Harry Potter and the Prince of Slytherin

Chapter 46: Redux (pt 2)

A conference room in the DMLE
27 March 1994, 4:20 a.m.

James Potter struggled not to yawn as he made his way into the conference room. He'd been awoken by a Potter house elf twenty minutes earlier and told that his presence at the Ministry was needed urgently. And so he'd quickly forced down both a Pepper-Up and a Sober-Up while pulling back on the rumpled uniform he'd left lying on the floor a few hours earlier. He and a few co-workers had gone to the Leaky Cauldron for Happy Hour the previous evening for an early celebration of his birthday, and he'd had perhaps one too many. The potions would cure that, but he worried a bit about the state of his breath. That worry intensified greatly when he found Fudge, Bones, and Umbridge waiting for him along with the entire senior staff.

"Well, what's got us all out of bed so early?" he grumbled.

Amelia merely looked at him disdainfully, but the Minister was jubilant.

"Why, a miracle, Chief Potter!" he exclaimed. "A verifiable miracle! And we owe it all to Senior Auror Thicknesse here!"

"... We do? Could you perhaps ... expand on that?"

James was rather nonplussed at the praise directed towards Pius Thicknesse. The man had been a good Auror if a bit stolid, but he'd not been James's first choice for the open Senior Auror slot created after his own promotion to Chief Auror. Not that James held a grudge over that time in Third Year when "Thicky McThickhead" had hexed him into the Infirmary for two days over a harmless prank. But Amelia had vetoed James's preferred nominees, and Cornelius had a soft spot for Pius due to a stint as one of his personal guards, so Senior Auror "Thicky" it was.

"Senior Auror Thicknesse," Amelia said with asperity. "Would you please repeat your summary briefing for Chief Potter's benefit."

"Yes, Director," Thicknesse said professionally. "Yesterday afternoon, I received a communication from a trusted confidential informant who provided a tip regarding the possible location of Fenrir Greyback and his pack. Acting on this information, my team Apparated to the coordinates provided – an abandoned farmhouse near Dunny-on-the-Wold in Suffolk – and set up surveillance. While the tip itself was accurate as to the time and location, it was incorrect in one important detail. The provided location was not the base used by Greyback but rather his next target. It turns out that the farmhouse was, in fact, the base of operations for the individuals responsible for the July 31, 1993 Azkaban break-out. It seems that the werewolves had learned of this location and were planning to attack it in order to free the Death Eaters who were actually being held prisoner there by the very people who broke them out of jail!"

"What?!" James exploded in shock.

"Let the man finish, James," Fudge chided.

Thicknesse coughed politely in response to the glare Potter was now giving him. As Scrimgeour had predicted, the Chief Auror was angry at not having been brought into the loop earlier. Pius continued his report.

"Just before midnight, Greyback's entire pack, in the company of an unidentified wizard in a Death Eater uniform, Apparated to the same area and immediately summoned the Dark Mark over the house before commencing an attack against its wards. I made the command decision to first call for back-up and then intervene. As a result of fine work by the Aurors and hit wizards under my command, all the werewolves were either captured or killed with no injuries or casualties on our side, though the Death Eater unfortunately escaped. Apparently, he or she was an unregistered Animagus who transformed into a rat that was too small for us to target from the air."

With that last remark, James had a brief coughing fit, and he quickly reached for a glass of water as Thicknesse continued.

"We then turned our attention to the farmhouse, but before we could enter, there was a small explosion inside. This was apparently caused by a modified Portkey of the same type used to escape Azkaban, and the three individuals we had detected inside the farmhouse were able to flee despite being under the Anti-Portkey Jinx imposed by the Dark Mark! But more important was what they left behind: the comatose bodies of Rabastan Lestrange, Rodolphus Lestrange, and Augustus Rookwood; a corpse positively identified as belonging to Bellatrix Black-Lestrange; and a set of Pensieve memories that ... well, I believe they speak for themselves."