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The arrival of the Daily Prophet at Buckingham Palace did not go unnoticed. The entire Royal Task Force made a very noticeable entry into the palace, and the mages joined them in the Queen’s private dining hall for an emergency meeting.
"What do you make of this?" asked the Queen, before even sitting down to her first cup of tea. "No, Dobby. No whiskey this morning. If I start, I will see double-doors where none exists before noon!"
"Someone decided to do the cleanup we have been trying to do for ten years, your Majesty," said Frank Longbottom. We need to move to Diagon Alley as quickly as possible."
"Then go. Major, bring to bear all necessary forces. I want this clarified before noon!"
"Expect hourly reports, your Majesty. One of us will send you a magical messenger."
"Oh?"
"A patronus. You have seen one, once, when the dementors tried to escape Azkaban and we used them to protect your family. They can talk too, and repeat short messages."
"Yes, I remember. I will be expecting your updates."
The muggles took the fastest route to the Leaky Chauldron, coming in just as the children rescued by Harry made their way to a much enlarged dining room.
"Hey Tom! Opening an orphanage?" asked Sirius.
"Might as well. Got some three hundred and fifty kids here today. Can you guys help me feed them? That might stop them from turning into cannibals. These kids have been kept on crap and dirty water for months!"
The mages and muggles began helping Tom. Shortly, a work chain was established, with Tom at the kitchen, the mages helping him with some basics, and the muggles distributing plates of food, juice, and cleaning up the occasional spill or dropped food plate.
In the kitchen, as the pressure began to drop, Frank looked at Tom with questioning eyes.
"Where do they come from, Tom?"
"The kids? There was that nude boy that came late last night, leading them in. Told me to feed them, payed for room and board for a year right off the top, and left. Told me if I did a good job he would patronize my business. I need that patronage, Mr. Longbottom, I need it bad. Business up-stairs has been poor, and the bar is not that frequented anymore since witches and wizards can go in the muggle world to get their daily dosage of liquid poison."
"Nude? Black hair hanging to his bum? Green, vibrant eyes?" asked Sirius.
"Ya got it, lord Black. You know him? He told me his name’s ‘No-name’."
"Yes, I ‘know’ him. Did he demonstrate anything out of the ordinary?"
"Ya, he turned into an ice-blue phoenix. Did not recognize the variety so spent a few minutes before opening this morning to look it up. An ice phoenix, the book said. Who’s he? He is hung like a donkey, by the way, puts me to shame. And no, I did not do anything to look at it, Lord Black, he walks with it dangling there naturally as if he never learned modesty and has nothing to hide."
"There, I agree. He never learned modesty, and even managed to pervert my son into being an avowed nudist!" exclaimed Frank. "I have yet to make Neville wear clothes in the house, and outside when the spring comes!"
"Yes, he is a wild animal, and Draco tells me he told him once that if God wanted humans to wear clothes, they would be born with diapers. What can you say against that argument?" said Narcissa. "I hear Shawn’s nudist tendencies have been shocking the teachers at Hogwarts. He regularly walks the venerable institution’s halls bare as a Jay bird, making the girls cry in shame and the other boys are jealous. At fifteen, he is no longer a boy and gets a spear pole at the mere feeling of a breeze. We all know how drafty that castle is!"
Tom snickered at the image.
"So, who is this so charming and influential nudist? Charming, because I have never met such a well-mannered boy, abstraction made of his... lack... of dressing code."
"My godson, Harry James Potter," replied a red-faced Sirius. "Do you need us or can we go talk to the children? They might have some information for us."
"Go, I will handle the cleanup of the kitchen with a couple of well-chosen domestic charms."
Sirius and the others made their way to the dining room, to find the muggles mingled with the children. The commander was talking to a group of older boys. He waved to Sirius to come to his table.
