Harry Potter: Junior Inquisitor.
Chapter 26: They All Fall Down
"So why are we not going back up to the castle?" asked Harry.
In order to calm down little Natalie, who had appeared to be on the brink of tears, Harry had sat down in the Quidditch stands with her and Luna. It was now fifteen minutes later, and the second year girl seemed to have calmed down enough for Harry to question their behaviour.
"Dumbledore's being a very bad man!" replied Natalie, firmly.
Harry stared at her for a moment before turning to Luna, hoping to get a better answer from her.
"The Headmaster has quite lost his capabilities of rational thought," replied Luna in a voice that those who knew her would be quite surprised to hear coming from her. "It seems that your recent rebellion has frightened him and in response he had decided to strip all students of their basic rights."
"When did I rebel?" asked Harry, genuinely puzzled.
"Ever since term started last week," replied Luna. "Though the wrackspurts say that it began long before then."
Harry thought for a moment before shaking his head and replying "I'm sorry, but I don't remember any of that."
"Of course you don't," said Luna. "Dumbledore caught you and used mind spells and potions to make you regret rebelling and force you to comply with his wishes."
Harry shook his head again, this time in outright disbelief.
"I'm sorry," he said. "But this is just ridiculous. This is Dumbledore that we're talking about, and you're making him out to be like Voldemort but in disguise."
Natalie flinched at the name, but Luna, surprisingly, did not.
"They are not entirely different people, Harry, if you think about it."
"This is crazy," said Harry. "You're crazy. I'm going back up to the castle."
"No!" shouted Natalie, grabbing him by the arm again.
"Get off me!" he snapped, shaking his arm in an effort to make her let go.
He succeeded in wrenching his arm out of her grasp and turned to leave, but he didn't get more than five steps away before he tripped and fell flat on his face.
With a grunt Harry forced himself to roll onto his back. Looking down at his legs he saw that they were locked together. He glared up at Luna who had her wand out, having cast the leg-locker curse on him.
"I'm sorry, Harry Potter, but you were doing too much good for me to just let you walk back into the castle."
"What good?" demanded Harry. "I don't have a clue what you're talking about."
"Then lie still and I will tell you," replied Luna.
Amelia Bones arrived in the Head Auror's Office at the DMLE and addressed her second in command.
"What news Rufus?"
Rufus Scrimgeour looked up from the notes he was making to reply. "Snape is currently locked up down in the Department of Mysteries where they are seeing to his wounds. He should be ready to talk in about another ten minutes or so."
"Excellent," replied Amelia. "I've waited a long time to wring a few truths out of the greasy bastard."
"You're not the only one," said Scrimgeour. "How were things at St Mungo's?"
"Messy. The healers can't work out what the spell he hit her with was or how to reverse its effects. If it weren't for the House Elf putting her under a stasis enchantment after tying up Snape than she would probably have bled out and died before we even got there."
"Yes, well, I for one will never underestimate House Elves again. Incidentally I had to call in your friend Cyrus Greengrass."
"Why?"
"Well, when Snape was brought here, a search revealed that he had a talisman of sorts upon his person. At first we assumed that it was an emergency portkey, but now we're not so sure so I asked Greengrass to take a look."
"Do you think it might be what caused the wards to fall?"
"It is," said a voice from the doorway. Amelia spun around and saw Cyrus Greengrass standing there "Forgive me," he said "but I couldn't help but overhear that last part of your conversation."
He approached Scrimgeour's desk and placed the talisman upon it. It was a disc made entirely of gold with a precious stone set in the middle. The stone was in a perfect circle and resembled the symbol of yin and yang, except one half was ruby red and the other emerald green, and did not have the dots in the larger ends. Around this central stone was a ring of sixteen smaller stones which ran in the order of sapphire, diamond, pearl and crystal before going back to sapphire again. A similar ring of stones was found along the edge of the talisman and on the back. A golden chain was affixed to the top.
"This thing causes wards to fail, you say?" asked Scrimgeour.
"It does, but only when activated which it currently is not," replied Greengrass. "And even if it were, we wouldn't have a lot to worry about here in the Ministry. This thing is far from strong enough to bring down the wards surrounding this building. I would imagine that it took several attempts for it to bring down the wards around the Abbott House as well."
