Author's Notes: Thank you Arnel for beta'ing

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Chapter 82

Nat couldn't settle to save her life. Her nerves were on edge as she paced around Teddy's house, which was where they'd ended up after Harry had kicked them out the Ministry. Nat hadn't even paid close enough attention to where Al was taking her as he'd led her from the room with the poor man who she now knew was Scorpius' aunt's husband. Merlin, this was complicated. When she finally realized she was in Victoire and Teddy's living room, it was just to have Al tell her to stay put and then he was gone again.

Victoire looked alarmed, but didn't say much because the children were running around her. "Hold the baby," she'd said as she passed Ireland over to Nat and left the room, likely to contact Teddy.

She needn't have bothered, though. Teddy showed up less than ten minutes later much to his children's delight, but the pinched look on his face told Nat that things were not going well at the Ministry.

Then Al was back and he brought Daphne Greengrass with him, her face pale and her hands shaking. "I'm sorry to intrude," Daphne said to Victoire. "I'm not sure if you remember me."

"I do," Victoire told her with a small smile. "It's nice to see you again, Daphne."

"You have a lovely home," Daphne told her but Nat could hear that it was robotic.

She was a shell of herself, more than at any point Nat had seen her. Admittedly, Nat hadn't met her often in the years she'd known Scorpius. He was probably still at work. "Where's Lily?"

"She's asleep," Al told her. "I left her a note, but told her to stay home. I know," he said, holding up a hand when Nat opened her mouth. "She isn't going to want to stay home, but she's too far along to travel by Floo and she still doesn't know how to drive. I let Scorpius know what was going on, using the mirrors. He's going to head home soon and I said we'd keep him posted." The mirrors… they didn't use them often, even though they'd had them for communication for years and years, but sometimes they came in handy. She'd have suspected Scorpius would have kept his at home, but apparently, he'd taken it with him to work. Interesting.

"Why did you bring us here?" Nat asked just as Amelia and Olivia clamped themselves onto Al's legs, one on each. It wasn't as though they could talk freely with the children around.

"I told him to come here," Teddy told Nat simply. "If someone were going to use this as an opportunity to try to get to you, they'd know you were at home at Ivy Run. I've also told Ginny to leave, she's gone to stay with Lily. The newer homes are just as protected as Harry and Ginny's house, but their location is not as well known to anyone outside of the family. Now," he said as he surveyed his family grimly. "I need to get back to Gringotts to speak to the Minister and give her an update. I'll be back as soon as I can, and I'll keep you updated as I know." He turned to Daphne and his face softened. "I don't know what's going to happen, but your husband is definitely under the Imperius Curse. That doesn't mean he's innocent or that you can stay with him, it just might mean that Crabbe needed him controlled to get him to come to England. But there is hope and if anyone can save him, Harry and Bill can."

Victoire, who hadn't said much of anything up until this point, rushed over to her husband and into his arms. "Is my dad okay? Is Harry?"

"I don't know anything," Teddy admitted as he brushed a kiss over her blonde locks. "I'll tell you as soon as I know something."

"You are not going back to the Ministry," Victoire said forcefully, glaring up at him.

"I'm not going back," he promised and Nat could tell he meant it, even if he didn't want to. "They need me alive and whole. I have to stay with the Minister."

"Alright," Victoire said as she led Teddy away for a private kiss.

Nat glanced down at the sleeping baby and sighed. Her stomach was in knots and she knew it was going to be bad. That man, whether innocent or not, was likely to die very soon in a horrible way and he might take out a bunch of people with him, including Harry. She glanced over to Al and saw him pacing the living room, the toddlers still attached to him, talking into his mirror. She focused and heard Scorpius' voice, then Lily's. Scorpius must be home now. Then she heard Ginny ask a question and Al answered, never once being slowed by the nearly two stones of toddler planted on each leg.

The Floo came to life and moments later, Rose, Andrew and Claire were standing in the living room

Emma squealed happily and ran towards her and finally Amelia and Olivia abandoned Al in favor of their new favorite cousin.

"Take it up to the nursery," Victoire told all the children. "Claire, do you have this?"

"Yep!" Claire assured her as she herded the kids towards the stairs and up to the large play room they had with toys.

"What's happening?" Rose asked as she surveyed the room once the bigger children were gone.

Nat was the one who spoke up, knowing she had to write the narrative so someone didn't accidentally blurt out her secret in front of Daphne. "I was visiting Al at the Ministry," she told them and knew everyone but Daphne would know what that meant. "Daphne's husband was arrested and brought in for his association with Crabbe. Rick went up to look at him and came back and told us he'd been turned into some kind of bomb, but Rick didn't know what kind. We were told to evacuate."

"Teddy came along a moment later and told me to come here," Al said, picking up the story. "That's about all we know."

"Teddy is going to be at Gringotts in a room they have secured for the Minister if she has to evacuate the Ministry," Victoire explained to Rose and Andrew. "Your mum is probably with the Minister."

Rose's expression fell as she closed her eyes and shook her head. "There is no way she'd have left Uncle Harry to deal with this on his own. She'll be with him."

