Chapter 46

Auguest 1st, 2018. Spellhaven.

"In conclusion, we have eighty-eight dead. Two Raven Host, nineteen of the island's militia, five sphinxes and sixty-two non-combatants. The attackers lost one hundred and seventy-three. The numbers on the wounded are still coming in, but we can expect there to be at least twice as many as the dead." Penny reported in an admirably even tone given the situation, but there was still a hint of tremble in it, even hours after the action was over.

Harry nodded broodily, looking over the island. Stories never did mention the aftermath of battles, probably because it was a dull, depressing and altogether unpleasant time.

"The… prisoners… are asking to be released." Penny went on, noticeably uncomfortable.

"Not yet." Harry shook his head. The girls had taken it upon themselves to sort the real Imperius victims from the fakers, their Legilimency was good enough to spot a liar as long as they didn't know Occlumency.

Moreover, he still had to put as positive a PR spin on this as possible, and that meant he couldn't release a bunch of people that would start blabbing who knows what to the first person that cared to listen. Speaking of which…

"Did Narcissa arrange things with the reporters yet?"

"She's still contacting a few I think, but the meeting has already been set for five o'clock."

"Two hours from now." Harry muttered. "Fine."

He really didn't want to talk to any reporters, but there wasn't much choice in the matter. If Voldemort had the intelligence of a brick, he'd have already started spreading rumors about what had happened and a silence from him would just give people room to make the situation sound even worse than it was. That was trouble they didn't need, so he was holding a sort massed interview and would later on give a statement on the relatively newly established Magical News Network, the magical world's first international media outlet.

It was times like this that he actually sort of envied Voldemort. His reputation was already as black as it got, the only way he could get any more notorious is if he violated a parley agreement or something. No matter how it was presented, Harry was going to come off worse in this exchange simply because of that. That was doubly true because of all the politicians that stood to benefit from having Harry's reputation darkened.

"Do you have any estimates on what this is going to cost us in financial terms?" He asked.

"Not yet, but it's safe to assume that it'll be a lot." Penny sighed.

"Whatever it is, add the expenses of buying up whatever is left of the basilisk hide we sold a few years ago to it." Harry ordered.

Penny blinked in surprise. "Harry, that stuff could be ten times as expensive by now, depending on the demand versus the supply." She warned.

"Doesn't matter." He shook his head. "It saved Dora's life and I'd rather be out of gold than out of a girlfriend." Especially since he had an effectively unlimited amount of gold now.

In hindsight, he shouldn't have sold a single scrap of that hide to begin with. It wasn't the first time that one of his past decisions looked decidedly stupid in hindsight.

"Alright." Penny nodded.

She left soon after that and Harry was left alone with his thoughts for perhaps the first time since the battle had ended.

He was rather disgusted with the whole thing. Not so much by all the death or even by the fact that most of the enemy dead were just poor bastards under the Imperius. He was too good at rationalising and had too few scruples left for that to really affect him in any significant way. Even if they'd known in advance that they were going to be attacked by an Imperiused force, it wasn't like they would have had the luxury of holding back against so many.

No, his disgust was aimed primarily at the actual fighting.

The first thing was that he had assumed that Voldemort wouldn't attack a fortified position solely because he'd never done so in the past. That had been a really dumb assumption on his part.

The second was related to the first. He hadn't fortified Spellhaven nearly enough because he'd figured that all the real fighting would happen elsewhere. Maybe it was time to go ahead with that idle thought of stealing some AA guns or other useful goodies from a military base somewhere? Did those things have a manual? Although he had a feeling that the girls might protest the idea of turning any further attackers into a bloody mist before they got close enough to be dangerous.

Harry personally considered that to be a better alternative to actually fighting them, but he supposed that he could keep that as a last resort option.

Maybe some kind of massive area-of-effect spell instead? A stunner? He did have a few ideas and using the liquid magic to power it would make it workable, even if he would rather use that stuff for other projects.

The third thing was his casting speed. Harry had worked tirelessly to master his magic without the crutch of a wand and it rankled that he was still too slow, but he couldn't afford pride when a few tenths of a second might be the difference between life and death. He would have to start working on a solution to that problem soon, but not right away. There was another idle project that he'd been working on occasionally that he would need to finish first, it would speed up all of his other projects… from a certain point of view.

The last thing that he was disgusted about was the sheer amateurishness of it all. The entire battle had been a mess, more like one tribe of primitive idiots attacking another than a well executed combat operation. It was only to be expected given that neither side had any professional soldiers among them, leaders included, but it still annoyed him to think back and see all the mistakes he'd made.

Although he did take comfort in the fact that Voldemort was unlikely to realise that he had made any mistakes at all thanks to his colossal ego. Who referred to themselves in the third person anyway? House elves, that's who.

Questioning had revealed that Voldemort's Imperiused fodder had been snatched from all over Europe, so there were also reporters from all over Europe here as a result. Given their looks of restrained excitement, Harry figured that they already had some inkling as to why they were invited.

"Thank you all for coming, I know it was rather short notice." Harry said to start things off.

"It was no trouble." Rita Skeeter, the one here on behalf of Magical Britain's Daily Prophet, replied smarmily. It might have even sounded gracious if not for the greedy glint in her eyes. The animagus reporter had been more than pleased with Harry's decision to move out of Britain, but she'd never miss out on a juicy story and this was looking juicy indeed. "I assume this has something to do with the rumors of an attack on Spellhaven?"

Harry nearly snorted. Rumors she said, as if they hadn't seen some of the aftermath on their way to the cháteau. Still, if there really were rumors then that meant that Voldemort had indeed probably sent some people to go drinking in pubs and talk about it or something to that effect.

In the end he merely nodded in confirmation. "It does. In the early hours of the morning, the self-proclaimed Dark Lord Voldemort, born Tom Marvolo Riddle, Hogwarts graduating class of 1945, attacked the island with a force of around four hundred wizards and witches. We fought them off and forced Voldemort to retreat, only to later discover that most of the attackers were victims of the Imperius Curse taken from all across Europe the day before."

There was a nearly unanimous gasp of shock, which Harry thought sounded a tad melodramatic, and then all the reporters started scribbling like crazy.

"Could you give us some idea of casualty numbers, Lord Potter?" A reporter from Poland asked.

"Eighty-eight of the dead were residents of Spellhaven, sixty-two of them non-combatants, including ten children ranging in age from two to thirteen." Harry knew that he needed to present his side as the victim as much as possible. "Among the attackers there were one hundred and seventy-three dead, with a further two hundred and ten currently being held prisoner, most of them wounded to some degree."

"Prisoner?" Another of the reporters spoke up, this one from Germany. "But if they were Imperiused, then why haven't you released them?"

