A/N:

As always,

Enjoy.

Story Summary: See! I told you I don’t do Author’s Notes anymore. I do story summaries now!
That thing above this? That says A/N? That, folks, I have done since I started on this site over seven years ago and it’s more tradition for me than anything else.

This is the last chapter of this story, folks. It ran slightly longer than I anticipated...by about twenty-five chapters. No additional scenes were added from the original draft, just a lot more information added to the overall story.

You’d think I was being paid by the word here.

Next up is a short one shot with Orion and Charly called One Night In Bangkok. It’s sole purpose is to introduce a character you will be seeing a lot more of in Family Ties. That story will be starting probably in July or August, depending on my health. So just watch my author’s page for updates. I will keep it up-to-date.

Disclaimer: What? Still? Really?

Loudmen was sitting at his desk when the door to his office opened without a knock proceeding it.

The man looked up in irritation, ready to lay into whoever was foolish enough to disturb him so, when he stopped abruptly, half out of his chair.

“Orin!”

Bale waved the man back down. “Sit down, Martin. We need to have a little chat. And I promise it won‘t take long. I know how busy you are.”

Loudmen slowly sat back down in his chair. He was sure he had heard sarcasm in the last part of Bale’s statement.

“I understand there was some activity on the part of your Aurors at the home of one of my agents, Martin.” Bale started right off as he seated himself in the opposite chair. “Specifically, Orion Black.”

Loudmen decided to jump on the defensive as quickly as he could. “We did receive a report...”

“From a fourteen-year-old boy,” Bale quickly cut him off. “who reported seeing a Deatheater in the household.”

“The boy stated the man’s wife was a Deatheater, Orin.” Loudmen stated, his agitation rising as he laid out his justifications for his actions in the matter. “An Elite no less!”

“And the evidence?” Bale ask, seeming to take as much notice of Loudmen’s rising agitation as he would of the sun coming up each morning.

Loudmen pulled up slightly behind his large, oak desk. “We felt there was enough clear evidence to warrant a search.”

Bale steepled his fingers in front of him as he fixed a solid stare on the other man. “Evidence from an unhappy, traumatized, fourteen-year-old teenager who didn’t much care for his new foster mother? You call that reliable information?”

“The boy was very sure of what he saw, Orin. And we checked his story. He past my agents scans. He couldn’t have done that if he was just spinning a tale because he was unhappy with his new living arrangements.”

“True enough.” Orin replied casually, turning a small smile to the man. “So, what was it your Aurors found?”

Loudmen hated playing this sort of game with the Unspeakable. Mostly because he knew he was all too likely to lose. “Why ask?” He replied. “You’re looking like a cat that just swallowed a canary, Orin. My guess is you already know.”

“Humor me.” The Unspeakable answered.

Loudmen gave a loud sigh. “You know very well they found nothing, Orin. Now if you don’t mind...” He stated, getting to his feet.

“Oh. But they did find something, didn’t they, Martin?” Bale replied.

Loudmen stopped halfway to his feet, not liking what he heard in the tone of the other man voice. Slowly he returned to his chair. “What do you mean?”

“My understanding was that your agents...at least one of them...got a personal introduction to the elusive Mrs. Black.”

Loudmen carefully considered his answer. “Primm met Mr. Black’s wife, yes.”

“And he reported that meeting back to you, I presume?”

Loudmen set a solid stare on the other man. “Yes.”

“Good. Now, for your future reference, Martin, and just in case there is still some question in your mind over the matter, let me inform you that I have, myself, met Orion Black’s wife, and I can tell you without any reservation that the woman your Auror saw was indeed the real Katlin Black. Her name before her marriage was Hekren. Katlin Hekren. She comes from a small village in southern Wales which currently has all the attraction of the aftermath of a volcanic explosion. Both her parents are dead. She has no siblings. She is thirty-three years old. Has no children of her own, but has high hopes to very soon increase her happy little household by five. And that, Martin, is from a reliable source.

Now, I am also sure you currently are aware that Mrs. Black is a somewhat...frail woman, who does not need to be upset or frightened. Something I assume having a squad of Auror’s running about her house is likely to do.

So, I would consider it a courtesy if, in the future, you would check out your source and their information a bit more carefully before sending your Aurors on a raid.” Bale said, getting to his feet. But as he turned and started for the door to the office, he stopped and slowly turned back to the man. “Oh, one last thing, Martin.”

Loudmen looked up at the man, not liking the look in his eyes one bit. Bale was definitely up to something. One last card he was about to pull out of his sleeve. And he had all the confidence in the world from that look, that it was a trump card.

“This vendetta you have against me...venting your anger against me is one thing. But when you start to use your position to make problems for my agents, I begin to take that more personally.”

Loudmen started to say something, but Bale cut him off quickly.