Andrew drew an arm around Rose's waist and pulled her in close.

No one knew what to say, as they knew Rose was right. Hermione wasn't going to get out of things.

"Technically, Dad can force Aunt Hermione to leave," Al pointed out hesitantly. They all looked at him and he shrugged. "Okay, no, so she's never just listened when he's told her to do something. I just meant he could force her out as he's in charge of security."

It felt hopeless. They waited and made food to feed the children. Al and Andrew took the kids outside to run some of their energy out while Nat kept the mirror handy to contact Scorpius and Lily in case they heard from Teddy.

Daphne sat numbly in a chair in the corner, staring out into the world as they waited. Nat lost track of time in her thoughts about what the man had looked like. He'd been under the Imperius Curse, she was sure of that. He wasn't completely in control of his actions, but what did that mean for Daphne? The curse on the man was like nothing she'd ever seen before. She'd never gone to a Peruvian tomb or seen any of their ancient magicals work. She was glad, now, that they hadn't as she was unsure that it wouldn't have just blown up on them. How on earth had Crabbe learned how to do the curse and to put it on a person? People were unstable and magical people used magic to get around. It could have gone off at any point!

"How does your husband travel?" Nat said, turning to Daphne.

She startled the older woman and it took Daphne a moment to focus on Nat before she could answer. "He will travel by Floo, but if he was trying to get into England unnoticed, he'd have taken their Muggle plane. He has a few of them. He wouldn't have a Floo to enter here that someone wouldn't have been monitoring."

Nat thought about how much they had tightened international travel by Floo and knew there was no way that Anthony Bugatti could have arrived without alerting someone in the Ministry. All international Floo transport had to go through the Ministry. There was no exception to that rule, not even for the Minister. The rules had been laxer in the past, but with everything that was going on, they tightened security and removed all access. "If he used a Muggle jet, then he had a chance of making it here without the wizards knowing, but Harry had his name and he'd have put him on the Muggle terrorist watch list or something." There was a list for wizards that the Muggles were to track if they traveled by Muggle means, but she couldn't remember what the name was exactly.

The Floo lit up again and Fleur came through, followed by Dominique, her partner Gwen, and then five minutes after that, Louis.

"Do we know anything about Dad yet?" Louis asked as he paced around the room, his hands shoved in his pockets.

"No," Fleur answered tightly as she sat next to Nat, who had passed her the baby to help calm her. Fleur snuggled the girl up, pressing a kiss to her temple.

"I'll go outside with the others," Louis offered on a long sigh. "Someone tell us as soon as you hear."

Nat helped Teeny and Victoire get food prepared while they waited, almost entirely in tense silence. Daphne eventually stood to help, telling them she had to be useful or she was going to go spare. They waited.

Nat nearly screamed when Harry's stag Patronus showed up in the living room and spoke, with his voice, telling them they had a plan and they were going to enact it now but it would be many hours before they knew anything.

"What does that mean?" Fleur demanded, yelling at the stag that was fading away before their very eyes. "Uhh!" she closed her eyes and then began to shush the baby, who had woken in all the commotion.

"Waiting sucks," Nat said quietly to Victoire as they stood together in the kitchen.

"It's what it means to be married to an Auror," Victoire told her with a long sigh. "Get used to it now."

Nat opened her mouth to argue she wasn't going to marry an Auror, but she shut it as the men came back in with children who claimed to be starving.

~*~

It took them four hours to drive to Wales in the large vehicle Hermione had been procured for them. Harry drove half the way and Bill the other half while he and Vick traded off watching the sleeping Bugatti for signs of impending doom. The large, black SUV moved magically through the traffic, which was putting Harry on edge, but Rick assured them that it wasn't doing anything to the magic around the man's cursed body.

"We're entering Wales now," Hermione said quietly from her perch in the front seat next to Bill. He noted his brother-in-law's knuckles were white on the steering wheel and he couldn't blame him for that. One false move and they might blow everything up. They were all very quiet, knowing just how serious all of this was.

"It should be another thirty minutes," Glenna said from the back seat, finally breaking the tense silence from the rest of the group. "It's been a number of years since I've been there, but I remember the way."

"If that was World War II," Rick said to her thoughtfully, "That was like… what? Seventy-five, eighty years ago?"

"It is eighty-one years," Glenna told him. "I last saw it in 1945, young man, before I left for Arizona."

"I haven't been to Arizona," Rick told her, managing a conversation when the rest of them were all too uptight to do more than small talk. It was probably his youth and inability to see just how serious everything was, but that was unfair. Rick could actually see the curse and how volatile it was. Maybe this was his way of coping. "I lived in Maryland before I went to school."

"I have been to Maryland when I went to Washington DC," Glenna said, the words coming out with their slight accent telling of her European birth. "It was a funny state. They have their flag on everything."

"Yeah," Rick agreed sheepishly. "It's pretty ugly, too, but everyone in the Muggle world loves it. Anyway, have you been the Grand Canyon?"

Harry tuned them out and focused on the road, watching as Hermione directed Bill to turn off the main road and onto another one that was clearly magically concealed. He would have missed it if he hadn't been looking, and he was magical. Once they turned, though, he saw it was well maintained.

