The Heart of Gryffindor
by SJR0301
Part II - Chapter Fifteen
Except for Harry, they had all reported to the Thames Street office promptly at eight for their first day on the job after training. They had been sent to sign in first and had been told to assemble in a large conference room for their team assignments. Johnny had snagged a seat close to the front as he was hoping for a good assignment.
They all snapped to attention when Major Halsey came in accompanied by the deputy head of the agency, a tall man with iron gray hair and dark eyes named Bentley.
Bentley gave the assembled new officers a swift assessing glance. "I'll get right to the point," he said in a gravelly voice. "Major Halsey assures me that this is as good a group of new officers as we've had in a while and I'll be looking to see that you prove him right. We have, as you know from your training, a number of matters coming to a boil and others that look threatening but haven't generated actual incidents as of yet."
Some of the new officers nodded at Bentley's words and he continued, apparently satisfied that they were following his comments. "This morning, you will each be assigned to an operating team. Some of your teams may be working together on larger projects, while others may be working alone. You should know that every assignment, no matter how large or small is important. Each team has a head officer to whom you will report and who will provide you with particular assignments within your team. I will expect each of you to recall the rules with respect to obeying orders, sharing information and to cooperate with all of your team members."
Bentley began assigning them to their teams without further discussion. Some went to the team following the IRA, others to the team following the Islamic Jihad and still others to the teams following the Society of Cornish Independents and the British Army of Revolutionary Marxists, whom Johnny could not help thinking of as the BARMies. He tried to be patient, as his name had not been called in the first group; however, when his name was called and he was assigned to the team monitoring the Anglo Aryan Alliance, he could not suppress a feeling of savage satisfaction. He wanted a chance to see them in jail for good.
Like everyone else, he was not surprised when Harry's name was included in that team. He was surprised when Harry came into the conference room accompanied by Lieutenant Daniels just as his name was called.
"Sorry I'm late, sir," Harry said as he slid into the vacant chair next to Ron. His face was still pale but his green eyes were bright and alert and he seemed to tense uncomfortably just a bit as everyone there stared at him. And no wonder, Johnny thought, since the last time most of them had seen him; Harry had been carried out of the gym unconscious having barely survived an attack by dark wizards.
Bentley did not seem to know that for he said sharply, "Your instructions were to arrive at eight, Mr. Potter, in a business suit, not fatigues."
Harry opened his mouth to answer, but Daniels laid a hand on his shoulder and said, "The doctor only released him from the Compound infirmary this morning, sir. You'll find there's a note about it in your morning's e-mail."
Bentley stared at Harry briefly. "I'll confirm that after our meeting Daniels. In the meantime, let's get on with it. Your team briefings will commence at 10:30 sharp." He continued reading off the assignments and dismissed the group quickly.
Johnny caught Harry's eye as they left and said quietly, "I thought you weren't going to be here today."
Harry shrugged. "Yeah, well...I didn't want to miss things and I can see I've got off on the wrong foot with him already," he said quietly with a nod at Bentley.
Ron clapped him on the shoulder and said, "Don't worry, mate. Halsey and Daniels will fill him in."
Hermione cut in swiftly, "Maybe not as much as you think. Just because the Death Eaters showed up at the Compound doesn't mean that every other officer here will be in the know about it."
"He'll have to know," Johnny objected. "He's the deputy head here." He led the way back to the office area where they had each been assigned a cubicle with a desk, shelves and computer. "I think that one's yours," he said to Harry.
Harry nodded and sat down at his desk looking for a moment as though he were utterly lost and trapped. Then he ran his long fingers over the keyboard like a pianist except that no note sounded and nothing happened at all since the computer was turned off. Johnny glanced around to make sure no one was watching and then leaned in to punch the button on the hard drive set below.
The green light of the computer screen booting was nowhere near as bright as Harry's eyes as he turned to them and asked generally, "How did we end up here, anyway?"
"You applied for a job and were hired," Hermione said tartly.
"Yeah," Harry answered, "but I never thought I'd be working in front of a computer at a desk and have to wear a Muggle suit and tie every day."
"I don't much like this Muggle bit," Johnny said after a glance around at the other officers.
"You're not a Muggle anyway," Harry replied.
"What makes you think that?" Johnny asked. Ron and Hermione, he saw, did not look particularly surprised at that either.
"Muggles don't have veelas for grandmothers," Harry answered. "Muggles don't throw fire when they get mad."
"I'd rather you didn't talk about that," Johnny said swiftly.
"You saved my life," Harry said softly, "when you did that. There's nothing to be ashamed of in it either."
Johnny felt the flush burning up his face. It was an uncomfortable feeling, composed of the heat of embarrassment and remembered rage combined. Nor did it help when Hawkins could be overheard badgering Brittany on the other side of the room.
"So tell me," his voice carried, "what is your grandmother anyway? An elf? A fairy? Is that why you keep us all drooling after you like dogs in heat?"
Johnny could feel himself cringe and yet anger rose further. But before he could act, Harry rose and walked over to where Hawkins was leaning against the cubicle that housed Brittany's desk.
"She's not an elf or a fairy," Harry said coolly, "and if you are drooling over Brittany, keep it to yourself unless she tells you she welcomes it." He paused and said regretfully, "I'm surprised at you Hawkins. I thought you were all right."
Brittany's face was full of distress and anger. "You don't have to defend me," she said in a low voice. "And we don't need to be having this discussion here, and now, on our first day on a real assignment."
"I don't mind," Harry, said quietly, "I always defend my friends."
It was worth it, Johnny thought, to see Hawkins' mouth shut on whatever retort he had planned and the flush of shame that suffused his face as he and they all recalled what Harry had done only days before to defend his friends.
Any further discussion was interrupted as Daniels came in and said, "It's 10:30 and you all will be late for your first team meetings."
There was a bit of a scrum around the board where the list of rooms where their teams were to meet was posted. Then they all separated and scrambled for the lift or the stairs. Johnny caught Harry's arm and pointed the way, as he knew that Harry had missed the early morning tour of the building.
***
Harry followed Johnny gloomily wishing that Ron or Hermione or Ginny were on his team. He knew that he would not always have been working on the same things as they would if he had been working for the Ministry of Magic instead of for the Muggles, but he could not help feeling that this bland office tower was a kind of prison and that if he worked in it long enough, he would find that the world of magic was all a dream and the Muggle world was the only reality. At least, he thought, if Ron had been with him, he would not feel so completely separated from his own world.
Harry found a seat at the conference table and his feeling of gloom immediately increased. Bentley had taken a seat at the head of the table and Major Halsey and Lieutenant Daniels joined him. There was also a tall very thin woman with an exceedingly long neck. She had mournful looking eyes with incredibly long eyelashes that reminded him of a giraffe. Between her brows were two permanent vertical lines and there was tightness about her thin mouth that communicated an aura of tension and anxiety. Her permanent frown deepened as it rested on Harry, marking his failure to wear a suit and making him feel even younger and more lacking than he had before. He wondered whether the Muggle stores would still be open that evening long enough for him to buy a suit to wear the following day since the closest thing he had to a Muggle business suit was his school uniform from the previous year. And he was quite sure that the sweater and outer robes would be unacceptable.
Johnny snagged a seat next to him and he was relieved to see that the other recruit assigned to the team was MacCready, whom he liked quite a lot.
Besides the thin woman, there was also another unfamiliar man who wore square black-rimmed glasses and had rather curly sandy hair and an aquiline nose. He was preoccupied with a laptop, on which he was typing furiously and he would chew his lip from time to time and mutter, as whatever it was he was trying to do didn't seem to be working.
"Can you get that working, Bronzstein?" Bentley asked.
Bronzstein clicked his mouse several times and suddenly, voices echoed from the laptop. Harry jumped, not simply because the voices had come suddenly, but because he recognized the voices instantly: Hayden and Malfoy.
"What are you doing here?" Hayden asked.
"Going somewhere?" Malfoy asked back coldly. "Lost your nerve have you?"
"I know when to cut my losses," Hayden replied. "I've no intention of taking a fall because of stupid incompetents or reckless fools like you."
