Harry and the Pirates, Chapter 77
Unlikely Vigilantes
Once they were safely in the woods, Harry asked his companions: "Besides your wands, what do you have for weapons?"
Dudley drew his Makarov, but the others all shrugged their shoulders. "Chort vozmi!" Harry cursed. "Oh, well...can't be helped. I've my own pistol, and between us, I think we know enough curses and combat magic to deal with anything we might face."
"Are you sure, Harry?" asked Hermione. "You do know that we're not adult wizards and witches yet."
"Yes, I'm sure, Hermione. You know Dudley and I grew up in one of the most dangerous towns in Asia, and we're still here and intact. You, Luna, Ron and Ginny both handled it pretty well. I think that we can, at least, defend ourselves, and if possible, go on the counterattack."
Hermione produced a beaded shoulder bag that Harry recognized as one she'd bought in a Roanapur street market a few days before leaving for Britain. Opening it, she pulled out quite a bit more than Harry would have thought the bag would hold, finally coming up with a pair of Muggle binoculars.
"Daddy gave me these when I was younger. I used to be a birder, and I managed to spot quite a few species that aren't common in Britain." She smiled impishly. "I should take that up again when we're back at Hogwarts. Scotland's birds are different to the ones in the Home Counties."
"Nice idea. But, right now, can you spot what's causing the ruckus?" At Harry's request, Hermione lifted the binoculars to her eyes, focusing them on the area where the disturbance seemed to be centered. She let out a long, low whistle.
"Those swine! They've captured the Muggles who own this field, and are tormenting them! And...oh, my God...they're wearing what look like Death Eater robes and masks!" She handed the binoculars to Harry. "See for yourself!"
Peering through the binoculars, at first, Harry couldn't see anything. With a muffled curse on his own incompetence, he adjusted the binoculars so that everything was in clear focus. He drew in a breath at what he saw. "Those are Death Eaters, or people dressed as Death Eaters, sure as I'm born!" he snarled. "Look! They've stunned those poor Muggles, and now they're levitating them in the air!"
"Those bastards," Dudley growled. "Where the hell are the damn Aurors?"
"Probably drunk, or chasing tail. They're generally about as useful as Chief Watsup's men, back home." Both boys laughed rather bitterly. They knew, all too well, how useless the police of Roanapur were. Outnumbered, underpaid, riddled with double agents and cursed with low morale, they were little more than a fig leaf the real rulers of Roanapur used to hide their total control of the town.
"And I notice that even though those assholes are badly, badly outnumbered, nobody seems to be rallying against them! They're all running and screaming! Sheep!" Harry said bitterly. He had a hatred of cowardice that came from long years associating with Balalaika's Afghan veterans. One and all, they spoke scathingly of former comrades who hadn't held up their end in battle, but cowered and cringed among the rocks, expecting others to do all the fighting.
"Well, these sheep just happen to have some sheep dogs among them," Ron said. He pulled out his wand, with a wicked smile. "Want to see what kind of surprises we can give these thugs?"
"It'd be a feather in our caps if we capture some of them alive, wouldn't it?" asked Ginny. "Particularly if some of them had been accused before,but got off by pleading the Imperius."
"The Ministry's party line is that 'You-Know-Who' is dead and gone, so they'd have a hard time getting away with that plea again," Hermione said. "I wonder if any of our Housemates' parents are down there?"
"Let's go find out!" As they moved closer, a familiar voice came from nearby.
"I don't think you should try it on with them," drawled Draco Malfoy. He was leaning against a tree near where they were, looking very much at home. "If those are real live Death Eaters, they're dangerous!"
"You would know, wouldn't you?" snarled Ron. "You've Death Eaters in your family!"
"So do a lot of other people, Weasel," Draco replied cooly. "The movement was widespread in its day. And its members weren't exactly known for their friendliness to Muggles, Muggle-borns, or Muggle-lovers." He grinned nastily at Hermione, Ginny and Luna. "If you want to be up there, spinning around and showing your knickers off to all and sundry…" At the insinuation, Dudley snarled and made as if to hit Draco, only to be restrained by Harry and Luna.
"Ignore him. He's just trying to wind you up, Dudley," Harry said. He turned to Draco. "If you don't have any more useful advice for us, my advice to you is to make like that tree behind you...and leave!"
