The Heart of Gryffindor
by SJR0301
Part II - Chapter Two
The Intelligence training compound was just what John Carter expected it to be. He was called John or Johnny by his friends, but his full name was Augustus John Carter III, and his father had trained there before him. His dad, known to his friends as Gus, was now second in command of Special Branch and his grandfather had been a General in World War II. His great-grandfather had been the oddity, being the only one to have missed out on a professional soldier's career since Augustus George Carter had fought at Waterloo with Wellington.
The huge red brick Victorian monstrosity housed a complete university for police and intelligence forces. It was here that Johnny intended to start his climb to the top, though in a way, he'd been preparing for it all his life. He'd graduated Cambridge with a First in Psychology and International Studies and he'd written his senior paper on the Psychology of Terror.
He looked like his Mum, he knew. She was French and had silver-blond hair and blue eyes and was more than a little eccentric and she didn't mind telling anyone that she was witch. Dad's friends in the service thought she was odd, but they put that down to her being French and a woman and besides, they never remembered half what she said because they were too busy being enthralled by her beauty and her lovely laugh.
Well, he looked like his Mum, but he took after his Dad in all the rest, and he had known he'd be in the Service since he was small, just like his Dad and his grand-dad.
There were the five of them who had all been to Cambridge and had all been recruited together. There was Charley Hawkins, whom they called the Hawk. His father was a major in the SAS. And James MacCready, who had specialized in engineering and chemistry and had been recruited for training as a weapons specialist. And then there was his cousin Brittany Halsey, who looked enough like Johnny that people thought she was his sister. Brittany's Dad, his Uncle Bill had been working with his own when they'd met Johnny's Mum and his Aunt. They'd be seeing plenty of Uncle Bill as he was in officer in charge of their training and was one of the top men in MI-5. Not that they be getting any favors from him. And last, there was Sean Fletcher, who was in love with Brittany and had followed her from university into MI-5, because he'd go anywhere and do anything that she would.
Their schedule called for them to go to the auditorium by eleven. There were twenty recruits in all and they'd be assigned into two smaller groups for some of the classes that required more individualized instruction and into even smaller groups at times once they began training simulations.
He strode just a little ahead of the others, impatient to get into the auditorium first and snag the best seats. Ahead of him, coming out of the dormitory block and looking at the schedule and map was a thin, black haired recruit.
"Do you know how to get to the auditorium?"
Johnny stared at the kid and thought, they let him in? He had a thin face and wore round glasses behind which bright green eyes were looking rather anxious. Taking pity on the kid, who, he thought would never survive the first three months of training if he couldn't read the map of the compound, Carter pointed and said, "It's that way. Just follow me."
Some of the anxiety went out of the thin face and the kid smiled and said simply, "Thanks." He held out his hand and said, "I'm Harry, by the way."
***
Harry's first impression of Carter as they shook hands was simply that he looked a bit like Inspector Bones, except that he was much taller, perhaps five or six inches taller than Harry was himself. His second was that Carter belonged there, had been born to be there and he knew it. His third impression was instinctive and came from the gut: here was someone who could be trusted. He smiled with relief then. He had regretted telling Ron and Hermione and Ginny to go on ahead of him, but he had felt certain that he ought to try to straighten up before attending their first assembly.
He had slept badly the night before, waking often from odd, uneasy dreams. So it was hard to wake once he'd finally fallen into a deeper sleep, and he knew his tie was on crooked and his hair was probably even more untidy than usual. And he hadn't had time to shave before the Inspector had hustled them out of the hotel and over to the Thames Street office to board the bus that had brought them here.
All he could think of, when he had first seen the big ugly brick pile, was: it isn't Hogwarts.
It was easy to spot his friends from the rear of the hall as Ron’s and Ginny’s vivid red hair stood out among their more drab neighbors. They were sitting in the front row, dragged there no doubt by Hermione, but the seat between Ron and Ginny that should have been empty was occupied by a fellow who looked very like Dudley from the rear, only even larger. The fellow’s sandy hair was razor cut to his large, blocky head and his shoulders were wide and muscled under his ill-fitting jacket.
Ron turned his head and caught sight of Harry and Harry could see that his friend was on the verge of a temper tantrum. His freckly face was flushed all the way to his ears. Not wanting trouble the very first day, Harry shook his head minutely and followed his new acquaintance into the row behind them. As he settled himself into the rather uncomfortable chair, he noticed with unease that all of the other recruits were considerably older than he and his friends were and they all wore their business suits with either the accustomed air of authority that Inspector Bones exuded or with the even more intimidating aura of the bully in uniform.
Harry turned his attention to the four men on the stage when the soldierly man at the podium spoke.