"I'm not the one who decided to blow up a Muggle shopping palace," Malfoy sneered back. "The least you could have done was made sure you actually succeeded."
"I think it's you that brought me trouble," Hayden answered. "You're the one who assured me the Boy Who Lived was no more."
"What do you know about that?" Malfoy asked swiftly.
"What I know is I saw him. He goes by another name, but it had to be him," Hayden answered. "I saw his scar, like a lightning bolt, it was, just as they say."
"You must be mistaken," Malfoy answered. "Everyone imagines they've seen him. He's been in Italy and Scotland and just recently in Yorkshire. He cured a vampire, if you can believe that. Nonsense it is, made up by those who fear the Dark Lord will return."
"I thought you said he would return," Hayden sneered.
"He will," Malfoy said coolly. "And don't imagine he'll play second fiddle to your royal aspirations. You'll bow to him like the rest of us do when he returns."
"We had an agreement," Hayden said. "You cooperate with my aims and I cooperate with yours. But it seems my intelligence is more reliable than yours is. And my hopes have some chance some day, while yours have none."
There was a pause then, a crackling silence filled with the hiss of static from the recording. Then Malfoy's voice came again, less hostile, and with an apparent nonchalance.
"This boy you saw," Malfoy said, "what was his name?"
"He called himself James Black," Hayden answered. "But I know it was he. Only one person has that scar. I saw it clearly when the wind blew his hair back off his face. So dream your dreams, Lucius, of the Dark Lord's return," Hayden added, "but I know better."
"You're sure?" Malfoy asked. "James Black? That was the same name as the one your friends told us had interfered with the signals at the card game. Where was he, your spy?"
The sound stuttered again and then faded out. Bronzstein cursed and played the laptop's keyboard like a virtuoso, but nothing more came out. Harry didn't mind, though. Malfoy's drawling voice had given him the shivers and guilt lay leaden in his guts, as he understood that this game was up.
"Sorry," Bronzstein said. "That's the best I could do. I almost couldn't recover it at all. There was some kind of interference with our bug. Maybe it's defective, I don't know."
"You all know who that was, don't you?" Bentley asked.
"Eric Hayden," Daniels answered, "The man behind the Anglo Aryan Alliance. He hasn't left them at all, has he?"
"And the other?" Bentley asked. "His friend "Lucius"? What kind of a name is that, anyway?"
Harry said nothing. A faint panic filled him and he stared at his hands trying to think what he could say.
Bronzstein fiddled with his laptop some more and a picture appeared on the hanging projection screen. It was grainy and poor, but unmistakably, it showed Hayden going out the door followed by Lucius Malfoy.
"That one," Daniels said, "is Lucius Malfoy. According to Bones, he was high up in the Lord of Death's organization."
"I thought that fellow was dead," the woman interjected. "That's what the Yard told us."
"He is, Zoë," Major Halsey replied. "But some of his followers are still around making trouble. It looks like Malfoy and a few of the others have joined up with Hayden and the Alliance." The major looked at Harry as though expecting him to speak, but Harry felt miserably that whatever he said could only bring more trouble.
Seemingly unconsciously, the woman called Zoë wrapped a strand of her long, thin brown hair around a finger. "What about Hayden?" she asked. "Do we know where he went?"
Bronzstein grunted as he played with his laptop and then another picture showed up, this one much clearer. It showed Hayden in Paris talking to another man. Nearby, film cameras stood idle and a jumble of men and women stood chatting, some smoking, others sipping from coffee cups. In the background, the Eiffel Tower made a black exclamation point to Hayden's gesticulations. It appeared that he liked to tell people what to do no matter what job he was engaged in, whether it was acting or murder.
"Look at him, the sod," Bronzstein said, "standing there pretending to be just another ordinary actor. And what do you suppose he's making?" he added with disgust, "another bad foreign language film about existential heroes in the middle ages?"
Zoë snorted and said, "His acting's not that bad. Too bad he doesn't stick to it like he said he was going to when he pretended to withdraw from the Alliance a few years ago. All shocked, he said he was, about that racial bashing. He had us fooled, didn't he?"
Halsey interrupted. "It's the other one that worries me right now. He's still got contacts with those gangs they united last year and the year before. I think he can do more damage in the near run than Hayden."
"What I want to know," Bentley said, "is who this James Black is, and why do they refer to him as the Boy Who...well, whatever it was?"
The sinking feeling in Harry's guts increased. He felt as though he ought to jump up and say, I confess, it's me, it's my entire fault. As he felt it was.
Sure enough, of course, MacCready said, "Oh, that's Harry here," and Halsey said, "Quite right. The Boy Who Lived, that's what they call him."
"You're joking," Bentley said. There was a momentary silence and Harry felt the heat rising to his cheeks as Bentley stared around the room and then at him. "How is it I don't know this? And how is it that a new recruit is already known to a pair of terrorists by an alias when he hasn't even been three hours on the job after training?"
"Well..." the major coughed. Then he launched into an explanation of how Harry and Johnny and Mac had set up the meeting with Hayden from the e-mails they had been given in class and how they had observed Hayden and Norway and Malfoy meet and how they had followed Hayden from the meeting and auditioned for parts in his new movie. He said nothing about wizards or magic or anything like that. But that did not relieve Harry's feeling of guilt, only the lurking worry that the Ministry would have to really expel him if any more people found out about him.
Bentley listened intently and said nothing for a moment.
"Very clever," Zoë commented. "That's quite an operation to pull off when you're still in training."
Harry could not stand the praise, however, and he blurted out, "It was dead stupid actually. I put other recruits in danger because I just went ahead and didn't think carefully enough."
"That's a bit harsh," Johnny objected. "You couldn't know they'd show up and try to kill you."
"What's this?" Bentley asked. "Where did they show up? Who did? When?"
"At the Compound," Harry answered. Then he shut up quickly at a gesture from the major.
"Why wasn't I told this," Bentley said again. His voice was cold and controlled, but you could see he was furious.
"K was told," the major responded calmly, "and the Prime Minister. And we are telling you now."
Bentley ignored that though and demanded, "How did they know where to go? How did they get in even if they knew where to go?"
"Norway told them," the major responded. "They had a mole in our training program as we already told you. We knew about him, but we discounted the danger because he, the fake Norway, took a drug overdose and died a few weeks before. We never expected them to attack there."
Bentley did not look particularly pacified. "And why, exactly, did they want to kill Potter in particular? Why did they know him not only by his alias but by a nickname of sorts?" He stared at Harry and this time Harry knew Bentley would not accept an answer from the major.
Harry shrugged, shivered really, as though he could shake off the lingering feeling of dread and guilt and answered, "Malfoy knew me because he knew my parents from school. He knew me because I went to school with his son." He paused a moment and gritted his teeth. Then he added, "They call me that, The Boy Who Lived, because I survived when Voldemort killed my parents. And," he added truthfully, "I should have known that Hayden might mention me to Malfoy and that Malfoy might figure things out. I messed up. It's my fault Malfoy showed up at the Compound and attacked. If any other recruits had been harmed, it would be my fault." He paused again and said with difficulty, "and it's obvious that I can't continue to work here. Malfoy got away and he has others still working with him. It won't take him long to figure out that I'm here now instead of at the Compound and to come after me again. And there could easily be others killed next time. I can see I was stupid to think I could work against them here. I'll have to resign, that's all."
"Voldemort?" Bentley repeated slowly. "He used that name only once, on the window at Harrods. And why did a major terrorist like that want to kill your parents?" His tone implied that he suspected it had been a case of thieves falling out. Anger dispelled the lingering feeling of guilt and Harry snapped back.
"They were working against him long before you were," he said, "and they gave their lives up fighting him. And I don't care if you sack me or if you want me to resign either, cause I'll go on fighting against the rest of them anyway."
He glared back at Bentley and drew breath to continue, but the major cut in. "Fact is, sir, Potter was the one who brought down the fellow - Voldemort. That's why Bones recruited him. And they want revenge on Potter, his followers, because he got their leader."
"I thought he was dead, this Lord of Death fellow," Bentley said. "The Yard got him, I thought."
