Harry Potter and the Heart of Regenesis

Chapter Thirty

The Witness

Having done all she could at the scene of the 'Nocensformida' attack in Hogsmeade Hermione had now passed over the day to day work on the investigation to a team led by Katie and Percy (for Katie was several levels above her husband in the Ministry of Magic hierarchy).

Hermione couldn't help but feel a personal interest in the case, though, and she went back to investigating the background that had led up to it. Who, now, were the dark wizards capable of launching such an attack in Great Britain? And which dark wizard was so strong that he could become a Dark Lord without anyone at the Ministry noticing? It was all rather embarrassing and Eustace Bean had called her to a meeting where he demanded progress in solving the case and unravelling the new Dark Mark.

Asa Chambers, who was also at the meeting informed Hermione that he had also had a meeting with Sam Bell in which he had managed to persuade Sam to re-impose some of the stiffer and more severe penal sanctions in New Azkaban so that they could let dark wizards and witches know that it was not an easy life for everyone in wizarding prison these days. Sam had stopped short of promising to work on the new punishment - something akin to a 'Dementor's Kiss' - Asa had wanted but there was now almost certainly going to be the reintroduction of solitary confinement as well as the, somewhat controversial, introduction of 'Photopenalis' and other 'natural depressants'.

'Photopenalis' was a new 'treatment' developed by a wizarding psychoanalyst called Dr. Ian Schlipp. Wizarding psychoanalysts themselves were a fairly new thing in the Wizarding World as, traditionally, witches and wizards rarely suffered from depression - and if they did get the odd dose of 'the blues' a quick potion prepared with St John's Wort was usually sufficient to make them go away! Ian Schlipp was trained as both a wizard doctor and a Muggle psychiatrist and was a devotee of Freud. He had started working on 'Photopenalis' in the Muggle World but had noticed very early on that it was capable of stunningly better results on wizards. It involves the use of light and colours to alter mood and actions:

Everyone knows that the colour green can calm people down - that's why theatres have a 'Green Room', for instance- where performers can relax prior to and during their shows. Schlipp had been a Slytherin (in the year above Lucius Malfoy, as it happened) at Hogwarts and had managed to go through his entire schooling without joining the ranks of Voldemort. He was already more of a thinker than a doer and he spent most of his spare time at school not playing 'silly games on broomsticks' - as he called Quidditch - or swotting for exams he knew he could pass with his eyes closed (literally! He had something of a photographic memory and if he closed his eyes he could see and read entire pages of script) but he had begun to wonder one day why he was in Slytherin House (seeing as how he didn't have an evil thought in his head) and not Ravenclaw, for instance, where his mental capacity was, surely, more suited.

He consulted with some seers and other divination experts to see if people's auras matched the houses they found themselves in and was rather amazed to discover that in over 65% of cases they did. He began to wonder if the Sorting Hat could see auras as well as read minds and, if so, wouldn't he make a better Divination Teacher than poor old Rosita de Deuce (the predecessor of Madam Trelawney) who he thought would probably be incapable of predicting buns burning in a furnace! His own aura, he was told, was a shade best described as turquoise - a bright green/blue colour. That explained to him why he was stuck between those two particular houses, at least.

He began to experiment with colours and their effects on different people. In these early days of his research he imagined the outcome would lead to a more 'therapeutic' use than a penal one and he called it 'Spectrotherapy'. Using one of the secret rooms he knew existed all over the Slytherin dungeons he would transform it, redecorate it (magically, of course) and furnish it in different ways and then bring people in to see how their moods and personalities changed in each 'room'. The first, and most obvious, thing he noticed was just how abhorrent the colour pink was to certain male and/or 'dark' Slytherins. Having decorated the room in marshmallow pink, furnished it with big, soft, floppy sofas and cushions and painted little pink bunnies around the walls he persuaded a fellow Slytherin in his year to spend an hour in there alone (although Schlipp was watching in secret). He had to let the boy out after forty minutes, however, as there was a serious risk he may have killed himself if left in there much longer. By that time he was frantically pointing his wand at the painted bunnies whilst shouting 'Avada Kedavra!' And so, what became 'Photopenalis' was first conceived.

