Amelia Bones strode through the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. She was late, though she felt as though she was late to everything these days. The world seemed to turn just a few steps ahead of her and she was always falling behind. Always too late to the meetings, too late to the raids, too late to save her people from being killed. A hamster in a wheel just turning, turning, turning, and never moving forward.

The office was almost empty, the last of the sun barely trickling through the charmed windows. She wandered through the office, casually neatening the desks as she went, clearing the rubbish from the floor and straightening folders. Pamphlets littered the desks. Safety advice, warding techniques, areas it was safe and unsafe to travel to. It was upsetting how many they were able to reuse from the first war.

Amelia flicked her wand, straightening a pile of notes on one employee's desk. Their lamp was still on; it was common for people to work late into the night. For some, it was safer than going home.

She caught sight of Him, his pale face and burning red eyes glaring up at her from one of the sheets. He looked almost ethereal, a burning white effigy against the black stone walls of the Ministry. She had howled when she heard the news, that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was back, that he had dared enter her halls and attack her Aurors. She had cried with anger, if only to mask the cry of fear that lurked within her.

She waved her wand, shoving all references to Him into one big pile on the desk. It towered next to the rest. Ironic really, so much information on a man they could barely catch a glimpse of. She turned away, stalking determinedly towards her office and the tirade within it.

"I'm telling you Amelia, I've dealt with this before. You have a rat in the department, I can smell it."

Mad-Eye Moody paced restlessly in front of her desk, his gnarled stick and gnarled leg banging out a steady rhythm on the hardwood floor. A sign of the auror he used to be, she thought. Alastor Moody never sat still, always moving, shifting, ready to strike at a moment's notice. Even after he'd retired from the Auror office, Moody had never really left. Amelia was glad of it. She trusted Moody, even if he didn't trust anyone else.

It made her uneasy, watching him circle the office. They were safe in here, protected by layers of wards and charms. Yet, even with the Ministry under more protective spells than Amelia could count, she still couldn't shake the feeling of trouble within the walls.

"They're getting more blatant, more reckless. More of those masked bastards showing up where they shouldn't." Alastor threw another paper onto the piles that already littered Amelia's desk. Green skulls, twisted from smoke and wrapped in serpents glowed on the pages. Images of houses ripped from the foundations, bodies littered among the rubble and yet another list of seemingly never-ending names scrawled into the Daily Prophet as though Amelia had time to mourn them all.

"I trust my staff, Alastor. I know who I hired."

"Pah," Alastor scoffed, turning to look at her with his scarred face and missing eye. "War shows the truth in people. And the truth is never pretty."

Amelia grimaced. He was right, of course. She remembered as much from the last war. Good faith placed in seemingly good people can often lead to bad things.

Alastor stubbed a gnarled finger onto the paper. "They were under our protection. No one should have known where they were, but us. How did those bastards even find them?"

Amelia sighed. "I don't know, Alastor."

"You do." Alastor growled back. "And the longer you deny it, the worse it'll get."

Amelia grimaced and tried not to look at the faces peering up at her. A young family held a newborn baby in their arms. Thomas Sheridan was a muggle born, so was his wife Áine. Both worked as part of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and were fierce with a wand. But they started getting threats, cursed letters, figures following them home. Kingsley had transferred it to Moody, who had hid them using whatever power his Order had. But it wasn't enough.

There wasn't enough of them left to bury.

Their location could have only been discovered by someone inside the department. Someone inside her department. And with more and more people going into hiding, the people she could trust were growing smaller and smaller.

Moody growled and stormed towards the window, his cane cracking against the stones. "These murders will only get worse unless you smoke out the leak!"

"I will not risk the trust of this Department!" Amelia yelled, getting to her feet. "We are stretched thin as it is. I will not risk sowing more suspicion around my staff, we need to stick together, Alastor!"

Moody's rebuttal died on his lips as a small knock sounded on the door. Amelia waved her wand at it and a small, pale-faced boy peered around the corner. He looked exhausted, his eyes glazed and vacant, shadowed with heavy bags beneath them.

"Hartwood," Amelia sighed, straightening her skirt and sitting back down on the desk. "Is that the last of them?"

"Yes, ma'am," Hartwood muttered. He slowly shuffled across the floor, his arms laden with papers and a wand loose in his pocket. Alastor chuckled as he tripped over his feet, unable to see the floor around the table. He deposited the papers onto Amelia's desk.

Amelia riffled through them; there were various reports from missions, lists of Auror affiliations, mountains of mundane names and their blood status'.

"Thanks, Hartwood. Now, go home. It's late," she ordered, collecting the papers and storing them in the locked safe below her desk.

"Keeping all those names in one place is just asking for trouble," Moody muttered as she reapplied the dozen warding charms to the safe. "They're just asking to be robbed."

"No one knows they're here but you and me," she said as Hartwood shuffled back out the door. "And I would rather have them all in one place than floating around if—if you are right about a mole."

