By Lord Wrackspurt

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This novel length story replaces the final book in the Harry Potter series. It is best enjoyed by those who have read the books of the series, but can be followed by those who have only seen the movies. This story is intended for reading only by adults. It contains depictions of torture, including genital abuse, castration and emasculation; rape; sexual assault; explicit sexual content including straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, fantasy interspecies, & polyamorous sexual relationships; often with characters who are under 21, but above the UK age of consent (16).

This story is a work of fan-fiction based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling and her publishers. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

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Chapter 2: “It was a dark and stormy night”

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Little Whinging, Surrey, England

July 11th, 1997

“He’ll be all right,” murmured Ginny.

And Harry looked at her, he lowered his head absentmindedly and touched the lightening scar on his forehead.

“I know he will.”

The scar had not pained Harry for nineteen years. All was well.

At least it was until there came from outside the banging sounds of a rubbish truck emptying the large bin at the end of Privet Drive.

“Uh — whatha — shit!” exclaimed sixteen-year-old Harry James Potter as he sat up in bed breathing heavily. Getting his glasses from the bedside table he looked at the clock, it was a little after three in the morning. “What a crazy dream that was. I’ve got to stop smoking that shit just before bedtime.”

Harry had received a package of ‘magic herb’ from his friends, Fred and George Weasley, just before he came back to stay with the Dursleys for one final summer. The two Weasleys were twin brothers with whom he had gone to school at Hogwarts. Harry knew they had bought it off Professor Sprout, the Herbology teacher at Hogwarts, who grew it out in the greenhouse there. They told him that inhaling the vapors would calm him, and let him put up with these stupid muggle arseholes again without killing them. Smoking the magic herb did help ease his tensions to where he could just barely stand it to be there. Well, that and wanking three times a day. It also made him hungry as hell. Harry quietly went downstairs under the cover of his invisibility cloak looking for munchies in the kitchen. He had to be careful not to awaken his shit-fer-brains muggle guardians.

Harry’s magical parents, James and Lily Potter, had been murdered on All Hallow’s Eve of 1981, a little over a year after his birth, by an evil megalomaniac wizard named Lord Voldemort. A so-called prophesy had been made that claimed that a boy born the end of July in 1980 would have the power to destroy Voldemort once and for all. To stop this from happening, Voldemort set his sights on Harry as the subject of the prophesy and came that night to kill him, but he failed. After Voldemort had murdered James Potter, he had offered Harry’s mother, Lily, an opportunity to live. Instead, Lily Potter sacrificed her life to save her son as an act of love. That had created a powerful protective charm around Harry, and had nearly destroyed Voldemort when he tried to kill Harry with a death curse that had rebounded back onto the caster. Most everyone assumed afterward that Voldemort was dead, but he wasn’t. He had been left in a weakened spirit form with no physical body. Harry had been left with a lightening bolt shaped scar on his forehead, and the scar provided a psychic link to Voldemort’s mind so that Harry could sometimes know what Voldemort was thinking.

Left an orphan, Harry had been taken and given to his only remaining blood relatives, the Dursleys, who lived in Surrey. His Aunt Petunia was his mother’s sister. Her husband, Uncle Vernon, was a fat bodied brute who loved to demean Harry and punish him brutally for any supposed violation of his house rules, which covered most anything. They were hardcore muggles and disliked magic and anything concerning it. They had grudgingly taken in Harry, but had abused him constantly while fawning over their own brattish and brutish son named Dudley.

Only when Harry had finally turned eleven had he learned the truth about his parents being a witch and wizard, and that he was a wizard too. He had now gone to Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry for six years and had one remaining year left to complete. Three years ago, Voldemort had returned to power after his followers, the Death Eaters, had reconstituted his body. He was at war now with the established magical government of Britain, the Ministry of Magic, for control. As part of that war he was seeking to foil the prophesy by finally killing Harry, but so far Harry had evaded his attempts to take his life. For his protection, Harry had been made to return to live with the Dursleys, and be sheltered under his mother’s bloodline, each summer until he reached the legal age of maturity for wizards. Harry would now do that when he reached his seventeenth birthday on July 31st.

His first year at Hogwarts the school’s revered Headmaster, Professor Albus Dumbledore, had given Harry an invisibility cloak that had once belonged to his father. It had proven a boon to him every year since then, and had saved his life on occasions.

To help light his way down to the kitchen for munchies, Harry had recently received an early birthday present from Fred and George. They had gotten him an enchanted electric torch that could light up an entire room, but in light only a witch or wizard could see; to a muggle it was still dark. The brothers ran a novelty shop that they had started using money Harry had loaned them several years earlier. They were always sending him stuff to try out as a sort of beta tester. It was a real help to Harry because he wasn’t legally allowed to do actual magic at the Dursley’s house without getting in trouble with the Ministry; but he could use enchanted objects.