"We are still sorting out who was and who wasn't Imperiused. Those who were will be released as soon as that is done. Pictures of the dead will also be made available so that family members may reclaim the bodies of the slain."

Harry would have personally prefered to turn all the viable corpses into inferi, because you never know when an army of undead might come in handy, but this set of corpses was a tad too high profile. No matter, he could always nip down to Africa or South America and wipe out some petty warlord's personal army if he needed fresh corpses. Even Dora probably wouldn't object to that as long as his targets met certain criteria of shitty behavior.

"You used lethal magic on Imperius victims?" The reporter from France asked accusingly.

Harry barely managed to keep the irritation off his face at the woman's idiotic question.

"We didn't know they were Imperiused at the time of the attack." He explained with forced calm, resisting the urge to add a sarcastic 'obviously' at the end. "Furthermore, even if we had known, what choice do you think we would have had? Eighty-eight of my own people died as it was, that number would have been significantly higher had any of us held back. I regret the deaths among the Imperiused attackers, but my first priority must be to the defense of my own people. I am more interested in learning how it was that none of Europe's Ministries of Magic picked up on this as it was happening. Using the Imperius to gain disposale soldiers is hardly a new strategy for dark lords after all. I warned them that Voldemort was dangerous and I pushed for a joint effort to deal with him, but have so far been met with lukewarm interest at best."

The questioning went on in this vein for a few minutes longer, during which Harry did his best to shove the blame that didn't go to Voldemort for those deaths on the incompetence of Europe's magical governments. That should make any campaign to pin the blame on him more difficult.

He had almost lost hope that any of them would ask about Voldemort's birth name and would force him to open up the subject himself when Skeeter of all people came to the rescue.

"Harry, You mentioned earlier that You-Know-Who was born Tom Marvolo Riddle and graduated Hogwarts in 1945. Could you elaborate on that?" She asked.

"Certainly." Harry nodded. "Are you familiar with the Gaunt family?"

Skeeter thought for a moment and replied with a frown. "No, I don't believe so."

"They were the last direct descendants of Salazar Slytherin and incredibly proud of it. So proud, in fact, that they at some point began to marry brother to sister in an effort to keep their blood 'pure'. This left them dangerously inbred and I suspect that it was magic alone that even allowed their family to survive into the 20th century. That was all it allowed them, however, as the once strong family had been reduced to three people living in a dilapidated shack. Marvolo Gaunt was the father of Morfin and Merope Gaunt. Both men were bitter, violent, half-mad and often vented their tempers on Merope."

"How horrible." Skeeter commented.

"Quite." Harry replied, inwardly wondering if she even realised that she'd sounded gleeful rather than sympathetic. Nasty cunt. "Merope was hardly the picture of mental health either and developed an obsession with the local squire's son, a man by the name of Tom Riddle, who had not a drop of magic in him. As you might guess, this didn't go over well with her extremely prejudiced father and brother."

"What happened?" Skeeter leaned forward, her eyes shining behind her gaudy glasses.

"When Merope was about eighteen, Morfin and Marvolo were imprisoned for assaulting Ministry personnel, leaving her free of them for the first time in her life. One of the first things she did with this freedom was to learn how to brew a love potion to ensnare the man she was fixated on. It worked and Tom Riddle left the woman he was engaged to, married Merope instead and got her pregnant in short order. When Merope was close to giving birth, she'd convinced herself that he loved her in truth and not just because of the potions and stopped dosing him. Predictably, as soon as his mind cleared up, Riddle became horrified by the situation he was in and ran away. Merope, heartbroken and heavily pregnant, managed to stumble to an orphanage on New Year's Eve, delivered her baby there, named him Tom Marvolo Riddle and died."

"You-Know-Who is a halfblood?" Skeeter breathed.

"Yes. Any pureblood rhetoric he was spouting was just a ploy to lure gullible and belligerent purebloods into his service. I suspect that his true objective was not to purge the British Isles of anyone that didn't meet some arbitrary level of blood purity, but to eventually wage war on the mundane world that he irrationally blames for the difficulties of his early life."

"Why didn't we know this sooner?" She near-demanded.

"I only learned it from Albus Dumbledore recently myself." Harry answered, lying a little bit. Well, he had learned it recently if you counted last year as recent. "Why he kept it to himself for however long he'd known it I couldn't say."

Harry figured that this was Dumbledore's penchant for information hoarding at work yet again. Releasing this to the public during the last war, properly slanted of course, could have done a lot of damage to Voldemort's cause. He hoped that revealing it like this would cause the old man a few headaches for that bit of stupidity.

Harry had himself been keeping it quiet since learning it because he'd already ruined most of Voldemort's support base in Britain and had been waiting until his telemirror business spread far enough to ensure maximum impact in other nations. The attack had provided him with a perfect opportunity to get as many people as possible paying attention. Hopefully it would cause at least some current and potential future Death Eaters to rethink their decisions.

Still, talking about Voldemort's origins now was very much closing the barn door after the horse was gone. The perfect opportunity to release this information had come and gone years before Harry was born.

The reporters had some more questions on this topic, which Harry did his best to answer in such a way that Voldemort was painted as an unstable lunatic that would expose them to the mundanes and bring ruin to the entire magical world if not removed and maybe Europe's magical governments should get off their arses and support the Dark Lord's primary enemy, Harry Potter?

"Lord Potter, do you truly believe that you can win against this Dark Lord?" One of the reporters that had been more quiet spoke up. "Not to disparage your powers, but he is much older and more experienced than you."

Harry made a great show of looking thoughtful, although he was inwardly gleeful at the question. He couldn't have contrived a more perfect opening.

"I suppose it is time to talk about this." He said with carefully feigned gravitas. "There was a reason that my parents went into hiding. A prophecy was made which foretold that a child born at the end of July, to parents who had defied him three times, would have the power to vanquish the Dark Lord. One of Voldemort's minions overheard that part of the prophecy being made and reported it to him, which was what prompted him to target me since I fit the criteria. There is more to it, but I won't talk about that because Voldemort doesn't know it either and it may play a critical role in his final downfall."

Now if Tommy was paranoid enough to attempt murdering a toddler because of a prophecy, that should certainly worry him enough that he'd be desperate to find out the rest of it. Harry thought to himself, for the moment ignoring the reporters that were rushing to talk over one another. If I'm right, then the next act will happen in Britain.

About an hour later, he repeated the information he'd given the gaggle of reporters in a prepared speech on the Magical News Network. Not only to ensure that it reached as many people as possible, but also to make sure that idiot politicians couldn't lean on the written media too much and force them to alter the story to suit their own purposes.

He had no fears of the same thing happening to MNN. Luna was technically the owner after all, although in practice she was more of a proxy for him.

