ch 26

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.