Power Plays Chapter 71 (Patreon)

Deep in the English moors, a lone manor stood tall and proud amid the early-morning mists. Gentle rolling hills of green, yellowish-brown, and the occasional smattering of violet vegetation offered an idyllic setting, though the muddy ground and endless streams and puddles left much to be desired. There was almost no cover to be found in a place like this other than the odd collection of hefty stones that’d once been a part of some ancient structure.

For Harry, that wasn’t a problem. He had the silky, silvery material of his invisibility cloak covering his body. No one would be able to see or detect him directly, though he had to be mindful of the other factors at play.

Taking another step forward, Harry grimaced at the slurping sound the muddy ground made as it tried to cling to his shoes. He was leaving imprints with every step he took, but a simple twist of magic let him obscure his footprints in the mud. He did so every fifteen seconds or so as he continued to trudge forward.

Walking down the actual road that led to the manor was one that Harry had briefly considered up until the moment that he saw the two cloaked figures lurking near the front gates to the manor. By all accounts, they looked like they were just on a leisurely walk through the gardens beyond the gates, but a longer observation revealed that they were just constantly retreading the same path again and again. Harry figured that they had to be on watch for something. What exactly it was, he didn’t know, but he wasn’t going to get close enough to them to find out.

When Rhys had sent his cronies back to Nott Manor, his words had implied that they’d already been there, whether for a visit or a more permanent fixture. If there was any hint as to what Rhys had planned, it would likely be here.

So, Harry kept on walking through the swampy moorland until he’d circled partway around the manor. Without any neighbours nearby, the Nott family hadn’t put up any hedgerows. They only had a front gate and a brick wall that extended out quite a ways to guard the front entrance, but with the small lake to the west of the manor and the moors covering the south and east sides, they never bothered to extend the wall around the other three sides.

Eventually, he reached the point that he’d been dreading: the ward limit.

Like virtually all manors owned by old or wealthy families, Nott Manor had extensive wards established to keep the family safe from any potential dangers that might be thrown at it. One of the most common wards was a simple alert when anyone entered the property.

If Harry stepped through the wards right now, the entire manor would go on high alert and begin searching for him.

Luckily, he’d planned for this.

Harry vanished the dew and moss off of a large boulder sticking out of the ground and sat down on it, watching the front gate from over the eastern gardens. The two figures patrolling continued to do so, and Harry decided to enjoy his wait by taking out the packed lunch that Eloise had made for him. The pan bagnat was especially delicious after it’d sat for a few hours to let all of the flavours meld and the bread soften slightly.

He was halfway through the sandwich when the sound of several people apparating in rang out loudly. Suddenly, one of the figures ran back towards the manor while the other headed for the front gate.

Although he was too far away to get a good look at anyone or overhear what they were saying, he knew that Gabrielle was on the other side of the gate with three Aurors in tow. The figure looked annoyed and was arguing back and forth with Gabrielle for a few minutes before the doors to the manor opened and out came Theodore Nott.

His curly, chestnut-brown hair was visible from quite a distance. He’d certainly grown up from the lonely-looking boy he’d been back at Hogwarts. Theodore walked with a confident stride down to the front gate where he spent only a few seconds talking to Gabrielle before he stepped aside, swept his arm out in invitation, and allowed the gate to be opened.

Harry quickly leapt to his feet and strode forward in time with Gabrielle and the other Auror’s entrance onto the manor grounds. He vanished off the mud and water off of his shoes and clothes before stepping onto the smooth path that ran along the length of gardens. A quickly-applied silencing charm upon his shoes kept them silent as he hurried walked over to the group up ahead.

“—ieve me, I can assure you that nothing illegal is going on in my manor,” Theodore explained to Gabrielle as he slowly led her up to his family’s manor. “What with the late Auror Potter’s efforts, I personally hired Ministry-approved curse-breakers and cleaners to remove any offending objects from my home.”

“While I’m sure that you’ve done your diligence, we received a credible account that there is such an object within your manor at this very moment,” Gabrielle replied. Harry cringed at hearing how hollow and empty her voice sounded. His funeral had only been yesterday, and from all he knew, she hadn’t taken a single day off. “I have been ordered by Head Auror Tonks to search your manor.”

“I presume that you have a warrant for such a search?”

Gabrielle pulled out a scroll of parchment from within her robes and handed it over to him. “Should you refuse us, we will be forced to involve the Wizengamot.”

“Please, Miss Delacour, I’ve given no indication that I’d refuse your search,” Theodore said smoothly as he read over the warrant. “I’m inviting you into my home, after all.”

