Chapter 38
"You're a fine dancer," Venelana complimented as the two of them twirled around the ballroom, following the music currently streaming in from the phonograph she'd set up.
"Rias and Akeno taught me last winter," Harry explained. "There was a ball at the school that I was required to attend and actually open with the other champions."
"Ah, I can see why you turned to them for that," Venelana chuckled. "Well, we don't need to worry about your dancing skills. Run through the most basic principles of etiquette for me again."
"I'm not to address anyone of rank without prior permission," Harry replied. "If asked a question, I should answer it fully but not let myself get long-winded. Once the Agares finish with a course during the feast, I'm to stop eating whether I've finished or not…"
"Minobella's a notoriously slow eater, so you won't have to worry about that in this case, but the same applies at all such functions," Venelana chimed in.
"Finally, I'm not to touch on politics under any circumstances," Harry replied.
"Correct," Venelana nodded. "You are attending as Rias' date, so no one will be able to say that you don't belong, but as a newly turned devil, you are essentially a newborn and will be afforded all the respect you would give one until you do something of note."
"I'm sure Riser Phenix won't hesitate to say I don't belong," Harry commented, and Venelana looked at him stone-faced.
"He's unlikely to attend, but even if he did, he wouldn't be so open in his disdain," she explained. "Formal balls and feasts like this are chances for devils to show off their power, make themselves appear grand, and network. Personal feuds are to be left at the door, and failing to do that is a major faux pas that will reflect badly on all parties. That's why political discussion is to be avoided as well."
"That makes sense," Harry nodded. "Should we expect pretty much all of the major houses to have at least one representative there?"
"Yes," Venelana replied. "Rias will introduce you to her friends among the devils, point out a few other noteworthy ones, and then mostly monopolize your time through the night, if I know my daughter. As she is still just the heir of the House of Gremory and not its lady, and because she's not yet a participant in the Rating Games, what's expected of her at events like this is limited, though we can't rule out the possibility that Minobella might have some surprise in store."
"How worried should I be?" Harry asked as she removed the record from the old phonograph and teleported both of them out of the room.
"With Minnie, both very and not at all," Venelana sighed. "She's generally harmless unless provoked, but she's a curious thing too, and when faced with a mystery, she can be like a dog with a bone."
"So we just have to hope that she's merely curious why Rias is with me," Harry surmised, and she scoffed.
"Hope is an illusion sold to fools," Venelana muttered. "We'll keep an eye on her, find out what we can, and go from there. Remain on your guard, though, and if her inquiries move at all in the direction of there being something unique or unusual about you, we'll know that we had better move forward with revealing what you are."
"If she just looks to find out about our relationship, though…" Harry continued.
"Then she's just being a busybody, which isn't out of character, by the way," Venelana chuckled. "I think you're as prepared as you reasonably can be."
"Thank you for all this," Harry replied.
She had been giving him etiquette lessons ever since they first found out that Minobella wanted him to attend the Agares ball, something that had taken more time than he'd have liked out of his schedule, given the investigation into Sebastian's curse, though that had hit a bit of a snag, and it had been days since they found anything useful.
"You are Rias' pawn, and by that alone, your actions would be a reflection on our house," Venelana explained. "Given that you are to be Rias' husband, that makes that doubly true. One thing you should know is that we're likely going to be announcing your engagement at the ball."
"Really?" Harry asked. "Why there, if you don't mind me asking?"
"Because Minobella invited you," Venelana smiled. "I want to see what specifically she's looking to learn first, but once we have a better idea of that, depending on what we learn, we'll announce your upcoming nuptials."
There was a wicked gleam in her purple eyes, and Harry figured that he'd ask Rias later why she might find that particular idea amusing.
"Will you be returning to the library?" Venelana asked.
"Yes," Harry replied. "I should check on the others and see if they've found anything."
"Then come," Venelana commanded, taking his arm.
She teleported them to the library and Harry immediately sighed at the sight of Fleur, who looked even more stressed than when he'd seen her earlier. The blonde hadn't been home since she and her father fought, and while they'd found no evidence that a warrant had been issued for her or any of their arrest, they were sure that if they were spotted in Magical France, the aurors would try to take them in for questioning. They had sent word of the address where Dumont and Lestrange's bodies were after they finished their investigation and knew that the aurors had shown up to take them, but that was all that they knew the aurors had done in this case.
"I just don't get it," Fleur muttered. "We haven't come across a single Irish reference in all of these files."
"There are barely any English ones," Hermione added, looking equally frustrated. "Oh, Lady Venelana. I finished copying that pile of books you wanted done."
"Excellent," Venelana smiled, looking at the small mountain of books sitting on a nearby table.
"What's all this?" Rias asked, teleporting in at that moment and seeing the pile of books.
"Mine," Venelana replied. "This is every notebook that Azazel ever scribbled in."
"The governor general of the Fallen?" Hermione breathed, looking at the books with new interest. "I didn't bother reading the books as I copied them, focused as I am on the case."
"The very same," Venelana grinned. "I'm keeping knowledge of the omnilibrary purely in the family for now, given what a monumental resource and advantage it is, but Sirzechs wanted to give these particular books to Lord Ajuka, and I agreed. He'll be telling him that he managed to get a spy in their ranks to copy his notes."
"Given Azazel's reputation, I assume that his notes will be exceptionally useful to Lord Ajuka," Rias commented.
"That's the only reason I relented," Venelana replied. "I suppose you're done with Kuoh Academy for the year?"
"Yes," Rias smiled. "The others will be arriving a little later today."
"Well, I'm going to deliver these personally," Venelana murmured, moving the books into her bag with a wave of her hand. "I need a word with your brother anyway."
With that she left, and Rias immediately turned to the others, kissing Harry and looking to Fleur.
"No," the Veela replied glumly before she could even ask.
"I just don't get why an Irishman would want to hurt your father when he hasn't even arrested any," Luna muttered, and Harry winced as he realized that even she sounded more down than he'd heard her in months.
"There must be some connection between our Irish dark wizard and one of your father's cases," Rias mused. "It's not like he's ever mentioned an Irishman he was personally irritated with, right?"
"Aside from a handful of Irish figures in the British ministry, I don't think he's even interacted with many people from that country," Fleur muttered. "I know our family's never been to Ireland."
"We're missing something," Harry scowled. "Did you finish going through his unsolved cases?"
"We did," Hermione replied. "In none of them did he seem to think that he got particularly close to anything, and none of them contained any information suggesting that he'd reopened them recently."
"And the stubborn fool won't work with me," Fleur lamented, burying her face in Luna's hair when the other blonde pulled her in for a hug.
"Uh, guys?" Akeno asked, appearing inside the library. "Sirius asked me to send you a message when he saw I was headed here."
"Is he in trouble?" Harry asked, desperately hoping that there wasn't suddenly even more to worry about.
