For the last twenty minutes, Albus had been sat in front of yet another Squib, this one in a blue shirt and tie. He had been wired up to a bunch of machines which looked like a mix between a polygraph and an intensive care monitoring station.

The Squib, who had identified himself as Dave McKenna had been asking random questions and giving him still photos to look at. None of the photos were of anything relevant. It was a simple memory exercise.

They knew about his Mind Vault and now they were testing him to see if it was everything they'd heard. Albus suspected that the whole thing was doubling as a psychiatric evaluation as well.

"You gonna start showing me Rorschachs next?"

"Not exactly," McKenna handed him a picture that was just box of random numbers.

Albus glanced at it. They wanted to see if he could code break.

"This is a waste of time!" Albus growled.

"Bloggs wants to know what you can do," McKenna shrugged. "Besides, we're still checking the phone she gave you to make sure that it isn't being tracked."

"It's not."

"How do you know?"

"Because she would consider that cheating. And she doesn't like cheaters. It's no fun if I don't at least have a chance to surprise her," he explained.

"You'll forgive us for being cautious."

Albus sighed and turned back to the numbers. "Twelve, seventy-eight. What is that, a debit card number?"

McKenna looked mildly impressed.

"No. That's the pin code to the phone of the chancellor of the exchequer. He keeps trying to cut our budget so we like to send him annoying memes and change his ringtones sometimes," he said casually.

The door opened and Bloggs was stood there. He nodded for Albus to follow him. Apparently, he had passed whatever test this was.

He handed him back the phone.

"You're right, it's clean."

"She had other ways of spying, she doesn't need to track my phone."

"You're more right that you know," Bloggs said.

Heled him down a corridor to another room. This one was as plain and blank as the other except for the back wall which had been turned into a montage of evidence, no unlike the ones he'd seen in the Auror office. Except this one was dedicated to Nemesis.

They had been very hard at work.

"She has been a busy little bee and the fact that she's pulling this off right under the noses of magical governments around the world is very impressive," Bloggs said.

"Pulling off what?"

Bloggs walked over to the evidence wall. "The ministry has found her four times in the last seven months. We've found her nine times. The most recent one that they missed is here," he pointed to a picture of a luxurious hotel. Alex/Nemesis was there, looking incredible in a bikini but she wasn't alone. An older man was walking alongside her. "The Seychelles, we got this of a taxi dash cam."

"Wait, I know that guy!"

"You should. Brian Tunney, head of the department of magical transportation and for the last few years, he's been using illegal port-keys to pop in and out of the country so that he could keep his affair a secret. He and his mistress dash off to a country with little or no magical presence for a few hours and shoot back. Oh, this is his mistress by the way," he plucked a picture of a woman's body, face down on a crushed car. It was a gruesome sight.

"Strange that he doesn't seem the slightest bit concerned that his secret lover just took a swan dive of his balcony, two minutes before he walked out the front with Nemesis," Bloggs said.

"She's controlling him somehow," Albus nodded.

"Yeah, but look at him. No dreamy expression, no loss of motor functions, that's not the imperius curse at work, that's something else."

"She can do things that the wizarding world has never seen before, I bet this is one of them," Albus said.

"I agree. Mr. Tunney showed up to work the next day as if nothing had happened and he hasn't shown any signs of unusual behaviour since."

"A sleeper agent," Albus gasped.

"Looks like. From there, connecting the dots becomes easy. We back-traced her movements over the last seven months and found a pattern emerging that is more than just a little alarming. Her little visit to the Grand Canyon just so happens to coincide with Mr. Frank Dallas' birthday party that was happening in Flagstaff. Mr. Frank Dallas, by the way, is the vice-president of MACUSA. It was a private affair, not something that was covered by the prophet, but he had guests from Ilvermorny, the Salem Witches Institute, other governments and so on."

He knew it was going to be bad, but he hadn't imagined this. Albus couldn't speak. It was taking everything he had just to wrap his mind around how expansive her plans were becoming.

"France, Japan, Germany, Ireland, Africa, every single place she has been, her visits have put her within five miles of a high-ranking member of a magical institution. And those are just the ones we know about. In other words, in the last seven months, she has managed to create a global network of sleeper agents and infiltrated every level of magical society there is and she is clearly just getting started," Bloggs said gravely.

"My God…" Albus breathed.

"There are two possible bits of good news to come out of all this. One; she doesn't know about us. If she did, I imagine she would have killed us all by now and two; you."

Albus looked at him slightly confused.

"The phone, the train, all her little taunts. She's clearly worried that you are going to figure out what she's up to so she's using this little game of yours to keep you occupied and distracted."

"Yeah, I suspected as much, but that doesn't mean I can ignore it. Peoples will die if I do," Albus admitted.