He looked at Harry as if waiting for clarification, so Harry said simply, "He was trying to kill me, and only I killed him instead."
He paused and added hesitantly, hoping they would understand, "He didn't like failure, Voldemort. And he didn't want to leave me alive because I was a witness. I could testify that he'd done murder, so he wanted me out of the way. And that's why his followers want me dead. I messed up everything for them by killing their master." He hoped that would be enough to explain things, as he was certainly not going to go into the prophecy or magic or anything like that if he could help it. Nevertheless, he was surprised by Bentley's next words.
"There'll be no sackings and no resignations, Officer Potter. We don't invest our time and money in training new officers only to throw them out at the drop of a hat, nor even because some terrorist has a vendetta against one of them. I appreciate your anxiety, but I can tell you, I'd have had to resign twenty years ago myself if I'd let some nutter's desire to have revenge on me govern my life. There's a man by the name of Michael Moriarty of the Sinn Fein who would still like to kill me and I'm not quitting."
Harry gawped at Bentley and could find nothing to say to that. Bentley then continued with the meeting as if none of the conversation had taken place. "So," he said, "do we have any idea where this Malfoy fellow has gone to ground? And have we finished questioning the ones we caught at the Metro Center?
By the end of the day, Harry felt utterly wrung out. They had spent hours reviewing communications that had been taped between Hayden and everyone with whom he had met or talked to on the phone at his London flat.
After that, they tossed around ideas for finding out who the remaining members of Alliance were, how many of them were in the inner circle and actually devoted to the terrorist cell at the center and how many were merely on the edges and believed it was a genuine political party. Zoë Beauchamp’s and Jaime Bronzstein were assigned to interview a man who was running for Parliament from Chipping Wesley as a candidate from the Alliance. Harry, Johnny and Mac were assigned to set up a shadow internet chat site for Alliance members and sympathizers in hopes that they could track chatters and find any who were in the inner circle. Harry did not say that none of this would help them locate Malfoy and the remaining Death Eaters, and he supposed that catching any of the Alliance people was almost as important since they were clearly willing to kill in large numbers for no reason, too. And he felt he would really like to be in on getting Hayden. There was something about Hayden that particularly repelled him. Whether it was the fact that he was a wizard and was using Muggles to further his evil cause, or his fanatical racist and historical beliefs, didn't matter. The man, Harry thought, was in some respects even more dangerous than Malfoy because his ambitions were so much larger.
At five o'clock, Ron tapped him on the shoulder, surprising him so much that he accidentally erased the report he had started. He glared and muttered, "Stupid Muggle computers," and Ron said sympathetically, "They really are, aren't they?" Ron looked around to see if anyone was listening and then bent over and whispered, "You don't suppose we could take them apart and make them run, you know, on magic, like my Dad's car?"
Harry snorted and said, "You'd probably knock out the entire system." He looked around at the open office, at his pale green cubicle and at the blank document on his computer screen and said dismally, "You don't suppose there's a store open anywhere where I can buy a Muggle suit?" He shook his head and added, "I feel like I'm turning into my Uncle Vernon when I sit here, and any moment, I'll swell up and start complaining about the neighbors' lawn."
"Not a chance," Ron said. "This place is as close to being like working for the Ministry of Magic as any Muggle institution can get. We actually spent the afternoon trying to trace Lucius Malfoy's location. Course, it would have worked better if we'd had one of Mad-eye's dark detectors on tap, but you can't have everything. I mean really, the only thing that's missing is Percy, and that's a plus."
That made Harry laugh for the first time since he had walked into the morning meeting late.
Harry was surprised and pleased, however, when Ron added, "And you don't have to buy a suit. Me and Hermione and Ginny bought one for you when we went for ours." He looked nervously at Harry as if daring him to object and continued, "and don't tell us you want to pay us back, okay?"
"Thanks," Harry answered. He figured he'd find some other way to pay them back anyway. A feeling of relief washed through him and then a wave of sheer fatigue. It occurred to him that there was no curfew that night and he was absolutely free to go anywhere he pleased for the first time in ages. He smothered a yawn and said, "I'm perishing for a drink and some dinner. Why don't we just go to the Leaky Cauldron?"
"Not the Leaky Cauldron," Hermione interjected.
"Our stuff is there," Ron objected, "We'll need that. And anyway, where are we going to stay tonight? We don't have lodgings in London yet."
"We can stay at my Mum's house," Hermione answered. "Or your mum's house. Or at a Muggle hotel."
"Or at my house," Harry said. "But I don't see why we shouldn't go to the Leaky Cauldron. I want a butterbeer and..."
Hermione shushed him with a gesture as Carter ambled over and said, "Who said something about going for a beer? Sounds like a brilliant idea to me."
"I did," Harry said. He got up and grabbed his trunk from under the desk in his cubicle. It stuck at first since his cubicle wasn't much bigger from side to side than his trunk. Just long enough, he reckoned, to fit in a broomstick at an angle. Feeling quite rebellious, because he was certain Hermione was going to lecture him and try to nanny him, as she and all of them often did, he said, "Come along then. The Leaky Cauldron will make you feel perfectly normal and then some, I promise you."
"Has it got good beer?" Johnny asked, "and pretty women?"
Harry grinned and said, "The beer is fine. I can't vouch for the women on any given night except for Ginny and Hermione though." He didn't wait for Hermione or Ron to object further, but lifted up his trunk with a grunt of effort and called across the room to Ginny to come on.
***
The taxi dropped them off at a non-descript street in front of a bookstore. Next to the bookstore was an ancient looking pub whose smoky glass window seemed to hold the grime of centuries. Johnny hoped dubiously that the beakers there were cleaner than the window.
Inside, his impression of age was reinforced as the pub was lit by chandeliers which held candles, not light bulbs. However, there were a number of people of all ages seated at the bar and at the scattered wooden tables and a cheerful hum of chatter pervaded the room.
As they entered, Hermione protested once more and said, "I don't know if this is a good idea..." But Harry cut her off and said impatiently, "We've been here a thousand times Hermione and I can't imagine Lucius Malfoy will show up seeing as he's on the run and all his cronies with him."
"He's got a point, you know," Ron said, and Harry strode forward as though Ron's agreement was all the support he needed.
Peculiarly, however, as Harry made his way through the pub from the door to the bar, conversation ceased and silence descended, crept through the room like a wave rolling softly into shore. By the time Harry had reached the bar, the silence was complete and every head had turned, and every eye was focused on Harry and Harry alone. The stillness was such that it seemed to Johnny that no one in there but himself had continued to breathe even and that the pub was populated by silent ghosts.
"Hullo," Harry said, apparently failing to notice that he was now the center of attention, "five butter beers, please, Tom."
The man behind the bar turned and stared at Harry. The amber bottle in his hand slipped unprepared and broke behind the counter with a crash, but the barman made no attempt to retrieve it.
After a clear moment's gape, the barman said, "Bless my soul. Is it really you, Harry Potter?"
Harry smiled happily and said, "Course it is." His smile faded, though, as he became aware of the silent stares of the people.
"It can't be Him," piped up a small girl who was sitting at the bar with an old lady whose violet velvet pointed witch's hat would have won best in show for a Halloween costume contest. "Everybody knows he's dead," the girl added. "Even I know that."
Harry frowned and a slow flush suffused his pale cheeks and then retreated leaving him paler than before.
"But I am - " Harry started to say, no doubt to insist he was Harry Potter, but another voice interrupted. This one was keen and had a nasty edge to it.
"So you've decided to come out and show yourself?" the person said. Her blond hair was done in an elaborate coiffure of rigid curls and her nails were a scarlet that looked as though blood had been bottled with varnish.
Harry flushed again only this time, Johnny was sure it was fury and no wonder as the woman continued, "You've got a great act going, haven't you? Curing vampires, doing miracles in Italy and all over. What will you do when a real dark wizard decides to see if you're the real thing just in case, even though we all know the real Boy Who Lived died on June 21 last?"
