CHAPTER 116: No Rest For The Wicked (Part 3)

Slytherin Fifth-Year Dormitories

May 13th, 1996

8:45 a.m.

Harry's reflection stared back at him as he fixed the buttons of his shirt. His long hair was damp and flat on his face, and his hands trembled against the white cloth. The after-effects of the potions had diminished over the past five days he'd been awake, though they were still very much there. The sharp aching pain had become a soreness that spread throughout his body. He could move now, thankfully, but it wasn't exactly comfortable as he felt the strain of every muscle he used. Despite the fact, there was something almost satisfying about the feel of it in a way he couldn't really explain or comprehend.

That first day had been the worst, being unable to do much but shift in his bed was its own form of torture. The healers came by every couple of hours after he woke up to check on him, and, occasionally, if he was lucky, they'd bring food with them. None of the good stuff, though, it was always that green, nourishing stuff that was supposed to help him through his recovery but only left him with the urge to gag and starve himself until he could eat something more tasty and unhealthy. The Slytherins stayed with him at the infirmary, though Harry had a feeling they didn't really have to. Other than Blaise, they all seemed relatively recovered from the night of the sieges, but whenever the healers tried to run them off the place, they would always have an excuse that would keep them in the room with him. Even the healers' attempts to break their spirits by also depriving them of any palatable meals weren't enough.

Umbridge came into the infirmary a few hours before curfew that night, the redness in her eyes and the purple bags underneath them giving away her exhaustion even as she tried to present herself otherwise. She quickly sent the healers away and set up privacy screens around his bed to keep the other Slytherins from snooping. Not that it mattered, it wasn't as if Harry couldn't tell them what happened as soon as she left.

"Good evening, Professor Umbridge."

"It's Headmistress."

"Is it now?" Harry asked with a touch of sarcasm.

"It's good to see you awake," she said, ignoring his rebuke. "You had us worrying for a moment there."

"Ah, well, you shouldn't have. I'm not planning on going anywhere any time soon."

"Have the healers told you how much longer you'll need to remain on bed rest?"

There was no way Umbridge had waited until seeing him to ask this question. She probably knew more about his condition than even he did. "Not an exact date, no. Why do you ask?"

"There'll be an emergency Wizengamot meeting on Sunday, the Minister was hoping you'd be able to attend."

"And why does he want that?"

"I think you know why, Mister Potter."

Aurora flew down from the headrest and settled herself on the bed. Harry stroked her feathers, smiling up at Umbridge.

"I'm not feeling well enough at the moment, but I'll consider it throughout the week."

On the morning of the second day, he finally managed to sit up on his bed and by the night of the third, he could actually stand and limp around for a bit. Pansy and Theo helped him into the bathroom that night, Aurora flying into the room behind them and settling on one of the towel hooks inside the room. They turned on the water and left shortly after, leaving Harry alone for that shower he desperately wanted ever since he woke up that first day. He was slow and savoured the feel of the hot water against his skin, but it still felt like it was too soon when he turned the water off and began drying himself. He was careful with the towel, especially when he began drying his back. In the months he was living his other life, he grew accustomed to living without the open wound of Montague's knife on his back. Now that he was back, it was like re-learning it all over again. The pain he easily managed to overcome, it was the texture of it and how uncomfortable it made even just laying on his back that was the more unbearable part of it all.

He left the shirt for last, dressing his lower half first in hopes of avoiding the uncomfortable feeling of the cotton gracing against his wound. But before he could even reach down for the shirt, Aurora flew down from where she had perched herself. She landed on his left shoulder, head bowed down, and before Harry could turn towards the mirror, a stinging pain exploded in his back. He gripped onto the lavatory, closing his eyes and grinding his teeth as it continued escalating. It made his head swim and his knees wobbled as the ache of his muscles suddenly felt worse as well, but when Aurora finally flew away from his shoulder, it all began ebbing away. Harry looked back at his reflection, and the first thing that caught his eye was that bulging, red M that he'd carried around for nearly five years of his life now. It was larger now, bulkier, but no longer open. As gently as he could, he ran his fingers through it, sensing the roughness of the tissue compared with the surrounding skin, and when he moved his shoulder in circles he felt the difference in mobility compared to what it had once been.

A laugh burst out of him. Somehow, some way, Aurora still managed to surprise him. She was looking down at him, and even though she was in her phoenix form, he could somehow see that smile he'd seen the first time he set his eyes on her human form.

