Chapter 26 Muggle Solutions

Harry drifted slowly on his broom in the Accursed Mountains of Albania. Today he was wearing his sky-blue set of robes. While they made him stand out on the ground, in the air they made him that much more difficult to see. Combined with a disillusionment charm he was well neigh invisible.

Spring had arrived and for the last four weeks he had scoured the countryside for likely places Voldewhore might be hiding. Mounds of snow were still in the shadows, which helped reduce the areas he had to check. He knew from his history that the Nagini was already active and thus not still hibernating in a tunnel in the ground deep below the snow.

This particular valley was the last in a series of four he had searched so far this week, the last in April.

The locals, contrary to the reports he had heard from almost everyone, were quite friendly as long as you didn't violate any of their hospitality rules. For a foreigner it was simple to abide by those rules. They boiled down to one simple axiom — don't insult your host!

He had managed to build up a little good will in each village he visited by healing ailments that the local Healers found too difficult. His stock of potions had been steadily dwindling as a result — it was amazing the quantity of Skele-grow he had dispensed! Putting his magic into the cure helped its efficacy for the normally magic-less. To the Muggles, among whom were a rare number of Squibs, he just passed off the potions as the latest in healing miracles from the more modern industrial countries. Adding a mild confundus insured that they would not think to mention this miracle cure to any outsider.

Based on what little he could understand from his halting conversations in the taverns, this particular valley seemed to have a pale of evil in it. Bad things happened to people who visited it. There were even rumours of a woman with child mysteriously vanishing in the dead of night just a night or two ago.

It was tedious work, doing this, they both had decided. It was surprisingly taxing slowly drifting through the countryside, quartering back and forth, disillusioned so the Muggles didn't see him, and trying to sense the evil that he knew was Voldewhore.

In his magically expanded pockets were the unbreakable jar and other implements and potions he intended to use to capture the blighter when he finally found him.

At least during the winter months he had been able to keep Gilderoy busy with the book tour and signings. Preliminary reports indicated that Burrowing with a Basilisk had easily surpassed the sales of Magical Me. On the one hand, Gilderoy found that disappointing that the previous book had done so poorly by comparison. On the other, he was overjoyed at the increased sales and fans. And, in spite of the winter weather, the signings always had a line of fans out the door and down the street. Diagon Alley and Hogesmeade weren't the only places he had visited, there were the magical bookstores in Ireland, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Poland — not to mention the colonies, Canada, the US, Australia, South Africa, and India. Harry had never travelled outside the U.K. ever before, and it was quite an eye-opening experience.

He usually left each signing event with a wad of floo-call addresses in hand for an evening of entertainment, if he so chose. Sometimes it wasn't even a note but a room key to a local apartment or room at a tavern. And his supply Witch's knickers — an interesting replacement for a personal introduction card — took up a small trunk all by themselves. Perhaps he should open up a knickers shop?

Suffice to say, Gilderoy did not want for female companionship when he was interested. And that happened a lot more frequently than Harry was comfortable with admitting. That had lasted almost until March, which he spent recovering in Grimmauld Place and working on Restraining a Rat. And finalizing his travel arrangements to Albania.

Before Burrowing with a Basilisk, came out, though, Harry had been doing a bit of Death Eater clean-up, with limited, very limited, help from Gringotts.

"Ah, Ragnurk, my friend," Gilderoy had called out as he entered the now plush office the day after The Hogwarts' Express left King's Cross Station last September 1st. He was their number one client, by a huge margin. The Goblins knew how to play to the typical Wizard's vanity and they assumed from Gilderoy's reputation that he was exceedingly vain. And they spared no apparent expense in using that vanity to their advantage.

"I would like to buy up the debt owed by the following Wizards, if at all possible," he had said as he sat down. He had handed the list he had made to the Goblin. "They are in order of importance to me."

The Goblin perused the list, frowning.

"I then want to call the debt, immediately. In full." He had paused and then added, "My goal is to ruin them financially. If you know of a better way, please advise me."

