Second Depression
"You don't remember anything, then?"
"No. It's absurd. It's like I'm stuck with all the worst experiences of it, but I've got no specifics."
"Dementors," Harry said. It looked like he and the prospie were the only ones taking him seriously. "That's how they're going to play it."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, the plan had three parts. It's like the boy who cried wolf. First, Justin comes in with someone who looks like Dean Thomas, who hasn't been seen anywhere recently, and he makes me look like a fool for not believing him when something strange happens, seeming to confirm his story, or at least that there's something going on. Have you ever heard of the townspeople effect?"
"What's that?" Justin asked. It seemed like the younger wizard had heard of it from the grim expression that was forming.
"It's a wizarding expression. The townspeople in the story should have known that a wolf was no less likely to appear after two false claims. Wolves in the area were not in any way impacted by the boy's claims. The townspeople, however, were. They had been made to look like fools twice and they wouldn't suffer it a third time. It's not just that they couldn't trust the boy to tell the truth. You'd think that even if they couldn't, one or two of them might go over out of curiosity, or they would have appointed a more honest kid to do the job. They had to punish him for lying, though, even at their own expense." He frowned. "I like the version of the story where the wolf is actually just one of the bigger dogs wearing a pelt or something, and the only one who suffers is the kid."
"The biggest problem is that the effect seems to stack, if that makes any sense. We were all tricked into thinking that we were tricked, and now it'll be a cold day in hell before we ever believe it again. I'm only in this because I was annoyed with Cherith from the beginning. I barely knew who she was- did you know anything about her?" The prospie shook his head. "That's what I thought. I talked to her department, and apparently the whole time, she's just been quietly doing her work and not really making waves."
"Is that a bad thing?" Justin asked.
"No, but it's a pretty good indicator that she was up to something the whole time. She started right after the war ended when we had a shortage of personel and no one really checked all of her background documents. Some less than qualified people were purged after that, but she just escaped their notice and never justified termination. I checked it all myself when I was in Records. That was what prompted me to get the Head Auror."
"You came to the right place," Harry said. "She said it to get me to try to prove her wrong, but she was right about how I can get committed to a specific theory."
"I couldn't help but think that you resented her because she's a nobody who came out of nowhere," he said.
"It's my business to know everyone in the department. If I don't know someone, it's unusual for that person to be assigned to a case with me, even joint-ex. It didn't sit well with me." He shook his head. "That doesn't matter now. I didn't want to trap you in any legal trouble, but now we can't get that signed confession out of you."
"I offered to sign a confession? I must have forgotten that part. Okay, I need you to catch me up on everything that I said."
"If we do that, then your testimony won't matter," the prospie said. "We'll be asked if we coached you and they'll know if we lied about it."
"I'm going to avoid testifying in court," he said after a moment. "One way or another, I'm not the star witness anymore. We won't be able to hinge everything on my testimony. We'll have to catch Marietta."
"She's long gone," Harry said. "That was the whole point of getting herself caught; it was so that she could get out. You said it was Zacharias who brought her up."
Justin hung his head, trying to think of a solution. He really wished his former self had written a note or something so that he would know what to do, but even then it would not be so simple. It was doubtful that even he knew how to solve the problem.
"There has to be something they missed," the younger wizard said.
"Marietta was the thing they missed, and they missed her on purpose," the Head Auror said. "What we need is to get all this exposed. We know that Brook used a Memory Charm on our witness, and that's an obstruction charge no matter what. The Hit Wizards have to have something on her, and that's how we're going to get her."
"That's just what they expect," the former star witness said. "She knows that you bullishly pursue leads like that, so she's going to put some kind of trap down that way. They don't have any desire to take direct action against you, but they're definitely trying to discredit anyone who says anything about the club."
"What are you suggesting, then?"
"We should be able to keep this from messing with the rest of the investigation if we play our cards carefully," Justin said after a moment. "If none of them know that my memory's been modified and she's disappeared, then they don't have any reason to lose confidence." He turned to the prospie. "Go back with a message from the top. Harry's protecting me personally, and everyone else is going to investigate every angle. Leave no stone unturned."
"That makes sense. What are you going to be doing?"
"There's one other person that they flashed right in front of us, someone we haven't even thought of checking out. We need to find Fletcher, and get him to say on public record that he was broken out of prison by Mr. Creevey, or someone who looked like him, and that Brook Cherith and I were there. That's the missing piece they're not expecting us to pursue. The problem is that his word isn't worth anything. That could have been why he was chosen in the first place."
"I can't argue with that," the Head Auror said after a moment. "That's how everyone knows him, is just this shady bastard who never keeps the same address. If you've heard of him, you wouldn't trust him at all. He was also a right bastard to me a few years ago, so chances are they want revenge on him as well."
