Chapter 36
"Harder! Harder! YES!" Luna squealed as Fleur's eyes fluttered open.
Blinking the unshed tears from them, she saw Harry was in the air, his powerful form covered in a sheen of sweat from the hours he'd spent fucking all their brains out. He was holding Luna by her hips, her convulsing form bent over and nearly limp as he pounded her from behind. Fleur felt her well-fucked cunt clench at the sight of the look of sheer ecstasy on the blonde's face, what little of it she could see through the curtain of hair that had fallen across it. She looked exhausted and in a state of utter bliss, something that she knew all too well was true.
"I swear he's a god," she thought to herself as she sat up, finding that not all the feeling had yet returned to her legs.
Looking around, she saw Rias and Akeno in the corner, kissing languidly and caressing each other's voluptuous bodies as they came down from their own blistering peaks. Hermione, meanwhile, was slumped over on the bed, her ass bright red from the spanking she'd taken, and her gaping quim still leaking copious amounts of Harry's seed. Smirking to herself, and never one to turn down such a tempting meal, she crawled over and buried her face between the girl's plump cheeks.
"Wha tha...oh, fuck," Hermione whimpered as she came to. "Fleur!"
"You taste so good," Fleur purred, her dexterous tongue dancing through the brunette's bright pink folds as she drank as much of Harry's cum as she could.
"Back among the land of the living?" Harry asked with a grin as he landed and gently deposited Luna's limp form next to them.
"So...good," the blonde whimpered, curling up into a ball as she panted for breath, smiling from ear to ear.
"Even after getting fucked like that, it was hard to sleep with all the screaming," Fleur grinned.
"Maybe another round will fix that," Harry rumbled, and she was about to agree enthusiastically when she was hit by something that gave her pause: an unfamiliar arousal.
Being in Harry's bedroom in the Rookery, in the middle of an orgy, arousal was something utterly blanketing the area, and her senses were all alight with it, yet even as distracted as she was, she could still make out a faint trace of someone else in the mix, and it took her a moment to realize that the person in question was outside their door.
"Actually, I need to pee," Fleur replied. "I'm sure Rias and Akeno would be up to tending to you, though."
"If we must," Rias sighed, not even bothering to keep her smile off of her face.
"Well, if it's such a burden, I would never insist," Harry replied teasingly, and she grinned.
"Oh, we're always more than happy for you to 'burden' us," Akeno purred, flying up so she wouldn't have to stand on her shaky legs.
As Fleur watched the two devils embrace Harry, each wrapping a hand around his massive cock, she slipped into the bathroom and quickly cast a spell to let her see through the wall out into the hallway, clapping a hand over her mouth as she realized just what she'd been sensing. There in the hall, just outside their door, was Koneko, the white-haired girl's face pressed against the narrow gap between the door and the frame so she could inhale the sex-laden air coming from their room. Her hand wasn't between her legs, but she was rubbing her thighs together, looking like she was practically purring.
"I knew she had a thing for Harry, but I didn't realize that it was this bad," Fleur thought to herself, chuckling at the girl's plight. "Why in the world would she not just ask Rias if she could join in? She's cute, and we'd all enjoy her, I'm sure."
Realizing that the girl's hearing was probably extraordinary even for a devil, Fleur conjured a piece of paper and a pen so she could write a note before slipping back into the room.
"More, more, more!" Akeno screamed, her ankles by her head as Harry pounded her into the bed on her back.
"Such a needy little slut," Rias grinned, hovering just over her face and letting her wet slit drip on her lips below. "He's fucked you three times tonight, and you're still desperate for more."
"Can't get enough," Akeno gasped as he hit something inside her that made her see stars. "Oh, fuck, Harry!"
"Rias," Fleur whispered, and as the redhead turned around, she slipped the note into her hand.
Koneko's outside huffing the air and looking so horny a stiff breeze could make her cum.
Rias' eyes widened almost imperceptibly for a moment before she destroyed the note and nodded to Fleur, mouthing, "I'll speak to her."
Figuring she'd done enough, Fleur turned her attention back to Harry, embracing him from behind and pressing her large breasts against his muscular back.
"Are you close, my love?" she asked, nibbling on his earlobe as he continued to fuck Akeno hard and fast. "Because I'd love to enjoy another delectable treat like the one you left in Hermione."
"Fucking hell, Fleur," Harry groaned, and she grinned, running her hands over his chest and abs as she kissed his neck.
Eyeing Rias, she bit her lower lip at the lust in the redhead's blue eyes and smirked as she lowered herself down onto Akeno's face, grinding her wet cunt on the raven-haired beauty's eager mouth. Fleur sighed to herself, closing her eyes and soaking in the sheer lust, debauchery, and love she was surrounded by. This was what she needed, a complete and total distraction to keep herself sane, and, as a Veela, there was no better distraction than an orgy like this.
A week had passed since they began to search for the person who had cursed her father, and they hadn't made much progress at all. They had ruled out a few suspects, to their credit, but they didn't seem to be any closer to finding the person responsible, and her father's symptoms had started to come back a couple days earlier. It was easy to feel like she was going to lose her mind, consumed by terror at the thought of losing her father and rage at her inability to stop it. Leaning on the others had become a must, and she really couldn't express in words how much she adored them for how much they'd been able to save her from completely losing it.
"Don't stop, don't stop!" Akeno cried, feeling the pressure inside her build rapidly. "Oh, fuck, I'm gonna cum again! I...I...AHHH!"
She squealed as she came hard, and Harry groaned, letting go and painting her inner walls white with cum. The smell of it made Fleur's mouth water, the potency of his magic and his sheer masculinity making every drop of his seed utterly intoxicating, and the moment he pulled out of Akeno, the Veela dove towards her gaping pussy, slurping down as much cum as she could.
"You got her off before she finished what she started," Rias pouted, and Harry laughed even as he panted for breath.
"Come here, and I'll happily make you scream," he grinned, and Rias shivered, flying cunt-first towards his face and wrapping her pillowy thighs around his head.
A second later, she began screaming like she was being murdered, and Fleur knew even without hearing the buzzing that he was using Parseltongue. Continuing to clean up Akeno with her tongue, she wiggled her arse towards Harry, sighing happily when she sensed his cock grow hard again. Allowing her mind to go blank, forcing all of her fears and worries out, Fleur lost herself again in the beautiful depravity of it all.
