Sympathetic Properties

by Mr Norrell

Having been treated as a servant his entire life, Harry is more sympathetic when Dobby arrives, avoiding Vernon's wrath and gaining a bit of freedom. That freedom changes his summer, his life, and the world forever. A very long character-driven story that likes to play with canon.

24. It's a Day As Black As Night

AN: These last two chapters have had a much denser, more thematic way of connecting everything together – which not only makes them longer but more time-intensive to produce. Thanks for your patience.

.o0O0o.

The shallow metal basin cast a mottled silvery-grey light on the smooth walls around him that faded to blue at the furthest corners of the tiny cell-like compartment. It often gave the heavily scarred auror the impression he was sitting underwater, but Moody barely saw it. If there was one spot in the entire country better protected than his home or office it was where he was, and now he could finally let himself take a moment to think things through.

'You'll want to look into that, discreetly,' Lichfield had said.

Alastor thought he had readied himself for all the possibilities, but that had been before he dove into the memory. He had expected to see another facet of his case against Dumbledore, some sort of character assassination, as if his old friend had any character left to kill. How could you defend someone, even in your own head, when everything makes you realize just how little you actually knew about them?

He hadn't ruled out seeing something to show Albus had knowingly sanctioned the mistreatment the boy suffered at his relatives' hands but Alastor had never expected the retirement-killing scene which played out before him. It wasn't the final nail in Dumbledore's coffin, the crucial bit of evidence to show he had intended to abandon the boy the entire time, but it did give his reasons for doing so a slightly more positive interpretation: for the boy's own good.

He knew; Dumbledore knew Voldemort wasn't dead, but how long he knew Alastor couldn't say. If he had known – or at least suspected – the entire time then hiding the boy away somewhere no one in their world would look would've been a very prudent idea. Sticking him with those relatives would've given things a chance to die down, for full criminal inquiries to take place, and for as many Death Eaters to be rounded up and thrown into Azkaban as possible.

That rationale wouldn't survive long though, not beyond the first few months, at most. It certainly wasn't enough to keep him there for more than ten years; not with muggles like them. A few days, a week or two at most, then you take the kid, change his hair, change his eyes, change his name, hide the scar, and give him to a family you can trust to raise him as their own. Nymphadora and her family were the right sort, and distant relatives besides.

But if Albus hadn't known, if you gave him the benefit of the doubt and assumed he only learned the mad man survived when looking into the Defense professor's death two months gone, then why had he stuck the boy with those people for so long in the first place? Was it really just to steal the kid's money? And even if it was, then why hadn't he reached out to him with this information yet and leave that bit out? Why hadn't Albus sought him out, reformed the Order of the Phoenix and had him start recruiting members within the Auror Office?

All of the answers Alastor came up with troubled him greatly. Either Albus didn't think there was a problem, he didn't trust him, or he was waiting for something to happen. But what was the man waiting for, for Voldemort to return to a flesh-and-blood body? For him to kill the boy so he could use him as a convenient symbol to rally the country around? Or was he mad enough to think the child could take him on himself?

He and Albus hadn't seen eye-to-eye on everything back then but at least the man had given a rationale for his positions, flawed as they were. For a man as smart and proud as Albus he wouldn't like being proven wrong, and every time you turned around you saw signs he had been wrong time and again these last ten years. Being generous with Dumbledore's motivations still left him in a very petty state. Pouting in his lofty high office and stubbornly refusing to admit the truth was hardly the way for the most revered statesman in the country to start countering the looming threat of Voldemort.

The Order had been prohibited from using lethal means of taking down Death Eaters for purely political reasons during the war. If they used lethal force to kill their enemies, while they might remove some from the battlefield permanently, it might provoke others to join the pureblood cause or to lend them political support. And if they couldn't show themselves to be different than the Death Eaters – and some might say better – then how could the Order gain the support they'd need to sway the Ministry to their side?

There had been another baffling reason Dumbledore had given to him in private once the Ministry had finally entered the fight and passed measures giving aurors the power to kill rather than capture.

'The wizarding world is a beautiful and delicate thing,' Albus had said. 'Any slight change, some hint of compassion, might be enough to give those who fight against us pause to consider the weight of their actions. Who are we to deny them that chance at redemption?'

His response had been terse. 'We're the ones those assholes are trying to kill.'

Albus had never mentioned it again but when you think on it, who was he – the buoyantly beneficent Dumbledore – to decide for all of them whether they should be willing to sacrifice their lives so their killers could have a second chance to grow up and learn it wasn't nice to kill people you disagreed with? For every Death Eater that had died or been captured there were two or three who'd slipped away, and all of them had left a string of dead in their wake. You don't do that and suddenly change because someone offered you a hug or a kiss.

Even a Dementor's Kiss hadn't been enough to change some of their minds. They had gone to Oblivion, willingly sacrificing their souls to their jailors rather than turn away from their beliefs. Those were the souls, the lives, Dumbledore valued so highly, higher than the people who fought for what was right, higher than the lives of their orphaned children.

Death Eaters with sense had lied to get out of trouble he had no doubt, and there must've been someone receptive very high up who was sympathetic or just as delusional as Albus was to believe the crap they were selling. Alastor had been too busy and too easily brushed aside to find out whom, but he hoped it wasn't Albus who had let it happen. He hadn't seen the true extent of the man's delusional philosophy at the time, but how can you trust a man like that once you see it?

It was a day as black as night when Dumbledore became the untrustworthy one but that's where they were and it meant everything fell to him. How many others would've lived if he had done what he should have all those years ago and used the deaths and disappearances to expose the flaws in Albus's reasoning and wrestle control of the Order away from him? Would Dorcas Meadows still be alive he had done it? Edgar Bones? Marlene McKinnon? The Potters? And how many muggles would still be wandering about today if he hadn't been so blind?

'If you can't trust Dumbledore, then who is there to trust?'

That was the most chilling thought of all. He might have been blind before he lost his eye, but he couldn't afford to remain so now his eyes were opened. Alastor spun his magical eye around on general principle, glimpsing the deluge of color and motion through it. It could be painful at times, having all those images magically shoved into your head, but he had long ago learned to filter out what he didn't need, for the most part.

If Albus wasn't ready – or wasn't fit – to do what must be done, then he had to do it himself. If Lichfield's accusations against him turned out to be nothing more nefarious than financial bungling of an old man too naïve to know that vaults don't refill themselves then he'd still be welcome as long he had actual information to contribute, but he certainly wouldn't be in charge. This wouldn't be some declawed, frilly phoenix gallivanting about and making a brave show of causing mischief either. He would have to do things his own way, in his own time, with his own people, but who was he to pick?

Alastor opened himself to the barrage of images coming from his magical eye and the real world paled in comparison to what he saw. Gone was the silvery glow on dark walls as his world became superimposed by the golden runic dinner plate bordered by translucent white walls. Slightly widening his view to what was around him, he could see the multiple other translucent compartments sharing the same space he occupied, all slightly out of touch from where he was. A certain silvery object caught his attention; he'd have to remember to take his cloak when he left.

Pushing his sight through the translucent walls, rushing through his office to the cubical farm beyond, his eye sought out the faces he knew. Pinky – 'Damn Lichfield and his nicknames,' the man who'd been "Mad-eye" long before he lost his eye groused – Nymphadora was returning from her training classes, face flushed from the effort she put in. Distant relation to the boy or not, she couldn't be involved; too young. He wasn't going to have any half-trained, idealistic young people die because some old man thought he knew what's best, even if the old man was him.

Behind the girl was Kingsley Shacklebolt, a solid man and capable; loyal, and diligent. He was good at training new recruits and didn't cut them any slack, but Kingsley didn't strike him as a leader, not where it counted. Personable and well-liked, no doubt he'd get on well with those above him and be able to play the political game that started in the upper reaches of any department, but he had one large drawback as far as Alastor was concerned: he was Dumbledore's man. And even if he was skilled in combat, if Shacklebolt had his way Dumbledore's philosophy of violence would infect the entire office, turning them all into kittens wearing mittens when they needed to be manticores.

Kingsley, like so many others, had been raised in Dumbledore's shadow, taught from an early age to always look up to the man. It would take a lot to change that; being the last great war hero – if you discounted all the time he spent sitting on his hands against Grindelwald, which everyone did – "the only man You-Know-Who ever feared," and the only Hogwarts Headmaster most people could name, Albus was practically a cultural force. If confronted with the reality of Voldemort lingering on in some form Shacklebolt's first response would be to run and see what Dumbledore thought of it, which was something Alastor wanted to avoid.

His vision darted to a few others before passing through another wall to settle on Rufus Scrimgeour. If he was pressed to name one, Alastor would still say Scrimgeour had been his best student; as well he should be since Rufus was the person he'd hand-picked to run the office when Harold Minchum, the Minister before last, had tried to foist the job on him. Maybe he should have taken it; taking Scrimgeour out of the field had stuck one of their best men behind a desk just when they had needed ten more like him out there every day.

He had taught Rufus to throw away the rule book if you had to when it came to getting results, because your enemy didn't have rules, but putting him in charge of others had made the man cling to the book worse than a Seventh Year on their way to N.E.W.T.s. It had ruined a good fighter and turned the office into something mechanistic, and instead of minting more fighters just like him they had gotten softer and softer by all the coddling. Rufus would be a good fighter to have in his corner if the time ever came to take on Voldemort himself, just like Kingsley, but right now his book would tell him to take this straight to the Minister.

Alastor's magical eye spun again, peering through all the space between him and Level 1, where he saw Cornelius Fudge sitting in a meeting with Lucius Malfoy and Dolores Umbridge behind a hazy screen against eavesdroppers. Malfoy was a Death Eater for sure, and Umbridge a likely sympathizer; taking anything to Fudge would see him share it with them so they could tell him what to do. Scrimgeour being out means he might have to do this without an official sanction, at least for now.

Retracting his vision back in, Alastor sought out the last face that might be of use, finally finding her on Level 2 between the Improper Use of Magic Office and the Wizengamot Administration Services. Withdrawing his eye from seeing more of Amelia Bones than Alastor had ever wanted to see, he tried to concentrate on any reason not to bring her into this. As head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, with titular control of the Auror Office, she seemed the logical choice to make if he wanted to do this with the pretense of legality.

She was a dyed in the wool litigator, though she gave the impression she'd approve an off-the-books investigation of this kind if she had to. At first glance having most of her family wiped out by Voldemort the seemed to work in her favor, undoubtedly she wouldn't want to see the man make a return. Having her brother become involved in the Order of the Phoenix only to die and leave behind a daughter for her to raise could be problematic, though it redoubled his determination for no kids or young people to be involved.

Her taking an interest in the Auror Office after leaving things in Scrimgeour's hands for so long would surely raise concerns, perhaps even getting the Minister involved, and then they'd be right where Alastor didn't want things to go. If he couldn't officially go off the books, and couldn't unofficially do the same, then there was nothing left to do but to toss everything aside and go off on his own, and would leave him with few resources and very little to go on. There had to be another option.

Alastor had fought against and taken down dark wizards for longer than he cared to remember, and you couldn't do that without developing some sense of the enormity of the problem you faced. With his two prime sources of information, Dumbledore and the boy, about to be locked in a very public battle with an intense amount of scrutiny on everyone around them, and any potential allies within the Ministry out of reach for the moment, his sense was telling him he was dealing with the most laborious, most exhaustive, and most time-consuming endeavor he's ever come across.

He shoved the images from his eye away and scrubbed a gnarled hand across his ruined face. This was going to take forever and he would get nowhere quickly, especially not sitting where he was – but perhaps that could be an opportunity. Albus, Kingsley, Scrimgeour, and the others were sure to see any digging for information about the past as evidence of something going on under the surface, so perhaps sitting still and going quietly was just the thing he needed to keep them from suspecting he was up to something.

That kind of slow pace and low information would leave him mired in theorycrafting for the foreseeable future and it was exactly the kind of thing he always hated; Alastor preferred to face his enemy head on. He was well known to hate it though, so privately pursuing it while publicly doing nothing to signify a problem would disguise more than demiguise ever could. The only problem was he was horrible at doing the theory himself; he'd forgotten more about the Dark Arts than most people ever learned. What he needed was someone as methodical, single-minded, and secretive as he was who could swim through any theory they got their hands on without ever drawing notice to themselves, and the likelihood of finding someone like that was–

Moody cursed himself for a fool before crawling over to draw the memory out of the pensieve and put it back in its vial. If it weren't for Lichfield and his fondness for nicknames he might've forgotten Froggy was still alive. Then again, Alastor preferred to forget that entire floor existed. Eye or no eye, no kind of magic should work like that.

Once the memory was safe in the vial, the vial was snug in his mokeskin pouch, and the mokeskin pouch secure in a hidden pocket, Alastor opened himself up to his eye again to scrutinize every inch of his office for any evidence it had been disturbed. Finding none, he pulled out a ring of seven keys and chose the second from the end. Reaching up, he managed to fit the key into a tiny hole near the ceiling and gave it a twist. With a hop, he pushed the roof of the compartment up, withdrew the key, and jumped again to grab the exposed edge.