The goblin studied the list. "This will take research. I will call you," he had said, finally.

Harry had left and Gilderoy had worked on Restraining a Rat.

Three days later, he received an owl from Ragnurk. He had headed straight over.

"Antonin Dolohov, Herbert Mulciber, Augustus Rookwood, Caspur Travers, and Septimus Blishwick are all in Azkaban and their fortunes are somewhat vulnerable," said the Goblin. "Alecto and Amycus Carrow, Phineas Yaxley, Charis Avery, Edward Nott, Ted Jugson, Lycoris, Scabior, Selwyn, Crabbe, and Goyle are all in reasonable shape financially. Their biggest debtor was Malfoy, and you already settled those. Calling in their remaining debts would be an inconvenience at best, harming some while strengthening the others for a net gain for your plans of zed. Severus Snape has no outstanding debts."

"It would take time, a year or more, to manoeuvre the five Azkaban prisoners' estates into vulnerable positions where you could reduce them to paupers, but only if their friends didn't help them. All but Dolohov have Gringotts managing the House finances, so it is likely that the remaining family, cousins, would seek assistance from their richer friends so they would have something to inherit when their relative dies."

Harry sat thinking. Plan B, he had decided, was the only workable solution in the short term. "Keep a watch on their finances for me. Should any of them become vulnerable, strike against them as hard as you can. Even reducing just a few would help in the long term." He sighed. "In the meantime, can you provide me with the floo addresses for all the people on the list?"

"You may purchase the floo addresses from the Ministry for fifty galleons each."

"And the passwords?"

"Are unavailable."

"Purchase the floo addresses for me."

The Goblin made a note.

'Also, can you provide me with the locations of all their properties?"

"Those that are not set to unplottable."

"Do it."

Harry spent several days working on how to get access to the estates. If he could get to the estate, he could get the vault key. And the vault key would let him bankrupt the Death Eater family. The Goblins would simply tell the families they should have taken care that the key was safe.

Dolohov had no relatives, so that was the one to start with.

Gringotts managed his estate in his absence. Their investments of the small amount of galleons he had barely returned enough profit to maintain Manor and other buildings, but it was sufficient profit. The Goblins' management contracts with the Wizards prevented them from deliberately and knowingly making bad investments, so Gilderoy couldn't use that to his advantage.

Then he remembered some of the techniques used by the Muggles in the future War. With the Goblins' assistance, Harry purchased a petrol station chain behind several "blind" corporations as an investment. With that as a supply and a cover, one night in mid-September he and Dobby had transported three thousand gallons of the liquid two thousand feet over the Dolohov Manor protective enchantments and north of the building. It had been shrunk to a six-foot sphere and kept at near freezing to prevent it from simply evaporating when released.

Then they dropped it, simultaneously finiting the sphere and the highly compressed balls of air scattered through it. The rapidly expanding air pockets sprayed the volatile substance over a wide area, intermixing the liquid thoroughly with the air both inside and outside the mass and creating a fine mist of petrol as it fell.

The creator of the Manor's protective enchantments had incorrectly assumed that the only liquids that freely fell from the sky like a rain were various forms of water and thus liquid from the sky did not need guarding against — after all, petrol didn't exist three hundred years ago when the enchantment designer lived. Any liquids other than rain, ice, or snow he knew of, such a Greek Fire, that might fall from above had to be encased in a shell, either physically or magically, for the trebuchet or Wizard to manipulate — and those he had guarded against. Being a liquid and non-magical, the protective enchantments on the manor allowed the mass to pass without hindrance.

The mist drifted down as the wind blew it over the estate, encompassing the house and much of the grounds around it.

Dobby, standing beside Harry, appeared to flicker in place as he popped to above the protective enchantments, and falling mist, hit the mist with a flame, and then reappeared beside Harry.

