October 2008
Wizarding London, England
Ministry of Magic of Great Britain
Wednesday Morning

Lyra and Harry flooed in to the Ministry and made their way through the deserted building to the Auror department. The office itself was alive with staff called in form home as news of the attack at the Potter residence spread through the wires, as the English muggles would say.

Lyra connected with the team and went in to briefing with Shacklebolt and some official from standard Magicial Law Enforcement that she had never met. She and Harry recounted their stories first and she saw Harry visibly flinch when she recalled the point in the evening that the sound of Lucius Malfoy's terrible chanting had made Albus cry.

Though she continued speaking, she made a mental note to speak with him about everything that had happened. She had brought this into his home and it had endangered his children. In his place, Lyra would have been furious. Lyra was furious in her own right. She loathed the idea of Ginny and the boys being threatened because of what was happening. Ginny had welcomed her without hesitation, trusted her with her babies. And for her trust and her kindness, she had ended up in danger and a suffered a midnight flight from her own home.

Lyra played back from the receiver the audio of Malfoy mumbling about Draco's compulsion and, finally, portions of the screeching chant that made many people in the room shift uncomfortably in their seats.

"It's Finnish, I think," Simpkins said from the back.

"What?" Lyra inquired.

"It sounds like a variation of Finnish," he shrugged.

"Awesome, Simpkins, thanks!"

Lyra looked to the back of the room for Rossman and Zabini. "Did you two find anything like that in your research?"

"We'd only just started looking at Scandinavian curses after the Russian, but there was a Norwegian curse we found that would compel someone to kill a loved one. This could be a Finnish variant," Rossman began.

"I hear you, Rossman, but how would that apply to our case? Zabini and I have talked about this already," Lyra retorted.

"Because you can block people from it," Zabini piped up.

"Explain that," Lyra replied, brow furrowed in confusion.

"Right, so say you're a bitter Norwegian fishwife and you want to compel your husband to kill his mistress. You could theoretically use one of these spells to compel him to do that, but then say that you turn this curse on him and he goes off and kills your daughter, because she's what he loves the most. His child. Couple of those mistakes and you find a way to protect someone from being on the hit list," Zabini elaborated.

"Like...like a blind," Lyra exhaled, suddenly tired...too tired to take Zabini up on his blatant sexism.

"If you like," Zabini replied, pining her with a knowing stare.

Harry spoke next. "Kingsley, did the detachment sent to my home find Draco?"

"I'm sorry Harry, but no. He disappeared," Shacklebolt replied.

Harry gave a stiff nod.

Shacklebolt continued, "We're dispatching a team right now to apprehend the elder Malfoy."

"Well that's all well and good for questioning, but I remind you that this is hardly conclusive evidence," stated the representative from Magical Law Enforcement.

"What the hell are you talking about!?" Lyra exclaimed. "I've seen convictions with half of the evidence that we have in front of us. I can't imagine that the legal bar for reasonable doubt can be so different here."

"Your doubts are none of my concern," chopped out the old wizard. "Lucius Malfoy is a powerful man and a patron of countless charities."

"Julian, that hardly makes it impossible for him to also be guilty of a crime," Shacklebolt countered, the tension in the room rising between the two wizards.

"Ah. You're one of his. Narcissa told me someone at MLE had been shutting her out. Was that you...Julian?" Lyra sneered, hoping to put him off guard.

The wizard looked at her incredulously and began to bluster out a response but Shacklebolt cut him off.

"Enough. We apprehend him. We question him. If we're right, we get him to undo whatever he's done and let the courts have him. Anything else is a clear violation of both the law and the public trust"

Lyra stared over at her stuffy opponent and raised an eyebrow. He emitted a jowly sound from his beet-red face and exited the room.

"What was all that then?" Gold inquired gruffly.

"Julian Diamond. I cannot stand that man." Shacklebolt replied. "Anyway, the extraction team is in the manor as we speak, thanks to Mrs. Malfoy leaving the door open for us. As long as he hasn't gone out for a 4AM pint, we should have him in custody soon."

"I'd like to question him." Harry stated flatly.

"Harry, do you think that's wise given everything that's happened?" Shacklebolt questioned.

"I don't know, but I'd like to do it myself," he replied.

"Can...since he's a suspect, can we use legilimency?" Lyra inquired.

"Technically you can. But you have to have just cause in the interview to do so." Shacklebolt responded.

"I think you should let Harry do it. He can destabilize Malfoy, make him give us a reason to read him," she pinned Harry with a serious gaze but continued addressing the Head Auror. "He can do it and he SHOULD do it, as the team lead."

Harry gave her a nearly imperceptible nod.

