[A/N: Thank you to Calamity Owl for beta-reading this chapter!]
Harry walked into his office the next evening for his first shift since he'd left for Banda Aceh to find a pile of memos on his desk and a Sue on his chair.
"Welcome back, ex-rookie," she said.
"Ex-rookie?" Harry asked.
"We've got a new rookie now," Sue said. "Owens started while we were out. He said the 'Q' word last night."
Harry winced. "How bad?"
"A call came in immediately from Umbridge's house." Sue vacated his chair as she spoke and they traded spots. In a moment, Harry had his chair back and Sue was in her usual spot leaning in his doorway. "We checked it out and it seemed legit, so we called for backup."
"Seemed legit?" Harry asked. "What happened?"
"Oz, John, and I went to check the house while I left Owens with Umbridge," Sue said. "While we were clearing the house, which turned out to be empty, we heard an apparition outside, or possibly two. The echoes made it hard to tell. When I came back out, Owens was out cold and Umbridge was gone."
"Gone?" Harry furrowed his brows. "Is she alright? I mean, she's still a bitch, but I didn't want her to die." Not quite yet, at least.
"That's the weird thing," Sue said. "Owens thinks she stunned him, but we don't have any proof. My gut feeling is that she didn't, because I found Owens carefully laid on his side and Umbridge would never care enough about another human being to turn them over after stunning to avoid tongue-swallowing. John and Oz think he fell like that by accident, but I have my doubts. Anyway, we scoured the house and neighbourhood for her and couldn't find her, so we left. This morning, she showed up and said the whole thing had been a false alarm."
Harry raised his eyebrows. "A false alarm with a stunned Auror? Those seem mutually exclusive."
"I know, right?" Sue said. "We're keeping the case open, but without a complainant or proof that a crime was committed, it's hard to continue the investigation."
"I see what you mean," Harry said. "Any idea why she changed her tune?"
"Not a clue," Sue said. "She even submitted to a quick test to prove she wasn't currently under the Imperius. She just wanted the investigation closed as quickly as possible."
"Weird." Harry inwardly crowed, but tried to keep it off of his face. "I'd ask you to bring me in on it if you want to go digging around her, but realistically, I hate her too much to be objective on an investigation."
"True enough," Sue said. "I just wanted to bounce some ideas off of you. Let me know if you think of anything that might give us a new angle on her, alright? This one's bugging me."
"Will do," Harry said. "I'm positive she's hiding something Merlin-damned shady, but I don't know what it was or how her little disappearing act played into it." He thought for a moment, then decided to risk it. If Sue hadn't thought of it, she would soon, and leading her in that direction might make her less likely to consider him as a suspect. "Have you considered Polyjuice? It's on my mind from Hermione's Christmas gift to us."
"Yes, I had." Sue nodded. Harry wasn't sure if he'd passed a test, though he couldn't help but wonder. "It's just a theory at this point. There's no way to test for it, Umbridge says nothing happened and we don't have any evidence of two Umbridges running around simultaneously. It would explain some things, but it's purely speculative without something concrete to work with."
"I see what you mean," Harry said. "Without evidence, we're just casting hexes in the dark."
She sighed. "Yeah. I'll leave you to catch up on things. Owens will be back on shift tonight and he knows not to say the 'Q' word anymore, so hopefully you'll be able to catch up on some of that."
"You too," Harry said. "I'll let you know if I think of anything else." He took a huge breath as soon as she left the room and drew his wand to cast a Muffliato followed by a messenger Patronus. He still had no idea how he was going to reveal to Nev and Sue that he possessed the means to find and unbind all muggleborns, but at least he wasn't already on his way to Azkaban.
Baby steps.
"Do you think Harry will message us soon?" Sirius continued pacing through his sitting room as he spoke.
"Probably," Remus said.
"You said that when I asked five minutes ago," Sirius said.
"I did," Remus admitted.
"And when I asked five minutes before that," Sirius said.
"I maintain my position that he'll contact us soon," Remus said.
A growl rumbled from the armchair across the room. "He'd better," Hermione said, glaring at the copy of A Compendium of Common Curses and Their Counter-Actions in her hands as if she were trying to set it aflame with her mind, "or I'm going to murder Sirius with a cheese grater."
"Do you mean a hand grater or a box grater?" Remus asked. "I'm just curious what you'd use, one professional to another."
"Oi! No grating me!" Sirius said.
"Neither." Hermione's eyes narrowed. "I'd use a rasp grater."
Sirius winced, but an ethereal stag bounded into the room before he could respond.
