For The Greater Good (A Draco Malfoy Story)

Mundungus Fletcher and The Locket

Bang!

"Rose!" Hermione shouted from the kitchen as I knocked over another vase. I flew around the room as an eagle, squawking my apology before circling out of the room and landing on top of Ron's head. He was sprawled out on the couch sleeping and his ginger head just looked so comfortable. He began to stir and mutter under his breath but I stayed perched on his well-shaped skull. With my heightened eyesight and my proximity, Ron's freckles looked like more prominent. If I played connect-the-dots, would it make a cool shape? Like an animal!

Curiously determined, I lowered my beak and began to trace his freckles and connect them across the top of his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. Then his blue eyes opened and met mine.

"Merlin's beard!" Ron shrieked, jumping off the couch with stunning speed. "Rose! Do you really have to turn into a bloody eagle every five seconds?"

I let out a sharp noise in response before flying upstairs to change and get dressed. It felt amazing to stretch my wings. Gabriel was right, being unable to shift was an exhausting pressure to deal with. As I began to dress in jeans and a black sweater, a loud crack broke the silence downstairs followed by a series of crashes. Hurriedly trying to pull my sweater over my head, I ran down the stairs and into the creature and was met with a rather curious sight. Kreacher stood on the kitchen table glaring at a short, bald man with the scrunched up face of a weasel. And another house elf stood next to them.

"What's going on here?" I whipped out my wand and pointed it at the man when I saw the tension in everyone's body language.

"Master, I have brought you the thief, Mundungus Fletcher," Kreacher rasped.

"Oi! Who you callin' a thief?" The man -- Mundungus -- interjected.

"Harry Potter!" the other elf suddenly said in his squeaky voice, shuffling forward quickly to grab Harry's hand in a shake. "So good to see you!"

"Dobby, where'd you come from?" Harry smiled down at the little elf. His giant green eyes lit up as he began to relay how he witnessed Kreacher trying to apprehend Mundungus in Diagon Alley and helped him. Dobby then began to greet Ron and Hermione warmly before settling in front of me.

"Dobby, this is my friend, Rose," Harry introduced us quickly and I knew he was just itching to get to the interrogation. Dobby grasped my hand with his long fingers and smiled.

"Any friend of Harry Potter is a friend of Dobby's."

I grinned, he was rather adorable actually. And much more forward and confident than any house elf I had seen.

"Alright, when you broke into the house and turned this place over -- don't deny it!" Harry began hotly, snapping the last part when Mundungus opened his mouth. He closed it again. "When you took things from Sirius's house, did you take a locket?" he continued.

"Why? Was it valuable?" Mundungus answered back.

"He wants to know if it was worth more then what he had sold for it! Bloody git," Ron snorted.

"Who did you sell it too? What did they look like?" Harry pressed his wand into Mundungus' stocky chest until I was afraid it would snap from the pressure.

"Alright, alright! It was some Ministry hag," Mundungus looked around, at lost for words when he spotted last weeks Daily Prophet. "Well, she's there! There on the Prophet! That old hag was about to give me a ticket when she saw the locket and took a fancy to it. She let me get away if I gave her the locket." Harry grabbed the newspaper and a shadow passed over his face. I could feel the dread Ron and Hermione exchanged with only a glance as they looked at the picture on the front page of the Daily Prophet but I didn't understand. Who was it? I looked at the picture and was met with the sight of a short, plump woman smiling the most transparently sacharrine smile I had ever seen. Her dark curly hair framed her face unattractively and to top it all off, she had a ridiculously large bow set in the middle of the curls. Come to think of it, she bore the resemblance of a smiling toad. The headline at the top of the page read, "DOLORES JANE UMBRIDGE, NEW HEAD OF THE MUGGLE-BORN REGISTRATION COMMISSION!"