Harry was finishing lunch when a goblin messenger poked his head into the curse-breaker's dining room. "Ten minutes, Mister Potter."

Harry nodded, swallowed the last of his coke and then thanked the server with a sickle tip. Moving after the messenger, Harry followed along to the flue that the goblins were using, got in line and then stepped through to Hogsmeade. Tapping the enchanted glasses that he'd found in the vault, he turned them into sunglasses, unused to the bright sun.

People came out of their houses to chatter as the goblins formed up in front of the Post Office. Harry felt kind of silly as he was called to a place at the head of the column between Badaxe and Stonefist. He couldn't help falling into step when the command to march was given and after a few repetitions, joining the horde's rumbling marching-chant, enjoying the cool morning as they made their way to Hogwarts. Who would guess that marching was fun?

lf

When they arrived at the Hogwarts gate, Hagrid was there with Flitwick.

The horde halted and Badaxe stepped forward. Ignoring Hagrid, he began a rapid-fire exchange with Flitwick in gobbledygook. It soon took on the tone of an argument.

"Hi, Hagrid!" Harry grinned up at his very large friend. "I'm glad that you're back."

Hagrid smiled back. "Aye, me too, 'Arry. I like yer hat. Wot's all this about then?"

Harry shrugged. "The snake in the Chamber of Secrets. I had to kill it to save Ginny. I told Ragnok about it and he bought it, so we're here to get it out. The entrance is in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, so we need in. Where is Dumbledore?" He wanted to get Riddle's diary for Stonefist.

"Out of the country. He got me out of Azkaban then said I'd need to make me own way home as he had business with the ICW. Busy man, our Dumbledore. Great men are always busy-like." Hagrid rubbed his beard. "Ow'd you ever find that chamber?"

"Hermione. The snake killed Myrtle in the second floor bathroom and that's hardly a proper destination for a big snake, so it had to be coming into the castle from there." He grinned "I can talk to snakes and there was a snake etched on one of the taps, so I told it to open and it did."

Hagrid nodded thoughtfully. "I knows sommat 'bout that chamber. I knows that it has to be under Hogwarts, but it ain't right under like, or else ol' Dippet woulda found it hisself. I figure it has to be under lake, starting down below the Slytherin dorms. Them Slytherins always look out fer themselves first and that chamber's a secret because the mad ol' wizard thought the muggleborn would be bringing soldiers 'round for him. Ol' Slytherin now, he were a canny one and would'na made a bolt-hole with no way out fer hisself. Enough soldiers an' even the biggest basilisk gets hacked up after they starts throwing their blankets over."

"Wouldn't like to try that." Harry shuddered at the thought. Hagrid meant well, but like most magicals had no idea of what modern soldiers could do. If they really wanted to kill the wizards and knew where the castle was then Hogwarts would be a smoking crater, basilisk and all.

Hagrid nodded. "There be snakes carved into the cliffs in forest past the west side o' the lake, in a hidden spot I always thought might do fer a backdoor. Belike you could open it, Harry."

Harry saw that Badaxe and Flitwick were looking at them, along with everyone else. "Well, let's go see. I don't want to slide down that slimy pipe again anyway."

lf

Harry hissed out the command to 'open.'

"Never thought to see the day." Hagrid stepped in, pulling a giant-sized electric torch from his pocket and shining the brilliant beam down the dark tunnel. "You should stay back, Harry. This kind 'o work isn't fer students."

"Does that use battery runes?" Harry had a dozen AA batteries with runes courtesy of Tonks, but hadn't thought of a torch and didn't know if the runes worked the same with lantern cells. The 'lumos' spell was useful, but did not cast a beam like a proper torch.

Hagrid smiled. "Never you mind."

Harry shrugged. "What if you need another password?" He wanted to explore.

"We have what we need, Snake's Bane." Stonefist grinned and lifted an amulet. When he stroked it, Harry heard it say 'open' in parseltounge. "You may accompany us or return to the castle as you please."

Hagrid frowned. "Did ye know that the mandrakes were harvested, Arry? Snape's been a-brewin' since last night and Poppy will be wakin' everyone up any time now."

