Chapter 16
Rescue Raid in Wales
Ministry of Magic
Office of the Minister
"Absolutely not!" screamed Cornelius Fudge . "What are you people thinking, wanting to risk Ministry personnel, as well as untrained civilians in some sort of harebrained scheme to 'rescue' a couple of criminals like the Dumbledores?"
Minerva McGonagall and Mad-eye Moody had come to the Minister to ask for Aurors to go along on the raid on Voldemort's lair. The request had not gone over well. In the opinion of the Minister, the plan had too many down sides, the largest one being that he had jumped on the bandwagon condemning Violet and Albus Dumbledore in connection with the murders and robberies connected with Voldemort. In his eyes, he couldn't be seen to be backing down in relation to their guilt. If Fudge had his way, Violet would disappear into Azkaban without a trial, just as Sirius Black had those many years past. The only thing that was stopping him from doing that in the event of her capture was the political pressure from the other pureblood families.
"Cornelius," Mad-eye said. "Look at the bright side. If the Dumbledores are guilty, you will get the credit for capturing them and putting them where they belong. If they have, as we believe, been impersonated, then you will be a hero for exposing You-Know-Who's plot. It's a win-win situation either way for you."
"Unless You-Know-Who wipes out your little band of fools along with valuable Aurors. Which is the more likely scenario. If you think that I am going to allow valuable Ministry Aurors to go on some sort of fools errand to rescue criminals who don't want or need rescuing, then you are as daft as that idiot Lovegood who runs the Quibbler. Now if you will see yourselves out, I have real Ministry business to conduct." With that, he pointed imperiously at the door. McGonagall sighed and, with Moody leading the way, left the Ministers office.
"Well," said Moody, "It looks like we will have to do this the hard way. I will check with old Order members who might be willing to help, and you need to go ask Potter to speak with Lord Dumbledore to see what he would like to do."
"I concur. It would be better for Harry to speak with Dumbledore, a meeting between equals. Please floo to my office tonight with whatever plan you can put together and we will proceed from there." With that, the two old warriors split up, Minerva heading toward the floo connection and Moody thumping toward the public apparition point.
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Dumbledore Manor
Later that day
The fireplace turned green and Harry Potter's head showed in the flames. "Jonathon, may I come through?"
Jonathon Dumbledore swallowed down the anger and distaste he felt for his fellow noble and put a bland smile on his face. "Certainly, Harry. Come through."
Harry Potter-Black stepped elegantly out of the fireplace and shook hands with Jonathon. "There is very little time, so I had better get right to it. Jonathon, I want you to know that I am completely convinced of your mother's and Albus' innocence in these attacks and I plan to do something about it."
Jonathon was stunned. This was the last thing he had expected to hear. He was sure that Potter-Black would gleefully throw Uncle Albus to the dogs and if Violet happened to get caught up in that, would not lift a finger to help. He was having a hard time getting a feel for this man. On one hand, he had helped subject Uncle Albus to the harshest punishment, even worse than death, ever handed down in the Wizengamot, on the other, he was offering to help clear Jonathon's mother and great uncle of these crimes that had been attributed to them. Now to find out if it was just empty lip service.
"That is all well and good, Harry, but what do you propose to actually help the situation? There has been no clue of their whereabouts since the Azkaban massacre."
"We have located the place where they are being held. We are putting together a rescue mission to bring them out. I am here to ask if you would like to be a part of it. The raid will require split second timing and a willingness to go at a moment's notice."
"Of course I want to be a part of it. How will I be notified?"
"The first thing will be to come to Hogwarts tonight at about 6:45 this evening. We will be putting together our operational plan at that time. As far as notifying you of when we will actually leave on the raid…."
Harry pulled out his wand and pointed it into the middle of the room. "EXPECTO PATRONUM!" His stag patronus erupted from the wand, looked around, then gracefully walked up to him and gazed expectantly at him, then vanished.
"When we are ready to go, I will send my patronus to you. You will need to apparate to the entrance of Hogwarts and we will leave from there."
"I am impressed. I have never been able to produce a corporeal patronus. Yours is beautiful. So, I will be at the Headmistress' office tonight. Should I bring anything?"
"Bring a picture of your mother. I want to make sure that everyone knows who we are looking for." The two walked toward the fireplace, shook hands, then Harry tossed in a handful of floo powder and was gone.
Jonathon walked to the study and sat down heavily in his chair. He did not know quite what to think. He had blamed Potter for everything that had befallen his family, but the reality was difficult to accept. Every meeting with Potter-Black had shown him to be completely open, far more open than Jonathon had been. He had read Uncle Albus' journals, but unlike his mother and grandfather, he believed that they were genuine. Uncle Albus had been firmly on the side of light, he believed this with all his heart, but still had, in the past few decades, had shown a reckless disregard for the people he had worked with, believing that the ends justified the means. It was much the same way that Jonathon himself approached life.