"But it still did it quicker than a whole team of curse breakers," said Amelia. "So where did Snape get this thing?"
"Well I had some people down in the Department of Mysteries look it over to see if there are any traces of a magical signature on it" said Greengrass. "And they've come up with a name."
"Who?"
"Voldemort."
Six Aurors stood guard along the bare walls of the room, two on the west side, two on the east and two one the south. Four Unspeakables stood guard by the door which opened in the north wall.
In the middle of the room Severus Snape sat in a wooden chair, barely coherent but certainly conscious. Thick black chains secured him firmly to the chair, which was affixed to the floor, and strong ropes were bound around the man's torso and legs.
A knock sounded at the door and one of the Unspeakables opened it. In came Amelia Bones, Rufus Scrimgeour, Cyrus Greengrass and Head Unspeakable Saul Croaker, along with two more Unspeakables and three more Aurors.
Croaker turned to the two Unspeakables who had entered with him. "Lower his Occlumency protections."
The two Unspeakables nodded in reply and drew their wands. When they pointed these at Snape, the man's body suddenly became very rigid as his mind instinctively tried to fend off their attack. They were not attempting to read his mind, but were instead working to lower his Occlumency defences just enough to enable the use of veritaserum on him.
The legality of this action was highly dubious, which was why it was being done off record by the Unspeakables. Officially Amelia, Scrimgeour and the other Aurors were not in the room and they had all been sworn to secrecy.
Primarily, any information gleaned from Snape during this session would be used purely to allow them to act. If they then chose to use this information in order to prosecute anyone, it would have to be presented by the Unspeakables rather than the Aurors. An annoying technicality, but that's politics. Technically they couldn't just use whatever means they wanted in order to wring the truth out of the man, but the term "information acquired by the Unspeakables" usually shut up all the naysayers.
Quite suddenly, after about ten minutes of the Unspeakables fighting against Snape's willpower, the man went limp, almost as if he had been stunned.
Croaker turned to another Unspeakable and asked the man to administer the truth potion.
"And remember to give him six drops instead of three."
The Unspeakable did as asked and, once the potion had taken effect, Croaker conjured up a seat opposite Snape and sat down on it before beginning his questioning of the man.
Starting with the standard questions to check that the potion was working properly he asked "What is your full name?"
"Severus Tobias Snape," came the barely lucid reply.
"What is your date of birth?"
"9th January 1960."
"Where do you live?"
"Hogwarts castle."
"And when not at Hogwarts?"
"17 Spinner's End, Cokeworth."
"And your occupation?"
"Potions Professor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."
At this point Croaker looked over to one of his subordinates standing by the door. The man had a sheet of parchment in his hand which he was currently using to check Snape's personal details.
The Unspeakable gave a nod of his head, confirming that everything that Snape had said was correct, and Croaker turned back to Snape.
With the potion obviously working, Croaker got on with the real questions.
"Why did you attack Sarah Abbott in her own home?"
"I had orders to kill her."
"Orders from whom?"
"Albus Dumbledore."
The others in the room exchanged dark looks.
"Why did Dumbledore order you to kill her?"
"To eliminate her influence upon Harry Potter and to draw attention to the Dark Lord's return."
Again the people in the room exchanged looks. They were a few of the handful of Ministerial employees who knew the truth about Voldemort's rebirth several months ago.
Filing way the bit about Harry Potter for a moment Croaker instead asked "And how would this have drawn attention to the Dark Lord's return?"
"I was to cast the Dark Mark in the sky above the house after completing the murder."
"How did you break through the wads surrounding the Abbott House so easily?"
"The talisman. It was designed specifically to bring down wards with ease. Rookwood designed it towards the end of the last war, and the Dark Lord used it to bring down the additional wards around Potter Cottage when he attacked it."
"How did you end up with the talisman?"
"I was there that night, waiting outside. When part of the roof caved in and the Dark Lord did not emerge I went inside. I took the talisman and the Dark Lord's wand."
"And how did the wand get from you to him?"
"Wormtail arrived at my house shortly after Wormtail brought the Dark Lord back to England. He had the Dark Lord and his snake with him and I handed over the wand."
"Yet you kept the talisman?"
"They did not ask for it, so I kept it for myself to use."
