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The Treasure Hunter.

Escorted by the Aurors, including members he was positive were part of Dumbledore's Order of the Phoenix, all the way to a room off to the side in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement where the walls were plastered with reports and what looked like crime scene photographs, Harry took his first look at the DMLE's case room. Ignoring the guards who'd been flanking him (Harry wasn't surprised by the way they had flanked him; while the news he was innocent of what he was being accused of had spread, for which he was grateful, he knew he was still a person of interest), Harry moved from wall to wall, studying the reports and the photographs.

They were sombre and grim. In one of the photographs, a group of magical investigation officers were deftly studying the area, casting magic with their wands that the photograph had captured while on the ground white shrouds had been thrown over the bodies of the numerous victims so nobody could see their faces. Harry knew magical cameras, primitive and old fashioned though they might appear, were actually a bit cleverer and more versatile than they appeared; the flashbulbs worked in much the same way as a pensieve and they captured the memory of the event forever, although it wasn't as good as the actual pensieve since it didn't showcase the entire memory.

But the cameras had certainly captured the scene and the aftermath. But there were other photographs that Harry knew had been siphoned from the memory of the various survivors of the attacks.

In one photograph, what had been a mundane shopping trip to Diagon Alley had turned into a blood bath. There was enough of the photograph to tell him the survivor was actually a child because of how tall and towering the adults in the frame of the picture were. As Harry watched the scene unfold in the photograph, he saw the memory play out.

It started with an explosion that destroyed several shops. The child whose memory supplied the photograph was shielded just in time thanks to some quick thinking on the part of one of the parents. When the child was able to see what was going on, that was when the imposter made themselves known. Harry frowned when he saw the imposter; dressed from head to toe in flowing wizard robes of a dark colour that was either black or a really dark blue. The moment he appeared he cast a spell chain of incredibly destructive but rather simple spells. Harry watched as the spell chain tore through the panic-stricken crowd, and he could see the silent screams of people in the alley as someone they had once placed as a hero on a pedestal attack them.

The imposter showed no mercy. They used an ensemble of spells that he could identify as dark spells before the flash of light signified the killing curse. Several people had died by the time the parents of the child got their family undercover, but the child was totally incapable of looking away. They had seen everything. Harry frowned when he saw the Aurors arrive on the scene and he shook his head.

The DMLE were truly sloppy. He knew similar departments found in other countries had a far quicker response time than the Aurors here. The moment they appeared, the imposter didn't retreat. They fought back hard.

Harry had hoped with the downfall of Fudge and Snape losing his magic after having signed everything away just so he could follow Voldemort's the Aurors would be better. To a degree they were, but not by much. It was ironic, really; the Aurors of the last twenty years had been ill-equipped to fight off an army like the Death Eaters, but while they hadn't improved too badly, they were still being outmatched by just one powerful man. Harry studied the imposter closely.

Whoever they were, they were truly going out of their way to appear as a wizard with the robes being the biggest symbol of their magical heritage, in total contrast to Harry, who preferred muggle clothes. The design of the robes themselves was simple and far from ornate. But dozens of wizards adopted that kind of style. The biggest sign the imposter had that showed they had no imagination was the glasses that looked not too different from the ones Harry had worn at Hogwarts. He had corrected his sight as quickly as he could despite the means he'd had to help him deal with his poor eyesight. He had long hated being dependent on the glasses to compensate for his poor vision and he had made it a priority to get it seen as quickly as he could when he had the chance.

But he didn't blame the imposter for making such a mistake. Many people learnt to cope with poor eyesight and adapted to their glasses, but for his choice of career, he needed to make a change. Harry studied the imposter in the photograph closely, but there was nothing in the memory to give him even a hint of a clue about who it was. Aside from the robes which meant whoever it was had to be someone who lived in the magical world since they would be disgusted by his preference for casual muggle clothes, the glasses, the imposter looked like a classic Harry Potter who was only a few years out of Hogwarts.

The imposter was very good at fighting back. Within moments of appearing in the alley, the Aurors found themselves fighting for their lives. The imposter was able to throw destructive spells and killing curses like nothing. The imposter had killed at least 7 of the Aurors before they realised they would be having a fight on their hands. The imposter finished up by sweeping his wand around him, creating a cloud of fire that was almost alive before it exploded outwards. Harry narrowed his eyes again, seeing enough evidence thanks to the child's memories and going through his own knowledge of fire spells that could do much the same thing to identify a Fire Vortex spell. Similar to Fiendfyre, but less dangerous. Controlled by people who were good with the mind-arts and could be formed and shaped by the caster to do almost anything, and extremely difficult to learn.