When 'Photopenalis' was first announced in the Daily Prophet as a potential new method of behaviour control in New Azkaban several 'Wizarding Civil Rights' groups had written parchments of protest and a petition was handed in to the Minister of Magic (Cornelius Fudge, in those days). Ian Schlipp was somewhat discredited and became known as 'Freud-Ian Schlipp' to the delight of all those who love puns and his own eternal disgust. Only within the last two weeks had he finally had his genius recognised (in his own opinion) and been told that the Ministry of Magic would now be employing him as a 'Treatment Consultant' at New Azkaban. Sam was not particularly happy about this but was told by Asa Chambers that he had 'no choice'.

Hermione acted surprised when Asa told her about 'Photopenalis' but she was simply hiding the fact that Sam had already been to see her; partly to complain that he was being undermined but also to warn her what sort of thing to expect once she'd been summoned to a meeting as well!

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She sat, now, in a dimly-lit oval office with dark, varnished furniture of teak and mahogany. The air smelt heavily of furniture polish and the little bowls of pot-pourri and vases of flowers were not able to mask it at all.

"After all, Ms. Granger, a senior ministry official was killed in that attack. All you have managed to discover so far is that he was dead before the fire - so was the fire a very feeble attempt to cover up his murder or was it a sheer act of terrorism. Whose Dark Mark are we looking at on these drawings?" Bean held up a piece of parchment with a drawing of the dragon and skull mark and waved it in front of Hermione's eyes.

She sat and took his ranting patiently then, only when he had finished and sat back down in the carved, wooden chair, she looked at Asa Chambers and asked,

"Mr Chambers. When did you or your wife last see Sherilyn Salt? I'm sure you know that not only was she at the party with Remus Lupin that evening but was also seen later, at The Hog's Head Inn, with him. Until I can trace her - and I have to tell you that she is currently my main suspect - how can I make progress?" Hermione had spoken calmly but the words 'main suspect' definitely had a harder edge and were slightly 'spat' out.

"Are you accusing my step-daughter of being involved in all this? Sherilyn Salt, the Dark Lord? What outrageous nonsense!" Asa Chambers shouted, spitting little droplets of saliva in his wrath and letting his long, white hair whip about his head. Eustace Bean stood and put a restraining arm on his colleague's shoulder. Chambers sat, red-faced and with a stony expression.

"On what grounds would you like to speak to Miss Salt, Hermione?" he asked calmly.

Hermione looked rather astonished to be asked such a question - it seemed obvious to her.

"In addition to the reason I just gave you," she now for paused pointedly, "She has been trying for some time, now, to persuade both Remus and my husband Ron to try her 'werewolf cure' potion. I believe her...her relationship..." Hermione obviously found it hard to use that particular word to describe what had been going on between them, "...with Remus was a final, calculated ploy to ingratiate herself with him and finally persuade him to...to try the damned stuff!" For the first time she now raised her voice.

"How do we not know it was her potion that killed him?"

"And the fire?" Chambers retorted. "Who was responsible for that? Did she start it? Some dark wizard she conjured with another magic potion?"

At this point his ire dropped and was replaced by a sarcastic sneer.

"Maybe her poor squib of a mother Apparated in from Fladda with a box of matches? You stupid bloody girl!" he hissed at Hermione. "Sherilyn could no more conjure that Dark Mark than my poor Gretchen!" He trailed the last few words off, no longer shouting but feeling he had made his point. Those words may even have had a hint of tenderness in them, Hermione thought. She did not want to let on at this time that she knew Gretchen was no squib - that she had taught her children spells and Apparition. Then Asa Chambers exploded in a desperate anger once more.

"We have no idea where she is, alright? Do you understand that? No-one has seen Sherilyn since that night. When we left her at the party she told my wife and I that she was going to stay at the Inn. When I heard about the fire I feared the worst and informed Gretchen who was heart-broken. Then your investigation showed up just the six deaths: the landlord, the honeymooners from Oz, the young couple who worked here at the Ministry - and Lupin!

"We took heart - maybe she'd escaped somehow?" he shrugged hopelessly. "But we've checked every hospital there is - wizard and Muggle, asked everyone we know - to no avail. We've tried owling her - you know owls will only return home unsuccessful if they are sure the intended recipient of an owl-post is dead. Well, Viki - our owl - returned home with the parchment still on his leg a few days ago. Her mother and I are now...resigned to Sheri being dead." He bowed his head sadly. Hermione couldn't help feeling sorry for him.

