Liason
"How is she?"
Tina gave a soft sigh as she sat down upon the couch next to her husband of fifty-seven years, letting herself sink into the plush fabric and staring into the heart of the softly crackling blaze slowly turning to ash in the fireplace. For a while she was silent, as Milly - the youngest and most adventurous of their pet Kneazles - leapt into her lap, demanding attention which she readily afforded the grey cat.
"She's fine, out like a light. Took the Dreamless Sleep potion I offered her." Glancing to her right, she looked at her husband with a strained expression. "Did we do a good job with Theseus, Newt?"
Newt gave her an odd look - contemplative. It was that soft one, where she could tell that he was immediately asking himself the same question even before coming up with an answer. A quiet confession left him. "I don't quite know what you mean by that, Tina."
Her strained expression pulled a little further. "Stephanie isn't very happy for a girl her age. She's started occluding almost constantly, and only seems to have dropped it around us..."
A slight grimace flashed across her features as an unpleasant thought came to mind. A confession of her own escaped her. "She reminds me a little of myself at that age."
An uncomfortable silence settled over the room, broken only by the soft purring of Milly on her lap and the cracking flames of the fire burning across the room, laying a comfortable warmth across her skin. There was a momentary noise of shifting on the other end of the couch, before Newt's arm wrapped around her shoulder and held her close, providing a warmth that made the fire feel like a chill breeze in comparison.
"We did our best, Tina." Giving a soft sigh, Newt gave his wife a small smile, one that she returned. "And if we failed Theseus in some way, that doesn't mean we will fail Stephanie, no matter who she is."
The corners of her lips pinched at the double meaning. "I still think it was a mistake letting Dumbledore ask that of our family. The man has done enough damage with Grindelwald and his war - surely, he realises the damage he could do to our family after destroying his own?"
Newt's expression lost the somewhat boyish smile that he had retained even after all these years, and a soft sigh escaped him. "Dumbledore always though that there was good in someone, and he would go to immense lengths to find that good in them, even at the cost of other people. There's a reason he never faced You-Know-Who head on - he spent that entire time trying to redeem him and his followers, even if he had told himself he would fight."
Tina had to agree with his assessment. Albus Dumbledore had cost many their lives in Grindelwald's war with his inaction, but that would have been more understandable if it had been forced by the blood pact he had made with the Dark Wizard.
But it hadn't.
The pact had only prevented Dumbledore and Grindelwald crossing wands directly, but the two men's approach to the situation had been starkly different. It didn't pain her in the slightest to admit that Grindelwald was probably the smarter man - he had managed to engineer a way for himself to almost take over the ICW with minimal bloodshed, and had looked for underhanded ways at bypassing the blood pact they had made once he realised the mistake. He had realised that the wording of the blood pact they had made meant that it would only be enforced if the two of them crossed wands with intent to kill.
Dumbledore had done nothing of the sort, caught on memories of what was, not what would be.
It had taken thirty-three years for the pact to be broken.
And in that time Dumbledore had stood away and allowed Grindelwald to bring the Wizarding world, and the statue of Secrecy, to the very brink. It had spilled over into the Muggle world so much that the two worlds fought essentially the same war, just from different perspectives.
Tina had lost twenty years of her life to a war she didn't sign on to fight, and along the way, had nearly lost her own life, that of her future husband, her sister, and her brother-in-law.
That particular thought drew a grimace across her features - it had been a long while since she had thought of Jacob or Queenie, Morgana rest their souls.
"I never did like Freya." Her soft remark drew an equally muted hum from her husband.
"Neither did I, but you can't judge a person by the sins of their parents." Newt gave a heavy sigh, leaning over to give a kiss to the top of her head as he gently scratched behind Milly's ears. "That much is doubly true with Stephanie - look how she's turned out."
"... I'll work with her over the holidays." Another kiss found the top of her head, and Tina leant a little to her right, snuggling closer to her husband, a fond smile slipping onto her features. "I think she'll find good use for what I can teach her, given what doubtless lies ahead."
"I think she'd like that."
The Department of Magical Law Enforcement was the largest employer in Wizarding Great Britain.
From those who investigated the lowest crimes of them all - petty misdemeanours that caused no harm or foul were slid into the inboxes of the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts or the Improper Use of Magic Offices, whilst the worst of the work went to the toughest of the tough - the heavy hitters of the Auror Office.
Heavy hitters like Sirius Black III.
