Snape sent the children to bed later that night, and conjured a bottle of Firewhiskey. "So, let me make sure I've got this straight; Cyrus was protecting a diplomat that had information about the largest crime syndicate in the world," Snape said, and Amelia nodded, "So they kidnapped him" another nod, "And now they'll try and kill the diplomat before he can give you the information." He finished. Amelia sighed, "That's about right. I'm going to have to go back to the ministry to completely replace the itinerary. I doubt that Cyrus would give up anything, but we still can't take that risk." Snape downed a shot of firewhiskey, "What are the chances that Cyrus is still alive?" Snape asked, passing one to Amelia, who likewise drank hers'. "I don't know, Inferno doesn't have a reputation for leaving people alive, but a diplomat is a powerful bargaining tool." Standing, she handed the glass to Snape and turned to leave. "Look after the kids. Don't let them out of the wards without an escort. Especially Daphne and Astoria. Those two are Cyrus' only weakness. " Snape rose, nodded, and saw her out the back door, until she disapprated.
Upstairs, after putting Tori in bed, the older kids stayed up in Harry's room, talking about what Amelia had said. Daphne looked at her two best friends and asked the question that she needed to know the answer to, "Do you think my dad is still alive?" Susan couldn't face her friend. She just didn't want to have to answer. Harry nodded, "I'm sure he is. He too valuable. I'm sure that Amelia will have everybody she can out looking for him. He'll be back before school starts, you'll see." Daphne smiled at her friends attempt to make her feel better. "Yeah. Let's get to sleep. It wouldn't help any of us to be tried for the training from hell we're going to get tomorrow." They nodded and the girls gave harry a hug before leaving the room.
"Madam Longbottom, it is wonderful to see you." Dumbledore says, bowing slightly to the Longbottom matriarch. "Is it true? Have you found a way to help frank and Alice?" she asks, walking into the private parlor. Albus nods, pulling out a chair, "I was going over a few of my old studies on dragon's blood and found a remarkably quality. It acts as something of a backup. The magic keeps a record of the mind and it could be passed between dragons. This allows tribes to become stronger over time. Each leader would inherit all of the knowledge from the previous. If I can apply the same principle to human blood, we might be able to use that as a focus to restore their minds."
She nods, "Absolutely brilliant, how soon would you be able to try?" "As early as tomorrow, most likely. Who was their healer before they were attacked? I need to find out if there are any old blood samples. It would be significantly easier than trying to adjust current ones." Albus responds, try to put off the subject as long as possible. "Here-"she says reaching into her large red handbag, and pulling out a card, "This is their healer, been mine for the better part of fifty years." Albus takes the card and smiles, "Wonderful, I'll schedule a meeting and see what I can do. There was one other thing that I needed to discuss with you."
Her eyes narrowed. 'She suspects me? I'm rather surprised. She has been among my closed supporter for years' Albus thought to himself, pouring himself a drink. "It has come to my attention that your grandson, Neville, is not held in high esteem by the other students. The ladies in particular seem to dislike him. As I'm sure you are aware, the head of the Longbottom family must be engaged by his seventeenth birthday. While his father seemed to find Alice almost instantly, I doubt that he would be able to find someone within that time frame. If he is unable to find someone, than the family would pass to Theodore Nott, his distant cousin and son of a known Death Eater. I wish to avoid this, as I'm sure you do." She nods, clear not liking where the conversation is leading. "I found a lovely young woman, from a wonderful family. Her mother, being of an older generation, is willing to sign a marriage contract with your grandson. I believe that it is in everyone's best interest for the contract to be signed. Neville needs a young woman to help and encourage his growth. Remember the change that came over Frank after he met Alice? I'm certain that she can help Neville become the man that he is destined to be." Madam Longbottom stood up, "I'm afraid that I must disagree with you. Neville is a fine boy, and in time, I'm sure that he will find someone he is willing to share his life with. I will not take that choice away from him." She says as she turns to leave. Albus rise and sighs. "So be it. Imperio!"
Cyrus woke, feeling uncomfortable on the wooden floors. Wooden floors… He bolts up and looked around. This wasn't anything like the room he'd been in until now. It was a small wooden room, with one window, on the next floor up. The walls were cover in claw marks, as if some beast had been confined here. Underneath him, he found a trapdoor. He tried with all his might, but it wouldn't move. Cursing, he climbed and looked out the window. He was on an island, in the middle of a lake. In the distance, he could see a small town. Something about it seemed familiar, he couldn't place from where. He climbed out the window, only to be forced back in by the wards outside. His shoulder hits the wall with a sickening crack, and he screams in pain.