Harry had been in good spirits ever since he returned, but after that night he felt as if there was nothing that could pull him back down. The scar was still there, and he doubted it would ever truly go away, but he didn't care. When Montague had dragged him up to the common room and tore through his skin, he promised Harry that the wound would stay open and never truly heal. Seeing it closed, no longer bothersome or painful, felt like spitting on his corpse, and that was the one thing he hadn't managed to do until now.

"You really are going, huh?" Pansy leaned against the door to the dormitories, watching him with that cold, analysing look on her face she always had.

Harry smirked, tucking in his shirt and turning around to face her. "Everything you know about me, and that's what surprises you?"

"It's because of everything I know that I'm surprised."

He snorted, grabbing the black tie he left on his bed and swinging it over his head. Pansy walked over to him, grabbing both ends of the silk before he could and starting to tie the knot for him. He must have grown this winter, he didn't remember her being as short as she was right now.

"How did you even convince them to let you out of the infirmary?" She asked.

"I'm Harry fucking Potter. Who's going to say no to me?"

"Don't start getting cocky, alright? Having people fawn over your phoenix doesn't make you the new King of Britain."

"Doesn't it?" She raised an eyebrow at him and he laughed. "I'll have you know, Parkinson, I'm more than just my phoenix."

"And you bring that bird everywhere because…"

"Eye candy?" Harry shrugged.

Pansy scoffed and tied the knot just a little bit tighter than she should have. "You get stupid when you get comfortable. Someone has to keep you in check."

"This isn't that. Even if I had never got Aurora, I would have managed, but now, with her… I have the opportunity to do more than just get by. Don't think for a second I'm going to waste that."

"I'll believe it when I see it," she drawled, flattening the wrinkles of his shirt before turning her gaze to him. "Just don't get yourself arrested, yeah?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "I'll come right back home, sweetheart," he mocked her. She shook her head and punched him in the shoulder before turning to Aurora and throwing her a few pieces of bacon, which the phoenix greedily wolfed down. "Good luck to you and Theo," he called out to Pansy as she was leaving the dormitory, and she gave him the finger right before she disappeared behind the door.

Turning back to the mirror, Harry looked over his reflection once again. He was dressing like him again. Besides the fact that the tie was black instead of green and that he'd let his hair grow while he had been a fugitive, he looked exactly like him. He didn't know when he started doing it or when he realised he was doing it, but Montague had left him with more than the scar on his back. A part of himself had always hated that he started dressing like him, but he kept on doing it anyway. It felt right at the time, like it would somehow give him power or make him more like what he should be. But now, looking at himself like it, it just felt wrong. Maybe with the robes, he'd feel better, Montague didn't like to use them a lot, but a part of him didn't feel he would.

His eyes landed on the large jar of Sleekeasy's he left on his counter, it was the new one he'd bought the week before Dolohov's attack at the Three Broomsticks and well over half of it had been used up already. He used to apply it at least twice a day as his hair seemed to dissolve the properties of the potion and turn wild every few hours, he even kept another one in the Room of Requirement given how that especially seemed to happen when he trained. For years, he'd tried to keep his hair slick, straight, combed back, and perfectly in place, and it never seemed to give, and yet back in his other life, where he had to keep his hair messy and obnoxious to keep pretending he was Prick Potter, it still felt off to him.

Harry reached over and grabbed the bottle of Sleekeasy's, turning it in his hand as he looked it over. "Hey, Mirror," he suddenly called out, and the mirror twitched in response. "I think it's time for a haircut, don't you?"

"Oh, yes. Most definitely, yes," it answered, a bit too eager as six arms popped out from behind it holding scissors, combs, brushes, a spray bottle of water, and a hair cape that was quickly tied around his neck and over his body. "The same as usual, I presume."

"No," Harry said as he threw the Sleekeasy's on the bin beside him. "Let's have some fun with it, shall we?"

Parkinson Cottage

11:00 a.m.

"There you are!" Kieran called out as the door to the cabin finally opened. Everyone was already there waiting for them, with his grandfather sitting calmly in his armchair, Rookwood pacing wildly, and even Yaxley - who still hadn't fully recovered from whatever the Knights did to him - sat by the piano, occasionally pressing random keys out of what Kieran assumed must have been boredom. It had been well over forty minutes since the kids had been expected to arrive, after all, and for some reason, his grandfather hadn't wanted to start the meeting until everyone was here. Kieran rushed towards the entrance, turning just in time to see his sister roll up the sleeves of her white shirt as Theo closed the door behind them. "Where's Potter?"