It had been 12 years since he had been awarded the post at the end of the war, when Amelia had been promoted from head of the Auror Office to head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement as Barty resigned in the wake of the scandal that was his son's trial. Sirius had only been an Auror Squad Leader - not exactly a fresh Auror, but hardly the most experienced veteran in the Department, that honour went to Alastor Moody.
Sirius had been in the Aurors for three years - and Alastor had chosen him to be the next head in lieu of himself.
Amelia had tried, she really had tried, but the grizzled Auror all but told her that he'd rather turn his wand on himself than take over as head of the Auror Office. But at the very least, he had suggested Sirius Black as his replacement, and Amelia had taken his word as gospel.
According to the Alastor, the Auror Office was an absolute nightmare at the best of times - and Amelia certainly shared the sentiment, given her half decade long tenure in the post. From 1976 until 1981, Amelia had held the title of Head Auror - a post that promised fame, riches and an almost guaranteed Wizengamot seat to just about anyone who wasn't in the posting for the period between 1970-1981.
Unfortunately - Amelia had held the post for half that duration.
And it was the half embroiled in open warfare.
Her job had been taxing, to say the very least.
Every morning, she would come into the Auror Office and summon those on duty for a briefing, and every time there would be a new gap in the crowd - a new family snuffed out overnight, a bloodline ended or a victim laying at home amidst the bloody remnants of their loved ones. They were always the worst - the ones who chose to retire and seclude themselves, utterly defeated - broken.
Then there were those like Caradoc Dearborn, who had taken the murders of their loved ones as motivation to wreak havoc upon the Death Eaters.
She lamented that she never had anything to give to the Dearborn's to bury.
Every day, she would push past the pain that came with watching her colleagues - her family that she fought side by side with, the family that she was ostensibly in charge of protecting - mourn those who were stolen in the night, and push through to make Great Britain safe. She would send them to the far corners of the UK, have them fight the enemy and save lives where possible, or clean up the danger and prepare what was left for the families of those who had not been so lucky.
Many Aurors never made it past that point - every Auror remembered the first time they had to knock on a door and tell those who lived within that their loved one was possibly dead, and needed to be identified, or was dead, and that their remains were ready to hand over. Amelia's hadn't been a fun one - not that any were to begin with. Her first had been an 18-year-old Muggleborn witch from Holland, Johanna, who had attended Hogwarts with Amelia - they had slept in the same dorm for seven years, and had graduated together just six months prior.
It had been one of her first homicides - and the first one where she really understood that being a woman added a new dimension to the war, a new form of violence that would be used against her.
Johanna had been strangled to death. Not killed in any of the usual ways that Death Eaters had killed their foes, not with magic. Whomever had killed her had raped her, then strangled the life out of her as they did so, and judging by the expression on her face, she had fought to survive until the very last second.
Amelia had managed to make it home that day before she collapsed in upon herself.
She never found out who had killed Johanna - but she had promised Johanna's parents that she would find out who had taken their daughter from them, and that promise had outlived the pair. That meant that all she had was a promise to herself - that she would find the man who had done it, and crucify him for it.
Every evening, she would go home and recall the events of the day, no matter how much she didn't want to. She would stare at the bottles of aged Ogden's, desperately wanting to drink away the painful memories of the day, but living in constant fear that it would be the night that her wards were pelted by spells, and her small flat would be invaded by those who had killed Johanna.
And every morning, she would wake up, and curse herself that she hadn't drunk herself free of the pain last night.
In '76 she had ascended to the prodigious position of Head Auror after Damien Opfer had been forcibly retired when he lost both his legs and his left arm - being seriously burned in a housefire that had killed his wife and left him to care for his 8-month-old daughter alone. Opfer had been Head Auror for three weeks. His predecessor had been Ignatius Claridge - and he had served for eighteen months before being assassinated in the Ministry Atrium, mid-press conference by his bodyguard under the Imperius curse.
The first three choices had turned down the offer, and Amelia had been offered the posting out of sheer desperation. She, a young Auror with five years’ experience in the field, whom had fought a handful of skirmishes, and had, for the most part, been relegated to the office and to clean up duty. The risks had been unimaginable, but she had been acutely aware she was to get no better chance than this to progress in the Ministry, so she had taken the offer.
She had moved to Bones Manor the night of her promotion, ignoring its state of disrepair in favour of the strong wards - and that same night, her apartment building had been gutted by Fiendfyre and thirteen had been killed. The day after, Edgar and Elsie had moved their respective families in to the manor - and that night, their houses, too, had been destroyed by Fiendfyre.