There was a concerted gasp and Ginny gave a low hiss of fury and drew her wand. Harry laid a restraining hand on hers and said with surprising composure, "I suppose you've gotten nearly as good mileage out of me being dead as me being alive, Rita." He raised an eyebrow and said, "I do have to say the only article you've ever written about me that was remotely true was when I gave you that interview for the Quibbler. You must think it awfully inconvenient of me to have actually shown up then."
Hermione had been silent till then, but now said in a furious whisper, "I should have kept you in that jar forever, you loathsome, co****ckroach. Or should I say beetle?"
The blond woman looked alarmed and angry and then peculiarly, as though she had only just noticed the others, her head turned from Harry to Hermione and from Harry to Ron and from Harry to Ginny and her mouth dropped just a little. Then her rather man-like jaw firmed and she reached out one crimson talon finger and pointed it at Harry's forehead. "I don't know why you all would support a fake, but I know I won't believe it until I have confirmation he's the real thing." Then she made a sudden stab at Harry's untidy hair and swept the black fringe off his forehead to expose the thin white lightning shaped scar on his brow.
The woman's face slackened in surprise; but just as quickly, it firmed again and her cold black eyes narrowed in suspicion.
"I will say you're the best imposter I've seen," she said. Her eyes roved over Harry's suddenly still and unreadable face. "Must be Polyjuice potion," she continued. "Only don't you think it's rather gruesome to be using a bit of a dead man to make such an effective disguise?"
"You would know about effective disguises," Harry responded silkily. "After all, it's how you get your best stories, isn't it?"
The woman bridled and then snapped back, "So you admit you're an imposter?"
Harry tipped his head to the side in the way that he did when he was working out some particularly thorny problem, in the way that always reminded Johnny of a cat considering the best way to pounce, and responded, "If I deny it, you'll print a story titled Harry Potter Imposter Denies Charade, so why should I bother answering you at all?" He turned away from her and back to the bartender and said, "I really would like a butterbeer, please, Tom."
The little girl on the bar stool piped up again, "Ooh, you said his name. You said the name of the Boy Who Lived. You must be very brave, mister."
The elderly witch with her tried to shush her, but Harry answered directly, "Of course I said my name. It's not like I'm Voldemort, you know."
The entire room gasped in again. Johnny saw that the others, Hermione, Ron and Ginny, were now torn between fury and laughter. "Perhaps we should go after all," Ron said. Hermione and Ginny, however, said as one, "No!" and Hermione added, "Why should we? Harry's got as much a right as any wizard or witch alive to come in here." She glared around the room as if daring anyone to disagree with her. Not surprisingly, considering the fierceness of her glare, no one did.
The little girl stared at Harry and reached out a tiny hand, in the way the children do when they touch something they know they shouldn't, and touched Harry's hand which lay relaxed on the ancient wooden counter of the bar. Harry looked surprised, but did not push her hand away. "You feel solid," the little girl said, "and you don't look like a ghost. Is it possible to be dead and be alive at the same time?"
Whatever Harry would have said was interrupted as the witch in the violet hat said, "Hush, and leave the man alone. And what have I told you about talking to strange wizards anyway? You never know if they could be dark wizards on the run from the law these day."
"But I want to know?" the little girl insisted. "See," she said, holding out a red leather book with gold tooling. "It say it right here. The Boy Who Lived, died on June 21st. It's in a book."
The book, Johnny saw, was titled, Lives of the Great Wizards: Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived. And on the inside front page, which the little girl had opened the book to, was a picture of Harry and dates showing birth and death.
This time, Harry quite lost his composure. "Who wrote that? How can they write a biography of me? I'm only eighteen. And besides, I never gave anyone permission to write my biography. That's ridiculous, that is."
The little girl pointed back to the blond witch, who had drawn out a scroll of parchment and whose enormous scarlet quill was flying over the parchment unguided by any hand. Harry whipped his head around to stare at the woman and squinted at the words rapidly appearing on the page. "Little Girl Confronts Imposter," the title read.
With an expression of enormous irritation, Harry whipped out his own wand almost quicker than the eye could follow. A soft gold light flashed out of his wand and the quill soared into the air while the words on the page changed. The title of the story now read,
Death Eater Lucius Malfoy Still At Large.
The story continued:
The Daily Prophet can reliably report that known Death Eater Lucius Malfoy, one of Lord Voldemort's most dangerous followers was sighted only days ago. While many of the dead dark wizard's followers have been captured, Malfoy and a few others remain at large. Anyone with information as to Malfoy's whereabouts should write to the following address. All information will be kept entirely confidential.
Harry smiled seraphic ally at the Skeeter woman and said, "There you go Rita. That's a good scoop for you isn't it?"
This time, the woman was entirely stunned. Her gaze had fastened on the wand in Harry's hand and she looked terrified. "You've got his wand," she said. The nasty edge was gone. "I've seen it, eleven inches, holly, with a phoenix feather. I saw at the Triwizard tournament, at the weighing of the wands. How did you get it? Did they give it to you?" She nodded at Ron and Hermione, and Hermione lifted her wand again.
Once again, Harry stopped her and said, "That won't help Hermione. You were right, you know. I should have known better than to come here."
"No, No," the bartender said quickly. "You are always welcome at The Leaky Cauldron, Mr. Potter." He bowed to Harry and added, "Please, I have a private parlor for you and your friends, and no one," he shot a glance at Rita Skeeter, "no one shall bother you."
Harry's face softened as he said, "Thanks, Tom." He stood to follow the bartender and a woman with curly gray hair with a pipe stepped in front of the Skeeter woman and put out her hand. "Welcome back, Mr. Potter," she said, taking Harry's hand in hers. "Doris Crockford, do you remember me?"
Harry smiled and answered, "Of course I remember you Mrs. Crockford. You were very kind to me the first time I ever came here."
The woman stepped back and pulled out an ancient lace handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes. An elderly man on whose shoulder sat a huge toad clasped Harry's hand in his two wizened old ones and said, "Algernon Longbottom, Mr. Potter. So good to see you."
Harry's eyes widened slightly and he looked at the toad sitting on the old man's shoulder. "That isn't Trevor, is it? That's Neville's toad, sir, isn't it, and you're his Uncle Algie."
The old man's wrinkled face creased in sorrow. "Aye," he whispered. "I gave him his toad meself before he started Hogwarts."
"He was the bravest, Neville was," Harry said. "He died fighting Voldemort. He saved my life in that last battle. Voldemort couldn't have been defeated without him."
Through the swirl of people who had now jammed forward, all wanting to shake Harry's hand, Rita Skeeter's brassy voice trumpeted once. "But was he defeated?" she called out. "If you're alive, when over a hundred people saw you die, then perhaps he is, too."
"Voldemort is too dead," Ginny spat at the reporter. "I was right there and I saw it all."
The crowding wizards stepped away from Rita Skeeter as though she carried some unknown contagion and she asked her last question from an empty space among the crowd. "And if he died, and if everyone who was there and saw The Boy Who Lived Die too, then how is it that you live? What magic did you use to come back from death itself?"
Harry opened his mouth, perhaps to answer, perhaps to say he never had died, but the ancient old man pulled out a long mahogany wand. "Twas the same magic that allowed him to survive the Killing Curse as a babe," Uncle Algie said, "an ancient magic, a great mystery. But the greater mystery to me, woman, is why no one has ever stopped that scurrilous pen of yours." And so saying, the old, old wizard flicked his wand and the Rita Skeeter transformed before their eyes into -- a toad. The toad began to hop away, but the old man said, "Accio," and the toad zoomed through the air into his two old hands.
Hermione, who though she had threatened moments earlier to turn the Skeeter woman into a roach, now whispered, "Oh, my. You'll have to reverse that, Mr. Longbottom. You don't want to go to Azkaban at your age."
The old wizard looked at her and said, "Miss Granger, I would reverse the spell at your request, since you were always kind to our Neville, but I have to tell you, I was always better at doing the hex than the counter-curse." His ancient rheumy eyes twinkled and he added, "You are a lot like Neville. You take the rules very seriously." He chuckled in a wheezy way and said, "Tom. I think round of firewhisky all around is called for. On me." He held the toad up for everyone to see and the people there all roared with laughter.