Alastor growled but said nothing. He pointed his own curved wand, adding another security spell to the already bewitched safe.

Amelia sat heavily into her chair. Her eyes drifted down to the smiling family on the paper. Sheridan had been a good man, a strong man. He would have put up a fight.

"Do your investigation," Amelia said, through clenched teeth. Alastor looked at her. "Be subtle. If word gets out I'm investigating my own Department, nobody will be safe."

Alastor looked at her, nodded softly and strode out of the room.

The sun had long since set but Amelia still sat in the shadows of her own office. In front of her lay the files of each of her employees; Tonks, Thicknesse, Scrimgeour, Robards, Shacklebolt, Yaxley, Dawlish, Proudfoot. They were all fierce Aurors, fierce fighters. She'd be remiss to get on the wrong side of any of them.

She barely recognised the faces that looked up at her from the files. They were so young, innocent. Even Tonks, who had escaped the worst of the first war, looked decades older than she did in her photo.

Fear changes people, war changes people. She trusted the people she hired, the people in these photos. Could she trust the people they were now? Older, scarred, crossed with lines and age. How can you sense the changes on the inside?

Amelia shook her head and rose from her desk, heading towards the bathroom. The clock showed almost 2 a.m. and the offices outside seemed deserted. She shut the door behind her, weaving down the gaps between the desks and using her wand to absentmindedly straighten out the files and notes.

Yaxley had a history of dark families. His father had been part of Voldemort's ranks but Yaxley had never shown any trace of prejudice in his work. Tonks came from a family of Blacks, generations of blood purists and a Lestrange for an aunt. She had every opportunity to learn dark magic. Robards' mother was killed in a battle in the first war. Hit by a spell thrown by an Auror. Proudfoot was quiet, unassuming, heralding from somewhere outside the continent. No one knew much about his history at all.

Where do you even start looking for a mole? What makes a person untrustworthy? Can you judge them based on their past?

Amelia stood over the sink in the bathroom, staring into the mirror. Her face didn't look like the photo in her file either. It was lined and tired. Silver streaks in her hair and a stern grimace to her lips that she barely recognised. She tried to smile and stiffened at the look of it. It looked fake, like someone had carved it into her face with a knife. She shook her head and splashed her face with cold water from the tap, as though she could wash the age off her skin. She braced herself, two hands on the sink and took a deep breath.

Maybe there wasn't a spy. Maybe it was all in her head. Maybe it was just bad luck, bad luck and the inevitable consequences of war. Maybe the Sheridans had been careless? Left the house without a glamour and been followed. There wasn't a leak in the Department at all and her staff were all still the honourable people they were in their photos.

It was the Sheridans that had been at fault. And the Lansdowne family. The Hughes, the Kilrees, the Porthwhistles.

"Trust your gut," she muttered to her reflection. "What's your gut telling you?"

That it was too many families. Too many coincidences.

Amelia left the bathroom and tried not to stare at the desks and she walked back to her office. She passed by the tall stack of papers filled with His image. The light was still on, shining on papers upon papers packed with shining red eyes.

Hartwood's desk, she realised, looking at the small plaque.

Her heart caught in her throat. She dropped the papers onto his desk, walking swiftly towards her office. He had been in the room, when she had stored the papers. He would have seen the safe beneath her desk, the colour of the spells used to open it.

He would have read the names, the hundreds of names on the sheets. Names of muggleborn families, their children, their homes.

Her office door was open when she arrived. She pushed it, her wand gripped firmly in her hand. She strode towards the desk, flinging it aside to reveal the safe beneath. Her wand trembled as she tested the wards. They were still intact. Bruised, as though someone had been tampering with them, but the safe remained locked.

Amelia sank into the chair, bones aching and lungs gasping for breath. Hartwood. Small, unassuming Hartwood. An administration assistant, not even an Auror. Barely a child, a paper pusher fresh from Hogwarts.

Amelia didn't even know anything about him, his family, his relations. She remembered the glazed look in his eyes as he shuffled through her office earlier. How could he be the leak? What had he to gain?

She pulled herself up from her desk and back towards the tables outside her office. The dark of the Ministry seemed less peaceful now, more ominous, heavy and waiting. She tiptoed towards Hartwoods desk, cursing the clack of her heels as they echoed on the floor. Hartwoods desk was lit by a light, the only one in the room. As though it had been a spotlight the entire time. She held her breath as she riffled through it, trying to find something that would explain why, why he would betray innocent families to You-Know-Who's wand. There was nothing. Scrawled notes from Thicknesse, letters from Yaxley, a missive from Shacklebolt about being late for meetings. Nothing that screamed betrayal.

Coincidence. 'You're just being paranoid,' she chided herself. 'Too many long nights. Too much talk of spies.' The whole of the Ministry was plastered with images and notes on He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Just because they are on Hartwood's desk doesn't make him the spy.