Jonathon had, in fact, put together a plan using his sister and Harry Potter to continue the Dumbledore line while gaining control of the Potter-Black lines. By encouraging a possible relationship between the two, he could ensure the pureblood continuance of his family. He had two valid reasons for this scheme. The first was that Jonathon Dumbledore was gay in a society where homosexuality was considered a mental disorder. Jonathon would have been willing to enter a marriage of convenience to produce an heir, no matter how much distaste he would have felt carrying out his 'marital duties', but due to spell damage that he had incurred during school, damage that only his mother was aware of, Jonathon Dumbledore was completely sterile. This meant that he was under no real pressure to enter a heterosexual marriage, however he still needed to somehow continue the Dumbledore line. This is where Jennifer came in.
Should she produce a male heir, the family would continue through this cadet branch. Since Potter was the most influential 'Light' ,or at least 'Light Grey' male available, he should be the chosen donor of genetic material for Jennifer's offspring. That Potter was the number one target of Voldemort and had, in Jonathon's opinion, a life expectancy to be measured in weeks rather than years, was all that much to the better. Should Harry produce an heir through Jennifer, then get killed, Jonathon would control the Potter and possibly even the Black inheritances as a magical guardian until the child reached the age of majority.
The meeting with Potter had made an impression on Jonathon in that he was starting to rethink his plan on revenge. He would have to do some more thinking, possibly even try to convince his mother that the diaries were for real. For now, however, Jonathon needed to bring himself to a state of readiness for the upcoming mission.
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Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
Office of the Headmistress
The people gathered together for the rescue mission was certainly a diverse group. They had decided on a fast strike group, sacrificing manpower for speed and effectiveness. The decision was made that this was not to be a full out frontal assault, but rather a quick insert and retreat, hopefully with no casualties on either side. The rescuers really hoping that they would be able to do the extraction without even meeting any of Riddle's Death Eaters, but if they did, it would be as bloodless as possible, using only stunners if they could. Since they had no real intel on the layout of the house, they were assuming that the prisoners would be held in the basement, since that would be the easiest place to fortify against intrusion. The assault team consisted of Harry, Fred and George Weasley, Jonathon Dumbledore, Mad-Eye Moody, and Draco Malfoy.
Draco's role was to scout out the house and find the Dumbledores, then report back as to the easiest route to make the assault. In this, Draco had an advantage that none of the others could match. Since his fourth year, when Barty Crouch Jr. impersonating Mad-Eye Moody had turned him into a white ferret, Draco had actually been very impressed with the feeling of being in an animal form and had spent the past two years working to become an animagus. It had only been a short three weeks past that he had finally made the breakthrough and had been able to transform into his animal form, that of a nondescript grey squirrel. Harry and the Weasley twins had began training to become animagi, but none of the three had yet to find their animal forms.
When they had started the meeting, Harry had passed each one a Galleon charmed by Hermione to act as sort of a magical pager to notify each person that the time for the rescue had come. The members that were away from Hogwarts would then apparate to the gates, meeting up with the others. The group would then portkey from Hogwarts to Riddle's hideout.
What none of them realized at the time was that their planning session was not as secret as they might have liked. At Gringotts, the goblin Warcry was watching and taking notes. When the meeting broke up and the wizards left McGonagall's office, Warcry put in an urgent call to Flickaxe in order to update him on the planning session. After hearing the plans, Flickaxe sat back and thought a moment.
"Put together three or four warriors to make sure that their mission is successful and that no harm comes to either Potter-Black, Malfoy, or the young Lord Dumbledore. It would be best if all of the rescuers and hostages are unhurt, but if need be the others are expendable. No harm must come to the heirs. It goes without saying that Voldemort's people are disposable. The more taken out now, the fewer that can cause problems later." Flickaxe shook his head. He was disappointed in the wizards for not realizing that fact and including it in their plans. It was a good thing that they had a common sense goblin watching out for them. Of course, if they had any common sense at all, they would have just hired a goblin hit team and sat back while the job was done correctly.
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Voldemort's Hideout
"Is everyone ready to go?" Voldemort, although appearing cocky, was not as confident as he seemed. This raid would, if successful, take care of his money problems for the foreseeable future. He had been so impressed with the amount of money collected from the department store raid where his people had taken the armoured car bags that he decided to strike at the source. He had his people following different armoured cars on their routes, discovering the location of the terminal for the trucks and scouting out what defenses the company had. He had also figured out that the best time to hit them would be roughly 2:00 am when the last truck had checked back in and the vault would be full. This would be much easier than hitting Gringotts, after all, it was just muggles. What kind of real defense could they muster?
