Blood Vengeance

Chapter 11

Published: 7/6/2022

Harry was dragging when morning came. He had a few naps, but Draco's spasms and shakes kept waking him up. The first shift healer was very surprised to find him there. He had a similar heated conversation about Draco being in restraints with her, where she completely rescinded the healer's directive. He also ensured that they put a security guard outside his room and some wards up. Harry did not like leaving him alone, but they needed the manpower. Fuck, he had so much to do.

"Draco?" he called. "I gotta go to...."

"Get the fuck out of here. I don't need you, Potter," Draco hissed, staring at the wall.

Well, he couldn't say that he was surprised. Draco was as prickly as a porcupine right, now. "I going, but there's a guard on duty. He's not an Auror, but we got to try to track down DEK and I need the bodies."

"I don't fucking care," he mumbled.

"I know. I was going to send a message to your mum... do you want me to pass on anything?"

Draco trembled and Harry could see a few tears fall. Draco didn't answer, though. Harry waited nearly a full minute before he asked him, again.

Draco finally said, in a more regulated tone, "Just tell her I said be safe... and I love you."

Harry's insides squirmed a bit, as Malfoy's pale, thin neck immediately went red as he realized his slip. He said, "I love you." You not her. Harry pretended like he hadn't noticed.

"I'll tell her. I'll try to dissuade her from coming, especially alone. I won't be back till late tonight. I'll leave instructions with the orderlies on how to contact me, if you need something."

"I won't."

"Yes... of course. But I don't know when I'll be done."

"I don't want you here."

"I know, Draco, but I'll come regardless. Please have the healers contact me if they try anything like restraints, again."

Draco tightened up and just stared at the wall, defensively.

"Take care, alright... and I'll try to get back as soon as possible," Harry said and finally left the room. He gave the staff instructions, sent a Patronus to Narcissa and Apparated to the Ministry. He luckily caught Mike and Terry before they left, and sat down his team in their case room. He spelled clear the board and wrote in big letters:

1. Diagon canvas – Terry & Mike

"Alright, guys. I wanted to get the team on the same page before you went out. Places to focus," Harry said, taking charge. He had been doing this all along even under Proudfoot, but now he was the official Lead. Of course, they never had much to go on before Malfoy was captured and nearly killed.

"Good idea," Terry said, in approval and Mike nodded.

"Ron already told you about Diagon, right?"

"Yeah, we figured we'd start at Gringotts and work our way to Eeylops."

Harry nodded. "That's a good baseline. Call on Mockridge for assistance if the goblins give ya any problems. Suggest that if they don't feel like cooperating, then they are complicit in covering up DEK's killings."

"Gotcha," Mike said, pulling out a notepad. Ron and Terry already had one out.

"We also got Slug & Jiggers to check out. Malfoy goes there. Ask them about the Healing Draught, too. Confirm which shop it came from and pull buy lists, if possible. It's not restricted, but shop owners have their own mental records. Press all the potion shops on the image and that they need to summon Auror assistance if he returns, immediately."

"We holding back... that it's DEK?" Ron asked.

Harry grimaced. "Don't release it as official that he's our subject, just wanted for questioning in connection. If we get more than memory pulls, then I'll bring it to Robards. I don't want the photo released to Proudfoot. He can pull some shenanigans that we don't want to deal with. Next is Twilfitt and Tattings. The Malfoys frequent there. Ron interviewed him already, but redo with the photo."

Terry and Mike both nodded, and scribbled some notes that Harry couldn't read.

"The quidditch shop across the street isn't as big of a target, but that's where DEK grabbed Malfoy. Talk to anyone who might have noticed DEK stalking him last month. That's the big thing. Malfoy only leaves his house, presumably about noon, on the first of every month. Spends maybe thirty minutes at Gringotts and walks Diagon for maybe another half-hour to an hour and leaves. It's not an easier pattern to stumble across. Someone reported his actions. Malfoy said that he occasionally gets quills and books, but Eeylops was the last one he directly said he frequented."

"Doesn't mean that the other shops didn't notice," Mike said.

"Very true, but those are the hit points. Walk the whole mile, just to make sure," Harry said. He felt a little guilty holding back about the massage shop. He could stop by tonight.

"Did he go to Knockturn?" Ron asked.

Harry shook his head. "He didn't indicate that he did. Hold off on that. Any questions about Diagon?"

"I think we got it," Terry said.

"Alright, Ron... you're still heading to Ollivander's, 'kay?" Harry said, as he turned and wrote on the board:

2. Ollivanders – Ron

"On it. Just waiting for his shop to open."

Harry nodded. "I got the ID. Maple, 10-11 inches, and I'm leaning toward dragon heartstring core."

Ron nodded. "Maple isn't hugely popular, but it'll take a while. You want me to hover, or leave?

"Your discretion. We do have a lot to do. Actually, could you drop by our research team?" Harry asked and didn't wait for Ron to answer when he wrote:

3. Lung-fill Curse and Trace-Blocking - Research

"Trace-blocking isn't that hard," Ron said, as he wrote them down.

"I know, but it's new information and that Lung-Filling Curse is fairly unique. We don't have much on DEK in the way of spell-work besides Apparation and Crucio."

"As far as how young DEK is, Apparation might lead... somewhere," Terry pointed out.

Harry hummed. "A splinched or unlicensed jumper? I like it. Add it to the list, Ron. Next is me."

4. Scotland yard – Harry

"I'm meeting Stebbins from Muggle Relations to set up inter-department cooperation. Mike... is the hard evidence ready to be sent?"