They may not officially be married, but Luna had long since folded all of her assets into his own holdings. A show of trust that would be considered insanely uncautious for anyone else, but was completely typical for her. There hadn't even been any opportunity to ask her if she was sure she wanted to do that since she'd just flounced into Gringotts the day after she turned seventeen and ordered it done as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Harry was often glad that he had befriended her so early. Smart though she was, Luna was too passive and accepting. People would have tried to ruin her sweet innocence the same way they tried to ruin everything else that didn't conform to their narrow beliefs.

Harry checked the bindings on Bellatrix and took a moment to give her naked body an approving look. Despite being in her late forties and spending fifteen years in Azkaban, she was still a rather beautiful woman. Magic really could do wonders when it came to fixing up appearances.

She hadn't been too badly injured during the battle. Some cracked bones and heavy bruising, nothing that couldn't be fixed in a few hours. It was time for her to wake up.

Harry moved into one of her blind spots, revived her and then waited patiently as the witch surged awake and pulled on her restraints. It was quite useless, bound as she was at the wrists, ankles and neck in a reclining spread eagle position, but he knew from experience that it was best to let reality sink in before speaking.

"It doesn't chafe, I hope?" He inquired politely, smiling to himself in amusement when she froze. "I'd hate to think that my work was substandard."

"Potter." She snarled.

Harry walked into her line of sight and smiled at her. "Good evening, Bella."

Bellatrix glowered for a few moments longer and then favored him with a disdainful sneer. "So, what is it going to be? Torture?" She paused to look down at herself as much as she could in her current predicament. "Rape?"

"If I didn't know better I'd say you were looking forward to it." Harry observed.

"It's not as if a little boy like you could really do anything to me." She sneered some more.

"Is this the part where I lose my temper and violently rape you in a sad attempt to prove how much of a man I am?" He asked, amused. "You'd scream abuse and insult me the whole time of course, but you would secretly enjoy it because you're weird like that. You'd provoke me into doing it again and again in the coming days until you stopped pretending to hate it. Eventually you'd proclaim your devotion to me and I'd let you go, taking you as a mistress or concubine… and then one day you'd put a knife in my back. Was that the plan?"

Bellatrix tried to cover up her shock with another sneer, but didn't deny it.

"Nice try, but I read the Evil Overlord List."

"Evil Overlord List?" She repeated, clearly baffled.

"Very useful thing, even if you're not an Evil Overlord." Harry assured her. "Anyway, there's no torture in store for you. I've long since moved past such a clumsy way of gathering information and I'm not a sadist by nature either, so that kind of thing doesn't do it for me."

"But tying women up and collaring them does do it for you?" Bellatrix asked snidely.

"Yes." Harry nodded shamelessly and reached out to give her pubic hair a little tug, earning himself a glare from the bound witch. "But that's not why you're tied up and collared. I do admittedly enjoy those kinds of games, and I am tempted to do to you what I did to Narcissa, albeit with a few extra steps… buuuut you'd likely be more trouble than you're worth. Cissy brought her skill with politics and social maneuvering to the table, whereas you're just a blunt instrument with a terrible reputation and a lot of baggage."

Aside from the amusement value of tweaking Voldemort's non-existent nose by turning his lieutenant against him and the visceral satisfaction of completely dominating a beaten enemy, there were nothing but downsides to that course of action. Dora was also unlikely to be impressed.

Bellatrix apparently decided not to ask what he'd done to her baby sister. "What's the point of putting me in this position if you're not going to rape or torture me?"

Harry was privately amazed at how this conversation was going. With her reputation, he'd honestly been expecting to get nothing but incoherent screaming out of Bellatrix. Maybe it was because Voldemort hadn't been mentioned yet? That seemed to be her primary trigger. Well, he'd find out soon enough.

"I just want to ask you a few questions." He said calmly. "I know that Voldemort entrusted you with something that he told you to protect at all costs."

Bellatrix tried to keep her face schooled into neutrality, but that was exactly the problem. Her previous insolent expression vanished like smoke.

"What was it, Bella?" Harry crooned, leaning in. "Was it a sword? Maybe a diadem? A cup?"

Her aura rippled with a deep fear when he mentioned the cup. "Ah, so it was the cup, Hufflepuff's Cup. Now all you need to do is tell me where you put it. I've already torn Lestrange Manor down to the bedrock and it wasn't there, but where else would dear Bella hide something like that?"

"I won't tell you anything!" She shouted, almost hyperventilating in fear.

Harry frowned. Her emotions were running so high right now he wouldn't be able to keep guessing and hope that she would betray herself. And there was no telling what critical information he'd miss even if he managed it.

"No, I don't suppose you will." He nodded. "And I don't want to spend the next few months fucking you until you belong to me more than you ever did to Voldemort. I guess we're doing this the unpleasant way." He finished with a sigh, stepping back.

"I won't talk, no matter what you do to me!" Bellatrix repeated furiously, her chest still heaving slightly from the earlier rush of fear. Sweat had begun to glisten all along her body as well.

"I'm not going to do anything to you, I'm simply going to leave you here for the next three, four, maybe five days." He said, pulling down a contraption that bore a strange similarity to that thing that caged hamsters sometimes had for drinking water from. "If you get thirsty just order this thing to move closer and it will. There's an alchemically-derived nutrient dust dissolved in the water that will provide your body with everything it needs to function. Trips to be bathroom will be unavailable I'm afraid, so you'll have to relieve yourself as you are. Don't worry though, the nutrient dust is 100% digestible so I expect you'll at least stop shitting yourself within two or three days at the most. there are also some enchantments on the surface you're lying on to take care of the worst of the mess and Kreacher will come to hose you down afterwards."

He paused for a moment to take in her outraged expression before continuing. "Also, try to stay awake. The collar is enchanted to deliver a nasty electric shock if you nod off. I expect that after a few days without sleep, your fairly impressive Occlumency will be worse than useless and I'll be able to simply plunder your mind for any information I want."

"I'LL KILL YOU, POTTER! JUST LIKE I KILLED MY WHORE NIECE!" Bellatrix howled in fury, whatever self-control she'd been holding on to evaporating.

"That reminds me." Harry cut in calmly. "If you get any ideas about biting your own tongue off or something like that as a means of suicide, I'd advise against it. There are diagnostic charms monitoring you at all times and you won't have time to die before help arrives."

He decided not to tell her that Dora was still alive. You never know when that kind of information might come in handy.

Harry stepped out of the room that served as Bellatrix's temporary holding cell and blinked when he saw Kreacher standing there.

"Kreacher?" He asked in confusion. "What are you doing here?"

"Kreacher wanted to get started on his duties to keep the outcast of the Black family clean." The crotchety house elf said with a certain gleam in his eye.