"Umbridge didn't report the theft," Harry's voice said, emanating from the stag as it moved around the room. Sirius's whole body noticeably relaxed once it arrived, and the glare evaporated from Hermione's face like fog in the sun. "You're all clear to proceed."
The Patronus left the temperament of the room profoundly altered when it disappeared. Sirius, smiling and content, turned to Hermione and said, "That's our cue. Will you be alright here by yourself?"
"I will, thank you," she said, returning the smile. She knew she ought to be annoyed about having her mood changed by a spell, but that hadn't been a mere Cheering Charm. Harry's Patronus didn't make her feel different, but rather seemed to pull out the best feelings that were already in her heart and remind her they were more important than the transient annoyances of the day. "You have life, love, and hope," the stag's mere existence seemed to tell her. "They endure, and your troubles shall pass."
He and Remus hugged her goodbye, put their shrunken travel trunks into their pockets, and left to activate the international portkey they'd purchased from the Ministry. Hermione didn't let the silence or emptiness of the old house distract her after they left, instead pulling out a full parchment, an empty parchment, and a quill.
Copying out this letter left-handed went a little faster than last time, which worried Hermione. The last thing she wanted to do was get good enough at this that her left hand's writing started to mimic her right hand's. When she finished, she once again summoned an eager Kreacher to manually duplicate it.
Gandalf's admonishment about not being "too eager to deal out death in judgement" haunted her long after the old elf left to do his work, but so did the spectre of the babies Gollum stole from their cribs because Gandalf hadn't dealt out death in judgement to him after his capture before the events of The Fellowship of the Ring. After no small amount of thought, she decided to leave mercy to the province of the Wise and the Good. Limited by her own fallibility, all she could do was try to ensure Umbridge didn't hurt any more little girls.
Dolores climbed up the rickety tenement steps, vanishing rat droppings and the occasional pool of vomit as she did so. Someone had to keep this city clean, even Knockturn.
Her first knock on a worn, stained door on the third floor had no effect, so she banged hard enough to elicit hungover groans from the flat next door. Shuffling steps reluctantly approached the other side of the door before a man pulled it open. His threadbare old pinstriped robe seemed to be held together mostly by faded magic and memories of its former elegance. Like the skin of that man who wore it, it was wrinkled and seemed too large for its occupant.
"It's been a long time, Dolores," he said.
"Too long, Cornelius," she added with a bit of a simper. "Won't you invite me in?"
He sighed and gestured for her to enter his flat. "Come in," he said, "and tell me what you want."
"Can't I just want to see an old friend?" she asked as she walked in. She hung her pink pillbox hat on a hook next to a ratty old green bowler hat and conjured a wooden chair to sit on in his dirty living room, since that seemed more sanitary than either of the wooden chairs already there.
"You were never my friend," Fudge said. "You used me and threw me aside when I couldn't help you anymore."
"That's not true at all," Dolores replied. "I helped you as much as I could right to the very end, but our work was always more important than either of us. That's why I'm here, really. I've gotten into a spot of trouble and been Obliviated. You were always so good at Obliviation while you were in the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes, and I was hoping you could help me."
Fudge looked out of the dirty old window in the room for a moment before speaking. Faint sounds of muttered arguments, the creak of wheeled cart, and even the occasional distant shout of pain drifted up from the street. It felt a long way from the tidier, more organised noise of the Ministry in which they'd both once worked. "I sometimes wonder if that was the only job I was ever really good at."
"Nonsense," Dolores said. "You were always a great minister. Those other fools were just too blind to see it. In fact, I've been saving up for years to give you this as a token of my appreciation for all of your hard work." She handed him a small leather money-pouch with a modest space-expansion charm on it.
Fudge tried not to look too eager as he took the pouch, but mostly failed. As he rooted around inside, Dolores continued, "Two hundred and fifty Galleons," she said. "The retirement present you've always deserved."
His sunken eyes lit up. "I can finally get a nice flat with this money. Thank you! How can I repay you?"
"Oh, it'll be simple for you, I'm sure," Dolores said. "Can you try to reverse the Obliviation I got hit with? I need to know who attacked me."
"I'll do my best," Fudge said. "I'm out of practice, but I was damn good at this once upon a time." He raised his wand and looked her straight in the eyes. "Recordatio."
Cornelius's touch was a feather-light tickle in her mind as he viewed her memories through her mind's eye. The memories soon faded as he approached the blank spot around the night she was attacked, and he ran the tendrils of his thoughts back and forth around that time. No obliviation was perfect, and under the relentless examination of his magic, pinpricks of colour, light, and sound appeared in that blackness. In half an hour, what had been a two-dimensional blank became a three-dimensional memory full of black fog. A man was there…a wooden table…a yellow shirt…her study…Ludo Bagman! Cornelius wasn't able to reconstruct much of the conversation, but it was enough to confirm that Ludo had known what she had.
