Blood of Mud, Wing of Bat

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Chapter 36: Mother of All Messes

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The Burrow had been thoroughly ransacked.

Muggle media tended to portray a rifled house as having the furniture dumped over and the contents of all the drawers scattered all over the floor. Since that was actually the condition the Burrow's living-room had been in when Hermione last saw it, she'd halfway been expecting that. After all, Ron clean house? Seriously!

But a Wizarding house-ransacking took things to a whole different level. In fact, it took it so far that the true magnitude of such a catastrophe could not even be comprehended until one saw it with one's own eyes.

To begin with, practically everything was gone. The couches, the table, the lamps and the books off the bookshelves… everything! Even the dust-laden Pigwidgeon was missing from the mantel. That isn't to say the place was clean, however. The floor was ankle-deep in discarded debris - Witch's Brew cans, crumpled papers, single mittens and used tea cups. The walls, floors and ceilings had been damaged in the search, some turned transparent and others pried apart with the boards and panels left lying strewn with nails sticking up for someone to step on.

Every window was hanging wide open, as were the back and side doors, and everything was damp as if it had been soaked thoroughly with water - even the walls and ceiling. A heavy stench of damp charred timber hung in the air, and through the windows she could see that far more than the original shed that had burned was gone… now the whole row was gone. The fire must have flared up again and burned out of control after she was taken last night, before finally being put out.

As she hurried through the house in greater and greater panic, she found the cat from St. Mungo's cowering in a corner of a bedroom, but there was no sign of her own pets at all. Ron was missing too.

Everything of value had been taken, including from the attic and the cellar. The Weasley family magical clock had been pried from the wall and even Hermione's Muggle refrigerator had been confiscated. It was absurd. It was surreal. Even the junk on the floor had been thoroughly gone through -- pillows and bedcovers exploded leaving feathers everywhere, containers with see-thru charms cast on them or holes cut right through them, bits of clothing with see-you-seamy charms rendering them translucent. And there were dozens, if not hundreds, of tiny labels floating in mid-air identifying everything.

Hermione slid on a discarded spoon and went down hard, the knee still sore from Malfoy Manor's floor last night sending a jarring pain through her. She was still so stunned by everything that she was seeing that she didn't get up right away - just knelt there momentarily, then slowly sank back to sit on her heels, not having any idea what to do.

She took a few deep breaths, trying not to freak out. There was a logical explanation for this. Someone had to have made the decision to do this, and there had to have been some reason, and someone identifiable had to have done it.

Even as she drew her wand and clutched it to her chest for reassurance, the likely pieces began to fall into place.

---

First of all, she knew it had to have begun when Domestic Disturbances seized the papers Trelawney had given her and turned them over to Special Operations. Special Operations would have analyzed them, then turned them over to Nesbitt. Since Nesbitt had already had the papers in hand when Hermione arrived at the Triple-D headquarters, they'd obviously moved very quickly.

Once they'd seen Trelawney's documents, Special Ops' research facility had no doubt requested at least a cursory search of the rest of the Burrow for anything else that might be relevant. At that point Special Ops would have sent their own people for that instead of going through Triple-D, since since she'd already been found to have unreleased government documents in her possession and investigating that was within the purview of Special Ops. Unfortunately, this probably explained why she hadn't heard from Ron as well. He'd likely been ordered to leave when Special Ops arrived, or else done something hot-headed and gotten himself arrested.

At any rate, by that point there would have been two departments officially involved, Triple-D and Special Ops. Hermione knew that by law, any incident involving Aurors from two or more departments was required to go up for review by Auror Affairs. This was supposed to provide oversight, to prevent former Auror heavyweights like Nesbitt from recreating the power monopoly the Aurors had enjoyed by the end of the last war. Unfortunately, it took weeks for a proper investigation to get under way, and in the meantime all the oversight process really did was get all the information on Auror actions in one place, where other departments could see it and act on it quickly. Which, as more than one person had pointed out, was exactly the opposite of what was intended.

Hermione strongly suspected that after Domestic Disturbances and Special Operations had gotten done raiding the Burrow, every other group of Aurors who could reasonably claim to have legitimate cause to do so then descended upon the place and seized whatever they could get their hands on. Some of them at Nesbitt's prompting, no doubt, but there were other departments who might bear a grudge against Hermione due to her radical activities in her youth. A person couldn't run around doing things like creating an entire class of Freed Elves and working hand-in-hand with vigilante groups like the Order of the Phoenix without accumulating a thick dossier.