Harry wondered if many in the DMLE or the rest of the Ministry had seen what he just had, the Fire Vortex spell was a major clue about the wizard behind the disguise. Whoever they were, they were extremely powerful and trained in the mind arts, especially when the Fire Vortex spread by itself and tore through the alley like the full force of dragon fire.

Harry didn't bother staying to see the next memory photographs. He just studied them briefly but they more or less showed the same pattern he had seen in the Diagon Alley memory photograph; he saw the imposter attacking St Mungo's hospital, destroying the entrance and the waiting hall within moments of appearing before he stormed the rest of the hospital, killing everyone left right and centre without a qualm, destroying whole sections of the hospital with powerful spells that either burned or collapsed the hospital.

There were a few scenes taken from places in Europe and America where the imposter had attacked but after a moment of looking over them curiously to see if there was anything different about them, only to discover they weren't any different from what he had just seen originally.

It was just the imposter, appearing time and time again, killing, killing, and killing. All of the pictures and the memory photographs just showed the same things over and over again. The imposter would just appear, out of nowhere, completely alone, and attack. There was no mention of any dark side uprising, no sign of a group of dark-aligned killers or mercenaries working with the imposter or being some new sick incarnation of the Death Eaters.

If the imposter was some up and coming Dark Lord, he was taking his own sweet time even trying to look into achieving whatever kind of political agenda he had in mind. But Harry was starting to wonder if the imposter even had one in mind. Not every dark wizard was interested in forcing themselves into politics. Some dark wizards just liked doing much like the one in the memories did, appear and kill, or plan or plot some kind of vicious little scheme that made sense only to them.

But all the imposter was doing was killing everyone and he was using Harry's face and the reputation he had gained over the years to further his own agenda.

"Very thorough, this imposter," he commented, looking at Amelia Bones with a dark expression the older witch did not like. "Any idea why he's doing all of this?"

"Sadly no, I did ask myself why you would do something like this when the first attack came in," Bones replied.

Harry nodded without the comment that was on the tip of his tongue, that Bones had believed everything was his own actions rather than look for the real explanation coming out. With how precarious things were, he didn't want to provoke anyone. "There is no sign in any of these photos of him using followers, he's working alone, but has anyone heard anything for definite? Er, rumours, stories, stuff like that?"

"No," Bones sighed before she walked over to where he was standing. "And truthfully I'm happy about that. But it makes him more dangerous at the same time. He seems to be striking out at random, expect the places he's attacking are important places - shopping centres, hospitals, that type of thing. He attacked the French and German Ministries, though."

"How did he manage that? Those places are impossible to break into." Harry frowned. Another clue. He knew the French and the German Ministries, unlike the one in dear old Blighty, had learnt from their mistakes during the Grindelwald wars and they had made their Ministries as Dark Wizard proof as physically possible. During the war with Grindelwald, who had been a much better Dark Lord, many Ministries were invaded, and some were destroyed.

The people in other countries did not want anything like that ever happening again. All of the Ministries in Europe had learnt to take precautions in case of an attack. When he had visited the German Ministry, Harry had needed to submit himself to an examination before finding himself surrounded by a number of German Aurors. Harry hadn't even known they would be there, but the Floo Network in Germany, and he quickly learnt, in many other magical countries in Europe was carefully and closely monitored, and people going to the Ministries were sent straight to a holding area to be checked out, and the Aurors were smart and powerful enough not to be complacent. Not like it was here.

Harry had also heard the wards and the defences in the Ministries of other countries were not interested in repeating their mistakes of the past, and they had gone out of their way to ensure House-elves and phoenixes could not just take you into them. The Ministries in other countries were worried about another war happening.

If Voldemort had decided to try his luck in attacking the Ministry in Germany, Spain, or even Egypt, he would need to rely on his Horcruxes to keep himself from being blown to bits. Harry didn't know the full extent of the defences on those ministries, and he did not want to know, but they were not places he would want to get into.

"I have no idea," Bones replied with a sigh, clearly at a loss to understand it herself before she gave him a speculative look, "How do you know the ministries in France and Germany are impossible to break into?"

"Because I visited the German ministry a few years back. I was tending to some business there, and I saw some of their security precautions. One of the issues is that it's hard to get into the Ministry; you need to visit a specific place the Ministry has control over and is linked to a private and unconnected Floo portal. Once there you have to submit yourself to a check-up, and for visitors, there's even a veritaserum questioning room. The report is sent ahead, along with the magical signatures of the wizard or the witch, and then you can go. Have you ever been inside the German Ministry?'

