"Well?" Moody barked.
"This answers nothing," Lester replied. "Are you sure there's nothing else? Did you see him in person? Did you sign anything? Did you ever use blood?"
"Of course not," the woman said.
Lester glanced at the Tonks girl. "You know how to check for Obliviation, right?"
The girl looked surprised at being included again. "Oh - um - it's…"
Alastor's wand danced at Petunia with a little curlicue. "Study up," he told Tonks, "Test tomorrow, one you won't remember taking if you fail. Remember anything now?" he asked Petunia as Pinky sighed. Auror training wasn't easy, even without throwing Alastor into the mix.
"Of course not, I told you we've never met him," the woman said again, struggling with the gag that bound her husband.
Lichfield grunted in disappointment, though all things considered he should've been glad. Moody was no slouch, and impartial when investigating, so if a witness regained no memories after he was done with them there were no memories to be found, and they wanted them gone too much to lie. It would only bring them back later on, when they were in a not-so-friendly mood once they found out they lied.
Dumbledore hadn't legally signed the kid over to them, meaning he wanted to retain any legal claim he had as a guardian - however he managed to get it - so he hadn't overtly lied to Gringotts when he gained control of Harry's account. But not signing the kid over to the Dursleys also meant he had, in fact, abandoned him here, which might have been his plan all along - meaning the old man had abrogated his responsibilities to Harry and thereby should've lost any guardianship rights because of it the instant he'd done it.
Lichfield nodded, he could work with that. It didn't make sense for the old man to leave it like this though. How could the old man have promised them protection without ever being there himself? He looked down at the letter in his hand again; it was the only link between the Dursleys and Dumbledore.
On a hunch, he pressed his wand to it and cast a spell, making the entire letter glow. Turning it over, he saw an overlapping series of circles, multi-pointed stars, and runes laid out at precise angles. They practically covered the entire back page. Here was the genius of Dumbledore; Lester wouldn't even know where to begin in deciphering this - though he thought the best place to start was the strange holes interrupting the work and accounted for the only empty spaces there.
"Good gracious!" the woman exclaimed, drawing Lester's eyes to her again. "What is this? What's going on? What did you do!" Petunia asked, her hands glowing, covered in patches of blood red lines and runes. There was an odd sympathy going on here and it didn't take a genius to figure out what it was.
"Well, I'll be damned," he said to Petunia. "The old man made you magical."
"Mummy! Give it to me. I want it," the greedy pig-boy cried as he ran back into the room. "I want to be magical too!"
The captured Erumpet struggled against the ropes so hard it looked like his head was ready to explode.
"Dudders, you-," his mother tried to warn him off.
"Here, boy, touch this," Lichfield said, holding the letter out to him.
"Are you sure that's wise?" Pinky asked. "We don't know what it does."
"Absolutely," he said, growing more convinced by the second.
Pig-boy grabbed the glowing letter, his hand coming away with the same kind of blood-red runes and swirls, leaving behind another gaping hole in the design. Piggy stared down at his hand hungrily, as if he couldn't wait to start blasting things apart with it, though thankfully that was impossible.
Lichfield negated the illumination spell on the letter causing it and the muggles' hands to stop glowing at once. He was more glad than ever Harry was out of this house; these were the worst sort of people and he'd hate to see them if they had any actual magical ability. If the boy had taken after them he would've been a monster.
"You got what you need?" Alastor asked.
"Yeah," Lester replied, refolding the letter and putting it in his bathrobe pocket. "I've got a hunch on what this does, but I'll let you know what I find out."
"No need," the older man rebuffed the offer. "I see what this is and it looks like you've got it wrapped up, so I'll leave it with you."
"What about them?" Pinky-Tonks asked, gesturing to the muggles.
"They already know about magic so there's no breach of Secrecy. What I'd really like to see is the lot of them in jail for what they've done to the boy," Lester said with a look to the muggles in question. "But this enchantment's consanguineous, so it might be helpful to keep them around, and they might be called for questioning."
A smile crept onto his face as he looked down at the struggling man.
"But this one's not needed at all; he shares no blood relation to his nephew, and I'm willing to bet most of the abuse came from him," Lester smiled. Suddenly the large man looked just as stupefied as when James had blasted him.
"You know the hoops you have to jump through to charge muggles with anything?" Moody asked.
"I do, but if there's one kid the Ministry would bend over backwards for, it's this one, especially when this gets out," he replied.
"It'll bring a lot of attention down on him," Moody warned.
"Name one thing that hasn't," he said dryly.
The horse-faced woman, who'd been getting progressively less attractive the entire time they've been there, fumed and had enough.
"How dare you!" she seethed, still tugging at her husband's gag. "What gives you the right to come in here and judge what we do in our own home? You freaks are nothing to us."
"Your sister gave me the right the day she married James," Lester growled. "I would've thought you and your lot would've learned your lesson about picking on wizards at your parents' funeral - you remember the day, don't you? - when you blamed us for not raising the dead and couldn't accept that what's gone is gone?"
"YOU FREAKS GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!" the tangled man roared, finally free of his gag.
"I'll show you 'freaks,'" Lichfield said, pointing his wand at them. "Memento!"
With a whirl, number four dissolved and Lichfield found himself seated with Mrs. Hamilton of number one, a cup of Oolong in hand. The nice old widow was welcoming and eager to speak when she'd heard what he wanted to know.
"They're very odd people," she said, "quite loud. Sometimes I hear the man shouting at the boy right in the middle of the day all the way from here. Heaven alone knows what he's ever done to deserve it. He's always seemed polite to me, not like the ruffian of theirs."
Next he was with Ms. Sanderson of number five with a cup of Earl Grey."If one of them is mistreated, then why don't they just leave? And sure, everyone likes to feel welcome but how is that supposed to keep them alive? Do they die from not being liked?
.....
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