ch 26

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.