With many a grunt and muttered curses, Alastor Moody emerged from the invisible cavernous hole next to a coat rack on the far side of his office. Rubbing his rib where the edge had dug in and flexing his amputated leg as he shut the lid, he knew he'd have to lessen the depth of that part of his trunk; he wasn't a kid anymore. He'd think about passing this off and retiring anyway but if Lonely Lester and Froggy Saul could work themselves to death then he wasn't about to stop short, and he wasn't even one of the Lost.

Fumbling for the right key, he used his magical eye so he could find and reopen his Disillusioned trunk and expose another compartment within, drawing out a silvery invisibility cloak. Alastor paused for a moment, rethinking the wisdom of his next act. As much as he hated the politics that came with big cases he hated interpersonal drama even more; it needlessly complicated everything.

Dealing with Saul after being tipped off by Lichfield was going to be uncomfortable to say the least. The two men hated each other, or at least they did thirty-odd years ago and neither had seemed the type to let bygones be bygones; blaming a man for the death of your wife wasn't something anyone could just get over. To his knowledge neither had spoken to the other since, which was considerable since they were the last of the Lost left, so far as he could recall.

Lester would have expected him to keep this memory close to his chest, maybe do some digging on his own and follow the normal mode of investigation; he wouldn't have expected him to go to Saul. That would mean no one else would likely foresee it either, even if they knew of everyone's past, which would keep the connection properly buried as long as they didn't contact each other again. It was a different place to start from than Albus's Order had last time around, to be sure, and he had the luxury of not having active Death Eaters to contend with, so if he had personal drama to handle instead he would just have to suck it up and move on.

Closing and locking his trunk, Alastor scanned the outside of his office before he shrunk down the invisible box until it was small enough to fit in his hand and stuck it to the underside of his chair. From his desk he withdrew a purple sheet of paper and scratched out a short vague message before tapping it with his wand to fold it into an aeroplane. Peering through his eye again to recheck that he wasn't about to be disturbed, Alastor disappeared under his invisibility cloak and tossed the memo into the air.

Achieving stable flight, the folded purple memo circled the room before heading towards the door. With a tap of the aeroplane's nose the office door opened; Alastor paused only a moment to Silence the thunk of his artificial leg before stepping lively to keep up before the door closed on him. Keeping his magical eye fixed on the memo he looked about with his real one to make sure he wasn't observed.

"C'mon, Tonksie," the towheaded Jameson kid said with what the boy must've thought was his most winning smile. "What do I have to do to get you to go out with me?" he asked for what must be the hundredth time as Alastor made his way past her cubical.

"First off, stop calling me 'Tonksie,'" Nymphadora said with an agitated edge to her voice that'd soon have the poor boy in the infirmary if he didn't stop. "That's almost as bad as 'Pinky' Mad-Eye's friend called me today. Secondly, you're like a minute older than me–"

"–More like a year," the boy noted.

"–That's still too close," she continued, "It just feels weird. So please just give up and move on."

The girl then tried to bury herself in all the paperwork she let pile up as Jameson coped with the loss as best he could.

"Pinky? Oh, that's perfect. I've got to start calling you that now."

Pinky let out a frustrated roar as he finally hit the hallway; Alastor couldn't have hoped for a better distraction.

His magical eye scanning around to insure that no one would bump into him, he hit the button to summon the elevator. Thanking his lucky stars the car was empty except for other memos, he followed his folded purple guide inside and hit the button for Level 9. His luck continued as no one joined him along the way, though he did have to cause all the papers to fly out of one witch's arms to make sure it didn't happen.

"The Department of Mysteries," the announcer chimed as he reached Level 9 and the memo soared off again.

As Alastor followed the aeroplane towards the door at the end of the hall he couldn't help but glimpse things through his magical eye again. The elevator behind him glowed like a strange spectral chariot, the stairway leading down to the twisting hallways, courtrooms, holding cells below were as open and barren as a catacomb, leaving the memo ahead like a twinkling guiding star in the darkness; a tiny twinkling on the edge of a black oblivion.

He had always disliked the Unspeakables who worked in Department of Mysteries for their secrets, dubious loyalties, and uncertain chain of command, but he liked the whole place even less once he had lost his eye. After that it had gone from a place he was wary of to one that was downright unnatural. Whether it was an intentional defect of his replacement or some enchantment on the Department itself he didn't know, but it was the one place he couldn't look into. It was like staring at an all-encompassing void which blot out the sun, and he was going into it just as blind as any other human; any that could stare out the back of their own skull anyway.

With a tap of the memo's pointed nose the door opened and the aeroplane raced through; Moody followed behind, uncertain what would be next. The tiny purple plane started flying in small circles at the center of a circular room of doors lit by eerie blue flames. Alastor stopped beneath it and looked around with both eyes, though neither worked any better than the other. The doors, flames, walls, ceiling, and floor were solid black and didn't register as the least bit magical, the only things which did were the memo, the silver shroud keeping him hidden, and the translucent mist muffling his steps.

Through his magical eye he saw the door he entered through close causing the room to rumble and spin around faster than he'd ever thought possible, the torches leaving blue tracers across his vision. His replacement eye spun around with it trying to keep up, which made everything so much worse. Moody tried to fix it on the memo above him but it didn't work either since that had gone nuts too.

When the world stopped spinning he took a moment to collect himself, clamping his good eye closed and shutting himself off from the images from his magical eye. When Alastor felt comfortable enough to look around again without sicking up he realized the memo was gone and a door off to one side was closing.

'Oh, not again,' was the only thing he had time to think before the room spun around, leaving him completely disoriented.

When everything finally stopped spinning, Moody had to remind himself why he was doing this in the first place. He had to salute them on their security though, even if he knew where he was going he'd have no idea where to go. He'd just have to hope Saul got his message soon or who knew how long he'd have to wait; thankfully it wasn't long.

A door burst open behind him and a man with a face like thunder came barreling through with his wand in hand, his hair and beard streaked with gray.

"Where are you, you son-of-a-bitch!" Saul said as he looked around the circular room.

Alastor moved to one side and gazed with his replacement eye, hoping for every advantage against the Unspeakable he could get if things went south for some reason. Unfortunately, that was also the moment the door Saul came through closed and caused the room to spin again.

'Damnit!' he cried in his head. 'The spinning's worse on the sides.'

"Show yourself, coward," Saul demanded as the room spun. The spinning didn't seem to affect him at all.

With his magical eye Moody saw a wave of misty white emanate from the man's wand, pulsing through the room and bouncing off him to echo back to Saul. Invisibility cloaks could keep you hidden from view but there were always other means of detection, and now Froggy Saul knew vaguely where he was.

"What is this, Lichfield?" the Unspeakable asked as he pointed his wand towards him and kept an eye out for any hint of movement. "Has your time finally run out and you wanted a bit of revenge before you go; only now you can't do it?"

"Not exactly," Moody said.

Finally giving up the illusion that he could fight the man – even if he had to – somewhere where the room itself was an enemy, he stowed his wand and shook his hands out of his sleeves to show he wasn't armed before lowering the hood of his cloak to reveal his face.

"Moo– How do I know you are who you look like?" Saul asked, squinting at him and still not lowering his wand. "And what are you doing down here? How did you know that stupid name?"

"You don't, to see you, and Lichfield told me years ago," Alastor said gruffly. "And since those are the obvious answers anyone could make up from seeing you charge in here, how do you want to handle this? Quiz me on things only I would know when we have never gotten to know each other well? How's that going to work?" he asked, spinning his magical eye around in a not-so-subtle clue the man was being ridiculous. "You got my memo," he continued, "So do you have the time to talk, Froggy, or not?"

"No," Saul replied. "And don't call me that. If it's important, come back tonight; this place is always deserted by then."

"Sure thing, Croaker," Alastor agreed, his magical eye darting around to all the doors around him. "Now how the hell do I get out of here?"

.o0O0o.

The swirling lights from the other fires were rather stupefying, almost as if they were trying to lull you to sleep. That was only if you didn't try to focus on them anyway; if you did, they'd make you sick. Harry thought it better just to close your eyes and avoid the issue entirely; it wasn't as if he didn't have other things he'd rather think about anyway.

The day-trip hadn't ended quite how he would've liked it to. There was the unfortunate turn with Mr. Lovegood towards the end, and apologizing for not asking her first after that – even though she said she understood – so perhaps things just weren't quite right in order to get another one of those kisses on the cheek. It was nice to think Hermione had been building herself up to one though. Still, Harry didn't mind, just thinking of the one from the night before still made him smile.

He might've tried to give one to her instead but that would've been… Well, he didn't know how to describe it. Not unpleasant; Harry was quite sure kissing Hermione would've been rather nice, on the cheek or otherwise. It might've felt more like the hug he got from her instead, the one where her father was watching the entire time; that was uncomfortable. It was the first uncomfortable hug he'd gotten from her, but even then it was nice. It just had him wishing the smiling man would go somewhere else, or at least turn around, because hugging a man's daughter just didn't seem right when he was standing there watching.

The whole thing made him glad the next time they'd be together would be on the train to Hogwarts, where at least that wouldn't be a problem. And when he thought of it, things had gone rather well, at least until the Hopefuls meeting, and Hermione seemed to enjoy herself too. So maybe Fred and George were right, maybe this was a da–

With a lurch and a belch of flame behind him snapping his eyes open, Harry found himself in the Weasleys' kitchen on wobbly legs. Maybe paying a bit more attention while flooing wouldn't go amiss; he didn't want to end up landing on his behind or collapsing as soon as he got where he was going after all. He tried to cover for the slip by using the movement to shake the ash out of his hair rather than dusting himself off, just in case any of the guys had seen it.

"Oh there you are, Harry!" Mrs. W–Molly greeted him cheerfully from the very homey table. She had what looked like several issues of the Daily Prophet around her; she must've finally gotten bored looking through the old notebook of hers.

"I figured once Percy had come through you two wouldn't be far behind," she said with a smile, before her eyes darted back to the fireplace curiously as the moment lingered. "Does Hermione know how to use the floo?" Molly finally asked with growing concern. "Oh dear, she might've come out of the wrong grate. Merlin knows where she'd end up then. Burslem, probably."

Harry wanted to wonder how anyone could come out at the wrong place but knew he was just trying to distract himself from having to address the uncomfortable moment of truth.

"Actually, Hermione's not coming," he said, somewhat embarrassedly. "She and her dad had to head back home."

"Oh, that's too bad, dear," Mrs. Weasley commiserated. "Of course they're welcome here any time. Merlin knows a girl needs her mother and a girl without one could use all the friends she can get."

"I'm glad to hear you say that," Harry said as he slunk into a chair at the table with a squirm in his stomach. "Because I did invite a girl over, but it wasn't Hermione who'd lost her mother. Sorry for the mistake. It was someone else who was at the Hopefuls meeting."

"Oh, thank goodness," Molly said, a look of relief evident on her face. "Not that I wouldn't be delighted to get to know your girl better, dear, I'm just relieved such an awful thing didn't happen to her."

Harry tried to clear his conscience about setting up Mrs. Weasley for such a huge emotional blow but he didn't make much headway on it. She was obviously a very caring person and in spite of her disagreement with Mrs. Lovegood, her heart must've been in the right place, or at least that's what Harry was choosing to believe. It made everything so much harder to get through.

"So tell me about this girl you invited," Molly said, fingering one of the Prophets. "And where is she? I take it she's not a muggleborn?" she asked, obviously wondering why the mystery girl wasn't here yet.

"I think she wanted to make sure her dad was okay," he said, deciding to go with a version of the truth. "He didn't take it too well when his wife came up in conversation. He actually runs a wizarding magazine, so they must know how to use the floo," Harry finished weakly, seeing the odd calculating look grow on Molly's face.

'How many wizarding magazines were there?' Harry wondered as he ran a hand through his hair to flatten it down, really wanting to avoid having to say what came next.

In truth he wasn't sure how many wizarding magazines there were since he'd never seen one, so who knows how many people across the country he could be describing. His stomach fell when he realized that she must've been trying to put the pieces together. As much as he hated it, he was just going to have to say it.

"Her name's Luna," Harry said finally. "Luna Lovegood."

"Oh! That's–," Mrs. Weasley's homey voice of recognition cut off quickly as the rest of what he meant caught up to her.

Harry wished he could look away but he couldn't, the look that began to grow on Molly's face and the way she covered her mouth with her hand as if to take back anything hurtful she may have said before just wasn't right. No one should have to look like that. No one should have to feel hurt, or be crushed like Mr. Lovegood had been, or how–

But when it came to that, why didn't anyone ever look that way when it came to his parents? Why did they think it was okay to go on about how famous he was without once having a kind thing to say about their deaths? Was it because he had never gotten to know them, so to their minds it wasn't like he was missing anything? Maybe they hadn't ever gotten to know them either and only thought of them as tragic but valiant heroes out of stories, like those stupid Boy-Who-Lived books brought to life; like they hadn't really existed at all. Maybe he wanted to miss them, had they ever thought of that?