Seeing the nods from his Death Eaters, Voldemort pulled out a piece of rope that he had made into a portkey that would drop them in the loading dock area of the armoured car company. He wanted to make sure that this went smoothly, so he took almost all of his Death Eaters with him, leaving only a skeleton crew of four junior Death Eaters to guard the prisoners. Considering the shape that the Dumbledores were in, he didn't even need that many, but better safe than sorry. The raiding party grabbed onto the rope and, with a word from Voldemort, disappeared.
Roughly 5 minutes after Voldemort and his crew left, 6 people appeared in a small copse of woods about 100 meters from the house. One of those people disappeared from sight, then a small grey blur streaked across the ground and up a trellis to disappear into a broken attic window. After a nerve wracking 10 minutes, the squirrel ran back to the group and turned back into Draco Malfoy.
"Ok, the wards are nothing special, in fact a pretty sloppy job. I can't believe that the Dark Lord put them in place himself, they have a big hole about 10 feet from the northwest corner of the house. Once we get inside that ward, we can just sidle next to the house to the back door. There are three Death Eaters up on the second floor playing cards and one in the basement on guard duty. If we go in quietly, we should be able to stun the guard, slip right back out and portkey out when we get past the wards." Seeing nods of agreement from the others, Draco led them, single file toward the hole in the wards.
Once inside, the group silently made their way to the basement. Mad-Eye had stayed outside the door to avoid his wooden leg from making noise on the floor and to guard the exit route. Once they got to the basement, Jonathon shoved open the door and sent a quick stunner at the lone guard, taking him down before he could raise the alarm. They then slipped in and untied Albus and Violet.
The two hostages were in bad shape, having been the recipients of Bellatrix Lestrange's tender mercies. Whenever she would get a bit bored, she would drop into the basement for some creative torture. As long as the hostages were alive, the polyjuice potion would work. There was nothing that said that the donor had to be uninjured or even sane. The torture had the added effect of keeping them weak enough that they could not make a serious escape attempt. It was shortly after freeing Albus from his bindings that everything went straight to hell.
During Draco's recon of the house, there was one being that he had missed. A house elf had been coming down to the basement to bring the guard a sandwich and had spotted the raiding party just before they entered the basement. The frightened elf had slipped back into a hallway and popped up to the second floor and notified the remaining Death Eaters of the raid. The Death Eaters had then silently slipped down the stairs and come in behind the rescuers. The rescue party had made a fatal mistake by getting overconfident and not leaving a watcher behind to guard against this very event. The first clue that they were in trouble was when they heard the beginning of the killing curse being thrown at the group. As the green light streaked toward Draco, Albus moved faster than anyone would have thought possible. Shoving Draco out of the way, Albus Dumbledore redeemed himself by intercepting the killing curse with his own body. Harry and the twins immediately hit the Death Eater with simultaneous stunners, taking him out of the action. Curses and stunners filled the room and, in a few seconds, it was all over, with all of the Death Eaters out for the count. Hearing the commotion, Mad-Eye came thundering in the door and caught the rearmost Death Eater in a full body bind. Thumping his way into the room, Mad-Eye snorted in disgust.
"What a bloody muck-up! How many times have I told you, 'Constant Vigilance?' You could have all been killed!" As the group looked down, shamefaced, he continued. "So, geniuses, what is your next move?"
Fred spoke up. "George and I will take Albus back with us. We don't leave him behind for Snakeface to gloat over. Whatever wrong Albus has done in the past, he saved our lives here at the cost of his own life. He deserves whatever dignity we can give him." Seeing Jonathon and Violet's grateful looks, Harry broke in.
"Jonathon, you help your mother," and pointing at Dumbledore's killer, "Draco and I will take this bastard back with us to face charges for the killing curse. Mad-Eye, you guard our retreat in case Riddle has any more surprises waiting. We all go back to Hogwarts to sort this out. With this Death Eater in custody, our testimony that Violet and Albus were captives, and Violet taking Veritaserum, we can get her cleared. Let's go."
With that, the group slipped out of the house and left.
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Bigalow's Armoured Car Service
London
The robbery started bad and quickly got worse. Voldemort and his Death Eaters, however, had no clue that anything was wrong. It started as soon as they portkeyed into the loading dock. Bellatrix was polyjuiced into Violet Dumbledore and Dawlish was imitating Albus, both carrying muggle weapons as well as wands. Dawlish, of course, needed the muggle weapon to carry out his impersonation of a squibbed Albus, but the others were carrying them to make an impression on the muggle guards. They figured that they would not be taken seriously if they came in waving what the guards would assume to be short sticks. They needed the employees to assist them in removing the most amount of money in the shortest period of time. Afterward they would dispose of most of the guards, leaving some alive as witnesses who would identify the 'Dumbledores'. Their mistake was underestimating the muggles.