“It isn’t my fault or anyone else’s, Martin, that there were Deatheaters operating as Aurors in your department. And whereas you may have been happier if I hadn’t found them..., I couldn’t very well have just ignored the situation either.

And I can’t help that the Daily Prophet found out and had a field day with that information.

But Martin, there is one thing I can do.” Bale continued, stepping back over to the man’s desk until he stood directly in front of it. “If I hear of you pulling another raid on one of my agents, trying to interfere with any of their missions, or if one of your Aurors so much as takes even one small step in the direction of Mrs. Black again, I will come back to your department, and I will start at the ceiling and work my way down to the floor.” He said, pulling a long, brown sheath of wood out of his jacket, which he laid on the front edge of the desk before him. “And I bet I’ll just be amazed at what I’ll find.” The Unspeakable added, giving the wand he’d taken from Thomas a small push so that it rolled across the desk, just stopping from going over the edge as Loudmen grabbed at it.

“Do have a nice day, Martin, won’t you?” Bale finished with a small smile as he finally turned and stepped out of the office.

As soon as Orin left the office, Jon apparated into his superior’s office.

“So what did the great Orin Bale want?” He ask.

Loudmen sat with the wand held by two fingers of either hand. “Orin was just returning my property to me, Jon.” Loudmen replied casually.

“That’s the wand you gave Thomas Belker.” The other wizard stated with a slight trace of poorly disguised alarm in his voice.

“That’s right.”

“And Orin Bale had it?!”

Loudmen nodded once, having not once yet even turned to look at the man standing next to his desk.

“You don’t seem particularly worried.”

“Why should I be?”

“Doesn’t it concern you?”

Loudmen shook his head. “No.”

Jon moved so he now stood directly in front on his superior’s desk, leaning over it as he studied the man in the chair. “Orin Bale, head of the Unspeakable’s, comes into your office to return an unregistered wand that he knows is yours, and that doesn’t concern you?”

Loudmen shook his head again. “No.”

“Would you care to tell me ‘why’?” The other wizard ask.

Loudmen turned his eyes to the man. “So Bale brought me back a wand.” He shrugged. “So what, Jon? It doesn’t prove anything.”

“It’s unregistered, Martin. And you can bet you last knut that Orin Bale knows that.”

“So?”

The man was starting to go way past exacerbation. “What if he goes to the Ministry? What if he reports it!?”

Loudmen placed the wand on his desk. Pulling out his own wand he pointed it at the other wand, which instantly turned into a line a fine dust.

Placing his wand back in his pocket, Loudmen turned to his second-in-command. “Reports what, Jon?”

The man didn’t say anything, but simply fixed a disbelieving stare on his superior.

“Tell every Auror that has one of those wands they are to do exactly the same thing.” Loudmen replied in a flat, level tone.

The other wizard frowned at the order. “Those wands were extremely difficult to get, Martin. Destroying them...”

“...is the price we pay for being careless, Jon.” Loudmen finished for him. “Now, I hold only myself responsible that Bale came into possession of this information. It was my own fault for trusting Belker’s son. Not a mistake I intend to repeat. But nor am I going to leave any evidence laying around for Bale to use against me when the mood strikes him. Have those wands destroyed.”
Jon paused for a moment, then nodded as he pulled back from the desk and finally turned and left the office with a sigh.

Returning to his office, Orin sat down in his chair with a loud sigh as he closed his eyes.

“Well?” He ask.

A flash of dark light erupted in the room and a tall man in his forties appeared before Orin’s desk. The man’s hair, cut in the height of executive fashion, was as dark as his eyes, which only went on to match the overall expression on his face.

“Why do you treat that man like he is some inconsequential vermin?”

“Because to me, he is .”

The man leaned his six foot four frame over Orin’s desk as he glared down at him. “Martin Loudmen is a very dangerous man, Orin. You should not treat him so lightly. If he were a Deatheater, I would never take my eyes off the man.”

Orin opened his eyes with a bemused smile on his lips. “Well, how fortunate for you he’s not one then. Now, did things go the way you predicted or not?”

The other man held out his hand and in it a long sheath of wood instantly materialized. “He did exactly what I told you he would. As soon as you left his office, he tried to destroy the evidence.”

Orin gave a small smile. “And the others?”

The man kept his hand held out. Eight more wands joined the first, which the man placed on Orin’s desk.

Orin gave the wands a quick look over. “I take it they don’t know?” He ask, turning to the other man.

The man gave him an indignant stare. “I am perfectly capable of copying a wand, Orin. Give me some credit.”

“Oh, I do.” He replied with a small smile, leaning back in his chair again as he once more closed his eyes. “I give you a great deal of credit. So tell me, what did you find out in the other matter?”

The other wizard gave a loud sigh, crossing his arms over his chest.

Bale opened his eyes again and stared back at the man. “This isn’t good news, is it?”