Then he pointed his finger at her once more.

"If..." he bellowed, "you should find her - then you will let me know at once! Understand? Before you lay a finger on her or ask her a single question! You LET ME KNOW!"

If he was lying to protect Sherilyn then he was doing a very good job of it. His grief seemed very genuine - and the girl was not even his real daughter. If Hermione was at least prepared to concede that much then she knew that there was something wrong, somewhere.

Something about that whole family was wrong...but what?

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What was wrong, of course, was that Gretchen Chambers had made such a good job of her 'squib' act that even her poor, deluded husband thought her capable of no more magic than Apparition. Yet Gretchen Krum had been the best witch in her year - and had placed those protective charms on her house. Gretchen Krum had taught all her children to Apparate - and much more. Gretchen Krum was educated in Dark Arts and was an expert potion maker.

Gretchen Krum was related to - indeed she shared a paternal great-grandfather with -Viktor Krum. And that grandfather was the dark wizard and multimagus Anatoly Brutchev, no less. Until she heard that Viktor was dead she had lain low for over twenty years, happily denying her heritage and enjoying the quiet life of a ministry official's wife. But then the Heir of Slytherin had been killed and there were no other lines of descendants. That was when Gretchen made the decision to don the mantle in his stead. It made Grendel the new heir and she had to prepare him.

Gretchen Chambers was the doting wife, the master teacher of all things dark - and now she was the new Dark Lord - Lord Malumnex.

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The breakthrough came just as Percy was starting to flag. He seemed to have knocked every door in Hogsmeade twenty times talking to residents, trying to encourage them to remember anything about that night; things they had heard or seen, people they didn't recognise - anything at all, even if it didn't seem remotely important - for, by now, ANYTHING might be important - anything would do. He just wanted somebody to tell him something new.

He was across the road from the remains of the Hog's Head Inn. There were five small houses there. Percy had knocked at each of the doors so many times now he knew who lived in every house from memory. Number 37 was Imelda Klopp; a strange old witch who had once acted as babysitter for George and Angelina. She wore green lipstick and, occasionally, a blue wig. 38 was the home of a younger couple, the Potters (no relation at all!) who worked at Hogsmeade school - she as a teacher and he as a caretaker. Number 39 was the home of Septimus Sinistra (or, more accurately, of his wife Ramona. He lived there only during the school holidays, 'which' he often said, 'worked very well, thank you very much!') Mrs. Sinistra was in the habit of sleeping with silencing charms around her bed 'to keep out the noise of the inn' and had not woken at all during the night of the fire. Her husband had had not yet moved out of the staff quarters for the summer and so was not in the house at the time.

Number forty was empty. When he had been at Hogsmeade school as a young boy they had called it 'the haunted house' (not that there is anything remotely scary about a haunted house to young witches and wizards, of course. Most houses that they lived in were haunted by someone, after all!) He had never known anyone live at Number 40 and no-one did now, although he had checked the registry at the ministry and discovered it was actually the property of a wizard family with the surname Lucan. He wondered why they didn't just sell it?

He had never been able to get an answer from Number 41 either - the home of the Muggins family - until today. It was a tiny house - more suited to being called a hovel, he would have said. The windows were so filthy it was impossible to see if there were curtains hanging in them or not. Several panes were broken and boarded up with wood. Percy tutted and shook his head. How could a wizard bear to live in there, he wondered? Five minutes in the place with a wand shouting 'Scourgify' and 'Reparo' and the place would look so much better. 'It was not as if the inhabitant would be a Muggle, needing to get mops and buckets, cleaning fluids and sponges after all,' he thought.

But he was wrong.

He knocked on the peeling paintwork merely out of duty, having failed so many times before. To his great surprise, after a wait of thirty seconds or so he heard some shuffling and the door opened, more dull blue paint falling off it as it opened.

"Wha'?" an old, cracked face asked, obviously annoyed to be disturbed. The final consonant of the one word question was not enunciated. The old man turned his nose up at his posh-robed visitor with his name badge introducing him as a ministry official. "No good showin' me that fing," he slurred. "Can't read! Wotcha want? I were sleepin'!"

