AN- Hi all! I'm very excited for this one! This is an important chapter, and begins to wrap up a bunch of storylines from Book 1. Please read carefully, a lot happens.

Book II
Small Gods

Chapter 11
Botley Road

"III"

February 8, 2008
(Please note that this is the same date as Book 1 Chapter 5 & 6)

Ginny pauses in front of the Admiral. Oh. This is him. The Admiral. The one the General told her about.

She smiles at him and he smiles back at her.

He stands there so stiff in his starched uniform. Thinking he's safe from the world. Thinking he knows her secrets. Thinking he's got away with it all. So she smiles at him, tight and devoid of warmth.

"Ah, Admiral Antony Attwood. Admiral Fields and General Clayton give their regards," her voice cold and sharp.

The Admiral's smile falters, snapping under her brittle tone. He knows now. He knows what this means.

"Oh and Harmon wanted me to say hello." Her grin is almost predatory now.

Attwood swallows with an audible click. You better be scared, you little worm. Vindication feels so sweet.

"Yes… yes, well that is good. You must give them all my regards when you see them next." He is unable to hold her gaze.

The air feels stuffy and humid. The silence stretches on and on.

Captain West bustles them down to the ward room quite quickly after that.

She can feel West's and the private's confusion swelling around the elevator as they head down. But she ignores it. They won't even remember her soon.

Once the wardstone is reset and she begins making her way towards the ship that will take her off of this barren rock of a base, she finds the Admiral hastily darting about, a bag clutched tightly in his hands.

He stops as he rounds the corner and sees her, nervously looking at the other four men accompanying her.

"Admiral, sir!" Captain West exclaims and the soldiers all snap to attention.

"Yes, yes, at ease," Attwood waves them all off, skittish, unable to take his eyes off of hers. He swallows loudly in the quiet hallway.

She's still holding her wand, almost casually. She always takes a private thrill in this part of the job. After the muggles have seen her perform remarkable magics and their confusion is so thick in the air it presses against her mental shielding, she can't help but use more and more spells in front of them, just to watch their eyes roll and widen until they look manic, sweat beading across their foreheads, breath coming quick and fast. It always makes her laugh.

The Admiral's eyes keep on flicking to her wand. From her eyes to her wand. Her eyes to her wand. Ginny's grin turns wicked and she slowly raises her arm to point her wand directly at his face. And almost lazily she says, "muto surculum."

It's become something of a signature for her.

She reaches down and pockets the small branch that lies in the middle of the hallways next to the Admiral's bag.

"Let's go," she commands the gasping, terrified soldiers. "Time to forget all about this."

"III"

September 12, 2004
(Note: 4 years earlier)

Chloe Burya isn't all that different from Ginny Weasley.

She looks the same, acts mostly the same—her demeanour tends to be a bit frostier, stormier. But Chloe is mainly just a cover name that Ginny uses whilst in the Muggle world.

She mostly uses the name with Muggles, but she decides it will work here just as well.

When she has to go out in the Wizarding world, especially when she is in England, Ginny leans towards using Talia as her cover, but that won't work here. They have too many precautions against deceit—from the waterfalls to their secrecy probes.

So, she slides easily into Chloe's persona as she pushes past the heavy golden doors of the bank.

It's early morning and the low sun glints off of the polished doors, almost blinding her.

Inside, the bank is cool and studiously quiet, only the gruff growls of the goblins rumble about the place. She strides deliberately past the rows and rows of tellers, empty this early in the day, no wizards out and about at six in the morning.

Botley Road referred her to the goblins, as is usual for the larger clients. 'Grimskull,' was the only information they gave her. Which isn't very helpful. But, she has gone on less before.

She stops in front of the two armoured goblins standing guard at the doors to cavern vaults and says, "I'm here to meet with Grimskull."

They stare straight ahead not even acknowledging that she spoke. She glances around, wondering if there is something else she's supposed to do. She fidgets, as the goblins stay silent still. She's just about to speak up again when one of the goblins bangs their axe three times against the floor and the doors behind them clank open slowly.

With a respectful nod to the guards, she walks on through.

Grimskull turns out to be a very old, very wrinkled goblin. His office is hewn from stone, the walls polished to a dark shine, gold filigree glistening off of every possible surface.