The man pulled himself back up to his impressive height. “No. It’s not, Orin.”

Bale gave a dismal sigh. “All right. Get it over with then.”

“Nothing.” The man replied. “That is what I found. Whatever was in those file, Belker did an admirable job of making sure no one could pull them back together. Even me.”

Orin sighed again as he leaned back in his chair again. “So we are no closer than we ever were to finding out what’s going on?”

The man crossed his arms over his chest. “We know this wizard is out there. And we know the source of his power. I would say we are ahead of the game.”

Orin gave him a short laugh. “The eternal optimist. That’s what you are.”

“And you seemed forever determined to find the cloud for every silver lining.”

“Some call that being ‘cautious’.”

“I call it being boring.”

“So what do we do now?” Bale ask, steepling his fingers in front of him as he stared up at the man in front of his desk.

The man shrugged. “Wait. This wizard has shown himself to be impatient at best. He’ll tip his hand soon enough. Of that I am sure.”

Bale shrugged in return. “I suppose that is, in truth, all we can do for now.”

“Indeed.” The man answered. “Then I’ll bid you good night, Orin.”

Bale gave the man a small smile. “Good night, Eric.” He offered just before the man disappeared in his usual flare of dark light.

ilovesiriusblack:

Katlin actually did embellish a little to make her poor husband seem about as incompetent as a man could be in caring for five children. But she’s no ‘mother of the year’ yet herself. Parenting is OJT, and it’ll take them a little while to get the hang of it. But they’ve done remarkably well so far.

Katlin does manage to put Treaks back in his place for each attempt he has made after her position. But for every time he fails, he just comes back that much more determined. The whole situation is becoming something of an obsession with him, and Katlin may have to make a decision soon on fixing the problem permanently. I’m sure that’ll keep her up nights.

Well, you’d have me there, since I didn’t read all of OotP. I got to ‘the incident’, and quit there.

There was going to be one more chapter here, by I decided against it. It was really superfluous. So, this story ends with this chapter.

Next you get a short one shot with Orion and Charly which is solely to give you a bit more information on Eric, because you’ll need it for Family Ties, then I’m taking a short vacation from this for a while to get some other things done, and then we’ll start back with Family Ties. And either to make you happy, or keep you up nights, I will say that Family Ties has very good potential at this point to be the longest of the three story arcs.

All in all, look for Family Ties to resume July or August.

MasterLupin:

True. I guess I got the idea there was a witch or wizard in the family somewhere from the fact that when Lily showed to be a witch, the family wasn’t the least bit surprised and from the way it was portrayed, accepted the whole thing as thought it happened in the family quite regularly.

Harry is 15. He and Thomas are basically the same age. Harry’s birthday, however, is July 31st, and Thomas’ is later in the year. So for a short time Harry is one year older than Thomas.

Actually, Voldemort has been interested in the wizard in the North for a while now. If you’ll think back to Enemies (Remember that?), what was supposedly in the package the currier was bring Orion was waiting for in the woods that one night? And Katlin had told him the information her informant brought was much the same. All centering on information gathered on the wizard in the north and his growing power base.

Enemies was actually the first mention made of the wizard in the north. The time between Enemies and Family Relations is approximately 15 years.

Now, are there discrepancies and continuity errors in my time line? I would bet a large sum of money on that. The reason is that the three story arcs went through a major shift halfway through and it threw things a bit out of kilter time-wise. So just work with me on the time line. I’ve got my iron out and I’m trying to smooth things over, but it’s gonna take some time.

OK, now you’re getting into some serious grey area, Dear. Let me try to help you out.

Yes, Voldemort did recreate a body for himself at the end of GoF using Harry’s blood. Now you have to consider two separate stories. The canon one and mine. Because they go in tow totally separate directions.

JKR went off in her direction and never really revisited that issue to my knowledge.

On the other hand, much of what happened in the end of Family Life was based on that act. The body Voldemort had created was failing, and so he needed another...fast. That was a large part of the reason he ‘hijacked’ Sirius’ body along with a lot of other reasons crammed in there that were laid out in Family Relations.

Now, regarding ‘the way that Katlin acts’. If you mean from before all this (ie: the time between his attack on the Potter’s to the time of GoF) that Katlin acts and seems to relate to him being a whole person...welll...that’s a bit of a sticky issue with me. Yes, she does seem to be relating things in regard to Voldemort as though he is a whole person. But that’s just the way she relates to him. Plus, she didn’t actually have a lot of contact with him during that time. Katlin more or less just took orders and did as he told her to do, which was basically trying to keep the Deatheaters in line. Past that, I could write a book on what was going on in that time in the world according to PAR, but it just isn’t that relevant to things really. IF you have questions regarding that time feel free to ask and I’ll try to answer them with some degree of coherency.

All reviews are as of 06/08/2008.

And remember;

I either get what I want...or I change my mind.