Harry chuckled too, but then he shook his head and said, "We can't really let him keep her as a toad, can we?"
"Why not?" Ginny asked coolly. "It's a step up from the bug she really is."
"Yeah," Ron agreed. "And just think. She and Trevor can set up housekeeping together in the same tank."
Harry looked totally scandalized. "I think that's a fate too awful even for Rita Skeeter. Here, Mr. Longbottom, we really can't leave her like that, you know. It just won't do."
Mr. Longbottom held onto his second toad and said, "I was going to give her to Alice. She's wanting cheering up, you know."
Harry said gently, "Having Rita Skeeter as a toad won't cheer her up. And besides, Rita did write up an interview with me when nobody else would have written the story that Voldemort returned. She wrote the story that named all of the Death Eaters we knew. For that alone, I have to ask you to reverse it."
"But I told you," the old man protested, "I'm no good at reversals. She might come out all wrong." Regretfully, the old man held out the toad to Harry and said, "Here, you do it boy. If you can defeat You Know Who, I reckon you can reverse my poor spell."
Hermione, however, stepped forward and waved her wand before Harry could. The toad changed, grew, and shrank, so that at first it was clearly a bug, a beetle, in fact, with square markings around its eyes that looked very like the woman's glasses. Hermione said, "Whoops," and flicked her wand again, and then the bug morphed back into the woman all in an instant.
~~~
The following day, Harry showed up at work promptly at eight dressed in a proper business suit that even fit him right. Only the rampant golden lion on his school tie hinted that the young man wasn't just like every other officer there.
Something of the previous night's incident revealed itself in the set of his mouth and in the faint shadows under the bright green eyes. Or perhaps it was simply the remaining fatigue lingering from his latest encounter with the Death Eaters. Johnny, however, could not help marveling that Harry could remain so, well, normal, when in his own world he was treated with nearly the same awe and affection as the Queen. After the Skeeter woman had left in a hurry, people had crowded around Harry, all wanting to touch him, to shake his hand, even to ask for his autograph. Cameras had appeared out of nowhere and pictures had been taken in great quantity, though none would likely capture the quality of wonder that some unknown photographer had caught in the one unmoving picture on the front page of Harry's biography.
Feeling only a little guilty, Johnny had "forgotten" to return the biography back to the little girl who had so boldly asked Harry about everything. They had finally managed to retire to a supposedly private parlor for a meal, but even then, people would sneak past and poke their heads in for a glance at Harry every few minutes.
Johnny had left them at the Leaky Cauldron and had sat up and read the biography straight through with complete and utter disbelief. Especially the account of Harry's final fight with Lord Voldemort. He wouldn't have believed any of it, except that he had seen Harry fight five Death Eaters and win only days ago.
He waited until Harry was fully occupied at his computer, checking out the responses to their shadow chat site, before he strolled over to where Ron and Hermione were seated to ask in a whisper, "This stuff in that biography, is any of it true?"
"Probably most of it," Ron answered.
"Killing a basilisk?" Johnny asked incredulously, "at twelve?"
"Oh, yeah," Ginny answered. "He saved my life that time. It was huge too. As big as dragon without wings."
Johnny shook his head and Hermione said with amusement, "That's the thing about Harry. The truth is always more sensational than the lies."
***
Harry squinted at the computer screen and wished he'd slept better. Though he'd been utterly fatigued by the time he was able to drag himself up the stairs to the room Tom had found for him -- he suspected Tom had actually thrown someone out to accommodate him, maybe even Rita Skeeter --he had tossed and turned and drifted from one anxiety dream to the next. He did not suppose that his dreams had any significance this time, as they were mainly composed of missed exams, desperate searches for lost possessions, and rooms full of Muggle computers in which every computer failed to work.
He considered the page of the latest contributions to their "chat" room and wondered what it was that turned these people into such desperate haters.
One, from a chatter named
AdolphtheGreat, was a long ramble on the defects of those with dark skin and the innate superiority of whites. Another focused on the evils of the French, the Greeks, the Spanish, the Russians, all Arabs; focused in short, on the need for the removal of all elements of other nationalities and races from the pure strain of the Aryan descendants of the Anglo Saxons and their ultimate triumph in restoring the land and the throne to a purer rule.
It reminded him exactly of Voldemort's followers, with their blind hatred of half bloods and mudbloods, and it gave him the willies to think of these sorts of haters being in league with Death Eaters.
Harry continued scanning the new "chatter." Much of it was repetitious of the others. Some called for a large scale rally, a march to demonstrate their serious strength to those undeserving impure who held power. Another was truly chilling. Its signer called himself
Lone Wolf and after reading his suggestion for action, Harry thought that a werewolf would be friendly compared to this fellow.
"Those who are strong and pure of blood must learn to act as leaders. The strong need no rallies. Find a place where no one will expect you to act. Then slip in by night and do the thing you know the impure will fear. Break their windows at night under cover of darkness. Paint their garden walls in indelible paint so their neighbors will know they are heathens and enemies. Follow their children and teach them to fear those who are strong..."
There was more in this vein and worse and Harry thought Voldemort would have approved of this wolf if he had been a wizard.
A voice behind him made him jump. "Whoa. Where did you get this lot from?"
It was Zoë. Her long brown hair hung lankly down her back and her large eyes were narrowed as she read through the messages blinking on his screen.
"It's from our shadow chat site," he offered. "Nasty lot, they are," he added.
"You got this many responses in one day?" she asked.
"There's a lot of nutters out there, I guess," he answered.
"What's your hook, then?" she asked.
"My what?" Harry asked.
"Your hook. The bait. The thing that got them biting so fast," she replied. Her tone suggested that he was just a bit thick if he didn't know something so obvious, and probably way too young.
"The hook," he answered coolly, "is 'For Pure Bloods Only.' That got them biting all right, the stupid pond scum."
Her thin brows rose and the fine lines in her forehead deepened. "Perhaps you do know something," she conceded. She gazed at him measuring, as if she could read his whole character in that one glance. Automatically, Harry stiffened and closed up his face and mind, substituting a pleasant inquiring neutrality for the near annoyance he had come close to showing.
"At least you've got a proper suit today," she commented next. She continued to look him over in much the same fashion as Aunt Petunia examined a new plant for the garden, checking perhaps for how hardy the specimen might be and whether its appearance was sufficient to impress the neighbors. Harry, however, merely returned the favor with as little show of emotion as possible. He had, after all, learned to control his face and to sustain the far more critical and hostile examination of Professor Snape.
Across the room, a deep voice, Bronztein's he identified, called them to their morning team meeting.
Zoe swung around and marched off and once again Harry was reminded of a giraffe as her long, spindly legs growing out of high, spiky heels had an awkward kind of grace in motion. Johnny clapped him on the shoulder and glanced at the foul messages glowing from the screen. "What did she want?" he asked, nodding towards Zoe, who had stopped to talk to Bronztein about something.
"To see what we were doing," Harry answered. "Checking up on us really," he added, "to see if we're up to the job."
"There's a surprise," Johnny muttered. "Did you print that?" he asked.
"Why would I want to?" Harry asked.
"So we can bring it to the meeting," Johnny answered in a long-suffering tone. "So we can make sure she doesn't take credit for our work."
"What makes you think she will?" Harry asked. He had enough sense not to add: who cares if she does?
Johnny simply shrugged. He leaned over and hit a button on the computer and swept up the pages as the last twenty-four hours' worth of messages printed out. He made way for Bones then as the Inspector had stopped by and said, "Mind if I have a quick word with you, Harry?"
Harry considered the Inspector with some apprehension. His face was closed and his gray eyes were dark with some annoyance or worry. He waited and for the Inspector to speak and then wished he hadn't.
Bones waved a roll of parchment at him and said, "Was it really necessary to make a spectacle of yourself last night?"
Harry opened his mouth in irritation. "How did you know about that?" he blurted out. He'd been trying to avoid thinking about the previous night's events, especially on Rita Skeeter's questions and the swarms of people coming by to gawp at him, to touch him. He had felt as though something had been taken from him and wondered whether he'd ever want to go into the Leaky Cauldron again if he had to suffer through that kind of attention again.
