Blood of Mud, Wing of Bat

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Chapter 20: Hawks-eye

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When Hermione arrived at the Auror Affairs Central Office for her little talk with Arthur that evening, she found the place in an uproar.

Maisie, the receptionist, answered the floo over and over again with frantic haste. Messengers wearing Aur Central livery scurried in and out of offices carrying portable braziers to transfer the calls. Five or six reporters with hawks-eye charms and lite-brites had staked out the lobby. They were enjoying Buzzwell's Buzzing Donuts and Muggle cappuccinos and tossing heckling questions at the harried-looking Aurors rushing past in every which direction. Support staff scrambled after the Aurors babbling legalese and clutching handfuls of papers or in some cases, their own pointy hats crumpled into nervous wads. As Hermione stood in the midst of it all trying to get Maisie's attention, two owls collided over her head and fell to the floor, knocked out cold. Nobody seemed to notice as the scrolls they'd been clutching rolled out of sight under Maisie's desk.

Hermione decided it would be for the best if she just got out of the way. She retreated into the back corner of the waiting area to sit on one of the couches until Arthur came looking for her.

---

The remainder of her day at Sibyll & Co. hadn't gone well at all. In fact, the afternoon had almost been worse than the morning. If this - her first full day back in the office in over three months - was an indication of what it was going to be like from now on, she almost regretted coming back.

She had still not succeeded in finding a new home for the Knowitall Balls stacked up in her office. The entire company appeared to be united against her on that subject; nobody went out to lunch, and they guarded their office space with fanatical interest. When in desperation Hermione had asked Trelawney to to intercede, her boss had simply patted her arm and assured her that she would be spending so much time at Batwing that she'd scarcely require an office at Sibyll & Co. at all.

Now there was an unpleasant thought. Hermione had spent at least an hour yesterday trying to convince Malfoy that he had to spend every waking minute at his company. It had been a sore subject even before the Ministry fired him. The last thing she wanted to do now was to spring it on him that she'd be there constantly as well.

Because her own office was unusable, and because no one else would allow her in theirs, she'd been forced to use Trelawney's office for doing her actual work. This had encouraged Trelawney to glom her in what Trelawney obviously thought of as a helpful manner, much to Hermione's woe. While her employer meant well, Hermione really preferred to do her job without the far-out theories, "data" collected using divination, and direct inhalation of sidestream incense smoke from a distance of less than a meter. And Trelawney never stopped talking, making concentration nearly impossible.

She thought about the secret rooms which Malfoy had allegedly added to his Manor to hide Dark Arts items from the Ministry. Since the Ministry had never succeeded in finding one while it actually contained anything, they must be pretty good secret rooms. Surely what could fool Aurors could fool Trelawney's landlord. She wondered if Malfoy could be convinced to install a secret storeroom at Sibyll & Co., in return for not having to see Hermione all day every day.

Or better yet, install a secret office.

---

Hermione waited in the Aur Central lobby for nearly forty-five minutes. During that time, the hubbub did not die down in the least, and in fact only grew worse. Someone made delivery of several wooden crates, which they abandoned in the waiting area after being unable to get anyone's attention to sign for them. The Aurors tromping through the lobby ignored the crates, but after about twenty minutes a couple of the reporters pried one open and were excited to find that they were Draco Malfoy's complete Apparition record. Hermione knew that the Department of Apparition Licensing and Enforcement kept close track of who Apparated where, but she was a little puzzled as to why Malfoy's records would be arriving here, and why they were so interesting. Extensive, yes, due to the amount of Apparating he did, but surely there was nothing incriminating in there? Apparition was tracked by wand, not by person. Obviously if Malfoy planned to Apparate somewhere illegal he wouldn't use his own wand, he'd take advantage of his highly unusual and possibly unique ability to Apparate using someone else's. In fact, now that Hermione thought of it, that's probably why he'd gone to the trouble to learn the trick in the first place. Maybe the Aurors hoped that by going over the entire record with a fine toothed comb, they'd catch a mistake or two.

When Arthur finally did appear, the lobby was still seething with activity though it was an hour after Aur Central's public areas usually shut down for the day.

"I'm sorry to keep you waiting, Hermione - things have been an absolute zoo here, as you can see," explained Arthur. "We've had a bit of an emergency, if you didn't already know."

"That's all right, Arthur. Thanks for seeing me on such short notice."

"Not at all! That's what family's for, isn't it?" Arthur beamed at her and led her toward his office.

"Er… what's the emergency?" asked Hermione.

"You haven't been listening to Wizard Radio, have you?"

"No, I was at work, and then it took me a couple of hours to fly here."

"Ah. Well, you remember Special Ops' Agent Johnson don't you? From way back when?"

"Nixon Johnson?" Hermione thought it odd that she hadn't heard about Johnson in years, and now he was mentioned twice in two days. "Nesbitt's old partner, right?"