"You shouldn't bother. You can't possibly escape same as always." Said an all-to-familiar voice. "You…" Cyrus managed to say through the pain. "Glad to see that you remember me. After what I put you through yesterday, I was worried that you might have memory loss. Actually, I'm surprised you can still move." Cyrus stood up, slowly trying to keep his distance. "You can scream if you want to. No one will be able to hear you. Well, that's not completely true…." She said as she pulled out a gun from the holster on her back and fired, piercing him in his broken shoulder. He screamed. He screamed more than ever before. This kind of pain was unknown to him, even after years of combating the dark forces and even after enduring the curciatus curse for what seemed like days on end. He prayed that his scream would reach the town, prayed that someone would find him. Looking up, he saw someone had stepped through the trapdoor.
"Allow me to introduce my associate, who will be in charge of taking care of you during your stay." The man stepped out of the shadows. He was tall with a large build, his face concealed by a muggle Carnival mask. "This is your old friend and new enemy, Zane. Zane, why don't you take off your mask and introduce yourself. The man obliges and removes his mask. Cyrus gasps when he realizes who it is.
Reiji boards the smuggler's plane and nurses his wounds. Even for them, taking on a hundred, heavily armed men was pushing their luck. By some miracle, they were able to steal one of their cars and evade pursuit. When they'd finally gotten to the smuggler's airfield, they'd had less than a minute to board the plane before it took off. Eren had taken a bullet to the left leg and right arm. He'd taken one to the stomach and one grazing wound to the side of the head. "We'll have to keep a low profile once we reach London. Once our wounds have healed, we can start-"Eren cut him off by shaking her head, "I agree that we can't afford to take any chance, but that doesn't mean that we have to do nothing. My leg will slow us down, but you should be able to do some general recon without attracting suspicion." Reiji nods, "I can't leave you alone." Again she shakes her head, "You don't have to worry. Inferno doesn't control England like they do LA. They only person they have that can fight against us is Cal, and given our current condition, I doubt we'd be able to win even with both of us." Reiji sighs "Why don't we try and find a hospital. We'd enter under an alias, and we'd us polyjuice potion the entire time we're there. It'll help us to heal, and get us a TV to get what info we can." Eren looks out the window, deep in thought until, "Alright, if we're going to a hospital, make sure that it's a magic hospital. We can't afford to spend too much time in one place." Reiji nods "Got it."
Harry stretched and got out of bed. He opens his door and finds tori standing in front, fist raised, as if about to knock, "Good morning tori." Harry says, smirking. Tori blushes slightly, "Good morning harry. Breakfast is almost ready." Harry nods, "You should have woken me up. I'd have helped." Tori shakes her head, "No, that jobs is mine and mum's, go get your own." She says, putting her fists up like she was expecting a fight. Harry just laughs, "Alright you can have it. Unless I wake up early, then it's mine." Harry jokes and tori starts laughing along with him.
"You won't be waking up early anytime soon." Harry turned and saw Amelia walking towards them, looking tired, "After all, I get to train you later today and believe me, that is going to be fun." She says with a smile. Harry shivers, "Why don't I like the sound of that?" "Probably because aurors don't have fun the same ways as humans." Daphne says as she walks into the group. Amelia looks at her accusingly, "Hey, I'm the director of the DMLE. Auror fun is child's play compared to mine." Daphne laughs, "Sorry harry. Make sure you write your will before you start training. And leave me something nice." She says as she walks down the steps. Tori chuckles, "Don't worry, I overheard Snape planning her lessons earlier. She won't be laughing for long." And she too, walks down stairs, Amelia right behind her, "Better hurry up, Harry, you don't want to die on an empty stomach." From her tone, harry couldn't tell if she was joking or not and quickly followed her down stairs.
Harry walks into the dining room, he found everyone eating and enjoying their breakfast. Susan smiled at harry when he came in. "Good morning harry. Apparently, we'll be training together." Harry looked at her in surprise, and Morgan chuckles, "Amelia asked that I oversee the training. Just in case you need a medic." He turns to Amelia, "What the hell do you have planned?" Everyone laughs, "All in due time. We won't start training until after lunch. I need to get some rest after pulling an all-nighter last night. Susan's going to get the theory portion now, and practical later. Daphne gets to spend an entire day with Snape." Tori chuckles, "I don't know who has it worse: Daphne or Harry?" Everyone except the two in question laugh.
