Birthday Presents

I woke up in the middle of the night to the pinging of the wards. A surge of magic through the sixth path and a bit of occlumency ensured that my mind was sharp the next instant. The wards had alerted me to a patronus that had come inside. It wasn't stopped because the sender was allowed inside the home.

My wand flew to my hand as I weaved it in the air, triggering the baby monitoring wards on each room. These wards were written with the purpose of ensuring that toddlers were tracked when they were unattended. They were just supposed to track the vitals and the current location and status of the baby. But the Blacks really were an odd bunch. I did not know who or when, but at some point these wards had been tampered with. They could not only send the master the status, but if enough magic was routed to these set of wards, they could also capture the audio in the room. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I used these wards to spy on the order meetings. I had previously taken a look with the revelio variant and could only see a web of runes and magic residing in the walls. It was so intricate that even with my second path, I had some difficulty differentiating between them. One thing I was sure of was that Moody's discount byakugan would have the same results.

"Tonks, get to Longbottom residence now," boomed Kingsley's voice from the patronus.

My heart dropped as I realized that Neville was under attack. Before I could do anything else, a shrill noise caught me off guard. I stilled myself and continued listening.

"Attention all aurors, multiple Death Eater attacks confirmed. If you have not been summoned by your immediate supervisor, please relay your current location. Confirmed sightings at the residence of the Weasleys, Lovegoods and the Longbottoms. Those on standby are requested to stay at the barracks, all other available units are advised to support the response teams and engage the targets. I repeat-" the voice then began to reiterate the orders.

I paled once I understood what was happening. They were attacking those who were with me during the fiasco at the ministry. It was no coincidence that this was my birthday as well.

I drowned the noise and immediately summoned my outfit. A quick switching spell ensured that I was garbed within seconds. I strapped the Holly wand to my shin and gripped the Aspen wand as I readied myself for yet another bloody confrontation.

The Weasleys would be comparatively safe because their wards had been upgraded thinking that I would be staying there. I knew that Hermione was also there, but they had many adults in that house so they would not be caught defenseless. Luna and her father were out of country on vacation, moreover, I would love to hear what happened to the idiots who went raiding inside the house, for I was sure that if they tried blasting their way in, the Erumpent horn would pulverize them. I did not know the situation at Neville's but I knew that his grandmother beat the crap out of a couple of Death Eaters and fled the place during seventh year. And with Shack and Tonks going there along with other Aurors, they would have some help.

If they were going after those who accompanied me, then there was a high probability that they were attacking Hermione's place as well. I did not know if Snape had told them that she was at the Burrow but I would bet my eye that they would have attacked nonetheless. And since it was a muggle residence, they would have an easier time of it. I growled and adjusted my goggles as I called for my elves.

"You all need to stay hidden from sight. Do not put yourselves in danger. But try to help as much as you can. Winky, go to the Longbottom's, stay hidden and try to help them. As a last resort, bring them to one of the suites on the fourth floor," I said as I ensured that the wards would allow them. They would be allowed since I was the one requesting their presence, but one could never be too careful. Winky bowed and popped to her destination as I brought my wand down.

The wards alerted me that Tonks had hurried out of the building. The order had either considered Hermione's parents and sent someone there or they had not thought about them. It was a stressful situation, sure, but only a fool would not make such an obvious connection about the targets. And as far as the auror broadcast went, they were focusing heavily on attacks on the magical sites now. Which, considering their abysmal manpower, was all they could do.

"Dobby, the Weasleys have more manpower, but I fear that the Death Eaters would have factored it in. Please try to help them if they need it. If all else is lost, I need you to bring Hermione here at once. After that, you may proceed based on the threat level." I shivered as I imagined failing the secondary objective of my quest just after one month of starting here.

"I will not fail you sir," he saluted me and he went off.

"Kreacher, you are with me. Stay hidden, and we shall reap vengeance on the minions of the wanker that got Regulus killed." A malicious grin formed on Kreacher's face as I locked my door and layered a strong illusion on the bed. The wards would not allow anyone inside my room anyway.

Why fix what's not broken? I grabbed the Comet and told Kreacher to hold on to me. I imagined Hermione's address and apparated a couple of kilometers up in the air. Just like before, I smoothly transitioned from free fall to a broom mounted dive, while Kreacher clung to my back. Hedwig was still at her newly established kingdom. I needed to find a way for her to replicate something like phoenix travel. One more thing to the ever growing list.

With a short usage of the sight based revelio variant, I caught four blips right below me. There was a small sphere of magic surrounding the house and traces of something else. I figured that the sphere must be the anti-transportation jinxes while the shattered magic must have been the measly protections around the house.

As I got close to the wards, I dropped a Decoy Detonator on the opposite side of the compound and quietly landed behind a tree.