"Righto, boss. Fingerprints, bootprints, tool specs and other muggle items. I duplicated pics of the tools, too. Got a few hairs and fibers, but I don't want to compromise our case by destroying crucial evidence. The blood evidence is iffy. Could easily be the victim's or someone else's."

"Thanks. Muggles work slower, so I want to get started. We also got a possible muggle-restricted drug usage. Still waiting on St. Mungo's for cooperation, but Scotland yard might be able to locate missing muggle drugs," Harry said, and turned back to the board.

5. Warnings sent out – recruits / Harry

"I thought we did that?" Mike said.

"Well, it's time to scrub the lists, again. I'll stop by the recruits and issue the orders, which leads me to the next task."

6. Pull records – Harry

"I went through a few hours of the memory last night, and I'll try to do a few more hours tonight. But DEK said specifically that both his parents were killed... so... we're looking for an orphan from this past war or the first."

"Voldemort's followers liked killing off the whole family for that reason... revenge. Shouldn't be too many," Ron said, sighing. Instead, he wrote some angry words on his notepad.

"It might be more than we think. He didn't say murdered... he said, 'You destroyed my life. You killed my parents.' Not that they were official targets by Death Eaters, but DEK lost his parents somehow. DEK could even be a Death Eater's child, or their parents were Kissed, committed suicide or died of something else. DEK is unstable enough to consider their parents dead... due to them."

Ron took another deep breath. "Bloody hell."

"Yep, but we can start making our lists, and cross off or demote as alibis and evidence comes. I'll stop by archives and pull death certs. Which leads us to our biggest background task. We have names... too many. We have to cross-reference, rank suspects. I am willing to bet 1,000 galleons that DEK will be on one of our lists," Harry turned and wrote:

7. Processing lists – MOP, Hogwarts, wands, archives

"This is always what we need to be working on, if there are no other tasks that have priority, so guys... when you're done at Diagon, unless you find leads to follow...."

"Homework-time," Terry grunted and nodded. "Right-o. We can get the recruits to help with some of it, increasing/decreasing priority as they find relevant info."

"Exactly. Does anyone have any other sources to request/add to our collection?"

Ron shrugged, but Mike said, "We already pulled DMLE records of violence against Death Eaters... we ruled out a bunch, but we have more information."

"Right, add 'em."

"Request an Apparation-violators report from Edgecombe," Terry piped up.

Harry wrote "DMLE/DOMT" on the board after archives. "Great, guys. So, the priorities of our lists will be: high, medium, low and dead. We do not remove any name off the list. We can get more suspects from the dead, and we know the war records weren't well-kept, so leave all possibles there. As far as determining priorities...."

Harry wrote three columns below #7 and in the first: Age 17-23, orphan, no education, MIA, DE interaction, wand match. In the next column, he wrote: Age 16-30, criminal record, only one parent dead, no OWL/NEWTS, and in the last column, he wrote: Age 30+, alibi, graduated, confirmed ID, non-parent family members killed.

"Right... that's a big list. Our primary profile is a young, of age, orphan, with little to no education, whose family was affected by Death Eaters, has a maple wand and, most importantly, guys, he's in the wind," Harry said and pointed to the MIA. "This guy is off the radar, or someone would've found him in our records. So, stress that to the trainees working the case.

"Secondary profile hints will expand the age group to encompass the use of Aging and De-Aging Potions. We have our guy. He's visibly young and inexperienced, and there were no signs of Polyjuice Potion or glamours. It's not to say that we can't move suspects up or down at our own violation, but our initial run-through should be for those. For example, I hit several of those primary profile marks, but my ID is confirmed and I have an alibi."

"Do you?" Ron joked, and Harry rolled his eyes.

"You aren't to take even my name off. I'd be put in low priority, as we have our suspect's picture from both Malfoy and Twilfitt. So, got it?"

"Sounds good. Should we add mental instability to the lists?"

Harry nodded. "We'd never get St. Mungo's to release names. If we find evidence, increase priority to investigate. Alright, we also have two more tasks that we can tackle as the list is worked. We sh-"

"What about... female suspects?" Mike interrupted

Harry nodded. "Keep them on and assign priority accordingly. People can change who they are, and anyone can be a killer," he said, sadly and then wrote the last two tasks.

8. Re-canvasing crime scenes

9. Interviewing potential targets

"Harry? Re-canvasing? You think we missed something?" Mike asked, a little prickly.

"We probably did, no matter how good we are. We might have misinterpreted something or didn't consider something. But most importantly, we have a picture to press the muggles on. The kid didn't just randomly find that place. Push out Apparation jump point checks to half a mile and look for patterns. There has to be a pattern. Who wants point on that?"

"Oh! Me!" Ron said, he always hated homework. He also was great with the muggles. Harry wrote his name on the list.

"Fine, don't start those until tomorrow, and lastly... we need to head off DEK. We need to check up on former DEs and their associates. Interview, inform and recommend precautions. Find out what they know. Tell them that DEK takes them from behind and put more protection wards up. Anyone got anything else?"

They shook their heads and looked pretty impressed. Harry was just as proud of them. They knew their shit, too.

Harry walked over and wrote the number "3" in the corner of the board. "DEK is hunting, he knows Malfoy is alive, and his time is running out. DEK's going to try to work faster. If I had to guess... three days is all grace period we have to find him, before he moves in on his next victim. Then the clock starts over."

The room was somber at that, even for just Death Eaters, but Harry sent his team into action. It was a race now, and they were really behind.