"Hermione!" Harry started to lunge away, but paused to give the correct bow of departure. "Nice to have met you, everyone and farewell. I have to go." The goblins all bowed back politely and Harry was off like the wind.

Stonefist watched him go. "Interesting lad and quite the doughty warrior."

"Aye," laughed Hagrid, "A thumping great wizard, our Harry! Belike to match Dumbledore hisself someday!"

The goblins exchanged quick glances but their thoughts remained unspoken. Stonefist turned to the giant. "Perhaps we should lead?"

Hagrid laughed. "Nah, let me. It's my patch after all an' nothin' much down there could likely do fer me." Kicking his way through, Hagrid entered the tunnel.

"Gouger, go back for extra picks. We'll have to dig him out at least once." Stonefist sighed and then followed.

lf

Harry burst into the infirmary and stumbled to a halt when he saw that the room was empty. Walking over to Hermione's bed, he touched the sheet sensing that it was freshly made. Where would Hermione go after being frozen for a month? The library! Backing and pivoting to run, he collided with someone who had unwisely chosen that moment to come through the infirmary door. Harry tried to lessen the blow, catching the person as she fell and spinning with her to bleed off momentum. "Sorry! Are you alright… Luna Lovegood?"

Luna hung in his arms, staring expressionlessly up at him with her slightly protuberant silvery eyes. She suddenly smiled. "I like your new glasses. They frame your face ever so nicely. You look very distinguished, Harry Potter. "

Harry flushed and set her back on her feet, happy that he'd managed to remember her name. Thinking of the man and woman that he'd seen in Diagon Alley, he realized that he had to return the complement or it would be something like an insult. Thinking quickly, he took a closer look at her earrings. They were tiny golden acorns instead of her usual radishes and they blazed with magic through his glasses. "Thank you. Are those new earrings? They suit you. What do they do?"

Luna touched an earring, looking pleased. "They were my mother's. They help me overhear things that could be of concern to me. How could you tell that they were magical?"

He took off the glasses. "I found lots of things in the family vault. These specs first belonged to my ancestor, Custus Worthington, and were enchanted for him by his daughter, June Potter nee Worthington. Her brother died in the Hanseatic War so they came back into the Potter family when Custus passed. They can look like any kind of glasses and when you look through them you see a sort of glow around anything that's got magic on it. I don't know what the different colors mean yet. Haven't actually puzzled out the manual to be honest." He handed them to Luna, thinking that she would look through them.

Luna simply held them, staring at them for a moment and then handed them back. "My mother was an enchantress. These are very nice. Truly the work of a master." She looked at his face, then reached up to tip the brim of his hat back and beamed. "Whatever did you do with him?"

Bemused, Harry put on his glasses, adjusted his hat and replied with the truth. "I sold him to a mad scientist for a knut."

Luna giggled. "I think that you got the better of the deal."

Harry nodded. "How did you know about the leech?"

Luna looked at him for a moment and then answered. "My bloodline has certain magical gifts, just as Slytherin bound something to his."

Harry paused, considering her words. "You really shouldn't tell anyone, you know. I met the most appalling… sort of portrait of an ancestor that told me why I can talk to snakes. Believe me, it has nothing to do with Slytherin. You don't want to know the lengths that barmy dark wizards will go to take magical gifts."

"We all have ancestors like that and I can see auras. I know that I can trust you, Harry Potter." Luna looked down, flushing a little at her own temerity. "I'm sorry for not saying anything about him before, but I didn't understand until I saw you without him. How many of him are there?"

Harry shrugged. "I don't know. It doesn't really matter. Tom Marvolo Riddle broke his soul apart and made horcruxes to become immortal, but they don't work. He'll just fade away at the end of his life while we go on and on. No harp for Tom!"

Luna shuddered at the thought. "Tom Marvolo Riddle…" Her eyes unfocused briefly. "I am Lord Voldemort." Reaching into her pocket, she dug out a card on a cord that she put around her neck. It said, 'PRESS.' "I came here to interview Hermione for the Quibbler and find out more about Slytherin's monster. Can I interview you instead please?"