Once in the kitchen, Harry helped himself to a soda from the fridge and some of Dudley’s potato crisps. Uncle Vernon had put a lock on the pantry door to keep Harry from stealing food. They knew that Harry would get in trouble if he used his wand to open it, but Fred and George had long since taught him how to pick locks. His fat arsed cousin ate so much food that nobody noticed whatever Harry nicked as long as nobody actually saw him do it.

As he ate the crisps, the memory of the dream he’d just had lingered in his mind. “There is no fucking way I’d ever name a child of mine after a rotten bastard like Severus Snape,” thought Harry. “Or even Albus Dumbledore.” Harry had liked Dumbledore a lot, but who wanted to name their son after an old poof who went around dressed like their grandmother?

Even the events of the dream were pretty weird. A witch and wizard spending months living in a freezing tent in the woods. “How retarded can a dream get?” chuckled Harry softly. “If Hermione, Ron, and I can disapparate all over Britain we can disapparate 20 miles across the Channel to the continent and hide out in a five star hotel. I mean it ain’t like we can’t use a Confundus spell or two on a hotel manager. Make him think that we were rock stars living incognito with an endless credit line. We’re not stupid just because we’re young.”

The munchies satisfied, Harry started getting drowsy again; the kitchen clock showed that it was now 3:40. Harry figured he would ease back upstairs and have a quick wank to relax him, then he could probably get a few more hours of sleep before breakfast. He looked at the calendar on the wall, today was July 11th, twenty more days until his seventeenth birthday. Then he would be an adult wizard, and be free of these muggles forever.

Harry slipped back upstairs and slid into bed. This would be a quickie so he didn’t bother digging in his trunk for a pair of the cotton gloves. In the darkness of the room he unsnapped the front opening to his pajama bottoms and wrapped his hand around his cock, or as much of his hand as would go around what little he had down there. As he pulled on himself, he fantasized about being in bed with Ginny. Ginny Weasley was Harry’s girlfriend, and sister of Fred and George, as well as Ron Weasley, Harry’s best mate at school.

As he wanked himself to climax he thought of Ginny, just the way he would like her to be when he took her, how she’d be dressed, and that he had a monster sized erection straining for her. To have sex like that would be wonderful he thought sleepily as his mind began to wander off after he had achieved climax.

“That’s the kind of dreams I need to be having,” he thought as he dozed off.

*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*

“It was a dark and foggy night …no … that’s not right … stormy night, yeah, that’s how it always goes,” thought Bill Weasley to himself. “It was a dark and stormy night, and gallant Bill Weasley was standing the 2AM to 4AM watch at his post like a good Auror 2nd class should. When suddenly Fleur, his beautiful, incredibly sexy, half Veela, half witch, wife-to-be, apparated next to him wearing nothing but a smile. She said to her brave and handsome young Auror, ‘Oh Bill, my poor darling, you look so sad and lonely. I think you need one of my extra especially good blowjobs right about now.’ With that, she went to her knees and fumbled with the buttons on the front of his robes. She pulled out his huge throbbing cock and smiled up at him saying, ‘Oh my darling Bill, it’s so big and hard, I’m going to have trouble getting it all in my …”

“Everything all right, Bill?” came a voice from behind him. It was the prison warden, Henry Vance.

“Everything’s fine, Henry,” replied Bill quickly, while turning to hide the boner that had started forming in his robes. “I just lost my concentration for a bit.”

“Easy to have that happen here,” said Henry with a knowing grin. Having been invited to the wedding he had a pretty good idea what Bill was daydreaming about. “But just remember where you are, and what you’re here for.”

“That’s just fucking great,” thought Bill as he watched Henry go back downstairs from the upper observation station. “The moment I start having a wet dream on the job the boss walks up behind me.”

Here for Bill happened to be Azkaban Prison. Located on an unchartable island in the cold and stormy North Sea, inside the partially collapsed shell of an ancient volcano, the island now served as the maximum-security facility for more than 80 witches and wizards who had been sentenced there by the Ministry of Magic for crimes involving the usage of magic. Many of the convicts were there for common crimes, but a core group of about 20 were there for deep involvement in dark magic. Many of their crimes had been committed in the service of the worse dark wizard of them all, Lord Voldemort.

Voldemort, whose real name was Tom Marvolo Riddle, desired control of the entire wizarding community in Britain, he and his Death Eaters had committed acts of murder, mayhem, and terrorism to force the Ministry of Magic to accede to his control. He and his followers focused only on the purity of the magi bloodlines; advancing the theory that the use of magic properly belonged only to a few self-chosen families of intermarried members, the purebloods.