When the raiders portkeyed in, they never noticed the surveillance cameras mounted on the wall. Up on the third floor, a guard just happened to glance up from his crossword puzzle and spotted the group on the monitor. Since the group, other than Voldemort and the 'Dumbledores' were wearing black robes and masks, it was pretty obvious that they were not employees. The guard hit a panic button, locking the counting room doors and shutting the vault to minimize the amount of money left in the open. The vault then set the time lock. This also put the remaining guards on alert, giving them time to pull their weapons. Voldemort knew nothing of this.
Strolling up to the counting room door, the front Death Eater unlocked it with a simple unlocking charm. They charged into the room right into a hail of bullets. Since the Death Eaters were not just a little overconfident, (after all, they were going against mere muggles!) they had not even bothered to put up simple shields. Although most shields would stop a bullet or two before collapsing, they did not even have this dubious bit of protection. Within 10 seconds, there were seven Death Eaters laying dead on the floor, half of Voldemort's raiding party. A few more precious seconds were wasted as the wizards attempted to fire their muggle weapons. Some of them had their safeties on, some had not had a bullet jacked into the chamber of their semi-automatic weapons, and still others did not even have loaded weapons. They had acquired the weapons, but other than Dawlish, none of the pureblood wizards had any training in handling muggle weapons.
Quickly dropping their guns, the wizards fell back to what they knew best, magic. Within seconds, the green lights of the killing curse filled the counting room, taking down all but one of the defending guards. With a look of disgust, Voldemort stunned the last guard and strolled into the room. There was actually less money in the counting room than on a typical armoured car stop. Waking up the guard, Voldemort pointed his wand at the man and said, 'CRUCIO!' After the guard had writhed in agony for a few seconds, Voldemort released the curse.
"Now that you know that I can cause you more pain than you have ever felt, tell me where the rest of the money is before I make you wish that I had simply killed you along with your comrades."
The guard gasped out, "Its in the vault!" He pointed at the huge steel door.
"Violet, please unlock the door so that we may reap the spoils." Voldemort hissed. Bellatrix lazily waved her wand at the vault door and shot an unlocking spell at it. The dials of the combination whirled, going back and forth, then stopped. The door did not unlock. The Death Eaters were floored. Bellatrix spun around and pointed her wand at the guard.
"Worm! Why does it not open?" She placed a short crucio on the guard just to make sure he knew that she meant business.
"Its on a time lock! It doesn't matter how many times you put the combination in, it will not unlock until the time is up!"
"And when will that be?"
The guard cringed, knowing that these people with their strange weapons and tortures were not going to be pleased. "When it goes into an emergency lockdown like this, it will not reopen for 12 hours."
Pointing his wand at the door, Voldemort angrily loosed a blasting curse at the vault door. It hit the 2 foot thick polished steel door and bounced off, hitting one of the Death Eaters and taking his head off. The others ducked to avoid the flying blood and brains. Just then the wail of police sirens could be heard entering the armoured car company yard. Voldemort had no intention of facing down a force of muggle police with the few Death Eaters he had left. He quickly gave his orders.
"Take these bags and grab everything left out. Once the bags are loaded, shrink them down and we'll go." He made a quick wand motion and stunned the remaining guard. "He should make a good witness."
As the Death Eaters were loading their bags, Dawlish lost his disguise, reflecting Albus Dumbledore's death back at the hideout. Voldemort did not notice until they were portkeying away. When they disappeared from the room, appearing back at the hideout, something happened that added insult to the injury that they had suffered. The Death Eaters had loaded everything that looked like money into the bags. Along with the Queen's good British pounds were several anti-theft dye packs. There were at least three per bag. The dye packs exploded, covering both the money and the robbers in a violently purple coloured dye. The Weasley twins would have been greatly impressed with the results. That particular dye, developed by a squib as a joke, was impervious to any kind of cleaning charm or detergent. The money was ruined and the robbers would have to let the coloration wear off.
Arriving back at the hideout, Voldemort had an even bigger shock. His hostages were missing along with one of his guards. The other three guards were dismembered and their body parts strewn throughout the house. The goblins had waited until the rescue party had left, then made sure that the remaining Death Eater guards would never again be a factor in the war. This was a message to Voldemort that he was up against someone not to be trifled with. It was also a warning that he needed a new hideout.
A/N: It is a pretty long chapter with much more action than normal. In the near future, the goblins will get their comeuppance.