Here We Go

chapter 16

Chapter 16: End Game

Usual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed and this is neither the real world nor a Disney Princess tale. There will probably be changes in the first hour or so as I find things that didn't come out the way I wanted.
H

arry and Fleur changed their tails back when they got close to the surface. They only had to wait five minutes or so for the effects of the gillyweed to wear off for Terence, Viktor and Gemma so that they could breath above water again, but they passed Hannah up while they were waiting and Harry saw her father quickly moving to cast something over her when she was laid on the deck. He soon worked out what that had been for because he caught Abbott's smirk when Gemma collapsed after she was pulled from the water and tried to stand, so he leapt from the water, grabbing Abbott by the front of his robes. As Abbott stared at him in terror Harry hit him with a vicious legilimency attack, throwing him at one of the Aurors on the deck and barking "Arrest him for attempted murder!" when he was done before turning to Gemma to cast the proper counter to the stasis charm that included the curse which was draining her energy away.
After the Matriarch Bondings and other gains, Hermione and Gabrielle probably had twenty to thirty times Gemma's energy reserves, so they could safely wait a little to have the curse removed, but an ordinary witch wouldn't have survived more than half an hour past the expected finish time for the task and Gemma had been losing energy faster than she would have if she had remained under stasis, especially as she'd swum all the way back from the bottom of the lake. Fudge, Abbott and the other Ministry officials were all demanding that Harry be arrested for attacking Abbott like that but Amelia silenced them and requested an explanation from Harry, so he told her about how Hermione and Gabrielle were being stabbed with tridents when he and Fleur arrived in the Mer village, how Gemma, Hermione and Gabrielle had all been set up to drown at the bottom of the lake because they woke up at their rescuer's touch, and that the girls would have drowned if they hadn't all been carrying extra gillyweed in case the task took longer than expected.
He also explained what he had seen when they got back to the dock, how Abbott had urgently cast something over his daughter the moment she came out of the lake and how he'd smirked when Gemma collapsed, so he obviously knew exactly what was going on. That was what moved him to use Legilimency on Abbott to discover just what had been cast on the girls and how to counter it, and he pointed out that they could confirm that the curse which was part of the stasis charms cast on the girls without permission was draining their energy fast enough to kill anyone like Gemma who had normal reserves within the next half an hour or so by questioning Abbott under Veritaserum, so the minimum charge for that alone should be four counts of attempted murder, taking the intended victims' status, the fact that extra steps had been taken to make three of them drown at the bottom of the lake and have two of them killed by the Mers as well into account. Amelia nodded, as she was well aware of the titles and relationships shared between him, Hermione, Fleur and Gabrielle and the fact that the house of Fawley was officially recorded as being vassals under the protectorate of the Most Noble and Most Ancient House of Potter, so the extra steps intended to kill them specifically meant that this would not be a simple case.

Knowing that the people behind this would try to find a way to shut Abbott up before they could officially question him, Amelia called for Veritaserum and questioned him then and there in front of plenty of witnesses. Fudge and the others tried to stop her of course but she was a woman on a mission, and half of the Ministry officials were arrested before they could escape, others who had come along to gloat but tried to leave when they heard about what was coming out were informally detained to 'give their version of what they saw' until they finished getting the names out of Abbott and the others arrested. Once again, it was only the fact that no-one had trusted Fudge to keep secrets that saved him because he wasn't involved enough to be caught in the net that was cast. Strangely enough, Bagman wasn't part of it either, but Rosier was of course, especially after crewmen appeared from the Black Lady, carrying the ones that they'd captured while they were trying to finish off Gabrielle and Hermione down in the Mer Village and cover up the evidence. They also brought Hermione, Gabrielle and Gemma's robes, which they'd summoned to the Lady as they left the village, and Amelia's blood ran cold when she saw all the holes in Gabrielle and Hermione's robes from being stabbed with the Mermen's tridents, which the DMLE healers' reports showed matched up to many of the bruises forming on the girls' bodies after they removed their dragonskin armour so that they could be examined. When Gemma removed her armour, they confirmed that she had been spared that treatment, as had Hannah Abbott, but they had no difficulty in examining her because she was naked under her robes, apparently she had been planning to…. reward her rescuer once they were out of the lake.
When the Mer Chieftain came up, demanding justice and reparation for the half dozen Mermen that Harry, Fleur and Hermione had killed, the situation got rather tense until he finally admitted that some of his people had taken bribes to make sure that two of the humans and the two birdwomen died. He tried to argue that the terms of the age old feud between the Merpeople and the birdwomen meant that the lives of any of them who came into his people's domain were forfeit anyway, but he was adamant that they had been specifically ordered to make sure Fleur and Gabrielle died.
While there was no-one else around who understood Mermish, Harry told the Chieftain that the human female and the two birdwomen they were trying to kill were his bonded mates, so if the Mers didn't give up all the details relating to the ones who had set the Mers to kill them, he would bring the ship which had helped them down there to their Mer village and wipe out every last one of his people so that his clan would cease to exist, and word of their shame would be spread among the people. The Mer Chieftain recognised that this wizard knew the ways of the people and was a warrior who could and would do exactly as he said for attacking his bonded mates, and that he would be within his rights to do so, so he quickly had everyone who'd had any dealings with the humans brought up to answer his questions. As luck would have it, the goblin versions of pensieves had wider tolerances than the wizarding ones, so they managed to get clear memories of nearly everything said by just about everyone who'd given the Mers any instructions about what to do to them, including the ones who had bribed the Mermen to kill him, Hermione, Fleur and Gabrielle. What came out of that was proof that everyone who'd dealt with the Mers had been trying to set them up to die down there, not one of them had given any instructions to spare them. As Amelia was being told what was said, she was getting grimmer and grimmer by the minute, the only good thing that came out of what they were seeing and hearing was that they had clear images of everyone who had talked to the Mers, so they didn't have to rely on the Mers identifying them and Amelia was sending Aurors off to pick them up as soon as someone put a name to the image.