"Sure." Harry grinned. Luna was quite fun. Why should he give his story away to strangers? "Do you have a camera? It's quite a good story and I'd like a picture of it."

"Daddy will be ever so pleased!" Luna reached into her expanded bag and withdrew a blocky old camera. "This is the first Quibbler press camera. Daddy bought it from The Enchanter when it folded in 1979. It's old, but it takes moving color photographs. Daddy gave it to me for my birthday!"

"It's very nice." Harry waited until she put the camera away and then bowed grandly, like he'd seen the man in the alley do. "Miss Luna Lovegood, would you care to accompany me to the Chamber of Secrets to view the remains of Slytherin's basilisk?"

"Oh!" Luna curtsied, her cheeks pinking. "Yes, please, Harry Potter, very much!"

"Then please call me Harry." Harry offered her his arm.

Luna beamed, linking arms with him. "And I'm Luna. What else can you tell me about those horcruxes, Harry?"

Harry shrugged as they left the infirmary. "Only what the goblin Creepsaw told me, Luna, but he seemed quite knowledgeable. They're an ancient immortality method with an arithmetic definition flaw that eventually destroys the soul and leaves you completely dead forever. Sane wizards stay away from that sort of thing but not Tom bloody Riddle, killing Myrtle and making that diary that possessed Ginny with a part of himself inside as a fourth year. There was another part that possessed Quirrel last year. That one was free roaming and probably the bit that was ritually attached to the body that my mother destroyed. I can't see the berk not having a backup, or that leach would have just disappeared down in the chamber."

"Three couldn't work anyway, as the lesser fragment in the body would constantly be pulled to the object. It would be quite intolerable. Same with four. Seven would be stable. He probably wanted a seven part array that could cancel out the pull on the disembodied bit." mused Luna.

"Wow." Harry vowed then and there that he would be taking both arithmancy and ancient runes or he would be finding a better school.

"Poor Tom." Luna shook her head. "He must have been very young when he ruined himself. The teachers here failed him terribly, as they often do. I wonder if there could be a way to put him back together?"

Harry smiled, thinking that Luna was probably the only person alive to spare even a trace of pity for the monster. He raised his eyebrows at the thought of it. How did one glue a soul together, take him to a cobbler? "Dunno, Luna. Maybe I can write to Creepsaw and ask him what he thinks."

"Would you?" Luna met his eyes. "I would like to write it up one day to warn others not to try such a foolish thing."

"Sure." Harry decided that Luna was a high quality person. "Probably not so many 'Claws or 'Puffs falling for it, just ambitious Slytherins and us headstrong Gryffindors."

Luna smiled. "More the opposite really. Reading does not imply that one can interpret information or evaluate its meaning and veracity properly. Ravenclaws would be most likely to try it in secret. Hufflepuffs would talk each other into it and all go together."

"Tom thought himself the end all be all greatest wizard ever, but he couldn't think things through very well." Harry frowned. "At least at fourteen. Creepsaw talked about 'rituals of sacrifice,' and how you can gain a little power that way, but doing them sort of unbalances a person and makes them stupid. It's heritable too. Tom's father was a muggle, so he looked normal but he probably got his dose of crazy from his mother's family rituals."

"That kind of working is banned for a reason, but weak wizards from the old families will try anything. Tell me about the horcrux in the chamber." Keeping their elbows linked, Luna flipped her pad open and made careful notes.

lf

Percy came down the stairs of Gryffindor Tower and slowed at the illicit sight of a Ravenclaw student carefully examining a tiny still portrait of an unknown wizard.

"Hi, Luna. What brings you to our common room today?" Luna's father was a little out there, but mother had always maintained that little Luna took after her mother, 'as smart as fresh paint.' The girl was an inveterate explorer and had always been able to walk straight through even the smallest gap in Bill's practice wards. Percy had no doubt that she had already found the entrance to every Hogwarts house as well as anything else of interest.

Luna turned. "Hello, Percival. I'm waiting for someone to come down. How is poor Ginevra?"

