Chapter 98

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"Black, Clancy wants to see you" a junior Auror said looking serious as Hadrian arrived back at the end of his shift.

"What'd you do?" His partner asked grinning.

"No idea" Hadrian replied unworriedly, heading upstairs. He knocked on his boss's door. "You wanted to see me?"

"Come in and shut the door" Clancy said.

"Hello Potter" Auror Robbards said.

"Hadrian," Kingsley greeted him.

"Kingsley, Auror Robbards, good afternoon, or good evening, good morning, it must be the middle of the night in London," Hadrian replied questioningly.

"I'll leave you to it" Clancy said, getting up and leaving his office.

"What's up? It must be something big if you've both come. Is Neville and his family and Sir Geoffrey okay?" Hadrian said anxiously.

"Yes, relax Potter this is good news," Kingsley said comfortingly.

"We've finally tracked down and arrested Davis, the ex-healer that cursed you," Robbards replied.

"So you know why he did it. Was it a personal grudge or did someone contract him to attack me?" Hadrian asked curiously.

"We questioned him under Veritaserum and found out that the attack on you was ordered and paid for by Narcissa Malfoy."

Narcissa Malfoy! That doesn't make any sense," Hadrian exclaimed shocked. Between the fact that Narcissa had once saved his life at great risk to her own and that none of the Malfoys had approached Gringotts to declare him ineligible to inherit the Black or Slytherin Headships, the Malfoys had initially been suspects but he hadn't considered them to be a possibility after the first month or so, and even initially he hadn't seriously suspected Narcissa. "Have you been able to question her about it?"

"It made sense in her twisted mind," Robbards said darkly, without offering an explanation.

"Have you arrested her?" Hadrian asked.

"No. But not for the reasons you might imagine. Kingsley and I managed to suppress Davis' interrogation and brought her in for questioning quietly at the same time as we were questioning all the other parents about the deaths of their squib children, but we cannot charge her with conspiracy to attack you without it going to trial and we're not entirely sure what it will do to the inheritance laws if it all becomes public. As to the killing of her squib children we are certain as we can be that it was Lucius and Abraxes Malfoy's doing, she wasn't complicit," Robbards told him.

"The last thing we want to do is hand over the title Lord Slytherin to the Malfoys. You understand why," Kingsley added.

"And if we attempt to charge her with the other crimes we uncovered during the investigation, we are concerned that her family will threaten to make your attack part of her testimony if they know about it," Robbards said.

"So they both get away with it, and what else is she going to get away with?" Hadrian said sighing.

"Believe me Potter we don't want this any more than you do but the safeguards we put in place after the war to stop what happened to Sirius from happening to anyone else have tied our hands in this matter" Kingsley said.

"Our hands are tied" Hadrian repeated thoughtfully.

"What are you getting at?" Robbards asked.

"The ministry can't publicly try her for her crimes without my children potentially being harmed both financially losing their inheritances and making them vulnerable to British homophobic bigotry and without her son benefitting in ways that would not be good for magical Britain, which is what she no doubt intended to achieve with the attack in the first place. It's in everyone's best interests that the ministry not punish her to keep to the status quo, but MI7 don't answer to the ministry and can act in secrecy. Healer Davis and Narcissa Malfoy will just disappear and it doesn't sound like much notice would be taken of either disappearance except for by Narcissa's son, perhaps Sir Geoffrey's men could arrange an accident, or to have her incarcerated in the ward for the criminally insane. Davis has been in hiding and Narcissa isn't well enough to be much in public," Hadrian explained.

"Nor do they get involved in personal assault cases," Robbards reminded him.

"I was consulting for them before I was attacked so it could be argued that Davis didn't just attack an Auror and the Head of two Ancient and Most Noble Houses, he attacked a MI7 agent."

"You really think they'd have a solution for us?" Robbards asked sceptically.

"He'll have a solution, but you won't like it" Hadrian replied dryly. "Sir Geoffrey once said quite seriously, that he'd have the entire Malfoy family assassinated before he'd allow them to inherit the Earldom of Slytherin, They're worried that inheriting the Earldom could cause the type of situation that might give Draco Malfoy the ability to unify the pureblood movement and inspire another uprising" Hadrian said. "And that was before we knew they were behind the curse that might let them inherit it by making it extremely difficult for me to produce an heir in Britain."