"Yes, he retired years ago," said Arthur as he let her into his office and closed the door behind them. "Well, today he got it into his head to spill his guts. He unloaded all sorts of classified information in a live interview before we could stop him. Now the media has gone into a feeding frenzy. We're still trying to find out exactly what he said and it may be weeks before we know the extent of the damage."

Arthur's office was as cluttered as Trelawney's, but in a totally different way. For one thing, it was chock full of Muggle artifacts. Hermione hadn't seen so many Muggle things in years, even when visiting her parents. And for another thing, his desk and all other available horizontal space was cluttered with ominously official looking papers, wizard-photos, and pieces of scrying and storage equipment. It looked as if she had interrupted a major strategy session or briefing.

"Tea?" asked Arthur, as Hermione sat down. Hermione knew he was very proud of his tea pot, which had been confiscated on a raid back when Arthur was head of the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts department. Arthur had at least as much of a fetish for misused Muggle artifacts as he had for the genuine ones. The tea pot, which resembled an elephant, stood up and walked to a pair of tea cups, pouring some into each with its snout. Arthur beamed happily.

"Thank you," said Hermione as the elephant picked up the cup by its handle and presented it to her.

There was no point in reprimanding Arthur for owning altered Muggle artifacts that were supposed to be illegal, or railing at him about the hypocrisy of keeping what he had confiscated from others by force of law. She'd tried for years and years to no avail and finally given up. Arthur just wasn't going to change.

She still wasn't sure if Arthur was completely clueless about the impropriety of it all, or just glibly pretended to be.

"And how's Ron?" inquired Arthur.

Hermione gritted her teeth. Speaking of cluelessness or pretense at same! Arthur was one of the worst to pooh-pooh her worries about Ron's long absences and probable infidelity.

"Ron's fine," she said, trying to keep her voice neutral.

"Oh, you've talked to him, then?" asked Arthur. "He flooed us last night looking for you. He said you didn't come home."

Now Hermione couldn't help but get a bit upset. Despite herself she blurted, "He should talk! He's only come home two nights out of the last five months. And the first time, it was only for a couple of hours and then he left again. I wouldn't be surprised if he left right after flooing you last night."

"Well, you must understand, he's very busy with his work, Hermione. All of that training and practicing...."

Hermione squeezed her tea cup so hard that the cup, which was shaped like a mouse, let out a muffled sound of distress. "No doubt," she said through her teeth.

"Oh, that reminds me! Molly wanted me to ask if you and Ron would be willing to hold another of your famous Quidditch barbecues next weekend. Fred and George have been wanting to see you again, in fact the entire family would like to come."

"Oh, I don't know about that," began Hermione.

"Ron seemed quite enthusiastic about the idea," Arthur continued. "He said he could definitely make it then… and surely you could use a break from work?"

Hermione looked at him in annoyance. He knew perfectly well she had just come off a 3-month vacation. And all of the cooking, cleaning, preparation, and hostessing involved with one of the barbecues was hardly restful in any case. And to ask Ron first, making sure Ron was prepared to make time for that when he couldn't be bothered to come home for normal occasions… that was just low, even on the familial manipulation scale.

The Weasley barbecues were an idea Ron had picked up years ago from one of his fellow players, an American by the name of Jimmy "the Bludgerator" Washington. The first one had been a great success, and up until recently they'd happened at the Burrow three or four times a year to the great enjoyment of the extensive Weasley clan and their friends. However, like everything else that used to happen at the Burrow, the barbecues hadn't been happening as often recently. The last one had been over a year ago.

"Well, I'll discuss it with Ron," she said grudgingly. "But I can't make any promises."

"Splendid!" exclaimed Arthur, who seemed confident that the matter was settled.

Hermione set her cup down lest she snap off the mouse's tail. "The reason why I wanted to talk to you, Arthur...."

"Draco Malfoy, yes," said Arthur immediately looking more sober. "I'm very glad you came. That's a serious situation you've gotten yourself into."

Hermione closed her eyes briefly. "I didn't come because I need help, I came because -"

"I don't want to sugar-coat this, Hermione, and I know you can handle the truth," Arthur said intensely. "It might be an unpleasant shock at first but I think you'll thank me afterward."

"The truth about what?" asked Hermione warily.

"About who and what your client Draco Malfoy really is. After you called this afternoon, I took the liberty of gathering some materials together for you to look over. Now most of this is classified, so you can't go repeating any of this or talking about it to anyone."

"If it's classified, don't I need to go through clearance procedures?" asked Hermione.

"Oh no!" exclaimed Arthur. "Heavens, no. You're in enough danger as it is."

"Come again?"

"Malfoy may be out of favor with James Patterson, but he still has plenty of other Ministry contacts," Arthur explained. "He's already checked you out thoroughly, but there's no guarantee he won't keep checking. If he learns you obtained a security clearance after starting to work with him, he might do something drastic!"

Good grief. Hermione counted to ten before replying, lest she do something drastic. Unfortunately Arthur used the pause to forge ahead on his own agenda.

