ror department is not concerned about missing biscuits. However, they’re only for sale about a month out of every year, so you can imagine my dismay to discover my depleted supply.)

What gives me the most pause is that several of these items—the Draught of Peace, the biscuits, the Dreamless Sleep, and the necklace—were on floors I have reserved as my private living quarters, which are closed to visitors of the museum. This is disturbing for two reasons. The first is that, to ensure that my private space remains private, I have several strong spells in place to repel any curious guests. None would be likely to cause serious harm, but anyone who proceeds more than a step or two past my rope partitions without permission should be overwhelmed by both a sudden absence of understanding as to what they’re doing there and the strong desire to be anywhere else. A particularly impressionable would-be trespasser ran out the front door screaming, once. The charms are still in place, the magical signature my own; how did the intruders make it in and out without removing them?

The second cause for concern is that I have no earthly idea when they could have gotten themselves in there. Setting aside the time I was unconscious, which I know was only about five minutes—that useless wretch of a teacher was good for that, at least—I had all four of the intruders we know about in my eyeline at all times. So: was there a fifth? Or did one of those four somehow make it upstairs, through the charms, to search my rooms and make off with their very unusual choices in those few minutes I was out cold?

It doesn’t make any sense. I’ve wracked my brains all morning and still I can’t explain these targets. All the items are valuable, but nothing like as valuable as some of what they didn’t take—or, for that matter, nearly all of what they damaged or destroyed. There’s no item of larger value that I know of which can be produced bybining these elements, either. Why the potions? The Amortentia, fine, it’s a rare vintage bottle that’s rumored to have been brewed in an ill-fated and frankly silly attempt to bring down Grindlewald, but the Draught of Peace? The Dreamless Sleep? Hogwarts students can brew them, for god’s sake! (Well, Hogwarts students who are better at Potions than you ever were, anyway.) Why my biscuits, Potter? What kind of blaggard secrets himself into another man’s home only to make off with his Cocoa Glaciers?

I’d say I hope your investigations are proceeding apace, but, alas, my expectations of you are much too low. I shall thus toil on, biscuitless, and await the opportunity to read news of your fall from grace due to public urination in the Prophet.

Regards,

Draco Malfoy

Harry stares at the letter and sighs. It’s obvious that Malfoy’s never met a medium he couldn’t use to chatter endlessly, but it’s also obvious he’s worried, and not without cause. The possibility of a fifth intruder is unsettling, and the list of what was taken is just bizarre, though Harry suspects the Cocoa Glaciers, at least, were nothing more than a crime of opportunity, and not intended as the a deep psychological blow Malfoy seems to have suffered at their loss.

He shows the letter to Ron, who blanches as he reads it, and says, faintly, when he’s finished, “Sorry, Harry, I am, but—your fall from grace due to public urination?”

“Oh,” says Harry, flushing slightly. He’d otten that part. “It’s—” he pauses, looking for any other way to phrase it, but eventually has no choice but to say, “Well, it’s kind of…a bit of an in-joke.”

“Of course it is,” says Ron, and then, fatalistically and clearly mostly to himself: “Some days, I don’t know why I bother.”

Harry sets up a meeting for later in the week with Horace Slughorn, whom the department often calls on to weigh in on cases involving potions, and writes Malfoy back.

Malfoy -

You’re right, that’s a weird list. Any idea if the necklace makes someone immune to ALL disease, or just the Black Death? We’ve got a couple of jumpy types here who are always quick to scream biological attack, but I doubt that’s what’s going on. Still, it’d be good to know one way or the other. And if you have previous ownership records on the rest of it, especially the daggers and the music box, definitely send them along. You’d be amazed how many theftse back to someone whose great-great-grandmother sold the item before it was worth much and feels entitled to a payout now.

The idea that there might have been a fifth conspirator is, yeah, a bit unsettling, I’ll grant you. I wish we’d known on Thursday; any magical residue we could have swept for then will have dissipated by now. We didn’t find much on the first two floors, but I’d like to have checked anyway. If youe across anything that obviously isn’t yours and could’ve been left behind, please send that over.

One of the guys at dispatch has a daughter in the Witch Rangers. I’ll see if he can’t scrounge you up a restitution box of—what were they? Coconut Blizzards?