"We could use that" Kingsley said thoughtfully. "Make her vow not to tell anyone, to save her son and grandson."

"I don't know that a vow would work with her mind as shattered as it is," Robbards warned.

"Wait, Malfoy has a kid?" Hadrian asked horrified. "We couldn't kill a child."

"I'm not suggesting we let Hobbs kill the kid, but the threat might be enough to make her vow not to tell them about the curse," Kingsley replied.

"You'd have to be very sure she hasn't already told anyone or written it down somewhere somehow" Hadrian said. "She wouldn't risk dying without a way for Draco to find out about this. I'm surprised she didn't tell him immediately."

"How do you know she hasn't?" Kingsley asked.

"I went to school with the little turd" Hadrian said bluntly. "He's improved some since the end of the war but our rivalry was intense, he'd still be incapable of not crowing about it to me or his mates if he knew. I would also expect him to petition the goblins for 'his' inheritance since being unable to 'father' a child could have made me ineligible to hold the Earldom if there was another heir contesting."

"He might have done. Gringotts wouldn't tell us if he had," Robbards reminded him. "They would have turned him down originally because he couldn't prove it and later because you clearly have had children."

"The Goblins would've told me there was a threat to my titles, even if they didn't report it to anyone in the ministry officially, and depending on how much he pissed them off they would probably have banned him from the bank itself or fined him heavily enough for it to at least be rumoured." Hadrian countered.

Kingsley laughed. "He's right, Ragnok would tell Potter. The Goblins never would have approved Malfoy's claim on Harry's estates if they could prevent it. Hell, Ragnok forgave Potter for breaking into a bank vault and stealing a bloody dragon to escape, not to mention the damage it caused to the bank and their reputation."

"Unfortunately, things aren't so clear cut. As I said we tried to interrogate Narcissa Malfoy. We didn't really succeed. She's insane. The near death of Draco during the war after the deaths of her elder squib children has destroyed her mind, the muggles would call it psychotic depression. Her family have been using charms to shore up her sanity for years, probably since before her current son was born if not before that, but the charms don't cure the problem they just control the symptoms for the time being. Administering the Veritaserum broke through the control spells the family had on her and she had a complete psychotic break, I don't know if we could reliably have her vow not to tell anybody, let alone recall whether she has documentation about the transaction somewhere that her son or anyone else might come across. For all we know she could have kept the bloody contract with Davis or written the whole plan in her will or in a posthumous letter to her son. She honestly doesn't seem to believe she did anything wrong," Robbards said.

"It still doesn't make sense. Why attack me?" Hadrian asked.

"She believes that disqualifying you from inheriting the Black Lordship would give Draco something to inherit when his older brothers come back to take over the headship of the Houses of Malfoy and LeStrange" Kingsley said dryly.

"But the eldest child would still inherit the lot unless Black and Lestrange specified a second-born son would inherit, and Draco's brothers and sisters are all dead aren't they? She couldn't have found a way to hide them away and fool the family tapestries so Lucius would think they were dead, could she?" Hadrian asked.

"Oh no, they're definitely dead, and under the current law squibs couldn't inherit if there was an alternative magical heir anyhow. Under Veritaserum she admitted to being forced by her father-in-law to watch as her husband killed them. Admitting it is what broke her mind completely," Robbards reported.

"Are you sure she's not pretending to be insane to get away with organising the attack?" Hadrian asked.

"It doesn't matter. She will never be released from the locked ward at St Mungo's. If she recovers and we can ever prove that she's lucid again she can stand trial. Her family won't let that happen."

"The long-term spell damage ward where the Longbottoms are doesn't seem secure enough" Hadrian said.

"She's not in that ward, the Longbottoms are in the long term ward to provide care for those incapable of looking after themselves but aren't a danger to others. There's are two mental wards in one of the floors under the basement. One of them is for people sectioned for their own health, which is where Ginevra Weasley currently is and the other is a prison ward for the criminally insane. She won't escape and she won't be allowed visitors, not even her son. The place is secure, it looks more like a muggle prison than a hospital ward.

"So that's that then. It's over," Hadrian said blankly. "I don't know quite how to feel about it."

"Would you be interested in being transferred back to London? Now that this threat and the threat of the Weasleys has been resolved?" Robbards asked.

