Crabbe thought life had been treating him quite well lately.
Ever since his suspension, he had slept until he woke naturally every day.
The legal counsel Lucius had found for him had told him the outlook was very favorable.
"Mr. Crabbe, you simply happened to be near a location where an incident involving prohibited items occurred. There is no direct evidence proving you put those things there." By the time the lawyer said that, Crabbe had already stopped worrying.
"Besides, you were performing your duties as an Auror at the time. Any reasonable suspicion can be explained as 'normal law enforcement activity.'"
After hearing that, Crabbe felt even more justified in putting his mind at ease.
He had even begun planning how to get back at Lin Ze after his reinstatement.
That morning, he was sitting in his living room in a silk dressing gown, holding a cup of black tea and leafing through the copies of the Daily Prophet that had piled up over the past few days.
Although he subscribed to every issue, he did not read them all.
Today's front-page headline was a follow-up report on the Dark Lord's downfall.
When Crabbe saw that headline, he nearly dropped his teacup.
The Dark Lord had fallen?
Damn it!
When had that happened?
He sucked in a breath-
He quickly scanned the report, his face growing paler and paler.
Then he rummaged through the newspapers he had left unread over the previous few days.
"Dark Lord falls, child under one becomes the Chosen One"
"Ministry of Magic announces: reports of Dark Lord's downfall confirmed"
"Ministry of Magic establishes Special Operations Team to hunt down remaining Death Eaters"
"Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement Crouch declares: not a single traitor who betrayed the Wizarding World will escape justice"
"Pete!" he shouted toward the door.
Pete the House-elf immediately appeared before him and bowed deeply. "What are your orders, Master?"
"Pack my things! Quickly! Put all my clothes in the trunks, and take out the Galleons in the safe, every last one!"
"Is Master going on a trip?"
"A trip, my arse! I'm making a run for it!"
Pete blinked, not quite sure whether his master was joking, but it still turned to carry out his orders.
Crabbe sprang out of his chair and frantically began rummaging through drawers.
Passport, wand, spare wand, cash, potions...
He stuffed everything he could think of into a suitcase. Halfway through, he realized the suitcase was too small and had Poppy bring him a larger one.
Just as he finished filling the third case, the doorbell rang.
Crabbe froze.
Then a very familiar voice came from outside the door.
"Senior Crabbe, open up."
It was that wretched Lin Ze's voice.
Crabbe's face twisted instantly.
Without a second thought, he dropped the case, turned, and ran for the back door.
The back door led into a small yard enclosed by a fence. Over the fence was the backyard of Goyle's house next door.
He pulled open the back door and had just taken one step outside when he saw Kingsley Shacklebolt standing beside the fence, pruning a rosebush at a leisurely pace with a pair of pruning shears.
"Mr. Crabbe." Kingsley looked up and gave him a slight nod.
"Lovely weather today. Perfect for pruning."
Crabbe spun around, intending to escape through the side door.
The side door led to the garage, where he kept his collection of broomsticks.
He ran to the garage door and was just about to push it open when it opened by itself.
Ben Frick stepped out of the garage, toying with a broomstick, a brilliant smile on his face.
"Nice broom, senior. A Cleansweep Seven? You can't buy these anymore."
Crabbe took a step back.
The back of his head bumped into something hard.
He looked back. It was the tip of a wand.
Amelia Bones stood behind him, her wand pointed steadily at his head.
"Bodo Crabbe, you are suspected of colluding with Death Eaters, leaking confidential information about Auror operations, and assisting in framing a colleague. You are now under arrest in accordance with the law."
Crabbe's knees buckled. He sagged against the wall and slowly slid down.
"I... I can explain... I... I demand to see my legal counsel..." His voice trembled.
"Go ahead." Lin Ze came around from the front door, his hands in his pockets, and strolled over to Crabbe.
"But I should remind you that every word you say now will be used at your trial before the Wizengamot."
Crabbe's lips quivered. For a long time, he could not manage a complete sentence.
Lin Ze crouched down and met his eyes.
"Oh, right, senior. Remember asking me in the office that day what I was writing in my notebook?"
Crabbe's eyes flew wide.
Lin Ze pulled the black-covered notebook from inside his clothes and flipped through it in front of Crabbe.
The densely packed writing, the entries marked with dates, locations, and names, formed something like an enormous spiderweb, and Crabbe's name stood out within it.
"You... from the very beginning, you..." Crabbe sounded as though someone had him by the throat.
"I'm not targeting you." Lin Ze closed the notebook.
"I'm targeting all of you."
The operation to arrest Crabbe had gone far more smoothly than expected.
Too smoothly, one might say.
Back in the Special Operations Team's office, Ben Frick was as excited as a child who had just received his Hogwarts acceptance letter. He paced around the office, endlessly repeating, "Did you see his face?" and "I've never seen such a cowardly Death Eater in my life."
Amelia sat at her desk, rapidly writing the operation report with a quill, its tip scratching across the parchment.
Kingsley propped the Cleansweep Seven from Crabbe's garage in a corner, saying it was evidence. In truth, Lin Ze suspected he simply wanted an excuse to take it home for his collection.
News of Crabbe's arrest hit the Ministry of Magic like a bomb dropped into Gringotts' underground vaults.
Not the sort of bomb that made a great deal of noise.
The sort that exploded with a muffled boom, its shock waves ricocheting through the underground vaults a dozen times and leaving every corner humming.
In the break room, three witches stood around a coffee machine, whispering. The hand one of them held her cup in was visibly shaking.
"Have you heard? Crabbe's been arrested. He'd been at the Ministry for seven years, and they just arrested him like that, without even any advance notice."
"What do seven years matter? I heard that Special Operations Team has a complete list of everyone connected to the Death Eaters. Crabbe was only the first."
"A list? What list? Who put it together?"
"Who else could it be? That..."
The witch speaking suddenly spotted Lin Ze coming down the corridor. She immediately shut her mouth and raised her cup, pretending to drink her coffee.
As Lin Ze passed the break room, he smiled and nodded to them.
All three witches returned stiff smiles in unison. Once he was far away, they immediately huddled together again, lowering their voices even further.
"That's him! That Lin Ze! I heard from someone in the Auror Office that when Crabbe was arrested, he crouched in front of him with a black-covered notebook and showed it to him page by page. It was full of evidence of his collusion with Death Eaters over the years."
"Merlin... just how many people are recorded in that notebook?"
"Who knows? Everyone in the Ministry is afraid for themselves now. No one knows when the Special Operations Team might come knocking."
"What is there to be afraid of? We haven't colluded with Death Eaters."
"Are you sure? Last year, you gave a box of Sri Lankan tea to Badun, the translator in the Department of International Magical Cooperation. He was an informant for the Death Eaters!"
"How was I supposed to know he was an informant when I gave him the tea? Wait, Translator Badun was an informant?"
"He was arrested the day before yesterday. Didn't you read the internal bulletin?"
"..."
Similar conversations were taking place in every corner of the Ministry of Magic.
Meanwhile, at the epicenter of this earthquake, Lin Ze was sitting in the Special Operations Team's office with his legs crossed, leafing through today's Daily Prophet.
The third page carried news of Crabbe's arrest under the headline "Special Operations Team strikes for the first time, former Auror suspected of colluding with Death Eaters."
The accompanying photograph showed Crabbe being escorted out of his house. The look of disbelief on his face, as though the sky had fallen, nearly made Lin Ze laugh aloud.
"That's a good photo." He passed the newspaper to Ben Frick beside him.
"Mainly because Kingsley caught the moment so well."