As Hermione stared dumbly about the living-room cataloging the damage, she realized Arthur must have been here for at least part of what happened. The Burrow's wards were all keyed to him and to his ancestors. Without Arthur's permission, they could not for example have searched inside walls, torn open ceilings, or pulled up floorboards. The house itself would have repulsed them, and rather violently at that. Ron could probably have given permission also, but he could have retracted permission too, and she couldn't see him standing by and watching all of this happen without freaking out.

In fact, the more she thought about it, the more she wondered if he had gotten himself arrested. Ron's temper was notorious, and unless Arthur had managed to get him out of there in time, he might have done something rash.

But why would Arthur have allowed all this to happen either? Unless he truly believed she might have done something wrong, or had no choice, he ought to have been able to stop them.

---

Floo powder was scattered all over the floor near the fireplace, mixed with the soot and grit of a dozen Aurors' comings and goings. Tiny bobbing labels hovered here and there near the floor, pointing out the "FLOO POWDER" and "HARDWOOD BASED ASH" and "CARPET LINT". They skittered away on the wind of Hermione's movement as she sheathed her wand, then began to awkwardly scrape the floor with the edges of her hands, trying to collect enough floo powder to initiate a fire-talking conversation.

Something round and hard rolled under her hand and she discovered the Knowitall Ball Trelawney had given her in the very beginning, when she'd given Hermione the Batwing assignment in the first place. Some help that would be! Hermione had tried to look at it at the time, but given it up as useless. Everything she'd seen so far in it involved batty old Trelawney practically undressing Malfoy with her imagination. Eugh! Unfortunately, unless she could find her briefcase somewhere in this mess, this Knowitall Ball was all the Batwing company information Hermione had left. With a sigh, she slipped the ball into a pocket of her robes and continued pushing together a pile of dust.

When she'd accumulated enough, she crawled the rest of the way to the fireplace, tossed the powder in, and stuck her head in to make a call to Aur Central, the office of Auror Affairs.

Maisie, the receptionist, answered. There seemed to be some sort of argument or confrontation going on in the background, but Hermione couldn't make out who it was or what they were shouting about.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Weasley isn't here right now," said Maisie. "He's attending to an emergency."

"Pardon me? I don't think I quite heard correctly?" said Hermione.

"I'm sorry," repeated Maisie patiently, "Mr. Weasley isn't here right now. He's attending to an emergency."

"Tell him it's me," said Hermione. "He'll have to talk to me."

"Oh, I'm terribly sorry, but he's not here," said the receptionist maddeningly. "He's attending to -"

"An emergency, I get it," said Hermione, her temper starting to get the better of her. "What emergency could possibly be more important than his son's house, the Burrow, being taken apart by Aurors?"

"Well… apparently Special Operations and at least one division of the Army are in the middle of a shootout with each other over at Apparition Enforcement," explained Maisie. "He went over to try to break it up before someone is killed."

Hermione was confused to say the least, but that didn't stop her from feeling a pang of dread as well. Special Ops in a wand battle against the Army? What could that possibly mean? It couldn't be good, that was for sure. And her recent line of thought about Aurors flouting the oversight measures wasn't helping reassure her any either. In any case, it was obvious more than just her own life was out of control and Arthur really did have more important things to do at the moment than explain to her about the Burrow.

"Well… all right," she said at last. "This is very difficult, but… I understand. Can you have him Floo me or owl me as soon as he can?"

"Of course," gushed Maisie. Her tone was warm, but the floo connection cut out partway through her last word.

Hermione gritted her teeth, but she'd obviously done all she could do there. With a sigh, she set about collecting as much of the rest of the Floo Powder as could be salvaged from between the hearth-flags and atop the mangled rug.

---

There was only enough for one more call. After some consideration, she bent down again and flooed Ron's apartment at the Cannons' Port de Soller training camp. It made her a bit uncomfortable to do so, because what if he wasn't alone? But she needed to know that he was all right, and not languishing in a cell somewhere waiting for rescue.

Surprisingly, when the floo was answered it wasn't Ron at all. It was a witch dressed in an orange miniskirt and with an orange-and-black Cannons top on.

"Oh, hi!" she enthused, when she saw Hermione - as if they were the best of friends. She was obviously the social type who had learned to handle people the way Hermione had learned to ace her NEWTs in school.

And she was gorgeous… even Hermione had to admit that. Lean, athletic, and with improbably large breasts that pushed out the pair of cannonballs on her orange outfit in bas-relief. Her hair was honey-brown and shimmering, coming to her shoulders. Hermione could see why Ron couldn't resist -

Even as Hermione stared rudely, mouth fallen open, she refused to believe. No, this could be anybody. It wouldn't have to be Sheila Lasherton herself. Obviously there were plenty of female employees of the Cannons, and some of the players were witches as well. Just because there was a female human being somewhere on Majorca didn't mean Ron was having sex with her. Hermione was just being irrational. She was upset about the house was all.