"Well, she doesn't need it just yet, but I get the feeling that keeping her clean isn't really your primary motivation." Harry noted with amusement.

"The outcast did not treat Kreacher well when she was still Mistress Bella." Kreacher explained without much inflection, but he was obviously nursing a grudge.

Ah, so it was revenge. That was fine. Kreacher knew that he wasn't allowed to do more than hose her with cold water.

"You're such a lovable little psychopath." Harry snorted and rolled his eyes. "Have at her then, but don't overdo it and stay away from the face. I don't want her getting hypothermia or dry drowning."

The room temperature was set to be rather toasty in deference to Bellatrix's lack of clothes, which was itself done to make her easier to keep clean as much as it was to make her feel more vulnerable, but excessive cold water drenching could still be dangerous.

"Master is embarrassing Kreacher." The elf said bashfully. If house elves could blush, he would be glowing. "Kreacher promises he will be careful."

Narcissa waited in front of the mirror that she knew led to Harry's secret stronghold of Ravenhead. She had never been there herself, nor did she know where in the world it was located, but she knew that it was there that Harry's prisoners were kept.

Her eldest sister was now among those prisoners and she hoped that Harry would allow her to visit.

Not that she really knew what she was going to say to Bellatrix if he did allow it. It had been so long since they'd seen each other and so much had changed. The only thing she was sure of was that she wanted to ask about Draco.

Lost in her thoughts, the mirror's activation startled her.

"Cissy?" Harry questioned as he stepped out of it.

"My lord… Harry." She replied nervously, starting to have second thoughts. What if he thought that Bella might sway her to turn against him?

He peered at her with an uncomfortable scrutiny.

"You want to talk to your sister." He deduced, sounding neither surprised nor upset.

"Yes." She admitted uncomfortably.

"She'll try to hurt you just to spite me." He warned.

Narcissa tried to give him a reassuring smile, but it felt more like a bitter grimace. "She would have tried to hurt me anyway. Bella… our mother always thought that hurting people was the way to solve problems and Bella was her firstborn."

Harry nodded his understanding without asking her to explain any further, for which she was grateful.

"Alright, I'll take you to her."

Narcissa hadn't been sure what to expect of Ravenhead, but upon seeing it was immediately apparent that it was exclusively Harry's work. Nothing but dreary hallways of smooth, unyielding stone, lit by flickering torches of Gubraithian fire.

It wasn't as bad as she imagined Azkaban to be, but it lacked warmth. Was this how Harry would end up living if he was alone?

They didn't speak on the way. Narcissa was too nervous and Harry's mind was already elsewhere.

"She's in there." He said, nodding at a heavy wood door. "Just one thing before you go inside. She thinks that she succeeded in killing Dora and I haven't informed her otherwise. I don't want you doing it either."

Narcissa nodded her understanding, took a fortifying breath and entered the room, happy that there would be privacy. She didn't want an audience for what was bound to be a difficult conversation.

The sight of Bellatrix shackled down with her naked body splayed out just made her feel sad. Why did it have to come to this? Why did her sister have to be such a monster?

Narcissa wondered if she dared ask what Harry was planning to do to her. He would tell her if she asked, she knew, but it would probably be unpleasant to hear. And she couldn't ask him to be merciful… not after what Bellatrix had attempted.

"Come back to gloat, Potter?" Bella spat out. There was water dripping from her body for some reason.

"It's me, Bella." Narcissa said softly.

"Cissy?" Bellatrix questioned hopefully, before apparently remembering to who Narcissa now owed her loyalty and her tone regained its viciousness. "Did he send you here? Hoping to trick me into telling my dear sister what I wouldn't tell him?"

"I don't know what Harry asked you, I just wanted to talk to my sister." Narcissa said.

"I have nothing to say to a filthy traitor spreading her legs for the enemy!" Bellatrix snarled.

"Harry isn't my enemy." Narcissa contended sternly. "I might have thought that way once, when I still allowed myself to be influenced by Lucius' and our parents' stupidity. I know better now. Harry Potter is the greatest head that House Black has ever had and I am privileged to be at his side."

"He's a disgusting mongrel halfblood!" Bella shrieked. "The Dark Lord will purge the world of his filth!"

Narcissa bit down on the urge to shout back at her elder sister. Had she ever sounded like that herself? Not this half-mad yelling, but the conviction in blood purity? Harry had shown her that long ago power had nothing whatsoever to do with one's parentage and the thought that she'd ever been this ignorant was an embarrassing one.

Not to mention that Bella's precious Dark Lord was even less 'pure' than Harry, although telling her that would no doubt be pointless.

"I'm not here to talk about that." She said after taking a deep breath.

Bellatrix scoffed and turned her head away as much as she could.

"Draco." Narcissa stated stiffly. "Tell me about my son."

Bellatrix turned back to look at her with a cruel gleam in her eyes. "Ah yes, darling little Drakey-poo. Now why should I tell you anything about him? He's a proper pureblood that knows his duty, unlike the whore that squeezed him out of her loins."

"I'm just hoping that you could tell me something good about him before he gets himself killed fighting Harry." Narcissa said sadly. "I did everything I could for Draco, now I would just like to learn who I am going to be grieving. Who has my son become, Bella?"

Narcissa didn't need to know Legilimency to guess at the thoughts brewing behind her sister's eyes. Bellatrix was considering whether granting her request or staying quiet would hurt her more. What a vicious creature she was.

Mother would be proud. She thought bitterly.

Bellatrix eventually decided that talking would be more painful, just as Narcissa had intended. Her older sister had always been easy to manipulate.

Harry wasn't surprised when Narcissa came out of Bellatrix's room with tears on her face and looking much subdued. He simply offered her his hand and didn't comment on the desperate gratitude with which she latched onto it.

He wondered sometimes if parenthood would affect him this much as well, or if this was a situation that only more emotional people found themselves in.

The day had been long and depressing and Fleur tried to make it better in her usual fashion as soon as they were alone.

But Tonks squirmed out of her embrace.

"I'm not in the mood." She muttered and stalked into the bathroom without looking back.

Fleur bit her lip and exchanged a worried glance with Luna. The metamorphmagus had been sullen and quiet ever since the battle had ended and it wasn't hard to guess that the deaths of their Imperiused attackers weighed heavily on her conscience.

"Should we leave her alone for a bit?" Fleur asked uncertainly after a long period of worried silence.

Luna shook her head. "No, Nymphadora doesn't cope by brooding the way Harry does. She needs us."

Fleur smiled, relieved to have a clear course of action. Luna always managed to simplify everything.

"Let's go help her then."

The shower was on, so the two blondes shrugged at each other, undressed and went in to join their shapeshifting lover. Only, she wasn't showering so much as sitting against a wall in a rather cliché scene of depression.