He thought about his meeting with the Minister, which had been brief as they needed to move. He'd sent the Patronus to his wife and to Victoire to let them know what was going on, but he thought of Minister Allison Macmillan's face as he told her the situation and that they might have to blow up the dragon reserve in Wales. She, just like Harry, had never heard of the reserve which begged the question of how Hermione had learned about it, but Hermione's explanation was she'd read it somewhere.

If there was a person who was likely to have gone through and read every obscure old document in the Ministry, it was going to be Hermione.

"Up there," Hermione said, pointing to a rolling field of green grass ahead of them.

"This is the reserve?" Harry asked curiously but Hermione shook her head.

"This is an illusion," Hermione explained as Bill parked the large car. "We need to go ahead of us for a few minutes and then take down the wards surrounding the place.

"I can feel them," Bill said as he unbuckled his seat belt.

Rick, who was leaning forward in his seat, looked absolutely mesmerized. "I can see them! Wow!"

"What does it look like to you?" Glenna asked the kid.

"It looks like…" he tilted his head a bit and then laughed. "I can see the world beyond the veil, which is scarred and lifeless. It has a bunch of unexploded things in there, but the veil itself looks like a soap bubble, only with more colors."

"Hm," Glenna nodded thoughtfully.

"Let's get to work," Vick said on a grim sigh. Harry had learned that Vick had a family, as well, and he knew the man didn't want to die today but they had a plan for that.

Harry waited in the SUV with Hermione while Bill, Vick, Glenna and Rick went around and pulled down the veil. It took them a solid hour before Harry began to see what was beyond the veil, but by then it was getting dark and he knew he wasn't seeing the full scope of horror of just what the old dragon reserve had once looked like.

He'd seen the preserves, the ones that were still in use. They were always well kept, thriving with living plants and creatures too small to annoy the dragons. They had the dragon keepers themselves, of course, living in protected areas of the preserves. He saw the remains on some of the homes, but mostly it was charred foundations and fallen stones. What on earth had they been doing here?

"We're ready to move him," Bill said, startling Harry back to the present. He hadn't even seen him approach.

"Alright," Harry said as he exited the SUV and with Bill and Vick's help, they moved the man onto a stretcher they'd brought with them before all four men grabbed a pole to start carrying him. It was not fun moving the man without magic but it wasn't worth the risk.

Hermione followed behind them carrying a golden vase that was magical and old, about three hundred years, but not so valuable that anyone would cry foul if the thing was blown up.

Glenna, who waited for them in the preserve, had been very specific about what they could use to transfer the curse.

"I can stay to help," Rick offered again after they'd set the man's body on the ground and Hermione had placed the vase next to him. "I might be able to help contain it."

"No, no," Glenna waved off the offer as she had before. "Put up the protections we talked about before and then drive, at least five miles away. I expect Rick will be able to feel when it's done, no matter what containment we use. When he says it's safe, you can come back to check on us."

It was not the first time they'd gone over the plan, and as with every other time Harry loathed the plan and respected the woman completely for what she was about to try. Rick had suggested a few ways to move the curse, but Glenna had no ability to move the curses like Nat could. Rick was having to tell Glenna how to do something that only one person on the planet could do, at least that they knew of, but she couldn't be there to help. She'd come up with something on her own and said it was the best she could, but Harry knew in his gut she was simply offering to die for the rest of them.

He hated himself for letting her, but he was going to do so anyway. She wasn't married, didn't have children, and had no other family. They'd been Muggle Jews in World War II in Germany. She was the only one to survive and she'd carried that with her. It made him doubly sick to think of what she'd been through, but she'd quietly reminded him that she knew what sacrifice was and then she'd pointed out that she maybe had another ten years left of life, while he had another hundred.

So he let it go.

He stepped back with Hermione while Bill and Vick quickly put the wards back up and then they were in the black car, driving away as dust swirled in the darkened space behind them, shining in motes from the taillights.

"We can stop here," Hermione told them as Bill pulled over at the main road, onto a patch of dirt. "Harry, can you send a message to the Minister and let her know it's safe to get back into the Ministry?"

"I'm going to wait until we can get a team in to sweep," Harry told her and contemplated who he wanted to handle that. It could be Teddy, but he wanted Teddy to stay with the Minister until this was over. "I'll get Raeburns to conduct it and report back to us."

After Harry sent the message to Raeburns, he turned to see Rick staring out the back window, watching the dark sky behind them for something that only Rick would be able to see. "You okay?"

"She shouldn't be there alone," Rick said in the tone that only someone who was so young could possibly use. "I could have helped."

"And you could have died," Harry reminded him. "To her, you are a child and there is no way she would let you risk cutting your life short."

"Let's be real," Vick said as he shifted in his seat, trying to get comfortable. They didn't know how long they'd have to wait. "All of us are children compared to her. I admire her courage and her bravery."

Harry knew he had a point, but before he could say anything, Rick jumped in his seat. "Holy shit…"

Harry spun around to try to scan the sky but he didn't see anything. "Take us back!"

~*~