"Fine, fine. Scorn my valuable warnings. But if you come to grief, don't come bawling and blaming me!" Draco moved off through the trees, and Harry noted that he did not move in the direction of the disturbance. He wondered if that meant that Draco and the Malfoys were really not involved.
Once they got close enough, they could see what was going on. A dozen or so masked, robed Death Eaters, or at least, people in Death Eater regalia and masks, were Levitating the owner of the campground and his family far above their heads. They were chanting something Harry couldn't quite make out.
"Do you know what they're saying, Hermione?" he asked. In their group, Hermione was the "facts person," and was routinely asked such things.
Hermione scrunched her face up, thinking. "No. I can't understand a thing."
"In any case," Ron snapped, "why don't we break up their fun?"
"I don't want to take a chance on those Muggles being hurt. This sort of thing is the sort of thing that gives Muggles good reason to hate and fear us," Harry replied. He had expected urgings to instant action from Ron. Ron was always the most impulsive of their group.
"We girls will catch the Muggles with Levitation Charms, and put them down somewhere safe," Luna said. "Meanwhile, you big strong men can give those scum something to think about."
Carefully, stealthily, they crept closer to the center of the uproar. As Harry got closer, he could hear the Death Eaters shouting abuse at the Muggles, and at the Ministry, the Aurors and magical society in general.
"How do you like flying, you filthy Muggle trash? Do you really think you're superior to us?"
"The Aurors are scum! They're all on the take! They threw innocent people into Azkaban without even a trial!"
To himself, Harry had to admit that the Death Eaters, much as he hated them, had a few valid points. While he'd had little to do with the Aurors, preferring to avoid their notice until he was wealthy and powerful enough to be able to deal with them, he did know that there had been abuses. I wonder how many people joined the Death Eaters because they were the only ones fighting the Ministry and Aurors? He thought of Sirius Black, and ground his teeth in anger.
But, for better or worse, he and the Death Eaters were on different sides, and always would be. As a "half-blood," and, worse, as the one who had defeated their idolized Dark Lord, any loyal Death Eaters would always hate him.
While he was thinking, he and the others had been preparing for action. He and Dudley had their Makarovs out, and their wands ready to hand. The others had wands out, and he saw Hermione casting a Silencing Charm. Clever girl, he thought. The bark of their pistols would instantly alert people to where they were, and he didn't think for a second that the Death Eaters would hesitate to defend themselves. Particularly from him and his friends.
At Harry's signal, they launched their attack. Harry and Dudley picked targets and let fly with their pistols. At that range, hitting anything was iffy at best, but they'd both been very well-trained by some of the best marksmen in Asia. Several Death Eaters suddenly screamed and clutched themselves, trying to staunch wounds.
This distracted the group from their sport, and Hermione, Ginny and Luna grabbed control of the Muggles, floating them gently back to earth. Once they were safely on the ground, the girls led them quickly away. Meanwhile, Ron lay down a barrage of spells while Harry and Dudley shot their magazines dry. Before long, both pistols were empty, and Harry and Dudley quickly re-holstered them, drawing their own wands. Soon all three boys were blazing away at their masked enemies.
The Death Eaters had been caught completely off-guard, and for a few precious minutes, fumbled around trying to find what was hurting them so. Several of them were still uninjured, and before Harry and his friends could do anything, they turned on the spot, Apparating out to safety. The others crumpled, clutching bleeding wounds and crying out in pain.
"Incarcerus!" Harry yelled, and his friends all followed his lead. The wounded Death Eaters were soon all tied up on the ground, helpless. Harry and the others strode out, covering them with wands. They were keeping a wary eye out. Just because this lot had been stopped didn't mean they didn't have backup somewhere in the crowd.
As they bent down to take off the Death Eaters' masks, they were interrupted. Several men and women in Aurors' robes came running up, along with some people with flash cameras. "Thank you, boys and girls, we'll take it from here," the foremost Auror said.
"Excuse me? Have we been introduced?" Harry straightened up, not sheathing his wand, but not pointing it at anybody. "My friends and I got these creeps, and we want to know who they are!"