"Can't a girl even shower in private around here?" Tonks asked listlessly.

"You weren't showering, you were brooding in the shower." Luna stated matter-of-factly.

"Come on, Nymmie." Fleur said, picking the metamorphmagus off the ground by her armpits. "We could all use a shower anyway."

Tonks didn't put up a fight and silently allowed herself to be led through the motions. There was none of the groping, giggling or kissing that often accompanied their group showers.

Once they were done, they migrated to the bed and Fleur resisted her natural instinct to start something sexual. Instead, she positioned herself against a pile of pillows with Tonks against her chest and Luna cuddled into her side.

"We had no choice." Fleur opened up once they'd gotten comfortable. "There were too many and we couldn't have known that they were under the Imperius."

"I know, I worked out that much myself already." Tonks sighed noisily. "That would be bad enough on its own, but… I enjoyed killing them. We were so much stronger than them… it felt like I was squashing bugs and it was fun . All this time I was worried about what lines Harry might cross and then I turn out to be the monster."

Fleur was silent for a good quarter minute as she thought about that. This was a different problem than she'd expected and would require different handling.

"I enjoyed it too." She finally admitted. "They were attacking my home and trying to kill my family. I reveled in my ability to destroy them. I always knew that veela could be violent in our passions, but it still surprised me how good it felt. If that makes me a monster then so be it."

"I like being able to protect you." Luna added simply and pressed in closer. She was blissfully unburdened by any concerns about what kind of people she or her lovers were. They were hers and she loved them, that was all that mattered.

Tonks exhaled gustily and closed her eyes.

"Could you sing for me?" She requested after a long few seconds, a little embarrassed to be asking for such a thing, but only a little. It was usually Luna who made song requests.

"I would be happy to." Fleur smiled. Her song was a pale shadow of true phoenix song, but it could still uplift the spirits of those who heard it. And she did like to sing, especially if it made her loved ones feel better.

Now it was just a matter of choosing an appropriate song. Something uplifting that wouldn't make light of the situation.

Her lips curved into a smile as she thought of just the right one. Harry had introduced her to this one during his 'research the power of veela song' phase. She had no idea where her tone deaf man had found such a lovely song, but it had become one of her favorites.

Fleur cleared her throat, took a deep breath and started singing. " Fear not this night, you will not go astray… "

Harry had nearly made it to the master bedroom after splitting off from Narcissa when he sensed as much as heard Fleur singing. He couldn't discern the lyrics until he was just outside the door.

" And you can always be strong

Llift your voice with the first light of dawn. "

Harry smiled to himself as he recognised the familiar words. A remnant of his experimentation of how a song's lyrics altered the magical effects of a veela's singing.

He recalled that Fleur had been a bit put out with his inability to just enjoy her singing without wanting to figure out how it worked, but she had agreed to help him eventually. Although she had shot him a truly impressive glare when he'd asked if she'd be willing to try singing ' Hammer Smashed Face ' by Cannibal Corpse. Good times.

Harry quietly opened the door, not wanting to startle Fleur into breaking off her song. He immediately noted the way that Dora was cuddled into the veela's chest, looking rather younger than her twenty-five years.

Fleur noticed him entering of course, but didn't stop singing.

" Dawn's just a heartbeat away

Hope's just a sunrise away. "

Those were the last verses and Harry hurriedly divested himself of clothing and joined the snuggle pile in the ensuing silence.

"What's the occasion?" He asked quietly, setting himself on Fleur's other side. He was usually in the middle of these group hugs, but this one was clearly set up for Dora's benefit.

"Nymphadora felt like a monster for enjoying the power she had over our attackers." Luna stated bluntly.

"Ah." Harry nodded in understanding. "Don't feel too bad about it. It's really no different than the satisfaction you'd feel after swatting an irritating fly or mosquito."

"But these were people ." Dora insisted, turning around to face him. "And they were forced into attacking us."

"So?" Harry asked with a shrug. "A fly or mosquito doesn't irritate you out of malice either."

Dora exhaled gustily and closed her eyes, clearly too emotionally exhausted to argue the point any further. "Everything is so messed up."

"The world doesn't heed the powerless." Harry replied after a long few moments of thought. "You think you fought and killed innocents today? You didn't, they had no voices of their own. You fought and killed extensions of the Death Eaters' power, who are themselves extensions of Voldemort's power. Temporary and unwilling extensions, but extensions all the same. So what if you enjoyed it? Everyone gains a sense of satisfaction from destroying a threat to the things they care about, whether that's their peace of mind from a buzzing fly or their home and family from a megalomaniacal idiot. You have nothing to feel guilty for."

"There you go, sounding like an old man again." She chuckled weakly, but gave it up as a bad job halfway through and just sighed again. "I wish this was all behind us already, so that we could get on with our lives."

"Who knows? Maybe this is just a vivid flashback I'm having as a thirty-year-old man, thinking fondly upon the times before the three of you buried me in screaming children." Harry quipped with a grin.

"I've always wondered how you could bury someone in screaming children." Luna mused absently. "I suppose you could transfigure them into a coffin…"

Even Harry could only stare at the petite blonde for that one.

"What?" Luna asked. She sounded honestly confused, but he wasn't sure he believed it. Even after all these years, he still couldn't tell if she did this just to wind people up or if she was for real.

August 3rd. Hogwarts.

"Was it truly wise to reveal that much information?" Dumbledore asked.

"Can't set a trap without bait." Harry shrugged.

"This is certainly likely to draw him back to Britain." Dumbledore admitted. "But to what end? You know he cannot die until we find and destroy all of his Horcruxes."

"True, but we can cripple his support base. His ability to cause trouble will be greatly curtailed without followers."

"That would only serve to drive him into hiding. Not to mention that the loss of life would be tremendous."

"I don't think he has it in him to hide for long, his ego couldn't take it." Hary didn't bother to address the point about the loss of life, considering it entirely irrelevant. People would die no matter what. "That means we could pounce on him as soon as he shows his ugly face."

"I still think it would be better to take care of him once and for all, rather than whittling away at his power like this." Dumbledore frowned.

"Because that's worked so well in the past." Harry said sarcastically, rolling his eyes in true teenager fashion. "See, I'd love to just take Voldemort out and then leisurely hunt down the rest of his followers, but that's apparently not going to happen yet and I'm not going to sit around and do nothing while he plots. It's been barely two days since his last plot and I'm already mired in a stupid propaganda battle with most of Europe's magical governments."

The fallout of Voldemort's attack would have been amusing to watch as an uninvolved party. As an involved one, it was highly irritating.

Early damage control had mitigated the worst of it, but it still turned into a blame shifting competition.