Percy grimaced. "It's still too early to tell. She is being evaluated by a panel of mind healers, but it will take time for them to come to any solid conclusion."

"Tom Riddle was a fourth year when he made the horcrux," mused Luna. "Harry said that it didn't know anything about the rest of the broken soul's career, so everything the diary knew it must have learned at Hogwarts. The Headmaster should have investigated where Tom learned his tricks, so most of what he could do as a fourth year is probably well understood. Tom was naïve then, to wreck his own soul like that. The horcrux was older, but inherently less clever and powerful than Ginevra. I suspect that she will overcome its influence and be fine," Luna reassured.

"Horcrux?" Percy had never heard the word.

Luna frowned. "They're akin to what Emeric the Evil did to keep himself 'alive.' It doesn't work of course and only ends up destroying the soul, but it takes a long time. It's sad that a wizard who went to Hogwarts could destroy himself like that, but his life was just one long tragedy."

Nauseated, Percy nodded agreement. There was only one person that she could have learned all this from. "Where is Harry?" Percy knew better than to be too direct in his questions. Luna tended to go off on incomprehensible tangents if pressed.

"He went to get his broom." Luna smiled.

Percy took in the Ministry press pass. Luna was young, but he knew that she took her journalism seriously. She used to drive Bill mad 'interviewing' him about runes. "Are you two going flying?"

"Perhaps a bit. We are going to view the remains of Slytherin's basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets and Harry thinks that riding on a broom will keep us from getting our robes dirty." Her smile widened. "It will be a Quibbler exclusive! Daddy will be ever so happy!"

Percy reflexively opened his mouth to forbid it, but closed it again. Who was he to decide what should be hidden or why? The Headmaster was too busy shoring up his many political positions to do his job, and his woefully overworked Deputy was too busy doing the old man's job to do her other two jobs, so she had no idea that Harry had returned to Gryffindor Tower. If Percy meddled then the Headmaster would just find it that much easier to cover his culpability in the attack upon Ginny, an event for which Percy harbored a volcanic store of ill-feeling.

Politics had no place in school and the Headmaster had invited the attack by engaging in politics. Hogwarts staff was under strength and overburdened due to the Board playing politics in turn, trying to force him out of one of his positions. They were right in that Dumbledore had abandoned his job without any provision to replace his function, but wrong in that the school suffered even more from their refusal to hire more staff. All that Percy could do to stay out of either camp was his primary job as prefect, which was to make sure that the students were safe. "Do you think that Harry would mind if I came along?"

Luna looked at him thoughtfully. "If you want to meet us in Moaning Myrtles bathroom with a broom you could ask. I don't believe that he would object."

Percy nodded. He would have to hurry. "I'll see you there."

lf

"Mister Potter?" McGonagall, walking with her recently petrified student toward Gryffindor Tower, caught only the barest glimpse from the back as he disappeared around a corner, causing her to stop abruptly with a gasp, palm over her chest.

"What? Where?" Hermione had been sneaking a peek at the folio containing the assignments that her teacher had presented her. She had been just as far ahead of her classmates as she could possibly get and so losing the month hadn't actually put her as far behind as all that. She had a promise of personal tutoring each night and was anxious to get started.

McGonagall shook her head. It had been a young James Potter that she had thought that she recognized. Perhaps she had been teaching for too long. "My eyes may have been playing tricks. If you will excuse me, Miss Granger, I have business to attend." She strode rapidly away and turned into a cat the instant that Hermione passed through the portrait, shooting off after the phantom at speeds that only four legs could provide.

Her sensitive whiskers let her follow the recently disturbed air and Minerva tracked them to the second floor. Shifting so fast that she almost stumbled, Minerva broke decorum by shouting down the corridor as the two figures passed through the door of the haunted bathroom "Harry Potter and Luna Lovegood! Hold it right there!"