"We have been tracking some trouble for many months now," he growls after she takes a seat in the hard-backed chair in front of his desk. "When I reached out to Botley Road, they recommended you as their best consultant for this… problem… we're facing. We goblins face a unique issue when facing an issue that occurs beyond magical borders. We lack the ability to… blend in. We have to, unfortunately, rely on wizards. The Botley Road program has long been our referrer for wizards with unique talents and those who don't hold any prejudices." The old goblin glares fiercely at Ginny, as if expecting her to start spouting off racial slurs, but she just holds his gaze steadily.

After a moment, Grimskull continues. "I've been told, you, Ms. Burya, possess considerable skills with and knowledge of barricadic arrays?"

Ginny inclines her head slightly.

The goblin grunts. "We…" he pauses, as if reluctant to continue on. "We have a leakage problem. Somewhere, funds are going missing. Not," he stresses, "from our clients' accounts, but from the bank's own assets."

Ginny shifts forward in her seat.

"One of our forensic units found money disappearing in certain interactions we maintain with our muggle counterparts; mainly in the dealings we facilitate between the Ministry of Magic and the muggle governments. We've tracked it as far as we can, but eventually a paper trail is only so useful, yes? We need to know everything about these… transgressions.

"Who is behind it? Where is the money going? Why are they taking it? Why are they taking it from us!"

His last words come out in a vicious growl.

"We're hiring you to find all of this out. With your skills as a rune master, we will hire you out for the regular consultations we provide for the muggle governments and organisations. They hire us for warding of most of the major institutions. As I'm sure you can understand, both the Goblins and your Ministry of Magic hold high concern with unprotected banks, military locations, and Muggle government buildings from magical infiltration and attack. An influx of any muggle tech, moneys, or concepts that we do not track or regulate could cause havoc to the magical economies."

Over the next half hour, Grimskull goes on to outline the task force infiltration plan they've drafted up for her. She then follows him deeper into the bank to meet with two more goblins who provide her with maps and maps and maps of all the institutions she'll begin working at with her new "job" at Gringotts.

Her head spins as she leaves the bank. Squinting as she steps into the brilliant sunlight from the dark bank's interior, she automatically taps the rune on her chest and shifts silently into Talia.

Talia has long been one of her favourite personas. Talia doesn't blend in at all. Her bright pink hair and her vibrant personality make her stand out and grab everyone's attention. But in that way, no one would ever suspect Talia is Ginny or Chloe. And she can't lie, she enjoys the attention Talia gets, especially in the wizarding world. Bright-pink haired witches are uncommon. Bright-pink haired witches who are as bubbly as Talia is, are even more uncommon. People like to stare.

She plays it up as well. Dressing forcefully in aggressive leather muggle boots that strap far up her thighs and a short fluffy pink tulle dress, she makes sure no one can miss it when Talia walks down the street.

As Talia, she walks up the Alley and grabs a seat outside one of the small tea shops. It's a warm fall day and the sun peeks out amid a few lingering blue-grey clouds from the morning rain. She dries off her chair with a wave of her wand and turns to face the weak morning light, smiling at the warmth on her face. Ordering a coffee, she pulls out her small notebook and begins to think about how she's going to approach this.

She was initially hesitant when Botley Road suggested that she work with the goblins. She's been actively avoiding the wizarding world for so long now. And ever since she faked her death she's even more adamant about keeping away. But Botley Road had been quite insistent that she would be the best consultant for the job.

And now her mind is working so far ahead. She loves problems like these. Ones that really challenge her, that cause her to use all of her skills and resources, that force her into new situations.

She smiles as the thrum of excitement sets in. It's time to create something new. It's time to worm her way into the muggle world again.

This is going to be fun.

"III"

August 24, 2007

This is not fun.

Anger burns hot through her veins, and for a moment, she can feel the wild and unrestrained plant life around. Outside of the dingy warehouse, the rough grass that pushes its way through split sidewalks grows high in a huge burst of her anger. The sidewalks crumble even more as all the weedy plants surge upwards.

Standing inside the old storage room, she lets her anger smoulder, not even bothering to constrain the uncontrolled growth happening outside. When she first began this project with the goblins, she had no idea this was where it would lead. For the past three years, she's integrated herself into the muggle government and military. Botley Road's influence in both worlds helps cultivate her consulting role with the muggle militaries after she follows the paper trail back to the initial transactions.