"First of all," said Arthur, "there's the question of whether he's actually a Death Eater. Of course he is. Who could really doubt it? Here's our best proof… these are old, but they'll hold up in any court."

He spread out some wizard-photos on the desk between them for Hermione to see. The Draco Malfoy in the photos was very young, right around Hogwarts age. He had clearly been stunned or otherwise incapacitated. His eyes were open but too-dilated, moist around the edges, and there was a confused, helpless expression in them. He lay there passively as Auror evidence recordists moved around him, taking the photos.

In one of the photos, his left sleeve had been rolled back to expose a Dark Mark on his forearm -- black, ugly, painful-looking against the childishly tender flesh.

Hermione couldn't say she was particularly surprised. In school she and her friends had thought of Malfoy as a future Death Eater almost from the beginning. Then in Sixth Year he'd actually found a way to let Death Eaters into the school, resulting in the assassination of Headmaster Dumbledore. Hermione had no compelling reason to assume Malfoy hadn't gone on to become a Death Eater himself after that. That it had taken so long to convict his father illustrated how very possible it was for a Death Eater to live a normal-appearing life and go untried for years or even decades.

"I could have guessed that on my own," said Hermione. "But if I have personal opinions about that, it's not very professional of me to make them known on the job - especially if I want to keep that job. As far as Trelawney is concerned, he's just a regular client, and she expects me to treat him as one."

"Yes," said Arthur seriously, "I can understand her reluctance to turn away a client over rumors she has no way of verifying. But Hermione, they aren't just rumors. Once you've seen all the evidence I have to show you, I think you will understand the gravity of the situation. This is far too important to let the traditions and niceties of business get in the way."

Again Hermione found herself grinding her teeth. Arthur wouldn't know professional ethics if they smacked him in the forehead. If being busted for owning a flying automobile while working for Misuse of Muggle Artifacts hadn't opened his eyes for him, nothing would.

This was actually Hermione's biggest beef about her father-in-law. When she was still a kid, and too young to know any better, she'd noticed it about him but hadn't minded because he was the father of her friends. But after several adventures with Ron and their friend Harry Potter, in which people who seemed like friends turned out to be the enemy all along and vise versa, she had become a lot more sophisticated about separating out her own feelings for a person from their actual behavior. She still tended to be more loyal than she ought to, for reasons that had more to do with emotion than logic, but at least she could see people for what they really were. And frankly speaking, though Arthur was a very nice fellow, he was also totally corrupt. Most Ministry officials were like that; it seemed to be a prerequisite for getting far in the institution. But that didn't mean Hermione had to like it.

At any rate, not only was Arthur clueless about (or, perhaps only blithely unconcerned about) business ethics, he was guaranteed to not understand why Hermione and Trelawney thought they were so important. That was going to make this conversation extremely difficult to conduct, at least for Hermione.

"As you know," said Arthur, "Draco Malfoy went into hiding after Dumbledore's assassination. The Aurors were aware that he had become a Death Eater, but there was no evidence that could tie him to any Death Eater crimes. At the time, he was a junior member and his father was imprisoned and in disgrace. He had no standing in the organization and his loyalty had been coerced with threats on his parents' lives as well as his own. Like many Death Eaters in his position he did his best to keep his head down while trying to find a way out of the mess he was in.

"After the war, there were the trials of course, and as everybody knows he was found innocent of war crimes. Now that he was able to lead a public life again, he attempted to restore legitimacy to his family name. He turned to business, amassing an impressive fortune through clever investing. He worked for the Ministry, holding a token position to shore up his public image. There were suspicions that he remained affiliated with the Death Eaters, but no solid evidence."

"What nobody realized was that, during all these years of seeming inactivity during the war and after it, he was actually gaining tremendous experience in tactics and combat, both against Muggles and against us. Recent interrogations have revealed that even before he achieved the rank he holds now in the Death Eaters, he was along for almost all of the raids. That's quite unusual, you know - only some of the Death Eaters go on each raid and it's normally different ones every time.

"And furthermore, though it wasn't so obvious on the surface, Malfoy's corporate interests formed a dangerous pattern. The wizarding aspects of them were ordinary enough, but many of these companies also did business in the Muggle world. It was the Muggles themselves who first alerted the Minister of Magic that he had succeeded in forming a monopoly. Who knows what havoc he might have wreaked on their economy if we hadn't managed to bring about that anti-trust ruling?"

Hermione found it difficult to believe that Malfoy, who thought Muggles little better than animals, would have arranged to build a monopoly of Muggle companies on purpose. It was more likely that the monopoly had come about accidentally and without his knowledge. The wizarding world had no laws of its own against monopoly, nor did it ordinarily enforce the laws of Muggles. Hermione suspected that this was yet another attempt by Arthur and others in the Ministry to weaken Malfoy's position using any means that could remotely be considered official and legal. From what she understood, though Malfoy's people had not allowed the details to become public, the anti-trust ruling had succeeded in weakening his position badly, forcing him to give up most of his income-producing assets in return for cash that was quickly eaten up by expensive divorces.