After everyone has finished eating, Amelia stands up, "I'm going to take a nap for about four hours. Get some rest and have fun. At noon, we start training. Harry nods and Snape stands next, "Daphne, we're going. Morgan, we won't be back for lunch." Daphne nods, and nervously gets out of her chair. "Wish me luck." She says to harry. Harry nods, "Good luck, Daphne. Do your best." The two of them leave the room. Morgan grabs Susan by the arm, "Come on, no time like the present." Susan smirks, "Harry needs to do something. It's not fair that me and Daph have work and he doesn't." Morgan nods and turns to him, "She does raise a valid point…." Harry backs away slowly, "You don't have to worry about dying during your training. I do." Morgan laughs, "I don't think you have to worry… too much." Somehow, that scared him more than anything else. Tori to the rescue, "Come on, harry. You promised to teach me how to ride the nimbus. 'Yet another reason I like quidditch' harry thought with a smirk, "Good idea, tori. Let's go."
The spent most of the morning ride on the pitch. Tori was steadily improving, but she still wasn't up to Harry's level. "How did you get to be so good? I've been riding since I was little, and I'm not nearly that good." Harry laughs, "When you play quidditch for Marcus flint's team, you get better fast. I'm sure you'll make it on the team fine." Tori nods, and follows him back into the house. Morgan is in the kitchen making lunch and Susan is at the table, looking over notes and answering questions. Neither of them seemed to notice when they walked in the room. "What should be your focus when you heal a minor wound with 'episkey'?" Morgan asked as she stirred the sauce. Susan recited from memory, "recall the original shape of the affected area and visualize it returning to normal." Morgan nodded, "Good. If harry breaks any bones, I'll let you heal them." Harry cleared his throat, "Thanks for the vote of confidence." Susan looked surprised, "When did you get here?" Tori interjected, "About five minutes ago." Morgan ushers them in and they take their seats. She passes out meatball sandwiches and butterbeers. As they enjoy their lunch, Amelia walks in and grabs a sandwich. Yawning, she takes a bite. "Great stuff, Morgan. I'll never understand why you can make my recipe better than I can." She takes another bite and sinks into a chair. Morgan tosses her a butterbeer, which she catches easily, and gulps half of it down at once. "Just about ready for your training?" she asks. Harry can only nod and hope for the best. "Then let's get started." Everyone got up and walked out to the back yard.
Amelia stops and turns to harry, "This isn't going to be like your training before. First of all," she tosses two cards to each of them, "Keep those. Those authorize that you can use magic outside of school. While it might not matter all that much, given where we are, I'm going to be have a lot of guest teacher come in to help you. And if you didn't have that card, they could arrest you, so better to be safe than sorry." Harry nods and places the card in his pocket. "Anyway, since I can't always be here, they'll be in charge of most of your training. I've got work today, so now we're just waiting on your first teacher." "That would be me, I take it?" said a new voice coming from the side of the house. An old man, scarred, missing a leg, and with a strange electric blue eye whirling around in his left eye socket.
Amelia nodded, "That would be you, Alastor. Thank you for doing this for me." He nods, "If it'll help to make the potter boy stronger, or find Cyrus, I've got no complaints." Amelia nods back, "Harry, this is Alastor moody. He is quite likely the most successful auror in the history of the department." He shakes his head, "Don't know how successful I was. When I retired, they still outnumbered us twenty to one." Morgan smiles, "and when you started it was thirty to one." Moody turned to him, "Potter, I am not going to sugarcoat it. We'll be dueling. The most complex spell won't be worth shit if they can't hit. Since we're dueling, you are going to get hurt. I'll be using the same curses that they'd be using. If you don't know what you're fighting, you can't win. CONSTANT VIGALANCE!" He barked, leaving harry no time to ask any questions. Amelia smiled, "Then I'll leave him in your capable hands. Just a request, try and lay off the unforgivables." She stepped through the back gate and disapprated.
