The Plague Ship
Synopsis: What might have happened if Sirius had been a bit more proactive after the dementor attack on Harry and Dudley? AU, and Hermione had not gone to Grimmauld Place, deciding to spend time with her family. No super-powered Harry.
Timeframe: Starting early August 8, 1995, then continuing afterwards
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the Potterverse, so quit asking for loans or donations.
Chapter 8: Elimination
The morning following the announcement of the embargo, staff arriving at the Ministry of Magic, and at the office of the Daily Prophet, were astonished to find the offices nearly empty. The Minister's office was empty, and his secretary was missing.
The whereabouts of Minister Fudge, and the publisher and editor of the Prophet, could not be determined.
When Amelia Bones and a squad of trustworthy aurors entered Delores Umbridge's office, her three secretaries (Slytherins all) attempted to stop them. After assurances that Madame Umbridge would not be returning, the three relaxed. Under questioning, it was found that all three had committed minor indiscretions when at Hogwarts, primarily at intoxicated end-of-the-year parties going 'muggling'. For one of the women, this resulted in an unplanned pregnancy which had it become widely known would have ended her career in the Ministry because of the rampant bigotry. It seemed that blackmail was a tool Umbridge used to ensure loyalty.
Garfield Goyle and Dungeness Crabbe looked at their small group of ten Death Eaters. As was typical of this sort of mission, there were about half and half experienced Wearers of the Mark (as their rank was called in the organization) and trainees. They had two potential initiates who were, like some muggle criminal gangs, going to commit their first personal murder and be promoted to being branded with the full Dark Mark. One of the initiates was Goyle's son Greg. For the Death Eaters, this was a Rite of Passage, a Coming of Age.
They had gone over the plan several times so that all of the group was familiar with their roles in the operation. They had surrounded the Burrow, the residence of a blood-traitor family that had caused problems, and they were going to finish them tonight. The family had a young daughter who would provide sport for the trainees before she was killed.
As always, they cast anti-portkey and anti-apparition wards around the property, so that the family would have no chance to escape their 'just punishment' for defying the Dark Lord.
In their excitement with the upcoming bloodbath, none of the group noticed a second set of wards going up just inside and outside their own, nor the fact that the entire group stood between the two additional ward barriers.
They did start to notice as the two new sets of wards started to move towards each other. The new spells seemed impervious to any of the team trying to move through them, which was not the case of their normal spells. As the space between the wards became narrower and narrower, some of the trainees began to panic.
The two wards which had not been erected by the Death Eaters finally stopped moving when they were a few centimeters apart. What had been twelve experienced Death Eaters and the wannabees were now twelve largely red, but multi-coloured, smears of a couple square metres each.
The only survivors of the attack were the unhurt occupants of the house, a small boy and a middle-aged man who had been standing well back from the wards. The young wizard, Crabbe's youngest son, Fiddler, had come to see his father's so-important role in the Dark Lord's master plan, and instead saw his father and elder brother die horribly, and Lucius Malfoy, the second in command after the Dark Lord himself, flee in panic. The lad saw the famed prowess, invincibility, courage and pure-blood honour of the Death Eaters for what it was.
When the cleanup team arrived to take down the wards and remove the detritus of the first successful test of the new wards, the goblin contingent laughed at their human counterparts' inability to retain their previous meals. The black cloaks and white masks were scourgified for later use or display, and what was described as 'chunky salsa' was banished to wherever household garbage was sent.
After the attacks on several houses of blood-traitors and mud-bloods ended in disaster for Voldemort's forces, the decision was made to free Bellatrix Lestrange and other (low-level) Death Eaters from Azkaban prison. They had sent their best curse-breakers and demolition teams to break in and break out. Once the attack squad apparated out to the prison island, nothing further was heard from them. The Dark Lord's command to respond, sent through the Dark Mark, was unanswered.
Lucius Malfoy was in a serious bind. As the effective treasurer of the Death Eaters, he had been tasked with supplying the funds for Voldemort's operations. As the band had grown, the need for money got higher and higher. Now, their sources were being cut off. However, this problem was mitigated, as it were, by the fact that the Death Eaters themselves were being eliminated and that there were only a few left. Unfortunately, the ones who were left were the least competent and the most greedy.
Until recently, there had been a slush fund at Gringott's that got deposits from an unknown source within the Ministry that re-routed Wizengamot resources into a fund to 'Special Projects', ostensibly under the direct control of the Minister's office., although it was quite apparent to Malfoy that the Minster was kept blissfully unaware of this arrangement. The bulk of the money was being diverted from funds that should have gone to training and equipping aurors, so it was not only funding the Death Eater organization, but also handicapping those who should have been dealing with them.
Lucius had drawn funds from this vault to supply the Death Eaters as well as paying the bribes that kept the Minster compliant. It amused Lucius to know that the Ministry had been subverted with its own money.