"No, but he did have a suggestion," Akeno replied. "He asked me to ask you if you could use the Room of Requirement to recreate Sebastian's office."
"Mon Dieu...ow, that's brilliant!" Fleur exclaimed. "Why didn't we think of that?"
Harry and Hermione both winced at that, neither one having thought much about the Room since they left Hogwarts.
"Do you know if the castle's defenses are any different during the summer?" Rias asked.
"I have no idea," Harry replied. "We could ask Dumbledore, but I have no idea how busy he is at the moment, nor can I guarantee that our reaching out to him wouldn't cause him a headache with the ministry, who I am sure would still like a word with us."
"Dobby could probably still sneak in and summon us," Rias suggested. "Mother sealed the Room so I'll need to be the one who lets us in, but once that's done…"
"We can look around and see if there are any clues about who Papa thinks is responsible for his condition," Fleur smiled. "Let's do it."
"Rias Gremory," Dobby squeaked, holding the summoning paper out in front of him as he stood on the seventh floor of Hogwarts, near the corridor in which the hidden door to the Room of Requirement could be summoned.
Rias appeared in a flash of crimson light and immediately turned herself invisible, saying, "Thank you, Dobby. You can go now."
"Dobby is always happy to help Harry Potter's Rias," Dobby nodded before vanishing, and Rias smiled at his words.
She quickly summoned the others, who turned themselves invisible as well, though after a moment, they realized that they hadn't been quite as stealthy as they'd hoped.
"Whoever's there, show yourself, and we can chat," Dumbledore commanded as he appeared in a flash of phoenix fire. "Fawkes, do you sense anything?"
The phoenix trilled, and Harry sighed, revealing himself before the headmaster got the chance to cast Homenum Revelio. "Hello, Professor."
"As I understand it, I'm not your professor any longer, Harry," Dumbledore said, recovering quickly from his surprise at seeing his old pupil. "You've grown rather substantially in the last few weeks."
"I can explain that," Harry replied. "I wanted to speak to you and figured I'd test out if you really can sense where people are in Hogwarts."
"During the school year, my abilities on that front are somewhat limited, given the sheer number of people here, but when it's just me…" Dumbledore trailed off. "Shall we?"
"Please," Harry nodded, letting him lead him to his office. As he walked, he gestured behind his back for the others to carry on, and they did, trusting that Dumbledore wasn't a threat to him and that he could escape if that changed.
"Given how well he reacted to the presence of the devils, after he got over his initial shock back in June, and how little hostility I feel at the moment, I can trust him well enough for now," Harry thought to himself, following him to his office.
Fleur quietly let them into the Room once Dumbledore and Harry were out of sight and sighed as the door closed.
"Fuck," she muttered.
"We knew it was a risk," Rias sighed. "Still, at least we got proof that he couldn't quite sense how many of us were here. This is your father's study then?"
"An exact replica," Fleur replied, "save for that door there. That leads to a copy of his office in the ministry in case we don't find anything in here."
"In theory we should," Hermione piped up. "If he has been working on the old case he mentioned, the file on it should be somewhere either in here or in his office. It wouldn't make sense if it didn't."
"You're right, of course," Fleur nodded, not willing to trust that anything would turn out to work in their favor just because it should at this point.
"I'll check his desk," Luna said, sitting down in the seat and unlocking the drawers. As she searched through the first one, she pulled out the first interesting thing she found, and her grey eyes went wide as saucers. "Oh, wow, your mum's breasts look just like yours."
"What?" Fleur asked, rushing over to check what Luna was holding, smiling in amusement as she saw it was a framed picture of her mother, resting on her bed, completely nude. The image winked at her as she spotted her, having limited intelligence, and stretched her arms over her head, showing off her voluptuous figure. "Well, we Veela do generally look alike."
"Try to check for things that actually have to do with the case," Hermione sighed as she started searching through his small liquor cabinet.
"I must say, I wasn't sure if I'd ever hear from you again," Dumbledore commented as he sat down behind his desk and gestured for Harry to take his seat.
"It's been a busy little while, but I did intend to reach out eventually," Harry replied, "if for no other reason than to let you know what happened to the Elder Wand."
"You figured out what it was then," Dumbledore nodded. "Gellert acquired it in the years leading up to his reign of terror, and when I bested him in our famous duel, it became mine. Its allegiance switched to you when you disarmed me the last time we saw each other. You said that something happened to it?"
"It's gone," Harry replied, "as are the Resurrection Stone and my cloak."
Dumbledore's piercing blue eyes went wide as saucers, and he leaned forward, breathing, "You...you acquired the Stone?"
"Voldemort made the Gaunt family signet ring into a Horcrux," Harry replied. "The ring contained a large black stone, which turned out to be it. When Sirzechs destroyed the Horcrux inside it, the ring was atomized, but the stone remained. Unfortunately, all three of them were destroyed."
"How?" Dumbledore asked, and odd pain crossing his eyes for a just a moment, and Harry undid the illusion magic hiding his horns and tail, making him gasp.
"I'm in love with Rias, and we want to spend our lives together," Harry replied. "Her life has the potential to go on far longer than mine would have, though, so I became a devil. There were complications with the process, though, and I nearly died. Only my connection to the Hallows saved me, though they were sacrificed in the process."
"Merlin," Dumbledore breathed, sitting back. "You really don't intend to return to Britain at all then?"
"Rias lives in Japan, as I said before, and I want to live with her," Harry replied.
"Well, I can't say that much of Magical Britain won't miss you, but given everything, that might be for the best," Dumbledore sighed.
"How goes the investigation into the attack?" Harry asked, "And how much of the damage has been fixed? I wasn't sure you'd even be here."
"The Great Hall's been repaired, and there was little damage elsewhere," Dumbledore replied. "As shocked as the country was by the attack, the school year will proceed as normal. The investigation has been concluded."
"Already?" Harry asked.
"Well, the aurors would like to speak with you, though there's enough desire in the ministry to move past the incident that they only sent a cursory inquiry to the Japanese ministry asking for their help in locating you, something that they said was a waste of their time," Dumbledore replied. "We could press the matter, of course, but like I say, the ministry wants to move forward. The testimony already acquired from a few Death Eater wives has been enough to show the truth of the matter as well."
"Well, that's good to know," Harry muttered. "Actually, there's another auror matter that I could use your advice on. Have you heard about what's happened to Sebastian Delacour?"
"I have," Dumbledore nodded. "I also heard from a contact of mine in France that the French auror department are rather irritated with you at the moment."
"The curse used was Nathresia's Bane," Harry explained, earning a solemn nod from the old wizard, "and I have reason to believe that the person who cast it lives in Ireland."
"Ireland?" Dumbledore asked. "What evidence did you find of that?"
"Our primary suspect turned out to have been murdered, and the murderer used something in carrying out that crime that he ordered from somewhere in central Ireland," Harry replied. "He was attempting to frame our suspect for his crime. Can you think of anyone in Ireland who might have access to the knowledge of how to cast something that complex and rare?"
