The Heart of Gryffindor
by SJR0301
Part II - Chapter Seventeen
The afternoon sun was sinking into the west when they arrived back at Thames Street. Bentley was off in a meeting somewhere, which left Austin quite frustrated, as he had wanted to report their results immediately. Harry, however, was relieved to escape further questioning about his brief, unhappy contact with Black Jack Crowley and the London underworld.
He went looking for Ron and Hermione and Ginny, immediately as he wanted to tell them about the pub and the probability that Death Eaters and possibly Hayden were operating from there. The jinxed crystal had also given him an idea; one that he thought Hermione might be able to assist.
His chest squeezed tight when he found them crowded around Ginny's cubicle. Ginny was slumped forward holding her head and saying, "I'm all right;" but from the slurring in her voice, he was sure she was not.
"What's happened?" he demanded. "Let me see!"
They all jumped like startled birds, and Ginny said a bad word. She pushed Hermione away and tried to straighten up, but winced and held her head again as she did so. Harry pushed her hand gently aside and saw there was a good sized bump on her right temple, which was rapidly blackening and must hurt considerably.
"Well?" he asked, looking at Ron.
"It's just a bump," Ginny insisted, before he could answer.
"We had a run in with some dark wizards," Ron said. "We've been staking out a couple of the shops in Knockturn Alley, the ones that sell the nastier poisons and the Class A illegal stuff."
"Because?" Harry asked, though he thought he knew.
"Well, don't get annoyed, Harry," Hermione said. "Just remember you're on a diff.."
"I know I'm on a different team," Harry snarled. "Just tell me what happened."
"Well, obviously," Hermione said, "we were watching to see if anyone is buying unicorn blood since we've intercepted the shipment meant for Malfoy and Bellatrix twice now."
"We reckoned they'd try to get the stuff on their own," Ron added, "on account of Hayden having disappeared back across to the Continent."
"So you caught them?" Harry asked.
"They got away," Ginny said furiously. "I think one of them was Crabbe, the big git. They got past our watch by going in by Floo powder and by the time we were alerted that they'd been detected by the Floo network, they were disappearing. We had a fight with a couple of them, and one of them managed to land a big fist on my face, but not before I got him first."
"It was practically an accident," Ron snickered, "as the git was half-blind with al the bats flapping off his face. He was flailing around trying to get to the fire to escape and landed one on Ginny cause she didn't have the sense to get out of there quick enough."
"But they got what they needed?" Harry asked.
"We're not sure," Hermione, answered.
"Whom'd they get it from?" Harry asked. "Didn't you question him?"
"Mr. Borgin," Hermione answered.
"Borgin and Burkes?" Harry said.
They nodded. "Only it's just Burke's now," Ron said soberly. "We couldn't question him because he was dead. So we don't know if they killed him because he didn't come through with what they wanted of if they killed him because he did."
"They can't bring him back," Harry asserted. "He's really dead. Right?"
"Of course, he's really dead," Ginny, answered.
"But--" Hermione said tentatively.
Harry looked back at her so fast his neck cracked audibly. "But?"
"Well, I've been reading a few things," she said in a rush. "About Necromancy. You know what that is?"
"Just tell me," He said.
"It's very dark magic, the worst," Hermione answered. "I don't see how they can bring him back the same way they did last time," she said. "Last time he had never died. His spirit was still here. We think they're going to try to raise his spirit from the dead and provide him with something to possess. A body. But we don't think they'll succeed. Not for long."
"Why not?" Harry asked. A memory stirred, sparked, perhaps by the too recent recurrence of being tied, confined: Voldemort telling his Death Eaters how he had possessed animals and people during his long wait in the forest, how the possessed creatures and people had rapidly died and he would have to move on. He changed his question, then. "What? Who?"
"We don't know," Ron said. "Not for sure."
"Me," Harry answered, and saw in the way they flinched that he had named their fear.