The only thing that had been salvaged from the flat fire was a single photograph, kept under a stasis charm she had not placed - a photograph of her and Johanna, taken in their graduation robes in the clocktower courtyard. A single message was scrawled on the back - 'You're next'.
It had been her promotion that had gotten her brother and her parents killed - they had only been such major targets because of her position as Head Auror, although with Edgar's involvement in Dumbledore's group, it was a miracle they had survived so long. She had been forced to go picking through the remains of her parent's cottage to find any scraps of her childhood worth saving. A handful of books she had salvaged from her old room - the Bones family copy of Tales of Beedle the Bard had been laying on Dorothy's bedside table, next to the four-year old's head.
Worst had been the bottle of Firewhisky on the counter - the moment she had gotten near it, it had exploded, sending a shard of glass straight into her right eye, necessitating an emergency trip to St Mungo’s. It had left her partially blind in her right eye - but in turn had added the monocle to the woman now known as Madam Bones.
The war had ended two months later, and Madam Bones had watched with cold rage and internalised grim pleasure as so many Wizards and Witches had come before the courts and cried foul. Watching a pompous idiot like Lucius Malfoy beg on his knees, praying to the court to believe his claims of the Imperius curse, had been cathartic. She had paid extra attention in every trial - recorded every memory in tedious detail, before cataloguing them all away in her pensieve for further reference. Every whimper, every plea, every slam of Barty's gavel.
The Lestrange trial had been... Damning. Alice had been her friend - regardless of her involvement with Dumbledore's group. She had been a colleague too, an Auror. Seeing the lot of them sentenced to what would be certain death was nothing short of justice.
And then Bagnold had fucked it all up.
The first of the Ministerial pardons had come down a year after the end of the war, and they had been questionable, but probably genuine. Marnus Clevet had been under the Imperius curse when he had assassinated Ignatius Claridge, and it was little surprise that he had been placed under it again after he had been cleared of all charges. Crouch had confided in her as much, but if he had started pardoning people likely under the Imperius with such dubious evidence, it would set a standard the more influential could use to escape harsh sentences.
Then the second wave of pardons had come down a year later, and Amelia had nearly dropped her cup of tea when she had read the list, marching straight to Bagnold's office, only to run into Barty already there, yelling at the poor secretary trying to tell him Bagnold was out for the day. It wasn't her finest moment, but Amelia had joined in the shouting at the secretary - especially when he tried to say that the Minister's decision was absolute.
The third wave had been the death knell of Bagnold's government - men like Malfoy, Nott and Avery walked free, holes in their pockets, but out of Azkaban robes. Bagnold's pockets, by contrast, grew heavier and heavier, and the conflict of beliefs boiled over in the Ministry Atrium in August of '84. What had started as a simple protest had turned into Amelia and Barty publicly berating the Minister for perverting the course of justice. Impeachment proceedings began to work up, and evidence was compiled that would put Bagnold in the same cells that Malfoy and his ilk had just left.
Bagnold's reputation had never recovered for the remainder of her term in office - all three days of it.
Three days later, she had been publicly lynched in from the fountain of Magical Brethren by a crowd of over a thousand. Cornelius Fudge had succeeded her as Minister with a majority of over ninety percent, but had been unable to reverse the pardons - or perhaps unwilling. Regardless, the damage was done, and Amelia had stared across the Wizengamot chamber at the so called 'Traditionalists', half of whom should have been rotting on the rock.
At the very least, half of them looked half dead, and would live with nightmares of the Dementors for the rest of their lives after three years on the rock.
It was no consolation to those who had lost everything in the war.
Bagnold's lynching had, at the very least, been a stark reminder to those who had taken bribes under the table that mob justice was still a thing - and that the people very much would let it be known when they had enough. Neither Amelia, nor Sirius had ever laid a single charge for the lynching of Bagnold - not even when it was proven that it had been a Killing curse to end her life.
Sirius had been in a dark place - being forced to balance the Auror Office's increasingly scarce budget, and occasionally dipping into pocket, as Bagnold and Fudge made more and more Aurors, who had fought for the fat cats in office, redundant or unemployed. A vicious cycle began - the Auror Office's funding would be cut, Aurors would be laid off or suffer pay cuts, and inevitably the contracting size of the department would justify the next round of budgetary contractions.