"No. My life is here with my family now," Hadrian said decisively. "My husband's career is here and my children are safer here. Teddy doesn't face the prejudice here that he would in England, he will have a much better life here."

"I understand," Kingsley said. "Sir Geoffrey wanted me to tell you that he's pleased with the work you're doing here and is happy for you to continue here in your current post for the foreseeable future. Clancy has also stated that he would be willing to have you transfer to his command when your current assignment is completed. He has several positions you could take your pick from. Everything from counterterrorism to an investigative team lead to teaching full time at their academy. They're both very impressed with your work here."

"Thank you, sir. Thank Sir Geoffrey for me too please," Hadrian said politely.

"Nothing needs to change because you know this Hadrian," Kingsley said. "It's just one less hidden enemy you need to worry about and you've done a great job rounding up most of the known Death Eaters but there's still no guarantee there aren't still more we still know nothing at all about. You're right, this is your home now. You deserve to stay here and live in peace if that's what you want. You've done more than enough for the ungrateful people of magical Britain."

"Thanks Kingsley," Harry said grateful for his friend's understanding.

-o0o-

"Hey, you're home early," Tim said cheerfully when he arrived home early himself and found Hadrian outside playing with their children.

"Are you okay?" he asked anxiously, when Hadrian didn't respond.

"Yeah… I am!" Hadrian said getting up and coming to hug and kiss his husband. "I'm just feeling a little unsettled. I got some surprising news today. They found the person who cursed me and he admitted under Veritaserum who'd paid them to do it."

"Okay, what does that mean to us?" Tim asked.

Hadrian shrugged. "I don't know! I thought that knowing who did it and why would make a difference to me, and that it would change the way I felt about my safety here and visiting Britain, but it didn't," he said.

"Would it help to talk about it?" Tim asked.

"It wasn't Davis choice to use that spell, instead of attempting to kill me, well he chose the spell but he was actually only contracted to prevent me from having children so she could prove I was infertile and therefore ineligible to be Lord Black and her son would inherit the Black estate, and possibly the Slytherin estate though they're not even sure she knew about that one. I'm lucky he knew the spell and used it instead of castrating me or performing a permanent sex change or killing me. The woman behind it was insane, literally, she was from one of the pureblood families who became too inbred and whose husband had killed most of their children because they didn't have magic. He was a sadist who forced her to watch their children's murders as punishment for birthing a squib in the first place and her grief over the deaths of the children broke her mind. Her family has been using charms to prop up her sanity for years and it worked well enough to appear to let her function normally, or at least to appear to. In her insanity she's blocked out the deaths of her children and believes they'll come back and take her youngest and only living son's inheritance from his father, so she needed her family's inheritance for him instead. She'll be locked up in an asylum for the rest of her life as a danger to herself and others, but not for orchestrating the attack on me."

"And the guy who carried out the attack. Will he be tried?" Tim asked.

Hadrian shrugged. "Robbards is going to hand the evidence over to Sir Geoffrey so that he can be punished without attracting the media attention of a public trial in the Wizengamot. He's admitted it under Veritaserum so I won't have to testify." Harry didn't tell Tim that just as with the Death Eaters he caught and delivered to MI7, the closed trial would probably only take a couple of minutes while the defendant testified again under Veritaserum in front of three judges after which the doctor would quietly be executed. In fact, Davis would possibly already be dead, Sir Geoffrey wouldn't have wasted any time. Tim who believed in the whole judicial process of trial by jury and the ability to appeal a decision would be horrified.

"I'm glad you won't be besieged by reporters but why are they trying so hard to keep it quiet?" Tim asked.

"Britain is extremely bigoted and traditional. The goblins have accepted our children as my heirs but Kingsley and Robbards are worried that the ministry might try to insist that since I did not father them in the traditional way they shouldn't be considered legitimate. In which case the son of one of the leaders of the dark side would inherit my titles and a good chunk of my money. The son of the woman who hired Davis actually, unless they can prove he knew at the time what his mother was trying to do. It doesn't matter that much personally. Neville would be the one who inherited the Potter estate and he's already made a magical vow not to claim it. They wouldn't take enough of our money to make much difference to our standard of living but they're worried that Malfoy being named Lord Slytherin could enable him to raise enough support to start another war," Harry explained.