Even a mile away, Harry could feel the ground shake a moment later, followed by the shockwave of the explosion. A minute later, the heatwave from the blast, much cooler but still uncomfortably hot after traveling that distance, swept over them. Dobby stood beside him, mouth open in shock.

The mushroom cloud of smoke and burning debris from the building shot high up into the sky, far more impressive and scary than the morsmordre cast by the Death Eaters.

"It's called a fuel-air bomb, and is devastatingly effective," Harry said, "as you can see. It is second only to nuclear bombs in destructive power." They watched as the mushroom-shaped cloud climbed higher into the sky, flames bursting from within the dark mass. "The Muggles will say it was a gas-leak explosion — has to be because that's the only thing that causes such a wide-spread flaming disaster. The Ministry will think it's some kind of Dark ritual gone wrong. And with the Dark Artefacts in the ruins contaminating the evidence, what other conclusion could they make? Especially without the presence of any other magic in the remains of the explosion."

The explosion completely flattened the manor. The spells reinforcing the building simply were not up to the task of dealing with the equivalent of a thousand simultaneous superpowered reductos. The pressure wave created tore the Manor walls and insides to shreds, as well as sucking all the oxygen out of the house and crushing any underground rooms or dungeons. The magical blow back from the house protective enchantments overloading obliterated the Stone controlling them, blowing flaming pieces of the manor across a wide area. And when the Enchantment Control Stone failed, the remaining property enchantments collapsed, adding their energy to the blast consuming the building.

Harry apparated to the edge of the former protective enchantments and looked across the burning lawn and roaring fire that was the Manor. He raised his wand. "Accio Dolohov Vault Key." Moments later, a golden key came flying from destruction. Harry let the glowing hot key fall to the ground before dosing it with water. Being Goblin made, it was indestructible. He dropped the key into his pocket and left for home. Because Gringotts never closed, he would have Dobby order the Goblins to sweep the vault for Goblin-made items and destroy any Dark Artefacts tonight. Once that was complete, he would have Dobby, Kreacher, and Bipsy transfer the remaining contents to one of House Black's empty properties. Then he would place the key in his special Vault Key box in the Study, labelled, of course. Dobby would periodically check the vault for any deposits from business investments Dolohov made before being sent to Azkaban — no reason to let it accumulate, now was there?

Later, he would have Kreacher and Dobby sell off the unwanted furniture, clothing, jewellery, and books previously stored in Dolohov's vault to second-hand shops across England and the continent. Eventually, he would transfer the remaining galleons to The Gilderoy Lockhart Investment Fund. The items he kept would go into the Lockhart Vault.

Through the rest of September and early October, he repeated the attack on the Mulciber, Rookwood, Travers, Blishwick, and another half dozen Pure-blood bigots' Manors — he didn't want to do too much all at once and leave an obvious trace to follow back to him. All except one of their keys joined Dolohov's in Gilderoy's Vault Key box for regular checks.

Travers was a bit trickier as his wife was still in residence, fortunately without any children. He had Dobby monitor her and when she was off visiting friends, they struck. It was their only daylight raid. After removing a hefty chunk of the galleons in the vault, he owled her vault key back to her. She could use the galleons remaining in the vault either to build a much smaller Manor or to provide herself with an apartment or small home somewhere in an area where he couldn't repeat his attack. He didn't care what she did. In either event, providing any financial assistance to other Death Eaters would be next to impossible — the Manor represented half of their net worth and the galleons he had stolen significantly reduced her ready cash. She wasn't nearly as poor as the Weasleys had been, but if she wasn't careful she would be.

The sudden outbreak of fires and explosions on confirmed Death Eater properties horrified the ministry. They were convinced Death Eaters were attempting highly dangerous Dark Magic to turn on the Wizarding World, hiding their work in supposedly empty Manors behind powerful protective enchantments. It was only a matter of time before they succeeded, the Ministry reasoned. Equalling horrifying, from their point of view, was that the Ministry could only find generic Dark Magic residue of whatever it was that destroyed the Manors so thoroughly. No records of anything that could cause such widespread destruction existed in the Ministry.