They demanded that others with only one magical parent, the half bloods, be limited in their participation in government. They especially wanted the exclusion of those who came from non-magical, or muggle, parents, the so-called mudbloods. Not all purebloods agreed with this concept and resisted the attempts of the Death Eaters to seize control of the government and implement their restrictive ideals. Those pureblood families who did not ascribe to Voldemort’s doctrine were reviled by the Death Eaters as ‘blood traitors.’ Prominent among the blood traitor families were the Weasleys, Arthur and Molly, and their seven children, of whom, Bill was the eldest.

In the 1970’s, Voldemort had unleashed a wave of terror upon the British magical community that had culminated in an attack on a magical family named Potter. Lord Voldemort had learned through an informant that a prophesy had been made claiming that a wizard would be born the end of July of 1980 who would have the power to defeat him. Voldemort had decided that the prophesy referred to one year old Harry Potter, and had set out to kill him. The Potters had sought refuge under a spell that hid their location, but the secret keeper who knew the location, a close friend of James Potter named Peter Pettigrew, had gone over to the Death Eater faction and had betrayed their hiding place.

The father and mother had been brutally slain, but, Harry, their year old son, had survived. The death curse that Voldemort had attempted to use to kill the baby had rebounded upon him. It was thought by many for fourteen years that Voldemort was dead, but he had survived by some means to return. His followers, who had been driven underground by the loss of their leader, soon returned to him, and started a new war against the Ministry. Bill Weasley was now a soldier in that war.

Until a year earlier, the prison had been guarded for the Ministry by the Dementors, foul spirit creatures who fed on the minds of the prisoners. A sentence to Azkaban had been a feared fate. However, the Dementors were almost as evil as those they guarded. Their loyalty to the Ministry had been purely mercenary, they would perform a task no real witch or wizard wanted to do, but only if they had those sentenced there as their prey. When Voldemort had returned to power most of the Dementors had turned to him. Now the rogue Dementors constituted one of the major threats to the Ministry. The job of guarding the prison had then fallen on the Ministry’s law enforcement officers, the Aurors.

Bill Weasley knew that he didn’t have to be there. He could have been with his beautiful fiancé, Fleur Delacour tonight. Technically, Bill was still on the disabled list due to injuries sustained in action. A few weeks earlier Bill had been badly injured by a werewolf named Fenrir, or Greyback as he was sometimes called, during the attack on Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. During the attack, its longtime Headmaster, Professor Albus Dumbledore, had been murdered by the school’s Potions Professor named Severus Snape. Bill’s wounds were still beyond complete cure by the healers, apparently Greyback had used a spell that kept the wounds from permanently healing. Bill still suffered some from the effects, but he had confidence in the healers at St. Mungo’s to find a cure.

He had already learned that he was not doomed to Lycanthropy; Wolf’s Bane treatments had been started before the infection could set in. Also, Fenrir had bitten too deeply in his rage, the flow of blood from the wound had washed away much of the werewolf’s infected saliva. Still, Bill had nearly died from shock due to blood loss.

Bill had spent over two weeks in St. Mungo’s Wizarding Hospital before the boredom got to him, he had to get out and do something. He couldn’t go on active field duty, and there was still some lingering fear by the Ministry political bosses that he might go wolfy despite the healer’s prognosis. So he asked for logistical support duty, if he couldn’t serve in the field trying to hunt down that bastard Snape, and the others involved in the attack, then he could at least free up someone else to be out there. After a couple of requests had been turned down, his boss had reluctantly agreed to let Bill go back on light duty, but strictly unofficially. Bill’s name wouldn’t appear on any duty rosters, that way no one would know that a ‘potential werewolf’ was back on the job.

The result was an immediate covert transfer to Azkaban to start a two week stint as assistant jailer to the inmates; and training officer to the 15 young recruits who were being hastily developed into Aurors to perform support duties at the prison. This would free up fully trained agents to go into the field to face the Death Eaters in a new Ministry offensive planned to commence in about a month. The prison staff was rounded out by six regular Aurors whose rotation it was to guard the prison. Prison guard duty at Azkaban was considered almost as bad as being incarcerated there so it was rotated through the ranks.

Henry Vance had accepted the position as permanent warden after his wife Emmeline, a senior Ministry official, had been assassinated last year by Death Eaters. Apparently, the only way he could deal with her loss was to be away from it all. As for Bill, he couldn’t wait for his tour to be over. He had not had sex with his beautiful Fleur since four days before he had been bitten; that was nearly four weeks ago and he still had another week of guard and training duty here. He had vowed to ‘save himself’ for his return to her, but his balls were hurting so bad now he didn’t see how he was going to stand it that long. It didn’t help to think that he could have legitimately been somewhere warm, dry, and safe tonight. Lying in a soft bed with one of the most beautiful and sexy creatures he’d ever met bobbing up and down on top of his cock right now.