"Busy," his sister said curtly, shoving her way past him and into the living room.

Theo only gave him a shrug and a half-hearted smile.

"What do you mean busy?" Kieran demanded as he rounded on her. "We need him here! What else could be more important than this?"

"Why don't you ask him the next time you see him?"

"It's alright, Kieran," his grandfather said with a hint of authority. "I'm sure Pansy and Theo can bring him up to speed when they see him later tonight."

"He should be here!"

"Well, he isn't," his sister said coolly. "Are you going to waste more time whining about it?"

Face flushed, Kieran was unable to do anything but shuffle back to his seat at his grandfather's side.

"Has Harry said anything of importance since he woke up?" His grandfather asked, the two kids, but stared keenly at Theo as he did so. "Do we have a better picture of his experience the night of the sieges?"

Theo turned to Pansy for a moment. "No specifics, really. Just that he helped out in London before finding out about Montague from one of the Death Eaters there."

"And the Ministry."

"Nothing we don't already know from the papers," his sister spoke up.

"I'll have to ask him in person then."

There was a sudden slam behind them. "Why are we even talking about this? We have bigger issues at the moment."

"Augustus-"

"Don't, Parkinson," Rookwood snarled. "Because of your plan, the Dark Lord is now aware that we know of his Horcruxes. Maybe if we had managed to retrieve even one, it wouldn't be as big of an issue-"

"You didn't get any?" Theo asked. "I thought you had the map."

"The map was wrong."

"The map is never wrong," Yaxley said with deadly calm. "It's not its fault that you can't properly search through a few drawers."

"Don't blame this on me!"

His grandfather raised his hand slightly, and, immediately, both men quieted down. "The night was not all for naught. We managed to confirm that the Dark Lord did turn Nagini into a Horcrux, and though the Dark Lord must have been alerted by the defences he placed upon the Horcrux in his family's shack, it proves that the map does indeed work."

"If it did, I would have found the bloody thing," Rookwood said. "I'm telling you, it's faulty."

"It isn't. The map gives us its position correctly, its only limitation is that it does not give it to us in a three-dimensional space."

"The map marks a borough where every building there is less than three stories tall. There is no place else where it would be."

"Up isn't the only direction the map doesn't consider," his sister said, almost arrogantly.

"You're suggesting the Dark Lord buried it under some random muggle district? That's not possible, it's not how he operates with his Horcruxes."

"No, not buried," his sister scoffed. "What do we know is underground and expands through nearly all of London?"

"Gringotts," Kieran exclaimed.

"Vaults protected by goblins and that can have curses and wards applied to them for added safe-keeping. I'd say that would meet the Dark Lord's requirements, wouldn't you?"

Yaxley laughed. "Oh, yes, that's something the bastard would definitely do."

"Why are you laughing," Rookwood said coldly. "If things weren't hard enough already, we now have to break into Gringotts, you moron!"

"If the job was easy, it wouldn't be any fun."

"Let's make it your job, then, see if that doesn't wipe that smirk off your face."

"No, Corban has other responsibilities he'll have to take care of," his grandfather said. "Now that the Dark Lord knows we're after his Horcruxes, there is no use in waiting any further. We have a Horcrux, it's time we start the process of destroying it."

"Potter's going to be an issue," Yaxley commented. "He was very against our muggle kidnapping plot."

"I wonder why," Theo said darkly.

"We don't need to use a muggle," Rookwood proposed. "We kidnap a Death Eater, one from the Dark Lord's inner circle, and have the Horcrux possess them. We kill them and the Horcrux at the same time, two birds and one stone."

"Or we could have a high-ranking Death Eater with a piece of the Dark Lord's soul escape and attempt to hunt us down," Yaxley said. "I'm not keen to die young."

"Then we make sure they are unable to escape," his grandfather said. "It's a good plan. It presents the Horcrux with a powerful host that it would want to possess, and it rids us of our enemies. I dare say Harry would vote for this plan as well."

"Yes, let us vote for the plan the unhinged, suicidal kid would approve of."

"There's another issue we have to worry about," his grandfather continued, ignoring Yaxley.