"Albus, I think we've reached the point where casualties are inevitable. She's already too dug in for us to stop her, now it's about damage control."

"I know how to stop her! Pull her out of Alex and she goes back to the veil!"

"Except, you don't know how to do that!"

"I will if I can figure out who she really is!"

"Which means you have to play her little game, I know," Bloggs said reluctantly.

Albus started pacing. He rubbed his hands over his face and took another look at the evidence board.

"I'm guessing that your watching the sleepers we know about?"

"Twenty-four, seven."

"Why now?" he asked scanning the evidence. "Seven months under the radar and suddenly she shows back up now with a bang…I think you're right. I think it is a distraction but it's also something else. Nemesis is the queen of multi-tasking, everything she does has more than one purpose…What if she had to show back up now?"

"I don't follow," Blogged said.

"What if, after seven months, she's reached a point where her plans can no longer be carried out with subtlety. What if there is something she needs and she can get it with stealth? She turns to misdirection instead! Make a big noise over here so no one notices the smaller noise over there…but she can't just do it at once…one random horrible event would be scrutinized, but if it's just the next event in a series of them…"

"People come to expect it. The shock value wares off. But it's not about big and bold, it's about you. She wants all eyes on you when she throws her little tests at you to see if you can pass them. Everyone in the ministry was glued to what was happening with the train," Bloggs said.

"How do you know that?"

Bloggs gave him a mischievous little smile. "This wouldn't be much of a clandestine organization if I didn't have people in the right places, would it?"

"You have an informant inside the ministry," Albus realized.

"Whom shall remain anonymous for obvious reasons."

"What if Nemesis gets to your informant?"

"She won't. I've taken precautions," he said ominously. Albus suspected that he wouldn't like those precautions one bit but decided not to press the matter. Bloggs seemed very protective over his sources so he definitely wasn't going to share them with him.

He was right about what she was doing. Nemesis would make sure everyone was watching him when she called to give him his next challenge. How could they not? He was Harry Potters son after all and they all still gazed adoringly at him from time to time. So, watching his wayward son bolt out of the ministry and –

"The veil!" he suddenly blurted. "She's gonna take the veil!"

"What?!"

"Think about it! First thing she does is pull me and everyone else away from the ministry with the train! That wasn't a coincidence, that was a test! She wanted to see how many people stayed behind at the ministry! I'm guessing Tunney didn't leave?" he said, pulse racing at the revelation.

"Didn't move a muscle," Bloggs sighed.

"Bit odd considering he's the head of magical transportation and I just derailed a magical train!" Albus growled. "He was watching, measuring how vulnerable the ministry was after they all left to help the kids. The veil is the doorway to her prison…there's no way she was ever going to let us keep it. We don't know how to use it but that doesn't mean we won't figure it out. So…seven months of staying away, building her network and acting like she has no interest in it whatsoever…after the mayhem at the ministry my dad had a whole team of Aurors guarding the death chamber, how many is it now?"

"Two…and they don't guard it anymore, they patrol the lower levels."

"Of course," Albus groaned.

"But, why take it? Why not destroy it?"

"I don't think she can. If she could, I think she would have done it the second she possessed Alex. And besides, whether she loves it or hates it, that thing has a very meaningful significance to her. I think she needs it. It represents everything that set her down this path. It's a reminder of the betrayal she suffered. Most people would want to be away from something like that but not her…"

"I had a mate like that once. Back in my military days, his brother was killed by the Taliban. Took a bullet right to his left eye. My mate then went through all kinds of legal procedures to get that bullet once it was removed from his skull. He kept it, wore it around his neck all the time, he still does as far as I know," Bloggs said. "Strange the things we become attached to sometimes."

"She's most definitely attached to the veil, in more ways than one. And the second she makes her move to take it or whatever else she's planning, that's when I'll make mine. Until then, I've got to play her game. Get the clues, find out who she is," Albus stated. "I've got to get back to the ministry, put a few of my own precautions into place."

"My boys will see you back there. We're wired into that phone now so the next time she calls you, we'll be listening. Other than that, we have to be very careful on how we communicate," he handed Albus a small card with a number written on it. "That's the number of a laundromat in Croydon. Ring it, ask for Mr. Swan."

"Understood."

"Good luck," he held out his hand for Albus to shake which he did.

The man that had been pretending to be the cab driver came and escorted him out just as Eve entered the room. She closed the door after Albus left, walked over to Bloggs and handed him a file.

"You didn't tell him who she really is?" she asked.

"He needs to figure that out on his own," Bloggs said.

A/N - Really sorry for taking so long to update. My course requires a lot of work and then there was the usual Xmas/New Years stuff as well. I'll try and update soon.