Caught between possible redundancy or loss of employments, and the chance to take their leaving bonuses whilst they could, men like Alastor quit the Ministry, disgusted with the direction it was taking, whilst those like herself and Sirius fought a losing battle to keep law and order, whilst raising the scarred survivors of the war. Susan spent more time between '87 and '91 with her than with Elsie as Amelia's sister spiralled deep into her depression after her husband's death on Christmas day of '86.
And Sirius had the job of raising the 'Saviour' of the Wizarding world - a title she loathed. It did no justice to those who had fought Voldemort, and it did even less to those who had paid the ultimate sacrifice to stop him.
"Sorry about the wait - had a run in with the Toad." Speaking of the man in question, Amelia looked up from the tea she was drinking, briefly glancing out the window into the atrium and the 'Fountain of Justice' as a select few had taken to calling it after '84, before spinning her chair around to give a tired smile to the Head Auror. When she had been Head Auror after the war, it would have been unthinkable that she would work on holidays, but here both of them were on Boxing Day. A quick sip of her tea preceded her reply, given as the Head Auror poured his own tea from the pot on the desk.
"Still trying to get you to give up your requests for Veritaserum logs on the Wellbridge case?" Sirius made a noise of unimpressed agreement.
"Still. And she's still trying to push that anti-Werewolf legislation she drafted back in December." Amelia gave a small snort a moment before taking a final sip of her tea, setting the nearly empty cup back down on the saucer and turning her attention fully to the Head Auror as he took his first sip. The chance of Sirius Black greenlighting anything written by Dolores Umbridge was about as likely as hell freezing.
"She'll never learn." A hum of agreement came from the man, and Amelia hit him with the real punch of the conversation. "What did you learn about Pettigrew's escape when you went to the Rock yesterday?"
Sirius paused, his teacup half lowered from his lips, before he gave a weary sigh and took another, longer sip of tea, before setting it down with a clink. A grumbled complaint came out first. "I fucking hate going to Azkaban... Regardless, the Dementors gave us something we didn't learn before. Pettigrew had inside help. A man in a hooded robe."
"Well, that's something to go off." A sarcastic note infiltrated her voice as she sighed. "Only, what, thirty thousand suspects left?"
"If we take into account Polyjuice, then you can just about double that. But the Dementors say that they couldn't see under his hood." Amelia stared at Sirius for a handful of seconds, before giving a heavy sigh and taking off her monocle to polish it.
"That could mean a number of things, including anything from illegal imports to an Unspeakable doing it. If it’s the former, that's a problem for Arthur and the Trade Regulation Office - if it’s the latter... I'll need to speak to Croaker about it. I'll need to do it anyway, but I'll touch base and see if he had anyone on the island. I know they were doing a number of studies on the wards, which I signed off on." Giving a groan, Amelia steepled her fingers and rested her forehead gently on the top of the steeple. "This could get a lot worse, Sirius."
"I'm well aware, Amelia. But I've got to meet a portkey at eleven, and then I have a meeting with Cyrus this afternoon, so I'm going to need some sanity left." With a soft groan, Sirius stretched in his chair, before shrugging off his coat, leaving him in his vest and button up. Giving her a tired smile, he glanced down at the pages of documents in front of him on his desk. "So - what's on the agenda today?"
"International Portkey from Seattle, Magical Congress of the United States has now arrived."
The automated voice rang loudly through the atrium, pulling Sirius from the paperwork he was carefully reading over - regardless of whether he liked it or not, he was a part of the Wizengamot, and that meant he was obliged to read over legislation, even if it was the drivel that he had before him. The Wallenby family, bless them, wanted legislation passed to open up trade with the RIM - Regno d'Italia Magica, or the Kingdom of Magical Italy - but the patriarch was hopelessly naïve and blunt about things.
The bill would almost certainly pass if Sirius reworded eighty five percent of it into proper language, but that meant sitting down and actually rewording eighty five percent of it.
Which, needless to say, wasn't exactly high on his list of priorities.
What was high on his list of priorities was the meeting he was due to have with the woman who had just arrived on the portkey. Wearing a similar outfit to the one she always seemed to wear, Porpentina Scamander shrugged her shoulders a little, adjusting the trench coat she was wearing, before reaching down to the figure on her knees next to her. A few quiet words passed between them, before Porpentina helped a girl Sirius had not been expecting to see, to her feet, albeit she remained doubled over, catching her breath.
He could sympathise - international portkeys sucked.
"Director Scamander, a pleasure. Stephanie, I didn't expect to see you here." A polite nod accompanied his greeting, and Porpentina returned the gesture in kind.