"So no one has even visited Celeste Lestrange in years?" Hermione asked.
"That's what the Citadelle's visitor logs say," Harry replied, "and our copies of the few letters she's received and responded to suggest that she has few resources to call on in general."
"We've investigated half the wealthy families in Magical France at this point and found little," Fleur huffed.
"Jules Raymonde turned out to be genuinely reformed," Harry commented, "and Julian Lacroix's family cut him off years ago. Between them, the ones that have died, and the others we've ruled out, I'm increasingly looking at Augustin Dumont. I know your father didn't think it was likely, but…"
"Knowing that he's in league with a Lestrange, I don't think we can just dismiss him because he wasn't that intellectual back in the day," Hermione interrupted him.
"I agree," Fleur nodded, "though we are no closer to finding the two of them than we were a week ago."
"I can't believe that neither of them had properties in their name," Hermione muttered.
"It's not unheard of for purebloods not to," Luna murmured. "Isabelle would have lived at the Lestrange manor, and she definitely didn't bring him back there."
"Their last note just mentioned a safehouse," Harry added, "but it would have been easy enough for them to find some abandoned property somewhere in the area, ward it until muggles couldn't even look at it anymore, and just use it to lay low. From what I've read so far, that's actually a major problem for aurors in general when dealing with suspects that aren't complete morons."
"Luckily, most of them seem to be," Hermione sighed. "Do you know where we put that last note?"
"Just a second...here," Harry replied, summoning it from the folder he'd stuffed it in and floating it over to her.
Hermione opened it up and read aloud, "The house is set up, and we'll be safe there for a while. I can't wait to lose myself in your embrace."
"I guess she couldn't say arms," Harry snickered, recalling that the man had lost one.
"It could be bloody anywhere!" Fleur exclaimed, jumping to her feet and pacing around. "No wonder the aurors haven't found them in all this time."
"Muggle police work must be so much easier," Luna sighed.
It was true, given that muggles couldn't teleport or turn random homes into fortresses with a few waves of a stick. Tracking down an escapee in the mundane world was a far simpler affair, generally, and though he was loath to admit it, Harry finally understood why Fudge reacted so hysterically when Sirius escaped from Azkaban.
"I might have something that could help," Rias murmured as she walked in.
"When did you get back to the Underworld?" Harry asked, wrapping his arms around her and kissing her softly.
"An hour ago," Rias replied. "I flew over to my aunt's palace because my cousin wrote to me."
"Seekvaira?" Rias asked, surprised that her cousin had answered the door personally.
"Not here," the green-haired beauty replied, taking her hand and flying off into the Agares territory.
Curious, Rias went along without question, figuring that this must be important, whatever it was, and she smiled when Seekvaira landed next to a small lake she hadn't seen in years.
"You still come here?" she asked.
"As often as I can manage," Seekvaira replied. "Father has had the entire area declared off limits so whenever I want to just be on my own, whether to train or just clear my head, I can come by without fear. I'm not surprised you remember it."
"The waters are still crystal clear," Rias smiled, kneeling down and dipping her fingers into the cool lake, remembering the handful of times that she and her cousin had played together in this very area when her parents had visited the Agares. "What's going on? You said you had something I'd find interesting."
"I wrote to Mother's contacts in Magical France after you said in your last letter that you'd hit a snag in your investigation," Seekvaira replied, and Rias cocked an eyebrow at her.
"I take it Aunt Minobella doesn't know," she commented, knowing that her aunt would object on principle to favors being done for free.
"No," Seekvaira replied. "I asked about that prison guard you said had helped one of your suspects escape, and they got back to me the next day."
"How did you even manage that?" Rias asked. "I know that Aunt Mini watches the mail like a hawk."
"I have my ways," Seekvaira smirked, and a moment later, she poked Rias in the back, having reappeared behind her.
The redhead shivered and turned around, seeing her smirking cousin looking smug. The most powerful among them could move so quickly that it looked like they'd teleported, and Rias might have assumed that that was what she'd just witnessed, but she knew better.
"You've been practicing," she murmured, and her cousin nodded.
"I'm getting better," Seekvaira replied. "It might not be as flashy as the Power of Destruction, but manipulating time is just as useful."
Rias chuckled at that and sat down, motioning for her cousin to do the same. She knew that Minobella had been disappointed to learn that her daughter didn't inherit the power of the line of Bael, given that both of Venelana's children had, but the inherent ability of the Agares clan was no joke. With sufficient practice, they could learn to erect barriers inside which the flow of time was different than it was normally. Seekvaira could even erect condensed barriers around her own body, allowing her to completely cut herself off from the time flow, though the last Rias knew, she struggled to maintain it for more than a second at a time.
"So you managed to snatch your reply without your mother knowing?" Rias asked.
"Indeed," Seekvaira replied. "I think Father suspected something, but he didn't speak up. I can cut myself off for up to three seconds now, which was enough for that."
"Thank you, really," Rias smiled. "So what did you learn?"
"This Isabelle Lestrange woman sounds like a real nutcase," Seekvaira replied. "She's a complete loner and has been for years, having few if any friends, and even when she lived at her family's manor, it seems that she wasn't close to any of them."
"That was what we'd come to figure by now," Rias nodded.
"She did have one friend, though," Seekvaira replied. "A Charlotte Corbin."
"She wouldn't have been interviewed at the time because the local authorities didn't connect Isabelle to our suspect," Rias nodded. "Do you know where she lives?"
"I do indeed," Seekvaira replied, handing her a rolled-up note.
"Thank you," Rias smiled. "You've been a big help."
"We're cousins," Seekvaira shrugged, "and I haven't seen nearly enough of you lately. Have you figured out what you're wearing to the ball?"
"Charlotte Corbin," Hermione muttered to herself, looking through the files. "We don't have anything on her in here."
"It's a lead at least," Fleur said. "Shall we go speak to her?"
"We might not need to," Harry replied. "Part of the reason that we've had so much trouble tracking these arseholes down is that no one we know about has written to them, but maybe this Charlotte has."