Tim looked at him in shock. "They believe you have the political power to start a war?" he asked. "No wonder they want you out of the country."

"Kingsley and Robbards know me too well to worry about that. They know I have no interest in starting or fighting another war, and the titles I have mostly give the holder of those titles power in the eyes of men who wouldn't follow me under any circumstances anyway because I killed their last leader, and have spent most of my adulthood trying to imprison all his followers. They sent me out of the country because they feared that one of them would eventually succeed in killing me and my death by assassination would lead to war," Harry replied.

"How do you feel?" Tim asked.

Hadrian looked across at Rosie playing on the grass. "I don't honestly know. When I look at my daughters or think about the new baby growing inside me, I can't be anything but grateful for the opportunity to have them both, and my heart aches at what the poor witch went through praying for her children to show some sign of accidental magic and dreading their eleventh birthday, watching hopelessly for the mail to bring them an invitation to attend Hogwarts even though she knew it wasn't likely to come and then being unable to prevent her husband from killing them, knowing that it was probably going to happen again to the younger children too and not having the strength to stop it herself or even the ability to leave him or tell anyone what was happening to stop it," he said. "I also feel for the children, the Malfoys are incredibly wealthy but I doubt even they could manage to keep the children completely separated and they must have grown up knowing what happened to their siblings and what was going to happen to them if they didn't get a Hogwarts letter and I feel for the elves that looked after them, think about how attached to the children Tollie is, Merlin no wonder Dobby was a little insane in his protections for me."

Tim looked horrified at the story but a tiny voice in the back of his mind insisted that there must have been some way she could have prevented it, to have hidden her sons or daughters away before it's eleventh birthday if it hadn't shown signs of magic rather than wait passively for her husband to murder the child. "Was she a battered wife or emotionally abused in some way to prevent her from being able to change things?" he asked.

"I don't know, she certainly didn't appear to be in public, not in the traditional sense at least, but there are more insidious ways of abusing and controlling someone, particularly with magic, even some unimaginable torture that doesn't leave visible marks. Her husband would have insisted on very restrictive marriage vows and probably backed them up with behaviour modification potions if he thought he was losing control of her," Hadrian replied. "Kingsley already told me they were using spells to shore up her mental condition and hide it from the rest of the world, who knows what else some of those spells did."

"Did you know her?" Tim asked. "Did you like her as a person?"

"I met her several times, but I don't think I ever knew her, we weren't friendly. The whole family were Voldemort supporters though she wasn't a marked Death Eater. The first time we met I was fourteen and she looked at me like I was something she'd scrape off the bottom of her shoe, the second time we met I was seventeen, she saved my life at some risk to her own, she lied and told Voldemort I was dead when she knew I wasn't, and then the third time not long after that she asked me to speak in her and her family's favour at the trials for her, her husband and son," Hadrian said.

"So, you feel you owe her something?" Tim asked.

"No, I don't owe her a damn thing. I had saved her son's life earlier that night and I testified at both her's and her son's trials so they didn't go to prison. Besides she didn't do it for me. She did it for her son, I was just lucky that she thought saving my life was in her son's best interests. I feel sorry that her life's been so shitty the same as I'd feel for anyone, but she chose to marry a very wealthy sociopath for money and the old family name, it might have been arranged by her family but she still had choices, her sister ran off and married for love," Hadrian explained. "There's nothing I could do for her anyway. She's not going to be put on trial she's been declared criminally insane and a danger to society and locked up in their secure mental ward with her magic permanently bound."

"With Ginny Weasley?" Tim asked.

"Yeah but they're in different sections, Ginevra is in the secure ward and Narcissa in the prison ward. Besides, the Weasleys and the Malfoys have feuded for generations, they don't even know how it started anymore but they still hate each other on sight enough to physically brawl in public in front of their children. I doubt they'll interact much even if they were given a choice," Hadrian replied unconcernedly.

"Well that's a good thing, but you know how things can go wrong inside a prison," Tim said doubtfully.

"I know, but remember that Ginny did vow not to interfere with our marriage or to try to harm either of us or the children so she can't plot against us and from what Robbards and Kingsley said, I really don't think that Narcissa's functional at all once the secrecy spells were broken it completely broke her mind, they don't expect her to recover," Hadrian said.