"Are you alright?" Harry asked, finally managing to look away. It wasn't a shock to find that his eyes were just as misty as Molly's was.

"It's just…," she said, sounding more than a little lost. "If you'll excuse me for a moment, dear," Mrs. Weasley murmured, getting to her feet and walking away. At the living room she turned back to him. "The boys are out back, if – if you want," she said nebulously, but for once he didn't feel like Quidditch.

When she hit the stairs he realized what she was going to do – she was going to tell Ginny that her best friend's mother was dead. If he couldn't think of the people they were trying to help as victims of their own attempts to help them then he was a horrible manipulator. He knew then that he and Hermione should never try to do something like this again. At the very least they should talk about it and actually be honest with everyone instead of going behind their backs. Harry didn't know how he could feel any worse.

Suddenly a high-pitched shriek tore through the house, and then another close behind.

'Just how bad was she taking this?' Harry wondered.

After that something truly bizarre happened.

"We are the Harpies! The Holyhead Harpies! We will never fail!" Ginny's voice rang out. "We'll fly through the night and put up a fight, thr–"

Brief as it was, he heaved a sigh of relief when it suddenly cut off and Mrs. Weasley reentered putting her wand back in her pocket. She hesitated on seeing him still at the table.

"She's not been feeling well," Molly said lamely. "I think friends will do them both a world of good. It was very nice of you," she said with a smile he didn't deserve.

As she made her way to the kitchen Harry wondered if it wouldn't be better if he went outside after all, but he doubted the guys would understand and he certainly didn't want to add any more misery to the place. Molly had pulled out flour, milk, eggs, and butter and had just opened a cabinet for a large bowl when it disappeared and Dobby appeared beside her with it.

"Missus needs something cooked? Dobby can cook," the little elf said energetically, glancing between him and Molly to see which one would say yes first.

"Yes you can, dear," Molly said, taking the bowl from him with a pat on the head. "And you cook very well; I'd just feel better doing this part of dinner myself. I'll get out of your way after that because I know you want to make tonight extra special," she said supportively.

Harry looked at Mrs. Weasley curiously. Even having just been emotionally distressed she was better at manipulating people than he was. Was it a mother thing or a girl thing? He was starting to fear he'd always see people he was trying to help as victims of himself while Hermione had managed to get him to ask her out to Hogsmeade, and then again generally, well before they had even met up at Diagon Alley.

Harry vaguely remembered wanting to buy something there too, but for the life of him he couldn't remember what it was. He didn't think it was a book; was it a broomstick or something? Harry knew Hermione was smarter than him, but he had never considered the possibility that if they were already officially going out that she might be doing the opposite of what Fred and George suggested in case everything went badly and they had to go back to being just friends. Maybe Hermione would've been a better Slytherin than he would have, regardless of whether his grandparents were in the house or not.

His attention was diverted by a gout of green flame from the fireplace. If the elder Weasley brothers had been unsuccessful at breaking into the bank this would certainly make their mother's day. Oddly, it turned out to be Luna, who he hadn't expected here for hours yet, though Mrs. Weasley didn't seem to mind at all.

"Oh, there you are, dear," Molly said warmly, crossing over to the small blonde and giving her a hug. "It's lovely to see you again, you've gotten so big."

The girl looked at her a bit bewilderedly.

"Did the gnomes bite you?" Luna asked. "Their saliva's supposed to be enormously beneficial."

"Of course, dear, that's why they're there," Molly replied without a hint of hesitation. "You've met Harry, of course," she said, gesturing to him.

"Hello," Luna said with a wan smile.

"Ginny!" Mrs. Weasley called. "Oh, I forgot," she said before taking out her wand and giving it a flick at the stairs. "Why don't you go ahead and go on up? I'm sure she'd like to see you," she patted Luna on the back and went back to whatever she was making.

Luna paused as she was about to pass by him and dug in the pocket of her dress for a moment.

"Here you go," she said setting a small pile of river-worn pebbles on the table next to him. "I thought you could use them."

"Er– thanks," Harry said, not knowing what else to say.

"I think you'll be interesting," she replied. And with no attempt to explain what she meant Luna left for Ginny's room.

Strange as they were, Harry took the pebbles anyway. If he left them there then Fred and George might have them make their way into his food when he wasn't looking. But then again, if she was able to brighten things up just by being here who was to say they wouldn't come in handy after all?

Feeling better about getting her here, Harry went out to see what the guys had been up to.

.o0O0o.

He'd heard things at the home office in Britain had become a bit odd – why else would they have called people back from overseas? – but he thought it would've been some nonsensical regulatory regime the Ministry had just pushed through, like making everyone working overseas provide regular toenail samples or something. What Bill hadn't expected was for the bank doors to be closed or prepared for the sheer number of people recalled. If he hadn't run into Charlie last night he wouldn't have had a room to sleep in unless he went back home.

Even the normal leeway they gave employees seemed to have been curtailed, which is how the two Weasleys found themselves standing in a small side alley next to a nondescript door while slightly darker clouds threatened to drizzle on them. And to top it off, they were waiting for a goblin he was pretty sure was just going to say no, whether he seemed to have taken a liking to him or not. Still, if you didn't put up with a bit of annoyance for your brother then who would you do it for?

The door in front of them opened slowly, and Bill could tell from the voice behind it that this was the goblin they were waiting on.

"Ah! I am thanking you," a goblin voice said to someone, "I did not be knowing this door was here."

Charlie gave him an odd look he only had time to squelch with one of his own before the mustachioed Overseer Alkrat appeared before them.

"Is it the raining?" the goblin asked, looking up. "Better the wet storm than the stand storm, yes? And it is the Weasley!" the excitable Overseer exclaimed. "This is the luckydo. You be getting inside, yes?" the goblin beckoned.

"Uh, yes, sir," Bill said in hopes of keeping his boss happy. "I was hoping to bring someone in with me though, so I could give him a tour and he could entertain some professional curiosity," he explained.

Overseer Alkrat's face fell.

"Oh, I be so sorry for you," the goblin said. "We–we–we cannot be having anyone in the inside now. The others, they not be allowing this. He come back later maybe, yes?"

"We understand, sir. I just thought I'd check," he replied. "Sorry, Charlie. Maybe next time," Bill said to his brother.

"That's alright," Charlie said with a wave. "It gives me a chance to see Ron and the twins, not to mention Mum."

"Mum?" Alkrat asked curiously. "What is the mum? This is the fleur–flower, yes?"

"He's just talking about our mother, sir," Bill explained, thinking that if he gave a mum to his mum she'd probably keep it forever.

"Yes, and I still working with dragons is easier to deal with than her," Charlie joked.

"Ah!" Alkrat cheered. "It is another Weasley! And he be working with dragons, yes?" the Overseer asked, his eyes bright.

"Yes, sir," Bill answered quickly, sensing an opening here. "He's worked with them on a preserve in Romania for the last year, and had a summer internship there before that," he said with glowing tones as if to imply that his brother had run everything himself.

"This–this–this is wonderful!" Alkrat smiled. "You come," the goblin said as he grabbed Charlie's hand to pull him towards the door. "We need the consultant."

As Charlie disappeared inside he shot him a look wondering what he'd gotten him into. Bill tried not to laugh at the hyperactive Overseer but he was wondering the same thing. He had promised to get his brother a look at the dragons one day but he had never made any promises about them letting him leave again.

As he entered and closed the door behind him, Bill wondered if he could get Charlie probed.

.o0O0o.

Lester had never seen the bank so busy. Even in the stuffily stolid legal department humans and goblins were running about carrying who-knew-what around so quickly he had to flatten himself against the wall or be trampled. It made slow going, especially when collisions happened and papers went flying and everything around them had to stop while they sorted what was what.

'Perhaps the mystery of the missing rental agreement wasn't so difficult after all,' he thought to himself.

When he hit the common conference and work area he found it strangely segregated. On the right were all the human litigators and legal clerks Gringotts used with the only goblins darting about being low-ranking Gofers while on the left were the goblins who served the same function, though they had drafted Secretaries to ferry things about. At a tiny table in a far corner stood one of the best goblin contract lawyers Gringotts had huddled with who he thought was the Dragonmaster and two of his senior underlings.

'Huh. They must be making sure they're in full compliance with the creature handling laws,' Lichfield thought. With the I.C.W. involved and the Ministry likely wanting any excuse to poke around too, it was a sensible precaution to take. 'If Bloodwell had been drawn in it's a good thing I have other things to do or I likely would've been grabbed instead. After all, why would they need a contract dealing with dragons?'

Lester fingered the vial in his pocket as he made his way down the row between the human and goblin camps as he headed for his office at the back. The meeting with the loathsome Skeeter woman had been productive but irritating at the same time. She was a wand prone to backfire and would require close watching. The woman needed to learn that real scandals were sensational because they were true and not what was real, made sensational, resulted in scandals. Even a cursory glance at real evidence would have her best story unravel if it wasn't true and what he was offering her was different, better.

"Litigator Lichfield, I've got something for you," came a cracky, screechy voice behind him and he turned to see Barchoke's secretary coming towards him from the goblin section.

"Well tell them I'm busy and it'll have to wait," he replied with a wave.

"But it came from the Gra– from Overseer Barchoke directly," she said in a cracking voice which made his skin crawl.

How Barchoke or the other goblins could stand that way of speaking Lester would never know. It got him to stop though.

'Goblins never slip up over hierarchy,' he thought. 'Is that little bugger getting promoted and he didn't tell me?' Lichfield grumbled; if he got bumped up to the big chair upstairs he was likely going to end up having to call Barchoke 'sir' even in private. 'Well, stuff that.'

"Well then, what is it?" he asked the pig-tailed goblin gruffly. "And what's all this running about? I thought we were prepared for the whole I.C.W. mess."

"We are," she said simply. "But now we're up to our necks in more N.D.A.s than we ever thought possible."

"And how are we supposed to fully disclose things to the I.C.W. and the Ministry if no one can speak coherently?" Lichfield asked, rubbing his temple.

"How am I supposed to know?" the secretary asked with a shrug, her voice cracking again.

This was going to be one of those days, he just knew it. At least he got a free meal first.

"So what is it he wants me to do?" he asked the little goblin female.

"It's something involving intellectual property rights," she replied, "but I can't say anything more without an N.D.A. from you being on file for this."

"So the whole world's falling apart," Lester said, gesturing to the scrum around him. "And now Barchoke decides he can't trust me?"

"They're not trusting anyone," she said by way of explanation. "He even made me sign one."

'Like that makes a lot of difference,' Lester thought. 'There's a difference between a decent secretary and a best friend. It's not like they're–'

His eyes darted to the pig-tailed secretary who was holding out the standard N.D.A. for him to sign. He quickly tried to scrub away the image which popped into his mind.

'Good for him if it's happening but it's not something I want to think about,' he mentally muttered while looking over and signing the agreement.

"Just a second," he said as the secretary – he should really learn her name now, he guessed. 'Dixie? Trickie? Trixie! That's it.' – as Trixie opened her mouth to continue.

"Mipsy," he called. Lester couldn't help but notice the disgusted look on Trixie's face as the little house-elf popped up beside him.

"Yes, Mister Lichy?" the energetic elf asked, drawing glances from the goblins around them.

"Is the contract safe in my office?" he asked.

"Yes, Mister Lichy. Want me to take the briefcase now?"

"Please, and keep this safe too," Lester said, handing the vial of silvery memory over with the briefcase and watched her pop! away again.

"Can you not bring that thing here?" Bladvak, one of the goblin litigators, said getting up from a nearby table. It was much more assertive than anyone had spoken to him at any time since Barchoke had been made an Overseer. He seemed to have appointed himself office manager.

"Why wouldn't I?" Lichfield swatted back at him, noting how much more of the goblins' attention was now on him rather than what they'd been doing.

"Because we don't like them," the goblin answered with Trixie nodding. "They freak us out,"

"Why?" he asked, wondering why he was just hearing about this now.

"They just do!" Bladvak snapped before turning to the rest of the scrum. "What are you all looking at? Don't you have work to do?"

It looked like several new undercurrents had developed in Gringotts in the past day or so and Lichfield didn't know if he liked any of them. And worse, with all the mess with the I.C.W., Flamel, the Ministry, and his own case with the boy he didn't know when the next time he'd be able to sit down with Barchoke would be so he could get to the bottom of it; if the goblin would tell him that is. If the dislike of house-elves was so common, why hadn't he mentioned it before? He mentally waved it away for now as a concern for later.

"So now what can you tell me?" he asked Trixie as he motioned her to lead the way.

"That depends," she replied. "Do you speak Goblin?"

Lester sighed. Sometimes it didn't pay to work for a bank.

.o0O0o.

"I feel like a scarlet woman," his brother moaned into the pub's tabletop a few hours later.

