This starts a plot thread that doesn't come entirely clear or entirely conclude until the sixth story.

Interlude: The Liberator's First Letter

June 25th, 1996

Dear Minister Scrimgeour:

I hope you will excuse me writing to you like this, under a false name—almost a title, in fact—and without offering a way for you to owl me back. However, I fear for my life if my family finds out I'm writing you. My fear is no longer enough to hold me silent, but I cannot risk your owl.

My family has strong connections to the Order of the Phoenix, which I understand you're still trying to track down. I know only a few names myself, but I can suggest you look at:

-Auror Hector Dalyrimple.

-Madam Malkin, who runs the robe shop of the same name in Diagon Alley.

-The reporter Gina de Rousseau, at the Daily Prophet.

Not all are deep in Order politics. Madam Malkin, I think, only permits her shop to be used as a gathering place for Order contacts. But all are bound in some way to the evolving web that once used Albus Dumbledore as its anchor and now uses another—a more formidable enemy, because his reputation is not widely known.

Tell me, Minister, have you ever heard of Falco Parkinson?

But you cannot owl me, and I cannot ask you to trust me at all until you have learned whether this information is good. Therefore, I will close this letter for now.

Please do not make an attempt to find out who I am. My father wants little to do with the wizarding world, and my mother, though she is more tolerant than my father, lets him have control over my life. I have reached the age of twenty without ever having left the house more than about once a month.

It is not only my own freedom I am fighting for, Minister, but that is a part of it.

The Liberator.