So why could she feel her heart breaking, breaking, while she struggled for words?

"Ron," she said finally, her voice hoarse and tragic sounding. The perky witch looked startled, and Hermione tried to contain her emotions and make her expression at least semi-normal. The scene of destruction in the background couldn't have been helping, though. "Is Ron there?" she managed to ask. That's what she really needed to know. Not if this woman, this big-busted 25-year old thing was sleeping with her husband, no. She only need to know if he was all right, if he had avoided being arrested.

"Oh," said the beautiful witch, compassion in her smile. "He'll be at practice now. Do you want me to send for him?"

"No… no, don't," said Hermione. She couldn't bear to actually see him. Not right now. She was just glad he was all right. "But you're sure? You've seen him this morning? He came back from England?"

"Oh, yes," the witch assured her, kindly. "He came back last night, and he's fine."

Last night, thought Hermione, insanity threatening to rise in her. What did they do last night? But no. Best not to even go there. She couldn't cope with this, not right now.

"I'm Hermione Weasley," she said, not even knowing why she was saying this. "His wife."

The woman smiled again, kindly, tenderly. "I know," she said. "Should I let him know you were trying to find him?"

"Yes," said Hermione, feeling defeat wash over her. "Yes, let him know I Flooed when he's done with practice."

"I will," said the friendly witch. She looked like she wanted to help more. She looked like she cared. In fact, she looked like she felt sorry for Hermione.

Hermione felt like she was going to cry.

But no. She had to be strong.

---

As she closed the Floo connection and began to scramble around on the floor looking for salvageable paper for use in sending owls, she knew she could not afford to lose it emotionally now. She didn't even know if any of it was true. Malfoy was the one who'd told her about Sheila Lasherton, not Ron, and what did he know? Ron had admitted something had happened, but there'd been no time for detail before Triple-D had explosively entered the scene. She had to wait and hear his side of the story before letting this ruin her life. For the sake of her sanity, she had to set it aside for now.

She had to warn her kids about Malfoy, just in case he tried to get revenge for what they'd done to Salazar. She had to tell Trelawney what had happened last night, because those confiscated papers could get Trelawney into a lot of trouble. And she had to decide what to do about the Burrow.

It had reached the point where triage was necessary. Only the most critical problems could be dealt with right now. Everything else would have to wait for later.

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Away from the fireplace, the floor was ankle-deep in trash, debris, and discarded bits from the walls and ceiling. She crawled farther from the wall, rummaging through the trash until she managed to find a quill and collect a pile of crumpled, used parchments. Ink was a bit more difficult - she finally found some by casting "Accio Ink!" but it had been rendered invisible, presumably to see if there were anything hidden inside. She saw a tiny glowing label "INK" whizzing through the air toward her, and before she realized what it was, the invisible bottle below it had smacked into her open palm so hard it nearly broke a bone. Hermione's eyes widened, and she switched the bottle to her wand hand so she could shake out her hand and check it for damage. "Ouch!!" she exclaimed belatedly, her outrage growing. "Nesbitt, you… ooh! Ouch!"

Her knee slid over something slick and hard and flat, and she reached down to find one of the He-Says-She-Says charms there, still bearing some text from when the Aurors had been searching the house. She tried to read it, but she only got a glimpse of the words "tacky", "unbelievable", and "kitsch" before they faded out and new words were added in response to her own exclamation. She hastily averted her eyes, lest she be offended by its interpretation of what she'd started to say about Nesbitt.

It was not time to be offended about the Aurors' callous comments about her lack of funds or skills for decorating, either. She had to stay focused.

Carefully she gathered the papers and spent some minutes charming them to be more or less clean, smooth, and write-able. Only after she'd spent several more minutes searching for ribbons to tie letters with did it finally dawn on her: she hadn't seen a single piece of actual, non-trash correspondence in the house, nor any owls waiting, since she arrived. Normally when she'd been gone for so long, owls piled up at the Burrow. Knowing that Ron and Arthur were both busy, she doubted either of them had been by to pick the mail up. Molly maybe? Or maybe nobody had been by to pick up the mail at all. Maybe her correspondence was being diverted by Special Ops or someone else. She remembered hearing Aurors from other departments complaining that Covert Ops sometimes intercepted letters too. There might even be an owl-ward on the house redirecting the mail to a different destination.