"We could check the library first, and if we don't find anything, pay her a visit," Rias nodded. "One way or another, if she knows anything, we will learn about it. I need to get back to Kuoh, but let me know if you find anything."
"Will do," Harry nodded, kissing her gently.
As she disappeared, the four of them flew off towards the library, finding it unusually empty, and began summoning letters written by Charlotte Corbin to Isabelle. They had looked through her correspondence before, even trying to narrow it down to what was sent after she retired, but it seemed that, even with her being a bit of a recluse, some did try to contact her, sending their letters to her old address, and since they still had other suspects to look through, they hadn't decided to try and go through everything back then. With a specific name to help narrow things down, though, they were able to narrow in on just a handful of letters.
"They're still addressed to the Lestrange Manor," Fleur sighed, scowling as she looked down at the first one she came across, finding it dated just over a year ago.
Only her father Jacques' angry journal entries about how she'd up and disappeared without a word and hadn't had the courtesy to give them a forwarding address had kept Fleur and the others from trying to speak to him themselves. They were being somewhat wary of interviewing people directly, not wanting to draw the ire of the aurors, when they wanted them focused on Sebastian's case, and with the library, they had been able to find enough evidence so far to rule people out without having to speak to them.
"That's odd," Luna said as she read through one of the letters.
"What is it?" Harry asked.
"This one speaks like Charlotte knew that she'd moved in with a man," Luna replied. "Look, in this section, she wrote, 'I hope you're enjoying your new abode and beau.'"
"So she knew about the move and wrote like she expected Isabelle to read it but addressed it to her old home," Fleur said, confused. "Something's strange here."
"None of the other Lestranges seem to know where she went from their journals and letters," Hermione pointed out, "and her father in particular was still complaining about having no forwarding address as of a few months ago."
"Hmm, I wonder," Harry thought to himself. "Look through the others, and let's see if there's anything that hints at an actual conversation between them."
"You have an idea?" Fleur asked as she picked up another one.
"It's a possibility," Harry replied, opening one of them.
"Here!" Hermione exclaimed. "Your new home sounds so beautiful. It's just a shame that you have to live near so many muggles."
Harry grinned and grabbed one of the envelopes, clearing his mind and trying to sense any magic on it. "Here you are."
Recognizing the charm on the parchment, he reached out and undid it, watching as the letters on the page rearranged themselves.
"Guérigny?" Fleur asked.
"Do you know of it?" Harry asked.
"Not offhand, but...we have them," Fleur replied, feeling excitement course through her as, for the first time in days, she felt hope.
"We'll need to check all of the letters to see if there's any reason to think that might have moved on yet," Harry pointed out. "In the meantime, if you could check and try to find this place on a map, we'll be able to move in once we're sure."
"Of course," Fleur nodded. "I know where Nièvre is, and maps of the department shouldn't be hard to find in here."
Even if it turned out that they had moved on, this was the first major lead they'd gotten since they started investigating, and the possibility that they might actually manage to track down Dumont was exhilarating. She knew that her father didn't think it was him, but to Fleur, it just made too much sense. The brutal way that her father ended up taking him down, the sheer violence that the man was capable of, and the Veela connections, it all fit, especially if he found in Isabelle Lestrange someone knowledgeable enough in dark magic to help him pull this off. There were still so many unanswered questions, but they could be answered if they managed to find the bastard.
Setting her excitement aside, she picked up a map book of central France from the library and started searching for Guérigny.
"You wanted to see me?" Koneko asked as she walked into the Occult Research Club's meeting room, and Rias nodded, closing the door with a wave of her hand.
"Yes, I did," Rias replied. "You've nearly finished your first year here, and I just wanted to hear what you've thought of it so far."
"It's okay," Koneko shrugged. "You and the others helped me catch up on what I needed to, and it's been good enough. My grades should be fine."
"I'm sure they will be," Rias nodded. "Have any boys here caught your eye?"
"Wha...what?" Koneko spluttered, her blank expression giving way to panic for just a moment. "No. The guys here, what few there are, are either boring or complete douche-nozzles. Kiba would be the obvious exception, of course but, he's a friend."
"Right," Rias nodded. "What about outside of here?"
"Rias, I don't know what you think you've seen, but…" Koneko went to defend herself.
"Koneko, it's alright," Rias smiled. "I've seen how you look at Harry, and I'm not mad."
"It would be weird if you were, given everything, but I swear there's nothing there," Koneko replied. "Harry's an incubus, and he practically reeks of sex, even when he doesn't actually smell like it, and that has taken some getting used to, but I will, I swear."
"He's triggering your enhanced senses?" Rias asked.
"Something like that," Koneko muttered. "Look, for most nekomata, a guy like that would be like catnip, pun intended, but I have better control of myself than that, so you have nothing to worry about."
"If I'm worried about anything, it's you," Rias replied, and Koneko stiffened.
"I'm fine," she muttered.
"No, you're surviving, and those aren't the same thing," Rias sighed. "I've kept quiet because I figured that, more than anything, you needed space, but I just don't want you to go the rest of your life thinking that you need to keep yourself emotionally frozen…"
"You don't know what it's like," Koneko hissed. "I'm not just a devil, and I don't just have devil urges and instincts. I know what can happen when someone like me lets go and where that leads, and I refuse to become like that...like her."
"Any newly turned devil can become a stray," Rias sighed. "It's always tragic, even when it doesn't end as badly as things did in her case, but it happens, and if I thought that you being a nekomata would increase the likelihood of that happening, I never would have made you my rook."
"What...what are you saying?" Koneko asked.
"I'm saying that you could live to be thousands of years old because of the gift I gave you and that would be a tragic waste if you spent all that time not actually living," Rias sighed, standing up and walking around her desk. "Come."
Koneko stood up and froze as Rias wrapped her arms around her. Holding the unfortunately stiff girl in her arms, she ran her fingers through her white hair, grazing her scalp with her nails.
"I know you're scared, Koneko, and I understand why," she whispered.
"She ruined everything," Koneko muttered, sounding numb. "She was all I had left after our parents died. We were lucky to be taken in as we were by House Naberius, and she just...blew it all up."
"Like I say, any newly turned devil can go that way, but you've been one for months now," Rias whispered.
"She didn't go wrong immediately either," Koneko sighed, and Rias did too.