The loss that has been angering the goblins occurs in the purchase of magical materials by the highest level of Muggle's in the governing bodies of their military and intelligence services. The wizarding world has always provided protection to high security muggle institutes and locations to ensure that no ill-intentioned wizards would have easy access to or could easily break into them.

But somewhere along those transactions, someone is funnelling the funds away. In the past three years she discovers that it's happening within the muggle military, and so she gains her consulting role, helping update military bases with her stronger wards. As a rune expert, she is able to provide the services easily and quickly makes a name for herself as Chloe Burya, Runic Expert, Consultant to Wizards and Muggles alike. She enjoys her work.

Until today.

Until this.

Her hands shake in fury.

She never expected to find something like this.

"III"

The day starts quite normally.

The hazy morning sun streams in through the bank of windows in her loft bedroom, rousing her from a deep sleep. She stretches and groans as her back muscles protest. Constantly switching between Talia and Chloe leaves her back all sorts of messed up. But the disguises are quite critical now that she spends so much time in both the muggle and wizarding worlds.

She's even begun working on a new persona, one that she can use to ensure she stays separated from the struggles of her consulting role. Thiella is the same height as Ginny, but she has dark brown hair, tanned skin, and sea storm eyes. Ginny spent ages in front of the mirror perfecting the look and has only used her a few times, when she needs to escape for a bit. But it's just one more disguise to fuck up her back.

She should probably see someone about it…

With a shrug, she rolls out of bed, looking forward to her morning coffee.

Soon, the warm smell of fresh espresso fills the loft and she relaxes with a sigh onto the couch. In a flick of her hand, all of the notes she'd stayed up way too late last night working on suspend themselves in the air in front of her. As she drinks her coffee, she slowly rotates through the sheets of paper working her way through the next step of her plan.

She's worked with banks. She's worked with the military. She's worked with the secret muggle service. She's even worked with the Ministry of Magic, albeit not as Ginny or Chloe, but as a cowled and shadowy "Botley Consultant." It seems that Botley Road has certain latitudes within the Ministry. When she showed up to a site at which the Aurors were attempting to break past the ancient wards and she was dressed in the pure white cowled robes, whispers echoed around the area. It appeared as if Botley's influence was farther reaching than she'd ever realised before.

Throughout all of her jobs, she's slowly built up profiles on everyone who seems to be involved with the missing transactions. Beginning her investigation, she thinks it may be one or two people who are syphoning off funds for their own gain. But as she works her way through all the involved parties, she can't help but think it's much deeper than that. And over the past three years, she's built a list of eight names.

All eight of them are involved in some way. She is sure of it.

The General, for example. He's been used as a contact. For whom or for what, she isn't sure. But he's been referenced too many times by too many people. One of his contacts that she manages to corner late one night, even shows signs of obliviation.

Which surprises her.

The General is a muggle. So who would be casting charms on his contact? Does the General know that this woman's mind has been tampered with? Is someone else working with him or is there a wizard out there who's working separately from the General?

Each time she finds someone new involved with this case, more and more questions pile on.

None of the eight seem to have any contact with each other, as well. But somehow, their actions always happen to sync up perfectly. As far as she can tell, none of them have ever been in the same town or city at the same time. But they seamlessly continue to shuffle funds and materials around without arousing any suspicion.

All of this information has been costly.

The flat little brass coins, the memory tokens she created that erase small bits of people's memories, have been stolen on multiple occasions. She suspects that they've even become a part of this organisation's thefts. And after her newest batch disappeared just the other day, she finally decides it's time to track them.

Last night, one of her contacts brought her a tip on a shipment the General mentioned.

She waves her way through the papers until her notes on the tracking come to the forefront.

She develops a special process to create the memory tokens. Through her years of mingling with muggles, she's picked up a thing or two. And she learns about a process with which they use something called a "laser" to etch tiny glyphs into various materials.

In her spare time, Ginny has always liked to play around with developing arrays, and one such array that she creates causes an hour-long memory blank-out.

It takes ages for her to work out its exact process, but eventually, the array is perfect. All the user has to do is to just whisper a passphrase to a receiving array, and the partner, the reactant, is triggered. Anyone within a degree radius of the reactant will lose an hour of memory. Seamlessly.

But the array is huge. Too large to be practical. Until she learns of this muggle invention.

Each coin comes in two parts with the array spread out in tiny etched runes across one side of each. After she receives the separated coins, she wraps them in wire with each array facing the other, then magics the wire into a flat square coin, melding the whole array into one without a chance at the runes being harmed or ruined or even found out in any way.