"One or two," Dumbledore replied, stroking his long, white beard as he pondered the question. "I would ask something of you in return, though."
"Name it," Harry replied.
"Tell me how you developed so quickly," Dumbledore said. "At first I figured it was just your devil friends, but while that might explain your increased power even before you became like this, it doesn't explain the rest. If you were still attending here, you would be headed into your O.W.L. year come September, and yet you don't hold yourself like fifth year boy; you haven't in some time, really."
"Well, to answer that, I would need to take you back to a rather horrifying conversation I had with an immensely powerful devil back in November," Harry replied. "It was when I learned just what my scar really was."
Dumbledore winced at that and sat back, listening intently as his old student told him all about how he truly came to best Tom.
"There's nothing in here either!" Fleur growled as she searched through her father's office.
Luna and Rias both winced, still looking around his study while the Veela and Hermione searched his office. So far they had found a number of interesting things, but none of them were related to Sebastian's curse.
"We haven't checked quite everything yet," Hermione said reassuringly, watching her friend and lover fume in frustration.
"We're getting pretty close, though," Luna mumbled under her breath, sinking down heavily into the copy of Sebastian's chair. "I really thought that this would turn out to be a good idea."
She'd thought that losing her parents as she had been was the worst way you could, having no warning as they suddenly disappeared from your life forever, but watching Fleur through the past few weeks, she'd come to the conclusion that she'd been wrong. The suddenness of her mother's passing and then her father's murder had been heartbreaking, but watching Sebastian go slowly as she tried, up to that point in vain, to save him seemed to be an entirely different torture, and she wished desperately that she could take Fleur's pain and terror away.
"It still could be," Rias nodded. "Say, this desk looks pretty old and ornate."
"You think it might be like the one at the safehouse?" Luna asked, immediately figuring out what she was getting at. "I suppose we can check."
The two of them started feeling around the desk for any hidden buttons, wondering if perhaps there was a hidden drawer they hadn't found yet. When Luna's finger pressed against a small bronze ornament on the right side, she gasped in excitement, only to hiss as she felt a needle prick her finger. The desk rumbled, not recognizing her blood, but thankfully did nothing else. The sound alerted Fleur and Hermione, though, who rushed back into the room.
"Did you find something?" the Veela asked, watching as Luna cast a healing charm on her bleeding finger.
"His desk bit me," she replied.
"I think it tasted your blood and rejected you," Rias said, and Hermione gasped.
"It's enchanted to open only for Mister Delacour!" she exclaimed. "Um, do you think Fleur's blood would be close enough?"
"Probably not," Rias replied, "and I don't want to test out how many wrong blood samples in a row it will take before it starts trying to do away with us."
"Papa wouldn't have had it enchanted to attack anyone who happened to touch that spot, just in case Gabby or I managed to get into his office and did so, but I imagine it will be less tolerant of subsequent failures," Fleur added. "I have no idea how we're going to get into it, but if what we're looking for is kept anywhere, I imagine that whatever that lock is hiding is our best bet."
"Harry didn't get rid of your father's blood," Rias replied, "figuring that he might need to run further tests down the line. It's being kept under a stasis charm in an amorvitrum that it turns out the Blacks owned."
"So it will still be usable," Fleur smiled.
"Possibly," Hermione murmured, tapping her fingers on the desk as she looked down at the spot Luna had pointed to. "We don't know if the enchantments require the needle to pass through flesh in order to work."
"We'll give it a try anyway," Rias replied. "Worst case scenario, we have to go outside, reset the room, and conjure a fake arm to pump the blood into. We'll make it work; I just have to go get the blood."
Without another word, she vanished in a crimson circle, leaving the three of them behind, only to reappear a moment later, holding the amorvitrum. Unlike the one that had belonged to Lestrange and Dumont, this one was only partially-full, and Rias quickly levitated a large drop of blood out of it, moving it over to hover just outside the bronze button. Luna pressed it telekinetically, and they all watched as the needle sprang out suddenly, sucking in some of the blood. There was no rumbling that time, and instead, a drawer they hadn't noticed before popped out.
"Yes!" Fleur exclaimed as she pulled it out and saw an auror file inside along with a few other things. Pulling it out, she opened it, and her brow furrowed as she started reading. "This wasn't among the files we've looked through so far."
"Really?" Hermione asked. "That's odd. I thought we looked through every case your father worked on."
"Maybe he was such a rookie when this happened that both the library and my aunt's contacts didn't consider it his," Rias suggested. "How old is it?"
"It's from the mid-sixties," Fleur replied. "This would have been from right after Papa joined the auror force."
"What's it about?" Luna asked.
"The murder of a young woman named Maelle Devereux," Fleur replied. "Oh, merde, she was nine months pregnant."
The other three of them all grimaced at that as Fleur sat down and set the file on her father's desk, flipping through it as she looked through the records.
"So one of your father's first cases was the murder of a heavily pregnant woman," Hermione muttered. "No wonder he's so desperate for you and your sister not to follow in his footsteps."
"Well, as we've learned over the past few weeks, it's a wonder he ever sleeps at all," Fleur replied, trying not to think about the particularly gruesome cases they'd read about. "Maelle was sixteen years old at the time of her murder, killed by a piercing curse through the heart cast with such surgical precision that she died instantly. Her coin purse was stolen, and the official statement on her murder concluded that it was a robbery gone wrong, but lead detective, Claude Lacroix, notes that the particular use of the piercing curse was so perfect that he found it hard to believe that someone that skilled with a wand would kill such an obviously pregnant woman over what couldn't have been more than a few galleons."
"This has to be the case that your father was looking into," Luna breathed. "It's the only file hidden away, and it sounds like they never found the killer."
"They didn't," Fleur replied. "There was no evidence at the scene to suggest that anyone else was even there, adding to Detective Lacroix's theory that this wasn't some random, low-level thief."
"It's a lead," Hermione nodded, "and it gives us something to look more closely into. The library should have the newspaper articles from the time and any other files the aurors might have on Devereux's murder."
"We don't even have to return to the Underworld for it," Rias grinned, and Fleur nodded, causing another door to appear in her father's office.
Hermione opened it and looked inside a smaller version of the omnilibrary, presumably containing anything that mentioned Maelle Devereux from around the time of her murder. Summoning the newspapers over, she handed the first one she found, a copy of Le Cri de la Gargouille from December of nineteen sixty-five, to Luna, who sighed as she looked at the front page.
Pregnant Woman Murdered in Cold Blood, the title of the article translated to.
"Oh, she was beautiful," Luna murmured, looking at the picture of the deceased they had included with it. She was stunning, a young girl with a beautiful heart-shaped face, still retaining some hints of its youthful roundness. The picture was black and white, but they could make out anyway that her hair had to have been rather fair and she had a pair of haunting pale eyes. "I wish it was in color; I can't even fathom what color her eyes were."