"Perhaps not, but I haven't seen a single sign of there being anything wrong with you," the redhead insisted, "and that isn't because you work so hard to numb yourself."
"Isn't it?" Koneko asked bitterly.
"No," Rias replied, cupping her cheek and raising her head until she could look into her golden eyes. "You're never going to fully move past what your sister did if you insist on keeping yourself so withdrawn. You're surrounded by people who have been forced to come to terms with trauma and grief, and you know that you can speak to any of them about it as well as me."
"Wow, we really are all fucked up in one way or another," Koneko said as she thought about it. "Only Fleur's an exception, and, well…"
"We'll hope to keep that from changing," Rias sighed. "My point is, that continuing to fight yourself like you are is only going to cause you further harm."
"I'm doing fine," Koneko insisted.
"Huffing the air outside my bedroom while we were having an orgy isn't you being fine," Rias replied, and Koneko went white as a sheet.
"I...I…" she stammered.
"I'm not angry," Rias replied. "I'm just concerned."
"He...he drives me insane," Koneko hissed, glaring at the ground. "The smell of him, the sight, the sound of his infuriatingly deep voice, I…"
"You're attracted to him," Rias smiled.
"It goes beyond that," Koneko sighed. "He brings out things in me I don't want to be there."
"But they are," Rias smiled, "and they're not bad things, despite what you think. Your attraction to Harry is one of the first things that you've felt since the incident. That's progress, and I think it would help you to explore it."
"Do you get off on watching him with the others?" Koneko blurted out, and Rias laughed.
"It's not a fetish thing for me, if that's what you're asking," the redhead replied. "I love him, I like seeing him happy, and the two of us have very similar tastes in women."
"Tastes that I doubt include me," Koneko muttered, running a hand over her nearly flat chest and then gesturing to Rias.
"You look younger than you are, but you are very pretty," Rias insisted. She got the sense that Koneko would have been a late bloomer either way, but it hadn't escaped her notice that her breasts had gotten even smaller after she became a devil, her inherent powers responding to a desire that she imagined had a lot to do with looking as little like her older sister as possible. "I'm just saying that if you wanted to get to know Harry better, not only would I not mind, I would actively encourage it. It would be better than torturing yourself every time we have sex, something that I guess has been going on for a little bit now."
"I'll take it under consideration," Koneko replied, her face burning with embarrassment at the knowledge that she'd been caught.
"That's all I can ask," Rias replied. "Oh, by the way, I left a small gift on your bed back home."
"Oh?" Koneko asked.
"You'll see," Rias smiled, and Koneko was so distracted that she didn't notice the devilish glint that appeared in her eyes for a moment. "I need to check on the others, so I'll probably see you tomorrow."
With that, she disappeared, leaving the embarrassed nekomata alone. Grumbling to herself, she teleported back to the Rookery, marching into her bedroom, only to freeze when she saw what had been placed on her bed. It was a black, buttoned-up shirt, crumpled in a way that made it immediately obvious that it had been worn and not washed, though the smell emanating from it could have told her that. Clenching her fists at her side, she stared down at the garment in rage, even as the mix of woodsy cologne, sweat, and the telltale sex essence of an incubus made her brain tingle.
She should have torn it up and thrown it out, and even ordered one of those odd elf creatures to clean her sheets as well just to be safe. As she walked towards it, though, feeling her pussy grow wetter every time she inhaled, she knew that she wasn't going to do any of that, and by the time she reached the bed, she'd already spelled away her clothes. Picking up the shirt, she buried her face in it, inhaling deeply and letting out a shuddering breath.
"What's...wrong with me?" she stammered, her hand sliding down along her flat belly to the hairless quim already leaking profusely.
Her arousal dripped down along her thighs, and the moment her fingers found her netherlips, she cried out, falling onto the bed with her face still covered by Harry's shirt. She was glad that her classes were nearly over because she doubted that she was going to have time for homework any time soon.
"It will never end up in any peer-reviewed papers, but I think incubus-dick-therapy might have real potential," Rias thought to herself with a grin as she appeared in her family castle, spotting her father gleefully looking over some document. "Something cool you found in the library?"
"Indeed," Zeoticus replied happily, and Rias couldn't help but smile. She didn't think that she'd seen her father as excited in her entire life as he'd been since they set up the library. "Nothing worth getting into just yet, but I think it might have a great deal of potential. If you're looking for Harry, he and the others left a little while ago."
"Oh," Rias nodded. "Thank you."
Reaching out to Harry, through their bond, she sensed he was on Earth, somewhere in Western Europe and, figuring he was like in France, she teleported to Paris. Turning herself invisible, she let her wings spring forth and flew south, quickly realizing that they were likely in some very small town. As she drew closer, she got the sense that Harry knew she was coming, and just after the small, quaint town came into view, she saw him wave from a nearby rooftop and landed behind the building, letting herself be seen as he joined her.
"Hey," Harry smiled as he hugged her. "I didn't know you were coming."
"I really need to remember to recast our communication spell," Rias chuckled. "I didn't have a lot to do back in Kuoh, as we really are just wrapping things up in my classes. I take it that Charlotte Corbin ended up providing some useful information?"
"Not directly, but yes," Harry replied. "We managed to get the address of Isabelle and Augustin's safe house. We were inspecting the wards when I sensed you approaching."
"Then I came at the right time," Rias grinned. "Why carefully unravel what I can just destroy?"
"I like how you think," Harry grinned. "Come."
He took her hand and led her out into the streets, the pair of them eliciting a few curious glances from the locals.
"This place is lovely," Rias sighed as she looked around.
"France in general is beautiful," Fleur murmured as she joined them. "Hermione and Luna are just about done cataloging everything. The sheer number of magical traps we've found so far…"
"Given what your father and his aurors ended up facing when they took Augustin down the first time, we would be wise not to underestimate him, especially since we have no idea what to expect of Isabelle," Harry cautioned, and she nodded.
"I know," Fleur said. "I just hope this ends up being it. I spoke to Mama earlier, and they think his second wave of symptoms has started. Painful red splotches have appeared all over his body, and the healers say it looks almost like shingles, but they cannot treat it."
"It's the curse," Harry sighed. "It will subside in a couple days, but it's going to be deeply unpleasant until then."
