The Dark Side Assembles
Voldemort looked at the three Death Eaters that Peter had brought to his new hideout. They had moved from the previous one where they had performed the ritual, as, while it was hidden under fidelius, they didn't want to risk that the outburst of magic that took place had left a beacon on the place. That had happened in the past with rituals and it wouldn't do to let people like the unspeakables find them. They had prepared the move beforehand, therefore, they now had another comfortable and well-defended base. And the unspeakables wouldn't manage to bring down the wards and fidelius, if they really had a beacon to determine where they needed to search, before the end of the year. By then the residue that would allow to get a reading on the particulars of the ritual would have faded.
Before him stood Lucius Malfoy, Thaddeus Nott and Corban Yaxley. All three were better examples of Slytherin traits.
"Welcome my friends," he greeted them, "As you can see, I have returned after thirteen long years of absence."
"My Lord," the three chorused, bowing to him.
"I have grand plans that I need your assistance with. Plans that will finally bring us rulership over this country. From there, we will spread our revolution to the continent and then the world," announced Voldemort.
The three looked happy to hear that.
"But to achieve that, we need to act smart. We need to first prepare things in the shadows. We have to prevent that the corrupt institution that the Ministry of Magic has become can paint us as terrorists again, which they did when we started our movement to peacefully change this country at the beginning of the seventies," continued Voldemort.
"What exactly have you planned, my Lord?" asked Yaxley, "As I work at the Ministry, I know what a swamp it truly is."
"Ah, we will destroy the ministry from within. Lucius, as far as Peter reported to me, you managed to get close to the fool Fudge who for whatever unexplainable reason was made minister," stated Voldemort.
"I have, my lord," confirmed Lucius.
"Perfect. What needs to happen is cleaning the Ministry of the incompetent and ineffective morons that have infected the place. I am all for keeping muggle filth and ideas out of our institutions but letting the morons that give purebloods a bad name rise through a corrupt system is painful to watch. I mean, letting somebody like Arthur Weasley head the misuse of muggle artefacts office? Even I know more about muggles than that man. And it is actually important to prevent that muggles get their hands on magical items. It is a hole in our protection from them figuring out that we are still here," Voldemort shook his head.
"I believe he got that job because nobody else wanted it," commented Corban Yaxley.
"Because there are only incompetent fools that are hired. And because people like Weasley busy themselves with unimportant parts instead of taking on the really important things that endanger the Statute of Secrecy. Peter reported several things to me, as he has observed what kind of graduates Hogwarts churned out recently under Dumbledore's lead. I mean, I did ensure that the position of DADA teacher couldn't be filled for longer than a year except certain conditions were met, but honestly, it wasn't that hard to figure out what needed to be done," commented Voldemort.
"So, there is a curse on the position, my lord?" asked Thaddeus Nott curiously.
"It's not so much a curse as a ward, interwoven with the general wards of Hogwarts. I didn't want it to be determined and lifted easily. No cursebreaker will look for a ward when called in to deal with a curse. It's a blind spot that I figured out when I was still a student at Hogwarts. To sum it up, as long as Binns teaches History of Magic, and the candidate for the position of DADA teacher doesn't manage to get eighty percent of the students of Hogwarts to pass their exams at the end of the school year with at least exceeds expectations, he will find himself gone before the coming school year. I did that because Binns is an insult to proper education and I would only allow a competent candidate to remain in this position after Dumbledore refused it to me," explained Voldemort, "Otherwise, I can of course change that once I take control, but the other part is an easy solution I left the school."
"That is ingenious, my Lord," admired Thaddeus.
"So, the main reason why the effect is still active is that nobody got rid of Binns," understood Lucius.
"Correct. I honestly didn't expect Dumbledore to keep him for decades after his death. I mean, he was already a bore while he was still alive. But after his death it became worse," stated Voldemort.
The others could only nod in agreement. They had all suffered from Binns' horrible way of teaching, which had led to many naps during History classes.