"Hey, Lord Black, this guy there is Timmy Goodwind. He is the oldest, at sixteen. The customers at his old dig were busy killing him when that kid barged in, gutted some, and freed him from the roaster. He healed them all, inside and out, and then took them to this place after one of the other kid told him it might be a good place for the night. He says their savior made a wood pile of the bodies and then they all vanished. He then set that place on fire. From what the others told my men, that place was a hell-hole. I will pressure the Queen to give him a medal."
"So he can pin it on his bare skin?" asked, ironic, Sirius.
"Nude?"
"Ya, I did not get to that yet. We were always nude in that place, so another nude kid did not stick in me face."
The commander looked at Sirius. "Godson?"
"Yes. Let us keep this under wraps, please, and you too, sonny. I do not want it known it is him, yet."
"I will not tell. But we can not stay here. And most of us lost our family to these bone-faced idiots."
"I might be able to offer a solution to this, young man. I own an empty house near the Forest of Dean. It is usually empty except when I go on vacation with my son for a week or so. So, there you go."
"That is a nice offer, Narcissa. I know your house is big, but enough to lodge three hundred fifty kids?"
"Oh yes, if they are willing to share bedrooms. I have one hundred and fifty bedrooms in that place, some of which have not seen an occupant since the middle-ages. The house-elves keep them in top condition, but they are finding the work boring. No better way to make them regret their peaceful existence than to throw in three hundred fifty kids!"
Shortly, a patronus appeared at the Queen’s audience room, where she was reading the metropolitan police reports on the Diagon and Knockturn Alley incidents of the previous night, while paying token attention to the Romanian ambassador’s unending monologue on the need to improve trade. The report, delivered by a Husky Dog patronus, was simple enough.
"It is our search target."
The Queen immediately understood whom the target in question was. But the ambassador of Rumania, whom was more shocked at seeing that bright, shadowless, ‘dog’, and unknowing or having discarded as drunkards’ wild imagining the (re)-emergence of a magical court in Great Britain, froze any thinking process when said imaginary ‘dog’ talked!
"Your Majesty, I must retire. I do not feel too well. I suspect I must ask for an escort to the nearest hospital. I must have been poisoned at my last meal. I am seeing things, hearing things... that just can not be!"
The Queen, having been trying to find a way to get rid of the flowery-talking but immensely boring ambassador, gladly acceded to his request, letting out an explosive breath of relief when the ambassador left the audience room.
"If a patronus could wear medals, I would award one to that dog!" she said to her chamberlain. "I was getting ready to strangle the Romanian ambassador, and damn the diplomatic consequences. It delivered the kind of report I want: To the point, in a single, let us see, four-word sentence!"
It took a couple of hours to organize the transport of the children. The 502nd squadron being ill-equipped for this massive task, the 109th Transport group was mobilized, and seven Chinook and five Apaches helicopters were called into service, not to mention the Harriers that insured high-altitude cover. Seven city busses made their way to the decrepit entrance of the Leaky Cauldron, were the children boarded the busses for a quick trip to an urban park nearby. A superb demonstration of military discipline followed, as each helicopter landed, loaded, took off, and hovered two hundred feet off the ground. Once everyone was back in the air, an arrow formation progressed toward the forest of Dean.
"Let us go into Diagon Alley. I want to get the pulse of the public," said Sirius. "Frank, you send your patronus with the report."
Shortly, a tiger patronus appeared in the Queen’s audience room, shocking another long-winded ambassador into submission. The report was even more to the point than Sirius’ had been:
"Three hundred and fifty children rescued."
"If this pattern continues," said the Queen to her chamberlain as she watched the ambassador of India leave on shaky legs, "I will have a squad of patroni to get rid of importune visitors."
"They might get used to it."
"I hope not. I have been able to do more this audience day than in any other over the last forty years!"
Sirius led the mages and the SAS guys into Diagon Alley, walking with purpose toward a group of aurors.
"Report!" he thundered, using a commanding voice that made the SAS guys want to crap their uniform.