“Welcome, gentlemen and ladies,” the man said, “ to what the public would like to call the Spy Academy.” A faint ripple of amusement stirred through some of the audience of recruits, but stilled as the man continued. “We, of course, prefer to call this simply the Compound.” He paused again, apparently assessing his audience; then finding them satisfactory, he went on. “I am Major Halsey and I’ll be the chief officer in charge of your training. My colleagues are: Lieutenant Daniels, who will be one of your instructors and Team A’s training supervisor; Lieutenant Worthington, who will also be one of your instructors and Team B’s training supervisor; and a new addition to our staff and Special Liaison to the Anti-Terror Task Force from Scotland Yard, Inspector Bones”
The others around him looked at Bones with sharpened interest and, Hawkins, who was sitting on Harry’s other side, muttered softly, “He must be damn good to get appointed to that position so young, or really well-connected.”
Harry, of course, knew that Bones was good at what he did, but that he’d been appointed for reasons the others would never know, that had nothing to do with connections and everything to do with Voldemort’s attacks on Muggles last year. He turned his attention back to Major Halsey as he continued.
”There are twenty of you here today. One of the largest classes of recruits we’ve ever taken and from what I’ve seen of your applications, one of the best-educated and well-qualified. Some of you have come to us through the regular Army. Some others, from police experience. Almost all of you have significant university training in one or more areas of interest. And we are going to need every ounce of your intelligence and abilities as we have rarely before faced such an increase in threats from terror right here at home.”
Gloomily, Harry wondered just what he and his friends were supposed to be doing here when they were not supposed to be doing magic and yet magic was the only thing they’d been trained to do.
The lights dimmed, and on the screen before them, a video began to roll. “The video you will see,” the Major said, “includes footage from incidents that have taken place in the last six months. Some of it is rather unpleasant, but we think you all should understand just what your quarry is capable of, and what you are likely to face, right from the beginning. This first incident took place last year and has been tagged as the work of the Ulster forces who oppose any settlement with the IRA.”
The video showed a city square with an open market, several low-rise office buildings and a glass-fronted pub. A bus stopped on the street, and several men with ski masks covering their faces descended. One of them tossed an object into the glass window of the pub, which blew abruptly outward in orange flames and a hail of glass and blood. As several men and women fled from the burning pub, the waiting men opened fire and in seconds bloody bodies littered the street. Before anyone could react, the attackers jumped into a waiting van and sped from the scene.
In front of him, Ron uttered a muted curse and both Ginny and Hermione gasped in horror. He closed his eyes and thought; I don’t really want to see the rest of it. But the Major’s next words caught his attention and he looked again in spite of himself.
”Nasty, yes,” the Major said softly, but in a carrying voice. “This next one, however, is a new twist on things. Your usual terrorist begins as a fanatic, a believer. He is sincere and absolute in his ideals, at least at the beginning. What we’ve found, however, is that after a while, they find they need financing for their weapons and their lifestyle and so they find odd allies, strange bedfellows to prop up their cause. This last one is a union of terrorist and organized gangs. This anarchist united nearly all the London crime gangs last year and used them to finance and back up his attacks.”
The video moved forward again and showed a sunny day with crowds and a stately procession. The Queen’s Guards made a brave show in their uniforms and the crowd cheered, covering the noise of the attack. From out of the crowd, a swath of green fiery light struck at several of the guards and missed the royal party by inches. Pandemonium ensued as police rushed forward to shoot at the black robed attackers; they were forced to retreat as others stormed forward and returned fire at the security forces with their own guns. Harry’s stomach clenched and he stopped breathing for a moment as the images on the screen blended in with his own recollections. The robed attackers had been Death Eaters, and he had seen the original attack through Voldemort’s eyes.
Beside him, Carter raised his hand and asked, “That was one of the attacks by the group led by the one the papers called the Lord of Death, wasn’t it, sir?”
”Very observant, Carter,” the major replied. “As a matter of fact, Inspector Bones was involved in the investigation that connected the unifying of the London gangs with the terrorists”
”And did they ever do a profile on him, or identify who he was working for?” Carter asked.
”He appears to have been a home-grown anarchist,” Bones replied after the barest of pauses. “He had a small group of hard core terrorists following him and he used them, in turn, to coerce or persuade the local criminal gangs into working for him.”
”Have been?” Hawkins asked. “So they really did catch him, like the papers reported?”
”In a manner of speaking,” Bones answered. “He was killed in the course of one of his attacks. But we remain concerned about whether the gangs he united will stay so and if they will offer their services to other terrorists now that they’ve seen how profitable it can be.”
Another hand waved and MacCready asked, “But what about those weapons, sir? The ones that shot out some kind of fire? What were they and where did he get them from?”
“We’re not sure,” the major answered.
Harry breathed a sigh of relief and noticed that Bones had relaxed fractionally as well. He wondered if Major Halsey actually knew that those weapons had been wands. Probably not, he assumed. He couldn’t help feeling utterly disconcerted at the introduction of Voldemort into their training on the very first day and wished he had refused to come. I could leave, he thought. I don’t have to stay. But he saw that Bones was watching him covertly and he knew if he bolted it would place the Inspector and Ron and Hermione and Ginny in jeopardy of discovery and possibly being expelled by the Ministry of Magic. He gripped the arms of his chair and hoped that no one else had realized how distressed he was.
