Sipping his tumbler of top notch firewhisky, Voldemort studied the papers on his desk. The papers were all from the Ministry of Magic, and they detailed how things were going with the muggleborn initiatives. He also had a few papers dealing with other Ministry business, such as the rights of House Elves, but right now his focus was on the muggleborns and muggles. Voldemort knew these initiatives were the most important ones as if they failed, he would have to resort to his back-up plan of taking control of the wizarding world by force.

Voldemort wasn't opposed to using force to get what he wanted, after all that was the way he'd gone about things in the past. However, he accepted that force wasn't always the key. He could get results just as good by using manipulation and underhand tactics to achieve his means. Besides, by doing things the way he was, he was also offering his family some extra protection. Of course they still weren't totally safe, not while certain fractions of the Order were still around, but they were safer than if the wizarding world was involved in an all-out war.

Even though things seemed to be going according to plan, Voldemort was still taking the time to draw up alternative lines of attack. Just because things were running smoothly now, didn't mean it was always going to be that way. After Dumbledore's death, the Order had gone to ground, but Voldemort didn't think for one minute that the threat they provided had gone. Yes, without Dumbledore it was diminished significantly, but not totally snuffed out. The Order could still be a problem, and Voldemort wanted to be prepared for any eventuality.

Over the last few weeks, Voldemort was actually coming to think he'd made a mistake in his actions the previous year. They'd all been so keen to get the truth out, so that Hermione and Harry didn't have to hide any more, they'd failed to think about the fact they'd left themselves adrift from the Order. A few months ago, Voldemort had three of the people he trusted the most right in the heart of the Order, and now he had none. They were now left with no way of knowing just what the Order were up to.

Shuffling through his notes, Voldemort found the list Severus, Harry and Hermione had helped him compile of the known Order members. They'd made the list so they'd known just who they were dealing with, but now Voldemort was looking at it for potential weak links. He was looking for someone on the list that they could use to keep the flow of information coming their way. Luckily, he also had additional notes on each person thanks to his two children and grandson, so he was hoping he might find a clue in some of the extra information he had about the Order.

Voldemort studied the list for nearly an hour, and every time he came back to a couple of possibilities. One was Mundungus Fletcher, a petty thief and lower ranking member of the Order. Voldemort was convinced he could get Fletcher on his side, just like he'd done with Pettigrew all those years ago. However, Fletcher wasn't totally trusted by the majority of the Order and there was a question mark over just how much he would be able to tell them. Still it was worth a shot, and Voldemort made a mental note to get one of his Death Eaters to get Fletcher in their pocket. Even a little bit of gossip he'd overheard might prove useful if things got dicey with the Order.

The other people Voldemort kept turning to when scanning the Order numbers were a family of three – the Tonks's. Andromeda Tonks was Narcissa's sister, while her husband Ted was a muggleborn and their daughter, Nymphadora, worked at the Ministry as an Auror. Voldemort knew from Bernard Nott that Tonks was a good Auror, and she was very loyal to the light. She'd been part of the group that had complained bitterly when the Aurors were relieved of the duty of catching dark witches and wizards. Voldemort wasn't sure if they'd be able to use the daughter, but he did wonder if they could use her parents.

Normally, he would have asked Narcissa to try and reconnect with her sister, and play the part of a long suffering wife who didn't want to go along with her husbands darkness. However, with recent events, he didn't think Andromeda would fall for that. Instinct was telling him that if they wanted to use any member of the Tonks family, they were going to have to force them to do their bidding. Maybe a kidnapping could be the way to go. They could kidnap either Andromeda's husband or daughter, and then force her to pass information on to them if she wanted her family to live.

Voldemort was mulling over potential ways he could arrange a kidnapping, without alerting the rest of the Order, when there was a knocking on the front door. Voldemort frowned at the interruption, but he didn't rise from his seat. One of the house elves could answer the door, although he wasn't sure who would be knocking as most people who visited the house would just arrive by floo. A few minutes later he got his answer as one of the elves appeared in the doorway to his study.

"Yes, Dippy?" Voldemort inquired with a polite incline of his head.

"Mrs Lestrange is in the living room," Dippy replied hesitantly. "She insisted on coming in."

"I'm sure she did," Voldemort said. "I'll deal with it Dippy, you get back to work."

"Yes Sir," Dippy replied with a low bow before he disappeared with a sharp crack.

Voldemort took a few moments to clean his desk and tidy his work away, before he left the study and headed towards the front room. When he entered the living room, he found Bellatrix standing beside the fire, a gold picture frame in her hand as she scowled at the picture. Voldemort knew it was a picture of Beth and Hermione that had been taken a few years ago.