Moody looked harry in the eye, "If you've got a question, then speak up." Harry nods, "What are the unforgivable?" Moody nods, "Three of the nastiest curses they've got. Amelia gave me permission to test you with one of them. I guess a demonstration wouldn't hurt." He waves his wand and a rabbit comes flying out of the bushes. "Imperio!" moody yells, point the wand at the rabbit. The rabbit, which had been struggling against Moody's magic, suddenly stopped moving. "The imperious curse. Total control." He puts the rabbit down. "I can make it do whatever I want." To prove the point, the rabbit starts tap dancing around the yard. "That's the curse you'll be under later. You've got to learn to fight it. If you've got a strong will, you have nothing to fear from the imperious curse. The other two, though, are completely different." He turns his attention to Susan, "You might not want to watch this. It isn't pretty." Susan shakes her head and keeps watching.
Moody points his wand at the rabbit again, "Crucio!" At once the rabbit started squealing twitching on the ground. Just watching made harry sick to his stomach. Seeing this, Moody lets up. "The curciatus curse. Torture, plain and simple. Every nerve in your body feels like it's on fire. Some claim it doesn't leave any permanent damage. I say just take a look and the Longbottoms." He says, looking at the rabbit in pity. "Longbottom? As in Neville?" Susan asks. Morgan looks at her, then at moody, "We have to tell them. Better from us than some article somewhere else." Moody nods, "Frank and Alice Longbottom were among the best aurors. Faced Voldemort-"the girls winced slightly, "three time and lived to tell the tale. They survived to the end of the war, which is more than can be said about a lot of people. Unfortunately, bad luck caught up to them. Frank had been assigned to track down Voldemort after the war. Half a dozen Death Eaters tracked down the pair of them, and tortured them with the curciatus curse. They didn't let up, and eventually, they completely destroyed their minds. Better to be dead than alive like that. Used to tell the boys when I was in the Aurors, "If that happens to me, chuck me in front of a train." Wasn't the only one either. "What happened to them?" Harry asked, almost afraid of the answer. "Still alive. At St Mungo's. Every now and then some wannabe healer thinks up some harebrained theory to help them, but nothings worked."
Morgan looks at the two of them, "Don't confront Neville about this. Let him tell you on his own in time." Harry and Susan nod, completely understanding why he wouldn't tell them about it. Moody sighs, "One more to go, and this one's the worst of the all." Harry secretly thought that it couldn't get much worse, "AVADA KEDAVRA!" A sickeningly familiar flash of green light roared through the air and it struck the rabbit. The rabbit stopped moving. Harry walked over to it and saw that it wasn't breathing, "It's dead." Moody nods, "The killing curse. Worst of them all. Only one person survived, and he's staring at a dead rabbit." Harry nods and turns back to moody, "Let's get started, before I lose my nerve." Moody smiled, "That's the spirit. We duel until Snape get back."
Harry was starting to get a handle of how he needed to duel. After he'd lost ten in a row, we started seeing patterns in Moody's fighting style; slowly he began to push back. Moody answered by completely changing up the game and forcing harry on the defensive. Harry was crouching behind the fountain when he heard moody yell, "Imperio!" Before he could react, he suddenly felt calm. Moody's voice echo in his mind, "Stand up" it said. And gradually, harry started standing up. Harry tries his hardest to resist, but it's no use. For every inch he manages to gain, he losses two more. Finally, he stands fully up and is blasted by a ball of purple light. The bone breaker hex does its job, as harry hears the sickening crack of his wrist. Susan runs over, wand drawn and says, "Episky!" the wound snaps to the side, and harry gasps in pain, until a soothing heat comes over it, gradually removing any trace of the pain. When the warmth subsides, harry moves his wrist gingerly, and finds that it is fully healed, "Thanks Susan." He stands and turns back to moody. Moody lowers his wand as three owls fly into the yard. Each stop on the patio table and lifts their legs, showing three identical letters with the Gringotts seal. "We'll take a break, Potter. If the goblins are sending you mail, it's usually not good news." Harry nods and takes the letter. He opens it and reads:
Heir Harry James Potter,
At two o'clock, in two days' time, we will be holding the will reading for the Late Lord and Lady Potter. As primary Benefactor, you are asked to arrive two hours early to insure that everything is in order. We at Gringotts, offer our heartfelt condolences for the loss you have suffered.
Yours in grief,
Gornuk
Potter Account Manager
"The will reading is in two days." Harry says. Morgan nods, "You have to arrive early?" she asks, and Harry nods, "Alright, Alastor, I'm sorry but training is called off." Moody nods, "Figured as much." Harry went into the house, and came out with a quill, a piece of parchment and Hedwig. "Let's see if we can't even the score."