Potter mightn't have heard, but Minerva was absolutely infuriated over being ignored by the Lovegood girl, which was confirmed when she reached the door and found it held closed with a clever modification of the 'colportus' spell. Harry probably didn't know how to modify spells on the fly, but that busy little Ravenclaw certainly did. By the time she worked out the intricate variation and got the door open, Minerva was just in time to see the chamber entrance close.

lf

Luna hung on with her wand lit and giggled all the way down, something that made Harry laugh in turn as he expertly guided the Nimbus through the slimy tunnel. Exiting at the bottom, he hovered in place, waiting for the much slower Percy as Luna examined the rough walls.

A moment later a somewhat slimy and battered Percy exited on his borrowed broom. "I can't imagine Salazar Slytherin in a pipe. There has to be an easier way up and down."

"Probably, but I don't know what it is. Her robes were clean so Ginny might remember." Pressing on, he led them down the tunnel until they reached the shed basilisk skin.

"Merlin!" Percy stared, trying to suppress fear.

"Ooh, I'll want a picture of this!" Pulling out the camera, Luna tucked the wand behind her ear, set it up and aimed. "Close your eyes."

Harry, remembering the photographer at Flourish and Blots, began drifting lower.

Luna set off the flash and almost fell from the broom. Fortunately, Harry had descended enough for her feet to save her. "Thank you, Harry." Letting the camera hang by a strap, she extracted her notebook.

"That was bright." Percy had faced away from it but was still dazzled.

Harry was also dazzled. Feeling her regain her seat, he began to drift along at a brisk walking pace. "That was brighter than Forge's firework potion. I saw a photographer in Diagon Alley taking pictures once. His flash wasn't as bright as yours and it left smoke that burned me."

lf

Percy frowned. Were Idiots One and Two brewing explosives again? Though a prefect, he would rather let his father deal with them as it was less wearing than going through the exercise in futility that was confiscating their toys. The twins occasionally needed the fear of Arthur in order to see reason.

Luna was scribbling shorthand in her notebook, wand tucked behind her ear but impressively still lit. "It's a muggle potion called flash powder. Five parts magnesium to one part potassium nitrate. Daddy mixes in a binary vanishing potion so that there's no smoke."

Harry reached the rock fall. "This is where Lockhart tried to obliviate us with Ron's broken wand and brought down the ceiling. He obliviated himself, but I ended up alone on the other side. I decided to keep going while Ron dug. He made a hole just big enough to crawl through in time to get us out."

Luna shook her head at the man's foolishness. "If Lockhart had succeeded then his oath to Hogwarts would have taken his magic. The wards wouldn't have let a muggle back up the tunnel, so he would eventually have crawled through and ended up as the basilisk's dinner. "

"Lockhart was a useless fool." Percy examined the fall, carefully masking his inner rage over the fact that a Hogwarts teacher had attacked his brother, and flicked his wand to begin moving rock. "No need for crawling. It's stable, just rock from the ceiling. We'll have it cleared in no time."

Luna took pictures, questioned Harry about Lockhart's antics, jotted down notes and happily learned the more advanced levitation charm as well as the vanishing charm that Percy patiently took the time to teach them. Wandless, Ron hadn't gotten much shifted.

lf

Moving very slowly, Harry frowned, then lowered the broom so that they could dismount, unwilling to risk a surprise. "We're close. We must have beat the goblins. There were lights in here before."

"Lights. Lights please? Torches? Luminance? Luminari?" Percy frowned, dismounting his own broom. "These things are usually voice activated. Try it in the serpent's tongue."

Harry tried to imagine a snake to speak with, but could only think of the terrifying basilisk. What if it wasn't really dead? Swallowing fear, he managed, "sSLightSs."

The torches high on the walls flared and the still-open entrance doors to the chamber became visible about ten yards ahead. "It's right through there." Harry couldn't help the quaver in his voice. Approaching the doors, he swallowed. "You two should close your eyes, just in case there are more basilisks."

Percy moved to the fore. "Snakes tend to eat smaller siblings, but I'll go first. Keep your eyes averted and should I go silent… run."

With considerable respect, the two younger students followed. For about three steps, when a belligerently squawking Fawkes appeared in a blast of blue flame, dropped the sword of Gryffindor in front of Harry with a terrific clang and then shot through the doors with a piercingly offensive battle-screech.