"That's not necessary, young man," said a nearby witch, a squat woman in unlovely red robes. She reminded Harry very much of a toad. "The duly constituted authorities will handle them!"
"Let's at least unmask them, and let these fine ladies and gentlemen from the press get their pictures. I'm sure the Daily Prophet will be interested," said Luna. Harry gave her a narrow look. To someone who didn't know her, she would have seemed to be the picture of guileless innocence, but Harry did know Luna. She didn't trust the Aurors any more than Harry or Dudley did, albeit for different reasons.
The Aurors acted utterly shocked at such a suggestion, and Hermione took action. She pointed her wand at the captives and yelled "Accio masks!" The masks were ripped from the captives' faces, and the reporters shouted with glee, snapping picture after picture as the captives writhed and tried to turn their faces away from the cameras. Ron smiled proudly at his girlfriend's action, and Ginny clapped her on the back.
"How dare you?" thundered the lead Auror. "These are respectable citizens, pillars of the community! How dare you expose them to infamy in this way?"
"How dare we?" asked Dudley. "Well, it looks to us like you're trying to sweep this all under the carpet, and we don't care for that! The Death Eaters were a menace, and it looks like they still are!"
"These, young man, are not Death Eaters. In any case, You-Know-Who was defeated more than ten years ago, and is almost certainly dead!" At that statement, Harry looked very closely at the toad-like witch. He thought she was someone worth remembering.
"And who are you, madame?" Harry asked, as politely as Balalaika herself would have wished. Even when killing some poor fool who'd crossed her, Balalaika never lost her cool or forgot her manners.
"I? I am Dolores Umbridge, Undersecretary to the Ministry of Magic! I am not accustomed to being spoken to that way by a mere child!"
"A pleasure to meet you, Madame Umbridge," Harry lied. "May I introduce myself and my friends? I'm Harry Potter. Yes, that Harry Potter. The girls are Hermione Granger, top student in her year at Hogwarts, Ginny Weasley, daughter to a Ministry employee, and Luna Lovegood, daughter to the editor of the Quibbler magazine. The boys are Ronald Weasley, Ginny's brother, and my cousin and all-but-brother, Dudley Dursley."
"I'll remember you." Umbridge hissed. "Oh, yes, I'll remember you!" Harry was fine with that. He would also remember Dolores Umbridge, and she was now marked down on his "probable enemies" list. While she might well not be a Death Eater herself, she was far too sympathetic to them to ever be on Harry's "good" list.
A tall, bald black man in Auror's robes came up, and the other Aurors visibly deferred to him. "I'm Kingsley Shacklebolt. I take it these are our troublemakers?"
"Yes, sir, they are. They were wearing Death Eater robes and masks...I have the masks right here if you want to examine them...and were baiting Muggles. They had the owner of this campground and his family Stunned, and were floating them in the air, shouting all sorts of nasty things about Muggles and the Aurors and the Ministry." At this last, Harry noted that Dolores Umbridge narrowed her eyes menacingly, scowling at their captives. He wondered if she was really on the side of the Dark, or just a Ministry true believer.
Harry had run into people like that before. They would smile and nod if whatever they had chosen to place their faith in said that the sun rose in the west...while watching it rise in the east. He had never really understood them, and he knew Dudley didn't, either. While they both had a lot of faith in Balalaika, they were aware that she was fallible and capable of error. She had warned them about that herself.
While Harry ruminated, Shacklebolt leaned down to look at the captives, who glared up at him as though he were personally responsible for their plight. "Well, well, well! You do know that even owning those robes and masks, much less wearing them publicly and baiting Muggles, is likely to earn you a spell in Azkaban, don't you?"
"Piss off, filth," snarled one of the captives. "We're telling you nothing!"
"Oh, I very much doubt that, McGee," Shacklebolt purred. "If nothing else, a dose of Veritaserum should loosen your tongue!" He turned to the listening Aurors. "Take them away! To the safe cells in the Ministry! And if any of them get away, some of you will be in those cells yourselves, as probable accomplices and accessories!" The Aurors went pale at his threats and hastened to obey his commands. Hustling the captives to their feet, heedless of their defiant yells, they all grabbed onto a rope that Shacklebolt pulled out of his bag, and disappeared.
