Harry and the Pirates

by Technomad

Chapter 64

The Golden Apple Ploy

The PD Enterprises group began to research their target in depth. The Coca-Cola distributorship was making very good money, so cash was not a problem. They found back files of some wizarding publications that chronicled daily life in the magical community, such as Witch Weekly, in the Hogwarts library. The financial pages of the Daily Prophet also proved an unexpected windfall of information, since important transactions were reported there. Hermione began going through them systematically, writing down every detail she could find about Abraxas Malfoy. Gradually, they began building a picture of a man none of them had ever seen face-to-face.

The elder Mr. Malfoy apparently ran his extended family with a tight hand. He controlled the Malfoy family fortune, which included holdings in many wizarding businesses. About half or so of the businesses on Diagon Alley were partly-owned by the Malfoys, or completely owned by them, with front men and women running them. "No wonder the Malfoys are so rich," Harry commented, when Hermione came to him with a tentative chart of the Malfoys' holdings.

"It's kind of ironic that they have to do so much business with Muggles," Dudley said, looking the chart over. "Of course, that's where they get the raw materials for a lot of the stuff they make or sell."

"How do they deal with them?" asked Harry. "Considering how clueless Draco is about the Muggle world, I can't imagine his family being very knowledgable about that world."

"They've probably got Squib relatives, or descendants of relatives, that they don't like talking about," Ron explained. "We've got a cousin who's an accountant…he didn't get a Hogwarts letter, but it was still early enough that we could get him into Muggle school. Most Pureblood families have Squibs, but it's not something that's usually discussed."

"And why is that?" Hermione asked. Her voice was dripping icicles, and she was giving Ron a Glare of Doom that made Harry very happy that he was not in Ron's place. Dudley was also giving Ron the fish-eye. "What's wrong with being non-magical?"

"Well…" Clearly, Ron had never thought about the question before, and he squirmed under Hermione and Dudley's gimlet stares. "It's just that to us, magic is so natural, so much a part of our world, that to not have it seems to us like being crippled or blind. A Squib in our world has a dreadful time getting along. Look at Mr. Filch! Why do you think he's so bitter?"

"I hadn't thought of that, but that does make a lot of sense. Even so, we Muggles aren't ashamed of crippled or blind relatives. We make accomodations for them. Can't you do that, too?" Hermione was still looking very ominous, and Dudley was smiling a very unpleasant smile.

"What can we do? Almost any work in the magical community depends on magic to get done. For them, it's unbelievably frustrating. They generally are sent into the Muggle world, with phony papers that the Ministry of Magic provides. They're usually young enough that they adapt, and they do provide a very useful interface for our community with the greater outside world. Quite a few of them are informants for the Ministry, alerting us to things we need to know, like wizards and witches abusing their powers to bully Muggles."

"In any case," Ginny said, "we're getting off-subject. What would be a good way to get at Abraxas Malfoy?"

"He's all about his social standing," Hermione said. She pointed to some stories in back issues of the Prophet. "That could hurt him, if something came out that damaged his image."

"I wonder how we could plant the rumour that he avoided Azkaban by shopping a bunch of his fellow Death Nibblers?" Harry mused. He grinned at the others' shocked expressions. "What? Hey, I'm the one who beat their master, and I don't even remember how! The bloke they all kowtow to was beaten by a baby! How can anybody take them seriously?"

LunA, Ron and Ginny were suddenly very serious. "You may laugh at them, Harry, but nobody who lived through the last time they were really active can. They killed too many people, they did too much harm. To us, even though we're too young to remember directly, it's not a laughing matter." Luna nodded agreement solemnly, her big silvery eyes suspiciously bright.

"Oh. Kind of like the Blitz is for Muggles," Hermione said. "That's one subject nobody makes jokes about. They're still picking up bomb damage in London, and the Blitz ended in 1945." A shadow passed over her face. "My grandfather was in the war. He never would say much about it other than that I was very fortunate to not have had to live through it."

"Very well, I can see your point. At the same time, treating them with studied disrespect weakens their hold on people's minds. The less people tremble and wet themselves when those clowns appear, the likelier they are to be able to successfully defend themselves."

"That's a good point," Ron said thoughtfully. "I wonder if we could get Fred and George in on figuring ways to prank those wankers when they come back? If, for example, instead of those scary silver masks they wear, what if they found themselves wearing clown masks?"

"And maybe Transfigure their robes to be glow-in-the-dark, or bright colors, instead of black?" Ginny asked, getting into the spirit of things.