"I swear I am going to castrate that son of a bitch," Fleur hissed. "If he is the one responsible, he will not get another chance to escape prison."
"We could always dump him in Cocytus," Rias chuckled, and before either of them could ask about that, Luna rushed out to speak to them.
"We think we've got all the wards and other traps identified," the blonde reported. "Hermione thinks it will take even you quite a while to get through them, Harry, but if Rias can destroy them all…"
"We don't need them all destroyed," Harry clarified. "We just need a clear path. Have either of you managed to detect anyone inside yet?"
"No," Luna replied.
"I think they're out," Hermione commented as they reached her. "If we can get inside, we could arrange an ambush for them easily enough."
"Agreed," Rias nodded, reaching out and getting a sense for the kind of wards and curses that had been left out to deal with would-be intruders. "Nothing that I'm feeling so far seems to be particularly rare or impressive."
"I noticed that too," Harry said, deciding not to comment on what it suggested, though from the way that Fleur's face tightened, he knew that she came to the same troubling conclusion.
They were looking for someone extremely knowledgeable in rare or obscure curses, and the lack of anything more complex than basic alarm wards and organ-melting curses didn't suggest that this was the home of such a person. Still, they wouldn't know for sure until they actually investigated the couple properly, and as he watched Rias carve a path through their defenses like they were nothing, he hoped that they'd get the answers they were looking for soon.
"That should do it," Hermione nodded, unlocking the door and opening it carefully.
There were more basic wards inside, which Rias took care of quickly, and soon enough, they were inside the small, two-floor house, looking around at what was a pretty well-furnished home, though as Harry looked more closely, he realized that it wasn't a terribly well-cleaned one. There was dust everywhere, so much so that it didn't look like anyone had been there in days, and he winced when he heard Fleur let out a frustrated huff.
"I don't think they've been here for a while," she muttered.
"It doesn't look like it, but it doesn't look like they moved either," Harry replied. "This place wasn't set up like a temporary home, and nothing that we saw in the case files suggested that the aurors believed they'd ever gotten close to Augustin."
"A man like that would have more enemies to fear than the aurors, I imagine, but you are right that it doesn't look like they left this place willingly," Rias replied. "It's not hard for wizards and witches to shrink down and move their furniture, and some of these pieces are exquisite. This cabinet, for example, looks centuries old."
It was an ornate wooden cabinet, the edges and claw feet of which had been gilded. Harry hovered a hand over it and detected a number of particularly nasty curses woven into it, suggesting that attempting to open any of its drawers would end poorly for them if they didn't take care of them first.
"Oui, it looks genuinely quite old," Fleur nodded. "I would guess at a glance that it goes back to the ancien regime, perhaps early in the reign of Louis the Fifteenth."
"That would make sense," Hermione murmured. "From what we've heard of Augustin Dumont, I might not expect him to have particularly distinguished tastes, but Isabelle Lestrange was a member of an old noble family. Half the stuff here could belong to them."
"Which would add to the theory that they didn't just leave here," Luna added, resting a hand on Fleur's shoulder. "Maybe they went on a short trip and will return. We could camp out here and wait for them to return."
"We don't have time for that," Fleur muttered. "Let's look around and see if there's anything suggesting where they went."
"Agreed," Rias nodded. "Harry and Fleur, you two check out upstairs; Hermione and Luna will look around the first floor, and I'll check out the basement."
"Okay, but I'm going to warn everyone not to touch this cabinet until we've had a chance to break the curses on it," Harry replied. "They feel more dangerous than anything that we saw outside."
"That's...odd," Luna murmured, furrowing her brow in confusion as she stared down at the cabinet.
"Not if it belonged to the Lestranges as I suggested," Hermione said. "Think about half the ridiculously cursed things we found in Grimmauld Place."
"That's true," Luna conceded, and the pair of them began searching the first floor while Harry and Fleur flew upstairs.
"Mon dieu...ow," Fleur breathed as they opened the door to the main bedroom.
"I'm going to go out on a limb and say that whoever furnished the rest of this place brought that thing in under protest," Harry chuckled.
In the middle of the room, taking up a lot of the space, was a heart-shaped bed covered in blood-red sheets.
"It's...hideous," Fleur chuckled despite her mood. "Needless to say this didn't go back to the seventeen-hundreds."
"The seventies, more like," Harry chuckled. "Check out their closet, and I'll look through their dressers."
"There are no defenses up here at all," Fleur commented as she looked around warily.
"Presumably they figured if anyone got up this far, they were fucked anyway," Harry replied as he started riffling through their clothes.
Curiously, while the dressers looked like they hadn't been touched in weeks, they hadn't been emptied out either, and the more that Harry looked through them, the more confused he became.
"Do you think something could have happened to them?" Fleur asked after a couple minutes, poking her head out of the closet and giving him a worried look.
"There were no signs of a struggle downstairs," Harry replied, "and the wards outside hadn't been touched. I will admit, though, this looks increasingly like the two of them just vanished."
"Merde," Fleur spat. "They are our best suspects."
"And there are ways to track people down, love," Harry assured her. "Our biggest problem before was the fact that we had nothing at all to go on. Isabelle had up and disappeared, taking all of her shit with her, according to what we could parse from her family's writings, and Dumont was a prisoner who vanished in the night. They definitely lived here, though. Look."
He picked up a picture of the two of them from the nightstand and held it up for them. Dumont looked more or less like he had in the pictures included in the case file, albeit older, and Isabelle looked like the picture from her employment file. That picture alone was proof of her wrongdoing and would be something to give to the aurors if they didn't end up finding anything of use in the house, something that I doubted would be the case.
"What do you need?" Fleur asked.
"Hair would suffice for a basic tracking charm," Harry replied. "If they purged their external connections, that would complicate matters, but I honestly doubt that Dumont, at least, would remember to do that very often."
"Few do," Fleur nodded. "I'll let you know if I find a brush in here. You check his dresser."
Sure enough, Harry found a comb with a few hairs in it in the top drawer of Dumont's dresser and pocketed it as they finished looking around their bedroom. It didn't turn up much more of interest, and though they found a brush full of Isabelle's hair in the bathroom, the rest of the second floor didn't prove too interesting, with the only other room being one they clearly used for storage.