The Muggles were equally upset. Because the explosions harmed no Muggles nor damaged any Muggle property, the Muggle Minister acceded to Minister Bones' request for secrecy. The Muggle Minister buried the news under the Official Secrets Act. The locals were all told the light and noise was a military test or that it was a leaking gas tank explosion. That and few selective obliviates of locals kept quiet the Muggle end of the problem.

The Death Eater's relatives, on the other hand, were demanding that the Ministry find the person or persons responsible for the destruction of their Manors. They vehemently denied that anyone had been involved in anything magically dangerous on those properties. However, since the properties were allegedly unoccupied, and had been for some time, they could provide no proof. Naturally, only the Pure-blood fanatics in the Ministry believed them.

Travers was the only exception. Instead of raging at the Ministry and demanding that they catch the culprits responsible for destroying her manor, she kept her mouth closed and simply said she had no idea what happened. Gilderoy clearly saw she was afraid to draw the attention of whomever it was that had so thoroughly destroyed her finances. The day after her questioning at the Ministry that left the Aurors quite vocally upset at her obstinacy, she received a two thousand-galleon owl delivery with a note saying simply "Thank you." That reinforced her determination to remain quiet. Her continued evasions simply convinced the Ministry that their suspicions were correct.

"Good Morning, Madam Minister!" Harry/Gilderoy said as he entered her office on October 15th. "I'm so glad you could find the time for me!" Today he was dressed in a lilac ensemble and was, as always, perfectly coiffed.

"I always have time for you, Gil." She returned his wide smile with one of her own. Her Goblin contacts had told her Lockhart was the richest Wizard on the planet. If you separated House Lockhart from House Slytherin, Lockhart was the richest in the U.K. — due to the Basilisk ingredient sales they told her — followed by House Black. As the acknowledged regent for House Potter, even though Sirius was the Boy-Who-Lived's godfather, he took the third position as well.

As an interesting aside, the Lestranges were no longer on the top fifty list. What had happened to their fortune was a mystery, and the Goblins refused to say if they knew anything. That four of the other seven Azkaban prisoners had also disappeared from the Goblin's list of the richest Houses and individuals in the U.K. was also an intriguing bit of news — the destruction of their Manors was a substantial blow to their finances, true, but such a loss shouldn't have wiped them out completely. What had happened to their vaults?

The two sat on the couch and chair to one side of her office, sipping tea. "I've been reading about these mysterious explosions. Dreadful business, that," Gilderoy said. He spent the next fifteen minutes telling her about his adventures in fighting Dark Wizards that he had not yet put into any book. All were real stories from the future War Harry had fought. That she, as head of the D.M.L.E. had never heard of any of these duels, made her highly doubtful of their reality. But she did wonder why the truth spell on the couch failed to trigger at the clear falsehoods.

When her smile became a bit fixed, he knew he had worn out his welcome, as he had planned. Once more, he had convinced her he was an empty-headed braggart with delusions of competence and authority. But a very rich empty-headed braggart with delusions of competence and authority. And his control of the Wizengamot gave him political clout no one else could match, especially with both Malfoy and Dumbledore effectively removed from the scene. That made him simply too powerful to offend with an interruption.

He smiled at her broadly, "Oh, I almost forgot, the reason I came to visit today is that I need to visit Azkaban once more. While Bellatrix Lestrange neé Black is no longer in residence . . . ," He wasn't about to lie and say she was dead in case the Minister had a truth detection spell in the room. Let her assume he was being polite about the Witch's death. ". . . I should probably check on the states of her husband and his brother. They are related family, now, much as I regret it." No one suspected that he had destroyed the Lestrange Manor, its destruction hadn't been nearly as flashy as the others — merely a fire that had gutted the unplottable building hidden behind its protective enchantments in the early morning hours before anyone normally woke.