"I tried to tell him, but Mr. Creevey kept using Testicular Torsion on me." He shook his head. "I'm sure that was Zacharias. He's the one who likes using Polyjuice so much. He must have figured he could get me barking up the wrong tree for a moment if he pretended to be a muggle with a wand."
"That, or it was an attempt to discredit your story down the road," the younger wizard said. "Most likely, someone is going to say that you were telling an unbelievable story in the first place, and now that all the evidence has disappeared, the only thing left is to see what to do with you for wasting our time." He left without another word. It seemed that everyone in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement was at least prompt.
"It's also possible that it was never Mr. Creevey, Dennis's father, but someone else entirely," Harry said. "You never would have known what he looked like."
"Yeah, I guess so," he said after a moment. "I didn't cock everything up, did I?"
"It's not your fault. It's ours. You're a witness; we're supposed to have everything under our control." He shook his head. "I don't want guilt; I want you to help us fix this. I'm betting that the goblins were telling the truth when they said they didn't notice anything. If Robards doesn't come back with anything to show for it, and that's starting to look likely, then no one is getting paid, not in gold."
"How do we track them, then?"
"Well, we'll have to cross that bridge when we get there. First, we'll go to Fletcher's old hideout, where he was found the last time he was arrested. Someone might have been observing him there."
They disapparated by side-along and almost immediately reached their destination. It was a tumbled-down cottage in the middle of the woods. A few spells had been used to make the place look a little more livable, but that was it. It was very much a hideout that probably no one would think was housing a known petty criminal.
"How did we catch him here?" Justin asked as he looked around. He had to admit, it seemed like a good idea to investigate the place, but he really had no idea where to start. There was a broken pair of right-handed scissors on the ground, but he couldn't do anything with that.
"Well, this probably comes as no surprise, but it was an anonymous tip."
"Okay, well, something else that's obvious, but I have to ask, how are we going to find traces of someone who was just observing him here?" He used the light charm and lit up his wand. "There's not a highly convenient spell this time, is there?"
"No, but I doubt that our anonymous tipper would have thought to get rid of his footprints. We can use those." He cast some kind of spell on a set of footprints he found outside, and then the same spell again in the cottage. "They're not the same. Now we can at least find out who our observer is."
"How will that help us? In order to get his testimony, we have to find him, not just identify the person who was watching him."
"Well, do you think that they're going to keep him tied up full time, or do you think they're going to offer him a deal, like they did with Zacharias and most of the others?"
"Now that you mention it..." There was a magazine open to a page about magical creatures, of all things, and something was nearly cut out. "Most likely, they would see him as they type who would accept the deal, but in that case, he wouldn't be able to come back here. So, wherever we find both of these footprints elsewhere, that's where his new hideout is. Where do we go looking, though?"
"Well, I've got a hunch," Harry said, joining him in staring down at the magazine. "It might have to do with why he was out here in the first place."
Without a cause to disagree, Justin simply grabbed his hand again, and they apparated once more, this time to the Forbidden Forest. He had never really explored the place, but when he looked around, he could see the castle in the distance. Rather than complaining that it would take forever, he decided to trust the main character a little more and look around for footprints.
"Oh, Firenze, it's good to see you again," his acquaintance's voice called out. He turned almost in disbelief, and yet, there was the centaur. "How is everyone?"
"We're a bit rattled by a disappearance to be perfectly honest. It is not our tribe's way to rely on outsiders for help, but I am afraid that I have to go against the others in asking for it. Have you seen Bane anywhere?"
"Well, you didn't have to tell me he was the one missing," Harry said, shaking his head. "I'm thinking I know who did it, or at least who we need to pick up as part of it." He cast another spell, putting a footprint on the ground. "Have you seen this man's footprint before?"
"I've seen the man himself. When he came to the Forest, I didn't think anything of it. Are you saying he's a suspect?"
"Either he is, or he's a terribly convenient witness. Did he have a problem with any of the centaurs?"
"During his entire teaching career, it would be strange if they never argued."
"You've got a great heart," Harry observed. "Someone as forgiving as you wouldn't have thought of it, but I think that Bane was taken by none other than Sylvanus Kettleburn. We found a crime scene where there were signs of someone having to use his left hand and being annoyed by that, as well as a few pictures of magical creatures who were suspected to have been involved with Lucius Malfoy's disappearance."
"Wait, what do you mean?" Justin asked. He had seen all the same evidence, but perhaps it was no surprise an experienced investigator could put it all together so quickly. "What magical creatures?"