“You dumbarse!” he muttered to himself, he hadn’t even brought a pair of cotton gloves with him. Maybe he could confiscate a pair from one of the recruits. At least his watch was nearly over; it was almost time for the changing of the guard. Ten more minutes and Peter Spinnet would be coming up to relieve him. After that, he could turn in for a couple of hours of sleep. Bill turned around to look out the glass windows of the observation station at the rolling waves surrounding the tiny island. The sky was just showing the first light of the approaching new day. He could see the white foam where the waves were hitting the rocks below.

Then a strange bit of motion caught his eye. Something was moving out there on the waves, probably just some flotsam. But no, it wasn’t … this was moving too regularly, and it was coming straight at the prison. Suddenly Bill realized there were several of these objects moving out there now. This had to be some sort of an attack. Bill reached over to sound the alarm when the glass enclosing the observation station exploded around him. Everything went black.

How much later he didn’t know, Bill awoke on the ground. It was not quite dawn, and he was outside the old main gates of Azkaban. When he looked up the first thing he saw were the dead eyes of Henry Vance staring back at him from a pile of corpses. Bill tried to get up but couldn’t, he was trapped in a binding curse. He rolled onto his side to see the other Aurors from the prison who were alive also bound and helpless. Some were crying out in pain from wounds, the rest were terrified of those standing over them. They wore strange robes and masks; it took Bill a second or two to realize who they were. They were Death Eaters. They were the ones who had attacked the prison.

Looking over his shoulder, he saw that the prison was on fire and sections of the walls had crumbled inward. What battle there had been was all over. He tried counting heads to see if anyone had escaped, maybe to get help, but couldn’t. He heard the voices of his fellow prisoners grow more excited and saw a party approaching them.

In the lead was a man who Bill knew well enough from the descriptions given to identify. With his red eyes, and the slits for nostrils, it could only be Voldemort himself. Walking beside, but a step behind, was another figure he knew all too well, Severus Snape. His former potions professor at Hogwarts, and, now, wanted murderer for the killing of Headmaster Albus Dumbledore. The party was rounded out by Bellatrix LeStrange; her husband, Rodolphus; his brother, Rastaban; and Lucius Malfoy. Malfoy was married to Bellatrix’s sister, Narcissa, until tonight he had been a prisoner in Azkaban. The six most wanted criminals in the land stood before him, and Bill was helpless to do anything about it.

“Master,” said Snape, “what shall we do with the prisoners?”

“We shall make an example of them to the Ministry of what happens eventually to all those who defy us. Bella, we place them in your tender care, wring all useful information from them, other than that make their deaths as uncomfortable for them as you can. We know you and your colleagues delight in tending such matters. Make a masterpiece of pain for us out of them.”

“I will obey with enthusiasm, my Lord,” said a delighted Bellatrix.

Lying there before them, Bill Weasley realized that he was about to be tortured to death. There would be no wedding, the family that he and Fleur had talked of would never be. He would never see his own family again. Bill thought of his mother, how frightened she had been of harm coming to any of them. How painful his loss would be to her.

“Oh, mother,” Bill said softly, but not softly enough.

The black boots of Bellatrix stopped before him. “Oh, the poor little boy, does it miss its mummy? Don’t cry, little baby, I’ll be its mummy tonight. We’ll play games and have lots of fun.” With a few flicks of her wand, Bill was stripped of his clothes and levitated in the air before a set of wooden crossbeams the Death Eaters had set in the beach.

Bella looked Bill Weasley over, her eyes lingering on his groin, sparkling with delight at the enormous cock that hung there bouncing in time with her victim’s racing heartbeat. “My, my, my … you certainly are a big healthy boy aren’t you? Some poor girl’s going to be disappointed when she finds out that you won’t be coming home no more.”

Severus Snape and Lucius Malfoy came to stand before him. Snape’s eyes ran over Bill’s body also, coming to rest where Bellatrix’s had also settled, then back to the face.

“You’re one of the Weasley brats,” said Snape. “I remember you … Bill I think …yes, Bill Weasley. That’s your name.”

“Damned blood traitors, the whole lot of them,” spit Malfoy. “Don’t worry about being alone where your going, boy, we’ll see to it you get to have a full family reunion real soon.”

“Fuck you, Malfoy!” said Bill. There was nothing else he could do; even his mouth was too dry to spit. Defiance was all he had left now.