"A very pale blue, I'd imagine," Hermione murmured. "Probably kind of like Professor Dumbledore's, but even lighter."
"Oh no," Fleur breathed, and they looked at her in concern, finding her reading through a rolled-up scroll of parchment she'd dug out of the hidden drawer in her father's desk, looking quite pale.
"What is it?" Rias asked.
"This is Papa's notes on this case," Fleur replied. "Apparently the reason we didn't find any notebooks from him in the library is that he keeps scrolls for each case that he jots his notes on."
"Admittedly, we didn't think to try to summon note-scrolls," Luna murmured. "What did he write?"
"When they examined Maelle Devereux's body, they found the fetus inside her already dead," Fleur replied. "They had arrived too late to save the child, or so they thought."
"So they thought?" Hermione asked.
"Papa disagreed," Fleur replied. "One thing that the medical examiner noted was that it appeared as though there had been some recent transfiguration done to her vagina. The traces were faint, and he wasn't sure, but he thought it was possible."
"For what purpose?" Luna asked.
"Some of the aurors on the case thought that perhaps the killer had raped her after he killed her and, after vanishing his semen, transfigured her vagina to hide the recent sexual activity," Fleur replied, and they all glared down at the file at that. "Papa's theory was worse."
"What could possibly be worse than the necrophilic rape of a pregnant sixteen-year-old girl?" Hermione asked, sounding revolted.
"The abduction of her child," Fleur replied, and all three of them turned as pale as she was.
"Oh, fuck," Rias muttered. "So he thought that the guy who killed her took the child and put a convincing fake fetus in her womb?"
"Yes," Fleur muttered.
"So what, he killed her and forced her body to deliver the child anyway?" Hermione asked. "Why not just cut it out?"
"Healing wounds on dead bodies is difficult," Fleur replied. "I studied under the nurse at Beauxbatons for a while, figuring that healing charms would be useful things to know, and she was big on explaining the mechanics of and theory behind everything."
"Even still, once the mother's heart stops, the baby has to be delivered in minutes to avoid brain damage or worse," Hermione argued.
"And magical deliveries are usually done in mere minutes," Luna said. "The cervix is transfigured open, the vaginal canal lubricated and softened, and the baby just slides right out. Daddy was horrified when he learned from Mister Weasley how muggles do it."
"Lucifer's light, what happened to that child?" Rias muttered.
"We have no idea," Fleur replied, shaking her head. "If Papa is right, though, then they've been presumed dead for nearly thirty years. He thought that the murderer might have sold the child to someone. This is why he's continued to look into this case for as long as he has, and if his curse actually is because he got too close to the person responsible…"
"Is there anything in that scroll about why he was in Compiegne a few months ago?" Hermione asked.
"Let me check...oh," Fleur breathed. "Maelle was from there."
"Really?" Rias asked.
"Her parents died when she was a girl, and she was adopted by a couple who lived in Paris, where she was found," Fleur replied. "The aurors didn't give much thought to where she grew up, since she hadn't been back in years, but Papa began to wonder if perhaps the person who killed her had been watching her for some time."
"Why?" Luna asked.
"Her adoptive mother died recently," Fleur replied. "She's been sick for some time, and as she lay on her deathbed, she remembered something that she hadn't recalled back when Maelle was killed."
"Why didn't she remember it back then?" Rias asked in confusion as Hermione's eyes lit up.
"Dementia?" she asked. When Fleur nodded, she explained, "Memory charms are incredibly vile things that should be more heavily regulated than they are. A particularly skilled obliviator can make someone forget their own name if they go far enough, but how exactly they work is often misunderstood. They don't cut memories out of a mind like people think, but rather overwrite them with nothing."
"Isn't that essentially the same thing?" Rias asked.
"In practice, yes, except where degenerative brain diseases are concerned," Hermione replied. "Because of how the charms work, as the brain of someone suffering from something like dementia deteriorates, it can disrupt the magic that has been there for years, even decades, ironically unlocking memories."
"So when obliviators erase muggle's memories of magic, those memories can come back?" Luna asked, disturbed.
"Yes," Hermione replied, "but by the time dementia has progressed enough to have that effect, no one's going to take anything they say about magic seriously, so the ministries just let it be. What did she remember?"
"A man came around about a year before Maelle was murdered asking about her," Fleur replied. "He seemed charming and handsome, and Margot, her adoptive mother, remembers just answering his every question without even thinking twice. She thought that he might have slipped veritaserum in her drink."
"Did she remember his name?" Rias asked.
"No," Fleur replied. "According to Papa's notes, she didn't remember knowing him, though whether that's because of her dementia or because he compelled her to let him inside, we don't know. What he does say is that the man was particularly interested in where she'd come from and who her birth parents were for some reason."
"What did she say he looked like, other than handsome?" Luna asked.
"Blonde hair, blue eyes, square jaw, charming smile, about fifty or sixty," Fleur replied. "He also spoke French well but with a faint, unusual accent."
"Irish perhaps?" Hermione asked. "This really might be who we've been looking for."
"Maelle's parents lived not on the street where we found that house, but close to it," Fleur said, rolling up the scroll and standing up. "It's entirely possible that that house is something that our dark wizard has kept for nefarious purposes for decades now."
"We found nothing there, though," Rias muttered. "My family's servants looked over the entire house from top to bottom and they couldn't uncover a single clue about who owned the place."
"We're talking about a guy who murdered and potentially stole the child of a woman without leaving a single trace at the scene," Hermione pointed out. "Whoever this guy is, he's good at covering his tracks."
"The question is, just what manner of monster are we hunting?" Luna asked, sounding unusually serious, something that they all understood well.
"So in the end, you were able to use his own knowledge against him," Dumbledore chuckled before turning more serious. "It is just his knowledge that you gained, yes?"
"I saw a fair few of his memories, but it was like using a pensieve," Harry replied. "I didn't get flooded with first-person images of murdering the innocent, thank goodness."
"I wouldn't want to imagine what suddenly having more of another person's memories than your own would do to a person, even if those memories came from someone less broken and evil than Tom," Dumbledore muttered.
"He was like a teacher," Harry replied, "albeit an unwilling one. Still, despite everything, he wasn't bad at it. Had he been less of a monster, he might have made a good professor."
"Had he been less of a monster, countless things would have been different," Dumbledore sighed. "Still, while I wish you didn't have to end up so burdened by such dark knowledge, at least you're using it for good."
"Speaking of, you said that you had a couple ideas about Irish wizards who might know enough dark magic to have cast Nathresia's Bane on Sebastian Delacour," Harry said, and Dumbledore nodded.
"In my capacity as Supreme Mugwump of the I.C.W., I hear quite often about things that transpire in different countries," Dumbledore replied. "There was recently an operation undertaken by the Irish aurors that prevented a catastrophe."
"Oh?" Harry asked, intrigued.
