Third Time's a Charm

Chapter Five: Entering the Grey Area

There was silence in the interrogation room for several minutes until the door opened and an Auror marched in with a witch clad in deep purple robes. Her eyes were closed and head was lolling about. She was handed over to the Interrogators, and the Auror left.

"Mum?" Goyle said.

"They have his mother?" Hermione sputtered.

"Of course not," Orion said. "It's just a Muggle with a dose of Polyjuice. We obtained the hair from Adelaide Goyle while he was still in St. Mungo's. It's standard procedure, Granger," he added as he saw Hermione's horrified look.

"Standard procedure ... for what, exactly?"

"If the Veritaserum doesn't make them talk, we have to.... Look. We could use Cruciatus or anything nasty on him. But after a few rounds of the curse, he wouldn't be able to tell us anything anyway. So they use a Muggle that no one will miss and disguise her as someone he cares about."

"Oh God. That's disgusting."

The Interrogators strapped the Adelaide Goyle impersonator to a chair and subjected her to the Cruciatus while Goyle looked on. She screamed through her sleep, not waking because she was in a charmed sleep, though it almost looked like her mind wouldn't allow her to wake up and face the pain consciously. The screams tore her throat and faded off into guttural moans.

"Now," one of them said to Goyle. "We can let her go, if you will talk. Otherwise it's more Cruciatus for her, and eventually we'll wake her up and she'll face the full brunt of the curse. Awake, staring at you, knowing it's your fault she's here."

Goyle was stark white and his lips were blubbering, but no sound was coming out. He looked around the room frantically, trying to make a decision.

"NOW. MAKE UP YOUR MIND NOW," The Interrogator who'd focused his attention on Goyle barked.

"She's strong," Goyle whimpered. "She wouldn't want me to tell. You can recover from the Cruciatus. It doesn't matter. She can get better and you can really do anything to her, or father...and people would find out..."

The other Interrogator cast Finite Incantatum on the woman, and she awoke unsure of where she was and terrified. To prove Goyle wrong, that they could and would do to his mother whatever it took to make him talk, including inflicting permanent physical damage, the Interrogator drew a scalpel out of his black case, and began tracing along the woman's jaw line. She gurgled and begged for her life as the line behind the blade blossomed with blood, and the man began to peel back her face.

"Stop! Stop!" Goyle yelled. "Leave her alone! I'll tell you anything, anything."

"Good. Nowell--stop. We will leave his mother alone--for now. The first thing I need to know, Goyle, is who are you working for?"

"Lord Voldemort."

Both Interrogators snickered. "Surely you don't expect me to believe that. You-Know-Who is long gone; you couldn't possibly be acting on his orders."

"He is. I swear. I've seen him."

"Nowell, his mother. He appears to need more motivation."

Hermione could no longer watch as the Interrogator called Nowell continued to pull back the twitching woman's face, and blood gushed over his hands and her chest.

Goyle yelled and jerked, trying to break free of his chair. It banged and rocked back and forth on the floor. "I'M TELLING YOU THE TRUTH! I DON'T KNOW WHAT ELSE YOU WANT ME TO SAY. LEAVE HER...LEAVE HER ALONE."

"Alright, Nowell. Perhaps Mr. Goyle believes he is telling the truth. Stop for now. Goyle, it's time to name names. Who are the other Serpent Eaters?"

"Draco Malfoy, Blaise Zabini, Emma Moon, and Vincent Crabbe."

"That's it? There are only five of you? And the five of you have managed to kill over fifty people while eluding the entire Auror Division and Department of Mysteries?"

"Yes. L-lord Voldemort has been helping us," Goyle said in a very small voice.

"Oh, yes, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Let's pretend, for the moment, that you are telling the truth. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is dead. How did you bring him back to life?"

"We didn't," Goyle shook his head. "He came to us. I don't know how--exactly, Draco didn't tell...well he didn't explain it to me..."

"That's unfortunate."

"No."

"Nowell, perhaps you can jog his memory."

But it was too late. The formidable form of Adelaide Goyle began to shrink into a smaller, more slender body, and her dark hair faded to red.

"That's not--" Goyle whispered. "I told you everything, and that's not even her!"

Lowell shrugged. "Avada Kedavra!" The woman who was not Adelaide Goyle slumped over, dead. "Better tell Quisenberry to send teams to the Malfoy's, Zabini's, Crabbe's, and Moon's. And dispose of this body. I don't know; I think it went pretty well, Short. He seems to think he was telling the truth, anyway. That's something."

"Yes." Then the Interrogator called Short said loudly, "Buckley, can you have Goyle taken to Azkaban? And Dementor's Kiss, I think. We don't want him escaping justice. I'll tell Quisenberry that we got all the information from him that there was to get."

Buckley said to Hermione, "Wait here. I'll be back in twenty minutes, at the most. Just don't move. Then I'll help you get back to your place."