It’s nearly Wednesday and I haven’t burned anything down OR peed on anyone,

HP

P.S. An ill-fated and silly attempted to take down Grindlewald? I don’t think I’ve heard that one.

When he arrives at work on Wednesday morning, Malfoy’s enormous eagle owl is waiting on his desk.

Potter-

I can’t stomach responding to your Owl in the standard fashion. This requires a list.

1. I genuinely can’t believe they let you be an Auror; you last missive was a horrorshow. It’s probably not a biological attack, how very reassuring, what would I do without yourforting presence? I was obviously mistaken the other morning—you’re not going to fall from grace for burning down tourist attractions or urinating on public figures. You’re going to do it by inciting mass hysteria, probably totally by ident. “Mr. Potter,” the reporters will say, “what happened here?” And you’ll reply, “Well, it looks like a total normal B&E, so you definitely shouldn’t worry that all of Wizarding Britain will be decimated in an explosion before lunch!” Then you can watch in bemusement as everyone runs around screaming bloody murder; what fun. Maybe, for the public safety, you should conduct all your official business in Parseltongue. At least then no one will be able to understand the horrible things you’re saying.

2. Golly gee, Auror Potter, I’m sure glad you said I should send along any strange objects I happen to find at the scene of the crime! That would never have urred to a wide-eyed innocent civilian like myself! D’you think I should maybe also include this large piece of parchment I found with the words “Reasons Why We Did It” and four signatures at the bottom?

3. Honestly: you are an imbecile. I, of course, have found nothing out of the ordinary in either the museum floors or my rooms, which I have searched exhaustively— one might even say obsessively—twice. In the event that I do find something, believe you me, I do not intend to sit quietly on that information wondering if should dare trouble the Auror department with my discovery. You imbecile.

5. The records you asked for in the information I already gave you, Potter. It’s a good thing my expectations have already been lowered dramatically or I think I might actually be disappointed. Blue binder, sorted by category and then by year—there’s an index with a green tab in the front. And, finally:

6. They are not COCONUT BLIZZARDS, you terrible useless shell of a man. Have you no decency? Have you no soul? Coconut Blizzards are a garbage biscuit ed in the pits of hell and have no place in the home of an upstanding small business owner such as myself. I will have Cocoa Glaciers or I will have NOTHING. (But if your contact does have them, tell her I’ll give her twice what they’re worth and never breathe a word of it to anyone.)

You don’t deserve a proper sign-off and I refuse to write you one. Coconut Blizzards. Honestly.

DLM

P.S. Of course you haven’t heard this, it’s an obscure story even amongst historians and you literally don’t know basic elementary magic: in the 20s, at the beginning of the Grindlewald regime, there was this group of witches called the Berlin Seven. Really incredible coven, did a lot of good in that war, except they were really the Berlin Eight— the seven women who were actually going out and fighting and spying and what have you, and then one of their mums, who was by all ounts a lovely if slightly dotty old woman called Bernice. I believe the arrangement was that she housed and fed them so they could get on with things, but war takes its toll, as you know, and by 1934 they were the Berlin Three—Miriam Cohen, Basilah Saeed, and somehow Bernice. I don’t think she was even one of their mums, if I’m recalling the story right; I think she just stayed on for the sake of it.

Anyway, she got this perfectly mad idea to brew up a batch of Amortentia and use it to turn Grindlewald’s head. Saeed writes this whole thing in her diary about it, it’s quite funny, I’m paraphrasing but it’s something along the lines of ‘Crazy old Bernice at it again, wants to dose GG with Amortentia so Miriam and I can take him out while he’s distracted by her beauty, don’t think she realizes there’s only so much love potion can do when you look like a toe.’ But there have been rumors for years, since long before anyone ever found the diary, that there were several attempts to, essentially, attack Grindlewald with love potions that year.

I suppose I like the idea that Saeed and Cohen ended up going along with it. There’s just something that tickles me about the idea of two of the deadliest spies in history lobbing love potions at Grindlewald to humor a mad old lady who wasn’t even their mum. It’s so insane! But that’s the only reason I even had that bottle of Amortentia; that story is just a story, it’s not as though there’s any verifiable proof linking my bottle to the rumor. I just thought it was funny, and the guests liked hearing about it. It’s not like it’s worth anything! God, t

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