"Phoenix are supposed to be all light and everything, but he likes the fighting more than anything." Harry laughed and picked up the sword. It had a sheath this time, so he slung it over his shoulder so that it hung down his back and walked confidently into the open door of the chamber.

Fawkes was walking stiff-legged up and down the dead basilisk, wings partly extended, crooning a low, threatening caw.

"Sorry, Fawksey, but there's no fight left in it." Harry grinned at the bird's antics.

There was a camera flash, interrupting the bird's march. Fawkes trilled in regret and then sailed through the air to land on Harry's unoccupied shoulder. With another low trill, the magnificent firebird started grooming his hair, ignoring flashes from the camera.

"You are a very brave man, Harry Potter." Luna lowered the camera and just stared at the horrifying basilisk.

"You killed… that with a sword?" Percy was awed and immensely grateful for this service to the Weasley family, but in truth his growing regret over Lucius had been blown away as if by a cold gust of reality and replaced by satisfaction over the gruesome death that he had inflicted upon Voldemort's wretched slave. He just wished that he could arrange even worse for the rest of them.

"It's a good sword and I had Fawkes. Easy peasy." Harry drew the sword from the scabbard and raised it to show Percy that killing something with it wasn't so terribly hard. He grinned from sheer relief that he wouldn't have to use it again. "Fawkes dropped the Sorting Hat on my head and clawed out the eyes. Without the hat giving me the sword, I wouldn't have made it even then. Tom had my wand, but I don't know a spell that could kill a basilisk anyway."

Percy frowned. "The hat gave you the sword?"

"It's obviously the sword of Gryffindor." Luna took what she knew would be the iconic shot of her generation, a smiling Harry holding up the sword, Fawkes on his shoulder and the hideous basilisk looming in the background. The composition was perfect. "The Sorting Hat is just Godric Gryffindor's tatty old hat you know, and where else would a canny old wizard like that keep his things but under his hat?"

Harry laughed at her logic.

Percy's head jerked around and he blanched. "Something's moving back there."

Stiffening, Harry went on guard with the sword ready. After a moment he relaxed. "It's probably the goblins stuck behind the statue. Maybe it has a different password from the other side." He hissed out, 'ssoOpen, Slytherin, Greatest of the Hogwarts Fouross."

A moment later a knot of Goblins emerged, exclaiming over the size and quality of the basilisk, the workmanship of the sword and the disgustingly abysmal engineering of the wizard-dug cavern. They immediately began shoring up the ceiling.

lf

Harry explored the structure, but he didn't find anything else. Luna interviewed everyone and got good shots of goblins butchering the snake, the best being of the goblins Quickhand and Crusher standing fully erect in the propped open mouth, removing fangs with chisels. She took careful photographs of the damage on the walls from the snake's strikes, the ink on the floor where the horcrux had been stabbed, as well as Harry holding the fang up next to the still-livid puncture mark on his arm. She was good at pulling the story of Harry's Hogwarts clashes with Voldemort, coming up with seemingly unrelated questions that served to draw him out with detailed explanations of his typically laconic descriptions.

lf

Percy felt a little guilty as he excused himself from the party, walking to the outside entrance and returning to the castle overland. He told them that it was in order to put the broom that he had borrowed back, but he was really letting them face the reception from the irate Acting Headmistress alone. He had pretended not to hear McGonagall along with Luna and was somewhat cold-bloodedly throwing them to the old cat. Given the matter of her culpability as acting headmistress for Dumbledore's gross negligence in not seeing to it that the boy was treated for a basilisk bite he doubted if there would be punishment for the Boy Who Saved Her Career. McGonagall was fair to a fault and aside from a scolding they were free and clear.