With a groan of exasperation, Hermione levered herself to her feet, grabbed her knee momentarily, and then limped to the front door and opened it, expecting to find a ward-mark there for the owls.

---

Out on the front porch, the devastation wreaked on the Weasley property was a lot more evident. The grass was trampled flat, rubbish littered the ground, probably from the media who had been thronging there the night before, and everything was as soaked and muddy as if there had been a storm. Every one of the outbuildings had burned to the foundations, save for the stone ones which had lost their floors, windows and roofs. The chicken-house, set well away from everything else, had also been spared - but its door hung flapping in the breeze and the chickens, normally free-ranging during the day, were no where in sight.

As Hermione frowned and turned back to the door, she saw the owl-ward mark she had been looking for. There were also dozens of notices magicked to the outside of the front door, placed there by the different Aurors in compliance with the law, stating that the raids had occurred. Feeling sick to her stomach, Hermione rifled through them.

There were the original Triple-D and Special Operations notices, of course.

There were several ominous-looking notices from the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes, the Department of Domestic Disturbances again, and more alarming, a bright red notice from the Obliviators and a summons to appear before the Wizengamot for "mass exposure" of Muggles to "magical fire, explosions, and Malfunktioning Muggle Artifacts". This was supposedly due to "negligence, willful Lack of Control of Personal Emotions of a Dangerous Nature, and the Use of Wild Magic".

Hermione groaned. Passing Muggles must have spotted the blaze from the burning sheds and sent for the local fire brigade. That's where all the water had come from. And because of the stupid lie promulgated by Special Operations - that she had generated Wild Magic and caused the burning of the shed herself - she was now supposedly to blame for the exposure of Muggles to magic in the putting out of the fire.

Rage began to spark in her breast, despite her best efforts to squash it. The very idea of being punished for a load of Muggles trying to put out a fire set on her property by Special Ops and Triple-D, and the thought of all those poor firemen risking their lives battling magical explosions and darkness to save the buildings - while warded from Muggle eyes, Aurors plundered and pillaged inside - was enough to make her want to shriek.

But from the looks of things, she might have the Muggles to thank for there being much left of the Burrow at all. Without its protections, which would have to have been disabled to allow the Aurors to search, there was no reason it couldn't have burned just like everything else.

Then, and she really ought to have predicted this one, there was a notice from the Department of International Cooperation, which for some reason was also in charge of Wizarding zoning and building code regulations. They'd been on Ron and Hermione's backs for years about the Burrow's obvious need for magical support to remain erect, as this was no longer considered up to code. Still, since the Burrow was grandfathered in due to the structure's age, all the Zoning subdepartment could do was harass the Weasleys fruitlessly. Here was another example of that harassment: a citation for having improper fire protection charms on their buildings. It was as much of a joke as their other attempts, and it'd be easy enough to fend off in court once she was able to present documentation showing the Aurors had removed existing protections, but it would take insane amounts of her time and likely stretch on for weeks. As if she really needed one more thing to worry about!

After that came a notice and summons from the Improper Use of Magic office demanding that Hermione turn herself in for evaluation after her so-called Wild Magic usage, and something from the Committee for the Disposal of Dangerous Creatures demanding to know what had become of the Ghoul that had been living in the attic and whether the Weasleys were hiding it elsewhere, which "as you must know, is in violation of the Dangerous and Unusual Pets Registration Act".

As she'd half-expected, there was also a bright green notice from the Insurrection Investigation Initiative, a boiler-plate "we're watching you" type notice that let her know that, despite the many years since she'd done anything vaguely revolutionary, the entity known irreverently as the "three eyed monster" was still checking up on her.

As if those weren't enough, there was one final notice tacked atop all the others, from the Bureau of Unusual and Magical Menageries Enforcement and Rescue. It stated that by order of the SPCMA, six cats, four owls, and twenty-five chickens had been 'rescued' from 'abominable living conditions and abandonment' as well as 'near certain death by fire' in and around the Burrow's grounds.

Hermione wasn't happy about this, but it was to be expected. There shouldn't be any reason she couldn't get all the animals back, provided she had someplace to keep them and acted in a reasonably timely fashion. But she figured she'd better take the accidentally-stolen cat back to St. Mungo's right away, lest the SPCMA return and abscond with that one too. It'd probably never find its master again if that happened.

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BANG!

The unmistakable sound of an Apparition rang through the air, coming from inside the house.

Hermione jerked upright, adrenaline pounding, and her wand was in her hand in an instant. She charged back into the house with no thought other than that it was definitely an Apparition and she had to see who it was.