"Decades ago there was a dark witch by the name of Siobhan Flynn, who…" Dumbledore began.
"The necromancer?" Harry asked, interrupting him. When the old man just peered at him over his glasses, he added, "Sorry, it's just that Tom met her back in the late fifties and learned under her."
"Really?" Dumbledore asked, genuinely surprised. "I thought I had managed to get a relatively complete timeline of his travels abroad."
"She was a real lunatic from what he described," Harry nodded, "obsessed with figuring out how to raise inferi more efficiently. Her goal in life was to master the discipline so completely that she could raise entire graveyards at once. Even Voldemort found her disturbing, not that he didn't happily learn from her. She was killed in a clash with the aurors back in the seventies, if I recall correctly."
"So we thought," Dumbledore replied, and Harry's eyes went wide.
"She survived?" he asked, not particularly enthused by the idea of a woman whose dream in life was to make the walking dead outnumber the living still drawing breath.
"She escaped the site of her apparent demise and made her way to Haiti, seeking further knowledge of necromancy," Dumbledore replied. "The man who led the assault back then never trusted that Siobhan actually died, and when he got word that she had returned to the Emerald Isle, he arranged a strike team to meet her. What they found was a subterranean lair full of countless hundreds of inferi, but they managed to take her down. I know that blood curses are a little outside her typical interests, but she's easily the darkest witch or wizard in Ireland that I've heard of."
"Where is she now?" Harry asked.
"Dead," Dumbledore replied. "She wasn't ever going to let them take her in alive, but they were able to confirm her death this time."
"I don't think there's any connection between her and Director Delacour, but it's something to consider," Harry replied.
"Before she returned to Ireland, she stopped in France, and no one knows how long she was there," Dumbledore replied. "The French authorities were completely unaware that she was in their country at all."
"Well, that's a little more, I suppose," Harry nodded. "What was the other possible idea you had?"
"That one is entirely my own theory," Dumbledore replied. "I have nothing to back it up and no proof of any wrongdoing save for this: I have twice in my entire life been genuinely unnerved by wizards or witches I met, and neither one was Gellert nor Tom."
"Oh?" Harry asked, his curiosity genuinely piqued.
"The first was when I met Nicholas and Perenelle," Dumbledore chuckled, recalling the sheer power he felt radiating off of them, "and the second was far less pleasant. Tell me, what do you know of the Lynch family?"
"As in Diarmid Lynch?" Harry asked, and Dumbledore nodded.
"The very same," he replied. "In the early sixties, less than twenty years after my victory over Gellert Grindelwald, I had an occasion to meet Declan Lynch, his descendant and the current head of the family."
"And this Declan frightened you?" Harry asked.
"Disturbed would be the better word," Dumbledore replied. "I couldn't honestly figure why at the time. He seemed pleasant enough, a man maybe ten to fifteen years younger than myself. It only hit me afterward why he had seemed so unsettling. It was his eyes, you see; there was something in those eyes that bothered me instinctively. They were utterly empty, like there was barely a flicker of feeling inside him."
"How did they differ from those of inferi?" Harry asked, his mind still on the subject.
"He was clearly alive, but it was like there was something missing in him," Dumbledore replied.
Harry nodded at that, saying, "Hermione read a little about the family to learn more of house elves, and from what she's said, they're incredibly reclusive."
"They've been an entire family of hermits for generations," Dumbledore nodded. "They keep to themselves, seldom bother anyone, and all anyone knows about them is that they and they alone breed and sell house elves. If not for that one meeting, I would never have even thought to look into them."
"Was there anything else about the meeting that bothered you?" Harry asked.
"Declan Lynch wasn't the least bit impressed with me," Dumbledore replied. "Keep in mind this wasn't all that long after the end of the war that made me a household name. I was very used to people, whether they liked me or hated me, holding me with a degree of reverence at that time, and I convinced myself that that was all there was to it; that I had grown so arrogantly used to being treated like the most powerful being in the room that having someone treat me like a normal person had become alien to me. As I reviewed the memory afterward, I realized that there was a little more to it than that."
"Could I see the memory?" Harry asked, and Dumbledore shrugged.
"Why not?" he asked. "I'm not terribly busy today. All I ask in return is that you tell me what your friends are doing on the seventh-floor corridor I found you in."
Harry froze for just a moment before sighing. "You did sense them."
"Indeed," Dumbledore replied. "Fawkes is keeping an eye on the area."
"I had wondered where he went," Harry thought to himself. "There is a room in this castle that, if outside forces were to learn of it, would immediately put it in grave danger."
"This is that little spot in the corridor across from the tapestry of Barnabus the Barmy that was sealed weeks ago?" Dumbledore asked, surprising Harry further. "I honestly thought that was the Death Eaters work for some bizarre reason, but as the magic was on a solid wall in a part of the castle that no one really goes near, I figured that I'd just seal the corridor off and investigate it at my leisure."
"It was Rias' mother who did that, and that's because that room I mentioned can become anything you like," Harry replied, making Dumbledore furrow his bushy brow in confusion. "Aside from eatable food, it can create anything you envision. It could recreate this office down the most minute detail; it is currently being used to recreate Sebastian Delacour's office because he won't let us help him freely, and it can recreate every book ever written."
"Every book?" Dumbledore breathed, feeling a chill go down his spine.
"Everything ever written," Harry replied. "Imagine for a moment what every ministry in the world would do if they learned that nothing they ever wrote down was ever secret."
"It would be a war without end," Dumbledore sighed, burying his face in his hands.
"And that honestly pales compared to how the muggle governments would react," Harry muttered. "Are you familiar with nuclear weapons at all?"
"No," Dumbledore replied.
"They're massive explosives capable of leveling entire cities," Harry replied. When Dumbledore's jaw dropped, he added, "No, really. Think fiendsfyre, but on the scale of the Great Fire of London, and it poisons the air, water, and land of the area afterward. If the American muggle government learned that that room contained every document they ever created, they would try to seize the castle by any means necessary and when that failed, they would drop as many of those bombs on this place as they felt they needed to to keep that threat from falling into other hands. The Russians would be no different, though they might be a little slower to react, since their current leader is apparently a massive drunk."
"You could have told me," Dumbledore said, sounding exasperated.
"I thought about it, but I was keeping the devil secret from you, and all my other secrets stemmed from that," Harry replied. "Rias and I had every document in there copied onto real paper and then sealed the place up so that no one else would stumble in there and spark a disaster."
The actual reason had been because Venelana wanted to keep the resource exclusive to House Gremory, but Harry agreed for different reasons.
"Well, I can't say that the alternatives you brought up wouldn't be significantly worse," Dumbledore muttered. "Did she do anything else here?"
"No," Harry replied. "You would have detected it anyway, as it turns out. Speaking of detection, why did you just let Luna, Hermione, and Rias go freely?"
