Madge Farley was a fifty-something old witch who once was a 'hopeful' for the international dueling circuit, so we immediately had something to connect over during dinner.
Gemma Farley barely talked to me, still looking at me with slight guilt whenever our eyes crossed, and her father Charles Farley didn't seem to want to talk to me much either.
I learned that he worked in the ministry, same as his sister, and the two shared an office at the Department of Magical Games and Sports - the ministry department responsible for hosting the Triwizard Tournament, among other things. He was also a huge Quidditch fanatic, even having played three seasons for the Tutshill Tornados before Bella forced him to quit after a head injury that could have killed him.
And still, the man wouldn't talk to me, despite me being a pretty decent Quidditch player with a perfect track record of 0 losses... to... 1 win. Okay, maybe Charles Farley simply didn't yet care about me, and he had deeper reservations like the potential fallout with Lucius Malfoy that loomed over his head thanks to associating with me.
"Are you ready for some gifts, laddie?" Madge asked with an excited grin that told me she couldn't wait to open gifts either. She was kind of childish in her mentality I had gathered during our sumptuous Christmas feast.
"Uh, sure. I brought some of my own as well," I said as I handed over another wine bottle to Madge since I didn't know her.
The wine had been quite the topic at the table, and Madge, in particular, was in disbelief that muggles had wine that good in their barrels. Pureblood magicals were such a weird breed... it seemed, however, that my gift would be appreciated.
The father of Gemma received the expensive whisky bottle I had acquired, which he merely thanked me for with a nod and had a house elf put away. Gemma herself got a scarf like every other girl this year, which she seemed to appreciate. Just on topic, it was a very pretty wine red.
"It should have been emerald green and silver," Aunt Bella jokingly interjected, but Madge immediately protested.
"There's a life after and outside of Hogwarts. Just living for your house colors makes no sense unless you're a dullard. Nice gift, lad, don't listen to my sister-in-law! The Slytherin pride runs too deep!"
The two witches started playfully bantering back and forth until I handed over my gift to Bella: a necklace with a locket that held a picture of me that Lavender took during the school year when we were still an item, and a picture of her sister and her niece - my grandmother and my mother.
The picture of my grandmother and mother were safeguarded by Patrick all these years ago and having a resized copy made that would fit in a locket and still move was one my most expensive purchases in Diagon Alley to date.
"I thought you might appreciate a little family token after I found that picture of my grandmother and mother. You reached out to me, after all, so I thought this might be a-"
My explanation was cut short as the woman embraced me in a loving, motherly hug that made me blink away a few tears eventually, the longer it lasted.
"Such a thoughtful boy," she cooed into my ears as I felt a few tears land on my shoulder. "Thank you, Talion."
-----
Late into the night, I was back alone in the shack in Goldsborough with a heavy tome resting on my lap. My gift from the Farleys, or rather Bella in particular, was a family grimoire of House Gamp. The thing was bright gold in my eyesight and two hours into leafing through the heavy old thing, I was still not sure just how much knowledge this book contained about Transfiguration.
Bella had tested me after the gifts were opened and deemed my third-year-level of Transfiguration 'acceptable', though I saw Madge roll her eyes every time my aunt barely praised me for my intricate spell work that was well ahead of my peers.
This Gamp Grimoire was a testament to the storied family of my grandmother and held many little nuggets of information that have recently been featured in Transfiguration Weekly, one of the few publications in the wizarding world that circulated in Magical Britain. And this grimoire was written and editted by witches and wizards centuries ago... if only they had published their work and catapulted this branch of magic into the future early...
Curiously, the grimoire came with a sort of 'echo' function as Bella had called it. Future generations could erase information in the book and correct the work of their ancestors, but thanks to the meticulous thinking of Ulysses Gamp, the original author of 'Gamp's elemental laws of transfiguration', you could see the erased information in case it turned out to be correct after all or alluded to wisdom not considered in the corrections.
Echoes, he called it. Echoes of knowledge.
Eventually, I fell asleep with that grimoire next to me and woke up reading it for the entire next day. In fact, I did not do much else the next few days, postponing all my other plans, because reading all the old and corrected information in this grimoire put me in another trance where past knowledge connected with what I learned from the book and formed deeper understanding.
-----
I knocked on a tall gate in Nottingham an hour before sundown.
When it opened, a redhead I grew to like quite a bit skipped down from the manor deeper into the estate and cheerfully invited me inside.