“It’s Auror Delacour,” Gabrielle corrected sharply. “And I understand perfectly well that you’ve invited me in, but don’t think I didn’t notice that man that came running inside.”

“That was my cousin,” Theodore replied. “He merely came to inform me of your arrival.”

“At quite the harried pace.”

“Should he have lingered before informing me of the arrival of a representative of the Ministry of Magic?”

It was clear that Theodore was hiding something. His words were as slick as so many pure-blood supremacists were in the face of the Ministry’s arrival onto their land. Harry had dealt with the issue countless times, and they always spoke in the same cadence, as though they prepared for such events in groups to rehearse their speech.

No one noticed as Harry slipped in just behind the other Aurors. Horgan, Batty, and Peasegood were utterly unaware of his presence as he walked perfectly in time with them. They entered the manor into an oddly-shaped entrance hall that diverged into three separate paths. From his examination of the exterior of the manor, Harry assumed that this manor had three wings that shot out like spokes from the centre of it. The entry hall itself was bright thanks to the massive windows stretching out above the grand doorway inside, with light-brown wooden flooring to complete the aesthetic.

“Where would you like to begin?” Theodore asked Gabrielle.

“Multiple wings,” Gabrielle answered. “But first, I’d have you summon all of your house elves and anyone else in the manor.”

“Whatever for?” Theodore asked innocently.

Naturally, he was merely stalling for time. Harry didn’t know if he actually had any illegal artefacts in his home, but it was a realistic possibility. The only reason that Gabrielle was truly here was because he managed to get Daphne to slip a fake report into the Confident Cases pile in the Auror Department where the individuals who had a proven track record of delivering correct information had their reports placed. Harry merely forged a document using a copy of an exact signature from an old man to make it look perfectly convincing.

“I don’t have to explain myself to you. Summon them here, now,” Gabrielle demanded.

Theodore gave her a weak smile. “Wobbley?”

This poor old house-elf that had long, gray hairs sticking out of its droopy ears and a series of tired wrinkles on his face appeared instantly. He cleared his throat loudly for a couple of seconds before speaking. “Yes, Master?”

“Please direct all of my guests to find us here, please,” Theodore ordered him.

Wobbley bowed deeply. “At once, Master.”

He was gone instantly, leaving behind a faint cloud of dust. Theodore stepped off to the side and gestured to a set of chairs that sat beside a fireplace. “You’re welcome to sit and wait,” he told everyone. “The manor is quite large. It’ll take a few minutes before everyone arrives here.”

“They’d better be timely, for your sake,” Gabrielle warned him. “In the meantime, you can help by giving us a list of everyone inside of your manor at the moment.”

Theodore’s smile was as fake as his pleasantness, but that wasn’t Harry’s focus right now. He didn’t need to be in Auror-mode, trying to examine suspects for whatever they were keeping secret. His goal was to uncover Rhys’ secret plans, and that was exactly what he intended to do.

An old blueprint of the manor registered with the Ministry told Harry that the western spoke had been built only forty years ago and didn’t have an underground level or anything that seemed out of the ordinary. He’d been sure to check over the building documents that the Ministry had as well. If the Nott family had anything hidden in that wing, it was very well done. Trusting that, Harry focused his attention on the other two wings.

All it took was a matter of time. As Theodore made small talk with Gabrielle, Harry focused his gaze on the two corridors that led into the entry hall. In time, he saw the first guest come in from the southern spoke. It was a man.

Back at Nerys’ flat, he’d heard both a man and a woman arrive with Rhys. He hadn’t gotten a good look at either of them, so he couldn’t confirm if this man was one of them, but he scrutinised him with his dark gaze regardless.

A minute later, three figures, all male, came out of the western wing. Then, just seconds later, two women came from the southern wing with a man trailing just behind them. Two small children then came from the western wing.

Finally, Theodore clapped his hands together.

“That’s everyone,” he announced to Gabrielle and the other Aurors.

“Then we’ll begin our search,” Gabrielle told him. “Batty and Peasegood, you stay here with everyone and make sure that they stay in place. Horgan and I will start our search for now.”

“Wouldn’t it be faster if I came with you?” Theodore asked her eagerly.

“No,” Gabrielle replied sharply, cutting him down. “You stay right there and wait. I’ll come speak to you before we leave.”

Theodore didn’t look particularly pleased, but then who would if they were having their home searched through?

Harry waited for Gabrielle and Horgan to begin their movements before he followed them. Gabrielle headed into the eastern section of the manor while Horgan treaded down the western corridor. Instead of following either of them, Harry headed for the southern section.