"Because you revealed yourself," Dumbledore replied, "and after managing to bring down Tom for good with so remarkably few casualties, you've earned yourself a significant measure of my trust. I'd just ask that you extend the same to me, at least where matters regarding Hogwarts are concerned."
"I promise, I won't keep anything else about the castle from you," Harry replied, and Dumbledore nodded.
"Then," he said, drawing his wand and putting it to his temple, "come and see my one and only interaction with a member of the Lynch family. It was at charity gala for the reconstruction of a hospital lost during the war, which had been torn down and abandoned since. He only attended it because he was asked to by an old friend of mine who simply adores networking."
"Blimey, is that Professor McGonagall?" Harry asked, spotting a young, auburn-haired woman nearby who looked remarkably like his old head of house.
"We were all young once, Harry," Dumbledore chuckled. "My hair was once a bright orange, believe it or not."
"And here I thought you came into the world with a long white beard," Harry chuckled, making the older man smile.
"Look," he said, pointing to himself and the man he was about to meet.
"Ah, Albus, there's someone I want you to meet," a rather short, bald, rotund man with a thick mustache said.
"There's always someone you want to meet, Horace," Dumbledore chuckled as he followed his friend.
"Getting him to come here at all was a challenge, but through a mutual contact of ours, I managed to pull it off," Slughorn grinned.
"That's Horace Slughorn," Dumbledore explained. "He taught potions at Hogwarts for decades, teaching both Tom and your parents. He's actually returning this year to replace Severus, who has elected to retire."
"The bat finally realized that teaching in a school full of children while despising children wasn't the best idea?" Harry asked dryly, and Dumbledore gave him a disapproving look.
"Albus, I'd like you to meet Declan Lynch," Slughorn smiled, and the fair-haired man turned around, his cold blue eyes finding Dumbledore's immediately.
"Albus Dumbledore," he nodded, offering his hand. "Your reputation precedes you."
"As does yours," Dumbledore replied, wondering why, as he stared into those eyes, he felt more uneasy than he had while going to confront his old friend the final time.
"Deirdre McAllen did a bit of work for him some years ago and was kind enough to introduce us," Slughorn explained. "Such a bright girl she is. I always knew she'd go far."
"She is talented, yes,' Declan agreed, though something about his tone seemed to suggest that he thought there was something lacking about her.
"Look at his eyes, Harry," Dumbledore said as, in the memory, he and the other man exchanged basic small talk. "Tell me what you see."
"They're empty," Harry murmured. "It honestly looks like there's almost nothing behind them. It looks less like he's regarding you and more like he's reading you."
"You're right," Dumbledore murmured. "Tom's eyes were a little like that when he was a boy, before they ever turned red and filled with palpable rage, but this emptiness far exceeds that."
"He's powerful too," Harry commented, interrupting him. "That lack of reverence for you that you mentioned extends far past you. This man has the look of a being who thinks he has nothing to fear from anyone around him. Sirzechs, the one who destroyed the dementors, generally has that look about him too, not that I think this guy is on that level."
Harry watched Declan walk off, mingling with the others guests, and studied his demeanor as he interacted with them. He was among the most wealthy, influential, and powerful figures in Magical Europe from that era, and yet none of them phased him at all. He didn't look bored so much as restless, as though he were searching for something and cared little for anything besides whatever he sought.
"As unlikely as that seems, I would wager there is more to him than we see," Dumbledore replied. "Come and I'll show you something."
The two of them exited the pensieve, and Dumbledore opened up a cupboard that revealed a very extended filing cabinet. He summoned a particular folder from within it and handed it to Harry, who opened it and saw himself looking at an old painting of a sandy-haired man with angry blue eyes.
"That is Diarmid Lynch," Dumbledore explained as he sat back down. "He was a relatively prominent figure in Irish society in the early seventeenth century before fading from view not long after his house-elves became popular there. He was married to a woman named Sinead, and together the two had three children, a son named Desmond and two daughters who died in infancy. He is the last Lynch that I have pictures of until Declan."
"They're that hermit-like?" Harry asked. "How on Earth do they do business?"
"House-elves are ubiquitous," Dumbledore replied. "Wealthy families and institutions all use them, and they can only get them from one source. They are so reclusive that Sinead Lynch is the only wife in the entire line that I was able to find the name of."
"That's...odd," Harry muttered, moving onto the next page, which contained a basic genealogical chart. "They've only had one son each too?"
"That's not the oddest part," Dumbledore replied as Harry moved onto the page containing Declan's picture and what information his old headmaster had managed to dig up on him. "Declan was just a month shy of his thirtieth birthday when his father, Cormac, died, and Cormac was just three months shy of his when his father, Keiran, died."
"An unfortunate coincidence," the younger wizard commented, and Dumbledore shook his head.
"Every Lynch since Desmond's son Conner has been between their twenty-ninth and thirtieth birthdays when their father died and they took on the family mantle," he said, and Harry looked up in shock.
"What?" he asked. "That's impossible."
"It's highly improbable," Dumbledore replied. "I've tried looking into them, but they are so secretive and their elves so widely sought after that even with my influence, I would never manage to get the necessary resources together to investigate them before someone found a way to shut it down. I know there's something wrong with them, though, something dark and twisted. I just can't prove it."
"Do you have anything on him that might link him to my case?" Harry asked.
"As I did with Tom, I've worked for years now to track Declan Lynch's various movements over the years," Dumbledore replied. "It's actually easier with him, since he leaves Ireland perhaps once every few years or so. He traveled to Denmark about five years ago for unknown reasons, spending a few days in Copenhagen, and about three years before that he met with British ministry officials to discuss a proposal on house-elf rights, finding the idea silly. I was at Hogwarts at the time and only learned about the meeting after he'd already left."
"What about France?" Harry asked.
"In seventy-nine, he visited Paris to meet with an ailing man who he once worked with," Dumbledore replied, "and in around sixty-four, he spent around two weeks in the city of Compiegne for reasons I couldn't determine."
"Compiegne?" Harry asked, and Dumbledore nodded. "Interesting. The city was the site of those two murders I mentioned."
"Interesting," Dumbledore murmured. "It's entirely possible that he travels more often than I've been able to determine. The notes I made in here about his movements were all the ones I could find proof of."
"I could look into him," Harry murmured, wondering if there might actually be a connection here.
"You will receive no help from any ministry in the western world, and if you get caught looking at the Lynches, they might actually work against you," Dumbledore replied.
"Since when is that new?" Harry chuckled, flipping to the final page in the file, full of little notes Dumbledore had jotted down about possible theories he had for their strangeness. "Declan is still alive, yes?"
"He is," Dumbledore replied, "last I heard anyway. Those are the only two leads I have on anyone in Ireland who I could possibly think might be capable of something like what you're investigating. Siobhan Flynn is a definite possibility, given what an evil creature she was, and as for Declan Lynch, his family has stayed isolated in their tower for centuries, quite possibly squirreling away all manner of knowledge, and I really think that there's something terribly off about them."