"There was niffler fur discovered at the scene. It's not uncommon to know what those are or how to use them, but they're hard to manage, especially in large numbers. The public hasn't been told this, but there's a theory- well, I have a theory- that because Malfoy Manor had been apparently much lighter on gold than it had been before the witness protection program stepped in, Lucius took it with him, intending to make it look like the goblins were responsible while really taking the chance to stash it somewhere."
"I see," the centaur said, hand to his chin. "Sylvanus would have figured that the Ministry never would have thought to put any kind of protective magic to hide his collection of gold if they did not know he had it with him. The nifflers were the perfect way of finding him. What does this have to do with Bane, though?"
"Most likely, he's working with this underground criminal group that basically seeks to get revenge on people. He got Malfoy as a favor to them- it's possible he helped someone else do it in order to pay off a debt, so it's possible the only reason he's doing it is to get someone else out."
"Yeah," Justin frowned after a moment. "He could be doing the same thing I did, going after some real jerks just because if anyone deserves it..." He shook his head. "It's no excuse, of course."
"Well, I should think that what we really need to do is to expose this criminal organization," Firenze said.
"That's exactly right. We need to get to the bottom of this before it really matters how we think about it," Harry said. "They've been good at covering their tracks, though, and we've almost fallen into their trap, so we're trying to approach it form an angle that they're not expecting. Wherever they're keeping Mundungus-"
"I see... you must have thought that Slyvanus would have a base around here. Well, anything we found here in these woods, my brethren would have destroyed. They always took the policy of humans not being welcome terribly seriously." He frowned. "While he was here, though, he mentioned that he had a retirement house on a forested island, and he offered me the chance to go there with him. He said that I didn't belong with the tribe. In a way... I suppose I was honored. I always saw myself as loyal to right and truth instead of just to those around me, but I don't entirely think that was what he meant. Bane chased him off before we could finish our conversation though." He shook his head. "You might think that with my six limbs, I would not understand why he hated it so much to lose one and a half, but I empathize more than he can know."
Justin was sure horses and centaurs did not enjoy comparison, but he knew that it was a common practice in the muggle world to shoot a horse if it broke a leg. Apparently, physical therapy was that much harder if you had four of them, and even as valuable as horses were, you were worth more at the glue factory at that point. For a centaur, his human limbs were what distinguished him from a simple animal, even though they were in the 'beast' designation by their own choosing.
"Well, we should get over there," he said. "We'll make an effort to take him in without harming him."
They apparated where they were told to go and found Bane, almost unsurprisingly. He had something much larger than his own penis magically going back and forth in his anus constantly, which certainly kept him from leaving any road apples. The suffering on his face was indescribable. As much as Harry probably wanted to stay focused on catching their target, he could not help but release the captive, who seemed to hyperventilate in relief, only to have to be stunned.
"That was probably the right move," Justin whispered, still looking around. "He'll be able to calm down better when he wakes up. His testimony will be especially valuable for our case."
"That's probably true. All we really need to know from him right now, though, is when Kettleburn's going to be back."
"Do you think there's a chance that it was just someone else with Polyjuice?"
"There's a chance, but it's not important. Anyone who sets foot in here, we'll stun and take back to the Department. We probably only had Marietta escape on us because Brook was helping her. She could have messed around with the anti-apparation jinx or she could have come up with a new way of getting out. It would have helped in getting Mundungus out."
"He's not here."
"No, he's not, but that was kind of a pipe dream. If we at least get Sylvanus, then we've got a chance of getting the boss from him. We can convince him that we've already caught everyone else, because he probably has no idea how we found him here; we'll just say we got it from the other servants of the club. Maybe it's going to take some convincing, but he's not going to immediately assume that he's the only one we have in custody, and if we take the velvet glove approach, he's probably even more likely to talk, if we're right about him."
They waited, but nothing was happening. While they had assumed that Bane's captor was only out temporarily, it seemed that he had some reason not to return. Did he know somehow that a trap was waiting for him? The centaur woke up.
"Are you okay?" Justin asked.
"Wizards?"
"Yes, we came here to get you out, and to get the wizard who was holding you captive. Does he ever come back here?"
"Oh, he does, but only to feed me. He never let me out of that cursed trap-"
"Wait, never? However did you-"
"I didn't."
A moment of silence passed.
"Oh, well, if you want a moment, please, take it outside."
"I am afraid that after this much atrophying, my legs will not take me there."
It was true that he looked worse for wear, but it was not a chance either of the wizards had considered. Unfortunately, it was too late. The most they could do was get out of the way as Bane groaned. The explosion was practically deafening, and the centaur passed out again after.
