Wednesday 26 August 2020

In which the narrator secures legal counsel.

"Before we can start, I need to confirm that you are happy with my terms as stated in the contract I sent. Were you able to sign it for me?" This was the first thing Portia Mbewe said to me when she came over to the Ministry at nine o'clock sharp. I would soon learn that she never wasted time on frivolous greetings; her directness impressed me, on that first meeting and afterwards. I never saw the point of small talk, and doubly so when I was footing the bill.

"Not yet," I said. "They wouldn't give me anything to write with. Have you got a quill?"

She passed one to me. I signed the document, which sealed itself with a lick of flame, and handed quill and contract back together. It felt oddly informal to be signing a contract with such serious commitments in my socks. I did not like to think what would happen to me if I reneged on any of the terms; the contract made it quite clear that the consequences might include (although would not be limited to) to thumbscrews, disgorgement, evisceration, and disembowelment.

"Let's start from the top," she said. "Why have you engaged my services?"

"I was subject to a raid last night," I said. "A whole gang of Aurors broke into my house and started going through my stuff. I don't know what they were looking for." It was hard to believe it was only a few hours before. I had not slept at all that night after Potter had left, and was now feeling rather worse for wear. I was still wearing the same clothes from the day before and had not been given the opportunity to wash or shave. I could really have done with a dab of one of my potions right then, just to keep me going.

"What time was this?"

"Getting on for midnight, I guess."

"They usually hit in the middle of the night. You're fast asleep, your resistance is lower."

"I was still awake, actually. I normally go to bed quite late. It wasn't much of an advantage though – I barely had time to reach for my wand before they were in."

"If you are usually late to retire in the evening, the timing of this raid suggests that the Aurors did not know your habits. This Department of Magical Law Enforcement has not always excelled in showing good attention to detail."

Quelle surprise, I thought. I said, "There were a lot of them – thirty, maybe? Is that normal?"

"They don't normally send that many unless they are expecting to find something serious. Given the resource commitment I would have expected a bit more groundwork though. Did you fight them?"

"I tried. Is that going to count against me?"

"It usually does. But we may be able to establish mitigating circumstances. Your mother was killed in her own home by Aurors, was she not?"

"Yes," I said, surprised that she already knew that about me. I supposed that this was how she could charge five hundred galleons per hour. "I was only a baby at the time."

"But you were there when they killed her, weren't you?"

"Yes," I said, touching the ring finger on my right hand; the mourning ring I usually wore there for my mother had been taken by the Aurors. Although she'd been the one to commission it from a goblin jeweller in memory of her brother Haemon (a Death Eater killed in action), she herself had been killed before it had been completed, so it had come into my possession without dispute from the goblin maker. It was just a simple silver ring with a stone shaped like a skull, but sometimes you would glance at it and out of the corner of your eye you would see her face there, or her brother's, although they'd disappear if you looked too closely. I didn't doubt that it would return to the goblins after my own death, perhaps with my face appearing sometimes in the stone too, but I could not imagine what they would want with such a personal item. Now knowing more about how goblins chose jobs and priced their work, it surprised me that they had even taken the commission.

"I suggest that any regrettable actions that might have taken place after magical law enforcement officials entered your home were due to shock, which recalled this trauma from your past," said Ms Mbewe. "Do you understand?"

"Yes," I replied. My mother's death had enabled my father to avoid Azkaban, and now it might help me do the same. This roused in me a feeling I could not name: inchoate grief perhaps, for the mother I had barely known and whose absence had loomed large over my life, or anger, although I wasn't sure if it was directed at the people who had killed my mother, or at myself, for using the fact of her death to get out of trouble in the same cynical way that my father had.

"How's your Occlumency?" Ms Mbewe said, giving me a long, hard look.

"Not too bad, I think?" I could feel what she was trying to do; although it was unsettling, I knew I could block her.

"Seems OK," she replied. "But don't get complacent. They will throw everything they have at you during their interrogations to try and rattle you. Don't admit to anything, and don't let them into your mind. They may have heard rumours about you that remain unsubstantiated even after the raid; even if they ask about a specific item, do not just assume that they have it. Do you have any idea what prompted this raid?"