"If I may ask, how could you let the four teenagers that you used as sacrifices in your ritual, as far as I could deduce from the report in the Prophet, escape? I mean, it doesn't make sense to not take proper security measures against them getting away and running off to tell Dumbledore," asked Lucius.
Voldemort laughed, which surprised the men except for Peter, who grinned.
"This is a great question, Lucius. It's true, if they had actually escaped, I would have had to crucio Peter for letting such a major blunder happen. But things aren't always as they appear. Peter, tell them," demanded Voldemort.
"I have long since placed listening spells into Dumbledore's office, incidentally on one of his many trinkets that he doesn't look at regularly. I did that when Percy Weasley was a first year. I needed to be kept informed if Dumbledore suspected anything about my animagus form. But apparently the wards of Hogwarts don't have a detection function for them. I had expected that only those registered to be teachers or students at the school were excepted to recognition. But that isn't the case. During that time, I collected a lot of information on Dumbledore, which I have given to our lord to use in his planning.
"The evening of the ritual, Dumbledore coincidentally found out certain things we wanted to keep secret for a while longer. The main problem was that Barty Crouch was working late at his office at the Ministry. Honestly, who besides the night shift of aurors or the emergency contacts at the floo office work after seven in the evening? And we did the ritual around ten. Stupid workaholic. I had placed a trigger to release a poison on his magic, which would cause a heart attack if a change to his family magic occurred. It would have been impossible to determine the poison after four hours. These changes can happen if a member of the family dies, is born, or if a family member marries.
"As you know from the Prophet, the ritual that we performed sacrificed the virginity of some of the participants. And Barty Crouch felt when Jasmine Potter became Jasmine Crouch by marrying Bartholomew Crouch. The trigger should have remained undetected, but as his death took place at the Ministry, which has wards that register that and sent an emergency call to St. Mungo's, Scrimgeour, who recognised the method of death from the war, informed Dumbledore, who went to look into the book of names, to see if he could find out if it detected any additions or losses to the Crouch family.
"We didn't know that the book existed and could do that. At most I had heard rumours about a book that notes all current students available for Hogwarts and transfers that information to the quill that addresses the letters to the students each summer break," explained Peter, "But with us knowing early on that Dumbledore had found out that Jasmine Potter was now married to Bartholomew Crouch, we needed to be faster than him. For your information, Bartholomew Crouch is a Death Eater, even if he is unmarked to keep attention off him for the time being. Endymion Lestrange agreed to assist with the ritual and sacrifice his virginity to give our Lord a powerful body back. He is truly his father's son. Our Lord modified their memories to stand up to Dumbledore's habit of using Legilimency to find out if a story is the truth.
"We chose Jasmine Potter because she was the one that cost our Lord his body back in 1981, and her involvement in the ritual would break the protection she previously had. Ironically, when Barty went to explain things to her about her body being put under potions to heal the damage done by her horrible muggle guardians and steadied her, her magic latched onto his. She is a high level submissive and he is her dominant partner," here Peter grinned at the thought.
"Honestly?" asked Corban gleefully, "Oh, the irony that Dumbledore's golden girl is submissive to one of us. I take it this Bartholomew is Barty Junior's son?"
"Officially he is," nodded Voldemort, "unofficially, I provided Barty, who survived despite official reports and was kept under imperius curse by his father until Peter and I freed him, with a potion that turned him back to the age of seventeen permanently."
Here Voldemort showed his smugness about being able to invent such a useful potion and how it had played an important role in succeeding in his plans.
"But with him having full control over Jasmine, it was perfect for my plans. The girl will follow his lead subconsciously. As she was walking around with Hermione Rosenberg, we found out that she is Gilbert Rosenberg's daughter with a muggle woman, probably Gilbert had some fun with her and the contraceptives failed, Barty kidnapped both of them at the same time, as two sacrifices were better than just one. Endymion was quite happy to take the girl's virginity. Seems she would have been high of his list of prospective brides, if not for the fact that she was believed to be a muggleborn. He wouldn't bring that into his family."