"Malfoy first started taking on a leadership role in the Death Eaters shortly before his divorce from Pansy Parkinson," Arthur went on. "His loyalty had already been in question because of the threats against his family, and when Pansy went out for Auror training the situation became critical. Malfoy came under pressure to prove his loyalty on penalty of death. He began to take on more dangerous tasks, to lead more of the raids. He worked to develop new tactics and techniques to strengthen the Death Eaters' hand and weaken the Aurors'. While he's never quite managed erase all doubt of his loyalty, he has managed to make himself indispensible to them and that is what has kept him alive all this time.

"You must understand, the Malfoy you see today isn't just any Death Eater. He's the highest-ranked, most well-placed Death Eater out of those who can still show themselves in public. He's also their point man for combat situations. Whether it's a sneak attack on Muggles or a direct clash with our people, Malfoy is the first in, the last out, and he's the one who sends up the skull-and-snake afterward. He takes command during raids and makes executive decisions about which victims die and which are left as witnesses. And he's there for every single raid unless there are two going on simultaneously. The Death Eaters absolutely could not be the threat they are today if it weren't for him."

Arthur picked up a sheet of paper and reached over to hand it to Hermione. "This is a list of the Aurors Malfoy has killed in combat."

Hermione looked at the list. She recognized them all. They'd been killed years ago. She'd known they had died in the line of duty, but had never heard Malfoy connected with their deaths before now. It gave her an odd, hollow feeling.

"All of them were killed around that same time period," said Arthur quietly. "You see, the divorce affected Malfoy badly. In fact he went quite mad, and became convinced that Rudeo Nesbitt, who'd been trying to expose Malfoy's Death Eater involvement for years, had actually persuaded Pansy to want to be an Auror in the first place. He tried to assassinate Nesbitt by allowing himself to be disarmed and captured, then going after Nesbitt with a second wand he'd had concealed on his person. He used a curse the Death Eaters had never revealed to anyone before. Nesbitt managed to avoid harm, but his partner was nearly killed and was forced to retire."

"Nix Johnson," said Hermione. She remembered Nesbitt mentioning Johnson in connection to Malfoy's carrying a spare wand.

Arthur grimaced. "Yes, Nix Johnson. Source of all my headaches," he added in a mutter apparently meant only for his own ears. Then to Hermione again, "It was a particularly grisly curse, and a lot of Aurors looked up to both Nesbitt and Johnson at the time. Draco Malfoy became a target because of what he'd done to Johnson. He killed the first two Aurors in self-defense within three days after Johnson's injury. They both underestimated him badly and he made them pay for it. Malfoy doesn't look like much physically, and there's no denying he's a coward. But when he's cornered, or when he's acting on You-Know-Who's specific orders, he can be extremely dangerous."

Arthur's finger moved down to the third name, Chelsea Lukas. "This one came next, only a couple of days later. She had the misfortune to Apparate onto the scene of a Death Eater raid while Malfoy was still there, and came in nearly on top of him. When she realized who he was she tried to grab him, but he Apparated with her and…" Arthur swallowed. "Our moles say he turned up alone on the other end. She's officially missing, but assumed dead."

Hermione winced. Malfoy might have Apparated with her somewhere private to kill her, or he might simply have lost her midway to his destination. The latter wasn't something a person ordinarily learned to do on purpose, more of a ghastly accident such as might befall a mother trying to Apparate with one too many of her children's friends. However, given Malfoy's fetish for Apparition, he probably had practiced doing it on purpose. That poor Auror. Technically it would be a splinching, but likely nothing would ever be found.

Arthur's finger skipped over several other names and stopped at the bottom-most one, Mick Shelville. "All of these Auror deaths happened in the wake of Nix Johnson's injury. The final one was this fellow, another friend of Nesbitt's. The day it was announced that Johnson was going to retire from the force, Shelville donned full battle gear and attacked Malfoy in broad daylight at the Sun Rail Pub. Do you know it? Yachting hangout, used to fly around near the south coast."

Hermione's brow furrowed. "Isn't that the place that burned down and crashed? The Muggles had to be told it was a giant meteor."

"Yes, that's actually the public version of the incident I'm talking about. The real details were kept hush-hush even from the wizarding world because it would have been a disaster if the public had found out an Auror caused that mess."

"What happened?" asked Hermione, curious despite herself.

"Well, I can't give you all the details, but the fire was started by a Phoenix Cloak Ward Malfoy was wearing. Mick Shelville died in that fire. So did the Death Eater Malfoy was with when he was attacked, and we almost lost one of our best moles as well."

Hermione frowned. The Phoenix Cloak, while technically a defensive spell, was considered a preemptive weapon because it was extremely destructive of everything around it when set off. Nobody wanted one of those to be set off anywhere near them. Nobody wanted it set off while they were wearing it for that matter. It was extremely expensive magically, and it couldn't be turned off but had to expire instead, taking anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour. A weakened or lesser wizard might be destroyed by his own ward if his strength gave out before the spell did.