"That is a lot of junk," Harry muttered as he looked around the room, finding boxes cluttering most of it.
"Unusual, given how neat everything else was," Fleur replied, taking a moment to see if there were any obvious curses on the boxes and grimacing when she realized that some of the contents were, indeed, cursed. "This is going to take careful work."
"This room looks like it was touched even less recently than the others," Harry murmured, opening up one of the only boxes whose content didn't feel fatal and nodding when he saw about a dozen books inside. "We'll look through these later, but my guess is that this is where Isabelle stuck all of the things she took from her old home and didn't have room for. This place is a lot smaller than the average pureblood manor, after all."
"That would make some sense," Fleur nodded. "It would be best to get the others involved, though, given the scope of things. Do you want to go check on them?"
"It doesn't appear that there's much else here to look at," Harry nodded, "and while I will want to check out the attic, we can see if the others have found much first."
They flew back downstairs and found Hermione and Luna examining the cabinet he'd pointed out before.
"The curses on this are really complicated and dark," the brunette said as she sensed them approach. "I haven't been able to identify everything, but what I have recognized makes the wards outside look even more amateurish than I thought."
"I'm pretty sure opening this drawer will fill you with an uncontrollable urge to kill," Luna murmured.
"That's a pretty common one in some of the darker circles of the wizarding world," Harry replied. "Thieves looking to break into well-fortified manors seldom work alone, and making them kill each other is just a practical solution all round. Did you two find anything down here?"
"Nothing indicating where they had gone, but they have definitely gone," Hermione replied. "What food we found had been there for so long that the stasis charms had worn off, and while those generally only last up to a week…"
"It suggests that they left, and the fact that they seemed to take almost nothing with them suggests it was in a hurry," Fleur sighed.
"Like Rias said, a guy like Dumont likely has enemies," Luna reasoned, "and while those two clearly worked to keep a low profile and definitely found a sleepy little town to call home, it's not impossible that one of his enemies managed to find him anyway."
"We found samples of their hair upstairs, so hopefully we'll be able to use that to track them," Harry replied. "In the meantime, I'm going to work on getting this cabinet open. Nothing else we came across was nearly this protected, suggesting that whatever's in here is really worth keeping safe."
"The three of us can check out the attic in the meantime," Fleur nodded, trusting that he knew what he was doing.
"Okay," Luna replied as Hermione nodded.
Harry dragged a chair in front of the cabinet as the three of them left and sat down, reaching out with his senses to determine just what he was dealing with.
"Whoever cursed this thing is an absolute master of their craft," he murmured to himself, "or was."
He had no way of determining just how old the curses on the cabinet were, and for all he knew, it had been some mad Lestrange wizard or witch centuries ago, but either way, he knew more than enough to know when he was dealing with the work of someone truly gifted with the dark arts. Unfortunately for them, he was likely one of the most knowledgeable wizards in the world, and he quickly set about unraveling their work.
"It really is funny to think that, given my age," he thought to himself. "I should be struggling with my O.W.L.s next year, and instead I can reasonably consider myself on the level of the greatest magical minds in the world. Albus Dumbledore, Ecaterina Mikhailova, Lajos Balogh, Klaus Reinhardt, and a fucking teenager."
He chuckled to himself as he worked, realizing for the first time just how much of a mindfuck it would be for most of the people he just listed if they realized he was at least their equal. Having become a devil, he was unlikely to have nearly as many interactions with the magical world as he would have otherwise, going forward, and he couldn't help but think that that was for the best. The ministries would have disliked the idea of someone as young as him having access to the power that he did and made nuisances of themselves, and most probably wouldn't have taken him seriously until he started to grey, even despite that. As much as he'd always retain a certain fondness for the world he'd jumped into eagerly when he first learned of it, happy for anything that could let him escape the Dursleys, it was also something that he wouldn't have truly belonged in even if the evil pieces hadn't worked.
"There you are," Harry muttered to himself as he felt the last curse on the cabinet unravel.
Opening the first drawer he could reach, he found a few quills, an inkpot, and some parchment, all of which he quickly dismissed as irrelevant. He closed the drawer, opening another, and frowned when he saw equally mundane things in it.
"Something that old and ornate likely has some hidden compartments to it," Fleur commented as she flew back in, followed closely by Luna and Hermione.
"Find anything?" Harry asked.
"No," Hermione replied. "They don't seem to have used the attic for much at all."
"There have to be hidden drawers," Harry concluded as he opened the last obvious one and pulled out the simple pair of brown leather gloves inside, "because absolutely nothing in here warranted the level of security I just broke through."
"Daddy bought an old cabinet like this once," Luna said softly, kneeling next to him. "It had belonged to a nice old man who said that he thought that wrackspurts might have laid eggs in it because every time he stood to close too it, his mind went all fuzzy. We never found any wrackspurt eggs, but we did find a hidden compartment containing a bunch of galleons that the man clearly hadn't known were there. They ended up more than covering what Daddy paid for it."
Harry looked at the blonde and smiled when he saw that her eyes had only dimmed for a moment, and even then only a little. It had been a while since she had brought up any of the creatures that she used to speak about often. That had clearly been something that she and her father shared, and that, with him gone, she found herself less willing to think about, and it was nice to see her bring up both of them and her father without looking distraught like she would have months ago.
"How did he find it?" Harry asked.
"He didn't," Luna replied. "I was quite small at the time, and when I crawled under it, I happened to notice that a couple bits of wood under it could be moved. As I jiggled them around, I happened to move them both in the right directions at the same time and a drawer popped right out. Unfortuately, it hit me right in the face, and I wailed, but Daddy took me to Fortescue's and spent a little of the money I'd found, and that made everything better."
Her smile dimmed at that, and Harry pulled her in, kissing her cheek and earning a little half-smile of appreciation from her.
"You have a point," Hermione murmured as she rubbed Luna's shoulder comfortingly. "If this thing does have hidden compartments, there will be some way to unlock them."
"I have shockingly few examples of things like this to draw on," Harry admitted. "The only things Voldemort felt the need to hide were his Horcruxes, so things like this held little value for him."
"Let us try," Luna said, pulling away from him and running her hands over the right side of the cabinet while Hermione searched the left one.
