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Manipulations to War
By Mutt N Feathers

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Category: Pre-OotP
Characters:Sirius Black
Genres: Drama
Warnings: Death
Story is Complete
Rating: R
Reviews: 19
Summary: Sequel to Harry's second Christmas. James and Lily are dead, and Sirius, Remus and Anwen are living in the Potter keep with Harry. They want him to have a well balanced childhood, but the need to keep him safe is greater. Sirius is working to unravel where the Potter money went while Anwen wants to discover why they were in Godric's Hollow and not safely in the Potter's home.
Hitcount: Story Total: 18817; Chapter Total: 462





Author's Notes:
Thanks to my beta Arnel, for her amazing work.




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Chapter 26:
I Heard About What You Said


August 30, 1985
Ministry of Magic


“This had better be a life-or-death situation, Amelia,” Anwen said as she entered the Auror offices on the sweltering Friday afternoon. “I spent the morning at the Muggle hospital with Harry having his imaging study done today.”

“I’m sorry, and I knew it was today, but you’re going to want to speak with the woman who is being interviewed by Alice right now,” Amelia said apologetically, leading her friend to the separate set of lifts which went from the Auror offices to the holding cells and interview rooms on a restricted sub-floor of the Ministry.

“Why?” Anwen said shortly.

“Because she knows who Isabeau really is?” Amelia told the younger witch when they were in the self-service lift cab.

“Wait, Isabeau, as in the Veela who caused all the problems for that family Emme was protecting in eighty-two? That Isabeau? Alice and I had given up any hope of finding her, figuring it was a false name.”

“I know, which is why when this young woman was caught and started telling us she could spill secrets on a Veela named Isabeau, the junior Auror who was handling the case immediately sent word to her training partner, Frank Longbottom “”

“And Frank recognized the name,” Anwen said relieved. “Thank Merlin and the Good Lord for a break.” It was only then that Amelia realized Anwen must have Apparated straight from the hospital, as she still was wearing slip-on shoe covers over her trainers. Amelia pointed at them, and Anwen hastily removed the paper covers.

“Muggles have to worry about germs,” Anwen explained off-handedly. “We have spells which kill them immediately.” Amelia nodded, although she’d never heard of ‘germs’ before. She was also unaware of why they needed to be killed, but it was a moot point, as they’d reached the detention floor and they slipped behind a part of the wall to the interview room which appeared solid while inside but could be seen through from the outside.

Anwen looked at the girl and felt empathy for her immediately. She was dressed in a dingy black dress with an equally greying-white frilly apron over the top. She was in-service of some sort, Anwen deduced, although it could be anything from a maid in a private home to a dinner lady in the canteen here in the Ministry. Her hair was pulled back into a loose plait, although at least a third had pulled free. She had no makeup on her lacklustre complexion, and her eyes seemed to be deeply set and naturally occurring dark smudges framed them. Her cheeks, nose and the rim of her eyes were red, as if she’d been crying.

“This is Calliope Carter, brought in on smuggling illegally obtained fortified wines from France through The Leaky Cauldron. She’s worked there for two years, and the owner figured out that his shipping manifests were always listed as heavier than what his order should be. He’s the one who suspected her and we put the junior Auror on her. Calliope’s older sister, Concertina, would have been a seventh year when you were in your first year,” Amelia explained. Anwen nodded, remembering the girl who was Seeker before her. “Calliope doesn’t have enough discernible magic to have gone to Hogwarts herself, so she’s been working since sixteen as a maid in various magical establishments. She started off at the Hog’s Head. Want to take a guess what year she started working there?”

“Please say nineteen-eighty?”

“Actually seventy-nine. We aren’t sure when she pulled into the smuggling trade, but honestly I’m not sure that she understood fully that dropping off crates of wine to Mundungus Fletcher’s home address wasn’t a smart business opportunity,” Amelia continued.

“Mental acuity as lacking as her magical?”

“I suspect so. Anyway, Alice has gone in and has been taking down a full accounting from this girl. She says she was there the day Sybil Trelawney gave her prophecy, saw Snape overhear it and well, you know he ran off to Volde-- sorry Tom Riddle, with only half a story. More importantly, she was there two days before when Isabeau was having tea with Sybil and Isabeau implanted the prophecy into Sybil’s mind.” Anwen looked at her friend slack jawed.

“What did you just say?” Anwen stuttered out.

“Calliope Carter claims the prophecy that’s at the centre of why Riddle came after James and Lily was a lie.” Anwen slumped against the wall. She’d already had an exhausting day at the hospital with Harry after being up with Caelum teething the night before. Sirius wasn’t much help at the hospital, as he kept staring and pointing at things which he didn’t understand.