"He would create an army of ghosts at the training grounds, with that tone," said one of the men. "I almost had a heart attack!"
The auror did effectively crap his robe, turning ashen at the tone employed by Lord Black.
"Lord Black! We have just finished interrogating those that saw anything using veritaserum. All we managed to figure out is that the guy, a young boy, maybe ten or eleven, walked out of the Leaky Cauldron or near it, and proceeded to do a cleanup of the street, a sweep, the muggles call it; The number of people found smacked against walls or hanging upside down on store signs left us in shock."
"It is more the number of bare-assed adults we found, Sir," commented another auror. "Modesty is tempered by hypocrisy it seems, as maybe only one in fifty wore underwear and their bits were on display for all to see. I have had ladies hysterical for their lost intimacy, and quite a few males with over-inflated egos that showed nothing to worry a baby size-wise. I, for one, will take with a lot of salt the ‘bigger than a donkey’ bragging I have heard from some of the denizens of our world from now on."
"Ya, the last bugger I freed is my neighbor. He is the size of my two-year old, and that is with some work of the imagination! Could not resist: asked him where he found his shrinking soap!"
"As funny as this is, I need to know what really happened?"
The lead auror repeated, almost word for word, the news report of the Prophet, the comments made by Tom at the bar, and the comments and reports the SAS had heard. So, in essence, nothing new.
"Is Gringott’s open?"
"No, Lord Black. There is a sign telling everyone that last night’s events has produce a sudden influx of business in the inheritance department and that all Goblins were tasked with updating the vault contents in accordance to the wills and the laws of magic."
"Wonder what that means?" asked another auror from the side.
"Simple, really," said Frank. "The one that gutted these people inherits their assets and titles as per right of conquest."
Sirius bleached. He had a good idea of how much power Harry welded, but disposing of that many and automatically inheriting their assets was going to be another nightmare, in the coming months, when Harry finally came out, if he ever did, that is.
"Do you have a list of the dead?"
"Yes, Lord Black. Some are known Voldemort sympathizers, others virtual unknowns; a couple were on the side of the light; and finally, some were rich, others poor, and the vast majority in the middle. Here is that list. It is precise as we read magical signatures, whom persist for twenty-four hours after death."
"Where can we read the best magical signature of the boy?" Alice asked.
"Down Knockturn Alley, in that hole that used to be Bethesda’s Bed and Breakfast. The kid seemed to have expanded a lot of energy there."
"You mean Bethesda’s Kiddy Brothel?" asked Sirius, with an acid tone that would have corroded stone.
"We were never sure, Lord Black. We heard rumors, but each time we raided the place, it was perfectly legitimate."
"You should have interrogated the kids before going into the alley, auror."
"Kids? What kids? And I do not trust kids when it comes to giving proper witnessing accounts!"
"Tell this to my face the day you ask my godson a question, and you will find Voldemort probably took lessons from the Black family, the amateur he was!"
The auror backed away, and pleaded with his eyes for clarifications.
"The kid that did all this also freed the children from Bethesda’s grip and moved them to a safe place, acting so quickly last night you guys probably showed up an hour after he had left Diagon Alley. By the way, you guys either have a serious leak, or are so slow the news reporters outrun you to the facts. Everything can be found in the early morning edition of the Daily Prophet!"
Just then, a coin in the lead auror began beeping.
"Oh shit! Not another crisis! I need to pee bad!"
Taking the coin out, he read: ‘Little Hangleton’ on the coin.
"Damn it, what is been happening! I have not slept all night, and now I am told to take my team to Little Hangleton. There is nothing there worth mentioning! Not even a decent water hole!"
"Go rest, we will handle that crisis," said Frank. "We are done. But tell us what triggered this first?"