"We don't know that," Hermione said firmly. "They could be planning to make a body like they did last time." She seemed to steel herself and then continued, "But we think you should be very careful, Harry, not to go back to The Leaky Cauldron or Diagon Alley or to let anyone know where you are."
"Not because we think you're afraid, or that they can actually capture you," Ginny added. "But so they won't hurt anyone else around you."
"Right," Ron said. Hermione nodded, and Harry saw that they had planned that last speech on purpose. Deliberately, he looked them all in the eye, one by one. "I'd be an idiot if I wasn't afraid of that," he said calmly, "and I'd be even more of a fool if I deliberately risked other people's lives for the sake of a butterbeer or a gewgaw from the Alley."
He saw them all sag with relief. They had been truly worried that he would react as if he were fifteen again or even thirteen and defy everyone's advice for a bit of fun. He did not say, though, that he'd be damned if he let them carry the burden of fighting against Voldemort's reappearance. He would, he resolved, have to find the Death Eaters' hidey-hole and stop the thing alone.
Harry would have liked to carry Ginny home right then, but Mac called him to listen in on the daily call from Zoe and Bronztein. The two, however, had nothing to report. "It's just a tourist attraction and rest home for nutters with a fixation on Druids," Zoe insisted.
Mindful of his chat with Mr. Smyth, though, Harry quickly interjected, "Well, maybe Jaime can get a look at their finances on the computer. We heard the Manor is in trouble."
"I don't see how," Jaime observed. "This place is booked through the winter. They've got literary conventions from America and a French movie crew are paying rent to use it for filming this week."
"Just check," Johnny replied. Apparently, he had been as impressed with Smyth's information as Harry had been.
It was close on seven o'clock that evening before they finished their report to Bentley. He considered Harry and Johnny and Mac keenly and drummed his fingers on the table as though he were in two minds about their next step. After a moment, he asked Harry abruptly, "How well can you actually fence?"
"I'm okay," Harry answered. He tried to conceal his surprise, but failed when Bentley went on, "Have you got a sword or do we need to find one for you?"
"I have my own," he answered. "Do you mean you want me to go in undercover?" he added.
Bentley frowned and against drummed his fingers on the table. He was, Harry thought, concerned about Harry's inexperience as an agent.
"We've already got two experienced officers in there," Bentley said, almost more to himself than in reply to Harry's question. Then, seeming to come to a decision, he said, "Bring your sword in tomorrow. I want a look at your skills. I need to see if you really would pass as a performer if I send you in."
"Erm, shouldn't I apply with a partner?" Harry asked. "Ron can fence, too."
"Weasley is on Bones' team," Bentley answered. "If I decide to send you in, and that's not decided yet, we'll arrange for you to take someone's place."
"It's dead annoying," Mac, said afterwards, "that you might get to go in undercover while we languish here in the office."
"I dunno," Harry answered. "I don't think he really wants to send me in."
"Yeah," Johnny said, "but obviously those two are missing something if what we heard from Smyth was true.
"I'd really like to get into that building again," Harry said, "and see if the Death Eaters or the Alliance are using it for more than a meeting place."
"You do like to live dangerously," Mac commented. Oddly, though, his tone was amused rather than critical.
Harry grinned. His curiosity was eating him and although he would have liked to persuade Ron to try a search of the place with him, after their earlier conversation, he was certain that even Ron would try to dissuade him from going.
"Let's see if we can get approval from Austin or Bentley first," Johnny said.
Under Johnny's collected gaze, Harry was reminded that some of his more recent improvisations had created serious trouble for everyone. He nodded, but added, "Let's push for it at tomorrow morning's conference. They can't help noticing that I've destroyed their window into the place and it won't take them long to realize that Madam B has gone and to start asking questions. I don't think we'll have more than a day or two to get anything more from there." He did not add that he was almost certain that whoever it was who was using the crystal as his spyglass might well have seen Harry's face in it before he had broken it.
