Chapter 158: The Albanian Forest

McGonagall examined Kreacher before anyone touched the Portkey.

The purple curse had opened a deep wound across his shoulder, but his breathing remained steady and his magic still answered. She bound the injury with clean linen and a cooling charm. Kreacher tried to stand.

"Stay down," she said.

"Kreacher must carry Master Edward."

"Master Edward can walk."

Edward proved it by crossing the shelter, although his knees shook when he stopped. He had bruises from the blast and a shallow cut above one eyebrow. The destroyed Crest had contained its crystal, but dark sap had ruined the glove and burned two fingers before he removed it.

Sirius sat on the neighbouring bed with his ankle braced. "You were supposed to remain at the camp."

"So were you, once they brought you back."

"That is not a defence."

"No. It is an observation."

Dumbledore ended the exchange. Bertha's body remained inside the ward, along with the platform and whatever Peter had left behind. Dawn was approaching. A larger Ministry party might preserve the scene, or it might drive the attackers to destroy it first.

The uninjured investigator produced a sealed emergency token from the Albanian authorities. She called six ward specialists and a medical examiner. Dumbledore sent his own report to the British Ministry, naming Peter Pettigrew and an unidentified servant but omitting speculation about the small body until they had secured evidence.

Edward objected. "It spoke. Peter called it his master."

"That belongs in your statement," Dumbledore said. "The alert must distinguish what we know from what we infer. We know Peter murdered Bertha and carried a living magical being. We have strong reason to believe it was Voldemort."

"How much stronger can the reason be?"

"Strong enough to act. Not strong enough to become careless with language."

The Albanian specialists arrived by Portkey. They did not enter as one cluster. Two stabilized the moving boundary while others opened a marked corridor. Each change was recorded before the next.

Dumbledore returned through the corridor with the examiner and two Aurors. McGonagall remained at the camp with the injured. Edward followed their progress through a communication mirror and supplied the positions of his white sparks.

The clearing appeared shortly after sunrise.

Bertha lay where Peter had left her. Her body was covered before anyone moved it. The examiner confirmed death by the Killing Curse and found injuries consistent with prolonged restraint and magical coercion.

The cauldron had been overturned. Dark residue stained the stone, but the small body was gone. So were Peter and the unknown man.

The ritual marks yielded more. One group bound a living victim to the platform. Another directed blood and magic toward the cloth bundle. A third appeared unfinished, as though the process had been interrupted or hurried.

The examiner inventoried Bertha's belongings in view of the communication mirror: spectacles, a torn purse, two Ministry keys, and a holiday postcard never sent. Each item entered a separate envelope. Her wand was missing. Peter might have taken it, or the unknown servant might have used it elsewhere.

Sirius recognized one binding mark from old Death Eater warnings but refused to identify it from memory alone. Dumbledore copied the shape for later comparison. That restraint prevented a familiar symbol from becoming a false conclusion in the first report.

The Albanian lead Auror assigned different officers to the body, platform, and escape trail. No single investigator controlled every piece of evidence. Edward watched the division of responsibility and understood that distrust could be designed constructively, without treating everyone as an enemy.

Dumbledore did not name the spell. He collected impressions of the marks and sealed the damaged stone under Albanian authority.

They also found Edward's Stunning Spell embedded in a tree, Peter's footprints around the cauldron, and a strip of black cloth caught under the platform. The physical traces supported the witness account. They did not depend on anyone trusting a frightened thirteen-year-old.

"Fourteen," Edward corrected when the investigator repeated the description.

Sirius gave him a flat look. "A decisive difference."

The search beyond the clearing stopped at a stream. Peter's tracks changed into the prints of a rat. The unknown servant left boot marks until the water, then nothing. Dumbledore found traces of a Portkey activation on the opposite bank.

Sirius asked to join the pursuit once his ankle was mended.

"No," McGonagall and Edward said together.

He glared at both of them.

The decision belonged to the Albanian lead Auror. She refused a blind chase beyond the secured area. Her team would search the exits and question nearby settlements. Dumbledore accepted the boundary.

By midday, the moving ward had been mapped well enough to remove the injured safely. Kreacher insisted on leaving under his own power. McGonagall allowed him to stand only after he demonstrated that he could Apparate a cup from one side of the shelter to the other.

Edward helped him to the Portkey anyway.

Before departure, the examiner brought Bertha's covered body past the camp. A recovered Ministry badge rested atop the transport board. Edward remembered her kicking the cauldron and gaining one second against two captors.

"We nearly reached her," he said.

Sirius leaned on a borrowed cane. "You tried to reach her."

"That is not the same."

"No."

The answer hurt because Sirius did not soften it.

Dumbledore gathered Edward, Kreacher, and Sirius beneath the remaining shelter. "You will each give a separate account in Britain. Do not compare details before then. Memory changes when witnesses try to agree."

Edward closed the notebook he had started. "I already wrote the order of events."

"Keep it sealed. Write the formal account without reading it, then compare the two in the presence of an investigator."

Kreacher nodded gravely.

Sirius looked toward the forest. "And after the accounts?"

"We warn those who can act, strengthen the protections around Harry, and determine how Peter found Bertha. We do not announce a resurrection as established fact when we witnessed a rudimentary body and an incomplete ritual."

"It was him," Edward said.

Dumbledore's expression held no doubt, only precision. "I believe it was. Belief will guide our precautions. Evidence must guide what we ask others to accept."

The Portkey returned them to Grimmauld Place.

Remus and Madam Pomfrey were waiting in the drawing room. Pomfrey took one look at Kreacher's bandage and ordered him onto the sofa. She treated him with the same brisk attention she gave any patient, ignoring his protests that house-elves required no fuss.

Edward placed the ruined Crest in a ceramic tray. The leather had blackened, the crystal had shattered, and the recognition bead was already gone. Burke would need to examine the contained fragments before anyone decided whether the containment had worked completely.

The object had stopped one unknown spell at the camp. Later, when sap destroyed it, the design had failed inert and kept sharp pieces away from Edward's skin.

It had not saved Bertha.

No artifact could turn that distinction into comfort.

Upstairs, the hostile Black portraits shouted questions about the mud and blood. Sirius closed their curtains.

The house fell quiet around the first hard evidence that Voldemort had regained a body, however weak and incomplete.

The recovered evidence entered two jurisdictions with matching receipts. Neither government could later claim the other had taken sole custody or lost the trail without a record.