Chapter 5
While Lucretia took Harry and Tom back to the Leaky Cauldron, Kingsley got started on the next steps as discussed with Lucretia. He asked for Luke McCormack. The young junior auror would be a good fit for the investigation. Harry had interacted with him and seemed fine about it. The junior auror also was top of his class and not yet corrupted by the messed up things an auror would be exposed to during their career.
"McCormack, come to my office please. We have a new case."
The young man entered the office right away, a notebook and quill ready to take notes.
"Yes, Kingsley, what do we have?"
"The boy you brought up to the department of child welfare today, his name is Harry Potter. He was just abandoned by his muggle relatives at the Leaky Cauldron today for having magic. But there's some confusion on why he was left with them in the first place. Either way, we will have to open an investigation for child neglect, abuse and abondonement. We will be working with the head of child welfare on this. Mrs. Black Prewett is Mr. Potter's caseworker. I want you to go back to the archives and look for everything we have on the death of Mr. and Mrs. Potter that night, ok?"
McCormack took notes while Kingsley talked. So far, he had mostly shadowed senior aurors and did a lot of the footwork but it seemed like Kingsley wanted to involve him more in this investigation. When the Potters were murdered by You-know-Who McCormack had just finished his Newts and was waiting on his acceptance for auror training. Looking back, he was glad that the war had ended before he had joined the corps.
"Ok, will do. Do you want me to start right away?" Luke asked, already seeing his end of day slipping away.
"Yes, that would be ideal, just maybe pull the files and evidence today and start looking through it tomorrow. I will prepare the Wizengamot order for Gringotts," Kingsley answered. McCormack's head snapped up. It wasn't often that they prepared Wizengamot orders for the bank. The goblins prided themselves on their discretion and independence from wizarding regulation and any Wizengamot order could cause tension for the relationship between wizards and goblins.
"Yes, I know, quite unusual. Both Lucretia and I suspect that someone went rogue when placing Mr. Potter with his muggle family after his parents were murdered. We need to have a look at their vaults and wills to check if there's anything there. We did a familial analysis with Harry earlier. There's one living, magical relative who might be able to take the child in but we need to make sure that his parents hadn't taken other measures." Since Luke would be working with him on this case, Kingsley could be as transparent as this. It wouldn't do to keep him in the dark, since it could lead to clues or information being undiscovered if Luke didn't know what to look for.
"Oh wow. So this has the potential to be big. I will go down to the archives now then. Should we have a quick check in tomorrow before lunch?"
It was the usual procedure for an investigation team to have daily sessions where they would talk about the process and leads to follow up on.
"Yes, that would be ideal. I will be meeting up with Lucretia tomorrow as well. It would be best if we had a strategy by then. I will let you get to it, then. Thank you, Luke." With that, the young auror left to go down to the archives.
The archives were very far undergroung beneath the ministry and most departments had their own sections in it to store paperwork and other important bits and pieces. The department of magical law enforcement had a couple of floors of the archive levels since they were required to store all casefiles and evidence for up to 150 years, even after cases were solved. There were a couple witches and wizards working in the archives and most were probably starting to get ready to leave. Luke looked at his pocket watch and saw that it was already 5 p.m. and the archives closed at 5.30 p.m. Hopefully they would help him today and not make him wait till tomorrow.
When he got to the front desk, a witch he had seen in passing before in the cafeteria welcomed him.
"Welcome to the archives. May I see your credentials and how may I help you?"
"Hello, I'm junior auror Luke McCormack," at this, Luke held up his auror ID, "I am here to check out all evidence related to the murder of Mr. and Mrs. Potter on October 31st, 1981."
After the witch checked his credentials, she listened to his request and her eyes turned huge. Arguably, there was no case more famous than the murder of the Potter's 3 years ago. After all, it was what it took to destroy the worst Dark Lord the country had seen in recent times.
"Oh wow, what do the aurors want with those files? We all know what happened back then," she tried to get more information from the young auror. She couldn't wait to talk about this with her colleague during lunch tomorrow and the more information the better.
"I'm unfortunately not at liberty to share information about an ongoing investigation. Are you able to pull all evidence and files tonight?" Luke really didn't want to share the information he had with the witch in front of him. The gleam in her eyes told him that the news would travel faster than he could say silencio if he left it up to her.