"The fact that both Dumbledore and the Dark Lord now know of our crusade?" Rookwood asked.

"No. The Ministry and Parkinson properties are secure enough, at the moment, and I've already created contingencies for both Dumbledore's and the Dark Lord's attempts at disrupting our plans. I'm more concerned about the other two Horcruxes that are left."

"The ones at Hogwarts?" Theo asked. "We still have two years left, I think that's more than enough time for us to find them, especially now that Harry is back in the castle with us."

"I'm more concerned about who might have them than where they might be," his grandfather said. "The night of the sieges, one of the Horcruxes was taken from the castle and into London. Somewhere near the Ministry of Magic, to be exact."

"You think one of the Gryffindors has one of the Horcruxes?" Kieran asked.

His grandfather pulled out the map from his pocket and laid it down on the table in front of them. "I know one of them does," he pointed to the Horcrux that was marked Wales, away from all the large cities nearby. "If you don't recognise it at first glance, I don't blame you, it took me a few days to remember the importance of this location. You're looking at Blackstone House, though I believe you'd know it by another name."

"Longbottom Manor," Theo finished.

His grandfather looked up at Theo and gave a sharp nod. "Precisely."

Wizengamot Chamber

11:00 a.m.

Emergency sessions of the Wizengamot didn't use to be common, but ever since Quirnirus had tried to steal Nicholas' stone, they had almost become an annual occurrence. The chamber was completely filled, and with each House bringing as many adults as they could fit inside their podium coupled with the magnitude of the situation that had happened all around the country as well as the total secrecy that Cornelius had implemented, it was about to burst from the sheer noise level. There was no person inside who wasn't shouting, either demanding explanations from Cornelius, who had taken the place of Chief Warlock for this session, or arguing with their fellow peers about the attacks that took place. It was complete chaos, unmoderated, and rising to levels that made Albus worry about the amount of wands that were inside the room.

"Everyone's inside," Alan Ward, a Hufflepuff who had graduated only three years ago, informed him somberly. Albus knew the boy didn't want to be here, he himself would have fathered not be given this responsibility today, but Rufus had been insistent that they were needed her.

"Thank you, Ward," Albus turned to the other four Aurors inside the room. "Seal the doors."

They immediately complied, and Albus managed to catch Cornelius' eye right before the slam of the doors echoed inside the whole chamber.

"SILENCE!" Cornelius' bellow was loud enough to be heard by everyone, but it took a few more tries before he managed to mostly reign everyone in. "I know all of you want answers, and you'll get them, but first we must abide by tradition."

A light was suddenly shown on the empty Bones podium, and as Cornelius stood up and took off his hat, the gaping absence was enough to fully silence the room.

"As some of you might know already, Amelia Bones was found as one of the casualties of the countrywide sieges we faced the past week. As the last of her family, I'm saddened to say that with her passing, so does the Bones line end." As his words were said, the flag portraying the Bones sigil began burning away, its ashes turning into miniature white stars that rose through the Chamber and embedded themselves to the ceiling, joining the rest of the Wizengamot's fallen families. "Her absence will be missed, and we as a council will seek to honour her and her family through our actions here. In their stead, I'm proud to announce that the House Nott, led by its patriarch, Titus, will join this assembly." Cornelius turned towards Titus, who had been waiting patiently beside him with a proud smile, and offered him his hand. "It is through tragedy that you are brought on board once again, but no less deserved. We are fortunate to have you with us, Mister Nott.

"Thank you, Chief Warlock," Titus shook Cornelius' hand fervently. "And thank you all," he addressed to the rest of the Wizengamot. "I met Amelia only once in my life, but from that one time, I could tell she was a good woman. With her death, she leaves some rather large shoes to fill, but I promise you all I will do my best to do so."

There were polite claps around the chamber, some more passionate than others, but Titus barely seemed to acknowledge them as he walked up to his podium and admired the golden flag that took the place of the Bones' flag. There was something off about that man, and though Albus had never considered the Notts as potential Death Eaters - and still didn't - there was something behind Titus' eyes that made him uneasy.

"Now that formalities have been put aside we can address the reason behind this emergency meeting," as soon as Cornelius said this the chamber once again exploded in shouts and demands from everyone. He once again tried to calm everybody down, but this time the crowd didn't react to the banging of the gravel. "Silence! The briefing will cover most of your doubts. All questions will be answered after. SILENCE!"