"Well, you've given me a couple potential leads, so thank you," Harry replied. Fawkes chose that moment to flame in, landing on Dumbledore's desk and looking up at her enquiringly for a moment before flying up and landing on one of his horns. "Thank you for being so understanding of the whole devil angle of all this too."
"You managed to foil an invasion of this school in which I was lured out, only losing a single student not involved in the attack in the process," Dumbledore commented. "I can overlook quite a bit for something like that. It would seem your friends have left."
"Yes, and I should get going too," Harry replied. "I'll let you know if I learn anything more about the Lynches, though if Declan Lynch had nothing to do with Sebastian's curse, I'm not going to be able to focus on that for a while."
"Of course," Dumbledore nodded. "Oh, and Harry, the next time you want to visit Hogwarts, just write to me."
"Yes, Professor," Harry winced, and Dumbledore chuckled.
"You can call me Albus," he said. "I'm not your professor anymore."
"Maybe someday," Harry replied, directing Fawkes off of his horn before teleporting out.
"So he knew the whole time?" Akeno asked as they gathered together in Rias' bedroom at the castle. "That's hilarious."
"He's friendlier to us than I would have expected, though how we helped against Voldemort probably is most of the reason why," Rias murmured. "Those two leads he gave you sounded interesting."
"Not as...oh fuck...interesting as what we found," Fleur moaned as Luna massaged her back, digging her thumbs into her in slow little circles up and down along her spine. "That feels really good."
"Given that we're looking for a man, we know that Siobhan Flynn isn't our suspect, though she could have still been involved," Harry reasoned.
"I still can't get over there being someone who actually disturbed Voldemort," Hermione chuckled, reading through the copy of Dumbledore's notes on the Lynch family from the library. "You don't really think that Declan Lynch is involved, do you?"
"He was in Compiegne around the right time," Harry replied, "and beyond that, his involvement would potentially solve one mystery in this whole affair that never made sense. None of you are going to like my theory, though."
"What is it?" Fleur asked, sitting up straighter and giving him an even better view of her magnificent breasts.
"Throughout this entire investigation, we've uncovered a lot, but one question we're no closer to answering than we were when we started is: how did your father's quill get cursed in the first place?" Harry replied. "The wards around your family's manor are extensive, and even if your entire family is out, your house-elf is still around."
"Yes," Fleur replied.
"That leaves one possible suspect," Harry said, and she squawked in outrage.
"Bernadette would never hurt us!" Fleur exclaimed. "She's been in the family since my father was young; I've known her my whole life."
"Knowingly she wouldn't," Harry clarified, "but just for a moment, knowing as we do that all house-elves come from a single source, consider this: what if that source is dark?"
"Why would a dark wizard sell creatures that are so bubbly, friendly, eager to please, and fuck, I think I just answered my own question," Hermione shivered, looking pale. "You don't think…"
"I think that if I were a dark wizard, and do remember that I know how to think like one, and I sold servant creatures to others, I would include a way of forcing them to do my will when I felt like it," Harry replied, "preferably without them even realizing it."
"That...that's not…" Fleur stammered, her eyes filling with tears at the thought that the elf who used to read her stories when we parents were busy and play with her in the gardens when she was bored might have betrayed her family in the worst way. "If that is true, then I have to warn my family…"
"No, don't," Harry said firmly. "It's only a theory and if I'm right, not only do I think it likely that Bernadette really doesn't know what she did, but more to the point, if we separated her from them, we would be tipping Lynch off that we're onto him. At the moment, he should think that he's won where your father is concerned and…"
"He would know that we found his hidden house in Compiegne," Fleur pointed out. "At any point, if you're right, he could turn Bernadette into a weapon against my family."
"I agree with Harry, Fleur," Rias said. "I'll have my familiar look after them with instructions to get them out of there if Bernadette looks to be doing anything untoward, but if we show our hand now, we have no idea what else this Declan Lynch could do."
"As for his safehouse, we found nothing there," Harry reminded her. "Even the bodies of his victims had nothing truly linking him to them. Nothing that couldn't be found without pretty dark magic, anyway. He has no reason to think we suspect him at all."
"Promise me that we'll keep them safe," Fleur begged, and Rias embraced her.
"You have my word," the redhead promised. "This does mean that we shouldn't discuss this case at the Rookery anymore.
"Dobby and Kreacher," Harry nodded, really not liking the idea that he might not be able to fully trust Dobby.
"Admittedly, Fleur, this picture does sort of match the description from your father's notes," Hermione said reluctantly, not wanting to believe that possibility any more than the rest of them did. "He's blonde, handsome, has blue eyes and has a strong jaw. Inchmore is in central Ireland too."
"When I was hearing Dumbledore talk about the Lynches, I really didn't think it was likely that this Declan figure was involved, but after hearing about what you came across…" Harry trailed off. "We don't have much yet, but what we do have is a figure of probably pretty substantial power, given how he held himself even when meeting Albus bloody Dumbledore, who matches the physical description given by that old woman, and who potentially could have pulled off everything we've seen so far."
"Knowing there's a mortal guy out there who made Dumbledore uncomfortable at the height of his power is genuinely unsettling," Luna said. "The complete lack of physical evidence at the scene of the murders we found also fits the description of Maelle Devereux's murder scene."
"I've asked Koneko to scope out the island," Rias replied. "Not to make contact or even get too close, but I want her to fly over and give us a basic outlook of what we're dealing with. It might be nothing, and there might be no connection here at all, but it's a theory worth ruling out at least."
"I can't even take solace in the fact that Gabby's been spending so much time with our aunt and uncle since this started," Fleur lamented. "They have a couple house-elves too."
"Most pureblood families do," Luna murmured. "We never bothered because Daddy thought that the elves might be spies for the ministry, primed to act if anyone started to figure out the Rotfang Conspiracy. The truth might be significantly worse."
"Did Dumbledore have a theory for why the Lynches all seem to take over the family at roughly the same age?" Hermione asked, "Because that's really weird."
"He didn't, but one thing I could think of is perhaps they kill their fathers," Harry replied, earning more than a few disturbed looks. "It sounds insane, I know, but what if every Lynch since Desmond has trained his son to exceed him, kill him even, in the hopes that each generation will be stronger than the last? It's no less mad than Voldemort, though on the opposite end of the mortality spectrum, of course."
"Well, at any rate, it's unnatural," Hermione muttered. "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, eight times is pretty bloody obviously enemy action. How would that even work, anyway? And why thirty?"
"Perhaps that's the cut-off date," Akeno suggested. "Hey son, if you haven't found a way to kill me by thirty, I'm killing you, or something like that."
"And failure would presumably mean death too," Luna murmured. "Oh goodness, maybe they don't actually have only one child per generation."