"Is there a problem, Bella?" Voldemort asked, making his presence known when Bellatrix roughly slammed the frame back down on the fireplace.

"My Lord." Bellatrix whirled round at the sound of Voldemort's voice, and The Dark Lord noticed how her frown was instantly replaced with a sly smirk.

"So?" Voldemort prompted when Bellatrix didn't answer him.

"So what?" Bellatrix frowned in obvious confusion.

"The problem," Voldemort replied. "I'm assuming you have one, or why else would you be here?"

"No problem," Bellatrix replied with a shrug. "I just thought I would come and see you and see how you were doing?"

"You make me sound ill, Bella," Voldemort remarked as he sat down on one of the sofas. "Why wouldn't I be doing just fine?"

"It must be lonely, being in this big house all alone," Bellatrix replied as she settled herself next to Voldemort and placed a hand on his leg. "I thought you might like some company."

"I'm perfectly fine, Bella," Voldemort said as he moved her hand off his leg. "Beth's only been up at Hogwarts for a few weeks, and she comes home quite regularly."

"Even so, it's not the same," Bellatrix purred, replacing her hand on Voldemort's leg and leaning over to give him a glimpse of her cleavage. "A man needs his wife around, not running off having a career of her own. You need someone to be there when you need them. Someone who puts your first."

"And I suppose you're volunteering for the job?" Voldemort questioned with a raised eyebrow.

"I wouldn't be running around in Scotland if you were mine," Bellatrix replied. "If you were my husband, I would be by your side all the time."

Voldemort gave Bellatrix an appraising stare, before subtly moving his head nearer to her. Instantly she surged forward, but before she got a chance to actually plant her lips on his, he roughly grabbed her by the shoulders.

"Luckily for me, you're not my wife," He hissed angrily. "Don't think I can't see what you're doing, Bella. You thought you'd coming running round here and try it on with me the second my wife is away. Just what do you take me for, Bella? I love my wife, and I would never betray her. Especially not for someone as desperate as you. Now get out of my house before I make you regret what you've just tried."

Voldemort let go of Bellatrix, and he felt slightly smug when she flinched away from him. Quickly Bellatrix rose to her feet, and mumbling an apology she hurried towards the doorway.

"Oh and Bella," Voldemort called, causing Bellatrix to pause in the doorway. "If you try anything like this again, you will regret it. Not only will you have me to deal with, but I'll let Beth at you. And believe me, my wife wants you gone more than anything. You don't want to get on her bad side, do you Bella?"

"No, My Lord," Bellatrix whispered.

"Good," Voldemort replied with a nod. "This is your final warning, Bella."

Voldemort smirked as Bellatrix bolted out of the house. Chuckling at the sound of the front door slamming behind his top female Death Eater, Voldemort refilled his glass of firewhisky and returned to his work in his study. Beth was due back the following day, and he planned on spending the weekend with his wife, so he wanted to get as much work done as possible before his wife's return.


C.O.T.D.


While Voldemort was busy working on ways to get the inside track on the Order, Sirius and Remus were working hard to bring down the dark wizard, his family and their supporters. Following their visit to the old Riddle and Gaunt houses, they'd been spending their time scrutinising the things they'd taken from both places. It had taken a few weeks, but finally they'd sorted the junk from things that could be useful.

"This is it?" Sirius asked Remus with a snort as the werewolf showed him a collection of three items they'd retrieved from the to houses. "Out of all those bags of things, we're down to three."

"Three that might by what we're looking for," Remus corrected. "Alastor kept a few pieces to look into further, and he gave me a couple of books which might prove handy. As for everything else, they're in a box in one of the spare rooms. But these three items all contain traces of dark magic according to the checks, Alastor, Kingsley and Tonks have run on them."

Sirius nodded as he picked up the items, one at a time. The first one was a little statue of a dragon, the second one was an old ornate ring, and the final piece was a small trinket box. After examining each piece, he placed them back down on the desk where Remus had laid them out.

"What do we think?" Sirius asked his best friend. "Do any match the items from Dumbledore's list."

"This one does," Remus replied as he picked up the ring. "Alastor is fairly sure this is the resurrection stone that was turned into a ring. This was definitely on Dumbledore's list. As for the other pieces, we've got no way of knowing if they were ever owned by one of the Hogwarts founders, or if they've just came into contact with dark magic at some time over the years."

"This resurrection stone, how does it work?" Sirius asked.

"Supposedly if you put it on, it'll show you people you've lost," Remus replied. "But Alastor says it's not safe. He thinks there's a curse on the ring."