Right as the detonator exploded and caught their attention, I shifted to the fourth path and overpowered the wards. Before they could register what happened, I dropped a runestone to the ground and jabbed at it with my wand, triggering it.

This was a nifty thing that I found in the treasury back home. Cassiopeia Black invented these runestones which mimicked ward stones. She had created a slew of such stones where each performed specific operations. Sadly, she had died before she got to patent and sell these inventions of hers. But she had recorded the process behind their creation in the grimoire and had also left behind several samples.

When one erected any kind of wards without a wardstone, it would be tethered to themselves and be a constant drain on their magic. These small stones were enchanted with instructions and charged with magic to do the same operation without any user input. Many people had been trying to get something like this out, but they all failed because such stones were always difficult to keep in an inert state. Cassiopeia had managed to create an entirely new runic language to bypass this issue. I planned on learning the ins and outs of that language once I was well versed in the existing ancient runes syllabus.

I wouldn't sell these now because that would be akin to providing the Death Eaters ammunition. But this would give us more firepower and not drain us during fights where we needed to maintain containment wards using our own magic. Once the war was over, I would tweak these and maybe sell them after planting failsafe mechanisms.

The moment the stone activated, I shifted to sixth path and looked up at Kreacher. He was sitting up on the tree, looking at the Death Eaters. I skimmed their positions off his mind and peeked out of the tree as blood shot out of my tattoo, seeped out of the glove and transformed into my trusty blade. According to what Kreacher saw, the Death Eaters were slowly moving towards the noise and smoke emitted by the Decoy Detonator.

The timing must have made them think that whatever made the noise collapsed their wards. I pointed my wand towards the last one in the group and shot a silencing spell at him. Racing right behind that spell was my favorite knife.

Hirudo plunged into the Death Eater's spine and I took over his mind. Once the possession was complete, I first plundered all his knowledge using the second path, and then used the full might of the sixth path to go through the last hour of his life.

The others had not caught on to what was happening, courtesy of the silencing spell. As I understood what had happened, my blood boiled in rage. The scumbags had killed Hermione's parents, and then used their blood to leave behind a message that not everyone can survive the killing curse. Voldemort was taunting me. He was coming after anyone who would follow me into battle and making an example that following me meant death.

There was one silver lining to what happened here, Rabastan Lestrange. The cunt was the one leading this team, and he just jumpstarted my plan by months.

I ordered the gimp to move aside as I snapped off two killing curses. The moment the spells left my wand, I understood why Bellatrix was so out of it in our last bout. These spells were quite energy intensive and required immense concentration. It irked me that I could not perform powerful spells like the unforgivables and the patronus silently. Even Voldemort used it silently only while dueling Dumbledore, so I figured it would be very taxing and that he felt no need to gain the advantage of silent casting against scrubs.

Both the spells hit true and the Death Eaters fell like a sack of potatoes. I mentally commanded the gimp to disarm Rabastan while I shot an overpowered stunner at him. No need to kill the golden goose just yet.

I had to give props to him that he immediately recovered from the shock and managed to raise a shield. Both the spells impacted the shield and it collapsed at once. To his misfortune, I had fired another stunner right on its tail, a trick I learned from his sister-in-law. He collapsed on the ground as I let out a laugh of triumph.

"Avada Kedavra," I intoned as I snapped the connection to the puppet. Once he fell, my tattoo glowed behind the glove and the blade on his back disappeared.

Now, to leave this place before the order and the aurors come snooping. They would be here once the priority targets are secured, so no need to loiter. I summoned all their portkeys and wands and placed them inside a conjured pouch. I then heaped them all one on top of the other and summoned Kreacher, who came to my side clutching my broom. He seemed chipper, but at the same time, a tad dismayed. Well, he could have helped if it was a head to head battle, but I was always going to try and catch them with guerilla tactics. Poetic, considering their modus operandi.

Once we were all set, I placed my foot on top of the pile and summoned the runestone. The less evidence left behind, the better. I then pocketed it after deactivating it. A quick pulse of magic to my portkey saw us transported to the dungeons I had prepared for this joyous occasion.

The wards would ensure that nobody could successfully trace the portkey back. And these dungeons had all kinds of enchantments on them to completely cut them off from anyone I did not want inside. Cleaning this place was a bitch and a half, but magic was a great equalizer.

I dragged the unconscious Lestrange and tied him to a chair and used rennervate on him.

"What-"

"Silencio"

I then dragged a chair opposite to him and sat on it with my legs crossed. There was no need to listen to this scum talk. All my answers were in his head. I wanted to expunge him and satiate my rage, but bigger things were at stake.

"Obliviate," I snarled as I erased my attack from his memory. I then used the full might of the sixth path to barrel inside his mind and create false memories.