“No — fuck you, Weasley,” said Malfoy as he drew back his fist and punched Bill hard in the scrotum causing a scream of pain to escape from him. “Bella, he was the second in command, if there is any information of use to the Dark Lord here then he has it.”

“Then we shall get it.” With a motion of her wand, Bill was thrown against the crossbeams. Bella picked up several pieces of volcanic iron slag from the ground, threw them into the air and transfigured them into metal spikes suspended in midair. Smiling cruelly at Bill she cooed, “Now this may sting a little.” Bellatrix gave her wand a little flick and the spikes drove themselves through Bill’s flesh at the wrists and ankles pinning him to the wooden beams. Bella issued her own little shriek of sadistic delight at the agonizing screams that came from her spread-eagled victim.

"Now comes the real fun," she thought.

“Well, well, little Weasley, do you think Lucius hurt your tender little knackers with that little tap?” Bella asked with an evil grin as she pointed her wand at Bill’s already bruised testicles. “I can do much better than that. CRUCIO!”

Bill Weasley’s screams of anguish filled the air as the Cruciatus, or torture, curse entered his body through his groin causing unbearable pain. It was as if ever fiber of his nervous system was on fire with the epicenter of the pain located in his injured testicles.

A short distance away, a disinterested Lord Voldemort motioned to Snape to follow him inside the prison. “Severus, we need you to accomplish a task for us of greater importance than that Bella thinks she is performing. Something where your special Slytherin talents will be useful.”

“Of course, my Lord, what is your command?”

“We want you to complete the razing of the prison facility. Make it unusable now or in the foreseeable future to the Ministry, but we have a special need in how you do this. We want it to be discoverable to the Aurors who will investigate their defeat here that our initial strike came from inside the facility. However, we don’t want it to be obvious that we left this evidence for them to find. Make it look as though we tried to disguise the fact that we were let in, that we wanted them to think that we attacked entirely from without.”

“You wish the enemy to know that there is a collaborator in their midst?”

“Yes, Severus. Our friend in the Ministry will be of much less use to us now as an informant anyway. It is a far greater use of that resource to allow the Ministry to chase its own tail over this. We’ll let them waste precious time and effort raking through their own ranks, sowing suspicion and non-cooperation among themselves. Bella will no doubt gather some information from the prisoners, but it will be of little use. Just as we had to change all our plans when we knew of Lucius’ treason, they will change theirs when they see the tortured bodies. They’ll have to assume some of the prisoners talked to ease their death agonies.”

Severus Snape watched as Lord Voldemort disapparated before him. From the other side of the wall he could hear the screams of agony from the captured young Aurors. He knew everyone of them, most had been his students just a short time ago. Now they were dying horribly only a few yards away, it was such a regrettable waste. Yes, the time he had spent teaching them had been such a waste of his efforts.

*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*

“What a mess, what a bloody mess,” muttered Chief Auror Gwain Robards to his Executive Officer, Kingsley Shacklebolt, as they surveyed the burned out ruins of Azkaban in the midday sun. As the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Robards was the one ultimately responsible for the operation of the prison.

The prison was destroyed, totally wrecked. Even dearer was the loss of 23 Aurors and trainees, many of whom had only been recruited in the last year. This represented nearly a quarter of the total force available for field duty. At least he didn’t have to guard the damned prison anymore, thought Robards.

“Kingsley, I hope you do a better job as Chief Auror than I did,” said Robards resignedly, knowing his career was now doomed.

“You think the Minister will sack you over this?” asked Kingsley. “You’re the one who kept telling that arsehole that this would happen. How can anyone blame you?”

Gwain had begged his predecessor, Rufus Scrimgeour, who was now the Minister of Magic, not to try to keep the prison going when the Dementors abandoned it. There was no realistic way that a handful of isolated Aurors could have hoped to hold off an inevitable Death Eater attack. He had told Scrimgeour that every new prisoner sent there only made an attack more profitable for Voldemort. The Minister’s response had been that keeping the prison open made the community feel safer, it helped boost morale. Gwain wondered what this little kick in the knackers was going to do for morale.

The naked bodies of the Aurors had been left outside the destroyed gates, nailed spread-eagled to X shaped beams set in the rocky ground. Some had mercifully died quickly in the attack, but 15 of them had been captured alive, some of these were already wounded. No mercy had been shown them. They had been brutally tortured, there were marks on the bodies where they had been repeatedly had the Cruciatus curse used upon them.