"This is all very well," Hermione said, in a businesslike tone, "but right now we're brainstorming ways to discredit Abraxas Malfoy. How can we best convince his former comrades to take him out for us? One advantage of that is that they might end up in Azkaban, and wouldn't that be an awful shame?" She made a face of satiric sorrow. "That would be just dreadful! Of course, they could have the most interesting reunions with their old comrades!" She smiled brightly. "You might say we're just facilitating reunification of old friends!" Everybody laughed, very unkindly.

"Do you think they'd pay attention to anonymous notes telling them that their relatives' misfortune was mainly due to Abraxas shopping them?" Dudley asked. "Or would they just blow them off as the work of cranks?"

"Maybe we could plant 'historical retrospective' articles in the Wizarding press, about those years?" Luna said. "Things hinting at how many Death Eaters who were just as guilty as those who were imprisoned or Kissed got off, because 'well-connected members of the organisation' had bought their freedom not just with gold, but with the names and crime records of their fellow Death Eaters.'"

"It won't work overnight, but if we keep it up, by the end of the year Abraxas Malfoy should not be in good odour with his dear old comrades," mused Hermione. "We've got to look at this as a long-term project, people. Abraxas Malfoy is a 'pillar of magical society,' at least, that's how he's generally referred to in the press. Discrediting him to the point that someone starts taking shots at him won't happen at once."

"Luna, do you know people who work on Witch Weekly or the Daily Prophet?" asked Harry. "If we can get some of them working with us on this, it'll be a lot easier to either slip in stories that we want, or have existing stories slanted in such a way to make Abraxas Malfoy look bad…but in such a way that he can't take action against the newspaper or the writer."

Luna looked thoughtful, and Dudley put his arm around her shoulders. "Yes, quite a few people start out on The Quibbler, to move on to the bigger publications once they've got some experience. I've friends who work for both publications, and I can talk to them about this." She gave them a sudden, impish grin. "People outside the news business don't realise how easy it is for us to shape public opinion. All it takes is to push this story, or spike that one, or downplay a story we don't want to get legs under it. I'm told that it works that way in the Muggle world, too."

"It does," Dudley said, as Harry and Hermione both nodded. "We've got something called the 'Internet' nowadays, that serves as an alternate source of information, but in the old days, the mainstream media were what there was for most people."

"Balalaika used to say that if you controlled the information people received, you could control the people." Harry said. "She never forgave the old Soviet government for lying to the Soviet peoples about the Afghan war and how it was going. When she got back from Afghanistan, she was shocked at how many falsehoods the people she met believed, but that was all they were allowed to report in the Soviet press." Seeing the blank looks on the faces of their friends who'd been raised in the magical world, he went on: "I'll explain later."

Since Harry had always come through on his promises to explain references to things in the Muggle world that they didn't understand, the wizard-raised present nodded and got back to their project. "Who do you think could do the writing?" asked Ginny.

Luna visibly cogitated. "Well…there's this woman called Rita Skeeter. She writes mainly for the Prophet and Witch Weekly. She has what Daddy calls a 'poison pen,' and doesn't care much whom she skewers. She's pureblooded, but never particularly part of the 'pureblood movement.'"

"Can she be bought?" Harry and Dudley both leaned forward. In their experience, most people could be bribed. Even Balalaika could be swayed with the promise of money, although there were some things, such as the safety and well-being of her employees, that she would not ever compromise on. "Do you know if she's rich?"

Luna, Ron and Ginny all thought about it. "Not that we know of. She's often at society events, but always as a reporter, never as an invitee. Since the really rich purebloods are very touchy about poor purebloods she doesn't rate an invitation." Luna finally answered. Ron and Ginny both looked sour at this. "I can check, though. Daddy would likely know, and he never fails to answer my questions."

"Owl him and ask. If she isn't well-off, we might be able to offer her enough money to go after Abraxas Malfoy, particularly if she gets to do it anonymously," Harry said. "She might not want to get involved if her name's directly on things. Death Eaters are dangerous people."

"Good point. And we'd best keep things on the Q.T. until we've got enough to bring that son-of-a-bitch down once and for all," Dudley chimed in. "We don't want him knowing we're working against him."

Everybody nodded rueful agreement. Love him or hate him, Abraxas Malfoy was a powerful mover-and-shaker in the magical community, and could probably manage to squelch impertinent upstarts, even if one of them was the "Boy-Who-Lived," easily. With that thought, the meeting broke up, and everybody got stuck in on their homework.

