that office, not knowing what to do or where to go. He would have to think about this.

1988-09-25 22:00 UTC, Hogwarts

Dumbledore was in a royal snit. It seemed the Phantom was not only far more powerful than they had ever imagined, but he had a seer giving him advice, and was not averse to using muggle methods to destroy magical beings if needed.

It had been pure luck that he had even found out. Dedalus had a second cousin, a much younger man, who was in the auror corps, and who had approached him at some point a few days ago. He had overheard a conversation this morning, where he had found out certain facts that sounded incredible. He was unwilling to provide details of who and when, though, which meant that Dedalus did not believe him, and sent him away.

Only today, more than five days after that, did he (Dedalus) think to mention this to Albus. While casually making small talk after an excellent dinner (and Lonsy's coffee), the conversation had died down, and - almost as if it was a joke - Dedalus said something that literally woke Dumbledore from his torpid state.

It be fair, Albus was not at all sure this wasn't some joke, but he had no intention of taking a chance, especially with the last comment. That someone else had figured out Voldemort would be back was a huge problem for him, and with the kind of reputation the Phantom was building up, he may attempt to defeat Voldemort and steal his thunder. Of course, Dumbledore did not believe in fanciful things like prophecies, but the horcrux in Harry's head was real enough, and needed to be dealt with.

So it took a while to convince Dedalus that this was probably not a joke. Then he had to make a floo call to his cousin Keele.

Keele, still smarting from Dedalus's refusal to believe him, and frustrated at having no other outlet for his momentous news (he was just smart enough to realise that going to the papers with it would not end well for him), initially refused to come. It was only by dangling the carrot that such a great man as Albus Dumbledore himself was interested in what he had heard, that Rowan could be cajoled into floo-ing in. Dumbledore's star may be on the wane, but he was still a "star" for all that, and Keele was happy to oblige.

And Dumbledore was a past master at soothing ruffled feathers, especially if the person did not want much more than that anyway. Keele and Dumbledore got on like a house on fire.

Whether either of them realised that the other was playing up the bonhomie, we will probably never know, but Dumbledore managed to convince Keele to give up a pensieve memory of the conversation as he had heard it. Bottling it up for a more detailed examination later, Dumbledore said his goodbyes and left.

Now, back in his quarters at Hogwarts, it was clear that this was all true, at least from Sirius's point of view, and that Amelia believed him.

And that was what led to his current state of intense anger and frustration.

The old Dumbledore would have rushed into this; he would have summoned Sirius and Amelia, made them tell him everything, and then told them to leave everything to him or whatever. Probably obliviated both of them, quite casually, if required.

But this one had been burned. Several times. Amelia was not to be trifled with, and Sirius had shown several times that he was no pushover either. In fact, if it wasn't for the "Voldemort returns" part, he may have concluded that this was an elaborate prank on him, being planned by Sirius and his cohorts.

But that part was too close to the truth. And Amelia was no spring chicken; she'd suss out pretty quickly that Voldemort must have created a horcrux.

In fact, even if she merely suspected that right now, his nosing around trying to get more information from them would confirm it in her opinion.

What to do... what to do..., he mused. For the first time in decades, this arrogant, I-know-what's-best-for-everyone, wizard, was not sure what his next steps were.

One thing he was sure of. He had better not use this information too soon - in case they made the connection to the leak, however improbable it actually was. Best to use it at a time when nothing remotely connected to it had happened recently, so they would not know how he found out.

1989-04-03 23:00 UTC, location unknown

It had been more than six months since the dementors had been destroyed. Of course, other than Amelia Bones, the minister for magic, no one else outside our little band appeared to know this - the rest of the wizarding world thought they were hiding somewhere, biding their time.

It seemed to still be in the news, off and on. Whether that was because it was really such a big deal to the lay wizard and witch, or because things had been so quiet that the Prophet could not find anything else to talk about, no one could say. Most likely the latter, growsed Hobby.

He and his friends had discussed this - whether something should be done, and if so, what. It wasn't much of a discussion - they couldn't very well come right out and say "oh yeah those dementors? We killed 'em all. Anyway, how about those Harpies huh? Awesome game last night!"

Nope; any which way you cut it, this was best kept a secret. But that did lead to something else, namely, "what now?"

"What now? I don't know - there aren't many death eaters left!", said Sirius.

"True", said Remus. "Who's left now, by the way, Hobby?"

"As far as I can tell, Alecto Carrow is in Azkaban. Her stint as cheer leader for the dementor delivery game seems to have had an adverse effect on her though; when I left her back in her cell she was completely catatonic and almost appeared to be kissed, though we know she was not", said Hobby.

