For disclaimer and author notes please see chapter 1.
1989-08-01 10:00 UTC, location unknown
Hobby, Sirius, and Remus were at Nick and Penny's place shortly after breakfast. Of course they could not have kept Harry from visiting his aunt Penny and uncle Nick if he had insisted, and that would have made this discussion a little more difficult, indeed almost impossible, considering the kids did not know any of this.
But he had not; he was happy to spend the time with Hermione - they'd probably be discussing their party, the other kids, whatever. Hermione's parents would not be home for some of the time, but they trusted the kids enough to not worry about that, and anyway Sirius had asked Kreacher to keep a discreet eye on them.
"Hobby told us what happened after we left; it seems we have two things to discuss?", said Penny.
"Yup. Three if you count the curious incident of the hand exploding after the wand was removed".
"Well, we went over that yesterday", said Hobby. He then repeated his theory, and explained how they had tried it with a warming charm and Nick had not felt anything unusual. "So, short of asking Ollivander, this is a dead-end, unless you want to keep Poppy Pomfrey on hand and experiment", he grinned.
Wisely, no one was that desperate to check out an obscure bit of potential wandlore.
"So that leaves us with Dumbledore, and Edgecombe", said Sirius. "Edgecombe first, I suggest".
"Best to get it done. There's not a lot to discuss anyway. I knew there were a lot of sympathisers, and as I said earlier she almost certainly was one of them - shutting down the floo when attacking someone was standard fare, as you all know from the first war, so she must have been involved. She'll get her just desserts, Amelia will make sure of that, but the question is, how do we tell Amelia to look deeper in the ministry, without revealing my unique perspective?"
"Seer excuse again?", suggested Remus.
"Could work. Almost certainly will, actually. But only if it's framed in the right context and with the right incentive. Can we find anyone else? Do you know anyone else who may be one? That would make the case much stronger!"
"Well, Albert Runcorn, for sure. He's not a death-eater as far as I know, and I can't believe I did not think of him till now, but he's sort of a male Umbridge, without the annoying voice."
"But more than that", he continued, "the plain fact is, the whole ministry was so corrupt that anyone who toed the ministry line blindly, can potentially be a death-eater sympathiser. The best example is Percy Weasley. To this day I do not know if he was merely a misguided, brown-nosing, fool, or he was at least a blood supremacist, if not worse", said Hobby.
"Actually that's a good point: it should all come down to blood supremacy. Anyone who believes that purebloods are inherently superior, are at least potential Voldemort sympathisers. Even if they did not actually do anything in your timeline, they would do so if they had the opportunity", said Sirius.
Noting Remus's look of mild disapproval, he explained. "Look at this way Remus. If all they did was shut off the floo at a specific time, without asking for details, did they actually commit murder? As far as they are concerned, they did something quite trivial and, for people who can apparate, causes only minor inconvenience. Even if they are human enough to rationalise away their deeds by thinking like this, it is clear that, going by who would have asked them to do this, and other details, they know someone is going to be trapped in their home as a result of their actions".
Hobby took up the argument. "In all likelihood, it's only the opportunity to do something that distinguishes one blood-supremacist from another - someone like Edgecombe versus someone, say, in the department of international magical co-operation, which has very little, if any, say in anything domestic", he said.
"Getting back to Amelia, we don't have to use the seer excuse if we're informing her of one more confirmed sympathiser. The only problem is Runcorn has not done anything wrong yet, so her hands will be tied."
"He may not have to do anything wrong. I believe Amelia is already forcing Edgecombe's trial to use veritaserum, and ask what she did pre-1981. If something comes out of that, she will also ask who else was involved, and in what way they were involved. Maybe Runcorn's name will come up there", said Sirius.
"And if it doesn't?"
"How bad is Runcorn actually?", asked Nick.
Hobby narrated to him his own knowledge of Runcorn - the episode of Cattermole's muggle-born wife and how Runcorn had taunted Cattermole. It was extremely clear he was a blood supremacist.
"In fact", concluded Hobby, "now that I think about it, he was the second non-death-eater who probably had a body count close to actual death-eaters. Can we take the chance that that was limited to Umbridge and Runcorn? Isn't it reasonable to assume that there would be at least a few more in the ministry? Wouldn't they be planning anything? If Amelia cannot bring him in, shouldn't the Phantom just do that, and we interrogate him ourselves?"