Once the Aurors and their captives had disappeared, Shacklebolt turned to Harry and his friends. "That was bravely done! Quite a few people still react with mindless fear when they see those robes and masks! Why did you do it?"
"We were offended, sir," Luna said. She faced the formidable Auror perfectly calmly, without a trace of fear. Harry was reminded of how she had faced down Balalaika. He remembered Dudley saying "Luna isn't fearless, so much as having decided that she is the mistress of her fears, and not the other way around. She thinks being ruled by one's fears is very silly."
"Sensible of her," Harry had responded. When he'd told Balalaika about that, the Russian woman had nodded and smiled, and said that Luna could have been a great military officer if she had not been a witch.
Shacklebolt smiled down at Luna. Harry had noticed that Luna seemed to be able to twist most men around her little finger when she wanted to do so. "Well, if more people reacted to them the way you brave boys and girls did, and fewer went into mindless fear, we'd have a lot less trouble from those people!"
Several reporters started shouting questions. Harry held up a hand to quiet them. "People, people, please! You can report on this, but my friends and I would prefer that our names stay well out of it. Just say 'a group of public-spirited citizens' took action to eliminate the threat." He had read more than enough mealy-mouthed articles in the English-language weekly in Roanapur, the Roanapur News, to be able to come up with the correct phrases.
"He's within his rights," Shacklebolt rumbled. "He and his friends are underage, and wizard law does protect underage wizards and witches from unwanted publicity." At Shacklebolt's words, the reporters shut up. Harry made a mental note that Kingsley Shacklebolt was not apparently a person to be trifled with. Unlike the lazy, corrupt Chief Watsap and his men, there seemed to be some Aurors who took their jobs seriously and tried to enforce the laws.
After a certain amount of back-and-forth, Shacklebolt released them and Harry and his friends all headed back to their encampment. "Well," Ron drawled, "I for one couldn't have asked for a better end to our evening. What about you?"
"I'm just glad we were able to help those poor Muggles," Luna replied. "I felt so sorry for them! They hadn't done anything, and those bastards were just tormenting them for the fun of it!"
"And because they could get away with it," Dudley said. Gathering Luna close, he went on: "But we showed them a thing or two, didn't we, just?"
"Let's hope this doesn't hurt PD Enterprises," Harry said. "If we get linked to this, it might hurt sales." Hermione stared at him like he'd grown a second head.
"How can you think of money at a time like this?" she gasped, then caught herself. "Oh, right. Roanapur." She shook her head. "Where greed is God."
"What can I say?" Harry shrugged his shoulders. "We've business to attend to, and business doesn't go away. At least those reporters will keep our names out of this."
"And we're not known publicly to be the leaders of PD Enterprises," Dudley pointed out. "Good thing, too. If we were known to be the leaders, a lot of people would try muscling us out of our monopoly." He shrugged. "The goblins wouldn't care much, one way or another, as long as they got their cut."
When they got back, they found Draco up pacing around. "Well? What happened?"
"We took care of those swine," Harry responded. "Hope your parents weren't among them!"
"No, they weren't, and I can prove it!" Draco snapped. He turned and thumped on an elaborate tent nearby. "Dad? Mum? Are you decent?"
The tent opened, and Lucius Malfoy came out. Unlike the other times Harry had seen him, he was disheveled and his robes had clearly been thrown on in great haste. "What is it, Draco? Is the game over already? You know your mother and I are in a serious discussion."
Behind him, Narcissa Malfoy emerged. Her hair was every which way and her robes were even more dishevelled than her husband. She had a smile on her face that reminded Harry of a glutton just after enjoying a huge elaborate meal. "Darling," she purred, wrapping her arms around Lucius' shoulders, "let's let the children enjoy themselves. We're not really done yet, are we?"
As his parents went back into the tent, Draco turned bright red with embarrassment. Harry, Dudley, and all their friends suppressed grins with more or less success.
"'A serious discussion?' Is that what they're calling it now?" Ginny purred into Harry's ear. "Serious discussions look like fun!"
Harry smiled. Apparently his plan to eliminate or at least reduce the influence of Abraxas Malfoy on Draco was working. He looked forward to the coming year, which promised to be peaceful and serene.