As Harry had expected, the affected countries kicked up a stink and tried to paint him as an unstable butcher. Not because of any kind of genuine moral outrage, but in an effort to reduce his political capital which they no doubt felt threatened by.

In other circumstances, Harry wouldn't have cared. He wasn't an elected official and didn't need to curry favor with anyone, nor did he have any political ambitions. If people didn't like him then they could fuck off, it made little difference to him.

Unfortunately, he was put in a position where he had to care. All this stupid politicking would just serve to indirectly aid Voldemort and Harry really did not want the struggle between them to drag on for years and years just because he couldn't act without some fat idiot getting in the way.

Of course, getting self-serving politicians to understand why ignoring or even indirectly helping an unhinged Dark Lord bent on world domination just because he wasn't directly threatening them at the moment was a bad idea was like trying to explain calculus to a chamber pot.

Narcissa's days were now mostly filled with trying to talk some sense into her colleagues at the ICW, but it was an uphill struggle. An international organisation like that was akin to a mechanical clock where every gear wanted to turn its own way. Nothing ever got done unless everyone had their attention focused on the same thing and the only thing that could really focus the ICW were breaches to the Statute of Secrecy. That was the angle that Narcissa was going for, but so far nobody seemed to be taking Voldemort particularly seriously as a threat to it.

Harry almost wished that Voldemort would end up irreparably breaking the Statute of Secrecy, just so that he could say 'I told you so'.

"You did kill a large number of their citizens." Dumbledore pointed out, his patented grandfatherly disapproval in full effect.

"You know perfectly well that this has nothing to do with me killing their citizens." Harry scowled. "That's just a convenient excuse, much like Voldemort's pureblood angle was."

"There are politicians in the world that care about the people they serve." The old wizard countered.

"Sometimes I wonder about you, Dumbledore." Harry replied thoughtfully.

"What do you mean?"

"I can tell that you actually mean what you're saying, so the question is if you are really that naive or are you just desperately clinging to your deluded optimism because you can't handle reality?"

"There is no need for insults, Harry." Dumbledore frowned disapprovingly.

"It's not an insult, I'm honestly curious. Maybe you just spend too much time either shut away in this tower or around children. Nobody as old as you should be capable of having this much faith in people."

"Do you really consider having faith in people instead of constantly questioning their motives to be such a terrible thing?"

"It is when it leads you to make decisions based on what you want to be true rather than what is true."

"We've strayed off topic." Dumbledore changed the subject.

"Let's get back on track then." Harry shrugged. "Voldemort will hopefully take the bait and try to get into the Department of Mysteries, where we can hammer him. Capturing him would be ideal, but there's not much hope of that happening. I'll take depriving him of his physical body and a few lieutenants as a consolation prize."

"Seeing as you have already baited the trap, I am left with no choice but to help you even if I disagree." Dumbledore sighed.

"Excellent." Harry smiled winningly, delighting in Dumbledore's consternation. They weren't enemies, but they had deep ideological differences and it always amused him to get the old man's beard out of joint.

August 5th. Ravenhead.

"Hello again, Bella." Harry greeted.

The bound woman looked at him with an eager expression that quickly shifted to confusion and then to anger.

"Potter?" She snarled, although there was a hint of question to it.

"Expecting someone else?" He inquired with a raised eyebrow.

Bellatrix looked like she was struggling to focus on the here and now. Unsurprising, she had been awake for a good four days by now after all and the line between consciousness and dreaming started to blur at about seventy-two hours without sleep.

She abruptly jerked and grunted in pain as the collar shocked her. Apparently she had started to pass out.

The pain did focus her though and her gaze sharpened.

"Potter!" She snarled, apparently forgetting that she'd already done so.

"Yes." Harry nodded. "Let me just turn off that collar for now."

"A pity, I was starting to like it." She bluffed with a sneer.

"Kinky." He commented conversationally.

"You haven't seen anything yet." She mumbled, already losing her grip on reality and consciousness.

"Look into my eyes, Bella." Harry instructed, leaning over her.

She looked back up at him with a confused expression. "Green?"

Harry got the feeling that she was wondering why his eyes weren't red. He ignored it and gently slipped into her mind.

In her current state, Bellatrix had no real defense against Legilimency. Her thoughts were unfocused and had a dreamlike quality to them that was easy to influence. Since she was already thinking of Voldemort, Harry had no trouble guiding her towards the memory of him presenting her with the Cup of Hufflepuff.

He saw her fierce pride at being entrusted with such an important duty and her determination to protect the Cup with her life if necessary. He saw her eventually decide that, filthy beasts they might be, the goblins would keep it safe in the Lestrange vault.

Harry broke off the contact with a frown. Gringotts, Hufflepuff's Cup was in Gringotts. That was… unfortunate. It had been a possibility of course, but he had been hoping that the typical pureblood disdain for anything outside of themselves would preclude that option.

It was going to be a bitch to get it out of there. The goblins certainly weren't going to be helpful.

Meanwhile, Bellatrix had momentarily regained lucidity because he had focused her mind for her and was now looking at him in horror.

"NOOOOO!" She wailed heartbrokenly. "Master, I've failed you!"

Harry looked at the sobbing woman and actually felt a faint stirring of pity in his heart. It wasn't the first time that one of his prisoners had broken down, but they usually begged to be let go or to have their lives spared, a rare few even asked to die. Seeing Bellatrix sobbing because she had failed to protect Voldemort's secrets was worse somehow, in the same way that the soulful look of a kicked puppy was worse than the sulking of a human child.

"I'm sorry, Master." She continued to blubber, snot and tears now making a mess of her face. She'd obviously drifted out of reality again. "Please forgive me!"

Harry sighed. What a pathetic sight. An otherwise strong woman whose whole life was built on a cracked foundation.

"It's alright, Bella." He said softly, cupping her face to get her attention. "Just look into my eyes and all is forgiven."

She looked at him with such hopeful earnestness on her face that it made Harry keenly aware of what a right bastard he was. But it had been a very long time since he'd thought of himself as a nice person and, pitiful or not, Bellatrix had information he needed and this was the best way to get it.

"Green?" She wondered with confusion just before he slipped gently back into her mind.

He went looking for other stuff this time. Locations, plans, strategies, numbers, resources… all the stuff one needed to fight a war. As before, Bellatrix's thoughts were easily guided, scattered as they were by lack of sleep.

Much of what he learned were things that he'd already gotten out of his earlier prisoners, but some of it was new. Bellatrix had been deemed too… enthusiastic… to be sent on recruitment missions and so Voldemort had kept her close. She had seen quite a bit that others hadn't.

For one thing, he finally found out where Voldemort had been hiding for the past year. Fucking Russia of all places. No wonder he'd had so much trouble finding him.