Hermione didn't look like she was going anywhere. She just sat stiffly and silently in her chair, shaking her head from side to side.

~~~

Orion came back and helped her up. "A Muggle," she said. "I just don't understand it..."

"Shh! Granger. I don't want anyone catching me talking to thin air. I don't know where you live. Do you think you can Apparate us?"

She Apparated them to her apartment. "You alright?" he asked.

"I...uh...yeah. I don't know. Excuse me."

"Geez, Granger. I see now why Quisenberry never has you do interrogation shifts. It's not because you're such a hotshot on the field--it's because you're a softy. You'll get over it. But in the meantime, maybe you should take a day off. It's not a good idea for you to go to work like this."

"Yeah, whatever. Can you see yourself out?" She pushed past him to the bathroom where she vomited into the toilet.

Hermione was shocked and disgusted, and didn't feel much else. She tried to convince herself that it was because she had witnessed torture for the first time. It was bound to have an effect on anybody, even someone who had been through Auror training and knew that sometimes unpleasant things had to be done to keep everyone safe. She was still revolted at the gore and the screams. They hadn't even touched Goyle, who was supposed to be the enemy. They had simply manipulated him with a stranger who was not his mother and was nothing to the Wizarding world, so nothing would happen to them for killing her. That was what really bothered Hermione. The war against Voldemort had been fought partly in the name of protecting Muggles and Muggle-borns, whom Voldemort despised and would kill. Hermione's side won, but what difference did it make to the Muggles? No one thought of them any differently. Her side still treated them like nothing, to be used, to be tortured to make a prisoner give up information.

Hermione had known that Veritaserum didn't always work in interrogations. At Hogwarts she had been taught that there was no antidote for the potion, but she learned otherwise during her classroom Auror training. The Ministry had an antidote, and so, one could presume, did some of the dark wizards. How the Ministry actually gained its intelligence from captured dark wizards just hadn't crossed her mind. She was glad she knew now, and Orion Buckley was wrong. She didn't need to take a day off. She needed to stop the Serpent Eaters so this wouldn't continue.

~~~

Hermione woke up in the middle of the night. "I just realized something," she thought.

"Malfoy. Goyle said Draco Malfoy! What's happened to your sharp wit, Granger? You're going soft. Of course he said Draco Malfoy. The fireworks. And Goyle never does anything unless Draco tells him to. And Draco is just psychotic and devoted enough to actually want to bring Voldemort back."

"I think Goyle was telling the truth about Voldemort..."

She tossed and turned, and slowly she fell back asleep.

~~~

"Victoria, get me a list of all the Aurors who escort Azkaban prisoners and their addresses," Hermione said.

The witch stood up from her desk and pulled two heavy books from a shelf on the wall behind her. "Directory and assignments," she said, gesturing to the books. Then she gave an incantation and the books opened, pages flipping by, while an enchanted quill wrote names and addresses on a roll of parchment. Hermione and Victoria chatted idly about the weather.

When the information was recorded, Victoria handed the parchment to Hermione. "Here you are, love."

"Thanks."

Hermione went to the break room and sat at a table, where she unrolled the parchment and crossed off the name "Atalanta Dark."

~~~

"I have a hunch," Hermione announced. "You can throw out your old assignments, we're not going to be watching over Muggle-borns tonight; we're going to be watching the homes of the dayshift Aurors."

She got several curious looks from her team.

"There haven't been any attacks on Muggles or Muggle-borns in a month, at least. That must mean something. That they've killed everyone they wanted to kill? And that's it; they just wanted to wreak a bit of havoc? Or they're shifting gears, moving on to a new part of...whatever it is they're trying to do. I haven't worked that part out yet exactly, but fifty dead Muggles and Muggle-borns over a fairly regular basis, and then nothing? That can't be right. The last big attack was on Atalanta, and she was a pureblood--and an Auror. It makes me think they're shifting gears. So why would they want to attack a pureblooded Auror? Honestly, I don't know. I don't even think it was an attack. I mean, people died, but something went wrong. For them, I mean. One of them was caught, when they've never even come close to it before. Not to mention there were only two of them--in an Auror's house--and I know for a fact there are more than two Serpent Eaters. Well, like I said, I haven't got it all figured out exactly, but if it wasn't an attack, why were they there? Do you see what I'm getting at? Whatever they're doing might have something to do with other Aurors."

Clarence whistled. "I wonder if Quisenberry's realized all this? It seems so obvious once you lay it out like that."

"Obviously she hasn't realized it or the whole Division wouldn't be guarding Muggle-borns, now would we?" Viola said.

"Did you tell Quisenberry?" another member of Hermione's team, Tony, asked.

"No. Is that a problem, anyone?"

"No," everyone shook their heads.

"Good. OK. We'll split up into teams of two and watch three houses. Let's see--Gwen and Tony together, Clarence and Michael, and Viola and me. Here are the addresses of the houses you're going to. If you see anything, contact me and wait for me before you go in. That's it. Good luck, everyone."