Lucius, Corban and Thaddeus nodded empathetically. None of them would allow any of their sons to marry somebody not of any magical lineage. That would taint their bloodlines. But an intelligent and powerful halfblood witch of a good lineage, that could be tolerated. While it was a shame that the girl was raised by muggles, sometimes unfortunate accidents happened. And a smart girl could be trained to conform to their world's traditions normally.
"From what I heard from my son, the girl is highly intelligent and ambitious," nodded Lucius, "If I read through his jealous rants about her constantly beating him in classes. Though, knowing now that Gilbert was her father, it makes a lot of sense. Well, I won't complain. Thanks to not accepting that a muggleborn could beat him constantly, Draco invests a lot more time into his studies."
"Ah, the good old motivation of a young man's pride being hurt," nodded Thaddeus understanding, "To want to prove himself better than a rival."
Lucius nodded in confirmation.
"So, as she is a halfblood, she would be acceptable as a bride for house Lestrange," understood Lucius, "Well, while I certainly want to see Draco marrying a pureblood girl, the selection of acceptable ones is deplorably small around his age."
"No wonder when families like the Blacks have failed to keep up the rule of not marrying too close to their lines, and you will know better than I do that the Crabbe and Goyle families have long since lost any sense. I mean, the last generation married first cousins, that is insane," commented Thaddeus.
"Which is why I didn't call them here yet. While they followed me in the past, I need intelligent supporters until all plans are on the way. And Lucius, if all goes well, we should have toppled the Ministry within two years at most. The next step will be expanding our influence and spread the message to other countries. In your place, I would look into finding a nice girl from a powerful magical family in another country. Perhaps not France, as your family's roots lie there and there may be too close a relation, but other countries have influential pureblood families as well. I will give all my followers this recommendation. We need to bring new blood into our lines to keep them powerful. If we want to change things, we need to weed out the idiots that bring their own lines into the gutter by inbreeding," stated Voldemort.
"An interesting suggestion, my Lord, thank you. I will talk to Narcissa, as she is better connected to other pureblood families outside of Great Britain. If we can find a girl that is compatible with Draco's magic, we could use the time to let them get to know each other until they graduate," pondered Lucius.
"Probably a smart idea, Lucius, as that generally leads to better marriages with lots of children," agreed Thaddeus, "I think I will tell my son he should do the same for my grandson Theodore. Merlin knows that the boy complains constantly that none of the girls at Hogwarts match what he looks for in a girlfriend. I don't know if it is a trend, but too many pureblood girls seem to be airheads."
"That isn't just your observation, Thaddeus," replied Peter, "I watched the same. I believe some part is that the families have set wrong priorities. I mean, I can say for sure that the Weasleys have done nothing to inspire proper study habits into most of their children. Percy got his drive from often visiting his great aunt Muriel Prewett, who he did small jobs for to have a bit of spending money for school. And Bill is a rebel by nature that wanted to get out from under his mother's coddling after he lost his second girlfriend with her meddling and interference. Which was when he was fourteen."
"Ouch," commented Corban, "Why would Molly interfere when it is already difficult for any Weasley to find a nice girl thanks to their blood traitor status?"
"No idea, but I believe she is not all there in the head," answered Peter.
"I had the same impression," agreed Lucius, "I mean, why else would a Prewett want to marry a Weasley?"
The others nodded. That had already been strange in the past when Molly Prewett married Arthur Weasley.
"Let's get back to our plans," said Voldemort, "Lucius and Corban, I need a complete list of the employees at the Ministry of Magic with their magic levels. Both general potential and realised potential. That will be part of a psychological strike against Dumbledore. Then I need to know which of them actually work well in their positions, which ones should be promoted but were always skipped for others, which ones need to urgently be fired, as they mess up all the time and hurt the general wizarding world with their incompetence and the ones that take bribes regularly and what they do with that money."
"Shouldn't be too hard, my Lord," accepted Corban, "I have access to the archives which have the full lists of employees. The general potential is listed in each employee's file, so getting that is easy as well. Checking the realised potential is trickier. I won't get away with casting that spell on all people undetected."