So it functioned well to stave off violence of any kind, because it was in nobody's interest for the ward to be tripped, especially indoors. Malfoy had probably told the restaurant's owners he was wearing it, and counted on them to watch his back for him. An Auror could probably get past the restaurant employees, but an Auror should have known about the ward.

"Didn't Shelville know about it?"

Arthur shook his head. "Oh, he knew. He thought he could last long enough to assassinate Malfoy anyway. He didn't care what happened afterward."

Hermione felt sick. "A suicide attack? It took out innocent bystanders! A bunch of other people died, that much was in the news."

Arthur nodded soberly. "So you can see why we couldn't release all the details. It also demonstrates the depth of the hatred some of the senior Aurors had for Malfoy at the time… and still do."

"So all of these Aurors on this list were killed in self defense? All because he tried to get revenge on Nesbitt for Pansy wanting to become an Auror?"

"Yes," said Arthur. "Malfoy doesn't normally target wizards and witches except in self defense. In fact - and you really can't tell anyone this - the way we ultimately managed to put a stop to the Auror bloodbath was through a verbal agreement. I wish I could show you the Pensieve of that, but it's in storage and I didn't think of it until now. Basically, our representative showed up, and Malfoy's representative showed up, and they agreed that Malfoy would no longer wear Type IV wards or use Unforgivables or other killing curses on Aurors, and that our Aurors would aim at Malfoy only to disable him, not kill. It's not ideal, I admit, but at least there haven't been any more Aurors dead by his hand."

"How on earth did you enforce an agreement like that?" asked Hermione.

"Well, it was my predecessor, not me," said Arthur. "And it certainly wasn't easy. Several good Aurors had to be put on suspension for violations in the beginning. There were a lot of hard feelings. And there are a lot of ways to accidentally kill someone while trying to disable them - Merlin knows there have been some close calls since then, many of them intentional on the part of the Aurors. If Malfoy didn't use surrogates he'd have been dead ten times since then."

"Surrogates?" Hermione didn't know exactly what Arthur meant by surrogates, but none of the possibilities were very pleasant.

"Ah," he said. "I'll show you." He dug through some of the wizard-photos lying on the desk, and came up with another from the same series as the one that had shown the Dark Mark on the teenaged Draco. In this one, more of his skin was bared, showing a black tattoo of a winged gargoyle at the small of his back. Its eyes glowed, magical orange points of light.

"These - well, there is only the one in this photo, but he has more now - are part of a life bonding ritual known as the Dark Link. Are you familiar with it?"

"A Dark Medicine ritual in which the patient's life is saved by offering up the life of a surrogate patient instead," recited Hermione.

"Yes. In this case, most of the ritual was performed in advance, and the bond preserved through this magical mark. Only when the actual sacrifice was needed - when Malfoy was badly injured - did the surrogate die." Arthur's thick finger touched the tattoo, then traced up the photo-Malfoy's slender spine. "The last time I saw these with my own eyes, there were ten running in a line like this. That would mean nine surrogates had already died in his place."

"Nine?" breathed Hermione. "Arthur, that's awful! Who would these surrogates have been? Muggles?"

"No, I don't think he'd be willing to participate in a blood ritual that involved Muggle blood. They would have been witches and wizards. Perhaps young Death Eater recruits, who agreed to it in exchange for Malfoy's patronage."

"Kids!"

"Young adults, most likely. Foreigners, orphans, loners who might not be missed if they disappeared. Or, the children of Death Eaters who either feared Malfoy too much to refuse it, or who owed him in one way or another."

Hermione felt sick. "Death Eaters' children?"

"Yes, unfortunately so," said Arthur. "It's terribly difficult to reconcile, isn't it? I mean, killing Muggles is bad enough, but at least you can see them rationalizing that Muggles aren't wizard-kind. But this? It's monstrous by any definition."

He picked up a Pensieve lying on his desk and placed it before Hermione. "This recording was made by a Death Eater who turned spy for us several years ago. It's an eyewitness memory of an attack led by Malfoy. It's our most solid piece of evidence tying him directly to a crime scene, although unfortunately it doesn't show him actually committing any crimes. It does show him getting hurt badly enough that it took out his surrogate however. Would you like to see it?"

Hermione hesitated.

"Go on," said Arthur. "You'll need all the information to make an informed decision."

Hermione knew Arthur was giving her a really one-sided story. But he was right. By definition, the more information she had, the better off she'd be. And Hermione was constitutionally incapable of turning down information.

So she looked into the Pensieve, and let it suck her in.

---

Darkness, intense heat. It must be summer somewhere. Indoors. Muggle home.

Black cloaked figures flashed past, running. Then, a pair of gunshots rang out and one of the figures dropped.

"Oh, shit," said the witness, the one who'd made the Pensieve. Hermione realized to her shock that she recognized his voice, though she didn't remember from where.