Despite having stayed late at the office, Harry arrived back at Grimmauld Place before the others. He sat in the kitchen drinking a bottle of butterbeer and sharing a bacon sandwich with Hedwig. Perhaps it was his imagination working overtime, but he seemed to feel eyes watching him, as though the spy had found a way to view him even through some minute particles of dust left from the broken sphere.
A muttering from the portraits in the lounge alerted him to the others' return.
"We stopped in at St. Mungo's," Hermione explained and Harry was relieved to see that the swelling on Ginny's face was entirely gone.
"I'm perfectly fine," she said crossly. "You're all making a fuss over nothing. And don't you get all protective and decide you're going to take care of things all by yourself again," she warned Harry.
It was, he reflected, quite annoying to be understood so thoroughly sometimes; however, he managed to keep his face and gaze entirely sincere, as he said, "Of course not." Then, because she still looked a bit too pale, he could not help asking, "You're sure you're all right?"
Her face softened and she reached up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. Warmth flooded through him and it took him a moment to realize that he was, quite simply, happy. He resolved that he would do whatever was necessary to keep her and his friends - his family - safe.
That night, he dreamed he was alone on a windy plain.
Great shadows reared up around him, cast by the circle of stones. The stones were giants dancing about him. The plain shook with the thunder of their feet and the ground sank down beneath their pounding, forming a deep hollow out of which no man could climb. A crack in the ground broke open and the hollow flooded with clear blue water, and he was lifted on its sparkling surface as the hollow was transformed into a clear lake, an inner sea. He floated at rest as time sped by and the lake reflected the brilliance of an untold number of stars. Then one of the stars, the brightest of all, swelled and grew and fell to earth, and the light of it, he saw, welled out of a silver cup in the hand of the king. "Drink," the king said, "you will need every bit of faith and hope and love that you possess before all is done and you may rest."
Harry woke early in the morning, quite abruptly and completely. He had the feeling that he had forgotten something important, but what it was eluded him. Restlessly, he kicked off his covers and peered out the window, but it was still too dim to be able to make out anything clearly.
He threw on jeans and sweater and slipped downstairs silently so as not to wake anyone else. A cup of coffee fortified him and he stared at the dregs in the cup thinking he was glad it wasn't tea and that he wouldn't be thinking about what the leaves might mean.
Almost without thinking, he rose and opened the kitchen door and peeked out at the garden. The early morning sun shone on a white frost, giving the garden a ghostly look. Cold, clean air rushed in and it was only the space of a moment before he had transformed and taken wing into the pearly sky.
The yawning dockworkers blinked at the crimson-gold flash in the early morning sky, but the fleeting splash of color was gone just as quickly, an evanescent brilliance easily dismissed as the after-image of the rising sun. Inside the tavern that was formerly known as the Hanged Man, the crimson flash reappeared, but none was there to see as the swan-like bird blurred and changed into a tall young man with untidy hair.
Harry stood still and held his breath, waiting for a sound, a vibration, the slightest suggestion of another presence; but there was none. The deserted parlor was even sadder and gloomier without the presence of human occupants to give it the illusion of cheer. The grate of the fireplace still held the melted remains of the shattered crystal, but not a shred of magic breathed its aura in the room.
In a spirit of caution, Harry drew his wand and uttered the invisibility spell softly. A watcher would have been sure he had seen a ghost, so quickly had he appeared, transformed and then disappeared from sight again. Cautiously, so as to make the least noise possible, Harry moved through the tavern and mounted the stairs, searching the building floor by floor for any hint that the Death Eaters or the Alliance might return.
The second floor was a great, open warehouse space. At one end, a giant old boiler sat hunched in the corner like a weary black bear preparing for hibernation. The rest of the space was empty and it reminded Harry of the bleak loft he had inhabited for those few weeks when he had run from Privet Drive and found himself locked out of the magic world. He shivered unwillingly and proceeded to the third floor. This was another warehouse space, but a few wooden boxes were strewn around the floor, their contents spilled out in a jumbled mess.