"You're right, that would be noticed, and we need to move secretly. Do you know how to set up a measuring ward? Like over the doorframe that leads into the elevator?" asked Thaddeus.
"No, I have heard of them but never cast one," answered Corban.
"I can teach you. It's fairly simple once you understand the trick. But with this ward on the elevator, which can measure the realised potential of anybody crossing it, which then just needs an automatic connection to our list that we want to be completed, we could over time get all the employees at the Ministry, as well as visitors," pointed Thaddeus out.
"A good plan, Thaddeus," approved Voldemort, "nobody would suspect anything, and they all use the elevator regularly. After all, the Ministry has anti-apparition wards in all areas outside the atrium. We will have that data within a week."
"What do you want to do with that information, my Lord?" asked Lucius curiously.
"I plan to bring down Dumbledore's reputation with this. All those that work at the Ministry graduated from Hogwarts. Now, as we know, as we took the studies from the DOM in the past seriously, after Augustus passed on the information he uncovered, if a young witch or wizard doesn't exercise physically regularly, meaning at least an hour twice a week, he or she will stunt the growth of his or her magical core. Then, even if that doesn't happen, without exercising one's magic practically, meaning by casting spells, for fifteen hours a week, which can't be covered fully by classes, the potential that a child is born with isn't fully realised. If we have proven data that Dumbledore isn't doing his job in at least letting the children realise most of their potential, it will be much easier to push reforms of the educational system through.
"Reforms, for which I intend to use Barty and Endymion in core positions," revealed Voldemort, "After all, those two will stay at Hogwarts for the next three and a half school years, thanks to their wives only being fourth years right now. They are in the perfect position to influence the younger generation. I could even see Barty enjoying taking up a teacher position. He has the right temper for it. I don't know enough about Endymion yet to tell concerning him. But I can tell that he enjoys researching magic and lost disciplines."
"Not too surprising considering that Rabastan and Ophelia, his parents were similar," nodded Lucius.
"Yes. I have a great program worked out how to bring Hogwarts back to the top. I want you to tell your children when we are ready to start the offence to assist Barty and Endymion in getting things started. We need to erode any kind of support from under Dumbledore, one at a time. And that can only be started at Hogwarts, but if we publish the study of how his politics as headmaster have harmed previous generations of students, he will be out with his closest supporters faster than he can put another of those dratted lemon drops in his mouth," declared Voldemort.
"Intriguing, my Lord. Perhaps I can even get things rolling faster," commented Lucius, clearly thinking things through, "Fudge is paranoid that somebody wants his job. And Dumbledore is the one many wanted for the position before the last election. If I can subtly convince our dear minister that it would look good on him and bad on Dumbledore if he performed a thorough investigation into the educational success of Hogwarts, claiming that the NEWT results couldn't continue like they are, he would be too distracted to see the true plans unfolding."
"Cunning, Lucius. Yes, that would work nicely. At least until I can implement my true educational reform. Peter, how are the results of Severus' classes?" asked Voldemort.
"Greatly split, my Lord. Those with a little talent and intelligence earn E's and O's in their OWLs and Severus only takes those that qualify with O's into his NEWT classes. But it is obvious that he hates teaching Potions. I don't know if he would be happier with DADA to be honest. I could rather see him in a different position where he doesn't have to deal with snot nosed brats all the time," answered Peter, "Though those that manage to qualify for NEWT level Potions always excel in their NEWTs as well."
"Severus hates having to deal with those that don't take his class seriously. He is too busy to keep an eye on all the dunderheads that don't want to understand that Potions is a dangerous subject to really get to much teaching. Not to mention that putting confrontational houses together makes him extremely tense all the time. I believe that he would become a much better teacher if he could concentrate on the older students that already have a proper base for the subject," commented Lucius.
"Then he would probably be open to my plan to transfer him into the headmaster position once Dumbledore is out of Hogwarts and additionally take the NEWT level classes to still be present among the students. Possibly he could also teach DADA on NEWT level, if he really wants to teach the subject. The main reason why Dumbledore doesn't teach any classes is that he has too many positions. Which is a reason why he doesn't do Hogwarts justice," analysed Voldemort, "The first task of the Triwizard is done, how did the Hogwarts champion fare?"