"Nah, I doubt any scarlet woman's ever been paid that much," Bill teased, eyeing the two large sacks bulging with the strange paper money the Romanian wizards used. "Worrying about it won't make it any better, just relax."

"How can you say that?" Charlie asked, looking pained. "You don't know what I've done."

"I break into people's tombs and steal their most beloved treasures for a living," he said with a wave. "Sometimes I literally take them from their cold, dead hands. You don't do that without a bit of moral flexibility. All I have to ask is, was it illegal?"

If anything that made the man who stared down dragons for a living look even more sheepish.

"From the way they described it, technically, no," Charlie hedged. "But that doesn't mean it's right. I feel like a fraud."

"And that bit of moralistic turmoil is exactly why your tongue's tied up with a non-disclosure agreement," Bill said. "Just be glad yours is temporary, mine's for however long it needs to be."

"Then how could you say what you just did?" his brother asked with a curious look on his face.

"Because everyone knows what a curse-breaker does, even if they don't realize what it is we actually do," he explained. "And I never said my N.D.A. was about that."

"But what are we going to tell Mum and Dad?" he asked. "I can't tell them fibbidy fumpt pipi-pumpkins. They'd never understand," Charlie said morosely.

Bill chuckled, "I'm sitting right here and I didn't understand."

"Ugh!" his brother cried, burying his head in his hands again.

"Look, if you keep trying to talk about it it's going to keep happening and they'll know something's up, press you about it, and it'll never stop happening," Bill warned. "Just try not to think about it; but if it's the money that's worrying you…," Bill teased as he inched his hand across the table towards the bags, "I'll gladly take it from you."

That got his brother to move.

"Like hell you will," Charlie declared, clutching his sacks of currency like they were eggs and he was a nesting dragon. "This money's going to something good."

"Swanky new robes and a flat of your own?" he suggested.

"I'm thinking of donating it to the Preserve," Charlie said, looking at him like he was mad.

"Don't be mental," he replied, looking at his brother like he'd been Confunded. "Are they going to make you a manager or team leader or something for that?"

"People can do things without an ulterior motive you know," his brother scolded.

"Name one."

"Me," Charlie said stubbornly.

"Really?" Bill said shrewdly. "Then why are you in the country: because Fred and George wrote you, you want to do something nice for our little brother, McGonagall called about the Hopefuls, you like spending time with Dad, or because you know you really should put a bit more effort in with Mum?"

"Having multiple reasons to do something isn't the same as having ulterior motives," Charlie said after a moment.

"And yet you're not donating that money because it's the right thing to do," Bill pointed out. "You're doing it to clear your conscience, and that's an ulterior motive."

With that his brother looked like a puppy who'd just been kicked. How Charlie could be both rugged and outdoorsy and yet namby-pamby at the same time he would never know. His brother was like a walking, talking teddy bear who probably hugged the dragons to sleep instead of subduing them; a veritable plush bundle of doom.

"You don't realize what that money is, do you?" Bill asked his brother.

"Proof I can be bought?" Charlie offered as he shrunk the sacks down to fit into his robes.

"Anyone can be bought," he told his brother bracingly. "All they have to do is keep throwing money at you until you go from 'no' to 'maybe' and they've got you. And you wouldn't have gotten half as much if you hadn't said 'no' quite a bit from the off, so whatever they needed you for they needed you pretty bad, but that's not what I meant. That money is a new future for you."

Bill continued as his brother looked thoughtful.

"I may look like I mint my own galleons," he said with a cocky grin and a flip of his ponytail, "but that's only because I live well below my means and work my ass off for it. Believe me, I wish I had haggled before I signed my work agreement with them; I was young and dumb enough to say, 'Oh, whatever you think is fair,' when it came to how much I take home. Applied correctly, this money is a house, a wife, kids, and a good start on their lives, and I know how much you've always wanted that."

The pointed look on Charlie's face made him realize that particular sore spot was still quite sore for him.

'Damn, still not thinking before I speak,' he scolded himself.

"Look, Charlie," Bill said more softly. "I know you loved Shawna – you two went out for longer than I can remember, and it tore me up to see you after you two split – but you've got to move on when things don't work out. You're not even twenty yet. Going out with someone else won't lessen what she meant to you, and staying single for the rest of your life won't bring her back."

"It's still easier to live that way though," Charlie said with a swig of his butterbeer, looking as if he wished it was firewhiskey instead. "She was the only thing I ever wanted. I didn't care what happened – if we lived in a hut like Hagrid's for the rest of our lives, I'd be fine – as long as she was there, it'd be home."

Bill didn't know how many times he'd heard his brother say that but it was the first time something had ticked in the back of his mind.

"You don't run off to the other side of the continent if you had hopes of getting back with an ex-girlfriend," he observed.

His brother brooded silently for a moment.

"You know what it's like having class with an ex for a year?" Charlie asked, hunching his shoulders protectively.

"Many times over," Bill said with a lopsided grin. "Several girls played Seeker when it came to me but this Snitch never stayed caught for long."

"Then you have no idea what I'm talking about," his brother said dismissively. "When you actually loved someone, you can never think about that person any other way."

"A girl you snogged is never going to be a girl you didn't," he said with a sagely nod.

"Something like that only much, much worse," Charlie agreed. "It's like I can sense her when I'm here – like she's in the next room or if I turn around she'd be there. And going down that street earlier," he said, pointing to the entry to Diagon Alley. "It was like she was right there next to me. Every shop, every window, everything connected back to her – it was a nightmare."

"So as soon as you could you run off to Romania just to get away from her?"

"Why not?" his brother asked, "The entire last year I was there, there were parts of Hogwarts I wouldn't go to because I knew she'd be there."

"Must've made eating difficult," Bill observed.

"Who said I ate much? There's a reason I got so skinny back then," his brother explained. "And when I did eat it was in the kitchens."

"Damn, Charlie, you should've said something," he said honestly. He had known it was bad but he hadn't known it'd been that bad.

"You would've just said then what you just said now, 'move on,'" Charlie said, dismissing his concern with a wave.

"The me I was then probably would've told the you you were then that, sure," Bill agreed. "But not if you had added the last part; I wouldn't have known what to say. I stick with it now because it's been more than two years," he explained. "The me I am now though would tell the you you were then that what you were going through is a good thing," he said pointedly.

"How?" his brother asked, seemingly at a loss for any other word.

"Because you're a lot like Dad – and I say it as a good thing," he hastened to add. "If Mum ever died, you know he'd be devastated," Bill explained. "But five years down the line, ten years down, whenever it was he got involved with a woman again, you also know he'd appreciate every single moment with her that much more because now he knows how quickly it can be snatched away."

"Yeah, I guess that's true," Charlie said after a while. "How does a Snitch who's never remained caught learn something like that?"

"Just because I fly from flower to flower doesn't mean I miss the fact some people like having just the one," Bill replied smoothly. "You deserve to be cautiously happy rather than constantly miserable though. I don't even want to think what that would do to a guy after a while."

"Maybe; it doesn't feel like today's the day for it though," his brother said, finishing the last of his butterbeer. "You're starting to talk like a guy whose turn is right around the corner though," Charlie said, finally with a bit of a smile.

"Don't curse me like that," he said with a perturbed look. "I was going to keep an eye out for a special little flower for you, but since you said that, you can forget it." Bill said with a smile, much preferring a happy brother to a woebegone one.

"And speaking of special little flowers–," he said, taking out his wand and spinning it in a bit of a circle. A single chrysanthemum in full bloom burst forth from his wand. Palely pink with a yellow center, Bill thought it was a fine choice for a mother. "–It's time to see Mum."

.o0O0o.

It was a plainer and much more subdued Rita Skeeter that Lichfield followed through the Ministry's corridors, clutching her quill-and-ink set and little notebook as if they were a shield against whatever lurked in the sparsely lit gloom. Gone were the tight blonde ringlets and bejeweled spectacles she normally wore – though he supposed he was wrong in saying so. In truth, when these events occurred the woman had yet to adopt the signature look.

Just in sight behind her was Bartemius Crouch, then the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, crisply dressed, hair tightly controlled, and briefcase present even at this early hour. A man with a fighter's mentality and a vicious hatred of the Dark Arts, all he understood was attack – attack – attack! Lester tried to recall precisely how long the man had left at this time before his career, his whole life, crumbled around him when his namesake son had been exposed as a Death Eater – a few days, a week at most; everyone had been blindsided by that bit of scandal.

It was another scandal he was interested in though and as Rita turned and entered the Office of Wartime Child Placement and Care – a Ministry department which wouldn't last the day – he saw the focus of his interest already sitting to one side of a modestly sized table in front of a room full of empty chairs. Albus Dumbledore never left his contemplative state as Rita tucked into a chair and seemed to blend into it like a mouse in a corner. It hardly seemed the scene for one – if not two – of the biggest miscarriages of justice ever known. In his experience though politicians could do far more lasting damage than any group of criminals ever could, and more often than not they got away with it too.

"Dumbledore," Crouch said quickly as he entered the room in what passed as a greeting from him. "Who was it this time?" he asked, getting down to business. "Are there any witnesses?"

"Ah, I think we should wait for the Minister to arrive," Dumbledore said in his grandfatherly way. "That way we do not need to repeat ourselves."

"Then wait no longer," a short, somewhat portly woman in curlers pronounced as she made her entrance. "I, Millicent Bagnold, Minister of Magic, do hereby open these emergency proceedings regarding the surviving child or children of um…," the woman looked to Dumbledore for information as she took her seat between Crouch and Dumbledore.

Looking over, Lester saw Rita hurriedly scratching away with her quill; these people had just taken it for granted she was ready, or was even there in all likelihood. The sympathy he had for some of the victims of her libelous literary liturgy slipped a bit when he saw that.

"How many of her first targets had actually had it coming?" he wondered, taking the privacy of the pensieve as license to actually speak his thoughts out loud.

"James and Lily Evans Potter," Dumbledore said, almost overriding him.

'Perhaps keeping my thoughts to myself would be better after all,' he thought. After all, he couldn't listen to what he couldn't hear for all his gabbing.

"While it's a sad day when any of our countrymen die, sadder still is the loss of those we value most highly," Minister Bagnold said with kind words that were belied by the tone telling them she was saying it now by rote. "The Wizengamot mourns the passing of such a distinguished member."

Lester shook his head at that. The boy had never sat in his father's seat, something he was determined to change this time around. If James had been born with even half of Charlus's temperance he never would've gotten involved with Dumbledore's little band, never drawn the attention of You-Know-Who, and would likely still be alive today.

'But if wishes were wings, pigs would fly,' Lichfield reminded himself.

"I've gotten reports," Crouch interjected while withdrawing a parchment from his briefcase. "Of 'an abnormally large man' riding a flying motorbike from the ruins of a house in Godric's Hollow. Does that have anything to do with this?"

"That would be our gameskeeper, Hagrid, though I cannot say for certain where the motorbike came from," Dumbledore replied with a smile like this was all a bright, sunny day. "He was there, on my orders, to take charge of the situation."

"Two muggle law enforcement officers and a dozen onlookers had to be Obliviated," Crouch said tersely. "Even now we have men tracking down who sent them, where those reports are, and how they are kept, all to try to keep this breach of Secrecy under control. The Ministry would be better served by having our forces deployed elsewhere. Is that what you call 'taking charge'?"

"Now, Barty, don't get in a huff," Minister Bagnold said indulgently as she checked her hair to see if it was dry. "We all know Hagrid means well and was doing his best. It's not like he has magic to call upon; his wand was snapped years ago," she said with a wave. "Albus, you know I support the things you do for us but you really should try to avoid these things. The Ministry's involved now."

"And using methods against our enemies which are far too harsh," Albus said mournfully. "These are our brothers and sisters. While we should strive to stop them whenever possible, we should be reaching out to them with love and friendship so they might see the error or their ways."

Lester snorted and Crouch didn't look convinced.

"Tell that to the people they've killed, to the children they've left orphaned, to the Obliviators I've had working overtime for months to cover for their – and your – actions," he said with a fiery gleam in his eye; Lester had forgotten how worked up the man could get before it all went to hell. "I for one think you all need to be brought to heel, and I'm happy to start with your group," the man told Dumbledore. "I intend to see charges brought against Rubius Hagrid for this serious breach of Secrecy, and on you for sending him there in violation of Ministry procedures."

"Barty, you can't go charging Dumbledore," Bagnold said, removing the curlers from her hair. "The public would have your head, and mine. Let it be," she ordered. "I am curious though how you knew to send him in the first place."

"Ah," Dumbledore said sagely, "when the Potters went into hiding for good, shortly after the birth of their son, I was instrumental in helping them erect certain monitoring charms," he explained. "So when Lord Voldemort–," Albus's eyes darted curiously to the Minister for a moment when she squeaked at the name and almost fell from her chair. "–attacked the Potter home, I was alerted at once. And while I am sad to say that help was unable to arrive in time to prevent their deaths, Hagrid was available to tend to the survivor."