When she finds out about the upcoming "missing" shipment, she adds in a small adjustment to the etching. Two runes. That's all it takes. And now she can track the coins anywhere around the world.

She smiles on her couch, waving all of her notes back into a neat stack on the coffee table. She loves when things work out so well.

"III"

The tracking goes off smoothly. The tokens are all together still and the beacon shows clearly on her map. All she has to do is follow it.

When she shows up to the warehouse, she expects it to be full of stolen materials. Perhaps one of the eight themselves are inside, processing her tokens, a pile of muggle and wizarding money stored in a large vault.

When she shows up to the warehouse, she tingles with anticipation. Gripping her wand and H&K in a two-handed grip, her wand grasped alongside the gun for easy aiming of both, she sneaks in through the upper gangway, charming one of the open windows silent for her stealthy entrance.

She loves moments like this. The calm before the storm. Adrenaline curls in her gut. She casts both of her detection spells, Mortalis Revelio and Malum Revelio, but both turn up empty, causing her to pause. Nonplussed, she casts them again, but still nothing. There should be someone here, right? Why isn't anyone here?

She relaxes slightly, then forces herself to tense back up. No use in getting complacent. There are wards and arrays that can hide people from those spells.

She drops down to the ground floor and moves deeper into the warehouse. It's quiet. The only sound is the wind rattling the old rusted windows high above. There's a line of old, cement block storerooms arranged around the centre of the warehouse.

And then finally she feels it. A ward! She knew something was hiding here! It lingers there, a faint hum in the air, a bit of electricity. Ever since her ascension, she's had an even easier time at sensing ward lines, they tend to smell of ozone, like the charge that lingers after a bolt of lightning.

She sees the line even, it appears to be sloppily made. It crosses one of the dirty water that stains the concrete floor and the reflection is off because of it. The windows appear backwards in the puddle. She scoffs to herself and holsters her gun. She moves quietly around the ward until she finds a dark corner to work from where no one can sneak up on her unseen or unheard. And slowly, she begins to unwind the wardline.

It comes down simply. The hum stops. The smell fades. Until all that is left is just the echoing drip deep in the warehouse and the muffled sounds of… breathing!?

She crouches low and pulls back into her two-handed stance with both of her weapons and inches her way towards the sounds. Silently, she casts homenum revelio and it pings back… way too many people. There are so many people. She almost pauses there. If they're all hostiles she can't take them all on herself! There must be over thirty people inside the furthest storeroom.

But something feels off to her. Something keeps her from turning away. The only noise she hears is muffled sounds of steady breathing. Almost like every one of those pings is sleeping in there. There's no other noise. No talking, no movement. Just breathing.

Sweat drips down the back of her shirt. She shakes her head and keeps on moving. And then stops quite suddenly just inside the door. She lowers her arms, her gun and wand falling uselessly besides her.

Her hands shake in fury.

She never expected to find something like this.

Rows of cages line the walls. Stacked two or three high, they're rusted and dripping in some sort of mould.

And inside are suspended, unconscious children. Rows and rows of them. They hang in some sort of enchanted stasis. Their hands bound and tied to the cages with huge linked chains, just as rusted as the cages themselves.

This is nothing like she expected when she started with the goblins. Tracing a money trail through this organisation's activity has been an exercise in caution, subtlety, and, honestly, often quite boring. She slowly ingratiates herself within this unknown shadowy organisation. She'd expected the money was being used for some kind of illegal funding, but she never anticipated this.

Her wand hand itches as she yearns to start freeing every single one of the children. With a frustrated growl she stops herself. She can't expose her position. She has to stop this whole thing if she wants to save every child and stop whatever this is from happening ever again.

To be honest, she isn't even sure of what exactly is happening! But she will stop it. This is wrong. So wrong. Impotence and frustration crawl across her shoulders and she screams loud, trying to shake it off.

She has to plan this extremely carefully.

Fuck fuck fuck! She kicks at the wall and then growls as her foot immediately starts aching. GodDAMNIT!

She spins around, and stalks back to the wardline. Fuck. This feels all wrong—putting the ward back up, trapping all the children, leaving them behind. But no one can know she's been here. That's not how this can work.

More than ever, she has to tread carefully now. She has to. There's so much more on the line now than ever before.

This isn't about some missing gold anymore.

This is about missing children. Children held captive.