"Miserably," answered Corban, "I was there as additional security for the event, mainly because of the kidnapping of the two girls three weeks before. The Ministry didn't want to risk unknowns getting the chance to kidnap other students, as the task allowed for spectators buying tickets, next to the schools of course having automatic rights to watch and cheer for their respective champions. Cedric Diggory was the one champion that was taken by surprise having to face a dragon. Fleur Delacour, the Beauxbatons champion clearly was prepared and performed quite well, and Viktor Krum, the Durmstrang champion, was probably prepped by Igor in what to do when facing a dragon.
"Even if I don't know what they were thinking in deciding to use a conjunctivitis curse. It caused pain to the dragon and it thrashed around. A thrashing animal is always more dangerous than one that is in control. And the ones in control can be predicted. Which led to Krum getting hit by the tail and crashing into the wall. They had to vanish several of his ribs and regrow them with skelegrow. Diggory was burned quite badly when he tried to dodge the dragon's fire and only barely managed to fulfil the task. The transformed dog he created after ten minutes of playing hide and seek with the dragon didn't hold for long and when he grabbed the egg, the dog vanished. It got him hit with another bit of fire, even if he managed to roll to safety with his egg."
Voldemort could only shake his head. This sounded too much like the Roman blood sport inside the Colosseum. Honestly, those were kids, if they wanted to set them up against dangerous creatures, they should use ones that a well-trained wizard could subdue on his own. Not ones that needed numerous people to stun one before it would go down, which dragons were known for. He would have to see the idiot that came up with the task fired. They needed their young generation to procreate in the future, not have them killed off in overdone tasks.
"I'm scared to ask what they have planned for the next task," admitted Lucius.
He was extremely relieved that his son was years too young for this event, as his pride would have made him try to become champion.
"The champions will have to rescue a hostage from the bottom of the Black Lake," answered Peter, "We got the information about the tasks after capturing Bertha Jorkins in Albania. And for the second task, they get the chance to puzzle out what it entails thanks to a clue in the golden egg that was the objective of the first task."
"That doesn't sound too problematic. A bit of drama but with the right preparation more than solvable," commented Thaddeus, "There are different ways to breathe underwater to reach the hostages, silent casting should be mastered by this time in their education and warming charms are also common knowledge. And dealing with the creatures in the Black Lake should also be well within the skills of champions."
The other nodded. This task was appropriate for the tournament.
"Well, if Diggory continues to give a poor show of his skills, I can use that as an example how Hogwarts needs change, as Dumbledore caused our country's leading school to look like a joke compared to the two others of the Big Three," commented Voldemort.
"I will make sure to mention that after the next task to Fudge. After all, before the champions can prepare, they need to work out the riddle of the eggs. And I didn't have the impression that Diggory was quite smart enough to think outside of the box. I mean, it is tradition to work out what the tasks entail before they start. Some might call it cheating, but nobody ever said anything about this. And there are loopholes that allow support for the students, if Igor's signature was that clear in his student's performance in the first task," stated Lucius.
The others nodded in agreement. Some would call this being resourceful. Working around restrictions without breaking the rules.
"My Lord, how do you plan to realise the takeover of the Ministry? After all, that will be the linchpin of our plans," asked Thaddeus.
"We all know that most people there couldn't defend themselves with their wands if their lives depended on it. What I want to happen is an unbloody takeover. The easiest way, I believe, is by putting sleeping potion into the morning coffee and tea of the Ministry. The one thing we need to manage is getting enough of that potion inside and past the controls to prevent scenarios like that. The wards limit how many potions can be brought in at one time, therefore this isn't easily realised quickly. Another option would require longer undisturbed access to the whole building, which is even more difficult. But if that were possible, we could set up runic arrays to paralyse the ones working there," explained Voldemort, "A violent takeover is also possible if we have enough manpower, but it would allow our opposition to paint us as terrorists again, instead of visionaries and revolutionaries. We came together as a group to bring down the establishment because it simply holds our people back. We need to return to those roots and make our message heard again.