"Rias is taking a while," Fleur murmured as Harry stood up.
"The basement may be more extensive than most," Harry shrugged. "I would sense if she were in trouble."
"We could check on her, though," Fleur suggested, and Harry nodded, figuring that this had a little more to do with her wanting to distract herself than fearing for Rias, who was more than capable of taking care of herself.
"I found something!" Luna exclaimed, and the two of them whipped around to look at the blonde.
"What is it?" Harry asked.
"This little decorative part pushes in," Luna explained, pushing on a little golden fleur-de-lis on the side of the cabinet.
"Oh, there's one on this side too," Hermione said as she saw what Luna was talking about. "Would you like the honors?"
"Okay," Luna replied, moving into position so she could press on both of them at the same time.
Craning her head back, she did so, and the lot of them looked in surprise as a new drawer appeared in the middle, pushing two of the other ones aside. After checking to ensure that there were no curses on it that he'd missed before, Harry pulled it out and reached inside to pull out a very old bottle of cognac.
"A bottle of Martell from...oh!" Fleur exclaimed. "I don't think any of my professors were this old."
"We'll have to check it for poison," Harry reminded her as he continued to dig through the drawer, which was far deeper and more spacious than it physically should have been.
He came across a scroll, which he handed to Hermione, and was about to pull out what felt like a large envelope when he heard her gasp and looked around, seeing her staring down at it in shock.
"It's them," she breathed, showing off the scroll. "They did it."
"Batard!" Fleur exclaimed as she grabbed the scroll from Hermione. "That son of a bitch! I swear when I get my hands on him, I'm going to…"
"I take it that's on Nathresia's Bane?" Harry asked, pulling out the large envelope he'd felt before.
"It's clear instructions," Hermione replied.
"Let me see it?" Harry asked, holding out his hand, and Fleur handed it over, her eyes black with rage.
As she spotted downy feathers appearing on her lover's arms, Luna embraced her from behind, murmuring calming words in her ear. Harry let Hermione take the envelope as he looked at the scroll, an immediate sense of dread filling him as he did so.
"Fuck," he thought to himself, recognizing the handwriting. "I really hoped you weren't involved, Reinhardt."
He hadn't yet tried to question Klaus because he was extremely reluctant to potentially make an enemy of yet another immortal wizard so soon after he'd rid himself of the last one, but looking at the scroll, he knew that the two of them were going to have to have a chat soon. He doubted that Reinhardt had specifically ordered Sebastian to be cursed, as that wasn't his style, and he did find the idea of him helping people as seemingly boring as Dumont and Isabelle odd, but the man always had liked advising wizards and witches on how to cause harm.
"Oh no," Hermione breathed, and Harry was surprised to hear the words not come out of his own mouth.
"What's wrong?" Fleur asked, and Hermione just handed her what she'd pulled out of the envelope.
Harry watched as the Veela turned pale and went to her, needing to take only a single glance at what she held in her hands to know why.
"Australia?" Fleur breathed, feeling like she might stop. "They...that…"
"What's wrong with Australia?" Luna asked. "I know it's far away, but we can teleport."
"The magical community in Australia is sparse, and they barely even have a government," Harry replied. "Losing people there can be incredibly easy, but with the hair samples we have, I…"
"You might be able to do nothing!" Fleur exclaimed. "If they've cut themselves off from their connection to those hairs, they'll have no power you can work with. These pieces of shit cursed my father, and if they've disappeared in Australia, our chances of finding them are close to nil. I...I…"
She started breathing rapidly, stumbling back against the wall as terror overtook her, and all three of them rushed over to her.
"I'm going to fail," she whimpered in French. "I'm going to lose him...I…"
"Hey, hey, we haven't lost him yet," Harry assured her. "This house is full of their stuff, and I am sure that something here will help us track them down. We still have time."
"Fleur, Fleur!" Hermione exclaimed, drawing her attention. "You need to slow down your breathing."
"I can't," Fleur panted, feeling like she was going to pass out.
"I know it seems hard, because you're having a panic attack, but you can," Hermione assured her. "Breathe with me."
"Oh," Harry nodded, realizing what he was seeing. He cast a calming charm on Fleur, who immediately gasped and leaned back against the wall as she felt it take effect.
"Oh, right," Hermione muttered, kicking herself for not having thought of that. She'd read about panic attacks and what to do to help others through them before, but her sources had been written by muggles, and it was what she fell back on when she saw Fleur start to lose it.
"Are you okay?" Luna asked.
"No, but my heart doesn't feel like it's going to jump across the room anymore," Fleur replied. "Thank you, 'Arry."
"Happy to help," Harry smiled, hugging her. "I meant what I said. We can still save him."
"What did you find?" Rias asked. "What did I miss?"
"We think that they might have gone to Australia," Hermione replied. "What did you find?"
"A lot," Rias replied. "Why would they leave all of their things here and move to another continent?"
"That is incredibly weird, but there are all kinds of travel guides and leaflets in here about Australia, both muggle and magical," Hermione replied, holding up the envelope. "They seem to have been thinking about it for a while. Maybe they ended up in trouble and decided to just go there early, intending to come back for their things down the line."
"What did you find?" Harry asked.
"The basement itself looked nearly empty, but that was deceptive," Rias replied. "There are numerous hidden rooms down there, including a ritual room, what is clearly a sex dungeon, and a room that I think they used as a sort of private retreat. It has this enormous hot tub built into the ground and bed in the shape of a heart, if you can believe it."
"They have a similar bed upstairs," Harry replied. "What else was there?"
"One of the oddest decorations I've ever seen," Rias replied, pulling something out of her pocket. "I think it's full of actual blood."
"Oh, shit," Harry said the second he saw what she was holding.
About the size of her palm, it was in the shape of a decorative heart and made of glass, held within a golden frame. The glass, divided into two equal parts, contained a deep red, viscous liquid that was clearly blood, and Harry could tell at a glance that something was deeply, deeply wrong with it.
"What is it?" Rias asked.
"This is an amorvitrum," Harry replied. "A physical symbol of a couple's love, their enchanted to hold their blood and glow as long as they each live."
"It's not glowing, though," Luna pointed out, furrowing her brow in concern.