It wasn't that he had never attracted attention before. Even negative attention, Like in his fifth year when half the students at Hogwarts, even those who knew him well, had thought he was an attention seeking liar and probably half-mad. But the previous night had been on another level altogether. Hermione, he thought, had guessed it would be like that. It simply had not occurred to him though that the reaction would be that, well, big. Huge.
"It's all over the Daily Prophet," Bones answered grimly. "Headline news. Couldn't you have waited a few more weeks?"
"I just wanted a drink and some dinner," Harry protested. "And Ron and the others all had their things there. And besides, I needed a place to stay."
"You have a perfectly good house," Bones reminded him.
"If you mean Grimmauld Place," Harry answered, "I don't like it there. And the Order is using it."
"Dumbledore says you should go there tonight," Bones said.
"I don't like it," Harry replied stubbornly. "It reminds me of Sirius. And no matter how much they clean it, it's still full of dark magic."
Bones sighed and repeated, "Dumbledore wants to talk to you."
"I can meet him somewhere else," Harry answered. He didn't quite know why he was resisting going back to Grimmauld Place and doing what Dumbledore wanted, but he somehow felt he wanted to make his own decisions. He did not want to be told where to stay and when to go.
Bones paused and glanced around at the others. "We have information that the Death Eaters will attack you if you go back to The Leaky Cauldron."
"So," Harry answered. "Let them. You can have as many aurors as you like there. It'll get them in one place and maybe we can take in the rest of them. Maybe even Malfoy would show up."
"I thought you had half a brain," Bones replied. "How many people will get hurt if you show up and there's a fight? Not to mention you just got out of hospital again. How many times do you think you can cheat death like that and survive?" He stared at Harry and Harry felt the heat climb up all the way from his toes. He was reminded of how he had felt when Lupin had read him the same sort of lecture after saving him from Snape's wrath and certain detention.
"Just do as you're asked for once," Bones added. "Give your friends a break even if you won't do yourself any favors."
Bronzstein called to them to get moving and Harry stood up quickly. Wordlessly, he nodded at Bones and stalked over to the conference room in which their team was to meet.
Harry was the last one to arrive again, but at least the meeting hadn't started. He slid out a chair between Johnny and Bronzstein and couldn't resist glancing at the screen of Bronztein's laptop. It was showing a picture that was full of white specks, which blotted out much of the images so that you felt you were watching a scene through a terrible blizzard. Bronzstein saw him looking and said, "Picture's damaged. Not sure I can recover it either." He kept playing with the keyboard as Bentley called them to order.
"This morning's meeting will be short," he said, "as we've pulled in a suspected Sinn Fein man for questioning. So," he said crisply, "Zoë, your report, please."
Zoë glanced at Bronzstein and began. "We haven't actually interviewed the MP yet. We've started out by collating background on him. His district is up north near York. It's quite small and has been historically a Conservative district for a long time. It was mostly small farmers and a few manufacturing plants, but the unions never got a grip on the workers there. About five years ago, a consortium called Anglican Manor Productions bought up a ruined medieval castle there and restored it. It's now a hotel and the rooms have all the mod cons, but it's decorated in the medieval style. They put on shows with jousting and fencing and musicians and so forth and they have a working farm that uses actual medieval farming methods. That's part of the tourist draw. So there's a real furrier and they have men cutting down the corn with scythes in the fall. There are about a thousand men and women employed by them between the hotel managers, the performers and the ones who run the farm. They've also got some kind of Neolithic site that they claim is an authentic Arthurian site. It's a small stone ring set around a depression in the ground. The locals call it simply The Hollow, but the Manor people call it Merlin's Cup. In any case, they've brought in tremendous trade to the area and our MP has capitalized on it. He sounds like any other Conservative politican except that he goes on about immigration and how we have to close the doors entirely for a while to any people of nationalities that have known terrorist ties."
Bronztein added, "That's in his official speeches. One on one, he puts it that we've had the English blood debased too far and we need to purify it and get back to our white, Anglo-Saxon roots."
Bronztein clicked out of the screen he had been trying to recover and opened another, which was then projected onto the screen at the front of the room. It showed a medium size castle, although nothing near the size of Hogwarts. The picture zoomed in to show an outdoor stage where two men fenced. With a click of a key, the picture refocused on jugglers, then musicians and then zoomed outward again to show the audience watching two armored men riding toward each other on armored horses and colliding into each other with what must have been an enormous crash.
The picture then moved inside and focused on a silver haired man dressed in an ordinary business suit. For a moment, Harry thought it was Hayden, but then he realized that this man was older than Hayden and not nearly so tall. He was seated at an octagonal table and the men around it were also dressed in modern business clothes. You would have thought it was simply the meeting of directors, no different than the ones Uncle Vernon had conducted at Grunnings, were it not for the board set up behind them. It appeared to be a listing of quantities of products and you would have expected, perhaps, barrels of ale, baskets of cheese and jams, and so forth, to be sold to the tourists. Instead, it showed quantities of arms. So many assault rifles, so many bazookas, so many grenades, so many handguns, and ten armored vehicles.
"Where did you get this?" Bentley asked sharply.
Bronztein pointed to the third man down and said, "Him. We discovered he's been cheating the Inland Revenue and we paid him a visit. He's giving us information rather than go to gaol. He claims this is a count of weapons held by the Sudanese Liberation Army that the MP has obtained. We think it's really a count of weapons the Alliance has been gathering, though we're not sure who their source is."
"Maybe he got them through Malfoy," Harry offered, forgetting that this wasn't his report.
Zoe stared at him in irritation and asked, "What makes you think that?" Her tone suggested that he was a bit obsessed with Malfoy.
"Well?" Bentley asked.
Harry shrugged and was sorry he had said anything for the moment. He was getting tired of having everyone treat him as though he were a child or an invalid. Under Bentley's stare, however, he added, "It's just, Voldemort was importing weapons when he organized all those gangs. And Malfoy met with Hayden. If this group is part of Hayden's organization, that could be where they got them." A fragment of an image came back to him, a maze of cartons holding guns and gold and diamonds and Malfoy at the end of the maze with a baby and a snake.
"We've never connected him with this lot until recently," Zoe answered. "He's certainly not there with those men," she added.
"He wouldn't be," Harry snapped. "He thinks they are beneath him. He deals with Hayden because he's useful. But I'd bet he wouldn't even consider meeting with Hayden's underlings."
He shut his mouth at a glance from Bentley and found himself wishing he'd been put on Inspector Bones' team with Ron and Hermione and Ginny. And this morning, neither Daniels nor Halsey was at the meeting and Harry felt uncomfortably that he was the fish out of water here.
"What's your approach then?" Bentley asked.
"Send someone in undercover," Bronztein answered promptly.
"I'll go in as a hotel worker," Zoe said "and Jaime will apply to work the front desk computers."
"Can you get in?" Bentley asked. "And besides, will you have enough flexibility in those jobs to get about where you need? Seems like being a performer would be better. More time between shows and so forth."
"I could go in as a fencer," Harry volunteered.
"It's your second day on the job!" Zoe said incredulously. "And what makes you think you can perform like these men? They know what they're doing."
"Harry can fence," Johnny cut in. He turned to Harry and said, "But I think it's a bad idea for you to be the one to go in. What if Malfoy does show up? Or one of his friends? They'll know who you are instantly."
"The idea is to catch him," Harry answered.
"Where did you learn to fence?" Bentley asked. Harry was surprised to see that the Deputy Head was curious, not annoyed at Harry for interrupting.
"At school," he answered. "We had lessons in sixth and seventh form. For, erm, Physical Training, you know."
"He's a baby," Zoe muttered very softly, but not so softly Harry didn't hear.
Bentley, however, ignored her and asked, "Who was your teacher?"
Harry was quite surprised for a moment. "Professor Ribisi," he answered. "Well, sixth year, anyway. He was the one who taught us most of what we know."
"Ribisi?" Bentley asked in surprise. "Giovanni Ribisi?"