"By the Lightbringer, and I thought the Devereux murder case had us veer into fucked-up territory," Rias muttered. "Well, let's review what we know so far. Sebastian Delacour was inflicted with a blood curse using blood stolen through an enchanted quill put in his office by unknown means. Someone tried to frame Augustin Dumont, an escaped convict with pretty substantial ties to Delacour for the crime and killed him and his lover in a house near a place that he was spotted in a few months ago."
"Papa clearly thinks that this relates to the murder of Maelle Devereux and the possible abduction of her child," Fleur added. "Her adoptive mother recalled being questioned about her by a charming, handsome blonde man months before she was killed, and this Lynch figure both fits that description and was in Compiegne around the right time."
"Your father was clearly cursed some months ago, knowing how Nathresia's Bane works," Harry replied, "and that may very well line up with when he was spotted around Compiegne looking into the area where Devereux grew up."
"What doesn't actually line up is the abduction of Dumont and Lestrange," Luna piped up. "They hadn't disappeared all that long ago."
"Whoever did this didn't need someone to pin the crime on immediately," Hermione pointed out. "It was months before Sebastian sought medical help at all, much less ended up in a bad enough state to warrant the investigation."
"Rias?" Koneko asked. "I found something."
"Already?" Rias asked, throwing open the door with a wave of her hand.
Koneko walked in, pausing when she saw that Fleur was topless, though she quickly shrugged and focused on Rias. "That Declan guy is dead."
"You have got to be kidding me!" Harry muttered. "How do you know?"
"I witnessed his funeral," Koneko replied. "I did as you asked, Rias, and flew around the perimeter of the island, keeping myself invisible. The magical defenses around it are pretty extreme, but I could still see things clearly. An old man sort of fitting the description you gave me was being burned on a pyre while a much younger man attended alone."
"Just a second," Harry said, disappearing for a moment before returning with a pensieve, which he set down on Rias' side table. "Koneko, could you focus on the entire memory? I can take it out, and we can view it together."
"Sure," Koneko shrugged, though as he drew close, she felt a shiver go through her and tensed up.
"It's fine," Harry assured her, his deep, rumbling voice making her insides clench involuntarily. "You won't feel a thing."
"So fucking big!" she's heard all of the women he was fucking scream at one point or another, and she forced herself not to think about the things she absolutely would feel if she let herself.
She gasped as she watched a silver strand of light leave her temple, following Harry's finger along as he brought it to the basin he'd set up on the table. He dipped his head into it at once and quickly found himself staring down at a verdant island. It was relatively large for a private property, made to look all the more so by the fact that the only structure on it was a large tower made of pale white stone.
"I wonder how the average wizard or witch would react to viewing pensieve memories from the perspective of someone who was flying," he thought to himself, knowing that he personally had no problem with it, as flying under his own power had become second nature to him by then.
He couldn't spot Koneko, but he knew that she was flying around just outside the wardline, well out of range of spells like Homineum Revelio. Spotting a funeral pyre just to the west of the tower, he flew towards it, immediately spotting the one standing figure there. Unlike in reality, he could move closer without fear of being spotted, the nekomata's incredibly eyesight coming in handy as he drew close enough to get a good look at both the young man and the body about to be set aflame.
"That's definitely Declan Lynch," he thought to himself as he looked at the man. He was an old man by then, his hair having turned white and his face lined by thick wrinkles, but Harry couldn't say that he had aged poorly. His hair hadn't receded at all, and though he looked old, he didn't look as old as Dumbledore had figured he was.
"You didn't even look that old," the young man said before pointing his wand at the pyre.
He was young, but not terribly so, looking in his late twenties, which likely meant that he fit with the disturbing pattern of the family. Even still, he radiated power and confidence beyond his years, looking rather pleased with himself as he set his father's pyre on fire. His eyes had the same cold emptiness that Declan's had, and Harry wondered just what that signified. As he watched him take in the funeral scene, observing it with a sort of detached pleasure, he felt the same kind of unease that Dumbledore had when he met Declan.
He emerged from the pensieve and let the others take their turn as he picked up Dumbledore's notes and checked the genealogical chart.
"Liam Lynch," he murmured to himself.
"What?" Hermione asked.
"The latest one," Harry replied. "He has a very similar demeanor to his father."
"Do you really think your theory about them raising their sons to kill them might be true?" Hermione asked.
"I have no idea," Harry replied. "All I know is that I fully believe, as Dumbledore does, that there's something bloody weird about them. If Declan was the one who cursed Sebastian, the blood sample's likely going to be found in that tower."
"Getting his son to hand it over might not be particularly easy," Koneko muttered.
"We'll only be asking for the sake of politeness," Fleur muttered as she watched Rias emerge from the basin and went to take a look herself.
"We'll be able to determine a fair bit about the magical defenses around the island from your memory, Koneko," she murmured. "Well done."
"Yeah, thank you," Harry smiled, resting a hand on her shoulder. "You've been really helpful through this."
"I...I just did as I was ordered," Koneko stammered, his touch feeling like fire on her skin as she cursed herself for wearing a top that exposed her shoulders.
"Nonsense, you have been really helpful," Rias replied, a wicked smirk on her face. "Harry, I often reward her with head-pats."
"Like this?" Harry asked, patting the girl's crown, only to freeze as she let out a little squeak. "Are you okay?"
"I just remembered I forgot to ask Kiba about something," Koneko rushed out as she jumped to her feet and practically ran out of the room.
"So, are we going to talk about how badly she wants me?" Harry asked. "Because I can sense that pretty openly."
"I think you would even if you weren't an incubus," Rias chuckled. "Just let her come to you, provided you're interested.
"Oh, I'm interested," Harry murmured, finding the catgirl quite pretty.
Hermione took her turn next as Fleur looked through the file on the Lynches, pondering the possibility that they had finally found who they were looking for. When the brunette emerged from the pensieve she was exceedingly pale, and she immediately rushed towards the pile of documents sitting on Rias' bed.
"Fleur's got Dumbledore's notes on the Lynches," Harry said.
"That's not what I'm looking for," Hermione muttered as she frantically looked through the papers, eventually pulling out the copy of the French newspaper detailing Maelle Devereux's murder they'd retrieved from their library. "Oh, God."
They all grimaced at that and glared at her for a moment, only to grow concerned as they saw just how horrified she looked.
"What's wrong?" Rias asked.
"Did you happen to get a good look at Liam's eyes?" Hermione asked.
"Yeah, they had that same icy emptiness to them that his fathers' had," Harry replied. "It really is rather unnerving…"
"Did you notice the color?" Hermione asked. When they all shook their heads, she said, "They were pale blue; really pale blue; paler than I had ever seen anywhere except here."
She put the copy of Le Cri de la Gargouille with Maelle Devereux's picture on it and they all paled as they realized what she was thinking.
"You think that Liam Lynch might be…" Fleur breathed.
"I think we might have found the baby your father thought was abducted back then," Hermione said, and they all stared down at the image of the long-deceased woman.
"Fuck," Harry muttered.