"Exactly," Harry muttered, taking it from Rias. "I think Augustin Dumont and Isabelle Lestrange are dead."
"Could it have just failed?" Hermione asked as Fleur looked even more horrified.
"I doubt it," Harry replied. "These things are incredibly well-made and really rare. The basic idea was that the couple in question could, so long as one of them was home, always know for sure that the other was alright, just by seeing that both sides of the heart were glowing, sort of like the Weasleys' calender, only way more macabre. There are downsides to them, though, one of which might really come in handy for us."
"What is it?" Luna asked.
"Typically it is possible and, for obvious reasons, a really good idea to regularly ensure that any blood, skin cells, or hair that you've shed is cut off from you spiritually," Harry replied. "The ritual to do that is simple and easy, but if you could cut yourself off from the blood in one of these, it would render it useless, so it's enchanted to ensure that you can't. To use one of them, two people have to willingly spill their blood into the vessels, and once that's done, it is not affected by that ritual."
"So we can use it to track them down," Hermione smiled.
"What would be the point?" Fleur sighed. "If they are dead, then we cannot question them, and my father's only hope is that they left his blood sample here before they left. We should begin searching through the boxes upsta…"
"I wouldn't be so sure," Harry replied. "Fleur, there is something blatantly wrong here. I know who wrote that scroll, and he isn't the sort of man the average dark wizard or witch could just stumble across."
"Who is it?" Luna asked.
"Reinhardt," Harry replied, "the man who helped create Nathresia's Bane in the first place. Finding his home is difficult, and even Voldemort struggled for years to contact him, having heard whispers of a powerful, ancient wizard who happily advised any who managed to seek him out. What we have here is a couple who disappeared, seemingly months ago, based on how abandoned this place looks and when the last letter Isabelle seemed to reply to was dated, who left all of their things behind. They had piss-poor wards outside, but incredibly advanced protective curses on this cabinet that just happened to contain a scroll on the very curse used on your father and a bunch of clues pointing at Australia. I think we're being played."
"You think this was set up by someone else?" Hermione asked.
"I think that whoever set this place up did so on the off chance that it would ever be found," Harry replied. "Think about it. The aurors haven't come here, and we only found the place because we possess a resource no one else in the universe does."
"So the real culprit curses Sebastian Delacour and, knowing enough about the man's cases to know who the aurors might finger as the most likely suspect, leaves a few hints here to lead them on a wild goose chase, not thinking it likely that they'll ever get this far," Hermione surmised. "Could this be an inside job?"
"It's possible," Rias murmured. "People have done worse things to secure promotions. We became so hyper-fixated on the revenge angle that we didn't really consider any other possible motives."
"Fuck," Fleur muttered.
"Well, either way, we should be able to get some answers," Harry replied. "If we can find where these two died, I know a spell that will let me view their last moments, and that might give us some hints. If you could get me a world map, I'll be able to use a drop of one of their blood to narrow down roughly where they are, though we'll need maps of that location to narrow things down better. Luckily, we have a cup of blood with us here, and neither of them can perform that ritual now, so…"
"I'm sorry, a cup?" Hermione asked.
"Each half contains half a cup of blood," Harry replied. "It's one of many reasons why these idiotic things never became popular. I only know about them because Voldemort saw one at an auction back in the early seventies and was horrified by the idea of trusting another living soul with half a cup of his blood."
"I still think it could be worth further examining the contents of this place," Fleur piped up, "just in case you're wrong."
"Oh, I'm way ahead of you," Rias replied. "I'll have my family's servants grab everything and begin sorting through it in the castle. If your father's blood sample is there, we'll find and destroy it."
"Merci," Fleur sighed, grabbing the exceptionally old bottle of cognac and casting a few spells to determine if there was anything wrong with it. Once she was relatively sure that it was safe, she conjured a snifter and poured herself a glass, needing it badly after the last hour.
"That is really creepy," Hermione thought to herself as she watched the small, thick drop of blood roll across the map that Rias had found for them.
Normally, it would have soaked into the paper, staining it irreparably, but there was nothing normal about what she was watching. All around her, Gremory family servants were popping in and out, removing everything from the house for further examination, while the four of them sat around and watched Harry perform an act of magic so dark, it would probably land him in prison if they were all still mortal and got caught.
"Blood calls to blood," he explained as he levitated a single drop of blood from one half of the amorvitrum. "Our magic is in every part of ourselves, and when we lose a part, the magic in it stays, forever calling out to the rest until it rots entirely. That's why things like hair, skin, and, more than anything, blood can be used for so many feats of dark magic. With the spell I have in mind, I'll be able to let either Augustin's or Isabelle's blood lead us right to them."
The droplet sailed across the map, crossing the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean as it narrowed in on Europe, coming to a startling halt right in northern France.
"That's not far from here," Fleur commented, reaching inside her mokeskin pouch for the book of French maps she'd borrowed from the library earlier. "You can use this to narrow it down."
"This is really good, by the way," Luna smiled as she sipped on the small glass of cognac Fleur had poured for her.
"Just remember that it is quite strong," Rias warned her.
"I only gave her an ounce," Fleur assured her.
"Shh," Harry shushed as he levitated another drop of blood from the glass heart and moved it to the book.
He began at the top of it, figuring that it had looked before like it was north of Paris, and a couple seconds later, it stopped right at Compiegne.
"Give me a moment; I'll find a map of this commune," Fleur murmured, flipping through the book as Harry took a moment to breathe slowly and relax himself.
"Is the spell difficult?" Hermione asked.
"It requires a great deal of concentration," Harry replied. "Otherwise, it's not too difficult."
"Here," Fleur said as she found what she was looking for.
Harry nodded and performed the spell again, this time managing to narrow it down to a single small street.
"There," he muttered as he ended the spell and vanished the final drop of blood. "That's as close as I'm going to get."
"We damn near have an address," Fleur smiled. "That is infinitely more than I could have hoped for on my own."
"Let's get going," Hermione smiled. "It doesn't look like it's terribly far from here, and we have hours of daylight left."
"Yes, let's," Fleur nodded.
It had been a long day, full of twists, turns, and a couple moments of abject panic on her part, but they had more reason now to think that they were on the right track than they had since they started. She could only hope that they'd find the answers she so desperately sought when they got to Compiegne.