Penny had to sound a note of caution. "What will you do if he is found guilty of what you suspect, and is actively spreading hate? That still won't give Amelia enough to bring him in. In fact, you may end up embarrassing Amelia if your illegal kidnap and interrogation comes out."
"And besides", added Nick, "you promised Amelia Dolohov was a special case, and you would not do anything illegal once she became Minister. How does kidnapping and questioning Runcorn square with that?"
"It doesn't", said Hobby, somewhat morosely, after staying silent a few beats. "Unless we can trap him in some way into revealing his nature by actually doing something".
"Look, how long is this going to go on? There's no end to this. Is it too much to expect that anyone who works at the ministry should be fair to all its citizens, without any discrimination?"
While the others continued to debate how best to manage this, Sirius sat back, thinking.
If the aurors who had found him laughing had done the right thing that November day in 1981, he would not have been sent to Azkaban. His godson would have grown up with him, safe and happy. Well he was safe and happy now, but he had suffered - somewhat - for a few years.
And yet, murderers had walked free at the same time, probably even that same day that he had been thrown in prison.
The whole system was screwed up. There was absolutely no accountability then, and even now only a few posts were filled with good people. If they turned bad, however unlikely that may be, their world would once again be on the brink of war, extinction, or exposure.
They had magic - why couldn't they use magic to enforce the correct behaviour? Obviously, he snorted to himself, because the purebloods want to retain the license to selectively flout rules!
He vaguely remembered something he heard on some TV program, likely something historical. Something to the effect that "selective enforcement of the law is the first sign of tyranny". Or was it fascism, he thought. Either way, this could not go on!
He'd need to think about this...
1989-08-01 09:00 UTC, DMLE Offices
While these momentous debates were going on in parts unknown, Amelia had had Edgecombe brought from her holding cell to an interrogation room.
Normally, it was not the minister's job to interrogate anyone - in fact the safety protocols required that she should not even be in the same room, and ideally not even in the same floor. (The reason? Way back in the '40s, an attempt to rescue one of Grindelwald's senior-most officers had gone so horribly wrong that an entire floor of the building had nearly been destroyed, with the then sitting Minister nearly had had his head crushed by a falling piece of masonry!)
But this was different. First of all, all indications were that no one even knew Edgecombe had been arrested. Her daughter appeared to be away on holiday with a friend and her family, and her husband was out of the country on business.
More importantly, Amelia's sister-in-law and niece were in the house when this woman had attempted her attack. There was no way she would be keeping her distance on this.
Edgecombe was brought in, and Amelia had to admit she looked like hell. Apart from the lost right arm, now just a six-inch stub from her right shoulder, it seemed some of her aurors had evidently roughed her up a bit - the thought that there were several children in the house that she had attacked, and that she had known it was a children's party (temporary floo connections had to have a reason, and Sirius had seen no reason to hide that), was considered a bit too much, especially in these peaceful times. (No doubt, if Fudge was still in charge, she would have gotten away!)
Amelia started her investigation like a blunt instrument - no preamble, no "softening up" the suspect, no small talk. Not even - for the record - asking her name. She did not want to give this woman any of the normal courtesies. Basically, treat her like the dirtiest dregs of Knockturn, rather than a ministry employee and colleague in some sense.
She held out the veritaserum, saying nothing. Edgecombe looked defiant, so - still without a word - forced Edgecombe's nose shut with a spell and waited. It only took a few seconds; Edgecombe opened her mouth, Amelia threw in a few drops (probably a lot more than the legal maximum, but she would claim Edgecombe was being obstructive).
"Who else knew you were going to do what you did yesterday?"
"No one."
"How long have you been planning this?"
"Since that blood-traitor applied for a temporary floo connection."
So, a couple of days or so, if she remembered correctly.
"What were you planning to do?"
"I was planning to execute the blood-traitor and his half-blood ward."
This took it to straight-up attempted murder of a sitting Wizengamot Lord, not to mention a young child who was not even of Hogwarts age yet.
"How were you planning to do it?"
"A reductor at Black, and I hadn't thought of what to do with Potter. Maybe a wide area explosion, if I could not get close enough to him for anything more focused".
One of the aurors in the room gasped. The others grew even more pissed off.
"Did you know there were other children there?"
"Yes."
"Were you willing to risk the lives of all those other children also?"
"They're all blood-traitors anyway."
"If you had the chance, would you kill them, even if Harry Potter was not in the group?"