There was a large archway that welcomed him into a long corridor filled with old artwork, marble statues, and the occasional suit of armour or weapon atop a mantelpiece. There were few windows in this area of the manor, creating a gloomy atmosphere that resembled the dreariness of the exterior marshes.

Room after room passed him by, but Harry knew that Rhys wasn’t likely to be so stupid as to allow his plans to exist in any old room. After Harry had caught him muggle hunting all those years ago, the man had become much more clever and careful in how he approached things. The fact that he had his followers in a manor besides his own suggested that he’d finally learnt to keep some distance between himself and his current or future crimes.

Harry peeked into the occasional doorway, finding only unused bedrooms and bathrooms in his wake. He continued along the ground floor before climbing up the spiral staircase at the far end of the long corridor to begin his search anew.

The rooms above resembled much those below, but he began to find certain rooms that were clearly designed for specific purposes, such as a practice room for music and a potion-making room. There was little else upon this floor that was of interest.

Harry didn’t bother to enter the attic yet. Should he do so, he’d need to obscure the ladder that was bound to fall down from the trapdoor overhead. It would be all too easy for one of Gabrielle's Aurors to accidentally bump into it, even if Harry made it invisible, so he retreated back downstairs for now.

Just as he was double checking through all of the rooms, he felt a strange tingle as he passed by a portrait of a man upon a penny-farthing atop a rural hillside. As ridiculous as he looked, the man pushed the pedals back and forth, rocking himself atop the hill.

Harry’s sensitivity towards magic left his body tingling. He scanned the portrait carefully, finding nothing unusual upon the moving image itself. However, once he began to search the frame, he found an unusual indentation on the right side of it. He pressed his index finger into the indentation and watched as the portrait suddenly folded unto itself, revealing a small passageway downward.

Carefully, Harry walked down the dark stairway with his wand at the ready. He didn’t see anyone and didn’t feel anything reacting to his presence, but that didn’t mean that he was willing to let his guard down quite yet.

Once he reached the chamber below, a torch magically illuminated. It must’ve detected his weight upon the floor or something else to activate so suddenly. It shocked Harry, but once he didn’t detect any alarm or sign of anyone approaching, he relaxed again. All there was in this small room was a table, a series of chairs, and a mess of parchment and ink upon the table.

He strode forth and quickly searched the room for any potential traps or detection spells that’d alert anyone to his presence. Thankfully, there were none. The Notts clearly trusted their wards to keep them safe from any intruders, which was a terrible mistake on their part.

Certain in his secrecy, Harry quickly hurried over to the table and began scanning through the myriad of parchments that were found there. Some were letters from foreign countries while others were mere reports upon the business dealings of the Nott family. But then Harry found something unique: the layout of the Ministry of Magic. These were highly classified documents, but what was worse was a note in the margin that read ‘explosives’ alongside a stamp of the roman numeral three.

Harry stared at the blueprints in sheer disbelief. The markings on every floor seemed too perfectly placed to be random as it appeared. Every room was perfectly marked and detailed upon these blueprints, but the explosive signs were placed so oddly that Harry was left scratching his head. The explosives must serve a greater purpose than merely exploding in odd corridors and old closets, but Harry didn’t quite know how..

He looked over them again and again, scanning and searching for any possible insight that he’d missed. Yet, nothing new stuck out to him.

“Okay, okay,” Harry murmured quietly to himself. “What’s going on? What is it that these bombs are trying to do?”

Say they were to explode, Harry knew from the layout of the Ministry that they wouldn’t even blow holes into the floors above or below them. The majority of the bombs weren’t even targeting important areas or hallways, which meant that mass murder wasn’t their intent.

What could it be then?

Harry sighed in frustration and leaned back in thought. If they weren’t killing people and weren’t searching for new pathways through the Ministry of Magic, then what were they trying to do? What was their goal?

Rhys said that he was going to deal with the fools in the Ministry once and for all. Deal with them. All of them.

He was going to kill them, Harry surmised, but how…

And then, it all came to him.

It was the exact same problem he’d faced when coming into Nott Manor: the wards.

The Ministry of Magic’s wards were so deeply embedded within the earth that there were very few people who even knew where the anchors lay. As the Head Auror, Harry had learnt of the massive stones carved with runes that were buried in the dirt outside of the walls of the Ministry of Magic. They formed the basis of the protection of the Ministry by amplifying and expanding the ward scheme that was established by the respective Minister of Magic.

It was rare to see the wards ever change in the Minister’s office, but that wasn’t what Rhys was targeting. His explosives would target those anchors that kept the Ministry afloat. Should they be destroyed, there’d be a cascading failure that’d see not only the Ministry of Magic destroyed but also much of central London. Rhys wasn’t the type to care about the loss of muggle life, but he’d be sure to appear immediately in the aftermath and attempt to offer some form of aid for any magical individuals. He probably already had a plan for that exact event written out and secured.