Of course it was too late to use this information. Bellatrix's memories made it clear that they were moving elsewhere after the attack on Spellhaven, possibly to more than one place. She only knew where she was supposed to go, which was going to be investigated, but Harry doubted that anything would come of it.

There was something useful here though. The damn Death Eaters had learned how to blend in with the mundane world! A large percentage of the new recruits were apparently not as oblivious as the typical British wizard. That could be a serious problem, as it meant that simply keeping an eye on a given country's magical hotspots wasn't necessarily good enough. He would need to widen his focus when spying through the Palantír, for all the good that would do since he had no way of easily telling if someone was a Death Eater unless they had a Dark Mark, which only the inner circle did.

Speaking of the new recruits, there were so many of them! Well over a hundred.

This alarmed Harry considerably. The sheer number of Imperiused attackers the other night had already implied that there were disturbingly many of them, but it was still an unpleasant revelation. How had he gotten so many to join up with him in just a year? How could he have gotten so many to join up with him in just a year?

The magical world was tiny, there were probably not even a hundred thousand witches and wizards in the whole world. While it was true that it had a far larger percentage of dubious characters than the mundane one, Voldemort should not have had this much success in his recruitment efforts, not with his reputation and sketchy track record.

Next up was the security measures against detection that Voldemort had devised with the help of Augustus Rookwood. The former Unspeakable had apparently deduced that Etal was a creature of wind and developed several wards that blocked his senses.

That was just fucking peachy. He really needed to deprive Voldemort of that particular asset as soon as possible. Intelligent thought he might be, Voldemort seemed to be focused on raw combat power while leaving the innovative thinking to people like Rookwood and Snape. Maybe he should off Snape too? It wasn't like he was useful as a spy for Dumbledore anymore with the way the Death Eaters had been reorganised.

Another worrying thing he learned was about the mysterious assassin that Lucius Malfoy had hired to kill him in the second task of the Tri-Wizard Tournament. He could finally put a name to the man thanks to Bellatrix. Goran Gojkov, a Serbian-born wizard with no connection whatsoever to… well, anything apparently. Just a wand for hire.

The mercenary had left Voldemort's service by now - something that had fiercely stuck in Bella's craw since she considered serving the Dark Lord the highest of honors - but he had been the one to suggest restructuring the Death Eaters into a modern type terrorist organisation and he had acted as a trainer for them as well.

If that was all it would be one thing, but the way that the man had come into Voldemort's brief employ in the first place was far more disturbing. Some unknown had hired him for reasons unknown to help Draco Malfoy on whatever task the little blond moron was on, which just so happened to be restoring Voldemort to physical form.

Someone was playing games from the shadows.

Harry told himself that just because the vampires were the only group of shadowy manipulators that he knew of didn't mean it was them. Still, the suspicion persisted.

The last notable thing he learned pertained to Voldemort's snake familiar, Nagini. He had already known about her from the others, but they hadn't spent as much time around the snake as Bellatrix. It was not a natural species of serpent for certain. The damn thing was the size of an anaconda, if not bigger, and potently venomous on top of it. Moreover, she was also significantly magic resistant, intelligent and surprisingly stealthy for such a large creature.

An especially important memory of Bellatrix's regarding Nagini stood out from the rest.

"She is beautiful, Master." Bellatrix was saying, casting admiring glances at Nagini as she slithered by.

"She is part of me." Voldemort boasted.

Harry nearly lost control of his Legilimency probe at that one. It almost sounded as if Voldemort had turned Nagini into a Horcrux… but surely he wouldn't? A living, mortal creature as a Horcrux? Even for Voldemort, that was a pretty damn cavalier attitude to be taking with one's soul!

And if Nagini was a Horcurx, then that meant that there was only one left unknown, most likely either the Sword of Gryffindor or the Diadem of Ravenclaw.

Harry rummaged around Bellatrix's mind for a while longer, eventually pulling out with a frown. Bellatrix paid frustratingly little attention to the details of Voldemort's actions unless specifically told to do so. All of her focus was on how great he was and what she could do for him, rather than on what he was doing.

She really was the blunt instrument he had said she was a few days ago.

The restrained witch blinked and burst into a renewed bout of sobbing as she realised that she had unwittingly betrayed her master yet again. Fortunately it didn't last long. The lack of sleep hit her like a brick and she passed out mid-sob.

Harry looked at her and shook his head with a sigh, then he unbound her and levitated her to a cell with a proper bed. There might still be more use he could extract from Bellatrix, but probably not through Legilimency. There was no more point in depriving her of sleep.

"So it's in the Lestrange vault?" Tonks asked sourly.

"Yep."

"Which my aunt hasn't had access to since you annulled her marriage?"

"I doubt that Rodolphus was able to renew her vault access in the time that they've been free, soooo… yep."

"So even if I morphed into her and went to Gringotts, the goblins wouldn't take me to the Lestrange vault?"

"That sounds about right."

"And even if I could accurately morph into either Rabastan or Rodolphus from your memories of them, we don't have the right vault key."

"Mhm."

"No chance that the goblins would let me in without a key in if I asked nicely?"

"They'd laugh in your face and insult your intelligence."

"We're going to have to break in by force, aren't we?"

He didn't blame Dora for scowling. Goblins might not be terribly dangerous out in the open, but they were very dangerous underground. And they took it personally if anything was stolen from their vaults. Getting captured by goblins for attempted theft would be worse than fighting them to the death, especially for the girls. Flitwick was part goblin and almost definitely not the result of an unlikely love story.

Probably a moot point though. They were too powerful to be kept prisoner nowadays.

"I'm not seeing any alternatives." Harry admitted.

Doing to Bellatrix what he did to Narcissa continued to tempt him as a option. Having a double agent high up in Voldemort's ranks would be incredibly useful, not to mention that she could have swiped the Lestrange vault key from Rodolphus.

If only there weren't so many problems making it non-viable… It would take months, maybe even a year or more to completely bend her to his will and it was doubtful that Voldemort would just accept her back without suspecting anything. Unlike Snape, Bellatrix didn't have the subtlety required to hide her true allegiance behind cunning Occlumency.

"Wonderful." The metamorphmagus said sarcastically. "And they already hate us."

"Couldn't we bribe a goblin to bring it to us?" Fleur interjected.

"I'm not sure." Harry said thoughtfully. "Goblins are greedy little buggers, that's true, but they also have a lot of pride in their security and they resent us. This seems like one of those 'all or nothing' situations and the odds of it going well are less than ideal.

"Meaning that we can't risk it." Tonks said sourly.

"Not with the current standing we have with Gringotts and our lack of knowledge on the possible consequences." Harry agreed. "But at least we know where the Cup is even if we can't get it yet. And if my suspicion about Voldemort's snake is right, that leaves only one Horcrux left unaccounted for."