"I do not know". Evidently, there was enough ambiguity in her mind that the potion could not force a categorical answer.
Amelia tried a different tack. "If you had known only that my niece and Madam Longbottom's nephew were with Harry Potter, would you still risk a wide area explosion curse?"
"Yes". No hesitation.
Amelia moved the conversation over.
"Who else knew you were going to do what you did yesterday?". Yes, this was a repeat, but the mind of someone under the truth potion sometimes needed a bit of time to switch topics. Repeating a question often helped with that.
"No one."
"Who else might have known?"
"I do not know".
"Who else may have guessed?"
"I do not know".
Amelia motioned to the auror who had the recording quill. With a quick charm, the quill was stopped in its tracks, waiting to be restarted.
"Who else in the ministry would do something like this, if they had the opportunity to do so?" Amelia knew neither this question nor its answer would wash with the Wizengamot - she may even lose the main case. Fudge was gone, but something so open-ended as this was not going to be appreciated, regardless of how damning the results might be.
Edgecombe did not reply. Apparently guesswork was not part of the potion's effects.
Sighing, Amelia closed off with a very important question. "Did you help the death-eaters' cause, or Lord Voldemort's cause in any way during the years 1977 to 1981?"
Edgecombe was silent again. This meant she could not answer yes or no, usually because the question had some ambiguity in what was actually being asked. In this case, for instance, if she merely suspected that some of the requests she got were to aid the death-eaters, but did not actually know, she could neither say "yes" nor could she say "no". The question would have to be rephrased.
Fortunately, she had prepared for this. She had set a young auror on a mind-numbingly boring task last night, and the results were in hand.
"Records show that between November 1st, 1980 and October 31, 1981, there were 220 temporary floo shutdowns. The following year, there were three. Just three. Who requested most of those 220 shutdowns during that period?"
"Lucius Malfoy".
Damn! A dead-end. She wished he was still alive now.
"Did you actually carry out most of them?"
"All of them".
"Even though most of them were to locations that Malfoy had no connection with?"
"Yes".
"Did you know people would die because of your actions?"
"Yes".
Oh well, we get at least one death-eater sympathiser sentenced, hopefully to death, thought Amelia.
Further investigation did not get them any useful results. Not even Runcorn's name - which she was specifically told to watch for - came up. It seemed there were a lot of watertight compartments in the metaphorical death-eater ship, and the only man who had access to several of them was now dead.
1989-08-01 11:00 UTC, location unknown
Meanwile, Sirius had been thinking to himself, wondering how to ensure the ministry was staffed only - or at least mostly - with honest people.
The others had moved on to a much more heated discussion. Penny and Hobby on one side, Nick on the other, with Remus somewhat ambivalent.
Penny had switched the topic from Edgecombe and the ministry and Amelia and Runcorn, to something she had been chafing at the bit since last night to discuss.
"What do we do about Dumbledore? I want to skin him alive, and then boil him in a vat of oil".
Hobby stared at her in shock. He was equally angry at Dumbledore, but Penny had never spoken like this. Clearly, her god-daughter was very precious to her.
"OK I'm only joking. Waste of oil, anyway", she said, half-pouting.
"What about skinning him alive?"
"That would still happen".
Nick decided to put a stop to it. "Enough, you two. You have no evidence that this actually happened even in Hobby's past life. You have no reason to believe he might do the same now. So you're judging him for something that, not only has he not done yet, but he might not do, and he may not have done in a past life! That's stretching it way too far!"
Hobby and Penny clearly were not impressed. Oh they agreed with the logic, they just didn't agree with the conclusion.
"What if we used veritaserum on him?", asked Hobby.
"What would you ask him? 'Did you kill Pandora in my past life?'", asked Nick, a bit testily.
"No", said Hobby patiently, though he was a bit miffed at Nick's tone. "How about: 'Are you planning to kill Pandora Lovegood?'".
"Depends. Does he know anything about Pandora's work at all? I asked Pandora, and she said she did not see any reason why he might know. She's an unspeakable; she knows how to keep things quiet. The only reason she went to, or probably went to, Dumbledore in your past life is to get access to you to run some tests."
"OK, we'll ask him, 'If Pandora came to you with a plan to remove the horcrux from Harry's scar, would you kill her?'"
Penny sighed. "Won't work Hobby. Too hypothetical. It's bloody hard to frame a question that's concrete enough for him to answer under the truth serum."