When contacted, Rita Skeeter proved to be very cooperative. In a letter to Luna (Harry did not want her to know he was involved in this project; he knew that as a celebrity himself, she would consider him just as fair a target as Abraxas Malfoy) she wrote:

While I have not yet gone into Mr. Malfoy's activities, I must say that his fast acquittal after the fall of You-Know-Who is highly suspicious. You may not know this, but I lost friends and family to the Death Eaters. I have a personal dislike of them, and would be happy to help them get the come-uppance they deserve.

Harry was glad to read this, but he was still inclined to be wary of Ms. Skeeeter. He made a mental note to check on the casualty lists from the time before Voldemort's destruction, since she could be lying. Either to ingratiate herself with the high-ranking purebloods, or for some other arcane reason. Life in Roanapur did not lead to a trusting nature. Neither did being Sorted Slytherin.

Hermione's discreet checks into Ms. Skeeter's claims bore fruit: "She did lose a brother, several cousins, and apparently a good few friends in the journalistic profession to Death Eater attacks, it seems. We should see how much money she wants, and whether we can raise that sum or not."

"The money should be no problem," Harry replied. He had not shared the information about his vault at Gringott's with anybody but Dudley. The fewer people knew that he was already independently well-off, the better, as far as he was concerned. He had enough worries about unreconstructed Death Eaters, or Vold-symps, taking shots at him without worrying about being kidnapped for ransom. He knew that Dudley would pay out anything to get him back, but he didn't trust any hypothetical kidnappers to keep their part of the bargain and release him, unharmed, upon payment of a ransom. The more so because he also knew that many ex-Death-Eaters would also pay well for him, and someone low-down enough to kidnap a child would be low-down enough to double-cross Dudley. And he couldn't count on Balalaika being able to help, either; she knew about the magical world but Harry didn't think she had any way to get at most of its denizens.

That thought made him remember Garcia Lovelace. He wondered, absently, how the Venezuelan boy was doing, and whether he was happy back in Caracas. He had been touched by the strong bond between Garcia and his maid, Roberta. For a second, he indulged in a happy reverie of what would happen if the Death Eaters were stupid enough to target the Lovelace mansion. Roberta, he figured, would be quite well able to make them rue the day they thought a "Muggle" house was easy pickings.

At least at Hogwarts, he was safe, he figured. Baskerville, the dog the girls had adopted, came into the room, and Harry skritched him behind the ears, luxuriating in the knowledge that Sirius Black was almost certainly miles away. That is, if he had an ounce of sense.

Once a schedule of payments was agreed on, and the first installment changed hands (Harry and his friends were not such naifs as to hand over the whole sum they had agreed on; the payment would be doled out over time, conditional on performance) Harry sat back to await developments.

Sure enough, in a few days, retrospective pieces began appearing, here and there in the wizarding press, that mentioned casually that some unnamed people were wondering how it was that certain accused Death Eaters "from prominent families" had been quickly absolved of guilt, while others "from families of lesser influence or prestige" had been thrown into Azkaban, sometimes without even the formality of a trial.

This set off a firestorm in the press, with loud angry denials of culpability issuing from some of the old families' heads, and accusations of favoritism and corruption from the relatives of those condemned. Then the relatives and friends of people who'd been victims of the Death Eaters jumped in, loudly saying that the exonerated were at least as guilty as the ones who'd been sent to Azkaban, fined, or exiled. Harry and his friends sat back and smiled to themselves at the furore they had stirred up. And the best part, Harry considered, was that none of it could be traced back to him! While he was well-known, he was not so ubiquitously in the news that he was the first person people thought of when those years were remembered.

At first, Abraxas Malfoy was not particularly singled out; he was just one of a number of "prominent, wealthy members of our community" who were mentioned as having been cleared of culpability suspiciously fast. Then one of the bereaved who had lost several family members to the Death Eaters named him by name, and soon a lot of the contretemps centered around him.

"If his old pals don't take him out, then maybe some of his old victims might?" Dudley speculated, as he and Harry pored over Witch Weekly. Like the Daily Prophet, the letters column was alive with invective, with pro- and anti-Death-Eater factions trading verbal salvoes. There had been open accusations that some of the exonerated had been exonerated at the price of betraying their fellows, and the pro-Death-Eater camp was split between those who had benefited from the easy grace that the Ministry had offered after the fall of Voldemort, and those who had not, or in many cases, their relatives and friends.