"Well, at least we confirmed that he's coming back," Harry said, sighing. "Do you remember the incantation for an appropriate cleaning spell? It looks like he painted most of one wall brown."
"It's Scourgify."
"Scourgify. Hey, that worked; thanks. Scourgify."
With a few more, the mess was gone except for the smell, but that was only something to keep them busy while they were waiting. Justin decided to search the place for any physical evidence. So far, their only real advantage was that the enemy did not expect them to be doing what they were doing, but Brook could show up at any time and erase his memories again. Unfortunately, he found nothing good in the whole house, nothing that really pointed to the existence of the club, or anyone else who was in it, though he was sure someone must have visited, making sure that Bane was being punished.
"Footsteps," the centaur whispered. It was surprising how quickly and quietly he could get out of sight, even after not having been on his own feet for so long. In mere moments, the door was open and Harry stunned the man who came through, having to then restrain his former victim from stomping on him. It fell to Justin to explain how it was necessary to get more information out of him while the Auror secured his wand and used some spell to tie him up. He provided every assurance he could that the wizard would not get off easy.
"It's funny," he said as soon as they were outside. "We had to promise the exact opposite to Firenze."
"We didn't have to promise him anything; I could have arrested him if he refused to speak to me about something. The information he volunteered was valuable, but not something we couldn't have found out from one of the other centaurs, most likely. I honestly thought he would have volunteered the information even if no promise was attached to it."
"If I had to go one way or another... well, first we have to get the story straight, but then, after that, we need to start the punishments with the boss."
"That's not really my decision," Harry said. He apparated the suspect to London, then came back, rounded up the other witnesses, and brought them. Again, they were in the observation room. "Okay, you two, I know you don't know each other, but you'll need to work together here. Make sure he doesn't leave. At any point, Marietta or Brook might learn through an informant that he's here and try to get him out."
"Harry, what's all this?" an official asked as soon as he opened the door to the hallway. "Another suspect in this mysterious case? Are you sure there's really something here? I thought it was all dried up at this point."
"They won't be getting out of it this time." He went around the corner and through the door to the interrogation room, casting the waking up spell right as he entered. Sylvanus looked around, confused.
"What am I doing here?"
"Skip the ignorant act. You don't think we know what you were doing out there? You think you can convince us you don't know what was going on in your own home?" He pointed backward. "I've got a witness back there and he's furious. He's talking me all the way up to drawing and quartering, and I had to remind him that it's not my decision, and we normally use the Kiss when we want to get rid of someone."
Playing dumb was an exceptionally common, intuitive strategy, if Justin was right just from his impressions of the system. From the deep sigh of the official next to him, the suspect had either picked the very best defense for the situation just by accident, or that was what he had been instructed, but it was not working, it seemed. Harry's statements rattled him. If he had expected to get by because of name recognition or anything of that nature, he was almost immediately shaken out of that comfort zone.
"Look, just tell me what you know so far."
"That's not how this works. I can tell you that we brought in Edgecombe already. Things aren't looking good for her, though I don't know when her fate's decided. Right now, I just want you to be honest with me."
"If you've had any insight into this at all..." Kettleburn started, trailing off. "If you know what this is, then you know that I can only start talking if you can promise me that it's absolutely over. It gets so much worse if you speak... you don't know what their influence does to you..."
"It's beyond over," Harry said. "There's no one who's going to punish you for speaking out about what they've been doing. In fact, it's the opposite. I don't decide your punishment, but I can practically guarantee, in my experience with law enforcement, that it will get substantially worse if you're not honest with us."
He spilled his guts, naming several other people in the organization. It was true that he was on the fringe, somewhat, with his own torture chamber to manage for a separate prisoner, but he had been to the main club before. Having been forced to take part in the torture of several captives, all of his information was consistent with what Justin had said on official record; he even knew about Griphook. He swore up and down that he did not know the boss's name, even when reminded that it was probably the best thing that could help his case.
"I only ever had contact with this man named Creevey. You've encountered him, right? Please tell me you've arrested him- he's tricky. I don't know how he does it, but he always knows things that there's no way of knowing, even with the kind of Divination that centaurs practice." It was becoming increasingly clear he had lived in a constant state of panic for at least a year. Having himself given up to the club, the previous star witness supposed that he sympathized, and could not blame him. As long as he was telling the truth, then it was fair to reduce his penalty, even though he had to be brought in.
"Don't tell me he's going to get away with this," Bane muttered.
"He's not," Justin said. "I came in voluntarily; that's the only reason I'm on this side of the glass. Ever heard of Azkaban?"
"I see."
Lying did not sit well with him, but neither did conflict. The last thing he wanted was to have two of the most important witnesses fighting.