"What does that mean?"
"Let me put it this way", interjected Remus. "The truth serum forces people to answer questions, but it literally only cares about the truth. In order to preserve 'truth', it actively prevents people from thinking too deeply, forming conjectures or hypothesising, or giving subjective opinions. It's impossible to ask a hypothetical question and get an answer".
"Oh". Hobby was silent.
"How about we lay a trap for him?"
"What kind of trap?", growled Penny. This contentious issue was causing several - hopefully minor - rifts within this extended family, it would seem.
Hobby held up both his hands in surrender. He stammered a bit at the anger in Penny's eyes, and said "what if the Phantom went to him and said he was close to finding a way to fix this, but needed some help completing the potion or whatever".
"Depends. The Phantom is someone to be feared, Pandora isn't anyone's idea of a fearsome witch. You can't extrapolate from his reaction to one, to get an idea of how he would react to the other."
"OK, how about-"
Penny glared at Hobby and interrupted. "I sincerely hope you were not intending to use Pandora herself to lay the trap?"
"Well, not directly, but a polyjuiced version, yes. Pandora, Xeno, and Luna often go off on trips - or at least that is what I remember my timeline's Luna telling me once. Just keep that quiet so he doesn't know they've left, then I take polyjuice as her and go ask him. If Nick can come along secretly, he may be able to pick up Dumbledore's surface thoughts at the time I ask the question".
Nick still did not like the idea. "That would still be just a hypothesis."
"No, I'd force him into taking some action."
"And if he attempts to kill you, you'd know, is that it?"
"Yes".
"And then what? Are you willing to kill him for this?"
Hobby sighed.
"Look Nick, for many years, I idolised the man. He was everything I wanted to be when I got that old. But the last year or two, was a revelation. Too many gaps, too many missed opportunities, too much time wasted. And then the whole idea that he didn't even force a trial for Sirius while he did the exact opposite for Snape has been really biting me. Why didn't I realise that in my 3rd year? I don't know, but he's upto a lot more tricks than any of us can guess at".
"All this is still circumstantial, Hobby. I'm sure he had his reasons. Sure he would have made a few mistakes, but are you suggesting he's actively evil?"
"I wouldn't have said that, until we met Remus in this timeline. Remus was brilliant - he'd worked out a fool-proof, or rather Dumbledore-poof, way of finding Harry and at least figuring out how he was doing, if not more. All this was done in a timeline that absolutely could not have been affected by my return as Hobby. So what happened in my timeline? Why did Remus not find me?"
"We discussed this yesterday", said Remus. "Pandora said he must have obliviated me and sent me on my way, making me think I was still dependent on him and others' kindness even for basic necessities like food and shelter". He almost sounded bitter, as if that has really happened to him.
Nick pounced on that. "Exactly", he half-shouted. "I can well believe Dumbledore would have obliviated Pandora, in fact I'm pretty sure he would have - no need to even check. Why would he kill someone, when the same result can be achieved by a simpler method?"
"Maybe he knew Pandora had backup copies of her notes somewhere, which would help her regain her memory later, and then she would even remember going to Dumbledore, but then forgetting why and what happened there?", asked Hobby.
"No. It's simpler than that. Pandora has been working on this for more than a few years. You can't obliviate all that without leaving large holes in her memory".
"Then how could he do that for me", asked Remus.
"Simple. The holes in your memory are muggle interactions. Plus you're a werewolf. He could fill those gaps with drunken hazes. Gaps in your muggle interactions don't count - as long as you don't go back to the muggle world and make someone ask 'hey Remus where have you been' or some such thing, no one is the wiser. Not so with Pandora - he'd have to obliviate Xeno and Luna also, to be absolutely safe", said Penny.
"Why would they be involved in Pandora's research?"
"They wouldn't. But to fill the gaps in Pandora's memories, he has to use something, and that should not - later - be found to clash with what Xeno remembers or what Luna remembers".
Nick was still not convinced, but he did not say anything. He had said his piece. He knew Penny would not follow through on this - this was just 'heat of the moment' talk. And if she didn't, neither would Hobby. Although, if a safe way of finding out what Dumbledore actually will do, turns up..., he thought.
AN: Funny side note. My son (in real life), reviewed recently. Considering the nickname he always uses, it was very hard to resist responding to it! After all, how often do you get to start a message with "Vader, I am your father" :)