Harry and the rest of the PD Enterprises group followed the news gleefully. While being careful to keep up with their studies, they made sure to never miss an issue of any magical publication. They did not take out subscriptions, but the Hogwarts Library had subscriptions to every magazine and newspaper published in Wizarding Britain, as well as many from the Continent and farther overseas. Since some Death Eaters had been foreign, such as Igor Karkaroff, a Russian, the foreign press had picked up the latest British scandal and were running with it. Harry, Dudley and Hermione helped with the Eastern European magical journal, Zhurnal Volshevnikov, since most of it was in Russian, the lingua franca of much of the Eastern European magical community. Hermione knew enough French to be able to figure out articles in the French-language magical press, and with his elementary Spanish, Dudley took charge of keeping track of what turned up in the Spanish-language publications that the Hogwarts library carried. About the only language they didn't have among them was German, but that couldn't be easily helped.

One reason they were keeping very quiet about their project was that they shared a House with Draco Malfoy, as well as people whom they knew to be his creatures. While Pansy Parkinson had been helpful, there was no telling whether she would run blabbing to Draco, or to someone who would tattle to Draco, if she found out about what they were doing.

Time went on, as did school. PD Enterprises' soft-drink business was doing well, with orders coming in and being fulfilled, bringing fat profits in to the main PD Enterprises account. They were shared out according to the agreement, with percentages from each customer's order going to the person who had landed that account.

Ron was gloating one evening, looking over the money he had made. "You know, I may be able to swing a trip to Thailand this summer, for me and Ginny!" he said, his face lighting up in a jack o'lantern grin.

Harry smiled back; Ron's good mood was contagious. "That sounds wonderful, but keep in mind that you might have to bring along one of your brothers. Who do you think could go?"

Ron thought about it. "Well, Bill and Charlie can't go, most likely. They've both got jobs and can only get so much time off for holidays and such. And I don't want Fred or George, or worse yet, both of them at once, along. From what you've told me, they'd almost certainly prank the wrong people, and then they'd be killed." A shadow passed across his face for a second. "I don't always get along with them, and they've done things I can't easily forget, but they are still my brothers. I'd never be able to live with myself if something happened to them, and neither could Ginny. And I think that it would just about kill Mum and Dad. For all she yells at them, Mum's proud of how clever they are, and does think some of their tricks are funny. Dad just loves all his children."

"That leaves Percy. What about him?"

"That's…not a bad idea, now that I think on it." Ron smiled again. "Mum trusts Percy a lot and with him along, she can relax more and be fairly sure that we're under 'proper supervision.'" Ron chuckled rather evilly. "Despite what she says, and even thinks on the surface of her mind, I believe Mum's still afraid that the evil snake house is corrupting her two youngest. I know she had her heart set on a matching set of children, all in red-and-gold."

"And Percy might enjoy Roanapur, too," Harry said. "I've talked with him a few times about this and that, and I don't think he's as strait-laced as you seem to believe. A lot of that might have been because your mum put him in charge of his younger sibs when she'd had Ginny, and the twins made a dead set at him and ran him raggedy." Harry thought about the older Weasley boy, visualizing him the way he would someone he needed to describe to Balalaika or another Hotel Moscow member. Looked at with fresh eyes, he was tall, straight, slender, with clear skin, brilliant red hair and blue eyes, and (when he chose to show it, which wasn't too often) a nice smile. Harry smiled to himself. He could think of several people in Roanapur who would be very happy to meet such a handsome young man, and show him a few things he didn't know. Sister Eda will probably snap him right up!

"Well, I need to get my books. I've got some homework to get at." In Slytherin House, homework was taken seriously, unlike what Harry had heard was the case in Gryffindor. Goofing off or not turning in good homework would earn the slacker anything from a painful interview with the sixth- and seventh-year students, who monitored their juniors' work, on up to a very unpleasant tete-a-tete with Snape himself. Since nobody had ever enjoyed these experiences, Slytherins studied, and sought help with the subjects they were having trouble with before it affected their homework or grades.

Harry suddenly jerked out of his chair when he heard a yell from his dorm: "Scabbers! Where have you been? Scabbers…No! Baskerville, put him down! Oh, Merlin…it's YOU!" Yanking out his wand, he ran for his dorm, and noted that Hermione, Ginny, Dudley and Luna were right behind him.

End Chapter 64