"Were there other talismans made?"
"Not to my knowledge. Rookwood could probably make more if he were ever freed from Azkaban."
"I see," said Croaker before changing his line of questioning. "Why does Dumbledore not want Sarah Abbott to influence Harry Potter?"
"Dumbledore says that Potter has a destiny to complete. A destiny that only Dumbledore can guide him towards. He says that Harry must not be subjected to outside influences."
"What does Dumbledore believe Harry Potter's destiny to be?"
"To die by the hand of the Dark Lord, completing the prophecy that ties them together and allowing Dumbledore to step in and kill the Dark Lord himself."
"What else has Dumbledore done to prevent Harry Potter from being influenced by others?"
At that question Snape suddenly began fighting against the effects of the potion and the magic that was working against his Occlumency.
As Snape fought, a third Unspeakable came forward and raised her wand. A few moments later Snape went limp again, the task of fighting off three assaults on his defences as well as the truth serum wearing him down quickly.
Croaker repeated his question again.
Snape, as it turned out, had a lot of answers to give.
Over an hour passed before Amelia, Rufus, Cyrus and Saul were able to head into Amelia's office and go over what they had learned.
"I think that we've got more than enough evidence to bring Dumbledore to his bony knees," said Amelia as she went through a list of all the ways that Snape had revealed Dumbledore controlled and manipulated Harry Potter's life. There was everything from controlling his mail to dosing him with potions.
"You realise that every student in that castle is currently dosed to the gills, don't you?" asked Cyrus.
This had been a particularly disturbing fact to learn. The idea that all the students at Hogwarts had, on Dumbledore's orders, been dosed with a potion that would force them to blindly accept what they were told or what they saw without question was utterly vial.
Worse, when asked why Dumbledore thought that he could get away with such an action, Snape had replied "He has done it before, on several occasions."
It was Croaker who replied to Cyrus' question "As distasteful as it is we cannot make that our first priority here. We must first deal with the Order of the Phoenix before Dumbledore gets wind of what we've found out and has them all go to ground."
Despite the fact that her niece was at Hogwarts and was likely under the influence of Dumbledore's little scheme, Amelia took Croaker's side "The potions will wear off in time without regular dosages. With Snape in our hands, Dumbledore has no one to make the potion for him. If this was any other criminal that we were dealing with, I would send a team straight to Hogwarts, but this is Dumbledore that we are dealing with. We need to destroy his power base and hit him with everything that we have."
Rufus pulled out a long sheet of parchment and began reading it before commenting "Well, we had better begin with our own employees. Kingsley Shacklebolt of the Auror Office, Emmeline Vance of the Law Enforcement Patrol, Arthur Weasley of the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office, his wife Molly and his son William, Sturgis Podmore of the Floo Network Authority and Dedalus Diggle of the Muggle-Worthy Excuse committee all seem like a good place to start."
Amelia nodded and said "You organise raids against them, I'm going after Moody."
"And what about Sirius Black?" asked Cyrus.
"He's hiding behind a Fidelius charm," replied Rufus "There is nothing that we can do for him right now."
Discovering that Sirius Black was innocent of the crimes for which he had been convicted had been a surprise to most of those in that room, but Amelia already knew that little piece of information, having heard it from Harry back in the summer. Until now her hands had been tied on the matter, and until they could get the man into the Ministry to question him, Amelia still had not action that she could take without setting alarm bells ringing within certain circles.
She was also rather reluctant to make a move in the man's favour anyway. Clearly he was one of Dumbledore's men and he had abandoned Harry twice now, once on that fateful Halloween night back in 1981 and again over the summer when he had taken part in the communication block that Dumbledore had imposed upon Harry.
Although she had left Hogwarts School two years before the Marauders had arrived, Amelia had learned plenty about them from her younger brothers, Edgar and Alfred. She had also met Sirius at various points during the two years he had spent in Auror training. She had not found herself liking him then and the higher ups had shared this view, which was why Sirius did not complete his third year at the Auror academy.
She would do what she could for the man when she had the time, but for now the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement had bigger fish to fry.
During his meeting with the Head Boy and Head Girl, Dumbledore had taken the time to note down all the names of those students who had been in the room on the seventh floor. Even now, several hours after the bulk of the students had been caught there were seven names unaccounted for, five girls and two boys.