More upsetting was the use of muggle torture to maim the bodies. All the bodies had been roughly mutilated. All the wizards had been roughly castrated, and had their cocks cut off and shoved in their mouths. The bodies of the witches showed that they had been repeatedly raped and sexually mutilated. Most had had their eyes gouged out, others had bones broken by blunt force trauma, and some showed signs of having had their skin burned. This wasn’t just an interrogation for information; Voldemort was interested in making a statement with these killings, oppose me and you will die screaming.

In the center of the group were two corpses whom Robards and Kingsley had known well in life. Henry Vance appeared to have been one of the lucky ones; he had been killed outright. His face did not show the telltale signs of agony that most of the others did. At least his suffering was at an end, he was with his beloved Emmeline again. He wished them both peace.

The most distressing corpse was that of Bill Weasley. Apparently, he had been the most senior Auror to survive the attack. His fate had been to be the focus of attention for information. His body showed far more scars from the use of the Cruciatus curse than the others. They bastards had even ripped his genitals off in addition to the other mutilations; only his were now missing, apparently carried away as a trophy. They had wanted him to suffer. Kingsley had to assume that Bill told them everything he knew about the current operations, defense plans, portal sites, passwords, and everything else. Months of work had to be scrapped and redone. It was too dangerous to assume otherwise.

The pair heard a movement behind him; it was one of the Department’s most senior and experienced Aurors, Alastor Moody. Moody inspired fear in many who saw him, he had hideous scars on his face and body from battles with Death Eaters. His left leg was gone and replaced by an enchanted metallic prosthetic that obeyed his command. His left eye was also missing, replaced by an enchanted prosthetic that gave him special viewing powers. It also gave him his nickname in Auror circles, Madeye Moody.

Moody was just about the best of what the Auror’s had left, but he was unconventional in his methods. Moody was disliked by the politicos in the Ministry. They wanted to be safe in their beds at night, but also wanted all their chickenshit rules and procedures followed to the letter. These would be the bureaucrats who would scream the loudest and demand change, as well as heads, over this. However, a lot of this disaster could be laid at their feet.

Moody, Robards, Kingsley and others had wanted the Death Eaters given to the Dementors for the final sanction sixteen years ago. Dementors could drive any person insane given enough time to feed on them, but their most feared weapon was the Dementor’s Kiss, the final sanction for criminals in the wizarding world. The Dementor’s kiss was a terrifying punishment in which the very soul was sucked out of a person and consumed, leaving them a veritable vegetable. The displaced soul was ripped to shreds and continued to exist in a state of utter torment inside the belly of the Dementors. Peace only came when the last vestige of the soul was consumed or the Dementors destroyed. There would be no afterlife, only the prospect of oblivion; and that might only come after centuries of continuous agony. The kiss was feared more than death by witches and wizards.

When Voldemort had been defeated following the murder of the Potters sixteen years ago there had been a movement to feed his followers to these creatures and forever be done with them. “But no,” cried the political suckarses in the Ministry. “Mercy should be shown, they were just misguided, not evil. Many of them were purebloods, the crème de la crème of wizarding society.”

Instead of destroying them, the Ministry allowed proven Death Eaters to be sentenced to short prison sentences; or use the excuse that the Imperious mind control curse had been unwillingly used on them to make them perform illegal acts. Many of the most dangerous Death Eaters, like Lucius Malfoy, were released without any punishment because of their family names and family fortunes. Only the handful of fanatics who never really bothered to deny their allegiance to Voldemort were severely punished.

“Why,” thought Moody sarcastically to himself, “if we administered the Dementor’s kiss to them then who would invite us to their gala private parties? Who’d contribute to our political campaigns, and pay our expenses to hold our bullshit conferences and conventions up on the hill in Godric’s Hollow, so that we could wallow in that pit of sin and greed with all its clubs, casinos, and whorehouses? Who’d ply us with liquor, drugs, and prostitutes? Who’d discretely fill our pockets with gold Galleons from our ‘winnings’ at the gaming tables, or bribe us with expensive gifts from the up market shops? Not the poor wizarding families like Bill Weasley’s.”

Moody hoped against hope that maybe now the Ministry would listen when Kingsley asked the wizarding high council, the Wizengamot, for the power to pursue the Death Eaters aggressively, to go to a war footing. Maybe this would finally scare the Wizengamot just enough for them to act. Then again, maybe not. It wouldn’t the first time a Minister and the Ministry bureaucracy responded with a denial of reality.

Gawain Robards had his own doubts about the leadership abilities of the current administration. Rufus Scrimgeour, the current Minister of Magic, had been Gwain’s predecessor in the Department. He’d been elected Minister on his record of service as an Auror fighting in the field against dark wizards. Telling everyone that he’d been promoted through the ranks on merit, and reluctantly taken higher office because that was where he could be of best service to the comrades he left back in the streets.