Shacklebolt looked back and forth between the two Aurors. "Alright, Harry. It's yours. Take an hour or so, get your notes in order. I'll let you know when we have him in a room."

"Great," Harry replied before walking out of the briefing room without further comment.


Lyra found Harry sitting on a couch in the main foyer of the Auror Department, staring in to a cup of tea. She lowered herself on the cushion next to him and stared forward into the round stone room.

"I'm sorry, Harry," Lyra said.

"For what? You didn't do anything," Harry responded flatly.

"I brought this into your house. Close to...to your kids. I feel sick about it."

"It's not you." Harry bit out through gritted teeth.

"Look, I get that intellectually, but your family was threatened. There's not a lot of room for intellect in that kind of thing. It's OK to be mad at me, even if it's not my fault. I mean, hell. I'm even mad at me."

"It's Malfoy," Harry said.

"Draco?"

"No. Lucius. This isn't the first time he's come after people I love," Harry explained.

"I'm sure," Lyra replied. "He was a Death Eater. Who knows what he's done?"

"No. I mean...well, yes he was, but that's not what I mean. My second year he did something that almost got Ginny killed. She was eleven years old. Eleven." Harry explained.

"Holy shit, Harry. I had no idea. What did he do?"

"Hid a cursed diary in with her schoolbooks that put her in a trance and had her release a giant snake on the school. Tried to steal her soul to reanimate Voldemort. You know, the usual."

"Uhhhhh...that's fucked up." Lyra responded.

"I'm mad, and yes, as unreasonable as it is, some of that is at you. But mostly, I'm mad at him. I'm mad at a system that gives him an easy pass for being rich while he terrorizes children and hurts people to make the world more like him. Every time he's intimidated someone, every time he's made families run in the middle of the night, he wins. He gets closer to satisfaction. It makes my blood boil."

She regarded him silently, listening to his words. He reminded her of Patrick in that moment. Pragmatic. Wary of a clunky system that favored manipulators and crushed honest people. "Better to fight from the inside where you can do some good than stand on the outside and hope that, eventually, the cracks will show," Lyra offered, parroting words Patrick had said to her after their team was forced to pull out of a raid for political reasons which had left her mad as hell.

"Yeah. Something like that, I guess," he nodded.

"Tell you what. If they let that bastard off the hook after this, I swear to you, as your friend and fellow Auror, that I will burn this whole damn building to the ground. I'm an American. We're insane." Lyra deadpanned.

That did it. He laughed. He couldn't help it. The mental image of the slight, dark-haired witch lighting office curtains on fire in her high-heels, ranting about how 'you're making me do this.' It was too much. "I just might help you," he replied.

"And tarnish your reputation? Don't you dare. You leave the trouble-making to me," she smiled over at him, and he gave her a tight smirk back.

"I'll get over it, you know...being angry with you," he offered sincerely.

"I know you will. You take your time," she consoled. She hated the idea of her new friend being mad at her, but she knew how important it was to give him the space to work through everything without shallowly trying to defend herself. That's what good friends do, and she had every intention of being a good friend to this poorly dressed man who had done so much to help her.

A silence fell over them that should have been awkward, but it wasn't. All things considered, it was nearly companionable. They were in a tricky spot but they both wanted the same thing, and had just almost been blown up together. That kind of thing tends to lend itself to rapid resolution of animosity, and they knew that.

They sat together, sipping tea for a while before Shacklebolt found them. "We have him. He's in room 6," the old wizard pronounced. "He's...he's not well, mentally. Looks like a trainwreck. I'm curious how long he's been declining this way."

"What are you talking about? That's bullshit, Sir. I saw him in a market less than a week ago and he was totally sound. I mean...clearly he's a sociopath, but he was well-kept, carrying on routine conversations with his wife in public. I'd wager he's putting on because he knows he's toast," Lyra interjected.

"If anyone can get him to show his true colors, it'd likely be me. If I was a corpse in the street, he'd go out of his way to kick my teeth in," Harry said plainly, as if simply stating a known fact.

"Well, he's ready. So, let's get on with it, shall we?' Shacklebolt held his arm out directing them to the corridor containing the interrogation rooms.

Harry and Lyra walked down the hallway together behind Shacklebolt. They stopped outside of the door and she turned to Harry. "Get him to brake character. Not too fast. I'm going to run and grab something from artifacts real quick but then I'll be watching. Pound the table once when you want be to come in and back you. Do not let him goad you, Harry. We got him. Hard part's over, right?" She smiled sardonically at him, before clapping him on the back and disappearing down the hall towards the artifact room.

"You're sure you can do this, Harry?" Shacklebolt inquired seriously.

Harry stared hard at the door for a moment. "Yeah. Yeah I think I can," he stated simply and opened the door, stepping inside.