The witness ran back to where the fallen Death Eater lay curled up on his side, anonymous in a white mask and black robes spattered with dark blood. More blood was pooling rapidly on the on the floor beneath. Too rapidly. Feet thundered by on all sides, and curses sizzled past overhead as the witness flung himself to his knees over the body.

"Draco, move your arm, I have to see." With an effort, the witness pried away the elbow enough to feel the area the blood was coming from, then used a knife to slit the heavy black fabric of the robes. Blood slicked everything, and Hermione could see more welling furiously from two bullet holes between the ribs under the Death Eater's arm.

"Bloody hell," swore the witness. He bent over the fallen Death Eater and peered at his back. Two bright points of magical light were shining there between his shoulder blades, tiny and orange and literally smoking. They were from one of those gargoyle tattoos, and were so hot they'd burned right through the robes.

"Oh my God," said the man. "Oh my God, it's too late." He fell back onto his heels.

There came a hissing sound, and then coughing. A Muggle gas cannister bounced across the floor in the background, but the witness didn't take his eyes off the bleeding body before him.

"They're trying to smoke us out!" came shouts.

"The portkey! Damn it, where can it be?"

More sounds of feet scuffling, coughing, and things crashing off shelves and tables.

As the witness watched, the fallen Death Eater stopped breathing. He looked dead. He should have been dead. There had been far too much blood lost. But as Hermione watched, the eyes opened slowly - and they were definitely Malfoy's eyes, an unpleasant shock - and there was agony in them, but rather less fear than she'd expected. He seemed to be concentrating, perhaps on remaining calm.

"We've got the Portkey!" came a shout.

"What are you just sitting there for?" Someone shoved the witness, jostling the view. "We've got to go! Somebody else grab Malfoy!"

"I got him," said another voice. Now the witness was shoved completely aside and black-robed figures surrounded the downed figure.

And the memory ended abruptly, throwing Hermione back out into the real world.

---

"My God," she said, shuddering. The office seemed too bright, too cold.

"Sorry," said Arthur. "But I thought you needed to see."

"I know that voice," said Hermione. "The witness, I think I've heard him speak recently."

"You might have," said Arthur. "He's one of Malfoy's closest friends."

One of the Lucius' crew, Hermione realized. It took her a moment to go back through her mind and think of which. It was Blaise Zabini. Zabini was the witness, and the spy.

"He turned because of what happened that night," said Arthur. "The surrogate who died was his own youngest son."

"But why would Malfoy choose his own friend's son as his surrogate?"

"Most likely it wasn't Malfoy's idea at all," said Arthur. "If the Death Eaters doubted Zabini's loyalty, they might have demanded that Zabini offer up the son as a surrogate to prove that loyalty. Ironically, killing off the son galvanized Zabini to turn against them entirely."

Hermione knew that Blaise Zabini had not come from a Dark family and in fact had resisted Death Eater involvement well into the middle of the war. When he did finally join, he was coerced to do so through threats on his family. Like Malfoy, he'd ultimately been proven innocent of war crimes in the trials after the war.

"But why would Malfoy accept Zabini's son? If he's a friend of his, wouldn't he have refused?"

"Firstly, Malfoy goes through so many surrogates he's probably not in a position to turn one down. And secondly, he wouldn't have dared say no, not if he didn't want anybody to doubt his loyalty. As I say, Draco's loyalty is his weak point with the Death Eaters, because of what happened with Lucius Malfoy."

Hermione felt sick.

"I'm sorry, Hermione, it is all rather shocking isn't it? But you'd rather know than be ignorant, wouldn't you?"

"If you have all this proof," asked Hermione, "why haven't you had Malfoy thrown in Azkaban yet?"

"Because we're missing certain key pieces of evidence, and unless he makes some big mistakes, we're probably going to be missing that evidence for a while. Until we have it our only real options are to keep wearing him down until he loses it, or to capitalize on the Death Eaters' paranoia about his loyalty and get them to finish him off themselves. But I'll tell you, Malfoy's losing his Ministry job is a huge break for us."

"It is?" Hermione looked at Arthur in confusion. "You mean, aside from the loss of social status?"

"Oh, yes. Our hands have been tied by not having access to his Apparition records. You see, Mr. Patterson in Supernatural Relations was affording him some very high level protection in that area. Thanks to you, we don't have to worry about that anymore."

"What was Patterson doing to protect him?" exclaimed Hermione in dismay. This was a development she hadn't at all expected.

"Margie Jackson, the head of Apparition Enforcement, used to be Margie Patterson before she married," said Arthur. "She's his sister."

Hermione just stared at him for a moment.

"That's why Malfoy has knocked himself out supporting and helping Patterson all these years," explained Arthur. "Patterson would go and talk to his sister, and Jackson would refuse to enforce the Apparition laws in Malfoy's case. Neither would she release his Apparition records. It's been terribly frustrating - for years now we've known there was enough evidence to take his license, yet couldn't do a thing about it. Now that Patterson and Malfoy are on the rocks, Jackson has agreed to release the records."