And now he needed to take care of the Lestrange brothers. He wanted to leave Belladonna in the clear should they escape in the future or magic react to their still being alive in the event the girl ever decide to marry.

This time, Minister Bones did not accompany him on his little trip to hell-on-Earth, she just wrote out a pass for him to show the guards and Warden.

"Thank you so much for your assistance, Amelia," he said, taking the parchment from her and starting towards the door. He had just put his hand on the doorknob when he said, "Oh, I was thinking about how Barty Crouch, Junior, managed to escape Azkaban, and it occurred to me that there was a lesson there — with help, anyone can escape Azkaban." Reluctantly, the Minister nodded her agreement. He could feel her emotions spike, wondering what little problem he was about to drop in her lap this time.

"So, I thought, why not put a spell on each Death Eater sentenced to Azkaban that is tied to the containment enchantments. Should a Death Eater leave without someone, say, an Unspeakable, removing that spell, he, or she, would die when they are more than a mile from the prison enchantments. Perhaps you could make it a tattoo? I'm sure the Unspeakables can come up with a clever idea. That way, you never, ever, have to worry about a breakout. And, if you want to release someone for any reason, you simply remove the spell with a counter spell that requires the presence of an Unspeakable."

He nodded his head to her, and then left her office with a parchment authorizing his visit to the desolate island.

As he had the last time he visited Azkaban, he used confundo and stupify to hide his actions from his escort. An obliviate on the both prisoners removed the memory of him drawing runes on their heads that slowly drained their magic into the environment around them. No one would see the runes under their hair. In a month, maybe two, both would die from magical exhaustion and the terrible conditions that their magic could no longer assist them in surviving. The runes, being nearly invisible and kept in place by their own magic, would disappear entirely after their deaths.

His visit on October 22nd to Little Hangleton took under an hour. Planning the trip took much thought and several days. At first, he had planned simply to remove the bones. But then he realized that if Voldy checked beforehand and discovered no bones he might choose another solution to getting a body. One Harry might not be able to interrupt or sabotage. If Harry left the bones, then at least he had a fallback position should he fail to catch the bastard in Albania.

But he didn't want to leave the bones as-is, he had to do something. He finally settled on a wicked compromise, one worthy of a Marauder prank. Every bone in the graveyard with a patrilineal link to Riddle he removed and replaced with engorged squirrel bones. Unfortunately, the "bone of the father" spell would fail if he simply stopped at that point. So, throughout each bone he melded a tiny amount of powder of bone from Tom Riddle's father. If a Voldewhore follower cast the spell requiring bone of the father, the bone brought to surface would contain no more than a very tiny fraction of his father, the rest would be squirrel. What came out of the cauldron after the ritual should be rather interesting. And definitely not very snake-like.

The rest of October he spent working on the "I was imperio'ed!" Death Eaters. Those were much tougher to come up with a good plan. The families were difficult because there always seemed to be someone at home. It was worse for those with house-elves, as even when all the family members were gone, that still left the house-elves.

He had to strike those families with multiple house-elves from his list. One always remained behind and there would be no way to evacuate or warn the little guy beforehand. The others, most being in full residence, became a problem of logistics — waiting for a moment when no one was home. That left the bachelors, Snape and Yaxley. Snape was never home, which was great, but his home was in a Muggle neighbourhood and a fuel-air bomb would take out most of the town. But he was also gone for ten months of the year. That gave Harry time to work on a solution for breaking the protective enchantments.

After raiding the Lestranges and the vaults of the others, Harry/Gilderoy had a Dark Magic library second only to House Black, which he also thoroughly examined. A curse-breakers toolkit, with the owner's instructions and field notes was an invaluable find.