Now, the cursed goblins had cut off access to this account, due to some traitor giving out information that was to remain secret, and Fudge had disappeared. Voldemort was insisting that payments be forthcoming in the very near future. Malfoy knew that if he didn't get some money soon, he would have to start supplying the money from his own fortune which he had stashed away in secret places (having never trusted the goblins), and he very much did not want to do that. The embargo on European goods was cutting into his lifestyle and those of his clients, whose agreeable nature was been essential to keeping the aurors from looking too closely at certain activities. Both at the Ministry and the Wizengamot, as well as in the general population. And word was that the Department of Magical Law Enforcement was looking at the Minister's bank accounts and other irregularities – that would never do.
Lucius had been lucky so far. He had been out of the Ministry building and far away, the day of what had come to be called 'The Purge'. His group of trainee Death Eaters had all been captured and executed, while he had remained at their headquarters in Edinburgh waiting for word of their successful attack on the Scottish muggle parliament – word that never came.
He had returned to his manor house to find Minster Fudge's body lying in the foyer, with a small hole in his forehead and a large wound where the back of his head once was. ON the Minister's clothes was a note, saying, "You bought him. Now he's yours." Narcissa had been hysterical – this was not supposed to happen! They were supposed to be the ones in charge!
Lucius was becoming desperate. What had seemed in his youthful pride to be a path to power, was rapidly becoming clearly a path to slavery to the monster he had inescapably bound himself to. He had seen what happened to his fellow servants when the Dark Lord became unhappy, or they disobeyed. Lucius was being ordered to provide the money, and although he had no wish to deplete his own family's resources, it was looking like that was the only future he could expect.
Something had to be done, and fast. Lucius Malfoy was a desperate wizard, which was why he was out in muggle London. He was in a rough area, where it looked to his practiced eye that life was cheap, and adherence to 'the rules' was limited.
He had approached one of the muggle women dressed in what seemed like inadequate clothing given the weather, and when she seemed to welcome the approach if the well (if oddly) dressed tall aristocratic man with long blond hair, he cast an Imperious on her.
Giving her the gun he had procured at the shop, where the confounded shopkeeper stood wondering what had happened to the handgun which he was only allowed to keep and sell under very restrictive conditions, he led her to a nearby bank and sent her in with specific instructions. In his worried state, he did not observe the husky muggle following the two from their original meeting point.
When the young woman came out of the bank, a siren started to sound. Lucius smile, knowing that as soon as she handed over the bag containing the money, he would apparate away, leaving her to deal with the police alone.
As she held the bag towards him, Lucius felt a strong grip on his shoulder, and heard a voice saying, "My girls give their money to me, gov'ner. Nobody else! You hear!"
Lucius spun and as he drew his wand, faced the man with a scarred face. "How dare you touch me!"
As he died of natural causes (as that part of London defined the term) Lucius heard the pimp's voice saying, "Nobody talks back to me in my territory, gov'!"
The muggle newspapers requested information from anyone who could identify the body of the well-dressed middle-aged man with long blonde hair, which had been found floating in the Thames River with a fatal knife wound in his chest. The authorities had no records of any such person ever being in Britain.
As none of the pure-blood wizarding community would have ever read muggle newspapers (or at least admit to it), and very few of the muggle-born magical folk knew Lucius Malfoy by sight, and those who did had few regrets about his demise, the authorities' call for information went completely unheeded.
It was a cold day at the end of October, when Harry Potter and a number of companions appears at a run-down shack on the outskirts of Little Hanglington.
He thought it fitting that this day, that would see the end of Voldemort, was the anniversary of the first time he had faced Voldemort, the day his parents were murdered by the Dark Lord.
The various curse-breaking teams had tracked down and destroyed the five horcruxes, and the Death Eaters had been eliminated or captured and imprisoned where they would not be released. With no servants left, the self-proclaimed Lord Voldemort had not eaten in over a week. His familiar, the snake Nagini, had been lured out of the shack by the smell of fresh meat and summarily dispatched, eliminating the last horcrux.
Harry, Sirius Black, and several others entered the shack. The Dark Lord was sitting on his 'throne', looking very pale and weak.
"Ah, Potter, you have finally come so that I can kill you myself."
Harry shook his head. "Sorry Tom, not today. I have come to finish you. You have no servants left for feed you their power. You are going to die, just as the prophecy said."
Voldemort shrieked, "You cannot kill me! I am immortal!"
Again Harry shook his head. "Your horcruxes have all been destroyed, including the one you fastened to my head."
With this, Harry's companions tossed the recovered Death Eater masks to the floor in front of the horrified Voldemort.
Pulling himself to his full height, Harry said, "Hello. My name is Harry Potter. You killed my father and my mother. Prepare to die."
As Sirius fell to the ground laughing, Harry looked to his associates and said, "I always wanted to say that." The rest of the group stood with puzzled looks, having less exposure to muggle entertainments.
Turning back to the Dark Lord, Harry continued. "This last year, your servants took my blood so that you could take on a new body. I want it back, and I am going to have it! Your body is nothing but a magical construct based on a spell and sustained by a spell. No longer! Finite Incantatum!"
With this, Voldemort's body dissolved into a pile of bones and blood on the floor. A black mist formed above the pile with a horrendous shriek, and then dissipated into nothingness.
Harry looked at his godfather and his companions. The aurors and witnesses from the DMLE, Gringott's and several Ministries of Magic looked to him as well, and nodded as he said, "I think we're done here. Let's go."