Chapter 159: The Unknown Servant

 

The British inquiry began in the Grimmauld Place dining room because Sirius could not safely enter the Ministry.

Amelia Bones arrived with two Aurors and a Quick-Quotes Quill that wrote only after she spoke a verification charm. Dumbledore attended as a witness to the search. Sirius had a solicitor. Edward had Sirius, the solicitor, and the right to stop if the questions became accusatory.

Kreacher requested a chair rather than a cushion.

Bones interviewed them separately. Edward waited in the library while Kreacher spoke first. He resisted the urge to reconstruct every minute. Dumbledore had warned that rehearsing could alter emphasis even when it did not change facts.

When Edward's turn came, Bones began with the decision to cross the ravine.

"You understood Professor McGonagall's original instruction was to return?"

"Yes."

"Why did you continue?"

"The waymark was required to reach the ravine. After we copied it, a woman screamed nearby. Dumbledore authorized movement to one defensible clearing. The roots separated us before we reached it."

"And once separated?"

"Kreacher tried to take us back. The ward redirected the jump. We heard Bertha again and chose to approach only far enough to extract her."

Bones did not praise or condemn the decision. She asked distances, spell colours, exact phrases, and which details Edward had seen rather than inferred.

He described Peter. He described the small body and the way Peter addressed it. He described the other servant as tall, thin, dark-haired, and perhaps in his twenties or thirties. The man's face had been pale from confinement or illness. His voice was harsh. He used his wand with confidence and obeyed Voldemort without hesitation.

"Would you recognize him?" Bones asked.

"I think so. I do not know whether the ward altered his appearance."

That qualification made the quill pause, then continue.

Edward reported Bertha's death. His voice failed once, on the moment Peter turned her into the path of his Stunning Spell. Bones waited without filling the silence.

He then described Voldemort recognizing Kreacher from the cave. He did not reveal where Regulus had taken the locket or what had happened to it. Dumbledore and Bones already knew enough to understand why the exchange mattered.

After Edward finished, the sealed notebook from Albania was opened. The order matched his account. Two colours differed: he had remembered one curse as violet at the camp and purple in the forest. He recorded the discrepancy rather than choosing one.

Kreacher's account placed the unknown servant closer to the platform. Sirius had seen the same man only at a distance before the ward separated him. None could provide a name.

Bartemius Crouch Senior joined by Floo when Bones asked about Bertha's travel. His head appeared in the green flames, stern and tired.

"She was on approved leave," Crouch said. "Her last confirmed lodging was an inn near Tirana. The Department began a search when she failed to report."

Bones read the description of the unknown servant.

Crouch's face lost colour.

Edward saw it. So did Dumbledore.

"Do you recognize anyone fitting that description?" Bones asked.

"No."

The answer came too quickly.

Crouch blamed the firelight, then demanded to know why a schoolboy had been taken into an active search. McGonagall answered with the sequence of decisions and accepted responsibility for the final approach. Crouch continued criticizing procedure until Bones returned him to the question.

"Did Bertha know anything that would make her a particular target?"

"She worked in my department years ago. She knew schedules and tournament arrangements, nothing of strategic value."

 

"Tournament arrangements?" Dumbledore asked.

Crouch hesitated. "Preparations not yet announced. Her knowledge was old."

Bones ordered a review of every file Bertha could access and every person aware of her route. Crouch agreed, but the Floo connection ended before she could ask more about his reaction.

Sirius waited until the flames died. "He knew that description."

"We know that he reacted," Dumbledore said. "Not why."

"My memory of his son is from a courtroom," Sirius replied. "Thin, dark-haired, young. He died in Azkaban."

Edward remembered the desperate boy in the trial record, pleading with his father. The unknown servant had been older and marked by years, but the resemblance was possible.

Bones did not dismiss it. "Azkaban recorded Barty Crouch Junior's death and burial. I will verify the record independently."

No one stated the next implication. If the son had escaped, the father might have hidden it. If the record was sound, grief could explain Crouch's reaction.

The inquiry moved to warnings.

Bones could not announce Voldemort's return on testimony alone, especially when the physical evidence remained under Albanian jurisdiction. She could issue a search order for Peter, classify the unknown servant as dangerous, and place protections around Harry and the witnesses.

"Fudge will resist the wording," she said.

"Will you still submit it?" Edward asked.

"Yes."

That answer distinguished her caution from denial.

Dumbledore sent private warnings to trusted witches and wizards. Hogwarts reviewed its wards and staff access before the new term. Moody had already been invited to teach Defence Against the Dark Arts, but Dumbledore would verify his arrival in person.

Edward gave Bones a copy of the Heart Crest failure report. The object had intercepted a curse used by a leaf construct, and its fragments might retain a trace. Burke would examine them with an Auror present.

"Do you intend to rebuild it?" Bones asked.

"Not until the examination is complete."

"And afterward?"

"Only if the evidence supports the containment design. The shield itself is unchanged."

Sirius watched him answer. Approval showed briefly, followed by worry.

The meeting ended after sunset. Bones sealed every statement and left one receipt with the family solicitor. Bertha's death would not vanish into an office drawer without a record of who held it.

Edward found Kreacher in the kitchen, trying to polish silver with one arm.

Madam Pomfrey had ordered rest. Edward removed the cloth from his hand.

"Kreacher failed to bring the woman back," the house-elf said.

"So did I."

"Master Edward tried."

"So did you."

Neither statement resolved the guilt. They sat with it.

Later, Dumbledore showed Edward a small glass vial containing the memory of the unknown servant's face, drawn from Edward's fresh recollection under controlled conditions. Kreacher and Sirius had provided separate impressions. The three would be compared for common features, not merged into one convenient image.

"If he enters Hogwarts, will the wards recognize him?" Edward asked.

"If he enters as himself, perhaps. If he uses another person's appearance, we must rely on more than a face."

Dumbledore placed the vial in a locked case.

The three impressions agreed on the servant's height, dark hair, and narrow face. They disagreed about his eye colour and the position of a scar. Bones kept only the shared features in the active notice and attached the disagreements to the full file.

She also circulated the notice without Edward's or Kreacher's names. A witness description could assist a search without advertising who had survived the clearing. Sirius approved the protection even though it made public recognition less likely.

The unknown servant had escaped the forest without a name. That did not make him invisible.

Bones distributed the notice that night. Every recipient had to confirm receipt, preventing an urgent warning from disappearing inside an unattended office.