It took me a couple of minutes to get it done. And as his mind was still reeling from all the activity, I nipped his finger with my knife and pumped magic into him. The partial possession of the path ensured that these new memories were infallible in his mind. I also placed commands and directives in his mind which would remain dormant as contingency. A full possession would be detected, this would not.

At once, I stunned him and undid his binds. I had ordered the blade not to inflict the curse on the small cut. It was happy with the blood it had drained from the other Death Eater, and had no issues with it. I healed his finger and then prepared my agent for transport.

###

Rabastan Lestrange hastened his pace as he entered Gringotts and walked up to a free teller. The Dark Lord had given him a high priority mission that he could not fail. His master had even placed an intricate illusion on him to help with this task. Nobody, except the goblins would recognize him. And with the chaos that everyone had sown today, all the blood traitors were busy elsewhere.

He was riding an emotional high after slaughtering those filthy muggles. He first feared that his lord would not be pleased with him for dragging him out of Azkaban yet again, but the blame for that fiasco lied in other hands. He was a loyal follower and he was rewarded with two back to back missions.

"Goblin, I wish to visit my family vault. And give me three money pouches. We'll deal with the charges later," He snapped at the filthy creature. It just barked something in that barbaric language of its kind and pointed him towards another one standing to the side. He would gladly slaughter these little shits if it weren't for the fact that he would fail his mission and disappoint his master again.

After spending god knows how many minutes in that infernal ride, he finally stumbled out of it, glaring at the goblin the whole time. Impatiently waiting for the goblin to open the vault, he finally let out a breath of relief when the damned doors opened.

"Stay here," he barked and walked inside. He then placed his palm on the wall. A tiny portion of his magic was siphoned and the room hummed. Now that the protections were temporarily disabled, he walked towards the cup. He levitated it from its perch and placed it in front of him.

Rabastan was never one for elegant charms, but his master had ensured him that he would be able to perform this task. He pointed his wand towards the cup and muttered the spell his master had engraved into his mind. A strange sensation took over him as his magic twirled inside him and moved towards his wand. His wand movement was unnaturally refined and the spell took hold on the cup with ease. He had wondered why the teachers at Hogwarts could not teach like this. But his master had said that only masters of legilimency could do this. It almost felt like someone had taken over his arm and performed the spell. It would explain the finesse. He was performing a spell in the same manner his master would, and it made him giddy with happiness.

He placed the copy back on the shelf and levitated the original inside a bag his master gave him. On his way out, he filled the three money pouches full of galleons. Once the protections were back up, he waited for the little shit to close the doors.

As the goblin walked towards the infernal contraption, he tossed one pouch towards it and grumbled out, "For your silence. Nobody can know that I came here. I will deal with the teller."

The smirk on the creatures face infuriated him. He did not understand why the goblins needed to be paid for this, but his master said that discretion was paramount.

After another infuriating ride, he walked up to the same teller and placed the two pouches on the desk.

"Thousand galleons, for your silence. I've given a thousand to the other goblin as well and finally," he motioned towards the biggest pouch of them all, "Ten thousand galleons for Gringotts as a whole. And since I returned all the money pouches to goblins, I believe you will not be charging me for them."

"Yes. Now, how do you want it to be done?" it asked after a moment of thought.

He knew that none of his family members had gone through their account details after they escaped Azkaban. They had just checked by mail whether the vault remained untouched and had left it at that. They had used signed documents authorizing transactions sometimes. But it was habitual by now, in face of the vast wealth to never go and count the number of coins left until any major purchases had been made. The bloodline had almost died out and the wealth accumulated from all the branches was massive. For the majority, Lucius was footing the bill and they had been all to glad to milk him dry.

"Fudge the total amount off as a bad investment. Nobody should know that I came and withdrew anything today. That is why I did not authorize you to just take this payment from the vault. No paper trails that way. Make it such that I made a bad investments worth twelve thousand galleons long ago and lost it all. I know that none of my family members have checked the ledgers, so alter them."

The thing looked at him for a couple of minutes and then nodded its head. Once the cretin agreed, he walked out briskly. After making sure that nobody followed, he apparated to the designated spot.

###

As he steadied himself, I stunned him and undid the disillusion charm on myself. His wand flew to my outstretched hand at once. I then walked up to him and dove inside his mind. The contingency commands had not triggered while he was away, so I presumed that the mission was a success. Once I went through his memories, I slung the bag across my shoulder and portkeyed us back to the dungeons.

I secured him back to his chair and took a good look at him. This piece of shit here tortured two innocent people to insanity, murdered countless others and I honestly thought that the world would be a better place without him. But I didn't have much time to fool around. If he was not found for too long, then they would try to find him and might figure out what I had done. Time to take out the trash.

"Crucio," I intoned and he work up with a scream. He kept screaming and fighting against his restraints, to no avail. I let go of the spell after half a minute and looked at him.