"Erm, excuse me," Percy said - he had tried (really, he had) to drop the 'spiffing, what, what' voice over the years; it seemed particularly incongruous when conversing with someone the likes of whom he was trying to right now! "I am from the Ministry of Magic and I am part of the investigation into the fire that destroyed the Hog's Head Inn." Percy pointed to the rubble as though the man had not known where it was. It was another of the silly things Percy frequently did that irritated people and his younger brothers in particular had always revelled in pointing them out and doing the same in front of him just to 'wind him up'.

"Bloody pain in the arse that is!" the old man responded. "Now I gotta walk all the way to the shop to get me booze." Percy looked round. The shop was all of twenty yards away, the remains of the inn just about ten from his front door. Percy shrugged.

"Oh, I'm sorry about that..."

"Yeah, so am I, wi' my bloody feet!" he was interrupted.

"May I take your name, sir," Percy said, quill poised by clipboard.

"Bill Muggins." The double 'L' at the end of Bill came out as a 'W', the way cockneys often make it sound. "I s'pose you wanna know wha' I saw, yeah?" he asked, out of the blue.

"Did you see something, sir?" Percy's heart had just skipped a beat and his eyebrows shot keenly up his forehead.

"Wha's it worf ter ya?"

"Erm...we really need to know what happened that night, Mr. Muggins. If you saw something it really would be useful if you told us."

But Bill Muggins had his hand outstretched, palm up. Percy put his hand into his own pocket and pulled out some coins. He deposited a few silver sickles into the hand and the old man pulled a face.

"It's all I have on me," Percy shrugged.

"It'll 'ave to do for a start then won't it?" The sneer took a while to leave his old face; as if the face had held it so many times it was now reluctant to take on a more normal expression. "I've lived here forty-four years," he went on. "Nuffin' much 'appens old Bill don't know about." Percy thought the expression that accompanied this line might have been a smile - it was very hard to tell.

"Good night's en'ertainment I woz 'aving. That geezer wiv the 'tache. Randy old bugger, he woz! That girl musta bin 'alf 'is age!"

'Oh, God,' Percy thought. Was this old man some sort of pervert - a voyeur?

"Sir," he said, rather abashed to even ask, "Do you mean to say you...you were...watching them together that evening?" Percy felt his face burn red just asking the question, he was so embarrassed. Bill Muggins just laughed.

"Precious little...er'...en'ertainment in 'Ogsmeade, son! Wassup? Young 'ealfy chap like you gotta problem wiv vat sort o' fing 'ave yer?"

Percy didn't know what to say.

"They left the curtains open. I'm on me own - a stranger in a strange place," He sounded as if he wanted Percy to feel a bit sorry for him. "Did I tell yer I'm a Muggle?"

Percy's eyebrows met in the middle as he furrowed his brow in surprise - wondering what a Muggle was doing living in the middle of Hogsmeade!

"My missus - she was the witch! My Maisie worked over at the 'Free Broomsticks' for years an' years. Barmaid. She 'ad a nice pair did my Maisie - very popular wiv the punters, if yer know wha' I mean?" A slightly lascivious smile appeared on his cracked old face.

"Been gone nearly ten years now, though - poor Maisie."

Percy now did feel a little sorry for the old man - stuck on his own in a wizard village with no family - and those mops, buckets and sponges would have been needed if he were to try to clean the place up, after all.

Percy needed to get his thoughts back onto business, though - however distasteful he found the circumstances of his 'witness' and what he had been doing on that night.

"I saw a light on late at nigh' up in the 'Og's 'Ead as I was going into me own bedroom. Wha' do I see but a beau'iful blonde standing righ' by the window. She leans be'ind 'er 'ead and undoes 'er dress. Next fing she's starkers! Righ' by the window! Me eyes nearly popped outa me 'ead!

"Then the bloke wiv the 'tache tries grabbin' 'er... My room is 'igher up than theirs was - I could see everyfing! I finished off me bottle of Ogden's while I watched 'em. She was gorgeous, know wha' I mean?"

Percy didn't really want to think about it. He now knew for certain that Sherilyn had returned to the inn with Remus after the party - and they had, pretty obviously, still been on 'good terms'.

"Er...how long did this...erm...your...show," he finally found the right word, "go on for?" Percy asked - really wishing he didn't have to hear all this. The thought of someone else watching he and Katie being intimate filled him with utter dread - he knew he'd be double and triple checking the curtains for the rest of his life after this!