White powder drifted on the floor, a ghostly film of dust, and it was only because of Harry's most recent education in security that he recognized the substance at all. Another box was mostly empty, except for a few loose cartridges of ammunition for an automatic weapon of some kind. They would do no one any good, however, as they were damaged. Another box was broken apart and empty altogether and Harry had to wonder what had been in that one that was so precious that it had to be completely salvaged. Here and there, some fresh scorching scarred the old wooden floor, and the crumbling plaster walls bore small round holes that might have been made by bullets. Clearly a violent contest had taken place quite recently, and Harry wondered which group had come out the winner. From the fact that the most sizeable remains were almost certainly illicit narcotics, he supposed that either the Death Eaters or the Alliance terrorists had successfully suppressed the regular gang's insurgency.
The fourth and fifth floors contained empty flats. Neither contained furniture of any kind and the fixtures were so antiquated that Harry supposed they had been unoccupied for many years. A swift movement caught the corner of his eye, but it was only the small gray back of a mouse, fleeing from the unexpected intruder.
With a sigh of aggravation, Harry regretted his caution of the previous night. Had they raided the building earlier, they might well have caught the Death Eaters or the Alliance men or both. He had better have a talk with Bones before long, he thought, as he really wanted to know just how entangled Hayden's group had become with Malfoy and the Death Eaters. Their aims, he thought were different: but whose were taking precedence?
It was almost a quarter to eight when he arrived slipped back into the kitchen at Grimmauld Place. Fully dressed and ready for work, Hermione glared at him and demanded, "Where have you been? I thought you were going to be careful!"
Occlumency, he thought, had its uses, as he smiled cheerfully and answered, "Just wanted a quick breath of air. The garden is really pretty with all that snow on it."
Her brown eyes narrowed and he knew she wasn't sure whether to believe him but she didn't like to challenge him so early or when he seemed so happy. "You'll be late, you know," she said disapprovingly. He grinned at her more and said, "I think you miss being Head girl, Hermione." He sped out the kitchen and ran up the stairs two at a time, and called out to Ron and Ginny as he went, "I'll meet you at work. Don't wait for me." He didn't wait for them to answer, but he heard Ginny's huff of annoyance quite clearly and knew he would pay later.
***
Hermione watched Harry's retreating form with suspicion. He was altogether too good at disguising his thoughts and feelings these days and she would have believed him without question, except that he had been wearing only jeans and a sweater. The draft of air that had accompanied him into the kitchen was so cold that only a salamander would venture out without a good jacket.
A soft scuffling noise distracted her, and she swung around quickly, finding to her surprise and discomfort, a pair huge brown eyes upon her. It was Kreacher. The house-elf looked like a loose rag supported by crumbling bones. She realized, with a start, that the filthy rag which he was clutching was the afghan she had knitted him for Christmas several years before. Fighting her dislike for the treacherous old creature, she bent forward and said tentatively, "Are you cold?"
The elf blinked once, slowly, and spoke in his hoarse bullfrog voice. "The bold Mudblood talks to me. She sees me in my corner, oh, when no one else sees Kreacher. But the Mudblood is blind, too. She looks and sees nothing."
Hermione blinked herself. She ought to be used by now to being called a Mudblood, especially by the mad old elf, but it still galled her in her deepest self. "What is it you see that I don't?" she snapped.
"Miss talks to HIM and looks at HIM; but she doesn't see HIM. Oh, no, Miss. Mudbloods don't notice. Humans don't notice. But Kreacher sees."
"Are you talking about Harry?" Hermione asked in surprise.
"The one who was the Potter boy," Kreacher said.
"What do you mean, he was the Potter boy?" Hermione asked. "Harry is grown up now pretty much, but he's still the same person."
Kreacher retreated into his den as behind her, Ron said, "How can you keep chatting with that disgusting toerag, Hermione? He gives me the willies, creeping around and watching. Who knows if he'll go off and betray us all over again?"