"If it's being in You-Know-Who's hands, of course there's curse on it," Sirius agreed. "Only a fool would actually put the ring on."

"A fool or someone desperate to see their lost loved ones," Remus replied quietly.

"No-one is that desperate," Sirius declared with a snort. There was plenty of people he wanted to see who were no longer with them, including James and his younger brother, Regulus, but he still wasn't stupid enough to put on the ring without making sure it was safe.

"So now we need to keep these items safe," Remus said, deciding it was best to leave the topic of the ring alone for the time being. "Chances are, the ring is the only Horcrux, but we may as well put the other things in safe keeping."

"There's a safe in my bedroom, it can only be opened by a family member, we can put them in there," Sirius replied. "Although we are going to think about how to destroy them. There's no good collecting all these Horcruxes if we can't destroy them."

"I've been doing some reading into Horcruxes, and they're practically impossible to destroy," Remus confided as the pair gathered up the items and headed to Sirius's room.

"But one already has been destroyed," Sirius pointed out. "We can use the same method."

"A basilisk fang," Remus said thoughtfully. "But was it the fang or the venom that destroyed the Horcrux? And even if we knew which, how are we going to get our hands on either Basilisk fangs, or Basilisk venom?"

"Could we get down into the Chamber of Secrets?" Sirius questioned. "I know McGonagall isn't headmistress like she should be, but she might still be able to sneak us into the castle."

"Dumbledore sealed the chamber after the attacks," Remus supplied. Even though he hadn't been teaching the year the Chamber of Secrets was open, he'd been at Hogwarts the following year and the staff had often spoken about the terrifying events of the previous year. "We can't get near the chamber."

"Pity," Sirius remarked as he placed the three items in his safe and sealed it back up again. "I wonder if we can mail order what we need from a potions company."

"I'll look into it," Remus promised. "But in the mean time we need to think about where to go next. As we've discussed Hogwarts is going to be practically impossible to gain access to, and we don't want to alert the dark to what we're doing by sniffing around Hogsmeade."

"How are we coming with the cave Dumbledore mentioned?" Sirius checked as the pair made their way back down to the kitchen, where Remus started to make a pot of tea.

"I've got a rough location," Remus answered. "We could start visiting the area and try to narrow down the specific cave we need."

"Let's get on with that," Sirius said with a nod of his head. "I need to do something, Remus, all this sitting around is driving me mad. I know we've got to tread barefacedly, but while we're taking things slowly the dark are gaining more influence over the wizarding world. Nott's already got his muggleborn initiatives into play at the Ministry, and he's slowly pushing out people who don't support the dark."

"I know," Remus said with a sigh. He shared Sirius's frustrations, and like his friend he feared that the dark sides grip on the wizarding world was starting to get too tight. At this rate, even if they found all the Horcruxes, it would be too late to actually save the wizarding world from Voldemort's grasp.

"Although we could just be doing this for nothing," Sirius continued in a rant. "The prophecy clearly states that a boy will be the one to defeat You-Know-Who. If it is Neville, like Dumbledore suspected, then we're sunk. Bloody Augusta Longbottom won't let us anywhere near her grandson. We need him on side if we're going to win this war."

"Molly went in too hard," Remus remarked as he handed a cup of tea to his fried and slumped into the seat opposite him. "Instead of taking things slowly with old woman Longbottom, she rushed in and tried to press her into joining us. There's no way she's going to back down now, not now Molly has gotten on her bad side."

"Then we'll have to go around her," Sirius stated. "Go straight to the source. We need to convince Neville to join us, and since he's nearly seventeen, there's nothing his grandmother can do if he chooses to join the Order."

"To do that we need to get someone who really knows him to woo him," Remus mused. "I don't think Neville is quite as gullible as people think. He's got a mind of his own, and he won't be forced into doing anything."

"Write to Ron and Ginny," Sirius ordered. "We can get them to cosy up to Neville and get him onside."

"Good plan," Remus said with nod. "I'll rattle off an owl later on. But for now, let's get back to these caves. As I said, I've narrowed down the area, but there's a lot of caves in the area. It could take us a few trips to get the right one located."

"It's not like we're overrun with other things to do," Sirius replied with a shrug. "Let's get searching for this cave."

Polishing off their tea, the two wizards got to work on the next leg of their plan. They still had a long way to go if they actually wanted to defeat Voldemort and the dark, but they were making progress. Hopefully, they'd soon have the upper hand and then they could strike and start restoring the wizarding world to what it was like before Voldemort took control and Nott became Minister.