"Which we have no leads on." Fleur pointed out.

"We know it's in Britain." Luna said.

Harry frowned at her. "How do you figure? I agree that it's likely seeing as all the others were also in Britain, but we don't have any information one way or the other. If I was Voldemort I would definitely hide at least one somewhere else. Frankly, I'm shocked he hasn't hidden them all over the world."

"He isn't really hiding them, though." Luna countered dreamily. "It's pretty silly to cut your soul into pieces and then keep it so close if you wanted to hide it."

Harry's face went slack as it slowly dawned on him that Luna was right. It was silly. More to the point, why would any vaguely intelligent person hide items of such critical importance in places connected to them, making it easier for enemies to find?

Slytherin's Locket, put in a cave where he tormented his fellow orphans with his early understanding of magic.

The ring, in the dilapidated shack where his maternal relatives had lived before he'd killed them.

The diary, given to Lucius Malfoy to protect. The face of the pureblood aristocracy that would have sneered at a halfblood Tom Riddle, turned into a servant.

Hufflepuff's Cup, given to a proud daughter of House Black that had devoted herself to him completely.

Nagini, to commemorate his return from death.

Harry's own murder had been meant as fuel for his final Horcrux, as if to demonstrate how wrong the prophecy was to foretell the coming of an enemy who could destroy him.

It all fit. Voldemort wasn't hiding his Horcruxes, he was using them as trophies to mark his victories. The instructions for creating a Horcrux in the Secrets of the Darkest Art even specifically stated that the item used had to be of great personal significance or else the soul fragment wouldn't bond with it. It was only logical that something similar would apply to where they could be placed.

A Horcrux was more than just an object that prevented final death. It was, quite literally, a fundamental part one's being, a connection far deeper than even the subconscious. No amount of basic common sense would allow Voldemort to simply put one into a box and bury it somewhere nobody would ever find it. No matter how clever he was or how great his will, he could not do it.

Harry felt properly embarrassed by his failure to realise this before. Had he not keenly felt the far-reaching consequences of soul manipulation himself? He may not have ever split his own soul and thus did not have firsthand knowledge of what it was like, but that was no excuse. All that research into the nature of the soul, only to overlook the potential ramifications of Horcrux creation on one's behavior? Unforgivable. He hadn't felt this embarrassed since… well, since the time that Adrastia had told him that performing the Joining on an unaware bed partner was not a harmless way to enhance sex, but at least there he'd had relative ignorance to plead as an excuse. This was just a pure failure to think .

He grabbed Luna by the face and kissed her thoroughly, making her squeal in surprise.

"What screw do you think she knocked loose this time?" Tonks asked as the intense snog continued.

"I don't know, but I'm starting to feel left out." Fleur replied, giving the metamorphmagus a pout.

Tonks looked at the way that Harry was assaulting Luna's mouth and concluded that it might go on for a while. Might as well find a pleasant way to pass the time.

"Alright, hop on." She said, patting her lap.

Fleur needed no further encouragement and daintily plopped herself into the indicated spot, immediately initiating a passionate liplock as if trying to outdo the other pair.

Several minutes later, all four of them were a bit disheveled and a lot horny, but Harry began explaining his epiphany before the clothes could start coming off.

"… which means we can narrow down the list of possible hiding places massively, all thanks to Luna's insight." He finished.

"Do I get a reward?" Luna asked excitedly.

"Sure." Harry was bemused but far from unwilling to accomodate her.

"Can I shave your chest and eat pancakes off it?"

Harry's smile became a bit fixed as he was assaulted by memories.

"Don't you remember what happened the last time you wanted to try that?" Tonks asked the petite blonde pointedly.

"I said I was sorry." Luna sulked and looked at Harry with big, hopeful eyes. "I won't mix up the whipped cream and the shaving cream this time."

"Or you could, you know, use a spell?" Harry suggested.

"But where's the fun in that?"

August 6th. Unknown location.

"Potter is obviously baiting a trap for Riddle and he is more at odds with the Ministries of Magic than ever." Baranar noted. "The situation is escalating."

"Indeed." Tao agreed stoically and looked towards Bjomolf. "Do you intend to stop running interference for Riddle now?"

"Yes." The ancient vampire nodded.

"I do not like this." Neferu said with a small scowl on her beautiful face. "For centuries we avoided dealing with the likes of those two. Always have they been deemed too dangerous and unpredictable. Now, at the most dangerous of times, you have suddenly decided to play games and risk exposing us all."

"It is exactly because of how dangerous this time is that we must deal with Potter. Riddle is a akin to a rampaging dragon, powerful and dangerous, but one-dimensional. Potter, on the other hand, is already poised to become one of the pivotal figures of this world's future. Our attempt to make an ally of him has failed, now we must strive to establish a cautious understanding."

"Your unsubtle use of that Serbian mercenary is hardly likely to achieve that." Neferu sniffed. "You must know that we seem like the natural suspects to him, given what he already knows of us."

"Unsubtle?" Baranar repeated with a snicker. "Ah, the follies of youth. Don't worry, my dear, you'll learn."

The Egyptian vampire bristled with irritation at his mockery.

"Ah, I see." Ophelia nodded, cutting off the brewing argument. "You intend to start helping Potter now, and not hiding it as well as you could. You are hoping that he will be confused enough by the mixed messages to ask to speak with you again?"

"Exactly so." Bjomolf nodded. "All our plans are set and the death spiral poised to begin at any moment. Potter has already gone off-script more often than anyone we have ever encountered. Left uninformed, he might very well turn our barely controlled death spiral into a free fall. Hopefully, my little nudges will put him into a receptive mindset."

"And if they do not?" Neferu asked, her pride still smarting due to how she'd overlooked the ancient Viking's true plot.

"Then I suppose I will have to let him in on Contingency Plan Ragnarök."

"We are not calling it Ragnarök." Tao said flatly.

"I am the oldest, I get to name it." Bjomolf argued.

"Your attachement to the vestiges of your humanity is revolting."

"Just let the old man have his fun." Baranar sighed. "You know how nostalgic he gets about the days when he could swing an axe around and scream about Odin or Valhalla without feeling like a fool."

"And it is apropos." Ophelia shrugged uncaringly.

"I hate you all, it is important to me that you understand this." Neferu bared her fangs at them. "I long for the day when I can at long last stake you out for the Sun."

"Teenagers." Baranar sighed, smirking mockingly at the late teens-looking female vampire. "Can't even make it a century or two without slinging around empty threats."

"Children, stop bickering or I will turn this apocalypse around." Bjomolf said sternly.

Ophelia and Baranar snorted at both his dad impression and the ridiculous notion that events could be 'turned around'. Tao remained stoic and Neferu briefly sneered.