Harry nodded. He was more surprised that a Muggle would have heard of the wizard swordsman. Then he remembered that Snape had made a few nasty comments about the Professor's taste for mixing with Muggles. Harry had always put that down to Snape's jealousy of the professor for having gotten the Dark Arts position over him. Bentley's next comment belied that.
"Italian fellow?" Bentley asked. "He was the silver medallist at the Olympics a few years back. Is he still teaching at your school? What's its name?"
Harry went quite still as he recalled the last time he had seen the Professor. "No," he answered, after he had collected himself. "He's dead. Voldemort killed him."
"And I suppose Lord Whosis was really after you?" Zoe cut in skeptically. Her tone implied that Harry was either making things up or dramatizing himself to make him seem more important than he was.
"He was," Carter said coldly.
Harry kicked Johnny under the table. Not that he wasn't grateful for Johnny's support, but he didn't want his friend getting into trouble on his account. It was obvious they'd have to work to prove themselves to the veteran officers and as Harry was unusually young, they were clearly going to be watching him more closely than the others to see if he made any mistakes.
Bentley, however, said impatiently, "That connection is being pursued by Inspector Bones' team. We are investigating the Alliance. I'll take up your suggestion of an undercover operation and let you know whether I think it's necessary and who will be assigned. In the meantime, keep up the background research." He turned and added," And you three e-mail me the results of your chat site. I want to see if there are any familiar patterns or posters." He stared at all of them and concluded, "I'll remind you, this is a team and we will work together. Now I need to see if they have my interview room set up."
Bentley stood and they all followed suit. Harry waited for all of the others to leave first and then followed Mac and Johnny down the hallway toward their cubicles. He tried to decide which was worse: being the center of attention at the Leaky Cauldron, or the object of disdain in the Service. For the first time in his life, he thought that maybe being the center of attention in the wizard world was worse. At least a bit of hard work in the Service would gain him the respect of his fellow officers. Nothing, however, would alter the fact that half the wizard world would be convinced that he was an imposter and the other half thought he was...he couldn't decide what they thought he was. Not normal, he supposed, whether good or bad.
Harry continued down the hallway trying to figure out why Dumbledore wanted to see him and why the Headmaster was so determined that Harry should stay at Grimmauld Place. He wondered whether Dumbledore would care if he found some other place in London to live, so long as it wasn't at the Leaky Cauldron. He knew, of course, that Grimmauld Place was thoroughly protected by just about every protective spell possible. But he wanted some place that felt like his own. He wanted some place that felt like home. And the only place where he had ever felt that he was truly at home before was at Hogwarts.
His thoughts were interrupted by a commotion nearby. Down one end of the hall, Bentley had re-emerged from another room, presumably the interview room, and the Deputy Head was striding rapidly in his direction. From the other end of the hall, two security agents were holding a rather large man by both arms and guiding him down the hall toward the interview room. As Harry flattened himself against the wall to let them pass, he had a glimpse of the prisoner's eyes. They were large and intensely blue and their gaze was focused intently on Bentley, with the ferocity of a cornered animal.
The prisoner made his move quite suddenly. Drawing the gun from one of the guard's holsters, the prisoner smashed one of the guards in the face with an elbow and shot the other just as quickly. He kicked free of them both and in a bound had leveled the gun again and was taking aim at Bentley. Without thinking, Harry leapt at the attacker and seized his wrist, turning the gun to the ceiling so that the first round struck a hole above them. Plaster showered down, and Harry struggled to disarm the man, as he had been taught. He twisted again, viciously, and the gun flew several feet away. The attacker, however, used his greater weight to throw Harry into the wall and seized him by the throat in a stranglehold.
His head ringing from the blow, Harry reached up to try to pull the choking hold from his throat, but the attacker was enormously powerful. He strained to breathe and his head throbbed. The attacker let go all at once, and Harry tried to gather himself to pin him down, but everything went black and he fell into darkness.
***
At the sound of the commotion, Johnny turned back. In a blur of movement, the prisoner had made his move, shot one of his guards and leveled the gun at Bentley, and faster than one could imagine, Harry had leapt at the man and forced the gun from his hands. The two shots were deafening, shocking, and it took a moment for him to realize that disarming the prisoner had now put Harry into close combat of the kind he was weakest at.
So fast had the entire incident occurred, that the prisoner had smashed the kid into the wall and had wrapped his huge hands around Harry's neck before Johnny could react. He rushed back across the room toward the hall, but oddly, the man abruptly let go of Harry as though he'd come into contact with something hot. Before the man could attack Harry further, and even before Johnny could get there to stop him, Bentley had flown in and struck the man with tremendous force.
Bentley barked something at him, and reflexively, Johnny caught the man from behind and pinned him. Mac had jumped in to aid him and they had the prisoner back under control, though he kept bucking wildly. Johnny slammed a knee into the man's back hoping he'd actually hit his kidney. From the resulting cry of pain, he supposed that he had, and he felt grimly glad that he'd done some damage back to the man.
Other officers poured into the hall, summoned, no doubt, by the noise of the shots. The agent who had been struck in the face was wobbling against the wall, blood streaming from his nose and tears streaming from his eyes. The other, who had been shot, lay disquietingly still in a growing pool of blood. Bentley turned him over first. "He's still alive," he said grimly, "but he'll need luck to survive."
The prisoner made a sound that could have been a chuckle and Bentley turned to stare at him as if he'd been confronted by the devil himself. "Francis Aloysus Flynn," he said. "Who the devil brought Flynn in without restraints?" he said furiously.
The agent who had brought him in protested, "That's not his name. That's not the name they had on the interview manifest."
The prisoner, Flynn, chuckled again. "Compliments of Moriarty himself," he said. "Almost worked, too. You'd have been dead, Bentley, if not for that interfering brat there." He nodded at Harry, who had not moved and added, "Since when have ye taken to recruiting officers straight off the play park, Bentley? No one have the stomach for the work any more? Have they all realized yer security is nothing more than the bullying of innocents."
"You're no innocent, Flynn," Bentley retorted. "Guilty as hell, in fact, this time, and you're going down for it, too."
Bronzstein and Beauchamp’s had reappeared and Bronzstein brought out a pair off cuffs. In a second, Flynn was restrained and at a nod from Bentley, two other officers proceeded to pull him away.
Zoë knelt and touched Harry's neck far more gently than Johnny would have expected from such an acid personality. "Flynn's not far off, is he," she muttered, "He does look like he belongs in a play park playing football and not in here fighting with killers like Flynn." She tugged at Harry's tie and unbuttoned the top buttons and then felt his head, checking presumably for injuries.
The medics had come and taken away the other officer, promising to send another quickly to see to Harry. Bentley bent over and said, "Well, is he--?" But before he could finish, Harry moved and pushed away Zoë’s hands, slapped them almost really.
"Get off!" he protested, and sat up quickly. Too quickly, clearly, as he held his head in one hand and seemed likely to pass out again for a moment. Then he got his feet under him and was up in one fluid movement, glaring at everyone, his eyes at their brightest green, as if daring them to come near and help.
"What happened?" he demanded hoarsely.
"You've got a good knock on the head," Zoe answered.
"I know that," Harry said with all the annoying sarcasm of the teenager he was. "What about --? Then he caught sight of Bentley and the prisoner, Flynn, and said with evident relief, "You're not hurt then."
"No, thanks to you," Bentley replied.
Flynn stared at Harry and swore. "Not just a child, is he?"
Harry blinked at stared at him, seeming half perplexed and half poised as if to attack again. His green eyes recorded every detail about the prisoner. The eyes, the sandy thatch of hair and the huge, rough hands that had left their mark on Harry's throat.
Instead of addressing Flynn, Harry said instead to Bentley, "He was after you."
"Yes," Bentley said, "I told you, if you stay in the service long enough, you'll have your enemies."
Flynn laughed, a nasty sound, and said, "He's starting young then. What's your name then, you? I want to know. I want to know what kind of changeling you've got there, with his uncanny eyes, and flesh that burns."
Harry looked quite taken aback, and then a flicker of understanding passed through his eyes and was gone.
"You always were a superstitious ass, Flynn," Bentley answered. "You've scalded your hands on the gun you fired is all." He nodded to the officers holding the prisoner and said, "Secure him in the lock up. I'll question him later."
