A Chance Encounter
Chapter 19
-Harry-
Double checking his watch, Harry waited in the common room alongside Ron who kept fiddling with his shirt. They were waiting on their girlfriends, getting ready to go on a doubled ate. They'd have already been on their way, but Fleur apparently wanted to give Hermione a makeover first which the other fourth year Gryffindor girls decided to get in on. The upper years just volunteered for Ginny watching duty.
Hearing footsteps on the stairs, and silently hoping it wasn't Ginny having snuck past her 'watchers', Harry looked up and saw it was Fleur and Hermione.
No matter how many times he saw her, Fleur made his jaw drop every time she felt like dressing up. Her hair was shining like spun gold as her clothes, picked for the muggle world, hugged her body like a second skin. Beside the French beauty, Hermione was dressed similarly and flushing cherry red even as Ron gaped slack jawed.
"See Hermione? I told you ze time would be well worth it." Fleur assured the brunette, "Now come, we have some boys to show off in ze muggle world."
"Right." Harry grinned, snapping out of his stupor to link his arm with Fleur's, "I know you don't spend much time there Fleur, and Ron, I know you've never been. So, Hermione and I are going to show you two how it's done muggle style."
"Let's keep this between us though." Ron chuckled, "If Dad finds out then he'll start giving me homework about what it was like."
"A foot of parchment on the precise functions of a rubber duck! On my recliner by Monday!" Harry did in his best parody of a stern Mr. Weasley.
"From what you've told me of zem, I am surprised that your father never tried to become the Muggle Studies teacher here." Fleur shrugged, "Or that he doesn't just go spend time in the muggle world."
"Mom thinks he'd never be able to handle himself in the muggle world without breaking the statue of secrecy and won't let him go out by himself." Ron frowned, "Plus she sees the class as an unrespectable position to teach."
"Of course she does." Harry shook his head, still torn on how to feel about Mrs. Weasley as while she'd helped him a lot since he joined the wizarding world, she had still tried to defend Ginny's attempt to douse him with love potion.
"Come on, we need to have some fun and I have just the thing in mind." Hermione grinned, "I looked into it and found out that the movie theatre in my hometown is playing some reruns of classics. Time to show these two what good movies are."
-Amelia-
Frowning, Amelia read through the reports on the Barty Crouch investigation. One of the healers for that ward had been found with their memories of the last fortnight erased along with a solid chunk of hair torn from their scalp. All signs leading to them having been attacked, hair stolen, and impersonated via Polyjuice for the murder.
Fudge, of course, was insisting it was probably just a case of a healer drinking too much and forgetting things plus someone not paying attention to what potted plant was being delivered to someone's room.
He, of course, went ignored.
Murders, abductions, mind wiping, liberal use of the unforgiveables. It felt like the war against Voldemort all over again, which was likely all the incentive Fudge needed to stick his head in the sand.
"We've tried everything boss, but the obliviation team says there's no way to recover those memories. Whoever cast the spell did it violently so as to make them unfixable." Shacklebolt frowned as he and Dawlish came to give their report.
"We do have one lead." She shook her head as she tapped the report of the initial situation that had led to Crouch being hospitalized, "He was held under the imperius for months. He insisted it was his son who did so. A son that was supposed to have died in Azkaban years ago. Dawlish, you're to go to Azkaban and have the body exhumed, check for signs of Polyjuice in the system at time of death. There should be traces eve on the skeleton. Shacklebolt, you're to work through the list of everyone who would have known of Crouch being brought into the hospital. See if you can find out where the leak was."
"Ma'am!" the two aurors saluted her before running off to handle their designated tasks. Now she had to see how many preparations she could get done without Fudge fucking everything up like he usually does.
-Sirius-
"Here we are." Sirius scowled in distaste as he unlocked the door to Grimmuald Place, the ancient Blake home reeking of foul odors and worse memories.
"Charming." Martin Delacour grimaced as the French Minister, the auror Pierre, and one of the higher up French unspeakables followed him inside, a heavily warded and shrunk trunk resting heavily in Sirius' pocket.
"Do you think that word will reach Voldemort about this?" Martin asked once the door was securely sealed behind them, "The last thing we want to do is tip him off. Especially if this doesn't pay off."
"With what I paid to the Goblins to make sure they kept their mouths shut it had better not reach him." Sirius grumbled with a scowl of distaste. As the last living male member of the Black family, he'd been named the Lord along with his exoneration. With that he'd been able to lay claim to the Lestrange vaults as they were tied to the Blacks through Bellatrix's marriage contract and as they were actually tried and convicted, they'd given up the rights to their fortune. It just wasn't an action that was typically done in 'polite society'.
Luckily, he couldn't care less about being polite.
"Let's get to a place where we can work." The unspeakable, one who had only given him the title of 'number eight', eyes the pocket where Sirius had the trunk containing the entirety of the Lestrange Vaults, "If Voldemort truly does have multiple Horcruxes then we don't have time to waste. That monster was bad enough before, I don't France to have to put up with his raids again."
"Especially with Fudge being in Malfoy's pocket." Sirius spat on the floor as they walked past, heading to the kitchen where he remembered a massive table being.
"So, you're positive about your device?" Martin asked number eight as they entered the kitchen, Kreacher hissing at them angrily and scurrying away "It can track the others if we find one?"
"Voldemort isn't the first madman to make multiple Horcruxes." Number eight scoffed, "The compass has limits admittedly, but so long as you're within a mile of a Horcrux from the same soul shard it can point you in the correct direction." As the man spoke, he pulled out a sphere that was explained to him as an omnidirectional compass. Get a piece of soul, put it in, and it could be used to track down the others. Perfect for lunatics with multiple soul containers.
So, the conveyor line began where Sirius would levitate out the items from the trunk, number eight would check for and remove any dangerous curses, and then it was passed off to Martin and Pierre to catalogue.
"Sweet Merlin." Sirius' eyes widened as he levitated one of the last items out, "It can't be."
"You recognize this cup?" Martin noted Sirius' shock.
"It's the Goblet of Helga Hufflepuff." Sirius shook himself out of his stupor, "This is an ancient treasure. I'd heard that the Smith family held onto it, using it to claim relation to Hufflepuff but nobody knows how true that is. This is the Horcrux, it has to be." Only Voldemort would be arrogant enough to defile a treasure like a Founders Relic with a bit of his blighted spirit.
"You're right." Number Eight nodded, as the man's grip on his wand changed, an incantation beginning in a strange almost eldritch tongue that Sirius didn't recognize. Slowly, painfully slowly, he saw the twisting screaming wraith be pulled out of the cup, herded into the sphere.
"Perfect." Martin sighed in relief as the last of the smokey wraith settled into the sphere, the inside swirling as it attuned itself, "Now to…begin…" the French minister trailed off, all four of them staring at the sphere that now had an arrow in its depths. An arrow pointing straight up. There was a Horcrux nearby.
-Crouch Jr-
Smirking, Crouch poured himself a bottle of expensive scotch he'd swiped from the Healer's house when he was obliviating them. "Here's to you pops." Barty smirked as he raised the glass up to the air "May you burn in hell with all the muggles and mudbloods of the world."
Still, it wasn't as satisfying as it would have been if he'd been able to be there himself. To see the light leave his father's eyes, to hear the man scream under his wand.
Regardless, the third task would soon arrive, and with it his master's revival. He'd be able to shed this ridiculous mask and stop taking that vile potion. At this point he was honestly sure it had killed any sense of taste he'd had left.