But how? Was his whole persona a lie to cover up a cunning would-be blackmailer? Who in Mordred's name could be that committed to a ruse?
"Merlin!" Fudge's exclamation snapped her back to the present. "Dolores, what have you done? What did he mean about binding muggleborns?"
"I've kept our world and our magic safe for decades," Dolores said. "You don't need to worry about it. I was thorough and never left evidence."
"Worry about it…you're the reason there are no muggleborns anymore!"
"Exactly," she said. "Isn't that what you wanted, too?"
"I…of course not! I just wanted to preserve our traditions and keep them in their place, not eradicate them entirely!" He wrung his hands nervously. "Dolores, what are we going to do?"
"Don't worry, Cornelius," she said soothingly. "It'll all be Petrificus Totalis."
She looked into the terror-stricken eyes of the frozen man. "I always held you in the highest regard, dear, and I always will, but I can't let anyone get in the way of my work. Not even you. Don't worry, though. This won't hurt a bit."
Her wand wove a complex pattern in front of his eyes. "Ennervatio. Goodbye, old friend. I'll stay with you until the end."
Two minutes later, the light went out of Fudge's eyes for the last time and Umbridge cancelled her Full Body-Bind. On her way out, she made sure to reclaim her money pouch and hat before locking the door one last time. No sense allowing ruffians to burgle his flat even if he no longer needed it.
After all, Dolores Umbridge had standards.
Harry's evening shift and the departure of his adoptive parents left his house quiet in a way that was much too reminiscent of Harry's time in Banda Aceh, but Hermione tried to ignore it and focus on her work. That focus was rewarded a couple of hours later while she was going through the Potions she would need to practise the following week with Andi and she stumbled across a note in a feminine hand next to the heading of the Strengthening Solution.
"This Potion is amazing!" Lily wrote.
"Indeed it is," Severus replied. "I'm going to keep a vial on me at all times."
"That will only escalate things, you know," Lily said.
"That Potter brat had no issue escalating to a Laxative Potion yesterday morning," Severus said.
"That was awful, but you should have heard him in the Common Room the night before. He was livid about the Jelly-legs Jinx you hit Sirius with."
"A child's jinx," Severus said. "Certainly not worthy of such a response."
"He was on the moving staircase while it was changing floors, Sev," Lily said. "You nearly killed the poor boy. James is a prat, but thank God for his reflexes."
"Rich boy," Severus corrected. "He's a Black."
"So?," Lily asked. "That's no excuse for killing him. Besides, you should have seen him when he came back from summer break at the start of this year. He was still twitching from all of the Cruciatus Curses his mother used on him."
What kind of monster would use the Cruciatus Curse on a fourteen-year-old? Good Lord.
"Too bad she didn't use more," Severus said.
Hermione's jaw dropped. There was no response at all from Lily, and the next line was Severus again.
"Lily?" was all he wrote.
"I don't want to talk to you right now," she said. "Go back to your work."
"I'm sorry," Severus wrote.
Lily didn't respond. Hermione couldn't think of anything to say, either.
Harry staggered out of the floo after his shift to a cheerful "Welcome home!" from Hermione.
"Thank you!" he said as he cast a quick Scourgify to get rid of the soot. "Thank you for waiting up for me."
Hermione put her parchments aside, rose from the chesterfield, and hurried over to give him a tight hug. "Of course I waited up for you. How was your night?"
"Not too bad, but the former Minister for Magic was found dead this evening by his landlord," Harry said.
"That's awful!" Hermione released the embrace so she could look Harry in the eyes. "What happened?"
"Murder," Harry said. "He was killed with an Ennervating Curse and also showed signs of having been under the Full Body-Bind Curse at the time of death. We're not sure why or who might have done it. There were no signs of forced entry, so it was probably someone he considered a friend. He was living in a flophouse in Knockturn Alley, the seedy side of Wizarding London. He's the one whose career I destroyed after the Dementor incident during Sixth Year."
"I see," Hermione said. "I know I should be sad about his murder, but it sounds like he presided over some terrible travesties of justice as well as the near mass-murder of Hogwarts students by soul-sucking monsters."
"I know what you mean," Harry said. "I can put aside the mixed feelings and do my job, but that corpse didn't bother me as much as it should have."
"You're still a good person," Hermione said, "and I know you'll try hard to solve this."
"Thank you," Harry said. "Did you write the letter and have the letter delivered?"
"Yes," Hermione replied. "It's done. Sirius and Remus left, too, and asked me to give you a hug from them." She gave him two more quick hugs.