She shook her head, straightening out the papers again. She was just panicking, worrying too much. She flicked the light off on the desk, flinching for a second in the near perfect darkness of the office. Nothing moved, nothing stirred, the office was completely silent. Amelia lit her wand, casting eerie shadows across the room and moved towards the door. She would go home, go to sleep and try to calm her racing heart.

She met no one on the stairs down to the foyer. Nor in the lobby or the Atrium. Amelia moved like a ghost through the Ministry of Magic, the click of her shoes echoing around the empty building like a thudding heart.

The alley outside was just as dark, a weak light from the sliver of a waning moon lighting the path in front of her. She didn't see the corpse until she stepped on it, the point of her heel piercing into soft flesh.

She gasped, stumbling backwards into the stone wall, clawing at the smooth surface for something to stop her collapsing to the ground. The body lay still, spread carelessly across the stones. The hole in its leg didn't bleed.

"Well, well, what do we have here?"

Amelia froze as a figure appeared in the mouth of the alley. His black robes seemed to melt into the shadows and Amelia tried not to scream when a pair of red eyes locked with hers.

Voldemort tilted his head, considering her with an almost childlike curiosity.

"Amelia Bones," he purred. He walked towards her and Amelia stumbled back. She fumbled for her wand but her fingers were numb, grasping at nothing.

Voldemort came to a stop at the body. He stared down at it, turning its face towards her with his foot.

"Hartwood," Amelia breathed, taking in the blank face of the young boy strewn on the ground.

Voldemort looked up at her. "It had a name?" he said with a smirk. "I wonder if others will remember it."

Amelia's hand found her wand in the depths of her robes. She grasped it, feeling a surge of confidence race through her as she did.

"He worked for you," she hissed, slowly drawing her wand from her pockets. If she could just get a clear shot, just one spell, that's all she needed.

Voldemort's eyes met hers again and with them, sent a shard of ice through her heart. It was like he was doing more than looking at her, like he was looking within her. Into her very heart and soul. Like he was searching through her to find her weaknesses.

Amelia wouldn't show them.

Voldemort smiled, a cruel and cold smile that showed nothing but teeth. "I owned him," he said, stepping cleanly over the corpse.

Amelia tried not to flinch, standing her ground as Voldemort came towards her. She glanced at Hartwood's body on the floor, his pale face and blank expression. His glazed eyes, as glazed as they had been when he had entered her office only a few hours ago.

"You Imperiused him," she whispered. It wasn't a question. She hadn't even noticed. No one had, not even Moody when he had seen Hartwood that evening.

A whole office full of Aurors and not one had noticed the Imperiused child in their midst.

Voldemort laughed. "He was not important. Just a practice. I have more important plans to see through. And you can help me, Ms Bones."

Voldemort drew his wand from his robes, still walking towards. Amelia panicked, whipping her wand from her robes and firing a jet of jagged red light towards him. Voldemort brushed it away with barely a caress of his own.

"I wonder, Amelia Bones, if no one noticed an Imperiused clerk for almost a month. How long will it take them to notice an Imperiused Head of Department?"

Voldemort flicked his wrist. Amelia's wand went flying from her hand. She felt a jolt to her chest and she was pushed back, pinned to the wall behind her. Voldemort strode up to her, coming to stop an inch in front of her. She could taste his rotted breath on her cheek.

"I'll never submit to you," she hissed, spitting in his face.

Voldemort merely smiled at her with a sense of pride that made Amelia sick to her stomach. "No, I would never expect you to. The House of Bones is a noble family. I would expect nothing less from you." He waved his wand over his shoulder. "There are others who are much more malleable who will serve me."

Amelia almost cried when she saw another figure emerge from the alley. Pius Thicknesse's eyes were glazed, his expression blank as he shuffled forward. Amelia noticed his wand hanging loosely in his hand.

"He will make a fine Head of Magical Law Enforcement, don't you think?"

Amelia tried to catch Pius' gaze but there was nothing in them. "Please. Pius please, fight it. Fight him!"

Pius Thicknesse didn't hear her. Amelia barely heard her own words. They fell from her lips like rain, doing nothing but feeding Voldemort's laughter as Pius raised his wand towards her.

Amelia stopped begging. She met Voldemort's eyes, cold red meeting her own fire blue. She would not beg for death.

"You will lose," she said, bravery rising from her from somewhere deep within. "You and all your puppets will fall and the world will cheer."

Amelia let out a bark of laughter. She didn't hear him speak the words. There was a flash of green, and a rush of silence. And Amelia wondered if people would cheer when she died.

THC

House: Gryffindor

Class: Astronomy

Length: Standard

WC: 3000

Prompts: - [Genre] Crime

1) [Dialogue (multiline)] "Trust in your gut." / "What's your gut telling you?"

2) [Dialogue] "Well, well, what do we have here?"