Hermione frowned. "You want to take his Apparition license? But why? He won't need it for using someone else's wand to apparate to illegal locations. All you'd be doing is preventing him from going to work and other legitimate activities. That's not really helping society, is it?"

"You've actually seen him Apparate using someone else's wand?" asked Arthur, eyes gleaming.

"Er -" said Hermione. She realized she shouldn't have said that. First of all, she hadn't seen it with her 'own' eyes, but while she was in her Animagus form and there was no way she could admit to that without admitting she was an Animagus, which of course she'd never do. The only incident that had happened in front of actual citizens rather than Aurors was when Malfoy had gone home after his conversation with Trelawney yesterday morning. She could say she'd heard about it from Mrs. Shortwater and the lady whose wand Malfoy had commandeered, but it really wasn't any of Arthur's business. She was not here to tattle on Malfoy. Also, the last thing she needed right now was to get tied up as a witness of some sort. "Well, I didn't see it, I uh, heard a rumor," she said lamely.

Arthur looked disappointed. "Well in any case, taking his license would only be the excuse. What we really want to do is legally fit him with a restraining charm for Apparition just like the one he already wears for flying."

"Which would prevent him from Apparating with any wand," Hermione realized. "And identify him, and his location, if he tried it."

"Precisely! If we can tweak up the sensitivity high enough, he'll eventually lead us right to the Death Eater hideouts whether he wants to or not. And in the meantime, his not being able to Apparate would sharply curtail Death Eater raids on Muggles. They depend on Malfoy's Apparating ability as an essential part of their attack strategy," said Arthur, "Because it lets him scout a location seconds before the rest of the team Portkeys in. Without that, they'll be one hundred percent dependent on Portkeys and they'll be much less daring. Not only that, but Malfoy himself will probably no longer be willing to go on raids.

"You see, he depends on his Apparition to get him out of trouble. He's been doing this for a long time and he's not as young as he was. No matter how good the Healers he has access to, the damage has to be adding up. He can't run or dodge as fast as before, he's being hit more often and he's being hit hard. Most Aurors will target him before anyone else if they can, and as you saw he can't always avoid Muggle weapons either. It can't be easy to find willing - or coercible - surrogates now that he's proven he goes through them so quickly. If he loses his ability to Apparate, he'll get himself killed or captured in short order unless he's allowed to take on a less combat-oriented role. Either way, it's a win for us."

"What could he do instead of combat?" asked Hermione, not sure she really wanted to know.

"Well, the other thing Malfoy has done for the Death Eaters over the last ten years is supply badly needed funds. Over 15% of the their operating budget has come directly out of his pockets. Oh, not quite directly… they've had to be very creative about how it's done, but they've managed to do it legally so there's nothing we can do to stop it."

Hermione tried to mentally estimate how much that must be. She had no idea where to start - but one thing was for sure, all the evidence now pointed to Malfoy barely having the cash to live on, much less giving much away. "How?" she asked.

"Do you honestly believe a pure-blooded, old school wizard like Malfoy would ever divorce someone willingly? Both the marriages and the divorces have been the result of strictly enforced Death Eater orders," said Arthur. "And each time, it's provided an excuse to inject a large amount of property and funds into the bank account of another Dark family."

"The divorce settlements," Hermione realized.

"Exactly," said Arthur. "And that anti-trust ruling, brilliant though the idea was in terms of forcing a liquidation of Malfoy's income-producing assets, must have been a tremendous windfall for the Death Eaters because he sold each and every one of those companies to suspected Death Eaters or their family members."

"Also because he was ordered to," guessed Hermione.

"Exactly."

"Well, I don't see how he could manage something like that now," said Hermione. "All the evidence points to his being broke. He gave up the last of his cash lending Trelawney's down payment to Batwing."

"Really!" Again Arthur's eyes lit up, and Hermione cursed herself for giving away information. Trelawney would skin her if she ever found out. Trelawney finding out Hermione had visited Arthur at all could get her in a lot of trouble.

"You didn't hear that from me," Hermione muttered.

"I understand," said Arthur. "At any rate, all our informants think he's building up Batwing Alchemical and Pharmaceutical so that he can give that up to Amexia Brandt in a divorce instead of cash."

"Amexia Brandt? I thought that was a joke! He hates her. After what happened last spring...."

"If he's ordered to do so, he wouldn't have any choice short of open defiance."

"I sure haven't seen anything to indicate they've even been ordered to get back together," said Hermione, remembering Malfoy's open shock at Jones' suggestion of it. Then she remembered she was not supposed to have seen any of that. "Er, not that I've had much opportunity to, in the brief time we met."

"That's too bad, I was hoping you could verify that for me," said Arthur. "None of our moles have been able to get anything out of him about his reasons for building up Batwing. As far as we know, he hasn't told a soul."

"I tried to ask, but he got defensive about it," Hermione admitted.

"Oh, I don't think he'd tell you in so many words. You know about the Memoralias Charm, right?"

Hermione was puzzled by the apparent change in topic. "The Memoralias Charm? I've seen it. I wondered how long he'd been wearing it."