"If we avoid being drawn into a downward spiral of violence again, we can win this time. After all, the Ministry doesn't have much in terms of competent employees anymore. With a bit of proper preparation and manipulating things to work for us, we will bring down the idiots that cling to their power and stand in the way of progress," declared Voldemort.
"It's good to see you back to your past brilliant self, my Lord," commented Thaddeus with a smile, "With you back to your prime, we can't lose this."
"Thank you, Thaddeus. It seems that one of my experiments went wrong without me noticing how badly it influenced my mind. I let the rightful anger at the treatment we got shown, even if our goals were worthwhile and we tried to realise them peacefully, be twisted into hatred and drew innocents into the mess. This won't happen again. The ritual did me a great service in reversing the effect of the failed experiment."
Then Voldemort continued passing out jobs. Corban already had his, Lucius got further jobs than just subtly pushing Fudge into the direction they wanted him to take and Thaddeus got put on the job to organise enough sleeping potion and ways to smuggle it into the Ministry building without being noticed.
Jazzy looked at the improved dress robes that Winky had given to her to try on. She wanted to be absolutely sure that her new mistress would outshine all other witches on the ball. After seeing the dress robes Mrs Weasley had bought for Jazzy, Winky had decided that they wouldn't do. They were far too old-fashioned and more or less looked like the bulky school robes of Hogwarts. Therefore, as the robes needed to be altered anyway, as they were now too small for Jazzy, Winky had been creative. The emerald colour of the robes was approved by Winky, but she mainly used the material to create new robes from them.
Now the dress robes looked like what Jazzy would have called an evening gown for a fancy muggle ball. The gown didn't have holders, it was tailored to simply sit tight to her upper body, subtly highlighting her new curves advantageously without ever giving the impression the one wearing it was showing off too much. The flowing skirt reached down to the middle of her calves, showing off the emerald high heels that Winky had bought for Jazzy. Next to altering the design, Winky had added embroidery in form of silver and gold birds on the top of the gown. It looked lovely to Jazzy. Winky had added a shawl to put around Jazzy's shoulders in case she got cold or wanted to take a walk outside.
The gown was created with some size adjustment charms, as Winky knew too well that eating at a feast could make a gown a little too tight. As far as she told Jazzy, it was basic for higher quality clothes to have this charm added. Next to that, Winky had woven a charm to keep the gown stainless, even if there was an accident during dinner or afterwards, somebody might trip and spray a drink on her, next to one that would act like a protego, to give her better protection. While Jazzy would have her wand with her, she would only be able to draw it in actually dangerous situations. It was seen as a faux pas to have a witch openly carry her wand during a ball. In case some magic was needed, it was expected that the wizard took care of that. And it was extremely rare to happen at social events.
Jazzy didn't understand the reasons behind it but accepted that Winky knew more about wizarding customs than she did. To add to her looks, Barty had asked Winky to bring some jewellery from the Crouch collection. Thus, Jazzy now sported a lovely golden and emerald bracelet that was formed like leaves connecting to each other with matching dangling earrings. Winky had told her that no witch should wear more than two major pieces of jewellery. Some were a must, but too much looked cheap or arrogant. Wedding rings were excluded in that list, as were some modest highlights for hair styles. Jazzy could agree with that.
Then she turned towards Barty, who smiled at the look of her.
"You look lovely, Jazzy. I'm a really lucky wizard to be your husband," he honestly told her.
She smiled happily at him.
"I can't believe that this is me. I mean, I'm still used to my old looks. I didn't have any hope to look like the more beautiful girls in my year and now look at me," she exclaimed happily.
"I do," he smiled, "I can't take my eyes of you."
She blushed a bit and continued smiling.
"Are your dress robes also done?" she asked.
"Nearly. The basic suit and cape I will use are ready, but Winky wants to add a few more details to make them perfect," he answered.