"Survivor?" Bagnold asked shocked as she righted herself in her chair. "Y–You-Know-Who has never left survivors before."

"I do not believe there has ever been an attack like this before," Dumbledore said seriously. "The monitoring charms noted only one person arrive before the attack began, meaning that Voldemort went alone. Another charm noted a Blasting Curse, presumably to gain entry, followed quickly by a Killing Curse," the old man recited, his eyes losing a great deal of their customary twinkle. "Mere moments later: a spell was used to force open a barricade and two other Killing Curses."

"Two?" Crouch asked, making notes of his own. "A parent and child? How many children did the Potters have? And what happened to the assailant? He just decided to leave?"

"James and Lily had only an infant son, Harry," Albus said. "But as to what happened, that remains a mystery," he said nebulously. "Shortly after the last Killing Curse was cast a second person entered the house. This person entered and left quickly, leaving behind the survivor of whatever caused the house to become the ruin you described, Bartemius. I cannot say for certain what happened to Voldemort–"

Minister Bagnold inhaled sharply at the name, and Lichfield would've rolled his eyes if it weren't so commonplace, even today, more than a decade later.

"–But I can say this," Dumbledore continued. "Out of all the attacks, Harry Potter is the one boy who lived."

"Fascinating," Bagnold breathed, trying to hide her previous discomfort by fanning herself, as if it were the story itself that she'd been reacting to. "You'd make quite the storyteller, Albus," she said with a pat on the man's arm.

"Thank you," Albus said with a slight blush.

'I wonder if I could remind Skeeter of that before she goes to press,' Lester thought as he poked a chair within the memory to see if it were solid enough to sit upon. It didn't have any give at all, but it seemed like it would do the job, so he sat.

"A second person?" Crouch asked with narrow eyes. "Who was it, why did they enter, and why would they leave the child?"

"To that I cannot say," Dumbledore said. "The spell was a simple one, merely intended to detect arrivals and departures. Though I said it would be prudent to have, they did not see the need for a more complex system in place since anyone who arrived would be an invited guest. That simplicity also made it more durable though," he explained. "Had they opted for one which relayed that specific knowledge to me, the spell may have ceased to function since the house was heavily damaged by that time, leaving us without this information at all.

"As to why this second person would be there," Albus went on to say, "to that I can only conjecture. Perhaps it was a friend who chose the wrong moment to stop by, though the timing would indicate otherwise," he said sorrowfully. "I believe this second person went there out of love."

"Love?" Bagnold asked curiously.

"Specifically, that of Remorseful Love, of Regret," Dumbledore explained. "I believe, though I am in no way sure, that this second person was the Potters' friend and betrayer, their Secret Keeper."

"A Fidelius?" the Minister asked. "That's a spell well beyond my–m–most people's abilities," she corrected herself. "The Ministry is most fortunate to have you, Albus."

Dumbledore opened his mouth to respond but once again Crouch's look turned cold.

"And wouldn't you have been Secret Keeper for this house, Dumbledore?" he asked pointedly, drawing bulging eyes from the Minister between them.

Albus looked at him sadly.

"While I offered my services in that regard, the Potters did not require my assistance," he replied. "James was quite powerful and capable of casting the charm himself, as was his wife. And though I offered to be the Secret Keeper for them, he was determined to use his best friend: Sirius Black."

"Black?" Crouch cried, as if things were suddenly making sense and whipped out a purple memo parchment. "We need an arrest warrant for him sent out immediately," the Ministry's top law enforcer declared. "There was a report almost two years ago about two dark-haired men on a flying motorbike. Black and Potter?" he asked Dumbledore pointedly.

"Ah, I do believe you could be right," Albus replied jovially. "Arrest might be premature though," Dumbledore said with a soothing gesture as Bartemius let his memo fly. "There are many questions to be answered, not least amongst them: was he the really the Secret Keeper and, if so, why did he betray his friends?"

"Was he really–?" the Minister asked flummoxed, and Lester sat back not too far from it. He hadn't expected Dumbledore to be Black's advocate in this. "How can you even ask that? You said yourself the Potters were insistent on it."

"And yet they could have changed their mind," Dumbledore pointed out. "They were a very clever group, and until we ask we can never truly know."

"Clever – or some might say stupid – enough to deceive the leader of their cohort?" Crouch scoffed.

"The Order of the Phoen–," Albus tried to correct the other man only to be overridden.

"Why would they lie to you when their lives were on the line?" he asked. "Asking such a loaded question only gives him room to wriggle away. We know enough as it is," Crouch said firmly. "I'll have him found and thrown in Azkaban by the end of the day. Such betrayal cannot go unpunished."

"Without a trial?" Bagnold asked. "The Wizengamot would never allow it."

"And there is the child to consider," Albus added. "Though he is young now, one day he may wish to know why his parents are dead, why their friend betrayed them. Sirius Black is, after all, Harry Potter's godfather."

Silence filled the room so swiftly and completely that even the scratch of Skeeter's quill was stilled, the woman herself sat staring at Dumbledore like he had pronounced the end of days.

"I have here a copy of the Potters' Will," he said into the accompanying silence, "which they had prudently left in my care."

Dumbledore removed a folded parchment from his star-spangled robes and handed it to the Minister.

"It is simple and clear," he said. "Upon their deaths, guardianship of their son, Harry, should pass to his godfather, Sirius Black."

Lester nodded; at least James had the presence of mind to make more than one copy, though if he were still here he'd clout the boy behind the ear for not giving him one. It would have saved everyone a load of trouble.

"That makes the depths of his duplicity even worse," Crouch said disgusted. "Betrayal by one as close as family is one we cannot ignore. You say he should have a trial? Then this is his trial," the fiery-eyed man declared. "You gave testimony the Potters were protected by the Fidelius Charm, and insistent upon using the man for their Secret Keeper, correct?"

"That was my understanding of their intentions," Dumbledore said tentatively.

"Then by all the available evidence, Sirius Black is disqualified from guardianship for the betrayal of the boy's parents, and I will see him in Azkaban by day's end for their murders!" Crouch finished firmly, hitting the table with his fist as if it were a gavel before closing his briefcase and storming from the room.

"Millicent, you cannot allow–," Albus said, but the Minister was already heading him off.

"The circumstances are unusual, and you may file for an actual trial if you wish," she said quickly. "But you know as well as I do what his fate would be if a case like this was brought before the Wizengamot. The man would have a date with a Dementor within the hour without any of your questions being asked," Bagnold said, spelling everything out for him. "A godfather turning on the family? I haven't heard anything so gruesome since that young child killed his family."

"And it turned out the child in question had been Imperioused," Dumbledore reminded her. "That may well be the case here. Until we ask we can never know," he said stubbornly.

Bagnold tsked and waved his concerns away as she got to her feet before turning to him with a curious look on her face.

"Wait a moment," she said, looking at Dumbledore with narrowed eyes. "Three Potters, three Killing Curses, and the house a ruin. But if the curse didn't kill the boy, how was he able to survive? And what happened to You-Know-Who?"

"As to how the he survived, I believe it is too early to know," Albus answered. "I believe, though, that it was his mother's dying act to sacrifice herself for him. Such an act can grant very powerful protection on those the person loves most," he explained. "And in so doing, attempting to kill young Mr. Potter would have been the very act which banished Lord Voldemort," Dumbledore smiled.

"V–v..." Bagnold stammered, still unable to bring herself to say the name. "You-Know-Who... is gone?"

"Not permanently, perhaps," Dumbledore said with a contemplative look. "But his power would most certainly be broken and his followers left leaderless. Which is what makes putting the boy who lived through this attack into a trustworthy guardian's hands all the more important," Albus explained. "If James and Lily trusted him, then who better to raise him?"

"You can't honestly suggest we give the boy to Black?" the Minister asked stunned. "The man's going to prison."

"Certainly things have not progressed so far that some leniency can't be shown," Albus said, looking sorrowful in his attempt to reverse the hasty actions with a commuted sentence. "Everyone deserves a second chance."

"You'll not convince Barty of that," Bagnold said simply. "And the Wizengamot would tear you apart, if the public didn't first, once this boy's story gets out. As the boy who lived through such a grisly attack – not to mention banishing You-Know-Who as an infant – this boy will be a legend!" the Minister cried. "I can't give him over to the man who betrayed his parents, even if he wasn't in his right mind."

"The boy must go to someone we can trust," Dumbledore pressed. "Someone we know won't turn him over to spare themselves."

"And you think someone as addle-brained as the recently Imperiused would be up to the job?" Milicent asked, mocking his foolishness. "I'm sorry, Albus, but Harry Potter will not be going to Sirius Black, that much is final."

"Minister, I have seen you take brave stances for the greater good against seemingly insurmountable odds," Dumbledore said dramatically, rising to his feet. "But if you insist upon this miscarriage of justice then I'm afraid you and I must part ways."

"Whatever do you mean?" Bagnold asked, looking concerned.

"If no other option is left to me, I shall resign in protest."

The Minister stood shocked, but she was no less shocked than Lester was. Dumbledore was doing the right thing, so how could it go so wrong?

"You can't leave, Albus, we need you," Bagnold said simply. "Even with You-Know-Who gone, there's still a world to set right."

"Starting with the fate of Sirius Black," Dumbledore pressed.

The Minister seemed to deflate a bit, a look of sympathy on her face.

"I commend you for sticking up for your friend and wishing to see the best in everyone," she said kindly. "It's the trait I most admire in you, but you must leave this alone. Here," she said, pulling out an official parchment and signing it with her name and magic. "Since the boy means so much to you, you take him – but leave this matter alone, for the good of everyone," Bagnold pressed.

Without a further word, the Minister left the room, leaving Dumbledore to slip back into deep contemplation once again.

"Minister, thank goodness I found you," a woman's voice said, drifting in from the hall.

"Mrs. Malfoy? Oh! This must be your daughter," Bagnold exclaimed. "I thought she'd be older."

"No, no, this is my son, Draco," the other woman explained. "Lyra didn't make it."

"Oh, my condolences, dear," the Minister murmured. "If there's anything I can do–"

"There is," Mrs. Malfoy cut in. "It's my husband; he's been acting strangely for a while – disappearing at nights and saying strange things. I think he's been Imperioused."

'So that was how it started,' Lester thought, shaking his head. 'You-Know-Who gone and before the Ministry could blink Death Eaters were coming out of the woodwork to plead their case. And Dumbledore had been bought... at the price of a child's life.'

Suddenly Albus's face brightened, hands pressed to his lips as if in silent prayer and with a smile like he'd been promised a sunny day that would never end. Equally distracting though was Rita Skeeter, the woman so easily overlooked in this time he had forgotten she was there. Finally recovering from her shock, she fled from the room as fast as her feet could carry her; no doubt off to sell the story.

The world grew dark around him and Lester felt himself being pushed out of the pensieve. No wonder she had forgotten to write any of it for the record.

.o0O0o.

As the sun began to set on the Burrow little Ginny Weasley couldn't be happier. Well, she could, but not by much. After the initial unpleasantness Luna had proven just as odd as ever – if not more so, if that was possible – but it was a good odd and she had brought things quickly back to how they'd been before and they spent the whole afternoon getting to be best friends again.

Better yet, she was staying for dinner, and maybe if she asked her mum she would let Luna spend the night. She was going out of her way to be nice to them after all. If Luna was able to stay, then perhaps she could get Tom to talk to her. He hadn't responded at all when she had introduced her to him, which she found rather odd. He had said he never had many friends but she'd think being friendlier would fix it, but that was a worry for another time.

Everything seemed to have righted itself with Luna's appearance though, not only her mum. The Ministry had let almost everyone go early today for some reason, which had her dad not only home early but so happy for the time off he was practically bouncing. Her brothers were in good spirits as well and without a word of that girl – Ginny refused to use Hermione's name – being said; they must have said all there was to say, which hopefully wasn't much, before they left their makeshift Quidditch pitch.

There was something odd going on with them though and Ginny couldn't put a finger on what it was. It wasn't the thing with Percy, though that was certainly odd as well. Ever since the guys had come back inside he had been talking to them about some Defense study group he and Penelope were starting because they doubted Lockhart's abilities in that regard. Ginny couldn't see how that could be; he was no Harry but he had plenty of books about him and his adventures and they wouldn't print it if it weren't true, no matter what Percy said yesterday.

She didn't mind the Defense thing though, especially since Harry seemed keen on it – as well he should since it was the books he'd bought that Percy had been reading all day. On the whole it seemed a backward way of doing things though. Everyone knew that Heroes had adventures and then passed their abilities on by training others, not the other way around, but Ginny supposed she could see the group preparing Harry to be the kind of Hero he was destined to be. For the life of her though she couldn't see Percy playing the mentorship role for Harry though, he'd never had anything close to an adventure at all – even Ron was better suited to be a Hero than Percy was.

'Ron, that was it,' Ginny thought as she sat at the dinner table next to Luna.

Glancing over at Harry and her brothers she noticed that even though they were talking, they were either giving each other knowing looks or trying not to smile when they looked at Ron, so he was definitely at the center of something.

