Hermione Granger and the Theft of Magic

Chapter 35: How to Be Free

[A/N: Once again, thank you to Calamity Owl for beta-reading this chapter.]

Lord Selwyn awoke with a splitting headache for two reasons. First, the hangover from the previous evening after he celebrated the extended demise of the Pink Bitch. Second, the manor's alarm ward was screeching.

He grabbed his wand and staggered over to the window. Just beyond the gates, three wizards in hooded cloaks hammered the wards with spell after spell, the flashes of purple and teal lighting up the predawn darkness. Selwyn recognized those cloaks, having worn one himself in service of the same Dark Lord. He knew how these raids worked, so he wasn't surprised a minute later when he confirmed his floo didn't work. There were still a few members of the Department of Magical Transportation who were willing to be victims of the Imperius Curse for the right price.

Selwyn spat out a curse and pulled out one of his own robes. He had no idea what he'd done to deserve this, but he was damned if he'd die in just his pants. After hastily throwing it on, he stormed out the door just as the wards finally fell. Now that he was closer, he recognized his assailants: Jugson and the Carrow Twins. Without the family or wealth of the other Death Eaters, they'd always done more of the dirty work.

"We served the same Lord during the war," Selwyn shouted, trying to ignore the pain from the loud noise. "Why attack me now?"

"You should have thought of that before killing Umbridge," Jugson said. The Carrows giggled wheezily, the sound alone making his skin crawl. "Sure, you got your blackmail material back somehow, but everyone else wasn't so lucky."

"What do you mean?" Selwyn asked. "The blackmail material was all safe!"

"He has a funny definition of 'safe,'" Amycus said with another giggle.

"Oh, it's at least as 'safe' as he is," Alecto added.

"What are you talking about?" Selwyn asked.

"Does it really matter?" Jugson asked. "You've incurred a debt, Lord Selwyn, and your peers have called it due. It's time to pay."

Selwyn gritted his teeth and raised his wand. His second-to-last thought, as he swung it to aim at his own head, was that he couldn't take more than two of those three bastards on a good day and today was not a good day. His last thought was "Reducto."

~~~~

Director Rufus Scrimgeour stared at the weary Auror awaiting him in his office when he arrived at precisely 7:58 a.m. "It's never good when they send you to talk to me," he said. "They know I'm not going to get too mad at you. Is Sue..."

Harry smiled ruefully. "Talking to her Aunt? I'm afraid so." He wasn't proud of how Scrimgeour cultivated his fame as the Boy-Who-Lived to make the DMLE look good, but he wasn't above leveraging that treatment to save his colleagues from the occasional messy meeting.

Rufus unlocked his office door and gestured for Harry to follow him inside. He dropped his briefcase on his desk, sat down in his office chair, and gestured for Harry to sit on one of the wooden chairs in front of his desk. "Have a seat, son. What fresh Hell have you brought for me this morning?"

"It started around 3:00 a.m. when we got a call from the Leaky," Harry began, swallowing annoyance at this man calling him "son." "Dolores Umbridge and Ludo Bagman were murdered."

"Merlin!" Scrimgeour said. "The former Deputy Undersecretary is dead?"

"Yes," Harry said. "She was tortured extensively first. Bagman was found bound in Japanese fetish style and beheaded. I don't wish to speculate on that discovery."