In the end, Albus and the Aurors were forced to get involved before the session could be brought back to order, and even then, it took nearly ten minutes.

"The night of May the second at approximately twenty-one hundred hours, seven concurrent attacks were led around the country by known Death Eaters from You-Know-Who's inner circle." The entire Wizengamot shouted in outrage, but this time, Cornelius didn't stop and wait for everyone to quiet down again. He stood from his seat and shouted over everyone else. "These attacks were meticulously planned and orchestrated, and have very nearly shattered the Statute of Secrecy that was put in place to protect us all, resulting in the lives of nearly three hundred witches and wizards and countless more muggles."

"What do they matter!" A voice shouted from the crowd, one Albus couldn't identify, and there were various cries of agreement.

"During these attacks, both Hogwarts and the Ministry were targeted. Thankfully, there were no casualties at the school, but the Death Eaters managed to breach the Ministry and raid both the DMLE and the Department of Mysteries."

"What about Potter!"

"Does he really have a phoenix?"

"Where is he?"

"Did he fight You-Know-Who?"

"Did he beat him?"

The crowd was starting to get riled up once again, but instead of joining them in an attempt to get them to quiet down, Albus pulled out his wand and launched a shockwave into the air that immediately silenced the entire Chamber.

"Thank you, Albus," Cornelius said with a hint of amusement. "Yes, you've all seen the pictures by now. It was inevitable. I'm afraid there is no easy way to say this, other than to say it plainly. Albus and young Neville were indeed telling the truth last year, You-Know-Who has returned. I was there to see it, as well as Albus and dozens of more witnesses. More than that, we have contacted Mister Ollivander to examine the wand in the pictures, and he has also confirmed that that is the wand of You-Know-Who. Though he looks… different, there is no point in denying it. You-Know-Who is still alive and very much operating inside Britain again."

"Potter! What of Potter?"

"Where is the boy?"

"Have you captured his phoenix?"

"He should be imprisoned," Amos Diggory demanded. "He's a killer, he is!"

"No, no," Cornelius spoke up. "Mister Potter has been cleared of all criminal charges he was suspected of. The pictures were not of Potter himself, but of a Death Eater attempting to incriminate him, it was this individual who attacked Hogwarts with a group of snatchers while Mister Potter himself was seen by many helping in the siege of London."

"Are you certain, Chief Warlock?" Lucius Malfoy's voice was heard over all the others.

"Quite so," Cornelius nodded, and even Albus felt convinced by his conviction. "Rufus Scrimgeour has led this investigation personally, if he were here, he would tell you that himself.

"And what of this individual who posed as the Potter boy?" Titus Nott asked. "What punishments will he face for killings now that Azkaban is no longer a viable option."

"The Ministry is still working on building a new temporal facility that can be used in the stead of Azkaban for the time being. Regardless of that, this individual is still on the loose, I'm afraid. Students at Hogwarts say he killed Elijah Montague and would have killed them as well if Mister Potter hadn't shown up and ran him off the grounds."

"And can we trust these… children?" Lucius asked with clear distaste.

"I would hope so, Lucius, one of them was your son," Cornelius answered. "The truth is, regardless of the veracity of these claims or the overall result of the DMLE's investigation on him, Mister Potter has us in a difficult situation. You've all seen the pictures, you've made it pretty clear, so you all saw his phoenix. There isn't a cell we can place him in or wards we can devise that would keep that bird from breaking him out the moment he is placed there. More important is the fact that he was possessed by You-Know-Who himself, which somehow drove him off. That is something that had been thought impossible until now, and given the phoenix's appearance, it seems to signal that we were wrong about how we perceived the prophecy. Neville Longbottom, for as much good as he may have done us in the past, is clearly not the child the prophecy speaks of."

"That's preposterous!" One of Augusta's allies cried out.

"Bedivere himself has confirmed so. Mister Potter not only fits the prophecy requirements, just as young Neville did, but also has been given Fate's blessing. Mister Potter is the one fated to properly vanquish You-Know-Who, so if we have any hope of doing so we will have to work with him closely now that You-Know-Who has shown himself willing to start such a public war for Britain."

"Then where is he?" Wynter Parkinson, Bedivere's first daughter, asked. "Someone like that shouldn't be allowed to roam around as he pleases. He should be under Ministry supervision, preferably living inside this building, to ensure he's actually of some use to us."