Turning to Sirius, he asked a question. "I know this will sound silly and thoroughly naive of me, but does Azkaban have a resident healer, or at least someone who visits periodically?"

"Resident healer? You must be joking!", said Sirius. "Why would any self-respecting healer elect to work under those conditions?"

"So what happens if a non-life-term prisoner fell ill?"

"If he was not a lifer, he's not dangerous. They'd probably put an auror guard on him and send him to St Mungos. There's a separate, albeit small, wing there for prisoner treatment, with wards that prevent apparation out and so on. I don't know more though; I was, of course, not privileged to be even remotely considered for that kind of stuff", he said darkly. To some extent it still rankled, and only the thought that all but one of the main perpetrators behind his illegal imprisonment were now dead, helped.

"OK fine, Alecto is almost dead. Who else is out here?"

"Flint senior is around. I see him occasionally at the entrance to Knockturn Alley, either coming in or going out", said Hobby.

"What were you doing there?"

"Wouldn't you like to know", Hobby smirked back at Sirius. "Anyway, Flint senior, Nott, Parkinson, Busltrode, Crabbe, Goyle. I think that's it."

"But we don't want to simply destroy them the way we did the others?"

"Nott and Flint, we could. Real bad apples, both. Crabbe and Goyle are more misguided muscle than considered maliciousness. Leave them alone. Parkinson and Bulstrode I am not sure of".

"So, if we can't do much for the death-eaters, or at least there's no immediate need to, what about the horcruxes?"

"Well, there's Ravenclaw's diadem, which is in Hogwarts, in a special room that the elves call 'the come-and-go room', but we called it the 'room of requirements', back in my fifth year", said Hobby. "I could easily go there and get that diadem, I just have to pick a day when Dumbledore is distracted. I have no idea what kinds of alarms he has on the castle in general - we never could figure out how he always seemed to know things he shouldn't have".

"Probably a mix of charms and spying. Ghosts, paintings, maybe even elves. For instance, if you went there, and an elf on cleaning duty saw you, would he or she raise an alarm? We don't really know".

"Not sure. But I'm not too worried - the window of opportunity is too small. It would have been a bigger problem if I could not directly apparate to that seventh floor corridor, but had to walk all the way from the front gates, though."

"OK, why don't you get it now?", said Nick. "We can meet back at the field where we used fiendfyre last time, and finish it off".

"Or do you want to wait till you get the ring also?", asked Penny.

Hobby suddenly remembered what that ring actually was supposed to be, or at least the stone in it.

"Umm, Nick, Penny...", he started. They looked at him expectantly.

"How much do you know about the deathly hallows?", he asked.

"They're a myth. The Peverell brothers were just pandering to the public's need for such stories, so they made up this whole thing and eventually it became a 'fact'".

"But you're sure it's not? Dumbledore clearly believed it, and a lot of his mis-steps were because he desperately wanted the resurrection stone."

"We're very sure, Hobby. We never researched the hallows ourselves, but we had a very good friend who had made a career out of figuring out how much of our popular mythology was true and how much was not. Mikkel Davidson was pretty good at it, and we trust his analysis. It was all a big prank perpetrated by the Peverell brothers".

"I mean", he continued. "Don't get me wrong. The individual items did have their powers; it's just the combined power that was a rumour".

"I've never heard of this guy", said Remus.

"A few years before your time, Remus. You're forgetting how old we are", grinned Nick.

Remus looked at him as if for the first time, quickly switched to Penny, and said "Well can you blame me?", and winked flirtatiously at her.

They all laughed out loud at this. "You've been spending too much time with Sirius", said Nick.

Hobby waited for the laughter to die down, and - very reluctantly - moved the conversation back to the important stuff.

"This makes it a lot easier. Of all the horcruxes, the ring was the most dangerous to get a hold of. Well...", he looked apologetically at Sirius, "since we know that Regulus got the locket out".

"This one", he continued, "pretty much killed Dumbledore. He could not resist the compulsion charm on it and when he wore it, he was hit by a withering curse. Snape gave him some potions to slow down the spread, but that only bought him a few months."

Sirius was looking a little worried. "If Dumbledore could not resist it, that must have been incredibly powerful. How are we going to get it out?"

"Well, I suspect it was worse for him because he was convinced it was the resurrection stone. People who know it is not, or know that there is no such thing, will fare better I'm sure; don't worry!", said Hobby.

"So what's the plan?"

"I'll go in broad daylight tomorrow and do a bit of reconnaissance, then we'll decide".

"What's the deal with 'broad daylight'? Not that I'm complaining!", asked Remus.

