Amelia held on tightly to the confession she had gotten from Barty Crouch Jr. This vial with her memory of it would be required to justify ordering the Aurors to arrest him. After all, you couldn’t just storm into the house of one of the departmental heads of the Ministry and cuff him. Even more dangerous was the fact that the man had seemingly no moral compunctions at all. Using the Unforgivables once was bad enough but using them multiple times on your own son was the heights of insanity. She would have to send her best and do it soon. Crouch Sr would likely get more suspicious the longer his elf took to get back with his son.

She headed to the gaggle of Aurors at their temporarily set up command center and saw just the man she needed.

“Shacklebolt! Get over here! Grab Proudfoot and Dawlish as well!”

The solemn looking black man made his way over with the two other Aurors and gave her a quick nod.

“Yes, Madam Bones, what is it?”

“First of all, how is your investigation going and what all have you found out?”

“We have found the area they apparated in by tracking the magical signatures as well as their numbers. We have eyewitness accounts from a number of victims as well as bystanders and I believe it is confirmed beyond doubt that they are the Death Eaters who managed to get out of being jailed after the last war. We do not have positive ID on any of them except the bound and trussed up presents left for us along with the memories. Those memories are iron clad proof that the said Death Eaters used the Cruciatus. All of them except a couple were suspected Death Eaters and even those two have connections to the families of suspected death Eaters. Whoever took them out did so with brutal efficiency with minimal effort, almost makes me want to invite them into the force. We could use someone like that on the force, most of ours are just too green and untested who likely won’t be able to stomach it when they get into a real battle.”

“Well, it is a good thing that such a person is on our side then, isn’t it? As Moody always said, a dead death eater is a good death eater. The less of these scum there are, the better for wizarding society as a whole.

Now, what I want the three of you to do is to get across Crouch Sr.’s residence and arrest him and detain him in the DMLE cells. Expect vio-“

Dawlish chose to interject here. “Surely you don’t mean the head of the Department of International Magical Relations? This would cause a huge scandal.”

“Shut up and listen Dawlish. We are Aurors, not politicians. We are not paid to care about what scandals are caused, only to arrest criminals. And Barty Crouch Sr. is a definite criminal due to multiple usage of the Imperius Curse. Now will you stop blithering and let me say my piece?”

All three of them, including the normally unflappable Shacklebolt dropped their jaws at that. The man was near legendary in the Ministry for his hardline stance against all kinds of criminals especially Death Eaters and here was their boss telling them that he was just as bad as they were. The only thing to do was to keep shut and just listen.

“Well, as the story goes, Barty Crouch Sr. broke his son out of Azkaban just about a year after his imprisonment on the last wishes of his wife. The two switched by using Polyjuice and the son left with his father under the guise of his mother. She died soon after from her sickness and her son was thus free. He was kept under control by his father by using the Imperius Curse. Tonight, he managed to escae his father’s control and was the one who cast the Dark Mark in the sky. Crouch Jr is already in our custody, but we need to bring in his father before he notices something and absconds. Do you think you can handle it?”

“Leave it to us, Madam Bones. We can take care of it. He will be in the DMLE cells within a short time. Dawlish and Proudfoot, the two of you familiar with the Crouch residence?”

“Yeah, we know the place. We can apparate their easily.”

“Get it done, boys! I have full faith in your capabilities.”

“””Yes, ma’am!”””

The three of them disapparated away with a cracking sound and Madam Bones headed over to delegate more tasks to the rest of the Aurors on-site.

Meanwhile, Darius was seeing of Monseiur Delacour. He had had a long day and was eager to get back to the embassy building with his daughters. He would have to have a meeting with the British bureaucracy tomorrow and would then be free to head back to his own country. As a parting gift, he held out a book to Darius. The book was positively pulsing with magic to Darius’ enhanced senses. He switched over to his aura sight and had to instantly close it as he felt a kaleidoscope of auras emanating from the book. This was definitely no ordinary book, not by a long shot.

“Books are always a welcome gift and I will gratefully accept this one but what is it?”

“Well, this is a gift from me for saving my daughters. I know you didn’t do it for a reward but I will feel much better if I give this to you. My family, the Delacours have a few more of these, including the original. I would like you to have one of them as they might help you a lot and also the fact that you saved my only daughters. I am the last of the Delacour family and the name might have died out if, Gods forbid, something had happened to my daughters. I hope you make good use of it.”

He snapped off a short bow and walked away, his contingent of Aurors quick to follow on his heels.

Darius looked down at the book in his hands curiously and only saw only one word on the cover, INTENT. The word was blazing with that very thing, intent. Intent was not illusionary concept imagined by humans, but a very real and powerful application of the human will practiced by witches and wizards.

Intent casting was only a very small part of it, a sort of transitionary phase between silent and wandless casting. Magic was a force or energy that allowed us to warp the very laws of nature and Intent was the will behind the magic. Witches and wizards are able to do so much without even using their foci or with casual ease. For example, the Weasley matriarch is well known for her stupendous meals, made using a mix of cooking skill and magic. But there isn’t any known spell that helps in cooking to that degree, it is all about the Intent you out behind the wand and your imagination that guides you magic to do as you will it. It is something that comes naturally to magicals as they age but is generally not useful beyond simple cantrips and the like. But from what Darius could make out from the first few pages, this book taught someone how to hone that Intent and make more use of it than just some cantrips. This just became his new favorite book. He couldn’t wait to get started on it.

The next day, the Daily Prophet broke the new about the capture of the Crouch duo and the shock had spread across the country. The man known for his love for rules and rigid dislike for any sort of Dark Wizards, and here he was using the Imperius on his own son for nigh on twelve years. For once the paper got all their facts straight and for once kept strictly to the report of his incarceration and the circumstances rather than spread some meaning less drivel. Darius suspected Amelia’s hand in this and was reasonably sure she had come down hard on the paper to prevent any rumor-mongering and cause the backlash to further worsen. Darius also realized that his vacant position in the Ministry could throw the Triwizard tournament in jeopardy but couldn’t bring himself to care too much about it. If it is to happen, then it will. He wasn’t too fussed about such matters since his epiphany about his goals in the world and the realization that Voldemort would only be a short blip in her life.