"As I said, Madame Parkinson, it would be of no use capturing the boy. Right now he is recovering from the injuries he sustained during the night of the sieges, but Madame Umbridge told me she passed on the invitation to this meeting."

All eyes immediately turned to Dolores, and the woman stood up. "I was assured that he would be coming, but that doesn't seem the case any longer. Regardless, the DMLE and the Minister's office will be working closely with him and his guardian - Madame Longbottom - to get him to cooperate with us. His efforts during the night of the sieges show that he is more than willing, so it shouldn't be too difficult to do so."

Dolores sat down and immediately, all eyes of inside the chamber turned toward Augusta Longbottom. As far as everyone was concerned, she had just been given authority over the most important person in Britain, and by the look in her eyes, she knew it too. The grin she gave him was enough to unnerve him.

Ilkley

11:00 a.m.

When Susan passed away a few months ago, it left Amelia as the last of her family. She was on the older side, many of her friends had either passed away, moved out of the country, or simply lost touch with her as she became consumed with the Ministry and the DMLE since the early days of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's first rise to power. All those people who courted her for her money, status, and power weren't anywhere to be seen, and even if most of them hadn't had the excuse of the emergency Wizengamot meeting, the extinction of House Bones that came with her death made Rufus doubt that more than a handful of them would have come to pay their respects. That, though, didn't mean that her funeral was empty. The entire Auror corps had shown in force, with only some of the more seasoned rookies left back at the Ministry in case anything related to the Wizengamot or some other emergency required their response, as well as a sizeable amount of Ministry personnel who had got to know Amelia during their time working with her.

There were no ministers in attendance. No reporters hovering behind the crowd or dignitaries openly mourning her. Her death had been buried under the countless headlines the Prophet had been printing ever since the attacks. Regardless of that, Rufus was comforted by the fact that she wouldn't be alone on this day.

The sun was shining bright that morning, Britain's summer heat nearing with each day. The casket was already set, countless white roses balanced on top of it as it hovered above the perfectly dug hole. And on her tombstone, placed right beside her niece's, inscribed below her name read:

Do noble things, not dream them all day long,

And so make life, death and that vast forever one grand sweet song.

All eyes were on him as he walked through the aisle, dozens of rows on either side of him filled with his people. He gripped the parchment in his hand tightly, squaring his shoulders and steadying his breaths as he made his way to the podium in front of everyone. He was used to giving orders and organizing raids, speaking in public had never really been much of an effort for him, but faced with the prospect of saying goodbye to his oldest friend he felt like a stage-shy eleven-year-old presenting in front of the Ministry Heads. Unfortunately, he'd been left with no choice once all the Aurors had decided it should be him who gave the eulogy. He worked on it every night since he found her corpse, which worked to his schedule given how he hadn't managed to sleep since.

When Rufus got to the podium, he stood the pieces of parchment on it and focused on it instead of looking up at everyone else. He focused on himself and tried to forget that he wasn't alone as he spoke.

"I'm sure most of you will think it's impossible, but there was a time when Amelia Bones wasn't the seventy-year-old woman in charge of the DMLE we knew and loved," a lot of people laughed, and it was enough to give Rufus that little bit of courage he needed. "No, when I met Amelia Bones I was a young, dumb rookie, and she was a young dumb Auror who had been a few years in the force already, so she felt she could boss me around. See, Head Auror Grimblehawk had partnered us up the moment I entered the force, it was a way to teach me the ropes while she also learned how to deal with daft morons like me. She used to take pleasure in calling herself my boss, I used to tell her that's why she had stayed so long in the DMLE. I can't say we got along well enough in the beginning, though I wish I could. I respected her in that vague way you respect a coworker you don't really know, and I didn't dislike her much, which was enough to do my job back then. It wasn't until we had been partnered up for nearly a year that I realised just how lucky I was that Grimblehawk had chosen me to be her partner."

Finally looking up from the paper, Rufus took all the eyes on him as well as he could and continued.