“What has Alice gleaned so far?”

“Well, everything she said about the day Dumbledore met with Sybil is accurate; I’ve seen the day through his eyes and Severus Snape’s several times. As for pulling the name Isabeau, her story seems genuine to me, but you and Alice are the experts,” Amelia said honestly. She sometimes wondered how the pair managed their young families and their jobs. Clearly finding out why the Potter’s were murdered and more importantly it seemed, why the war happened at all, was more than work for them. It was their duty to discover the truth.

“Okay,” Anwen said, straightening her shirtwaist dress before stepping through the door to the interview room. Amelia was so used to seeing her friend in Muggle clothes, it didn’t register Anwen wasn’t wearing robes until she was through the door.

“Please record Auror Anwen Parker-Black has entered the room,” Alice said for the magical recording device. Wizards were still recording their evidence onto wax records, which made Anwen cringe. She needed to find out how to make a cassette-tape device work around all this magic.

“I’ve heard of you,” Calliope said. “You became the Seeker after my sister, Concertina.”

“I did. I married one of the Beaters on the team,” Anwen stated.

“We all know who Sirius Black is. He was the most eligible bachelor in all the Magical UK. Well, at least until you and he took up with each other again,” she gushed. “My sister kept trying to get him to go out with her, but he wasn’t interested,” the girl said. Anwen wasn’t sure what to say to that. Sirius, like her, wasn’t interested in anyone else, even when they were broken up.

“So, how do you know the witch known as Isabeau?”

“Jago Selwyn is my uncle,” the girl said. “He had a house in Sweden. I filled in while his housekeeper was off because her husband died or something like that. Isabeau was his mistress. She lived at his house and everything.” Anwen kept her face emotionless, but she’d heard of the practice in pureblood families before. Heirs were important, so when the wife couldn’t bear children anymore a younger model was brought in do it. Merryn and Jago Selwyn had only produced one daughter.

“Do you know Isabeau’s last name?” Alice asked.

“Yes, it’s Masson,” Calliope rattled it off. “She was so beautiful and mysterious, and men did whatever she wanted them to do.”

“Ah, so did you know she would be visiting the Hog’s Head while you were working there?”

“Yes. I helped to arrange her accommodations. She didn’t sleep in the room there. That place was minging. I was glad when I went to work at The Leaky Cauldron. We spell the sheets between folks staying in the rooms.” Anwen and Alice looked at each other and said nothing, but they both filed the information away. It wouldn’t be the first health code violation The Hog’s Head would receive.

“You said you know the prophecy told to Albus Dumbledore is fake?”

“Sure, I watched when she put the memory charm on that Trelawney woman while she was visiting the tea shop in Hogsmeade a few days before her interview. We sat down for a cuppa and Isabeau planted the whole darned thing she needed to repeat into her brain. Izzy is really good with memory charms.”

“What was your job that day?” Anwen asked.

“I had to watch for anybody wanting to interrupt us. Izzy didn’t want to be interrupted.” Anwen was gobsmacked and didn’t quite know which way to move the interview.

“Calliope, I’m trained in memory procurement,” Alice said gently. “Can you bring the memory of that day in the tea shop to the front of your mind so I can make a copy?”

“Sure,” the girl said, not truly understanding the ramifications of giving up a memory such as this. Anwen would speak to the Wizarding CPS about immunity for the girl, since her information “ if proven correct “ would be the first decent break in this case. She was an accessory to memory tampering, a B-level magical felony.

Alice tipped her wand and pulled the memory from the girl. Anwen handed her a phial from a locked drawer behind her. Alice repeated the process for the memory of the day when Sybil parroted back what they all thought was a genuine prophecy.

“We’re going to review these, but we will be back in a minute. Do you want anything?” Alice asked.

“Some tea, very sweet.” Calliope sat there, a gentle smile on her face, still appearing unaware of the consequences of her idol’s behaviour and the lives it ruined.

Alice, Anwen and Amelia entered an unused interview room, after sending a DMLE assistant out for the requested tea, and one by one they poured the memories into a Pensive and watched as the woman named Isabeau passed the now infamous prophecy to lovely but oft confused Sybil Trelawney and then two days later passed it on to Albus Dumbledore.

“I can’t believe it wasn’t…” Alice said, not being able to order her thoughts.

“The damage that falsehood created,” Amelia said.

“I want that witch strung up by her toenails,” Anwen said with an unfamiliar hardness to her voice. “We need to take the best image we can from those memories to create a bulletin. We need any hint where Isabeau might have gone now that Jago Selwyn is in custody. I somehow doubt the McNairs welcomed her home like they did with Merryn.” Selwyn had been tried by the ICW for Gross Crimes against Wizardingkind and sentence to seventy-five years in the frozen prison in Antarctica.