"Head Auror Black, it has been a while. Last time we spoke in person, it would have been.. What, August of '84?" Sirius didn't miss how the American Witch's gaze went over his shoulder to the horrible statue that sat in the middle of the Atrium. The blunt reminder of the situation that had occurred that month was one that pulled his lips thin, and prompted him to opt for a single word response, before shifting his attention to the other figure in search of a change of topic.
"Quite. Steph, I wasn't aware you had left the country." Stephanie Scamander straightened up after a second more of deep breaths, and Sirius felt himself draw a breath of his own. In the several months since he had last seen the girl, she had turned into something of an aristocratic beauty, the kind one would expect from one of the older houses. Pale skin, high cheek bones and dark eyes to accompany her raven hair - a coldness that he hadn't gotten from her when they had briefly spoken at the start of the school year.
Merlin's fucking Beard she looks like me.
"I wasn't aware the Ministry kept track of all its citizens so carefully." Her response was cold, firm and - perhaps most alarmingly - held a tone of danger to it. The stark bluntness of the response that would not have been out of place coming from one such as Narcissa told him enough - Stephanie Scamander had started occluding, just like Remus had mentioned offhandedly over drinks after Christmas with the Tonks'.
Giving a small grimace in lieu of voicing his realisation, Sirius turned his attention instead to what he had said - his wording had been a bit searching. "I was just curious as to why you turned up on a Portkey you weren't nominally booked on."
"I spent the holidays with my Grandparents in Mount Rainier National Park." The matter-of-fact wording drew a small hum from Porpentina, who leant down a little and whispered something in Steph's ear. The raven-haired girl paused for a second, then several more, before she seemed to slouch a little, and expelled a breath. As her gaze rose, those same dark eyes met his own, but this time there was a sparkle of something behind them - life that had been previously absent from them. "I went over the Muggle way, but came back on Nana Tina's portkey because it was easier."
Her voice was no longer flat, it held life and emotion behind it. In a heartbeat, it became apparent that whatever Porpentina had said, it was probably something to remind her that occlusion wasn't for perpetual use. That was how one became a slimy bastard like Snape, a spy whose reliance on his occlumency permanently damaged his psyche, and who now used it as a crutch to keep his mind in order after the horrors he had been party to.
"Well, I hope you enjoyed your holiday." He was hardly going to humiliate the girl by commenting on her mistakes in the middle of the ministry, and in front of the family she very clearly held closer to her heart than her parents. That would almost certainly undo whatever progress she had made. Not to mention, Porpentina would fillet him for it. "No need to worry about the Portkey, I'll sort that out for you. How are you planning to get home?"
"I'll apparate her home, then come back myself, Sirius." With a nod, Sirius acquiesced, and the American Witch grabbed her granddaughter's arm, and with a sharp crack, apparated away. Sirius was no stranger to the Scamander home - he'd been a few times in the past few years to catch up with Stephanie's parents - and that let him appreciate just how magically powerful Porpentina Scamander was. That was easily a three-hundred-mile jump both ways, and barely a minute later, Porpentina Scamander cracked back into existence right next to him, barely out of breath.
The Witch's amiable expression had turned to a pensive one, her lips pressed into a thin line as she stared into space for a handful of moments, caught in thought. When she finally pulled herself from her thoughts, her gaze was intense, staring at Sirius - and for a moment reminding him that he was very much the junior Auror in the situation. Porpentina had been doing her job since before he was born - and had been an Auror before his mother had been born.
"Dumbledore's meddling has gotten out of hand…" A softly uttered complaint left her, filled with quiet contempt, before she let out a weary sigh and fixed Sirius with a look. "I would advise keeping an eye on my daughter-in-law."
Well, that wasn't what Sirius had expected to hear, but if there was something he had learned from the Auror Academy, it was to never question your superiors on direct orders, even if the comment had him narrowing his eyes a little. If she had picked up something with Freya, then it would be worth looking at. "I'll do just that. Now, where did you want to begin?"
"Well - You did ask for help with the Pettigrew case. Perhaps I can pass on a bit of what I know about tracking Animagi who really don't want to be found. Then you can help us with this situation in Afghanistan, of all places."
Corban Yaxley was not an easily perturbed man.
He had faced the Ministry down at the Death Eater trials and he had walked away from them scot-free - and with monetary compensation from the Ministry gained in a defamation countersuit. It helped that he had spent his time as an Auror and a lawyer, ensuring to cover his tracks as best he could, leaving little trace of the man who had earned his moniker in the Death Eaters as the 'Grey Lord'.