But she'd barely taken two steps through the door when something hard and invisible struck her solidly in the head. She staggered, flailing, and her hands came into contact with the object in question. She grabbed onto it and it resisted, buoyant, skidding through the air but not sinking. She stumbled two or three more steps into the house then managed to find her balance, still clinging to the… well, what was it?

Feeling around with her hands, she recognized it as a Flying-I that had been left there either by Aurors or the media to spy on her. God only knew how many others there might be, if they had turned them all invisible!

But there was no time to worry about that now. There was someone in her house, and she had to know who it was and what they were doing.

She forgot about the Flying-I and ran through the rooms, wand at the ready, looking for the intruder. Where were they? Who were they? But even as she was searching, she started wondering if there was nobody there after all. She searched high and low, in every room and hall, and even peered warily into the holes in the walls, but there was no one.

Was it someone invisible? Or… awful thought… had there been someone here all along, who only just decided to leave, hoping she wouldn't hear?

Something had made that noise, and she'd be damned if it wasn't an Apparition or Disapparition noise. Not knowing who had done it or whether they were still on the premises positively creeped her out.

It was the last straw. She had to get out of here, to find somewhere she could think.

After making two entire circuits of the house looking for an intruder and failing to find anyone, she gave up on that and started trying to find the cat from St. Mungo's instead. But now she couldn't find the cat either. She searched high and low, and even tried Accio cat but that failed as well. She was practically in tears of frustration by the time she'd re-searched the entire house twice more. The idea of the accidentally-borrowed cat ending up in the hands of the SPCMA and possibly even getting destroyed, unbeknownst to its owner, was extremely distressing. But what could she do about it now? All she could do was bar all the windows and doors and hope she could locate the cat when she came back to the Burrow later.

But to tell the truth, the idea of ever seeing the Burrow again at this point gave her the absolute shudders. She knew the sense of violation and loss-of-territory was a simple reaction to the shock of the house being trashed and everybody's possessions missing, but knowing that intellectually didn't make her feel it any less.

Returning to what was left of the living-room she gathered up the parchments, ink, quill and ribbons and stuffed them into her pockets with shaking hands. As an afterthought she placed the He-Says-She-Says charm in a pocket as well, not because she thought it'd be needed but because she had an overwhelming sense of leaving on a long ocean voyage with only what she could carry on her back. It seemed necessary, somehow, to save every scrap she'd found of her former life.

Then she went through the house closing all the windows and doors, putting simple magical locks on everything. They wouldn't keep out Aurors, but they'd prevent the cat from squeezing out a transom or something.

---

Out on the side porch, as she made ready to leave, she discovered another problem.

Her broomstick was gone. The dolphin-gray Whisk Evoca Ron had bought her for Christmas last year hadn't been in the house, and now she could see it wasn't on its rack either. It could have been "collected" by Aurors, stolen by a member of the media or their support staff, or even used by an ignorant and desperate Muggle firefighter in the fighting of the blaze. Accio broomstick proved futile, so Hermione sighed, and walked a ways farther out into the garden. Her feet crunched in the muddy debris: bits of lath and plaster, melted tidbits of Muggle artifact, and the deep embedded tracks of boots and Muggle fire-truck wheels.

A light breeze carried fresh air into her face, relieving the oppressive smell of burnt buildings somewhat. But all she wanted to do was escape.

She could turn into her fly form and ride that breeze for miles, where no camera or wizarding eye could possibly know her. She could spend days in the woods, or make her way toward the seacoast, and avoid her problems altogether until she could come up with some coherent plan.

But no! she thought resolutely. No more denial. She had to tackle this head-on or it was disaster for sure - for herself, for the Ron Weasley branch of the family, and maybe for a lot more than just them.

She held her wand up again, in Apparition position. Where would she go? To work? No; there was no place for her there, and she had no heart to spare for the battle over the storage of the Knowitall Balls. To Batwing? Poopsie might let her use Malfoy's office as a place to think, but if Poopsie were there, the house-elf would probably never leave her alone. To Majorca? There was an idea; there were loads of hotels and she'd be able to talk to Ron when he was done with practice. But no, it'd take a long time to get there by Public Portkey, and she had more problems here in England than she could afford to leave behind.

There was a wizarding coffeehouse in Ottery St. Catchpole just up the road. She could go there. She ought to be able to get a few owls off, and have time to decide what to do after that. Nobody would likely bother her there, at least not if she didn't stay longer than a couple hours at most.

Decisively, she lifted her wand. And with a BANG, all that was left was rubbish blowing through the dead and trampled garden.

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