"Hmmm," thought the old man. "Let me see..." He wasn't even a tiny bit embarrassed. "Well, she star'ed by giving him a blow job on the bed...then they both did i' on the floor. Then they got on the bed and were talkin' a while - lovey-dovey stuff it looked like to me - then she got on top of him and they started all over again!

"Then they star'ed yappin' again - so I went to the bog and got some more booze - me old bottle was empty - and when I got back there was anovver young chap in there." The old man's face developed a strange, even more lecherous expression. "I fough' we were about to get some 'free-in-a-bed' stuff but...I could soon tell somefin' was wrong. He was wavin' 'is wand about a bi' too much for i' all to be...friendly, like."

"Who was?" Percy asked, excitedly. "Who was the other man? Did you see?"

"I didn't see i' all, did I?" The old man's face fell, as though he regretted missing the 'best bit'. "I'd 'ad a bit too much firewhiskey, see? Bloody fell asleep didn't I?" He seemed crestfallen.

"Do you remember anything else at all?" Percy asked. "Could you identify the other man at all, for instance?"

"'Ang on," Bill interrupted. "I aint finished yet, am I?"

Percy waited patiently - he knew this was a big breakthrough in the investigation already. If there was still more to come, better still.

"I was woke up again by the fire. By the time I'd pulled meself too a bi' there weren't much of the inn left. I looked out the window - opened i', like and stuck me 'ead out. I couldn't see nobody.

"Then I looked down next to ole Meldy Klopp's place and saw the same young chap again - just standing an' looking up a' wha' was left o' the inn! Smug sorta grin on 'is mush!"

"Was he alone? Did he have anyone with him?"

"If you wan' me to tell yer - bloody shut up! Yer disturbin' my train o' fought!"

Percy shut up, suitably chastised.

"He weren't alone. He 'ad the bird wiv 'im, didn'' 'e?"

Percy nodded. That was it! The only thing he needed to know was the identity of the other man. They had her! Tomorrow they would need to start an even more major search for Sherilyn Zara Salt - Wanted - 'in connection with terrorist activity in Hogsmeade'.

But Bill said the words that took away Percy's breath.

"...It weren't the same bird, you know?"

"What?" Percy's face fell. It had to be Salt! Who else could it have been? "Wh - who was it then?"

"I dunno, do I?" Muggins shrugged. "Never saw 'er before. This bird was scared out of 'er wits! 'E 'ad 'er grabbed by the arm - she was shaking. An' she was only wearing a very skimpy nigh'ie - didn'' leave nuffink to the imagination, I can tell yer! Lovely knockers!

"She was even be'er lookin' than the uvver one! Absolutely divine! Dark hair and big eyes. Bloody gorgeous!"

"Did you see where they went, Bill?" Percy asked - beginning to feel lost again.

"Ah!" said Bill, his eyes showing a little more animation at last. "That was the weird bit. When I looked around again there was a fird person wiv 'em, weren't there! All in black wiv a big cloak an' an 'ood over 'is eyes. Whoever that one was seemed to be...impor'ant, you know? 'E raised 'is wand an' the big dragon fing came in the sky wiv a skull for its 'ead! Then they were all gone - Appara'ed, I guess, I remember vat word 'cos Maisie used to do i'...scared the willies outa me - 'cept that girl..." Bill shook his head quizzically, "...didn't look too keen to be wiv 'em at all, like I said."

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Percy had written it all down on his clipboard and read the notes through several times before calling Katie over to try to make some sense of them. He had been so sure - they all had been so sure - that Salt was behind all this. Who was the other 'young chap'? And what about the scared girl?

Suddenly Katie blurted it out.

"Della Topley!"

"What?" asked her husband. "No! It couldn't be!" Then he added, "could it?"

It didn't take long for Bill to make a much more positive identification of Della from a wizarding photograph of her modelling that they had obtained earlier in the investigation - and that left Hermione with the unenviable task of informing Della's family that not only was the girl they had already held a funeral for not dead after all but that she was also somehow involved in a very high profile murder and terrorism case. Suddenly the world was wondering if the lovely Della Topley - both a model and a model secretary at the ministry - was really a dark witch, up to her beautiful brown eyeballs in this whole affair!

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