"No idea. Just being careful, I guess. The muggles don't go anywhere near there, and neither do wizarding folk, so there's certainly no need to hide from the outside world there. It's the protections it has that, from Dumbledore's description, are dangerous, and some of those things abhor the light. Literally! I picked 11 am tomorrow as the best time to go".

"But why go alone? We're coming with you", said Sirius.

Hobby shook his head. "I am sure there are death traps there for any wizard, and I am equally sure some or all of them will need a parselmouth to overcome. Dumbledore did not tell me what he encountered but it was pretty bad, and must have weakened or injured him quite a bit for him to succumb to the compulsion that Riddle placed on the ring."

"And you can resist that compulsion?"

"I have always been able to resist the imperius, even as a fourteen-year old Harry. Now...", he just shrugged. He doubted if any compulsion would be able to snare him.

"Still, wouldn't you prefer having some backup, even if from a distance?", asked Nick.

"You know, Riddle always ignored elves. I'm willing to bet that place has no defenses against elf-magic", grinned Hobby.

1989-04-04 11:12 UTC, Hogwarts, headmaster's office

Dumbledore ran back into his office full pelt. He had been working on some ICW papers since 7am, and had left his office to stretch his legs and walk around for a bit. He had barely closed the door and gone down a few steps when the unfamiliar, unexpected, but feared, sound warbled from his office - one of the traps he had laid for Tom's wraith had been disturbed.

Knowing that Tom would be back - the Phantom's seer was only a confirmation of a long-held suspicion, for him - he had reasoned that Tom must have made horcruxes, and hidden them away in various places.

He dared not search for them himself, in case there were any traps, but he could lay his own warning wards on top of whatever wards existed. He had thus started out to place them at three places - the old Riddle Manor in Little Hangleton, the Gaunt's old house, now a derelict, abandoned, structure, and Wool's Orphanage. But some legilimancy of the staff there had also revealed that Tom was very fond of a particular cave on the coast, so - after some difficulty in obtaining enough information to be sure - he planted one on the coast closest to the cave.

He had not been sure what kind of warnings to place. They needed to leave the intruder alone, and not even give him a hint that a warning had been triggered, the better to catch Tom by surprise. Yet they could not be focused only on Tom; after all, if Pettigrew was a rat, who knew what capabilities his other minions had. Who even knew what they were - he would not put it past Tom to send a vampire into that area to check things out. At a pinch, even a zombie could be directed, at least to do simple things.

So he had to lay the most general purpose, "anything magical" warning ward. And one of those four had triggered. Someone, or something was there.

"Fawkes!", he called out. Fawkes was on him in an instant, and he told her "out of Hogwarts, please; after that I need to go alone. You are too close to a burining day to risk you."

1989-04-04 11:00 UTC, Riddle manor, Little Hangleton

Just a few minutes before that, Hobby had landed in front of the Gaunt shack in Little Hangleton.

Carefully, moving as slowly and as quietly as he could, Hobby approached the boundary. He kept a weather eye on the approach road, as well as the sides of the house. There was nothing there, as far as he knew, but no harm making sure.

Eventually, he found what looked felt like serious wards just a foot or two ahead - not just the usual muggle repellent wards, but something much more sinister.

Slowly, Hobby approached the ward boundary. As he came near, he could feel the tingle of the magic increasing, the small hairs on his skin were rising, and he found himself suddenly questioning his entire mission, his purpose and reasons.

He shook himself free. He had not been concentrating on his persona. He took a few moments to calm down, and then he focused on suppressing his wizard persona as much as he could. If asked, he would be hard-pressed to define or even describe what that meant - it was more intuited than learned - but now he was as much a house-elf as he could be.

Like magic, the compulsion disappeared almost completely. That did not mean the ward was not dangerous in and of itself, but he at least did not have to deal with the strong repulsion aspect of it.

He took one step forward, only to be thrown back several feet. No sound, no flash of light, nothing to say what actually happened. He hadn't even felt anything. Just... one moment he was there, the next, he was twenty feet behind his previous position, sitting up groggily.

Only to find Albus Dumbledore staring at him from just a few inches away, a look of utter shock on his face. Despite that, however, the old wizard quickly laid a body-bind on the elf.

"I did not realise Tom used elves, my little friend", he said, "but now that you have seen me, you cannot be allowed to escape with your memories intact. I cannot have him realise I am on to him. I'm sorry, but I will have to remove your memories of the last few minutes, then force you into the hostile ward. Better he think you ran afoul of one his own protections than- AARGH!"

The elf had shaken off the binding with a tremendous effort and blasted Dumbledore even further back, away from the Manor, before popping away.