"I see you're wearing my gift - is it comfortable?"
"Oh Morgana, yes! I've been wearing it nonstop since I opened your package! I even wear it inside the house - you know how much of a frostball I am!"
"I'm glad," I whispered and watched the girl run ahead of me with the ends of the maroon scarf I got her for Christmas flying behind her.
"Welcome to Bones Manor," greeted the head of the DMLE as I walked close.
"Thank you, Aunt Amelia, for inviting me," I offered back as I handed over another bottle of expensive wine.
As time for New Year drew closer after a truly heartwarming dinner that I knew Susan enjoyed just as much as I had, Amelia and I were on a balcony outside her study looking toward Nottingham. The first fireworks were already being lit up here and there, though no sound reached us through the wards.
"Lucius Malfoy has been snooping around your family assets. I suspect you know something about that?" Amelia asked as she enjoyed one of the cigarillos I had gifted her.
Muggle smokes were something new for her and actually bad for your health compared to magical tobacco, but even for that, magicals had found a remedy. So Amelia, as a heavy smoker, didn't mind much and enjoyed a new taste.
"I do. His idiot son has been trying and failing to get to me at Hogwarts," I answered, not mentioning the outright threats Lucius gave me or me knowing that the attack on me had been on Draco's orders.
"Idiot though he might be, his father has true pull in the ministry. Lucius Malfoy would have to cast an unforgivable curse in full view of the Wizengamot for us to pin a crime on him that he will get a meaningful sentencing for in the current political climate. Don't take it lightly," Amelia warned after another deep drag that she slowly exhaled in rings.
"If you don't live among society but above them, nothing is true and everything is permitted," I murmured, trying to include some of the recent wisdom I obtained from the book my mother had kept in her childhood home. "Sooner or later, Lucius will regret making more and more enemies."
"... that's a dangerous line of thinking. I hope you'll apply it better than your mother. She once told me something oddly similar and decided to stay in the country to be a spy among her father's social circle. Whatever good that did her and us," Amelia said after looking me up and down. "I told her to go anywhere but back home, but she insisted on staying with Walden to get evidence and infos on the death eater's next targets. Because 'they tried to live above the rules of men merely by virtue of their blood', and your mother couldn't live with that. Women were overlooked among their kind, and as such, she was never made to swear oaths of secrecy."
"And sadly, she trusted someone with the last piece of information that cost her her life. She trusted someone who was not to be trusted," I finished while keeping my eyes on the occasional muggle firework.
"What makes you say that?"
"Whoever's arms she died in after giving birth to me, that someone not only isolated me from everyone who might have wanted to raise me like Aunt Bella Farley or maybe even you, they made sure I was ignorant to the end because I found traces of wards in the orphanage I grew up in. And, my mother's sacrifice was in vain in the end. Because Walden died a free man. Free like so many of his rotten ilk."
Amelia's face hardened, wanting to reprimand me for wanting to take justice into my own hands, most likely, but she didn't say anything in response. She didn't even pick up on the fact that I just told her that there were wards placed at the muggle orphanage.
"Did you know that Sirius Black has never had a Wizengamot trial? Something even the worst of them like Barty Crouch Jr got?"
The head of DMLE was roused from her silent contemplation she got into thanks to a prolonged silence.
"Hmm, I don't remember his trial now that you mention it... how did you find out? And what's your point?"
I shrugged and answered, "I wanted to know more about my history. Maybe find out if there were any arrests around the time of my birth or something. But I found nothing except for my mother's name among the list of missing wizards and witches. Anyway, Sirius' betrayal had a three-day-special in the Daily Prophet. The attack on House Longbottom had a four-day-special right after Sirius' arrest. That followed a week-long coverage of the trial of the Lestrange brothers, Barty Crouch Jr., and Bellatrix Lestrange. But there's not a single mention of Sirius Black's trial."
I let that stew for a little while before scoffing.
"House Black, a pureblood house as old as Hogwarts. Their last male heir, no matter how hated he was by his loony mother, and this most noble wizard has never been able to plead his case, even if we all 'knew' he was guilty. Heh, just like we know for sure that Lucius Malfoy and two of his most loyal, most bigotted pureblood vassals were under the imperius curse for the duration of an entire civil war."
Amelia's smile turned bitter as she shook her head, same as me, "We needed an end to the war. As much as I wanted to round them all up and put them through the veil, the fighting would have started once more. Our society would have ended."
"And would that have been such a bad thing?" I whispered barely loud enough for her to hear.