"Oh okay, so don't tell me. Let me check how much it is and then I will send it up to your desk." The witch poutet and turned around to walk to a cabinet. She pulled one of the drawers open and it pulled out for a couple feet. She skimmed though the drawer until she got to the name Potter. The archives had a file up front for each case, sorted by the victim's last name. In the file they would find an itinerary for all files and evidence as well as the location of said files and evidence within their archives. The file she pulled out for the Potters was very thin and it didn't bode well. She took it over to the junior auror and they opened it together. There was only a single sheet they both looked at.
"Sealed, what does it mean their files are sealed?" Luke asked confused.
"Well, files can only be sealed with Wizengamot approval. To unseal them, we would need a Wizengamot order, unsealing them would take a couple of days. if you get the order tomorrow, we could provide the files on Thursday. But it says here that there was a connection to another case we have files for. Let me check real quick."
The young witch took the paper from the Potter file and walked back to her cabinet. She rummaged through it and pulled out another file, it being similarly slim. She took it with her to the young auror and when they opened it up together, it again only contained a singular sheet of paper that also had the words sealed on it. Luke took a closer look anyway. It was the file for the Peter Pettigrew killing. He shuddered, the case had been everywhere in the newspaper back then. Sirius Black, who everyone thought was the closest friend of the Potters, had attacked a mutual friend and cast a blasting curse at him in a muggle area. Killing Pettigrew and 12 muggles with him. When the aurors had arrived, Black had been found sitting in the street and laughing like a maniac. As far as Luke knew, Black had been sentenced to Azkaban for his crime.
"Ok, the files and evidence are also sealed. You might want to include this in your Wizengamot request, since both cases are linked," the young witch suggested. Luke nodded, thanked her and went back upstairs. He hoped that Kingsley hadn't finished his application for his Wizengamot request yet. They would need to write a much longer request now in order to unseal both the Potter and Pettigrew files.
"Wow, that was quick. Did they have the files ready?" Kingsley was surprised when Luke returned not even 15 minutes after he had left.
"I wish, we checked my request and the Potter files are all sealed. We uncovered a connected case, the Pettrigrew killing, but those files were also sealed after investigations concluded. We need to have a Wizengamot order to unseal them. The earliest we would be able to view everything would be Thursday. And that's only if we get the order tomorrow," Luke explained to Kingsley.
"Huh, well that is curious. I will include that in my request forms. Well ok. I guess that there's nothing more for you to do tonight then. I will get in early tomorrow, I still need to run something by the department of magical lineage. I want to analyse Harry's family tree before going there. You are more than welcome to join me in that. We also have to start a backround check on some people. Should we meet here tomorrow at 8 a.m.?"
"Yes, sounds good. Have a good night then, Kingsley. See you tomorrow."
Kingsley finished the Wizengamot order, adding the request to unseal both the Potter and Pettigrew files. The request had to be addressed to a special committee which consisted of 4 members of the Wizengamot and changed every three months. For the duration of their time on special committees, members of the Wizengamot were provided offices within a ministry and expected to be there each day. Kingsley should be able to push the request through tomorrow morning. Right now, the members of the special committee were Augusta Longbottom, Amelia Bones, Lucius Malfoy and Tiberius Ogden.
After he had sent his request of to the undersecretary for the special committee, Kingsley tried to sort his thoughts and take detailed notes for the files and tried to cover all his bases for the next steps he had chosen to take.
Harry Potter had been taken away from Godric's Hollow by Albus Dumbledore and left on his aunt's doorstep without the involvement of the department of child welfare. All files regarding the Potter's murder were sealed. Kingsley knew that Pettrigrew, Black and Potter had been best friends. The rumors were that Black had been the Potters' secret keeper and Pettigrew had confronted the young man who in turn decided to end another friend's life. The Blacks were known for their closeness to dark magic and the Dark Lord as well as more than a few cases of madness. Since the cases were connected, maybe Kingsley should talk to Lucretia about it tomorrow. She might have more information about Sirius, since she was his aunt. 3 years ago, Kingsley hadn't been involved in either investigation. He was part of the team that investigated the assault and torture of the Longbottoms. It had been really dark times with a lot of misery and despair back then. Kingsley sighed deeply, saddened to think about the war and all the people that had lost their lives.
Luke would start with the backround check on Severus Snape tomorrow and both of them would analyse the family tree and talk to the office of magical lineage. They needed to figure out if Harry's muggle family was actually muggle or not. If they were squib, a welfare check for Harry's cousin might be in order. This, he again had to coordinate with Lucretia.
If his requests were confirmed by the special committee, they would have to make an appointment with Gringotts as well.
Kingsley couldn't ignore his gut feeling about this entire case. His gut was telling him that this would be much bigger than a simple child abandonment.