The Fat Muggle, Ten Years Later

-----------------The Fat Muggle, Ten Years Later. chapter three,"The King of Pain"------------------

"Why the hell wasn't I notified?!?!" Hermione reminded Harry of a tornado when they opened the front door of the Ministry of Magic.

"Someone better fill me in about Draco Malfoy this SECOND!!" she continued roaring at her employees.

There was a small man with a necktie that had running antelopes on it who ran up and began to explain.

Well, he tried to, but his stutter was fueled by his nevosity to the very edge of a humans sanity.

"Wwwww..w..wwe...we dd.d.don't knkn..know how Mr...M..mm m malfoy ggg..got...ouout!" he managed to spit out.

Hermione looked at him.

"How dare you call such a filth 'Mr'?" she said.

The man looked mortified and was sweating heavily.

"SSssss...sorr rry, Miss Gr..granger," he stuttered as fast as his mouth allowed him.

"Give me the Aurors report. Who's handling the case?" Hermione asked.

A woman by a nearby desk answered for the small man as she couldn't bear to hear him stutter again.

"Benjamin Grindle is handling it!" she called out and handed Hermione the report.

Hermione looked through it and seemed pleased.

"Get Grindle in here now. Send him to my office the second he gets here," Hermione commanded and made her way to her office together with Harry, Ron and Dudley.

They hadn't had time to sit down before Benjamin Grindle showed up and knocked at the door.

"Enter!" Hermione said and sat back in her chair that almost looked like a throne of some sort.

A large man with wide shoulders and short blond hair entered the room and closed the door behind him.

He had several visible scars.

Two in his face, one across his nose and one crossing from his left eyebrow down to his cheek, and one large scar on his chest that was visible due to the unbuttoned purple leather uniform.

He had a dark grey robe hanging from his shoulders in a scruffy sort of way.

"You wanted to see me?" he said to Hermione.

Harry and Dudley noticed his accent was American.

"Yes, I want you to tell me just how the fuck Draco Malfoy could escpae from Azkaban," Hermione said sharply.

Grindle cleared his throat before he spoke.

"It appears Malfoy somehow got his Animagi-suppressor off without decapitation and simply transformed and broke through the wall of his cell on the Fifth floor and killed three guards in the process. Once he got to the first floor he was almost stopped by the outer wall so he made his way back up to the second floor and after killing seven more guards, he dove into the ocean and disappeared."

Hermione seemed satisfied with this explanation and stared to think about the whole situation.

"Excuse me, but what's an Animagi-suppressor?" Dudley asked.

Grindle looked at him as if he'd been born yesterday.

"You don't know what an Animagi-suppressor is?" he asked in his deep voice.

"Forgive my cousin. He's been living in the Muggle world for several years now," Harry said.

Grindle immediately recognised Harry.

"Aren't you..?"

"Yes! Harry Potter, the boy who lived," Harry said, being bored with people knowing who he was.

He had been for years and years.

"Sorry," Grindle said, realising he'd made Harry uncomfortable.

He went on explaining to Dudley.

"The suppressors where developed in order to keep Animagi prisoners from escaping, like what happened a great deal of years ago with one Sirius Black,"

"We know who he is, thanks," Dudley said without waiting for Grindle to even suggest explaining who Sirius was.

"Yes, and Malfoy, being a Basilisk Animagi, were given a suppressor. They can't be removed with anything but a secret spell only Aurors and Three guards at Azkaban in special cases, and if you would try to remove one without that spell...BOOM! Say goodbye to your head," Grindle finished.

"I see," said Dudley.

"Do we know anything about where Malfoy could be right now?" Hermione asked.

"Where on the second floor did he jump?" asked Ron.

"On the east side of the outer towers," Grindle replied.

"What are you on about, Ron?" asked Hermione.

"What is on the east side of Azkaban? Nothing for miles! He could swim until he died! But if he changed his direction slightly and maintained his Basilisk form he might have a chance in reaching Ireland or even Scandinavia!" Ron said.

"I don't think he can. He has been locked up for ten years and the strength one would need to perform such a massive swim, even in a Basilisk form, would demand an absolute perfect stamina and bodily condition and since he hadn't gotten hold of a wand, he can't have used magic to save himself," Harry said.

The others agreed, but Ron wasn't convinced.

"How the hell did he get the Animagi-suppressor off?" Hermione asked without expecting an answer.

"We haven't found any clues to what might have helped him," Grindle said.

"So what do we do?" Ron asked.

Hermione thought for a minute.

"There's nothing to do. We are going to have to either search the ocean for him or publish his picture in the Daily Prophet and wait until there is a sighting of him," said Hermione.

"Or we could do both," Harry said.

"No. It's too late to search the ocean anyway. We'll have to wait and see," Hermione said.

"Is that all, Ms Granger?" Grindle asked.

"Yes. For now," Hermione said and let him on his way.

"I fucking hope that bastard drowned," Dudley said.

"If we're lucky," Ron replied.

Silence.

"Hey! Let's go home to my place and relax for a couple of hours, shall we?" Harry suggested.

"We can continue our walk down Memory Lane in peace and quiet. And have a nice cup of coffee," he continued.

They all liked the idea and as soon as they were outside the Ministry, they apparated to Harry's house in Hogsmeade.

Memorys are like ghosts, Dudley thought.

You can't be sure they really happened and you can't be sure how much of them are real.

"I mean, you can't be sure how much of what was said, what was happening around you and what weather it was, really was the way you remember it," Dudley said into space; the others were staring at the fireplace with it's lit flames, lost in their own memorys.