If nothing was true and everything was permitted. If society needed a shepard to make sure the sick animals won't be the end of all the other sheep... maybe I should start taking this manual my mother hid more seriously.
Amelia won't adopt me to get me out from under Dumbledore. I gathered that much already. Bella won't either because Charles Farley couldn't go against Malfoy - or he didn't want to, at the very least. Which meant for another three years and some change, Dumbledore would be my guardian.
I had already put a scheme into motion that would rid me of him with Rita Skeeter and my long list of allegations by diverting his attention and reducing his influence.
Hopefully, that was enough to give me the space and time to grow. Hopefully, my changes to the storyline would make sure Dumbledore had other things to worry about than me.
I stood up from my chair as the fireworks started just when Susan came in with little desserts she made for us. Amelia hadn't said anything else once more during that time.
The Hufflepuff witch walked over, still with her scarf on, and pointed the baked goods towards me. "Talion! Look! Try a muffin!"
I turned to her, took one from the tray, and gave her a heartfelt smile.
"Happy New Year, Susan. Glad you enjoyed the recipe book," I offered as I bit into the muffin. "And to you, too, Aunt Amelia."
"Happy New Year!" The redhead shouted and jumped into her aunts' arms before giving me a quick hug as well. She immediately ran to the railing to watch the muggle fireworks and stopped talking for a while, but I saw her rosy cheeks and happy smile as she held her aunt's hand.
I didn't know much about their home life because neither Susan nor Amelia answered the questions directly, but Amelia likely wasn't home much when she grew up, so Susan probably cherished moments like these in particular.
-----
Finding a muggleborn wizard who worked in muggle finance was not particularly hard since most muggles appeared as blank individuals in my vision and only targets of interest had different colors while neutral magical parties had a white outline at the very least. Running around London's busy financial districs like Canary Wharf and Lombard Street when they were busiest just after New Years resulted in me finding magicals left and right.
Finding one who was morally ambiguous was even easier - they all were. Sure, they lived among muggles because they couldn't make it in the magical world or because they genuinely wanted to, but they all thought themselves better than 'regular humans'.
As such, I had used a small glamor with the help of Patrick and presented myself as a halfblood trying to invest his muggle dad's ill-gotten gains to two wizards and one witch almost at random.
Three-hundred thousand pounds went into an account run by a wizard banker who disguised this account through mundane financial wizardry as a bequest from an anonymous party to the medical funds of a dying orphan with possible additional funds being sent at a later date. For a fee of 'mere' £25000 a year, this banking wizard would deal with all things from potential taxes, audits, future additional cash drops, and investments. As a result, I would have a bank account that had 'clean' money in it.
Another four-hundred thousand pounds went to a wizard working at a hedge-fund, who would try to look to grow this money with his own account where he could launder the money by paying for his own expenses with the unlaudered cash while writing them off over the years. He bought a brand-new Porsche he had his eyes on for quite some time to start this scheme. My money was the least safe with this guy, but I was planning to kill dark wizards - what did I care about some weasel trying to steal some of my money?
The rest of the money, except for just about a remaining sum of £5000 for emergencies until Patrick had stolen more, went to a witch who needed a preferably quiet investor to break into the beauty and cosmetics market. Jeanine Lobel had already started a company called Stila after she was turned down from opening a beauty shop in Diagon Alley after the lobbying of established pureblood-run stores. Her 'magical touch' as a make-up artist earned her quick fame in the muggle world, and she leveraged that to start a high-class cosmetics brand.
My measley investment wouldn't make me a major shareholder, but I hoped it would give me access to connections eventually, and why couldn't Patrick simply steal more money to give to Jeanine? I had nothing to lose from this and everything to gain with a legitimate source of income should I ever need it. Jeanine would have extra cash to flush into her business for bribes or whatever she needed it for, and I would gain a steady interest as well as a friend.
With those errands over, a day before my return to Hogwarts, I made my way back to Crawley, but not to visit my Aunt Bella. No, I would visit their neighbors, the Frye family. Through subtle questions, I already knew that there was an old man still living there all alone with two maids and an 'apprentice' butler. My money was on the three younger residents of the house being assassins of the brotherhood, but I would find out today... I hoped.
As such, I used the bell near the gate of the mansion and waited to gain entry. Different from my magical relatives on the opposite side of the street, the gate opened through non-magical means without me having to give my identity weirdly enough, and I entered the grounds of Frye Manor.