He wanted the Carrows as his next target, but Dobby didn't raid them until almost February. On consideration, Harry had decided that leaving them alive would be a mistake. Their twins, Flora and Hestia, fortunately, were Firsties this year and not home. He didn't know if their mother was Alecto or the Witch married to Amycus. In either case, he only had to wait until Amycus' wife and their lone house-elf left the Manor that the brother and sister shared. Based on what he remembered of their ineptitude in the Final War, neither were sufficiently skilled or alert to notice Dobby's activities until it was far too late. Fortunately, Dobby could handle the raid by himself. The girls would need something to live on, so Dobby would be leaving the key behind. The Goblins later confirmed that the inheritors of the estate were the two girls and their mother — not Alecto — at the reading of the Will.

Crabbe and Goyle were easy targets. They each had a house-elf, so it was a repeat of Dolohov's Manor — wait until everyone except Crabbe, or Goyle, the Seniors, of course, were gone and the house-elf went shopping. Their vaults were depressingly low in galleons, so he took everything else. Replacing their Manors with new was out of the question without borrowing serious amounts of galleons. Ragnurk arranged for him to loan the widows the galleons they needed, leaving them clearly in debt to House Black and having to follow House Black's lead in the Wizengamot. Should Voldewhore return, Harry could always call in the debt and make Voldy spend his precious funds keeping them off the streets. Or increase dissension in the ranks by forcing them to beg their way into another Death Eater's home.

In the meantime, he drastically reduced the ranks of rich Death Eaters, not to mention eliminating many of them with extreme prejudice, as the spy novels liked to say. The Death Eater children in Hogwarts began to understand what it felt like to be on the losing side of a guerrilla-style war, and realizing they faced a future of belonging to the working-class instead of ordering the working-class around. Headmistress McGonagall's zero-tolerance of bullying also made them far more circumspect in their attitudes towards those they felt were their inferiors. The fact that Sirius made no secret that he would black-ball from employment anyone who didn't toe the line of tolerance certainly helped to make Hogwarts a fun experience for anyone who wasn't a Pure-blood bigot.

The book release in November left Harry/Gilderoy far too busy dealing with book signings and appearances to pay attention to the Death Eaters for several months. Things slowed down in late January and began to taper off in February. That was when he began to work earnestly on where in Albania he might find Voldy and how he could find him.

The solution for Snape's home was simple. Time consuming, but simple. He apparated nearby, then spent the day wandering around outside of the house's protective enchantments, locating the likely places an Enchantment Anchor Stone might be hidden. As he found each one, he placed two stones carved with runes that acted as magical power leaches. When he was done, the power leaches would drain magic from the Enchantment Anchors faster than they could charge. In a week or so, he could just walk up to the house without tripping the protective enchantments. He only had to look out for traps. And he planned to take care of those the same way, dropping power leaches at potential trouble spots and coming back later. He wished he'd found that Cursebreaker Kit in his first life.

Using power leaches on the other Death Eater's homes wouldn't work in any place with regular residents. The Enchantment Control Stone would warn the inhabitants that something was wrong long before the power leaches were close to compromising the protective enchantments. In this case, though, not only wasn't the owner not in residence, he was in another country — Scotland! He wouldn't be checking back here until Christmas at the earliest. With luck, he wouldn't discover his home was gone until next summer.

And while Snape had settled down at Hogwarts, he was still a Death Eater. Minnie had told him if he didn't shape up, she'd fire him. The current spate of attacks on Death Eaters had him feeling that staying at Hogwarts was a much safer ploy than being out in the Wizarding World taking his chances that the vigilante might catch him unawares. So, he minded his p's and q's and actually taught Potions in a fair-minded manner. Whoever would have thought that would happen — Snape being fair!

While he waited for the power leaches to do their job, he tackled Yaxley.

Yaxley lived in a large Manor in the country and had a single house-elf. The man had a low-level job at the Ministry and kept mostly to himself. As a result, the manor was empty except for the house-elf every day from morning until evening. It was simply a matter of waiting for the house-elf to go shopping.

Harry opened a new vault. He would need to move quickly when he got Yaxley's vault key.

In the meantime, Gilderoy had worked on the book-signings for Burrowing with a Basilisk and editing Restraining a Rat.