'It's probably some sort of prank,' she thought with a smile. Ron's head had been swelling lately with all the Quidditch they've been playing and it'd be really funny to see him taken down a bit.

Whatever it was it'd hopefully wait because just as Harry's elf – which didn't seem nearly as annoying right now – put the last of dinner on the table her mother brought over the dessert she'd been working on. She couldn't believe it! She had remembered! It was a coconut covered coconut cream cake: Luna's favorite.

"There you go, Luna dear," her mum said with a pat on the girl's head. As she walked to her seat Fred spoke up.

"Hang on," he said, looking at his watch. "We're still short."

"Whatever are you talking about?" their mother asked curiously before a soft chime rang out from the living room.

'It can't be,' Ginny thought. 'Things can't get any better than this!'

She was happily proven wrong the next instant as the floo flared and her eldest brother appeared.

"Bill!" she and her mum cried at the very same instant, though she had the presence of mind to start running over to see him while her mum came at a statelier pace.

"Hey there, Gin," he said as she hugged him about the middle and he mussed her hair. "Hey Lu-lu, thought that was you today," Bill said to Luna.

"Hello," Luna said, her finger already dipping into the frosting on the cake.

'Today? Why hadn't she told me?' Ginny wondered. 'Because it's Luna and she probably thought you knew what your own brother was doing,' she answered herself.

"Bill, whatever brings you here?" their mother asked.

Stepping away from her brother she caught a glimpse of what he was holding behind his back before he presented it to their mother.

"I wanted to bring you this," he said as he gave her a hug and presented her with a pretty pink flower. "A mum for my mum. I also had someone very important to bring here tonight," Bill said with a smile and a wink to the guys.

'Merlin!' Ginny thought wildly. 'Bill's got himself a girlfriend! I'm getting a sister!'

The clock chimed again and Ginny was proven wrong, but for the second time she didn't care.

"Charlie!" she said as he appeared and she almost tackled him in her excitement. It wasn't a sister but a brother's always been good enough for her, especially since she hadn't seen this one since Christmas. Now it felt like Christmas all over again!

"My boys are back," her mum said as she gave Charlie a kiss on the cheek and a hug that said she wasn't going to let him go.

"I hope Bill wasn't building me up too much," he said with a grin. "I'm only here for the night," Charlie explained, "But I said he could have my room now since he's been recalled to England and needs a place to stay, I hope you don't mind."

Ginny smiled, her mum looked ecstatic, and Bill looked like he was going to hit someone.

'This is great!' she thought.

"Ah, there's pater noster," Charlie grinned as he made his way along the table to hug their dad.

"I think you made your mother's month," their father said with a grin just like Charlie's. "But we may be too many to fit in here now."

"Did you get it?" Fred asked.

"Did you bring it?" George echoed him.

"Of course I did," Charlie answered as Ginny left Bill to her mother's devices and returned to the table. "You really think I came all this way because McGonagall pestered me about this squirt?" he said gesturing to Harry with a thumb.

'Well that's uncalled for,' she thought primly. Harry wasn't that short.

"You know," her father said with a studious look at the wall at their end of the table. "If we just…"

Drawing out a large square with his wand saw a huge section of the wall disappear opening up the room to the garden and the night sky beyond.

"There we go," their father said cheerily an instant before a swarm of cackling potato-like gnomes scurried through the new opening.

"Oh, Arthur," her mother said wearily as laughter trickled around the table.

"What?" he asked innocently. "You always said we could use a new addition when the boys got older. I'm sure they won't bother anyone," he said with a wave.

Ginny wasn't so sure about that, who knew how many of them were out there and what they ate? Luna clamped her hand to her mouth to keep herself from giggling and seemed to have a hard time staying in her chair. Looking down she saw one of the gnomes was licking Luna's bare feet and Ginny didn't know which one was stranger, the gnome for doing it or Luna for letting him do it.

The table started groaning as the plates around her shifted and she looked up to see the guys had backed away from it as it grew. A few moments later the table had been stretched several feet giving them plenty enough room for all twelve of them sit comfortably, as long as some didn't mind their end poking out of the house. The exasperated look on her mother's face was enough to know it'd all be back to normal by the time they went to bed tonight, but for now she'd let it slide.

"So Charlie," Harry said as the elf popped in chairs for the new additions and everyone found their seats as her mother plopped the little elf into his highchair. "Did you get a look at those dragons?"

Suddenly her brother had a very odd look on his face.

"They were very interesting," Charlie replied after a moment. "Anyway, I heard Ron's taken an interest in Quidditch," he said cheerily, changing the subject. "Thinking of going out for the team?"

"That'd be brilliant," Ron answered as they fixed their plates before turning somber. "But Wood's got years left as Keeper," he finished with a shrug.

"We'll be trying to get him to form a reserve team this year," George said as he began to eat.

"We nearly had the Cup last year," Fred explained. "We had it wrapped up until Harry got injured and we didn't have anyone to play Seeker for our last match."

Harry flattened his hair down nervously.

"It's not your fault, Harry," Bill said, eyeing their mother as she cut up Dobby's food for him into little pieces. "Accidents happen to everyone. The captain should have had a few people tipped for replacements anyway."

"Since you can get more use out of it than me, Ron, I suppose I can give you this," Charlie said taking out a small bag and tossing it to him.

"What am I supposed to do with this?" he asked, holding up the tiny thing.

"Why don't you stop being a dumbass and find out," Charlie said, rolling his eyes.

"Charlie," their mother chided.

"Well, what else do you do with a bag but look inside?"

"It's still no reason to call your brother that," she said, looking over at him crossly.

"Yeah," George strangely agreed.

"Mo-Ron would do fine," Fred added.

With a grin, Ginny looked over to see how her youngest older brother would respond only to find Harry staring at him in shock as half of Ron's arm disappeared into Charlie's small bag and it was still going.

"Whoa!" Ron said finally, his eyes bulging. "It can't be."

Pulling his arm out, he produced a small knob. The knob became a smooth wooden rod and that rod sprouted to become long enough fit curtains to. Suddenly she knew what it was.

'It's a broomstick!' Ginny realized as the first twigs of its tail made their way out of the bag.

"No way," Ron breathed. "This is your Air Wave Gold," he said to Charlie. "England gave you this."

Her mother looked stunned.

"And I'm giving it to you," Charlie said with a wave. "It's not like I get any use out of it. Besides, a decent Keeper needs a decent broom, and Harry says you're becoming more than decent."

'He got me into Hogwarts, got Luna back as my friend, got Charlie to visit from Romania, got Bill to move back to the Burrow, and he's even getting Ron onto the Quidditch team. Is there anything he can't do?' she wondered. And then it hit her: she's next in line for Ron's hand-me-down broom! 'This is the best day ever!'

Once again the floo flared and for one mad moment she thought it'd be Luna's mum to say everything there was just a misunderstanding – or worse, it'd be that girl showing up to ruin everything. It was somewhat of a relief it was only the tree stump looking litigator she saw before. It really wasn't nice of him to let her think all that last time and she wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of falling for it again… Not unless Harry said it anyway.

The old man didn't have anything to say to her though; he simply looked at Harry and said, "We have to talk."

.o0O0o.

"So Dumbledore really is my guardian?" he asked shocked as he sat down on his bed.

"No, what the memory showed was a quid pro quo," Lichfield said, pacing back and forth.

"A what?" Harry asked.

"A political trade of something for something else," the bailiff replied. "It's blatantly illegal, the whole thing was blatantly illegal, but that didn't stop them from doing it. Minister Bagnold – the former Minister – bought his silence by giving him you."

"So if they made him my guardian, how is he not my guardian?" he asked, desperately trying not to get lost with the legal stuff this time.

'Where's Hermione when I need her?' he thought, and then thought better of it. The two of them being in his bedroom would give the guys enough ammunition for jokes until the end of time.

"First, because the way he became your guardian was illegal," Lichfield said, turning towards him and holding up a finger before adding another. "Second, because he still immediately abandoned you by placing you with those muggles. And thirdly," he recited, adding his thumb as if to make the point somehow before the others. "Because the way they disqualified the man who should've been your guardian was also illegal. He should've had first claim on you."

"Then who should've been my guardian?" Harry asked. "And why am I just hearing about this now?"

"Because of who the man is," Lichfield said evasively. "Your parents left your guardianship to the one person they trusted most, the man they made your godfather – Sirius Black."

Harry didn't know what to say to that, and it was made worse by Lichfield looking at him as if expecting an explosion.

"I have a godfather?" he asked, wondering why nobody had ever mentioned it to him before.

"The name Sirius Black doesn't mean anything to you?" the old bailiff asked with a look.

"No, should it?" he asked at a loss. "Hang on," Harry said, suddenly remembering something. "Is he related to Phineas Black, the Hogwarts Headmaster?"

"He's a common ancestor," Lichfield answered. "So you've really–"

"So we're related?" he asked, cutting in.

"You and he would be second cousins, not that it means anything really," his litigator replied. "Your grandmother was a Black and there are very few pureblood families they're not related to: Flint, Bulstrode, Crabbe, Crouch – you name it."

"The Malfoys?" Harry asked.

"You'd have to ask me that," Lichfield groaned, closing his eyes with a hand to his head like it hurt to think. "You'd be the second cousin, once removed, to the current Malfoy heir," he said slowly. "I think; it's been years since I had to think about any of this."

A stone formed in the pit of his stomach.

'I'm related to Draco Malfoy?' Harry thought. Then again, if his grandmother was related to a bunch of goblin-hating bigots he didn't see how being even a little bit related to Malfoy should be a surprise. Something struck him as odd though.

"So I could have gone to the Malfoys to raise?" he asked horrified. If they'd done such a bad job with Draco, Harry didn't want to think what they would've made out of him.

"They may be the closest ones; I'd have to look it up," Lichfield said with a wave. "I think there may be a sister I'm forgetting though."

"Why couldn't I have been related to the Weasleys?" Harry asked, thinking of the happy family at the dinner table below them. "At least they're nice."

"Who says you're not," Lichfield said. "A hundred years ago everyone was marrying Blacks just for the chance at a bit of their money. Anyway, no getting me distracted," he gruffed. "If you wanted to be generous, it was probably keeping you out of the Malfoys' hands that had Dumbledore put you with the Dursleys in the first place."

"They're not any better," Harry said, before remembering the state Dobby had been in when he had first appeared in his room. Maybe the Dursleys were the tiniest bit better than the Malfoys on some things but put side-by-side it'd be hard to see any daylight between them.

"But they're not Death Eaters either," Lichfield replied. "And for all their claims of being Imperioused, it's an open secret the Malfoys were right in You-Know-Who's inner circle."

"What's Imperioused?" Harry asked, getting another look from his lawyer for wasting time. "What? I've never heard of it before," he said honestly. Lichfield may complain he was constantly distracting him but if anyone had bothered to tell him anything in the first place then the man wouldn't have to.

"It's a highly illegal spell that lets someone take complete control of you," Lichfield responded quickly.

"So it turns you into a zombie?" he asked.

"What does the southern United States have to do with this?"

"What?" Harry asked, completely lost again.

"Forget it, never mind," Lichfield said, raising his hands up in front of him to ward off an onslaught of questions. "Placing you with the Dursleys might've seemed a kindness to Dumbledore's mind compared to the Malfoys, but he still violated Black's most basic civil rights in order to do it."

"But why was he put in prison?" Harry asked. "You never said that in the first place."

"No one's told you about Sirius Black?" Lichfield asked, looking at him strangely again.

"No," he said honestly. "The first time I heard of him was at the bank."

"Huh," the old bailiff grunted to himself.

"And if he was shoved in prison without a trial, why didn't anyone else fight it?" Harry asked.

"You mean besides the fact that everyone was too busy celebrating the end of the war?" Lichfield asked. "Because the worse the story is the faster people believe it. It's stupid, but it's true," he said with a wave. "And there're some who preferred to believe it. His own mother was one of those."

"What do you mean?"

The grizzled bailiff pulled out Harry's desk chair and settled into it with a scratch of his head as he gathered his thoughts.

"You mentioned Phineas Nigellius Black," Lichfield said by way of introduction. "Do you know how bigoted he was said to be?"

"I know his tenure was marked by strain with the goblins, division amongst the Houses, and the near abandonment of Hogsmeade," he recited, thanking Hermione for all the research she's ever done for them.

"That's putting it lightly," Lichfield said wryly. "And the bigotry didn't end there. It passed its way down the line and was reinforced by virtually every marriage they made – with some notable exceptions," he hastened to add. "Your grandmother, Dorea, cared more about whether people had money or not, but otherwise I wouldn't call her a bigot."

"What House were they in?" Harry asked quickly, thinking he'd never get a better chance than this to ask.

"Who?" the litigator asked looking confused at the sudden change of topic.

"My grandparents."

"Oh, you mean which Hogwarts House," Lichfield clarified. "Dorea was in Slytherin, which isn't that surprising since most Blacks were. Charlus and I were in Gryffindor, the same as you."