He was scowling and looked quite ready to go after the elf, but Hermione answered sharply, "He's to be pitied. And there's no one left for him to betray us to. Narcissa is dead. And now he won’t tell me what he might have."
"Tell you what?" Ron asked.
"Something about Harry," she answered. She chewed her lip and tried to decide whether to say something about the elf's odd comments. "He calls Harry the one who was the Potter boy. It's odd, don't you think?"
"That is odd," Ginny said. "It's almost as if he thinks Harry is..."
"Dead," Hermione answered, "or an imposter."
"He's not an imposter," Ginny said firmly. "No imposter could use his sword. No imposter could do what he does."
Ron remained silent a moment and Hermione glared at him, wanting his confirmation that the elf was simply mad. Instead, he said slowly, "I dunno. Maybe what Luna used to say about him is true."
"Luna!" Hermione echoed. She forbore to say the girl had been as loony as her nickname, but Ron continued after a sidelong glance at her.
"She used to say that Harry was turning just a bit transparent, as though he was becoming a ghost, without having died."
Ginny snorted. "He's not a ghost, you git. He's quite solid and human. Honestly."
"Yeah," Ron said. "But he's not exactly normal either. Normal people, even normal wizards, don't transform into phoenixes. Maybe Kreacher can see something about him that we can't. I mean, we've all tiptoed around it, but...we all saw what happened last summer. We all know."
"It's obvious," Ginny said. "Kreacher saw him transform. That's what he must be talking about."
"When?" Hermione asked.
"This morning," Ginny answered. "I should have stopped him, but I don't like to let him know I know. He only does it when he had a really bad night."
"Did he, then?" Ron asked.
"No worse than some," she answered. "He has nightmares pretty often still," she said matter-of-factly.
"Well, he promised us to be careful," Hermione, said indignantly.
"Yeah, but..." Ron said, "I think we're all underestimating him. Seems to me we're so busy protecting him that we're forgetting he's our best weapon against the Death Eaters.
***
A glance at the clock told Harry he had little time to spare or he would be late to work. He quickly changed into his suit and shoved his tie into his pocket. He could always struggle with getting the knot straight once he arrived. He unlocked his trunk with a wave of his wand and slid out his sword from the old robe in which it was wrapped. The silver chased leather sheath was as fresh as the day it had been made and as he drew the sword out, he deliberately pushed away the memories of the Death Eaters attacking, and the other, more difficult memory of his final confrontation with Voldemort.
Taking a deep calming breath, he focused carefully, and then activated the disillusionment charm. After a moment, the letters engraved on the sword disappeared and the glorious heart shaped stone clasped in the golden lion's paws shimmered a moment and then also disappeared. To the casual eye, especially to any Muggle eye, the sword would appear quite ordinary and unadorned. He repeated the charm on the leather sheath, and the silver inlay and crimson color faded into ordinary gray.
After inspecting it in the light to be sure that the charm had worked properly, he slid the sword into its sheath and wrapped it with brown paper, conjured for the purpose. Another glance told him he had barely three minutes to get to work, so he flung on his jacket and took the stairs three at a time.
He slipped out the door and disapperated instantly. Fortunately, the men's bathroom was empty. Sparing only a moment more to flatten his hair down - an action that was as unsuccessful as it ever was - he strolled out to his cubicle and tucked his concealed sword underneath the desk. A softly whispered word set a repelling charm, so that anyone passing by would be reminded to check his e-mail. As usual, no one from the Ministry sent an owl telling him he had used magic in the wrong place.
He booted up his computer and found, to his annoyance that the screen would not boot up. Then it occurred to him that he could get out of reading would-be terrorist posts, and he stopped feeling irritated immediately. Whistling cheerfully, he took his time going to the vending machine for a cup of coffee before calling Mac over to see if he could figure out what had gone wrong with his computer. All in all, he thought, things were looking up.