Their opportunity appeared in mid-December. Dobby POPed into his study, "Wiksy is shopping," he said.

"Excellent, Dobby, you know what to do, I'll meet you there to get the key."

Harry put away his quill and carefully marked his place. He changed to his "stealth" robes — a more smart, fashionable, and perfectly tailored copy of the Muggle military camouflage combat uniform — and apparated to his pre-scouted lookout point in time to see a fireball rising into the sky. Dobby joined him almost immediately. He waited only long enough for the flaming debris to stop falling before apparating closer and Accio'ing the vault key.

Unfortunately, nothing happened. He tried a second time, and still nothing. Damn. The Wizard had figured out what he was doing and kept his vault key with him at all times.

He sighed. "Okay, Dobby, go back to whatever you were doing."

Well, there was still a chance he might get Yaxley.

Wiksy, the Wizard's house-elf, would immediately feel the protective enchantments' catastrophic disappearance and try to contact her Master to tell him the Manor was under attack. Yaxley was at the Ministry, so she would have to POP to the Atrium and then run through the building to find him. The Ministry spells would prevent her from using her elf-magic to magically POP to her master. That would take about ten minutes — passing security and running down the stairs to his office, if she knew where it was. If she didn't know, it would take a bit longer as she tried to get to him — knowing where someone is spatially doesn't tell you how to get to them in the maze that was the Ministry. Her explaining and him racing back to the atrium would take another ten minutes, maybe longer if he took the elevator. He'd waste a few minutes trying the floo, then he would apparate.

If Harry were really, really lucky, the bastard would apparate into what he thought was a safe spot in his Manor. Instead, he would be in the middle of the inferno now raging where the Manor had stood. The heat would kill him before he even knew he was on fire. If the arse was smart, he would apparate in at a distance and observe what was happening — what idiot would return to a home he knew an enemy occupied it and was potentially waiting in ambush?

Harry never detected an incoming apparition or Yaxley's presence.

Later, discrete inquires revealed that no one had seen Yaxley since that day he had rushed out of the Ministry. Harry knew he wasn't dead, the Goblins refused to release his estate. Harry figured the Wizard had gone to ground and was hiding in some Death Eater safe house Harry had never found in the future. Harry had already cleared out and booby-trapped the ones he knew of, with alert enchantments to warn him if anyone appeared at one.

A week after the Yaxley job, the power traps at Snape's home had drained the Enchantment Stones to the point of uselessness.

Harry looked around the Snape's sitting room. It was pretty pathetic. The furniture was old and worn, not even a second-hand shop would take it. It would, however, make good fuel for a nice bonfire. Harry carefully examined every room using the detection spells in the Curse-breaker's kit looking for hidden items. The only thing of note was a staircase behind a bookshelf that led to Snape's potion workshop. That held many rare and expensive ingredients. This was where Snape spent his income, stockpiling ingredients against future needs. Or, perhaps, where most of Hogwarts' Potion Budget went. Harry wouldn't put it past Snape to siphon off as much of the budget for his personal projects as he could get away with stealing.

Harry stripped the workshop down to the walls. The only other place Harry found of note was a safe hidden in the master bedroom filled with galleons. Harry didn't take the time to count, but from the size of the stack, compared to others he had seen, there should be around fifty thousand galleons, maybe more. Probably taken from his Death Eater victims in the first war because his salary wasn't enough to create such a stockpile in twenty years, never mind twelve, even if he didn't spend any of it.

It didn't matter because he took it all anyway. There was no vault key. He didn't expect there to be. No one had ever accused Snape of being stupid. If Snape had one, he probably kept it with him at Hogwarts.