What utter bullshit! The truth was that Rufus had joined the Aurors to be an office manager, not a field agent. Gwain could not think of a single time that Rufus had been in a real standup duel with a dark wizard. In fact, Scrimgeour only had one field talent; he always managed to show up just after the fighting was over, and just before the photographers from the wizard’s newspaper, the Daily Prophet, arrived. Then he’d be standing there out front holding his wand menacingly in one hand, and the other holding a secured prisoner by the scruff of the neck. Other than that, he was just a first class bullshit artist in the same league as Gilderoy Lockhart.

“Do you have a preliminary report for me, Alastor?” asked Robards.

“Yes, Sir, I do,” replied Moody. “Casualties: 23 dead, most by torture; Prisoners: all 83 missing. Most of them being known Death Eaters, or known associates of Death Eaters, or persons of ill repute who won’t hesitate to become a Death Eater if allowed. The prison and training facilities are destroyed and useless. In addition, the analyses of the blast patterns on the key facilities appear to show that the first wave of the attack came in through our own portals. This means they knew our counter-spells ahead of time, we have a traitor in our midst. Someone well placed in the Ministry.”

“We are so bloody fucked,” said Robards dejectedly looking over at the grim faced Moody. “When the Minister finds out that there is a possibility of a turncoat he’ll run to the IG, and then the real fun begins.”

The IG was the common nickname for the Inquisitor General, the head of the Inquisition. While it was the Aurors in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement who tracked down and captured fugitives wanted by the Ministry, it was the Inquisitor General’s office that prosecuted the accused before the Wizengamot during the trial. Those Inquisitors who performed this original function were still referred to as Interrogators.

Over time, the Inquisition had expanded its authority and power using public fear to justify a more all encompassing presence in the lives of citizen magi. Under the new rules, interrogations commonly took place in secret with the suspect having no access to a solicitor, or any sort of witnesses. The evidence thus gathered was used against them in trial before the Wizengamot.

There were increased allegations that these secret interrogations involved the use of physical and psychological stressing techniques, or ‘wet work’ as Aurors disdainfully called it. Most simply called it torture, but if they had any sense of self preservation they didn’t say it in public. The excuse given by the Inquisition was that there were too many ways that a deeply dark magician could evade simple interrogation truth potions like Veritaserum, or mind probe techniques like Legilimency. As always, when the Inquisition had first asked for the power to use torture, the officials had solemnly promised that it would only be used in the most extreme cases where there was no doubt of the perpetrator’s guilt, and then only in cases where the public safety was in imminent danger of attack from dark wizards.

However, once the power was conferred it was used by the Inquisition as it pleased. There was no defense against the methods used by the Inquisitors in their hidden dungeons deep beneath the Ministry of Magic building in London. If you were carried there and put to ‘the question’ you talked, you told everything, and even persons not accused of crimes could be brought in and questioned under duress.

The Inquisition had such a dread reputation that even the innocent feared being brought before an Inquisitor. Despite all that infusion of power, the Inquisition had hungered for more, and had found it under the recent administration’s paranoia over Voldemort. The Inquisition had been permitted to evolve into a sort of magical MI-5 with permission to spy on other agencies, including the Aurors, in search of supposed traitors to the Ministry.

This had definitely caused a chill in interagency relations with Ministry officers now suspicious of whether new colleagues were Inquisition plants sent to spy on them. For some, the last straw in turning the Inquisition into a virtual wizarding Gestapo had come with the confirmation of the return of Lord Voldemort a year ago. Despite strong protests by the Aurors, the IG was given authority to assemble a separate security force, supposedly for the explicit purpose of securing crime scenes and protecting investigating personnel gathering evidence in the field. In actuality, everyone knew they were the IG’s private assault troops.

Currently the IG position was held by Madam Erinyes Bartleby, a strong willed witch with powerful family connections who had joined the Inquisition soon after leaving Hogwarts. Those few old friends and Ministry colleagues who could claim they really knew Erinyes knew that she was ambitious and dangerous. She was never socially popular as she shared the Inquisition’s secretive nature with her personal life as well as professional. Still, most in the Ministry did admit that she could be a decent individual to work with as long as you remembered that Erinyes was a ‘our means are always justified by our ends’ type of bureaucrat; and let her get what she wanted in the end.

Ideally, the Aurors and the Inquisitors worked as a team to keep the magical public safe from criminals and dark wizards. In reality, there was often a sense by the Inquisitors that Aurors were more like a police officer working a beat, and of themselves as a superior authority. That attitude often didn’t sit well with the Aurors who considered the Inquisitors as show off’s who didn’t have what it takes to be in the field facing down criminals and dark wizards day after day. There was a definite interagency rivalry.