“Get back in there and see what other information you can glean from her,” Amelia said. “I’m going to visit our prosecution services to see what sort of deal we can get Miss Carter. She’s proving far too useful to not receive some leniency for her help with a bigger matter than Dung selling illegal wines.”

Alice and Anwen nodded, agreeing Alice would take the lead in questioning the girl. Anwen was already thinking past Calliope and what she wanted to know from Isabeau.

*R*R*R*R*R*

Later that night Anwen and Sirius were watching Harry sleep. He’d had a bad headache after the tests he’d undergone in the morning, and Anwen had hated leaving him. He was now sleeping fitfully, and she was contemplating sleeping in his room and letting Sirius deal with Caelum when he awoke.

“Anwen, you need to go to bed,” Sirius said softly. “You’re exhausted.”

“What if he needs me?”

“Luv, he’s five, he’ll come get us. Come on, let’s go to bed.” Reluctantly Anwen moved when Sirius wrapped his arm around her and turned her toward their room. When they’d left, Wilken stepped into Harry’s room, Disillusioned himself and would stand sentry over his young master through the night. Sirius had spoken with the elf earlier in the day, hoping if the elves cared for the children tonight, Anwen might get the first full night’s sleep she’d had in weeks.

Arriving in their bedroom, Sirius closed the door.

“We aren’t going to hear them if they wake up and the baby will need to be fed and “” Sirius kissed her to stop Anwen’s speech.

“I spoke with our elves, and the children, even Caelum, will be cared for tonight. You need sleep,” he added slowly. “You need to be cared for, and I am going to do that.”

With a flick of his wand the tub in the attached loo began to fill and Anwen exhaled, not realizing she’d been holding her breath. Layer by layer, Sirius gently undressed her and then deposited her in the fragrant, warm bath. He washed her back and then her hair and when the water began to cool, lifted her from the tub and dried her off and did a quick spell to dry her hair. He slipped a thin, cotton gown on her and then carried her to bed.

That night, wrapped in her husband’s arms, Anwen finally slept.

*****

Five days later, Anwen and Sirius found themselves at St. Mungo’s with Harry’s paediatrician and Mind Healer, Bev Weston. The healer had the reports from the Muggle examination of the mass behind Harry’s scar.

“I wish I could tell you that I have good news, but I don’t,” began Healer Crispin said. “Neither the X-rays nor the PET scan gave us any added information. Whatever that mass is, it’s solid and nothing can penetrate it. I’d say we should remove it, but since it’s under the bone and lodged right in next to his brain I won’t do it. I have no idea what it would do to Harry.”

“There’s nothing to be done?” Anwen nearly cried.

“The mass is lodged next to his frontal lobe. It controls things like memory, emotions, motor control and problem solving. He’s a brilliant little boy and I wouldn’t want to risk his ability to learn or disrupt his emotional and impulse controls,” the healer explained.

“So, what do we do about these headaches and the voices he hears?” Neither healer knew the voice Harry heard was Voldemort.

“We can treat the headaches without problem since he seems to respond to paracetamol for them. Should he need a stronger potion, one can be provided. As for the voices, Bev?”

“The voice isn’t telling Harry to hurt himself or others, it just seems to be a disembodied voice. Perhaps, like children who have imaginary friends when they are young, he will simply outgrow it? You can encourage him to continue telling you what he hears, and then remind him it isn’t real. He has the memory of his parents’ death highly active in his mind. We could try a memory charm, but if that is the course you choose, I would wait until he is older.”

While well meaning, their advice was useless in this situation. As close as Anwen was to Bev, she couldn’t tell her the truth about what Team Harry had come to believe about his scar. Sirius stood, thanked the healers, and shook their hands and then put his arm around his wife and they left the office and then St. Mungo’s. Walking to the nearby alley, from where they would Disapparate home, Sirius chose to speak first.

“So, we’ve exhausted medicine, magical and Muggle. I think it’s time I spoke with Mother about this.” Anwen looked at her husband and sighed.

“We’re certain, right? Harry’s a Horcrux?”

“There’s no other explanation, Anwen. Mother, with her vast understanding of Dark Magic, might be the only person who can help us find a way to excise that thing from our son’s head.”

“There’s always Albus?” Anwen suggested.

“No, I don’t trust him.” Sirius said with a brittle finality. Anwen nodded.

“To your Mother’s, then.” Sirius kissed her forehead and Disapparated them to his childhood home.
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