Replacing the broom, Percy loitered about the playing field for a time, watching some second years trying to play a pick-up game. They had little skill and no one to show them how, but they were trying. There were players from all four houses including Slytherin girls playing on both teams, and Percy wondered when that easy acceptance of the other houses had changed for him. It struck him again just what a divided unsatisfactory mess Hogwarts was and how it all flowed from Dumbledore. Grimacing at the unpleasant sensation of using an unsuited wand, he checked the time and then ambled for the gate.

lf

Neville was digging in his trunk for a pecan cluster that he'd lost when he noticed the odd behavior of his dorm mate. Harry Potter was sitting cross-legged on his bed, head bobbing. Frowning, he looked closer. Harry had some sort of yellow things, like earplugs with strings in his ears.

"Harry?"

Harry turned to him and suddenly sang,

'You know it ain't right,

You know it ain't easy,

The way things are go-ing

They're gonna crucify me!'

"What?" Neville blinked with absolute incomprehension. "Harry, what is that all about?"

Harry removed his earbuds and grinned. "I did some shopping in the city and got myself a Walkman."

"Walk-man?" Neville stared the blank stare of the sheltered pureblood confronted by an out-of-context problem.

"A Walkman. Here, have one." Harry tossed him a bag. "The instructions are inside, along with some cassettes and rune batteries."

"Batteries?" Neville tried out the strange word as he pulled the blister pack out of the bag, turning it over in incomprehension.

"Nev, you really need to get out more. Here, look at mine. Put the batteries in here, the tape in there and push the play button. Electricity makes it go and the tape plays music through the headphones. See how it works?" Harry quickly stopped and ejected the cassette, demonstrating the buttons, the door, then the battery compartment and batteries. "And don't ask me for a tape with the Weird Sisters, because no one that's heard any real music would bother recording them."

lf

"When my uncle hears of this you'll be the ones in the cells!" Rowel was putting up a good front, but starting to lose confidence. He didn't recognize the lockup and they had been feeding him veritaserum, plundering every detail of his family, business, personal ties and everything that he knew of the Death Eaters in spite of his pureblood status.

The other prisoners agreed, though without vehemence, having lost most of their starch in the face of harsh nonstop interrogation. The Death Eaters had become soft and lax in their Master's absence. The organization, once tightly compartmentalized and ruthlessly disciplined, had become a club in that they all knew exactly who their fellows were and openly boasted of their exploits while socializing. In Voldemort's day, masks and anonymity had been strictly enforced with obliviations and dire punishment. Few had known the real name of even one other Death Eater for sure, but in their master's absence they had easily found each other out.

"Your uncle has that little mark on his arm too. We are going to obliviate you, Rowl. Then we'll use what we've learned to set you against each other so that every murder has a properly marked murderer for the Dementor. Before you get your hopes up, your uncle is about to become known as the stoolie that's grassed. Many of you will likely die quickly after that, killed by your criminal 'friends' trying to limit their exposure. Once we get done fitting you lot up it's unlikely that any of you will live long enough to be a problem, but not to worry as I will personally execute every one of you that goes off script." Auror Baker seemed to be sitting at the desk, idly reading a book. He was actually behind another illusion that covered a concrete and steel fortification, a large bore automatic shotgun pointed at the room.

"We have rights!" Rowl glared. "The Wizengamot won't stand for this! There was a peace negotiated!"

"An agreement that you lot broke by associating." The image of Baker looked up to meet Rowl's eyes. "Technicalities are a funny thing, legally. Dumbledore blathered on about the next generation and he even convinced enough soft headed fools with blood ties to your side to be lenient, so that you lot got to walk free an extra decade to do your begetting, but time is up. The fact is, you don't technically have rights. You are branded slaves that have been declared a public nuisance by the Wizengamot. The moment that we learned of your owner's survival, your lives were over."

"You can't do this! You're an auror! You swore to uphold the law!" Powell, though a murderer as were all of Voldemort's slaves, was among the last to be marked before Voldemort's disappearance and not as hardened as the rest.

"This is technically legal, though I swore no such thing, else the Minister would be buried under a cell. All of that rubbish goes out of the window in wartime anyway. We know that your master is coming back and when he does, it will be the one of him against all of us." Baker sneered at the fool. "The only law of war is to win or die, and we're either going to be the winners or else we're taking every last one of you sods with us."