Now with the specter of a traitor in the Ministry looming, the Inquisition would be handed the job of doing an internal investigation. The first place they would start looking for traitors would be among the Aurors themselves. Both sides would close ranks and tempers would flair. Instead of fighting Death Eaters, the Ministry’s two arms of law enforcement would turn on each other.

“The Minister wants a report from me personally on how bad the attack was,” said Robards. “I guess I’d better get back and start cleaning out my desk drawers. Scrimgeour likes you for the work you did with the muggle Prime Minister last year, plus he knows you’ve got your head screwed on right. He’ll offer you the job, please take it, otherwise he’ll have to offer it to an office Johnny like himself.”

“I don’t want to take your job, Gwain,” said Kingsley.

“I know, and that’s the best reason for you to get it. Look, someone has to take the blame for Scrimgeour’s fuckups, it’s not as if he has the balls to stand up and do so himself. Besides, I am now personally appointing you to be in charge of the investigation from our side, that way when the job is offered you’ll already be up to speed. If you need assistance with anything that is going on just let me know and I’ll help on the sly if need be.”

With that, the Chief Auror disapparated to return to the Ministry of Magic headquarters building in London. Shacklebolt and Moody, who were old friends and comrades in arms in the fight against Voldemort since back in the old days when they were member of a clandestine resistance organization led by Albus Dumbledore called the Order of the Phoenix, were left to discuss their strategy.

“Voldemort has got to be laughing his arse off right now,” said Shacklebolt. “I’d bet you a thousand Galleons, if I had them, that Voldemort wants us to figure out he’s got a snitch in the Ministry. He knows we can’t hide it from the Minister.”

“Oh, I agree,” answered Moody. “It looked to me as though this was setup for us to figure it out. If Voldemort is doing that then it’s only because the snitch isn’t valuable to him anymore, he’s making a staked goat out of him.”

Shacklebolt half turned to face Moody. “For the first time I’m really scared that we’re going to lose this war. I believed in Dumbledore, I believed he’d find a way. Now he’s gone and there is no one to take his place.”

Moody looked at Shacklebolt, “There is one who might save us, you know who I mean.”

“Yes, I know who you’re talking about; but is he truly the one who can stop Voldemort before we are beyond all hope? Prophecies are mostly just bullshit. Many have given up hope already, most of the rest will after this hits the Daily Prophet. We’ve been buying time with blood, now we’re running out of both. Have you tried recruiting someone to be an Auror these days? Those with the intelligence to be a good Auror also have the good sense to know that it’s damn near a death sentence to become one now.”

“I think he is the one, but he’s not ready. He needs training, special training.”

“Alastor, even if he’s willing to serve, he’s still got another year in school, we could probably convince the Ministry to bend the rules a bit and start training him there, but it takes three years to get a fully prepared Auror in the field. We don’t have that kind of time.”

“You’re misunderstanding my idea, Kingsley. I’m talking about ‘special,’ special training. The kind we don’t go to some punk Ministry official for written permission in triplicate to do. This is a war for our survival now, not some damned police action where we say halt or we’ll hex you. If he is the one the prophesy says has a real chance at destroying Voldemort then he needs to have the knowledge, the will, and the confidence to fight at that level. I’m not wanting to prepare a field agent to arrest him and read him his rights; I want to prepare a weapon who will take Voldemort out once and for all.”

“So what exactly is it you want me to do, Alastor?” asked Kingsley.

“Let me form a small team of specialist from the remaining Order members,” Moody continued. “I can be officially disavowed to protect the Department. The Ministry arseholes want me out anyway. I’ll retire from the service and put my team together. Then we’ll get everything we need, set it up, and begin training him in secret, even he won’t know exactly what’s going on at first. Mostly what I need from you is to turn a blind eye to our actions, and keep me informed of the latest intelligence gatherings the Ministry has obtained.”

Kingsley looked down at the ground for a while. This was so dangerous he couldn’t imagine all the consequences he might face. Kingsley had been a damn good field agent, now he was a career administrator, this little stunt could cost him everything. Looking up his eyes first fell on the body of Henry Vance. He had known this man and his wife for many years, they were his friends. He shifted his gaze to the tortured corpse that had been Bill Weasley only a few hours earlier. The invitation to Bill and Fleur’s wedding was on his nightstand. Kingsley had bought a new set of dress robes just for the occasion, now they’d be used to attend his funeral. Was there any other hope?

“How many members will you need from the force?”

“Just one, Nymphadora Tonks.”

“There are better Aurors than Tonks out there for training.”

“Not for this kind of training.”

Kingsley just raised an inquisitive eyebrow. “All right. It’s your show, do what you need to do, but get him ready to fight.”