"A Slytherin and a Gryffindor?" Harry asked curiously. "How'd that happen?"

"Well there are only four Houses to choose from and stranger things have happened," Lichfield said with a wave. "Like all these Weasleys being in Gryffindor, that's downright strange. Your grandmother thought James was a shoo-in for Ravenclaw but the boy idealized his father too much for that."

"I thought you said you didn't know him that well," Harry said.

"You want to hear this or not?" Lichfield asked with a perturbed look on his face. After a moment he took his silence as a yes. "So the Black Family was a bunch of lousy people with a couple decent ones thrown in," his lawyer summed up quickly. "Sirius Black was supposed to be one of those: a Gryffindor like your father, his best friend, Best Man at his wedding, part of the same vigilante group as your parents–"

"Vigilantes?" he asked stunned.

"Your father had a very – colorful past when it came to doing questionable things," his litigator said judiciously.

"What do you mean?" Harry asked, fearing the worst. Vigilantes were a far cry from being the layabout drunks the Dursleys had called them but he still didn't want to think of them doing anything illegal.

"Well, at Hogwarts your father tended to spend more time in Detention than he did in the library, if the disciplinary letters were anything to go by," Lichfield said with a grin. "He may have been a little spoiled," he said wryly. "Maybe more than a little, but living in the middle of nowhere and being able to afford the latest, fastest broom's been known to have that effect on people."

Harry didn't know what do make about any of that, but one thing was certain. Lichfield knew a lot more about his father than he was letting on.

"But how does he go from that to being vigilantes?" he asked, trying to pull more out of the old man.

"As I said, your father had a colorful past," Lichfield said. "Not long before he died your father asked me a question; it happened to be one of two questions his father asked just before he had died. The first one was to find out the likely sentence an unregistered Animagus would face if they were caught," the old man said meaningfully.

"An Ani–what?"

"Ah, they must not have covered it yet," the old man said with a roll of his eyes. "An Animagus is a witch or wizard who can become an animal at will," he explained.

"My father was a werewolf?" Harry asked stunned.

"No, no, werewolves are different," Lichfield said quickly. "But that was the question they both asked: how would they go about leaving a bequest to a werewolf. Your father got a kick out of it when I told him," he said with a grin. "He shut up though when I told him about the Animagus bit."

Lichfield went on when he saw that he clearly didn't understand what the man was trying to tell him.

"Your father had some interesting friends," he said finally. "Some might say 'reckless.' I never found out for sure which was the werewolf and which the Animagus, but my money was on James being the Animagus. Charlus would've told me if the boy had been bitten, though how he thought I'd get your dad out of a ten year prison sentence for the other, I have no way of knowing."

"He could've spent ten years in prison?" Harry asked.

"If he was an Animagus, and if he was caught before he registered, yes," Lichfield said with a shrug. "But finding one of them is almost as difficult as becoming one in the first place; it's not a common thing to do, or all that useful from what I've read. And don't bother asking me what he was," he said when Harry opened his mouth to ask that very thing. "He could've been a psychedelic peacock for all I know or he could've been a dormouse – if he was an Amimagus at all.

"Anyway, this is a very long way of saying your father had a general disregard for the rules," Lichfield said trying to regain control of the conversation, though Harry was glad he shared something more with his father than just his last name and appearance. "Sirius Black was much the same and didn't seem to follow the pureblood bigotry the rest of his family did. He even went so far as to run away from home when he was sixteen to live with your father and grandparents."

That suddenly put a different spin on things for Harry. With the talk of them running around breaking the law had made them seem like gangsters but now it looked a lot more like what things were like with him and the Weasleys. He, Ron, and Hermione had all broken dozens of school rules to get the Sorcerer's Stone, though he didn't know about breaking any laws, at least not personally.

"So why's this man in prison?" he asked.

"Because the only person who stood up for him was Dumbledore," Lichfield said. "Everyone was sure he was guilty by the time they heard he was in prison, and by then other things had happened to push it from their mind. Even I got distracted by a load of other things," he admitted. "That's the way life works."

"But why would his own parents want him in prison?" Harry asked, remembering what Lichfield had said before.

"Because him being guilty meant he'd seen the light and become a good boy again," Lichfield scoffed. "I heard they had disinherited him years before but reversed it because to them he was better off as a convicted criminal than as a free man, because if he was guilty it meant their son had shared their views and was imprisoned for 'a lost but noble cause.'"

"Wait, I don't get it," he said, trying to put the pieces together in spite of the large gaps he still had.

Lichfield was obviously going out of his way to not say something, but why would he not want to say it? If Sirius Black had run away to stay with his grandparents because his own family was lousy then how could him being in jail be a noble thing for them? Had they changed their minds when he had gone 'vigilante' on the Death Eaters or something? It almost sounded like–

Suddenly he felt a sinking sensation, like he was about to leak through the bed and every floor below him.

"He changed his mind, didn't he?" Harry asked Lichfield. "Sirius Black changed his mind."

"That's what everyone thought," the bailiff said. "Back then everyone was paranoid. Between the killings, disappearances, and people being Imperioused left and right, no one knew who to trust. And when whole families were threatened because of what one of them thought – suddenly, not thinking that way anymore seemed a very wise thing to do, as far as your safety was concerned.

"Sirius never struck me as a coward though," Lichfield said, and Harry noted the use of just the first name. "It's the why it's bothering me. Why did he do it? And why are we more than ten years later and no one's ever bothered to check?"

It was then that something which had been lurking in the back of his mind shifted into place.

"Why would Black have been thrown in prison after my parents' deaths unless he was responsible for it?"

It was the silence and the scrutinizing look from Lichfield that let him know he had said it out loud.

"We don't know why he did it," his grizzled old bailiff said. "And we only have Dumbledore's word that Black was their Secret Keeper in the first place."

"Their what?" Harry asked, hoping for something else to poke this bigoted Black with.

"Something that sounds bad for him if you don't stop to think about it for more than half a second," Lichfield said gruffly. "The fact is we don't know anything about what happened that night. Who was involved, how you survived, how You-Know-Who knew where to find you – none of it makes any sense."

"So they should let Black go because something doesn't make sense to you?" Harry said hotly, suddenly standing with his hands at his side clinched as fists. "The wizarding world makes less sense the more I learn about it, does that mean we should let everyone out of prison? What makes sense is that Sirius Black told Voldemort how to find my parents. Why else wouldn't you be saying it?"

"Because he was a good kid!" Lichfield said as he stood as well. "A rule breaker, sure, but who isn't at their age? It doesn't mean he should rot in Azkaban when we don't know why it happened."

"Who cares why!" Harry cried. "They're my parents! He deserves to be punished for what he did!"

"He may not have had a choice!" Lichfield fought back. "Betraying them meant betraying your entire family: you, your parents, and your grandparents. There's no way he would have done all that, none, not once Charlus took him in."

"And who said he cared about that?" he shot back. "Who says he cared about any of it? Maybe he just wanted the Black money. How do you know he wasn't out for himself?"

"Because he would've died before doing any of that," Lichfield said forcefully.

"Then he should have!" Harry said.

'He should have been the one to die,' he thought. If he had been then his parents would've been the one who lived and he never would've gone to the Dursleys.

"So you're content just to be ignorant on this for the rest of your life?" Lichfield asked.

"Why not?" he replied. "You seem to content to keep me ignorant about everything else."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"For all your talk, you've barely told me anything useful since this whole thing began," Harry said hotly. "You've played hide-and-seek with information about my family, lied about not knowing them when it suited you, and yet you're springing it on me now like it's some sort of prize. You never told me about owning the land we're on right now when it could've made things easier and had me doubting people who are actually my friends, and for what, some personal crusade against Dumbledore?

"And thinking of him as some evil, untrustworthy old man out to steal my parents' money is fine by you," Harry went on to say. "But him sticking up for someone you like is all you need and you're ready to throw open the prison doors and let everyone out, because that's what makes sense to you. Well, sorry if I disagree, but isn't there some actual work you should be doing or has this whole thing been about wasting time? The only thing I've actually heard you do is kidnap Mrs. Figg."

"I'm not in the habit of explaining myself to children, detailing how I operate, or bringing up things I don't want to talk about," Lichfield growled.

"Then get used to it," Harry said forcefully. "You said a litigator's job is to get done what I want done so that means I'm your boss. I don't care about some godfather I never knew or a Minister I've never heard of. I don't want to fix the world, and I don't need someone to act like the guardian I never had; I've been taking care of myself well enough on my own. I just want Dumbledore punished for sending me to the Dursleys and I want to be free of all of them. You said it'd be easy, so do you think you can manage that?"

With a pop! Lichfield disappeared, leaving a seething Harry in his wake. No matter what the old man on the Knight Bus had said about it, if it meant being able to get away from people he didn't want to talk to anymore then Apparition was definitely something he wanted to learn.

As he flopped down on his bed Harry didn't think he was being unreasonable. What did he care about Sirius Black, Nicholas Flamel, or Minister Bagnold and why should he have to fix everyone's problems? His problem was Dumbledore and the Dursleys and the sooner Lichfield got that taken care of the better off he'd be.

Another small pop! a short time later had him look over to see Dobby uncertainly place a plate heaped with food on the desk. For once the sight of the little elf didn't make him feel any better. Lichfield may be taking his sweet time on everything and was prone to go gallivanting off on something completely unrelated if given half a chance but he had somehow managed to track down Dobby and arrange for Harry to buy him without the Malfoys ever knowing it was him.

When Dobby disappeared another ill feeling settled in his stomach that had nothing to do with food. The Weasleys must've been able to hear their shouting match from down in the dining room and he certainly didn't want to have to go back down there again tonight.

.o0O0o.

Lichfield found himself staring at a large black and white muggle picture. The sudden change was rather jarring but it was better than being yelled at. He didn't know who the old man with the frizzy mustache and wispy, white flyaway hair was but the way he had his tongue stuck out in defiance of any kind of propriety almost had him liking wherever it was he happened to be. But when it came to that…

"Where the bloody hell am I?" he asked aloud as he looked around.

"You're in my bedroom," came a female voice behind him.

Turning around he saw the wild-haired little Lady-wife of his mop-headed, pint-sized boss. When he took the job Charlus had hinted things could get rather strained when one generation handed things off to a new one. The bailiff who had the position before him – some man named Longfellow – had simply quit when their personalities had clashed too much, and while Lester had never foreseen it being a problem for him he also had never foreseen a twelve year old handing him his ass and telling him to get back to work.

'Too much of the auror had crept back in over the years,' he thought ruefully. 'Or it had always been there and Charlus had never said anything about it. Might've been the reason James had never trusted me with their plans in the first place, the gruff distance made me his father's man liable to reprimand him, not someone he could count on.'

"Well, now I know where I am would you mind telling me how the hell I got here?" he asked, the girl's look drew down a bit as if she wanted to take him to task for his language.

'I can curse if I want, she's not my boss,' he thought as Mipsy appeared by the girl's leg and gave him a happy smile.

"I asked Mipsy to see if you could come over," the Hermione girl said a little formally. "I didn't think she'd kidnap you."

"I didn't know you could do that," Lester said to himself more than anyone else as the elf gave him a bit of a chagrined look. "Why the hell am I Apparating, flooing, and walking to work if you could just take me there directly?"

Mipsy gave him a shrug like all he'd had to do was ask.

"Anyway," the girl continued, rising from her desk chair. "I wanted to thank you for sending Mipsy to me the other night, it was – very educational."

"Yeah, well, you're welcome," he replied somewhat at a loss for what else to say. Working for Gringotts for so long had made him somewhat of a foreigner when it came to niceties. "I could see how coming from your world into ours raised a lot of questions most people never even thought about so I thought it might give a different perspective on things."

The girl nodded thoughtfully on that.

"It certainly did," she said, though she didn't look like she had come to any definite answers on anything. "And seeing how much she likes to work," the girl continued with a glance down at the elf. "If you ever run out of things for her to do, I wanted to let you know that you can send her to me for any extra work we might be able to come up with. I'm not sure how that would work with payment though," she said finally.

The bit at the end drew a horrified look from Mipsy at the thought of any payment getting made at all, but it did give Lester an idea.

"I'm fine with the extra work if she is," he agreed to find his leg quickly hugged by an overexcited elf. "Well I guess that settles it then. Oh, Mipsy," he said, giving her a poke on the head. "There was a lot of very good smelling food at the Weasleys just a moment ago that got me very hungry. Could you go home and make me something to eat? I'll be there soon."

"Mister Lichy wants the soup?" Mipsy asked happily.

"Mister Lichy wants anything Mipsy wants to make him," he said with a smile.

As he watched, Mipsy's mouth drooped open and her little hands started vibrating with joy. She then hugged him then disappeared with a pop!

"That would have seemed very strange to me yesterday," the girl said finally.