"What's that?" Hermione asked softly from her space in the velvet couch.

"Memorys. They're like ghosts," Dudley said and took a sip from his drink; White Russian had been his favourite drink since...when? Neville was there, he was sure of that, but he couldn't quite grasp the memory.

It floated in his mind, on the tip of the tongue of his conscience.

"How?" Harry asked and stopped drawing a picture of how he remembered them that day in the Weasley's garden; a whole decade ago.

An eternity that felt like two weeks.

"What do you guys remember from Malfoy's trial?" Dudley asked them to set an example.

"It was cold and there were people booing," Hermione said.

"The Dementors seemed anxious to have their way with more people than Malfoy in that little room," said Ron and finished his Vodka and Coca Cola in the rocking chair to the left of the couch.

"Malfoy had a strange look in his eyes. Like he didn't care where they

(we)

were sending him. Just....tired," Harry said.

Dudley nodded.

"How much of that can you trust? How can you prove it really happened? Except for some records, that could have been written down yesterday, we don't have any proof of these memorys ever taking place and they are therefore..." Dudley stopped midsentance.

"Like ghosts," Ron said lowly and poured himself a new drink.

The bar! Dudley remembered it now.

It was after they were married; he and Neville had gone to Denmark, of all places, for their honeymoon and had ended up in this gaybar in Copenhagen called 'Centralhjornet'.

It was a very nice bar and hte two had been offered more than one indeacent proposition; mostly by older men.

Dudley hadn't really drunk alcohol before that night, he'd mostly just stolen a glass of vodka out of his uncle's minibar now and then, so when he was recommended to try a White Russian, he did.

And loved it.

He loved it even more because it made such a strong association to Neville; everytime he mixes one still to this day he thinks of Neville and how his bowtie was crooked and his black suit was wrinkly.

But his smile lit up that memory better than any candle, lantern or spotlight ever could.

They had danced half through the night and when they got to their suite and made love, they didn't say a word to eachother, they didn't need to.

Dudley wiped a tear out of his eye and tried not to cry.

"I remember the first job assignement we had together, me and Neville," Ron said and smiled.

"It was about a Dark Wizard that had killed three people and he was hiding out by a house that looked like a barn that was ready to collapse at any minute. We had no idea where to start looking for this guy and we were terrified, having only trained with dummys and replicas, but we were determined to nail this Dark Wizard," he said and took another sip of his drink and put his feet up on the table.

"We did everything as Johannes, our team leader, told us to, and so we sat down in the middle of some thorn bushes and then Neville said 'Ron, I think I need to take a dump'. I laughed out loud and my laugh scared the guy out of his hiding place and he started running over the field. I sent a leglocking spell and caught him and I was thrilled, but we wouldn't have done it without Neville telling me he needed to take a dump!" Ron laughed.

The others laughed too.

"And then it turns out this supposed Dark Wizard had only stolen three chickens and used the Killing curse on them to cook them! He said he didn't have the guts to chop their heads of!" Ron finished.

They all laughed harder.

"Vinnie, our informations guy, really got a yelling by the boss for getting the information wrong," Ron said and lost himself in that memory.

Harry put down his pencil and looked at his picture.

It was almost perfect; he'd gotten everything down.

The lighting, the atmosphere.

"It's finished," he said and they all got up and came over to look.

"That's really good, Harry," Hermione said and smiled.

"Yeah. Nice work, cousin," Dudley said.

"Got it all right. Captured the moment perfectly," Hermione said.

And Harry had gotten it down good.

He'd captured a memory.

So maybe Dudley was wrong after all.

"You even remembered what clothes me and Hermione wore," said Ron and looked at Hermione.

He missed her.

They went to sleep; Harry in his room, sharing the bed with Ron and the downstairs couch had more than enough room for Hermione and Dudley.

The next morning, a Monday, Harry was late for class and Dudley and Ron came with him to Hogwarts to look around some more.

Hermione went back to the Ministry to see if anything new had come up; she practically ordered Dudley and Ron not to leave Hogwarts before she came back to say goodbye to them.

Dudley didn't want to go back to his normal life, the Muggle life where he'd just been fired and his rent was due and his neighbours complained about the weed in his garden and the need for a new paint job on the house.

He wanted to stay in the wizard world, but he didn't know how he could.

There wasn't really any job the wizard world had to offer a Witchard.

But as the trio passed the Caretakers office, Colin came through the door in his mist form and took on his firm shape.

"I hear you are looking for a job, Dursley?" he said.

Dudley felt that creepy feeling as they all felt when they were still schoolboys.

"I can read minds, remember?" Colin said and tapped the side of his head.

"Oh! Yeah, that's right! You have that...completely...creepy..ability," Dudley managed to say.

Harry looked at him.

"You're looking for a job? What about the job you have?" Harry said.

"Got sacked, sadly enough. I guess I really want to return to this world, but how can I?" Dudley said and shrugged.

"Well, the reason why I stopped you three is this. I'm getting bored with doing two jobs so why don't you ask Albus if you can have Filch's old job while I concentrate on being the groundskeeper?" Colin cut in.

Dudley didn't know what to say.

It was a crappy job, yes, put a job he could do; and stay in the wizarding world.

But before he could answer Colin, an owl came flying and dropped a letter in Harry's hands.

"What's this?" Harry asked himself and looked at the senders adress on the back of the letter.

"Oh my God," Harry said and dropped the letter.

It landed with the back up and everyone could easily read the senders name, written in what looked like blood.

"Draco Malfoy, The King of Pain."

---------------to be continued in chapter four, "The search for Malfoy"---------------------