"Since his divorce from Pansy Parkinson. About ten years."

Hermione was stunned. "That long? That's… that's almost impossible!" Not only would Malfoy be utterly dependent on the charm for his memories, but if something happened to it he'd lose ten years of his life in one go. Maybe more than that, since going over old memories a lot could sometimes cause them to migrate to the charm as well.

"As I say, the Death Eaters required proof that Malfoy was loyal after Pansy went over to the Aurors," explained Arthur. "But Malfoy was Occlumens enough to foil all but the most powerful of pryers. They ordered Malfoy to wear the Memoralias charm so that anybody could pick through the memories when needed to make sure Malfoy hadn't been doing or saying anything disloyal. And it's remained that way ever since."

"But if something happens to that charm, you'll never be able to get a court conviction," said Hermione. "He'd practically be someone else. Remember what happened with Gilderoy Lockheart?"

"I know," said Arthur. "It's a problem. And part of why we're hoping the Death Eaters will solve the whole mess by taking Malfoy out themselves. Anyway, his refusing to discuss his reasons for Batwing probably means the Death Eaters don't want it discussed."

Hermione frowned. The information about the Memoralias charm changed everything. If the charm prevented Malfoy from doing or saying anything disloyal to the Death Eaters, who was to say what his true loyalties were?

In fact, everything Arthur had said and shown her changed everything. She wished she didn't have to meet Malfoy so soon after leaving Aur Central, because her thoughts had been thrown into complete confusion by the evidence.

"Well, whatever his reasons," she said, "it's my job to make it work. And I appreciate all your information, Arthur, and it's certainly been food for thought. But I have a meeting scheduled… with Malfoy as it happens. I should get going."

"Batwing at 8PM, yes," said Arthur.

"You know about it?" exclaimed Hermione. "Please don't interfere this time. I'll be lucky if he'll even speak to me at this point."

"Of course we know, Hermione, we've been tracking his every movement - well, every movement we can track - for years now."

"I don't need your protection. I understand what you're saying - he's a Death Eater, he does terrible things - but he's not going to do anything to me while he needs my help, and I need some time to think about this."

"Well, while you're thinking about it, think of your parents," said Arthur. "Your parents fit the profile of Death Eater victims perfectly. By getting involved in this, you're exposing them. Badly. Malfoy is a dangerous criminal, and simply by being around him you're putting yourself and your parents, your family - our family - at terrible risk."

Hermione gathered her broom and briefcase, shaken. "I know," she said. "And I said I'd think about it."

"Ah!" said Arthur. "Before you go." He rose and opened his office door, flagged down a passing clerk. After a few murmured words, the clerk left and Arthur turned back to Hermione. "There were some items taken from Malfoy yesterday. Can I ask you to return them to him?"

Hermione knew Malfoy would be very glad to get his own wand back, and the spare. And doing anything to look better in Malfoy's eyes couldn't hurt her at this point. "Yes," she said.

"There will be forms… you'll have to get him to sign them, and then you'll have to bring them back to me at your earliest convenience. Monday morning, perhaps."

Hermione winced. She knew she'd be expected to have an answer as to whether she was prepared to cooperate with Arthur by then.

"All right," she said reluctantly.

Someone tapped on the door, and leaned in carrying a huge evidence bag resembling a Muggle zip-loc bag of unusual proportions. Sure enough, it contained the two wands, the Lucius' ship's log, a Knowitall Ball, and the other items she'd seen taken from the Lucius. However, as Arthur handed it to her, a smaller bag fell from behind it. This one contained a second Knowitall, a small one.

"Where did this one come from?" She held up the smaller bag to display the ball.

"Oh, that," said Arthur sheepishly. "I hadn't meant that to be included." He tried to reach for it, but Hermione pulled back.

"But it's his?"

"Yes, Nesbitt lifted it from the table when Malfoy was being searched by Bancroft's people. We haven't had a chance to examine it yet."

Hermione realized it must be the Knowitall Ball with Malfoy's Batwing notes on it, the one he'd tried to give her at the restaurant before he backed down when the Aurors got jumpy.

"Arthur Weasley!" she said furiously, standing up. "You have no right to search this - there was no warrant! It's a blatant violation of his rights! And I can't believe you'd let one department damage another department like that - you know those poor tan-robes will take the blame for its going missing."

"I know," admitted Arthur. "I told Nesbitt as much when I confiscated it from him. Nonetheless -"

"Nonetheless nothing," said Hermione, stuffing the small bag into a pocket of her robes and snatching up the larger one again before Arthur could change his mind about letting her have it. "I'm returning all of these to him tonight, and you should be ashamed of yourself!"

Arthur spread his hands helplessly. "Hermione, you have to understand what we're dealing with here -"

"I understand plenty," she said hotly. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have a client to meet with."

Arthur sighed, and waved to her goodbye.

Hermione left, still furious.

As long as she was that angry, she wouldn't have to worry about how she was going to face Malfoy.

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