"England is covered by a widely spread magical detection grid. From the sequence in which a magical event is detected, it allows us to pinpoint a general area for an event. If we had more, we could track portkey activation, apparation, and just about anything else. But the grid is somewhere in the order of one detector every one hundred square miles. That is already a lot, but the issue is that magical energy fades over distance, as anyone trying to track an apparation quickly discovers. All we can do is draw a circle from the detectors, and try to estimate the location."
"Okay. I will inform the Queen of the new event and move our task force into the area."
"Thanks, Lord Black."
The task force left with eight muggles by side apparation, landing in the market place as the shoppers were beginning their daily routine. They heard the fire engines rush by, heading for an isolated place slightly off the edge of the village.
"Let us go! I have a feeling the muggles are going to need our help," said Frank.
Repeating the porting process, much to the disgust of the muggle SAS members, they quickly reached a dirt road and saw a manor burning white-hot, while the firemen were busy setting up their equipment and trying to start a pump to extract water from a nearby stream.
"That fire is not likely to be put out by the hoses. Might as well pee on it," said Sirius. "Let us get closer. Maybe a collective aquamenti would help, but I have my doubts."
The four mages progressed with the curious to the hastily set red tape with ‘Fire Zone – Hazardous’ repeated over and over blocking the passage.
"Commander, help the firemen set up their hoses. They are clearly outstripped by the fire."
"Yes, Sir!"
While the muggle military took to their task, Sirius applied the aquamenti spell and his wand began sprouting a powerful jet of water. Soon the other three wand users were joining him in his effort, but they quickly noticed the water did not even reach the flames.
"We need something different!" said Alice. "Let us try sand!" She quickly replaced the aquamenti by arenasmenti, producing a flow of sand that began sandblasting the blaze. Just as the firemen noticed the impact the mages were having on the fire, a powerful blast was heard across the road, while the mages felt a magical blast that flattened them.
"What the hell?" asked Sirius.
The mages ran back to the dirt road, jumping obstacles like deer on the run, and reached the source of the blast in time to see an ice-blue phoenix disappear.
"Damn it! Damn it all!" thundered Sirius. "We missed him because of the distraction produced by the fire in that old pile of crap!"
"Err, who did you miss?" asked the fire chief, wondering if he was not dealing with a new pyromaniac.
"My godson, the target of the Royal Task Force I am heading, that is who. He has been evading us for ten, almost eleven years now."
"Sirius, are you sure?"
"Oh, come on! Can you not read that magical signature? He has destroyed something here, and that destruction triggered the explosion. The kid has been doing a task we are unaware of, but he is putting his all into it."
Hidden behind the hedges, Harry listened to the tall, dark haired man talk with mounting curiosity. He had a smell he knew from far, very far back. And so did the brown-haired one, and the two others. But he could not pull their names or their faces up. And what was a ‘godson’? He will have to ask his friend Draco, when he next met him. He flew up to a sycamore, and watched as the group examined what was left of the shack he had burned to ashes using fiend-fire. He had not expected the explosion to be so powerful, otherwise he would have directed its wind upwards rather than confine it. Nonetheless, the job was done. The evil ring that had been tugging on him since he had left London to head for the Forest of Dean was consumed. The only thing that had survived was that strange, highly polished rock, which he had recovered by diving in the still burning fiend-fire as a fire Phoenix to pick it up with his claws. A quick change to his favorite ice phoenix form after using the hot air to lift himself out of the danger zone, and there he was, carefully taking note of the verbal exchange between the four mages.
Once the mages left, after helping the firemen finish extinguishing both fires, Harry hopped down the tree, and as a dark silver fox, made his way toward his next destination: the forest of Dean and his friends. Ten days before the fatidic date, ample time for a fox that enjoyed running, hopping, and could catch mice on the run.
"So, Sirius, what do you have to report? You missed two scheduled report times."