Before they moved though, Flynn retorted, "I'll get me Grandmam to put a curse on you Bentley and on your changeling boy, too. He's a witch, I bet. His Mam's a witch, too, and she slept with a fairy, didn't she?"
"I am not a witch," Harry said quite indignantly, "and my Mum did not sleep with a fairy." He said this last with a combination of annoyance and hilarity.
"Who's going to try to curse Harry?"
From behind them, Ron's voice sounded humorously. The tall redhead took in the scene, particularly Harry's appearance. He shook his head and started to say something, but his sister cut him off. "What is it with you, Harry Potter?" she said loudly, quite ignoring the fact that the Deputy Head was right there. "Can't you go for one week without practically getting yourself killed? And you've fairly ruined your new suit!"
"Well, It's not my fault that evil git started shooting people," Harry objected loudly.
Flynn, meanwhile, targeted Harry with his intense gaze and said, "Harry Potter. I'll remember that. I'll remember you, Potter. My Grandmam will curse you, I promise. And she really is a witch."
Harry snorted and said, "Tell her not to bother. I've already been cursed by the worst there is, and here I am still."
Bentley, by now, had lost all patience. "Get him out of here!" he barked. Everyone jumped and the officers dragged Flynn out.
Bentley turned to Harry and said more calmly, "Are you all right, Potter?"
Harry nodded, but Johnny noticed that he was leaning against the wall for support and his face was really quite pale. Ginny went to him and put a hand under his elbow. She started to say something, but Harry cut in quickly and softly. "You can yell more later, okay? Now is not the time for a Weasley tantrum."
She huffed and made a funny sound, but said nothing more as she led him over to his chair.
***
They took the tube that evening to the station nearest to Grimmauld Place and then walked the rest of the way. If he hadn't been dragging his trunk still, Harry would have been tempted to simply apparate there. He was tired enough that each step seemed a punishment, but he would not surrender his trunk to Ron, as he did not want to appear weak.
The atmosphere in Grimmauld Place increased his feeling of gloom. As always, the house seemed to resent his presence, though the door opened to him without his knock, and behind the curtains in the lounge, the portraits could be heard muttering. At least Sirius' mother was silent. Harry was sure that if he ever heard her voice screeching about blood traitors again, he would blast the portrait into smoke, despite the guilt he would feel later at having silenced the last earthly remnant of his godfather's mother's personality.
Surprisingly, no one from the Order was there and they had the house to themselves. Ginny and Hermione made themselves busy in the kitchen and produced a decent meal of shepherd's pie and butterbeer from the larder. Harry remained silent as they ate, content to let the others carry the conversation and too tired to speculate on how they had known that no one else from the Order would show.
Afterwards, Harry sat on the long green sofa in the lounge, yawning and waiting for Dumbledore to arrive. Idly, again, he wondered what the elderly wizard wanted. In the mellow light of the candles, Ginny's red hair seemed to glow with unusual fire and all of his friends seemed to shine with a peculiar aura to his tired eyes. He felt, as he sometimes did these days, a sudden moment of unexpected joy simply at being alive.
Sleepily, he wondered how it was, that though he had been at the very gates of the next life, the only thing of wisdom he had gained was that he no longer feared death. He felt it strange that being alive, all the same difficulties, all the riddles of life remained as intricate and uncertain of solution as they ever had. The only certainty he had was that being alive was simply a wonder, no matter the pain or trouble there was to endure.
~~~
The very first pale glimmers of light shed shafts of blues and greens and reds and gold’s through the stained glass window of his bedroom when Harry woke. He was tucked under the thick down comforter in the great bedroom at Grimmauld Place, but he had no recollection of leaving the lounge where he had been waiting for Dumbledore to arrive. Atop of the covers beside him, Ginny was curled up with her head propped up on several pillows and wrapped up in another blanket. Her eyes were closed and she looked rather like a large ginger cat having a pleasant nap; however he was quite certain that like a cat any movement or sound would wake her instantly. He contented himself for a moment with admiring the coppery shine of her hair as the light from the window played across it.
Surreptitiously, he moved and stretched and found without surprise that the goose egg on his head was gone and that his throat where Flynn had squeezed it was quite free of pain. Idly, he wondered how he was going to explain the lack of bruising at work, but as he felt quite well and rested, he didn't much care whether anyone would think his too fast recovery was odd.
With another glance at Ginny, he slid off the covers and started to rise. From under copper lashes, her brown eyes observed Harry sleepily.
"I'm just going to wash up," he said defensively, though she had said nothing.
When she did not respond right away, but merely continued to watch him, Harry slid his hand under the pillow searching for his wand. It was not there. He looked around the room, and was on the edge of irritation when Ginny said, "It's on the desk, there. Your wand," and when he stalked over to seize it, she added, "No one's going to attack you here. That's why Dumbledore wants you to stay here."
"Oh," Harry answered, "and why couldn't he say that to me himself?"
"You were sleeping," she answered, "and he didn't want to wake you."
"I'm not a child," Harry grumbled. "I'd rather have spoken to him myself." He glared at her and asked, "So that's all he said? I'm supposed to stay here? And what if I don't choose to?"
"Don't be a perfect git," Ginny answered. "The point is this house has protections on it that few other places have. If you move somewhere else, it will be too easy for Malfoy to track you and attack you again. And it's convenient for work."
"I want my own house," Harry said stubbornly.
"This is your house," she snapped.
"This is Sirius’s Mother's house," Harry retorted. "I just happen to own It."
"That's nonsense," Ginny huffed. "You own the house. It's your house. And," she added, "It has the most beautiful garden in the world."
Harry sat down on the bed and stared at her. "Yeah, it does," he said slowly. "But...I want...I want a house like the Burrow."
"The Burrow!" she exclaimed. "You can't be serious. It's crooked and small and there's never enough space for everyone."
"I don't mind that," Harry replied. "The thing is, it's home to the people that live there. It feels happy. It feels like a home. That's what I want. I want a home, not just a house to own."
"You have that right here," she answered. "I'm here, and Ron and Hermione. That's what makes it home."
He reached for her then and kissed her because he knew he wasn't very good with words and there weren't words for what he felt just then.
A knock on the door brought them back to reality. Ginny fled into the bathroom as Harry said in his grumpiest tone, "What?"
Hermione poked her head in and upon seeing him with the covers tucked all the way up to his chin, said, "You're going to be late. Did you know what time it is?"
"No doubt I've got dirt on my nose too," Harry answered.
"Oh, that's rich," she said. "I do you a favor and remind you to get up so you won't get into trouble at work, and all you have to say is that?"
"Thanks, then," Harry said politely. "You go on, and don't worry about me. I'm sure I can get into trouble even if I get to work on time."
"Honestly," Hermione replied with exasperation, but whatever she meant to say next was never uttered as Ron pulled her back, stuck his head in and said, "She's right little ray of sunshine in the morning, isn't she?" He withdrew and closed the door firmly behind him, but Harry could hear him saying, "Why don't you let a poor fellow sleep when he needs it, Hermione?"
"You mean you, Ronald, don't you?" she could be heard to respond.
Harry laughed as the their voices receded.
"She's got a point," Ginny said. "We will be late at this rate. It's already seven thirty and we'll miss the last tube that gets into the station by eight."
"Don't worry," Harry said. "We'll get into work on time. What's the good of being a wizard if you can't use a bit of magic now and then?"
"You'll set all the alarms off at the Ministry of Magic," she answered, but her eyes were gleaming with shared mischief.
"I won't then," he answered.
With a flourish, he opened his trunk and drew out his invisibility cloak. He raised an eyebrow and wrapped the cloak around them both.
"This will never work," she said, "We can't both apparate inside the same cloak."
"I don't need a cloak," he answered. He slipped out of the cloak and whispered the invisibility spell. The world turned fuzzy at the edges, but oddly, he could still see the outline of Ginny's slender form, wrapped in a cloud of silver light.
In the end, they were five minutes late getting in, but as no one could prove it, they only got read a lecture for forgetting to sign in.