"So the long and the short of it is that unknown plot against you is now known and we're safe from further attacks from that source but you still don't think we'd be safe in magical Britain. You want to stay in America and exposing this plot hasn't changed your mission brief at all, and Clancy has offered to employ you directly if Robbards does try to end your secondment. We're no less safe and settled than we were before they were caught and you think that Sir Geoffrey can try these criminals without the trial or your situation which is unique in Britain but common enough in most of the rest of the world becoming common knowledge. From what I've heard that's all good things. So what haven't you told me that has you feeling off about all this?" Tim asked.

"I can't help feeling that no matter what their motivations in attacking, for me the end result has truly changed my life so much for the better that it's actually the best thing that could've happened to me at that point in my life. Ginny's reaction after I was attacked was the reason I saw who she really was before it was too late and I broke off our relationship before tying myself to her for life, and her family's reaction to that in addition to the attack was why I left England. It's why I used muggle travel to leave to try to prevent them finding out where I'd gone. You could say that if it wasn't for the three of them we wouldn't have met and got married and had this wonderful life together. His attack saved me from becoming a love potioned slave to a shrew of a woman and led to the greatest gifts in my life, but in spite of all that he's going to be punished, possibly even given the death penalty or life in prison, and part of me wants to stop them from imprisoning him."

"He attacked you in the back in the middle of the street and left you there unable to defend yourself from even the most incompetent mugger or attacker, magical or non-magical, for the money, he had no way of knowing you weren't completely straight and as homophobic as the rest of the British Wizarding world appears to be or that you weren't genuinely in love with your fiancé. For that matter, you can't know that you're the only person he attacked, how many lives he ruined or that he won't do it again. What would have happened if he attacked Ron or Neville? Or any of your other homophobic friends and colleagues in Wizarding Britain? He would have destroyed their lives, he planned to destroy yours," Tim said.

"I know. I won't try to stop Sir Geoffrey from prosecuting him. I just feel like defending him somehow," Hadrian said. "He didn't have to cast the spell he did. He was paid to render me unable to father a child, any other hit man would have probably just killed me or castrated me."

Tim wrapped his arms around his husband. "I understand," he said quietly. "I'm thankful that he cast that spell at you as well, but he still deserves to be punished for the motivation behind the attack. And remember he attacked you in Britain on a public street and left you there vulnerable, somewhere your life could have been in danger from a second attack or even a general mugging. There have to be strict penalties for attacking off duty law enforcement otherwise none of us would be safe."

"Yes you're right. I won't do anything to stop justice from being served," Hadrian said.

"Besides as you said he didn't attempt to kill you he'll probably get off quite lightly," Tim said.

Hadrian knew that this wasn't true. To keep the attack from becoming general knowledge and causing more problems for Harry and leading to multiple dark parties trying to claim his titles the man would have to be silenced once he was found guilty which meant either having the last five years of his life obliviated from him, permanent incarceration in isolation from all other witches and wizards or the death penalty. Hadrian only hoped that his trial under veritaserum had or would reveal other crimes that were more deserving of the punishment he was going to receive. Against the death eaters, MI7 and Sir Geoffrey's ruthlessness was warranted and even necessary to prevent another uprising and war as soon as the dark lord's supporters found another pureblood leader to follow. But applying it to general criminals seemed to go a step too far in Hadrian's opinion. Still he acknowledged he had spent very little time in the last few years worrying about what the British purebloods were up to. Maybe Sir Geoffrey was right that this was necessary to prevent another potential leader from accessing the power to raise another army of terrorists. It might also be important that it didn't become public knowledge among the pureblood bigots that Draco had a potential claim to the Earldom of Slytherin refused in favour of Potter's untraditional way of producing children with a fellow wizard most wizards regarded as a squib. That the son of a half-blood and a magic-bound muggleborn was chosen as heir to one of the most famous pureblood lines in history over the pure-blooded Scorpius Malfoy might be enough to motivate the purebloods to attempt another revolt to re-establish the legal privileges purebloods had lost in the rebuilding after the last war.

A/N: Thank you to all those who reviewed, followed or favourited this story for your support.

A/N2: My computer is un-resurrectably dead and unfortunately it is the hard drive so I've lost everything not backed up. I haven't abandoned my other stories but it's going to take a while to get them back on track and I don't have a lot of computer or internet access at the moment. Thank you for your patience.