"It couldn't have been more than a few years after the Grindelwald wars. I was lucky enough to just have missed it, but not everyone did. There weren't a lot, it couldn't have been more than forty or fifty Aurors who went with Dumbledore to Europe and joined the fight against Grindelwald, and it was… a lot. I don't think I have to explain to you the damage of war, especially not after what happened last week, but what Grindelwald did in his time was worse than anyone had ever seen to that point. It was brutal. Inhumane. Even to this day we don't know the official casualty count of the witches and wizards that were killed in those nearly six years. Only seven came back to Britain, and most of them quit the force immediately after. But there was this one Auror, Oakwood was his name, and he stayed. He was older than most, and barely talked to anyone, but from what they told me, he was well-liked, but after the war he was… he was different. He was angry, and violent, and he always had his wand in his hand. It was scary back then, as an eighteen-year-old twat, to actually go up and talk to him. I even think Amelia was afraid of him back then because she avoided him too."

Everyone had gone silent, and from the corner of his eye, Rufus saw a figure leaning against a tree on a small hill nearby. He was wearing a white dress shirt, with dark charcoal trousers that matched with the tie and leather jacket he was wearing. He wasn't a wizard, the wards would keep him from noticing them.

"And one day, he just snaps. Something happens inside the Ministry, I don't know exactly what, but he suddenly explodes. He takes out his wand and starts blasting and slashing everyone around him. He's babbling, and he looks desperate, but he keeps firing even as he's being surrounded by Aurors who are trying to stop him. It's violent, and one of our superiors suggests taking him out," Rufus let out a small laugh. "Amelia didn't like that, she immediately shut him down even though she was a twenty-year-old novice and this guy had been in the force for thirty years and was close with the Head Auror. She yells at him so hard he ends up looking like some berated first-year, and she stomps away. I thought she was going to pull out her wand and take Oakwood out herself just to make sure no Auror would kill him, but she didn't do that. She kept her wand in her holster as she approached him and somehow, she calmed him down. He was having one of his attacks, it turns out, only this time… I don't know, the memories got too much or the alcohol made it all the more real. Whatever it was, Amelia saw it before anyone else and instead of giving up on him as a lost cause like the other Aurors, she went to him and just tried to help. Oakwood, he was out of his mind. He could have easily killed her, and she didn't even know him in the first place, never really talked to him more than the usual hello, but still, she risked her own life just so she could try to help. I don't know what she said or how she did it, but somehow, she ended up convincing him to give her his wand and when he did, she hugged him. She hugged him and rocked him and stayed with him until it all passed."

Rufus looked back up, but instead of turning to the crowd, his eyes fully drifted to the hill overseeing the funeral. The boy was still there, and only then did Rufus realise he was looking straight at them. Still leaning against the tree, hands in the pockets of his pants, looking almost as if he was listening to them. He had short hair on his sides, while the rest of it was slightly longer and a spiky mess above his head. And then he moved, ever so slightly, but enough for a glint of light to shine on his round-shaped glasses. The boy gave him a curt nod, somehow realising he had been spotted, and Rufus couldn't help but nod back before turning to the crowd.

"Oakwood was devastated when he came back to his senses. He had killed one of the Aurors, and badly injured three others. He was miserable, crying on Amelia's shoulder, clinging on to her as if she was the only thing he had in this world, and she let him. She did more than that, she tried to tell him it wasn't his fault. She spent hours there comforting him before the Aurors took him away, and I never told Amelia this, but I was sure that her doing that is the only reason why he didn't take his own life in his cell that night. After all was said and done, Oakwood was sent to St Mungo's instead of Azkaban, and Amelia was heavily reprimanded by Grimblehawk for risking her life like that. For weeks around the office everyone wondered why she had done that, and it took me a while, but I finally asked her, and when I did, she just said: because it was the right thing to do. To Amelia, being an Auror wasn't about hunting down Death Eaters or bringing criminals to justice. When she was faced with a choice to punish someone who was doing harm or to help them, she chose to help them. She always chose to help, and she died that way. Even when I tried to dissuade her from going on the front lines, Amelia shut me up and reminded me once again what my job actually is. Now that she's gone, I want you all to remember that… because she won't be down here to remind us again if we forget.

That's it for this chapter, thank you all for reading!

We're in the middle of the final arc of the book, so be excited! By the time I'm posting this, I'm THIRTEEN chapters ahead, and I am in the middle of the second arc of Book 2 of the Pray For The Wicked Saga! If you are interested in learning how to get early access to them, join my discord server using the following link: discord . gg / jyPfbGqhJT

As always, thank you for reading, favouriting, and commenting! I appreciate all of you! :)