"Thank you for passing that along," Harry said with a smile. "Now, would you like a late supper? I'm starving."
"That would be lovely," Hermione said. "I'll take the Stasis Charm off of our leftovers from yesterday while you change out of your uniform."
"Thank you!" Harry hurried upstairs while Hermione went downstairs to prepare supper. After a quick meal, she asked him to come back to the living room with her.
"I found another conversation between your mother and Snape," she told him once they'd sat down on the chesterfield and she pulled out her Potions book. "I think it took place toward the middle of the first term of their Third Year."
Harry reread it three times, and after finishing the third reading he just sat there and stared at the book.
"Is there anything you want to talk about?" Hermione asked.
"My father and his friends hated Snape," Harry said, "and he hated them. It's weird, watching that hatred creep into their lives and poison everything. I wonder, if you'd been at school with me, would the hatred between Draco and me have poisoned my relationship with you the way Snape's hatred of my father began to poison his relationship with my mother?"
"Isn't Draco the one who's a blood supremacist and would probably hate me?" Hermione asked.
"That's him," Harry said.
She snorted, such an uncharacteristic sound that Harry raised his eyebrows in surprise. "Then I very much doubt it," she said. "Schoolyard rivalries are one thing, but I suspect that Draco prat would have been calling me awful names as soon as I beat him on one single test. Realistically, I'd probably have been right there with you fighting him."
"Are you sure?" Harry asked teasingly. "Even I've noticed he's a beautiful man. What if you fell for his perfect skin, perfect hair, and suave bad-boy demeanour?"
"Because that would soooo distract me from how much he despised me," Hermione said. "Right. Besides, were I a sucker for perfect hair, what would I be doing with you?"
"My hair is perfect," Harry said.
"Perfectly messy, you mean," she replied.
"That's a type of perfect." Harry's eyes twinkled in the gaslamps as he spoke and she found herself powerless to disagree.
"I suppose it is," she said, and found words perfectly unnecessary for the remainder of the evening.
The outer wards tickled Lord Rupert Selwyn's attention before the distant pop of elven apparition reached his ears in his sitting room. A moment later, his own elf, Enny, popped up next to him. "Master, Enny sensed an elf for a moment outside the front gate," she said.
"Did you see which elf it was?" Selwyn asked her.
"No, Master, Enny did not," she replied.
He sighed. "Fat lot of good your elf senses did, then. Go see if it left anything and then slam your head in the gate as punishment."
Enny nodded. "Enny will do both at once."
The little elf popped back up a moment later, swaying unsteadily on her feet and with bruises starting on both sides of her head. "Enny found this outside, Master," she said as she handed him a leather folio that had seen better days. "There is no spells but protection on the documents."
"Good." Selwyn waved her off and cast some quick analysis Charms of his own. The contents of the folio were indeed harmless. Some of the documents were in a smaller, neater folio, sealed magically shut and protected against all forms of duplication. The only other document was a folded piece of parchment with a Self-Destruction Charm on it.
Selwyn wasn't surprised, since his associates often relied on such documents to keep themselves out of Azkaban. Words formed upon it with a touch of his wand.
Dear Lord Selwyn,
I grew tired of that meddlesome Half-blood Umbridge's possession of such valuable blackmail material and decided to relieve her of it. I was dismayed to find a loyal follower of the Dark Lord ensnared by her web, so please accept your folder back, unopened and uncopied. I neither know nor wish to know what she had on you. Anything that weakens you, even such petty blackmail, weakens our cause, and I am not foolish enough to court your anger.
Your Obedient Servant,
Not that idiot Umbridge
"Well, well, well," Selwyn mused as the parchment in front of him burned to ash. "What a pleasant surprise! And to think she was a Half-blood the whole time."
The life of a blackmailer is a dangerous one, and Umbridge was not as much of a fool as Selwyn would have liked. She'd made it clear to him (and presumably all of her targets) that her blackmail material was carefully protected. She only had one copy of the material. So as long as they paid their dues, they could rest assured that no others could stumble across their secrets, and that copy was protected carefully by wards and fail-safe artefacts on her person that would send the whole batch to the Daily Prophet were she to be killed or struck with an Unforgivable Curse.
Whoever had taken her stash must have done so with true Slytherin cunning, and Selwyn raised his brandy in silent toast to his benefactor. He was finally free of all of his obligations to that bitch and wanted only one thing more than to never see her again: the sight of her body writhing in agony.
With a smile, Selwyn drained his glass, savouring the burn as it went down. No one took advantage of the House of Selwyn and got away with it, especially not a jumped-up Half-blood with delusions of grandeur and pinkness.