Of course, he didn't assign himself that moniker, and he had been forced to explain it to the Dark Lord, and to assuage any hints that he may have been a potential rival. It had been some low-level imbeciles idea of mashing the phrase 'grey eminence' and his title as Lord Yaxley together, and it had nearly resulted in Corban's death.
He hadn't been happy, to say the least.
But the Death Eater trials had given him trouble, even without the conviction. He had been indicted, regardless of the fact that the court found him not guilty, which meant he was no longer eligible to serve as an Auror - something that Amelia Bones and Sirius Black immediately used as justification to lay him off immediately post-war. They were right, to their credit, but it still rankled that he had been punished without due course.
So instead, he spent his days slaving away in the Legal Department, analysing case records and handling files of a sensitive nature - which meant that he was in position to serve as perhaps the most valuable mole in the history of the Ministry. At his fingertips lay every address, every location, name, and birth records of every magical born into Wizarding Britain since the days of Queen Elizabeth I, and a few notable ones before that. If he wanted to, he could make it appear as if the Longbottoms had been tortured by Merlin himself.
This is why, he reasoned, the Dark Lord had sought him out.
Corban had initially been hesitant to respond to the summons of the Dark Lord - he had figured it to be a trap set by the DMLE or the Auror Office, but he had been equal parts horrified and relieved to learn that it was a genuine summons from his Master, who had cheated Death himself. The Dark Lord had been, paradoxically, quite pleased that Corban was still treating his situation as if it were wartime, and he still a mole, which he most assuredly was.
At least, that was what he told himself and the Dark Lord in equal quantities.
Whilst the Dark Lord had been less pleased to learn that Corban could not simply remove files from the record entirely, he had been remarkably amenable to the idea of Yaxley remaining exactly where he was, passing on information when requested, and scuppering efforts by the DMLE to pursue uncomfortable lines of inquiry. The visit by the Director of the Federal Auror Office of MACUSA a few weeks back had caught Corban briefly off guard, but once the requests trickled down to Legal, he had been able to piece together just what was going on - the Auror Office was requesting everything that they had on Peter Pettigrew, and the Pettigrew family as a whole.
Whilst it wasn't a lot that he had to send up, he had made a note of it, and had passed it to Augustus on their way out of work that evening, and he had watched as the Unspeakable's face briefly wore an expression more at home on a rabbit in a dragon's den. Years of service in the Ministry, hiding from shadows that did and didn't exist, had made the man utterly loopy in Corban's opinion.
Occlumency, and whatever the Unspeakables did down in their reclusive sublevel of the Ministry, clearly did not mix well.
But today's work was interesting - made doubly so by the whispers of Pettigrew being sighted in Edinburgh that had tricked down from the DMLE into Legal. Yaxley wasn't stupid enough to go rushing off with the information, given there had been hundreds of false sightings of Peter - turns out having an Animagus form that was one of the most common animals in the world was of great advantage to remaining hidden.
A junior Auror had even blown in a storefront in Diagon Alley in a panic, having seen a rat darting along a windowsill. So, rumours were little to go off.
However, this one had come from a curious source - Edward Tonks, the mudblood who had eloped with the sister of Bellatrix and Narcissa. Proper etiquette dictated that he could neither say her name, nor refer to her as a member of house Black, even if she had been restored to the family. Being disowned was something not reversed lightly, even if Lord Black had welcomed her back into the family following his inheritance of the mantle.
But being as he was Lord Black's cousin-in-law, Edward Tonks was likely meant to be a test for Corban, trying to see if the information managed to work its way to the Dark Lord. It was a frankly amateurish plot from the DMLE to test his loyalties, especially given his former employ in the department.
The real interest of the day's work sat before him on the desk, and as Corban's eyes flicked over the pages, he took in every potentially useful bit of information, locking it away in his memory banks and keeping his occlumency shields firmly raised. Tonight, he would report everything to the Dark Lord, then wipe his mind of the thoughts, so that no one could tell that he had even read the files in the first place.
The Bones family manor is located in Wiltshire, nine miles nor-west of Sailsbury. Three registered occupants.
The Black family estate is located on the isles of Scilly, Cornwall. Two registered occupants.
The Scamander family estate is located in Northumberland, five miles south of Kielder. Three registered occupants.
The Greengrass family estate is located in Hampshire, twenty miles west of Portsmouth. Four registered occupants.