Being a Muggle residence, the house was wired for electricity, even if Snape never used it. With a flick of his wand, Harry bypassed the gauge and made it look as if Snape were pirating electricity. Harry returned to the fuse box in the basement below the kitchen. He had several shrunken pieces of furniture and boxes of miscellaneous paper from upstairs with him. He restored the furniture and placed it against the wall beside the fuse box, with the boxes of paper directly below it and leaning against the furniture. He rearranged the rest of the loose contents of the Muggle basement to facilitate his plan. Then he cast incendio into the fuse box. The old-fashioned cloth-wrapped wires caught fire immediately, and Harry made sure some of the burning pieces of cloth fell onto the papers below. In moments, with the help of another incendio, everything in the basement was nicely burning. He retreated up the stairs and into the backyard, where he waited until he could see flames coming up the stairs. Then he apparated home.

He knew some Muggle would report the fire and the firemen would protect the nearby houses as Snape's place burnt. The dusty and dry condition of the house and its contents guaranteed that by the time the firemen arrived the place would be fully involved, and then burnt to the ground. The investigators, naturally, would conclude it started in the fusebox due to the old wiring and Snape's slipshod method of stealing the electricity. Arson would never be suspected. Except by Snape, that is. Harry knew he would immediately note the missing ingredients that should have fuelled a much more intense and explosive fire as soon as he returned to the place.

Not to mention the lack of anyone finding what amounted to over a ton and a half of gold coins.

Albus' funeral was during the Ides of March. The Wizarding world, and the British especially, wasted a good amount of time, in Harry's opinion, mourning their Hero, and remembering his great accomplishments.

Thus, it was that today, April 28th, he was drifting at tree-height on his broom in a remote valley in the Accursed Mountains of Albania, eyes half closed, trying to detect that indefinite loathsome trace of hate that was Voldewore. Disillusioned and covered with a Notice-Me-Not charm so that neither Muggles nor Wizards might detect him he moved back and forth across the valley.

He had covered almost three-quarters of the valley and it was beginning to get dark. He wouldn't finish this tonight; he would have to come back tomorrow. He sighed. When he finished this leg of the sweep, he would land and apparate back to the village.

Trusting his instincts had saved his life more times than he could count in the Final War. So, when the urge to speed up abruptly hit him, he did so. The powerful cutting curse sliced off the back two-thirds of his broom's bristles instead of slamming into his side from underneath.

The broom's integrity destroyed, it began to plummet, wildly jerking left, right, up, and down according to Harry's slightest movement. While this made it difficult for Harry to control his fall, it made it impossible for his assailant to hit him again. Spotting a small clearing created by a fallen tree, Harry apparated there, leaving the broom to drop down.

He landed roughly, tumbling. He sprang to his feet and recast his disillusionment spell. How his attacker had spotted him he didn't know, and he wasn't going to take unnecessary chances

He hadn't the faintest idea where his attacker was, but that it was a Voldewhore follower was certain. He held himself still, listening. He had to stay. If he left, they would leave knowing he was in pursuit and he wouldn't find them.

"Point Me Voldemort," Harry whispered. His wand spun, and then indicated to Harry's left. He turned and carefully made his way. He silenced his footsteps and his clothes and crept carefully through the bushes and debris littering the edges of the clearing.

They saw through each other's disillusionment spell almost simultaneously. It was Yaxley! He must have survived and fled, figuring that finding his lost Master was his only chance at surviving whomever was destroying the former Death Eaters.

Both launched vicious attacks. Harry sent reductos and langlocks in almost a continuous stream, dodging the incoming spells from Yaxley rather than using a shield. Yaxley preferred diffindo, defodio, crucio, expulso, and other Dark curses. Neither could make any headway, it seemed. Suddenly, something slammed into Harry from the side. It felt like the entire inside of his head caught fire. It wasn't crucio, though. His head seemed to be splitting in half, everywhere he looked he saw two. Yaxley pressed his advantage, casting faster. Harry threw up a protego as he tried to recover, dodging desperately to avoid whatever the other Death Eater might send at him. It didn't work. He tripped over a branch he thought was farther to his left and as he fell he saw another spell coming from the side. He screamed the activation phrase for his emergency portkey just as the spell hit him.