"Tell Cellarius I said hi. Avada Kedavra," there, job done. Now, how do I make a statement of my own?

While Rabastan had been busy filching the cup, I had gathered from Winky that the Longbottoms had driven off the Death Eaters with the help of the aurors and their strong wards. I instructed her to relay to them that they can come here if they needed a safe house before they got the wards around the place back in shape. And from what the wards had pinged me just now, it seemed that they had accepted the invitation. The floo point in the fourth floor had permitted two people and one elf inside.

"Winky"

"Yes master," she said as she appeared right next to me.

"I want you to tend to the Longbottoms for now. Co-ordinate with their elf. And please do not let them come in contact with the Order before I meet them." She bowed and popped from the spot.

"Kreacher, please tend to the order members who will most undoubtedly trickle in after they've dealt with the mess on their end. We don't want them to leave their designated area after all."

"Yes master, it will be done."

"Dobby"

"Yes sir!"

"What's the status?"

"Headmaster and his friends captured the bad wizards and took them somewhere. Dobby was keeping an eye on the miss."

"Good job. Keep doing that… No doubt she will soon hear about what happened at her house. If the reaction to that news is not good, I want you to bring her here."

He beamed at the praise and nodded vigorously, as he was about to go, he scrunched his nose for a second.

"Sir, Dobby heard the wizards saying that they caught another group of bad wizards who got injured by an exploding house."

I snorted at that. So the idiots had set off the Erumpent horn at the Lovegood house. Thank the gods that Luna and her father were away.

It meant that the order had focused their counterattack around the Burrow. Since the Rookery was close by, they went there too. And guessing by the destroyed protections around Hermione's house, they had known about the attack there, but had to focus their moves around their own strongholds. Even if it made some sense strategically, she will not be happy if she learns about it.

"Go look after her Dobby," he nodded and vanished.

I levitated the corpses and laid them next to each other. I then took out all their wands from the pouch and placed it inside their pockets. I then picked the portkeys and tried to trace the location where it would lead to, but the signatures were masked. Most likely a work of the wards at their safe houses. I pondered for a minute whether to just let the portkeys do their job. But that course of action was not that satisfactory.

After a minute, I decided on what to do and smirked. I tore the front portion of their robes and then pointed my wand at the air in front of me.

"Flagrate," I said and slashed my wand in the air. I could write the words with the spell, but I didn't want them to try and trace the handwriting. It might be a stretch and muggle methods were not often followed by wizards, but why risk it.

A line of fire traced my wand's movement in the air. Once I was done, I pumped more magic into it and focused on increasing the amount of flames while shaping them into words. Once it was done, I brought both my hands towards the flaming words and moved them apart in a ripping motion.

The words split into copies of themselves and soon, four set of flaming words were floating in front of me.

I motioned downwards and branded the words on the chest of the Death Eaters. 'For the Greater Good'. Let them chase around empty leads with this. As long as this kept them off my back, I was good. I then undid the enchantments on the portkeys and changed the locations. One would go to the ministry's doorstep, one for the Daily Prophet, one for Hogsmeade and finally, Rabastan, in front of St Mungo's. I cleansed their bodies of any spell residue and dropped the portkeys on them.

Having all this activity in my registered wand would have come back to bite me. But this did not mean that I would throw around killing curses with abandon. Unforgivables, especially the ones shot one after the other took a lot out of me. I would do well to stick to my lethal spells and improve on the battle transfigurations, and only use these when there is no chance of missing. Efficiency won battles.

I made it back to my room and changed back to my nightwear. For good measure, I shot off a lot of minor spells from the aspen wand before strapping it to my shin and hiding it behind an illusion. There was a way to stop the reverse charm from working on a wand, but that would interfere with the working of the wands, and sometimes make them unusable. So it was better to mask it with a slew of random spells which would bury the echoes of older spells. It was time to meet Neville and his gran now.

As I made my way towards the upper floors, there were several pings from the lower floors and one lone ping from the upper floor. It looked like the order was back.

"Sir, miss is not well. Dobby brought her here," Dobby said as he appeared next to me.

"What happened?"

"She overheard the other wizards talking about how they had come back from her home and found her parents dead. She asked them why they did not go sooner and they said they did not have the numbers to fight everywhere," urgh, which idiot was so tactless as to outright say it to her face, "She did not take that well and almost attacked them."

"Thank you Dobby, take rest, you've earned it," I patted his head as I walked towards the room, dreading what to say to her. I too, had failed her after all. I kept wondering if I had paid more, the owl information network could have set up faster and I could have had the information. It had not even been a full day since I set up Hedwig's empire and it showcased how necessary it was to gather information. Despite my best efforts, things were still not in our favor. No more delays from now onwards, I would need to be more decisive on what I do. Whatever it takes to finish the mission.