"It needs to match the robes of Mistress Jazzy," insisted Winky, "Winky will switch the red inside of the cape for emerald to match Mistress Jazzy's robes. And then Master Barty can use an emerald pocket square to add to it. Otherwise, basic black is always perfect."
"You're right Winky," agreed Barty.
Winky looked much better now that she had recovered from having her bond severed. She was still a bit pale, but that lessened all the time. Then Dobby popped into the suite.
"Master Barty, Mistress Jazzy, Dobby has brought the afternoon snack for you," announced Dobby, "Dobby made Christmas tarts and brought herbal tea."
"Thank you, Dobby, the tarts look great," nodded Barty, meaning what he said.
The tarts were shaped like stars made of a dark dough, probably chocolate, had a white cream layer and then were topped with both apple slices and cherries. If he saw it right, they were also sprinkled with a bit of cinnamon. There were six tarts overall, three for each of them.
"You did take care to not use too much sugar, right Dobby?" asked Winky.
"Of course, Dobby did," nodded Dobby quickly, "Dobby used dark chocolate for the dough and only half of the normal amount of sugar. And the cream consists of cream cheese with milk instead of cream."
Winky nodded satisfied. She was convinced that too much sugar wasn't good for a pregnant witch. A bit was okay. Then Winky told Jazzy to change into her normal clothes. Her robes would be waiting for the ball. Jazzy went into her bedroom to do just that, while Barty went over to the table that Dobby had set. A few minutes later Jazzy was back and both sat down to enjoy the tarts.
Molly Weasley had ranted for two full hours when the morning edition of the Daily Prophet appeared. Contrary to other subscribers, the Weasleys only had the basic version, which included the normal editions of the Prophet, not special editions, as it was cheaper. It normally didn't matter. If something was printed in a special edition, it would also be printed in the edition following that. This was the case for this edition as well, even if the special edition had a few more details from the press conference but the general story was still there.
Like many others Molly had worried about the two kidnapped girls, Jasmine more than Hermione. That had a reason. She was working on a plan to get her family out of financial trouble by having Jasmine marry her son Ron. She didn't care that it was clear that Jazzy didn't care for Ron in that way and more or less barely tolerated him and his bad manners. She considered that a small issue which could be remedied with a little bit of love potion. Once the girl was a bit older that was. It was a good thing in her opinion that Jazzy wasn't an overly beautiful witch, as then other wizards would have tried a lot more to get her to be their girlfriend.
But now all her hopes for bringing her family to the top had crashed down. She ranted about the girl not being old enough to be married, this having to be wrong and after her husband had fled to go to work, she ranted about losing the Potter fortune. She also ranted about Ron now having much more trouble to find a suitable witch to marry in the future. She felt like writing a howler, but hesitated to do that, as, after calming down a little, she realised that everybody would turn against her if she did that. The paper clearly reported that both Hermione and Jazzy had been forced to take part in a so far unknown ritual. It wasn't their fault. The article also stated that both girls were placed under the imperius curse to make them go along with the ritual. If she ranted at them with a howler, everybody would attack her for going after the victims.
Another thing she detested was that Hermione was now married to a dark wizard. After all, it was known to everybody that the Lestrange family was dark. Just look at that boy's father and uncle. And who his uncle had married. There wasn't a witch much darker than Bellatrix Lestrange. The boy couldn't be better than his family. And the Crouch family, well, the boy's grandfather was Percy's boss, a respected department head of the Ministry. With him raising the boy and not his criminal of a father, perhaps the boy wouldn't turn out as bad. Still, this didn't help her at all. She had hoped that once she was older, Hermione might possibly be a candidate to marry another of her sons. She was smart and not too bad looking. It would bring some fresh blood and intelligence into the line. And she already despaired at her older sons not bringing home acceptable girlfriends.
She needed to find out if there was still a chance for her to get money for her family. She didn't want to stay at the bottom of the society. She never found out why her family was called blood traitors but believed that if she got her sons to reach better positions than their father, she could rid herself of that blemish. The fact that her own behaviour only disturbed and disgusted others didn't register with her. Or that her sons fled to other countries when they could to get away from her control obsession.
Till next time