"No, I got the usual Death Eater scum insults but nothing they yelled at me seemed to have any bearing on why they had actually come." The fight hadn't lasted long. I'd been sitting up reading when I'd sensed rather than heard an unfamiliar presence, and had had a sudden instinct that something was wrong; my sensitivity to strange sounds had been greatly increased after spending a decade in solitary confinement. This meant that I tended to venture out infrequently as I now found overstimulating situations like busy pubs and shopping streets quite unbearable, though in this case my jumpiness was useful. Still, my hand was only halfway to my wand when they burst in, all shouting at once. It was horribly disorientating. All I could think to do was let fly all the hexes and curses I knew with the vague hope of distracting them and making a break for it, but after what was probably less than a minute, I was seized from behind by a couple of powerful spells and slammed to the floor, face down in my own threadbare Persian carpet. My ribs still ached now from the impact; I wasn't as young as I used to be.

It was a lot more dramatic than the first time they brought me in, just after the Dark Lord's final fall, when I was eighteen. Then, they had politely knocked on my door and asked if I would mind coming with them to the Ministry to answer a few questions, only they had to interview everyone with family connections to known Death Eaters. I had been detained a grand total of two days, and the Ministry witch and wizard who had handled my case had done so with a distinct air of apology. I was still terrified, of course; I was concealing the fact that I'd killed a Muggle under my father's tutelage. I guess I must be a pretty good liar, though, because I got away with it.

"What are you most afraid they might find?" Ms Mbewe asked.

"Well, um, there might be a few things they would disapprove of," I said. The adrenaline of the previous night had slowly worn off, and the realisation of the kind of trouble I was now in had begun to sink in on a visceral level as well as an intellectual one. "I was rather distracted during the raid, as you can imagine, but I could hear that they'd found something they thought would be significant shortly after I was incapacitated, before they knocked me out. As to what they got the warrant for, I'm sure I don't know. I've been careful."

"Not careful enough."

"So it would seem," I agreed, feeling deflated. "But I've hidden things well, and in different places. If they don't mention them, I don't want them brought to their attention, you understand?"

"Mr Nott, I have been doing this for some time," Ms Mbewe said archly. "I understand your concerns, but your case is in safe hands. Nevertheless, it would help me greatly if you could tell me the most compromising items they may find."

"OK," I said. "I have a mirror that lets you talk to the dead. It's not quite there yet so I can't really be sure if you're speaking to the actual person or just a demon that's taking their form. Still got to work that kink out. I've got some Imperius Curses encased in mints that can take over the mind of the person who eats them. Mint Imperials, get it? Those work quite well. I've got some, uh, recreational potions that the Ministry tends to frown upon. Just stuff I've kept for personal use, so not huge quantities, but it's pretty much all Class A. Some banned books. Oh yeah, and a Time-Turner." A pathetic but not insignificant part of me watched Ms Mbewe carefully, trying to discern if even after all the Dark wizards she had defended, she was impressed, but I couldn't read her at all.

"A stolen Ministry one?"

"No, custom."

"That's worse," she said. "Much worse. Where did it come from?"

"I made it," I said, trying to sound offhand.

"Worse still! Is there any external sign, any hallmark you tend to use that might indicate that you made it?"

"No," I said. "I'm not stupid. Although... the charms inside...within the glass I think they will be safe, but if they strip the Time-Turner down... there's a chance that one or all of the charms could be traced back to me, if they think to isolate them before they destroy themselves... they're very unstable, time-reversal charms, particularly long-range ones, and this Time-Turner has several, working in tandem, plus additional charms to fine tune the navigation to a specific moment in time and to counteract the ageing effects of time travel. If they manage to preserve any of these spells, and then cross-check them with my wand..." I wondered who would strip the Time-Turner down, if that was what they decided to do with it. I imagined Hermione Granger, the Minister for Magic herself, pulling my work apart, teasing out the spell, holding it with one of her own. A long time ago, I'd liked her, sort of, at Hogwarts.

"We must prepare for that, then. What is the range of this Time-Turner?"

"It can go back years," I said. "Decades, maybe centuries, but it's got a flaw. After five minutes it throws you back to the present."

"Five minutes is long enough to do plenty of damage," Ms Mbewe said. "And the range puts it into the category that is most harshly punished in wizard law. Let's hope they haven't found it. The other items are not trivial, but this is what will get you into real trouble."