"She's kind of strange every day," he replied. "But I'm not one to talk; there's something to be said for a little strangeness," Lester said, gesturing to the mad muggle on the wall. "Anyway, I'm fine with her working however much she wants, but you don't need to be paying me for it." In a hushed tone he said, "Don't tell her this, but technically, I don't own her."

.o0O0o.

After the cavernous blackness of the hub-like antechamber before, the one that followed was full of sparkling light so bright it was almost blinding, though through his magical eye the sight was actually worse. Golden lines and sigils were everywhere, covering every object and every surface, some runes crammed together so tightly you couldn't tell where one ended and the next began and a mysterious ticking noise seemed to come from everywhere.

'There has to be more enchanted objects in here than in the rest of the country,' Alastor thought as he shut himself off from the painful images.

As his natural eye adjusted to the light he caught a glimpse of what those objects were. Clocks gleamed from every surface, large and small, grandfather and carriage, hanging in spaces between bookcases or standing on desks around the room. The bright white light itself was coming from a large bell jar standing at the far end of the room which seemed to be full of swirling wind or water.

"This way," Croaker called from somewhere inside the room.

He hated going in anywhere blindly but certainly wasn't going to give the impression he was weak to anyone who might be watching. His magical eye darting about like mad, even while he was pushing those images away, Alastor entered the room as if he could see everything there was to see and closed the door behind him.

The thunk of his artificial leg made him stop and actually peer through the magical eye for a moment to see the spell he'd cast to muffle his steps had disappeared. Looking back at the door he saw the ingenious little solution to their identity problem Saul had come up with. He'd enchanted his door to forcibly remove all stealth, concealment, or other means of disguise from anyone who entered.

'Smart,' he thought. 'They don't call him "the Professor" now for nothing it seems.'

As he moved through the room to find Saul, Alastor got a better look at what the man did down here and what he saw he didn't like. He would have thought a man with his history would stay away from studying Time; anyone with any sense would. The hummingbird they had locked in the bell jar constantly going from egg to full grown and back again was just sick. It was what he saw when he glanced to his right though that really made him want to run.

"Are you sure you should be playing with that?" Alastor asked the man who was hunched over a workbench with his wand pointed at a tiny golden hourglass.

Sparing him a glance Saul asked, "Why? What do you think's going to happen?"

"I don't know," Alastor said roughly, slowly backing away. "And I don't want to find out."

"And why would you come to the Department of Mysteries if you didn't want to figure things out?" Saul asked with a furtive grin.

"To pick your brain, but I'm not mad enough to be in the same room with you if you're going to be playing with that," he said definitively. He had seen plenty of people die before but never in the way Lichfield had described; he was old enough already.

"What precisely do you think this is?" the other man asked with a nod to the hourglass.

"It's one of those – things, isn't it? The ones your lot made," the auror said, trying to sound calmer than he felt. He had not signed up for this.

Saul Croaker looked at him a moment before he spoke.

"I would point out the humor in asking an Unspeakable to speak about their work, but I'll let that speak for itself," he said with a smile as he put away his wand. "But to set your mind at ease, no, this is not a Bio-Temporal Stabilization Device – or 'Stiller' as the public called them. A stupid name in my opinion."

"Then what is it?" Alastor asked, earning another amused look from Saul. 'The man's going to do this every time I ask something.' "I assume it's not going to do what those Stillers did," he added, succeeding in making it not sound like a question.

"Carefully avoiding anything that might be construed as speaking the Unspeakable," Saul said, "I would have to say I'm not particularly keen on repeating my experience with Mintumble's Temporal Dysplasia – What I call what 'the Stillers did to my lot.'"

Alastor's lips writhed with the effort not to press the man or to drag him out of the room by his hair.

"Have you ever heard of Eloise Mintumble?" the infuriating Unspeakable asked. "A fascinating story – not Secret or Unspeakable in any way – just something the Ministry doesn't want people to know, which I find are the most interesting things to know, don't you?"

Moody wondered where the man was going with this.

"Ms. Mintumble was an Unspeakable who worked here around the turn of the century," Saul continued. "She and the team she was a part of were working on the same basic Mystery I do."

"Time."

"Quite," the Unspeakable replied. "Somehow in the process of one experiment or other the poor woman found herself stuck for five days in the year 1402."

"That's imp–," he started to say before cutting himself off with a glance at the ever-cycling hummingbird.

"Impossible?" Saul Croaker asked. "Now who's to say when you're dealing with Time, for truly it's a bizarre bazaar of possibilities. Would you like to guess what happened when they finally got her back?"

"She died," Alastor answered.

"To put it succinctly: yes," Saul smiled. "Death comes to all in the end though, but that's a different Mystery entirely. How she died was what had this entire Mystery shut down for more than fifty years, for aging five hundred in the span of hours is not an experiment you want to repeat."

"So that's what happened to you?" Alastor asked trying to get the man to sum things up.

"Yes, ...and no," he said unobligingly. "We never traveled in time, for all they call us Lost – Tell me," Saul interrupted himself. "Is Lichfield still alive? Pity. The man should count himself lucky he only lost fifty or sixty years, though I presume he's just been waiting to die since then," he quickly continued. "No, what we did was try to stand still and be young forever – hence the horrible name Stiller and 'Stiller's Sorrow.' The Ministry may not want the fate of poor Ms. Mintumble to get out but I'll always call it after her. After all, if more people had listened to me about her in the first place they wouldn't have rushed and Time might not have wandered off with us."

Alastor had to wonder if time had wondered off with the man's wits; he was starting to prefer the man when he was angry.

"I do so find it freeing to speak to someone again," Saul said with a pleasant grin and a stretch. "Even in a round about way. Bode is friendly enough but everyone else avoids me when I'm in here and refuses to work with me. I don't know why, it's not like Mintumble's is catching – except in that one case, but I always thought the man was a buffoon. He should have just let his wife take her chances on her own, but I suppose he'd say that was impossible.

"Speaking of impossibilities though, the Mystery of Ms. Mintumble gets far more interesting from there," said the Unspeakable who won't shut up. "The Tuesday after she returned lasted two and a half days, Thursday was four hours long, and twenty-five people just popped out of existence," he said with a maddening grin.

"How the bloody hell does that happen?" he asked.

"Ah ha!" Saul said with a finger in the air. "And there's the question that began all of my work. Well, except for the cursing; I don't usually do that – The earlier 'son-of-a-bitch' aside that is. Anger is the death of Reason. But answer me this – you and me, right now, when are we?"

"Around seven-thirty – eight o'clock at night," Alastor answered.

"That's just what the clock would say," Saul chided. "What section of Time is it though: Past, Present, or Future?"

"This is the present, obviously."

"Are you sure about that?" the talkative Unspeakable asked. "If another Mintumble appeared right here, right now, from five hundred years in the future, which would it be then? And what if they came from the Past instead?"

"I guess that'd be somewhat subjective," Alastor replied. "Do you talk like this all the time?" he asked, thinking he knew now why everyone really avoided the man.

"Only to myself," Croaker admitted. "Though I suppose I should've answered a little less honestly on that."

"You're a muggleborn, aren't you?" Alastor asked, wanting to make sure of the man's views.

"What gave it away?" he asked. "It was using the word 'dysplasia,' wasn't it? An oddly medical word for the wizarding world; I keep forgetting I should dumb things down. So what do you have for me?" Croaker asked. "Is it interesting?"

"It has nothing to do with Time," Moody said, for once glad to be back on soothing topics like still-living Dark Wizards bent on enslavement and world conquest.

"Well, nothing's perfect, but as long as it's interesting..."

"It's a memory," Moody said, not wanting to let the man verbally wander off again. "And what it contains is so secret it's beyond Unspeakable."

"Is it now?" the Unspeakable asked. "Now I'm interested."

"I've got a pensieve if you can free up some space," Alastor said, gesturing to the table.

"No need, no need," Saul said with a wave. "We've got better. You just go through that door there," he gestured to the door across from him. "I'll be in with you presently. I just want to finish this up," the Unspeakable said, turning back to squint at the small golden hourglass.

Stepping through the door he indicated, Moody found himself in a dimly lit rectangular room with tiers of stone benches descending to a recessed pit below. There, standing on a raised stone dais in front of a large crumbling archway was Saul Croaker. Quickly he spun back to the room he just left and kept his magical eye on the Saul in the new room.

"No, no, don't tell me," the Saul he just left said with a shooing gesture. "You just shut the door. I want to find out for myself."

From his magical eye he saw the second Saul toss a tiny object away from him and blast it with his wand, causing a brilliant explosion of magical energy. When his sight cleared, he saw it happen in reverse and the whole thing play itself out again. Battling every instinct he learned in his career, Alastor closed the door, drew his wand, and walked around the room staying well away from the second Saul.

"Don't you think you've done that enough?" he called when he'd gotten almost in front of the man.

"Do what?" the second Saul asked, stopping short of tossing whatever it was the sixth or seventh time through.

'Merlin! He can't have been doing what I think he was doing,' he thought wildly with a glance at the door he'd come through. 'The man would have to be mad.'

"I'd ask you what happened after I did what I haven't done yet," Saul Croaker said quizzically. "But then it'd bring up a host of interesting things to talk about – none of which are what you're here to show me. Well, this way," he said cheerfully, gesturing to another door. This time walking to meet him there.

"I'd tell you that I'm really me," this Saul said when they got close. "But if I weren't me I'd tell you I was really me too, so that doesn't get us anywhere. Likewise I'd explain what I was doing when you stopped me from doing it, but that'd be speaking the Unspeakable and you'd have to transfer to my department first. Anyway," the odd uncanny Unspeakable said as he opened the door. "Welcome to the room we keep our brains."

.o0O0o.

"So what do you think?" Alastor asked as the memory flickered off the clunky repurposed muggle device.

"The memory's been censored," Saul said.

"Yes, I noticed that and you mentioned it before," he replied.

"Well I don't like partial recollections," the Unspeakable fussed. "Who knows what pertinent information he left out with his clumsy Oblivations?"

"What did you think about what it showed?" Alastor pressed.

"I wonder..."

Twiddling with a dial, Saul reversed the memory.

"I have form only when I can share another's body..." the specter of Voldemort rasped. Saul then skipped forward a little. "Unicorn blood has strengthened me–." He then skipped back again, "Share another's body–." Alastor tried to contain his growing frustration but soon it became a constant stream of: "Unicorn blood – Body – Unicorn blood – Body – Unicorn – Body – Unicorn – Body – Unicorn – Body."

"Will you stop that!" he snapped, rubbing his temple where he had a grinding headache growing. "Do you know how he did it?"

"Yes, I think I do," Saul said with a giddy grin. "I've read bits of ancient magical rites where the subject would take into themselves conflicting sources of magical power – the more extreme and diametrically opposed the better. Then, if it didn't kill you, there's a chance the sympathies of the two would begin to work in concert, augmenting the natural abilities of the body and freeing you of the reliance on the artificial focus!"

"What?" Alastor asked, feeling like a flippin' First Year again.

"Well, you saw him," Saul said, gesturing to what he called a screen. "He did wandless magic. I'd wager the presence of a non-native soul, in the body, which was suffused with a substance what was both blessing and curse–"

"I'm not interested in wandless magic," he said roughly, trying to keep the Unspeakable from running off again.

"Well why not?" the man asked. "It was by far the most interesting thing there."

"I'm far more concerned with how a long-dead Dark Wizard's not dead, and I thought you would be too," Alastor said.

"Oh, no," Saul said, getting to his feet and putting the memory back into its vial. "I'm still my own Secret Keeper. I'll be fine if he shows up again."

"And would you mind sharing with me how he'd be able to do that?"

"Not at all, but that'd be speaking the Unspeakable and there's only one way I can do that," Croaker said with a grin.

.o0O0o.

It was a rather tight squeeze for the ones coming up the tunnel but it had been a long time since the tunnels had been in regular use, and they'd never been designed for this. The tunnels had covertly connected the bowels of Gringotts to these seemingly abandoned warehouses since the days they had been workhouses and orphanages, now they were being used for war, no matter how the others looked at it. It was a pity they had to concentrate their diet to lower animals that couldn't talk or carry weapons, he had wondered occasionally how human tasted.

Despite the workers' best efforts a handful of Curse-Breakers had been drafted at the last moment to get the tunnels appropriately widened, but everyone knew better than to complain or to talk about anything they knew or suspected. Either of those tonight would find the one responsible for it at the wrong end of a dragon.

As the fifth and final mass of muscle, scale, and wing emerged from the tunnel, a good two dozen Enforcers on its back, Gutripper couldn't help but to grin. He had never thought the bumbling, careful, human-loving Overseer of Hereditary Accounts could ever be a proper Grand Overseer – or a proper goblin at all – but this stroke of genius would scour any vestige of doubt from anyone's mind as to what their status was in the world. They were the Gringotts Goblins and the Ministry would hear them roar!

With a shout of victory in their native tongue he gave the signal to fly. And with cumbersome steps and the beat of leathery wings, the goblins took to the sky. Tonight it started; tomorrow, everything would change.

.o0O0o.

AN: As always, thanks for reading.