"Sorry, we got diverted by a magical alarm, and landed in Little Hangleton, where we missed Harry by mere seconds. In fact he was there while we were helping the firemen control a blazing mansion, and he blew up a small building. The aerial photographs of the area show that the mansion was rather big; that the shack was a single-room... well, shack! The thing is, neither buildings showed up on the village tax rolls. We found traces of wards around both, but the shack was, by far, the most warded of the two. The wards carried the signature of one ‘lord’ Voldemort, while the fiend-fire was definitely Harry’s work. In fact, as we reached the shack to investigate the blast, we saw an ice phoenix port away."
And who owned these two smoking ruins?"
"There was a mention of a Gaunt home where the shack was, dating 1603, and the manor is recorded as having belonged to a lord Riddle. For some time both buildings had been abandoned."
"Your Majesty, there is a lord Riddle recorded as having died without descent in the annals of the Realm, as a tax collector for King George VI, your dad. As for the Gaunt name, it dates to somewhere around 1515, and was awarded a piece of land to farm for services of unspecified nature by the monarch of the time. I would not put it beyond that particular Gaunt to have been responsible for some witch burnings some time before," said the chamberlain with disdain. "The Gaunts can be traced back, via a series of name changes, to a certain Slytherin. The magical records show that the line alternated between short bouts of mages, followed by long bouts of squibs. Merope was a very low-power witch, almost a squib, and could barely survive on her own. The Gaunts and their ancestors were avid practitioners of inbreeding, according to the magical tree records. Merope was the product of the two siblings, brother and sister, of the previous ‘lord’ Gaunt. Her brother was a squib, and Merope seemed to have looked outside of the house for a mate. There, the tree records a Tom Marvollo Riddle, but apparently the Riddle family did not appreciate the prospect of having a kid out of their own pure-blood lineage either, and rejected Merope. There is nothing else on the books, except the date of death of Riddle, and the execution of his brother for murder. Their stout belief in blood-lines and the known dalliance with Merope, that had made the gossip rounds of Little Hangleton, designated the brother as the culprit. That Merope had disappeared some years back added credence to the rumors."
"OI! You have been working!" exclaimed Frank.
"The twisted tree of Magic inheritance fascinated me. I am sure if we could log all members of the muggles as you do with mages, we would find a similar level of inbreeding. Farms are filled with inbred siblings: brother-sister, daughter-dad, son-mother, you name it. Quite a few cousins of first degree even get church exemptions to marry! We regularly learn that a father engrossed his daughter because his wife was not available. There are whole farms run by close-knit family members, but how close-knit they are is kept under the bed sheets!"
"Not to mention orphanages," added Alice. "The staff may try to keep the possibility of sibling marriage to a minimum, but moving one child across the country while not allowing them to know if they have siblings, has allowed a rather impressive number of tragedies to occur. It seems siblings gravitate toward each other, if only because they share common traits, and interests in common fields."
"And the flat-out sex that goes on, sometimes with the knowledge of the staff, or sometimes without. Abortion is still, in many orphanages, a no-no, and children bear children, sometimes from their own brother, without even knowing so," added Frank.
"Even the Royals are known for that, Sirius. The sudden appearance of hemophilia in Our line with Queen Victoria allowed geneticists to track closely its progress through the royal families of Europe. The Tsarevich Alexis, the heir to the Romanovs, was a known hemophiliac," reminded the Queen.
"Anyway, back to Harry," began Sirius. "I need to talk to Minerva. The letter for Hogwarts should be leaving in four days, and I want the one delivered to Harry to have a trace. He is due to enter Hogwarts this coming September."
"Why in four days?" asked the Queen, whose curiosity about wizardry mail had been piqued.
"To give the owl time to fly to its destination, The owl must be able to reach the intended mage before his or her eleventh birthday. Depending on how far he or she is, it is either a horrendous flight or an easy one. The school being in Scotland, it is estimated an owl takes ten days to reach the northern tip of England on the North Sea. Ireland, Wales and other regions are closer."
"What about overseas students?"
"There are portals dedicated for the owls. Overseas students on the Hogwarts list are rare, and the bird is given a month to deliver its missive."