This was an outlandish ploy, but Rhys had enough sympathy within the Ministry to accomplish it. After two failed attempts by the Death Eaters to come back and follow in Voldemort’s will, Rhys was trying to wipe the slate clean entirely so that he could position himself as the new saviour of Britain and lead the country into a future that he desired.

It didn’t have a date or time on any of the documents. Harry flipped them over and reread everything just to be sure, but there was nothing there to indicate a time frame.

Well, regardless of that, Harry wasn’t going to let this bombing happen.

With his magic, Harry duplicated the blueprints and stowed away a copy within his robes. As he set the original copy back down, he turned away to leave, only to be frozen in surprise at the woman standing in the doorway.

“Reveal yourself,” Gabrielle demanded as she stood there with her wand drawn. She shuffled to the side to place her body behind the cover of the doorframe, but her eyes narrowed as she peered around it. “I saw that parchment move. If you don’t come out I’ll—”

There was no hiding it from her then. This was the best chance that Harry had at dealing with Rhys before his grand plan, and he couldn’t allow Gabrielle to ruin it. So much for hiding his survival from everyone he knew.

“Calm down,” he said as he grasped the invisibility cloak in his hands. “I’ll come out.”

“H-Harry?” Gabrielle shuddered.

He tore the cloak off of his body, revealing himself entirely to her.

Gabrielle fell forward against the door frame, looking like she was on the verge of passing out. Harry lunged forward to catch her, but that suddenly sparked her reflexes as she took a step back and trained the tip of her wand on his face.

“It’s me,” Harry said softly, raising his hands in surrender.

“Harry Potter died,” Gabrielle said coldly.

“A version of him did,” Harry replied. “To the world, I’m dead. To me and Daphne, I’m still alive and fighting to keep Britain together.”

Gabrielle shook her head like she didn’t quite believe him. Tears began to fill her eyes, but they never spilt. “You’re a real bastard, you know that? Tell me who you really are, or you’ll be in serious trouble.”

“It’s me,” Harry repeated just as gently as before. “Don’t you remember that first night I saw you naked in your bathroom? You were applying lotion to your foot and—”

Before he could continue any further, Gabrielle charged out from behind cover and nearly tackled him down to the floor. He caught her in his grasp as she needfully pressed her lips to his, making him cringe in pain as their teeth clattered together. Gabrielle didn’t seem to care though as she kept kissing him and pressing her body against his.

“Oh, Harry,” she moaned softly.

Harry kissed her back for a moment and placed his hands on her hips. After a moment, he pushed her away. “We can’t do this here.”

“I thought you were dead,” Gabrielle exclaimed breathlessly.

“I know,” Harry grimaced. “I need you to listen to me. You need to act like you never found this room. Go about your routine business and then leave. I’ll be at your flat later tonight to talk things over with you.”

“But… but…” Gabrielle stammered, unable to quite find the words that she wanted.

“Go,” Harry told her more firmly this time. “I’m doing all of this for a very important reason, and I need you to trust me. Please, just do what I’ve asked. I’ll reveal everything to you later tonight.”

“Promise?” Gabrielle asked, her eyes brimming with hope.

“Promise,” he assured her.

Gabrielle wiped away the tears from her eyes and gave a sharp nod. “We’ll be out of here within the hour. Nott is bound to check over his property after we leave.”

“I’ll be gone by then,” Harry replied. “Don’t worry about me. Just take care of your Aurors and get out of here safely. I’ll handle the rest.”

“Got it,” Gabrielle said.

She leaned in close and gave him one last kiss before she departed.

Sighing contently, Harry felt his body relax just a touch. He hadn’t liked hiding his survival from anyone, and it seemed like he was doing a terrible job at keeping it a secret. But with every person who learnt the truth, he felt the weight on his soul relax just a touch. No one deserved to go through the suffering of imagining that someone close to them died.

He spent the last few minutes touching up the original document and ensuring that the room was exactly the same as it was upon his entry into this secret room. Then, he returned back to the entry hall where the lone Auror waited with Theodore, all of his guests, and his house-elf. He waited and waited until Gabrielle and her Aurors finally returned from their sweep.

After a few not-so-pleasant goodbyes, Theodore escorted the Aurors out, and Harry kept perfectly in place with them. He walked all the way past the ward line, grinning that a plan had finally come together. And as soon as the gate closed and the Aurors began to depart, so did Harry.

He knew of Rhys’ plan. Now all that mattered was putting a stop to it.