Dumbledore had been scanning the castle on the Marauder's Map for quite some time now, but as yet he had seen nothing to suggest where Pansy Parkinson, Astoria Greengrass, Natalie McDonald, Katie Bell, Luna Lovegood, Stewart Ackerly or Kevin Whitby had hidden themselves.
He had Filch and several members of the Order searching the secret passageways out of the castle in the hopes that the wayward students were hiding just beyond the edges of the map, but so far they had found nothing.
His eyes scanned the grounds again and this time he spotted two things that brought a large smile to his face. He turned around as addressed two of the Professors who were in the room with him and the captured students.
"Minerva, Nymphadora, it seems that Kevin Whitby and Stewart Ackerly have secluded themselves away within the Quidditch changing rooms and Luna Lovegood and Natalie McDonald are using the stands around the Quidditch Pitch to hide themselves. Kindly go out and retrieve them, and do be quick as the girls appear to have young Mr Potter with them."
Tonks scowled at the use of her first name but followed Professor McGonagall from the room.
"You're not going to get away with this!" said Susan.
Dumbledore smiled patronisingly at her and replied "Quite the contrary, my dear girl. The Ministry of Magic is soon going to become too busy to worry about what I do within my own castle."
Susan felt a chill go down her spin and Hannah shuddered next to her. The old man's words did not bode well.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
"Alright, alright!" grumbled Arthur Weasley as he hurried down the stairs of The Burrow, pulling on his dressing gown.
He made his way over to the back door of the house pulled it open.
"Rufus?" he asked in surprise as he saw who was standing at his door, and with five other Aurors no less. "What on Merlin's name brings you here at this hour?"
Like parents the world over who found themselves being awoken like this, he began to panic. "Is something wrong at the school? Is it the twins? Is it Ron? Ginny?"
"Something is very wrong at the school, Arthur," replied Scrimgeour, grimly. "However we currently have no reason to believe that any of your children are at risk."
"Then why are you here?" asked Arthur "What's going on?"
"We've come for you, Arthur," said Scrimgeour. "And Molly. You're both under arrest."
"What for?" demanded Arthur as two Aurors stepped forwards to arrest him.
"Arthur? Who's at the door?" asked Molly as she came down the stairs. She took in the sight before her and her tone changed from one of concern to one of anger.
"What's going on?" she demanded.
"Molly Weasley, you are under arrest," said Scrimgeour and he nodded to two other Aurors who moved to arrest the woman.
"Surely this must be some kind of misunderstanding," protested Arthur.
"Perhaps," said Scrimgeour. "But I doubt it. Is your son William at home?"
"No, he's… at work." replied Molly, faltering.
Scrimgeour raised an eyebrow. "Rather late for someone with a desk job at Gringotts to be working, isn't it?"
Without waiting for an answer he went on "Well, we'll just have to send a team to the bank. Now, I assume that you are both going to come quietly?"
"Very well," said Molly. "Please let us contact Dumbledore though. I'm certain that he can straighten all of this out."
"I somewhat doubt that, Mrs Weasley," replied Scrimgeour. "After all, you are being arrested for being members of his illegal vigilante group."
The shock of that statement silenced both Weasley parents better than any silencing charm could. Arthur found himself needing to lean against the table for a moment, no easy task when you're hands are bound behind your back.
Molly dropped to the floor in a dead faint.
Harry did not like the situation that he was in even a little bit. Luna had, according to her, told him everything that had been going on up at the castle during the past week, but Harry could recall none of it and none of it made any sense to him.
After all, everything seemed to centre on his rebelling against Dumbledore, but Harry could think of no reason as to why he would rebel, and Luna certainly did not know the answer. He could think of nothing to rebel against, except Snape and his slimy snakes. Apart from them everything was fine at Hogwarts.
He attended the best school of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the world and that school was currently being run by Albus Dumbledore, the finest Headmaster that the school had ever seen. The teachers were the best in the world, and there were no safety issues to kick up a fuss about as Hogwarts was the safest place in all of Wizarding Britain.
To Harry's mind, both Luna and Natalie had to be wrong.
But he couldn't do anything about this situation because his legs were still locked together and