"No," Amelia was surprised by the question.

"The Floo portals in the British Ministry's atrium allow free and public use. That does not exist in Germany. Anyone and everyone going into the Ministry needs to be checked out in a special holding area; anyone hostile is immediately arrested, and you have to be questioned again to be sure of the visiting intentions," Harry said.

Bones looked surprised and even intrigued by some of the security precautions he was describing, but something told Harry she had been trying to find ways of implementing security safeguards like the ones he had described for years with no luck. Harry wasn't surprised. The British wizards liked to think of themselves as superior to all. The idea of anyone else being better was anathema to them. At the same time, their beliefs in their blood purity were laughable. Power didn't come from the blood, but that meant nothing to the British.

As far as a British wizard was concerned, they were better than anyone else, and in their minds, nobody could break into their precious Ministry because of their precious beliefs. It was little wonder Bones was frustrated. That was when the idea struck him.

"Y'know, I've just found another clue to this wizard who's disguising themselves as me, Madam Bones," Harry said quickly, not wanting to even think about the insane beliefs of his own home country.

"Another clue?" Bones looked at him intrigued while a witch with jaw-length blonde hair folded her arms, her hair colour flickering from blond to purple, then to bubble-gum pink.

"Yes," Harry nodded, "First, this wizard doesn't bother to think that one of the first things I would do would be to see to my poor eyesight. It might sound irrelevant, but to me, it's a detail that shows this person doesn't think about what I would do when I got older. Second, they launch attacks on places like Diagon Alley and other shopping districts, but anyone could do that. But they have a way of bypassing the wards of magical hospitals. Those places are heavily warded. Getting into them to cause damage is not impossible, but difficult but this man got in without breaking a sweat. Third, the imposter doesn't have official followers, but he must have had help to break into the ministries in other parts of Europe."

Bones looked intrigued, and Harry noticed she was not the only one. "What do you mean, Mr Potter?" She asked while the other Aurors stared between the pair of them with interest.

Harry looked around the room before turning back to Bones. "I don't think the imposter used their own skills or their own power to break into the European Ministries. I think he had help."

"But he works alone!" The now pink-haired Auror protested.

"I know. That's what I've seen from the photographs. But there is no way he could have broken into those ministries without help. Perhaps one of them arranged for a specific dispensation to let him come in and the imposter did so and the person working with him was killed or had their memory modified so they didn't arouse suspicion," Harry folded his arms as he went through his own theory, knowing it worked.

The problem with magic was there were so many ways you could steal information, start a conspiracy without the victims even knowing; you just simply looked into their minds, reworked them a little so they would do what you wanted them to do while the unfortunates were not even aware of what they were doing.

Harry didn't know if the people giving the imposter everything that he needed on a platter even knew or were even aware of what they were doing, but he hoped Bones had the sense to find out. But even if she did, the imposter struck him as the type to cover his tracks. Harry went back to the photographs, examining the scene of each one of them.

He had to admit the imposter was good. While he hated the thought of anyone using his appearance to commit such atrocities, Harry had to admire their form. He took out his wand, thankful that he still had it, and he tapped one of the photographs so he could take a closer look at the wand. The photograph zoomed in on the single part Harry wanted to see.

The wand he was looking at was long and black, not too dissimilar from his regular wand, but there were enough details the rather grainy and hazy image could not disguise. The trouble was it didn't look any different from a number of other wands used by so many witches and wizards today. Harry 'zoomed' out, manipulating the image so it moved to the importers' face.

It was his face, the same face he saw reflected every single time in a mirror. But at the same time, it wasn't. The face he was looking at was cold, composed. There was enough colouring in the image for him to see the face was pale to the point of being bloodless.

A lot like Voldemort's face.

The comparison chilled Harry to the bone. Was the imposter deliberately doing that, or was it an unintentional side effect? There was no sign of the hours Harry had spent out in the tropical sun. There was no sign of the dark tan he had acquired after spending 8 months in the Caribbean last year. His hair was slightly longer than that of the imposter, but this man looked like he had only spent a few years out of Hogwarts before he had decided to commit these crimes. These murders.

Harry looked around the case room, as he began to call it, and he decided the best thing to do now was to wait and see what happened from this point. He only knew this was going to be a boring wait.

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Until the next time...

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