***
Beside him, Carter noticed, the kid was so pale he looked as though he might faint, and his hands were gripping the arms of his chair as though they were the only thing holding him upright. Well everyone there looked a bit shook at the video footage; but none of the others looked more affected than if they’d seen a rather scary movie. He wondered again how they had let the kid in. He must have some special qualifications, then. Maybe he was a computer brain and would spend his time behind a desk tracking info and tracing communications?
“Now,” the major said, “we’ll be breaking up into teams after lunch. You’ll see your assignments on your schedule. You’ll notice that each of you has also been assigned to one of us officers for one-on-one mentoring. Your teams may be altered at various times throughout your full two-year training, but your mentor will remain the same the entire time. If you refer to your orientation packet, you’ll see that your training will alternate between intensives here at the compound and on the job supervised experience in which you’ll observe and sometimes participate in actual operations. I’ll remind you that you may not discuss your training or any aspect of your work with any person outside of this agency.”
A quick glance at his schedule told Carter he was on the A Team and that his uncle was to be his mentor. Well, that was a relief. Hawk, he saw, was on the B Team and he tried to decide if that was a good thing. Probably, he thought objectively, as the two of us would both want to run the show and would make lousy partners. He saw with annoyance that Brittany and Sean were also on B Team. Brittany had not been given her dad as a mentor. He grinned to himself at that. She had the Major wrapped around her little finger and he knew it. He noticed, too, that the Potter kid was on his team along with MacCready. At least he’d be acquainted with two people before they began.
“One more word, before you go to lunch,” the major added. “You’ll have noticed that each of you has a complete computer set-up in your dormitory. Your packet contains your user name and password and you’ll receive weekly schedules and assignments via e-mail. Be sure you check daily for any changes. We’ll also expect you to submit assignments direct to your instructors through their e-mail addresses. I would suggest that you change your password first thing this afternoon so as to ensure your privacy and security. One of your first things to keep in mind, gentlemen: always be sure your communications and files are absolutely secure!”
Carter glanced over at his neighbor and saw that he had recovered his self-possession. A tiny smile tipped the corner of the kid’s mouth as he said softly to himself, “Just another way of saying, Constant Vigilance, isn’t it?” Was the kid just paranoid, or was he brilliant? And which quality was more important in an intelligence officer Johnny wondered?
They filed out of their row and some of the others had already begun to make for the doors. The Potter kid - well, he couldn't be that much of a kid or they wouldn't have taken him; he just looked young - went down toward a group who were still milling about in the front row. There were two redheads, true redheads, one tall and lanky and the other, a small young woman with a spattering of freckles on her nose. They were both flushed red with temper or embarrassment, and a third recruit, another woman with a wonderful mass of hair had a hand on each of their arms, like a Mum trying to pull her kids away from trouble. And trouble, he could see, was brewing fast.
The big recruit who had been sitting between the two redheads was chatting up the little redhead in the wrong way altogether.
"You're a bit small for security, aren't you darlin'?" the large man asked. He was even taller than Johnny and probably outweighed him by a good fifty pounds, and that was saying something. Muddy brown eyes were set in a blocky face and his complexion was pitted from the kind of severe acne that came from bad diets or body-builders' "supplements."
"Size is no guarantee of anything," the redhead said huffily.
"You speak from experience?" was the reply, “You look like a nice bit of fresh meat, much too fresh for a place like this."
Johnny could have sworn that the little one actually hissed and the tall red-haired man raised a fist. But Potter moved swiftly in and stayed the redhead's fist.
"She's not anyone's meat. She's a lady," Potter said coolly. "We'll forgive your ignorance this time, on account of it's the first day. But you speak with respect from now."
The muddy brown eyes hardened and Johnny could see that was what he was, a hard man, probably Army or police. He looked the kid up and down, assessing the skinny frame and said, "Or what?"
"I might have to rearrange your ugly face then," the kid answered. He paused and then added, "Of course, it might be an improvement if I did." The green eyes narrowed as the huge hands flexed into fists and he said with an affability that Johnny thought was meant to be pure aggro, "And that would be fortunate for you, cause you don't want to find out what would happen if Ginny decided to take care of you herself."
Johnny was sure one of the huge fists was going to knock the kid down, except the blond officer, Bones, interrupted.
"Potter, Weasley," he barked, "Back off. It's the first day," he continued scolding, "Can't you keep out of trouble for one day?"
The two redheads and Potter turned to look at the Inspector. The redheads both looked a bit abashed; Potter looked merely irritated. "He's insulting Ginny," he protested.
Surprisingly, Bones was not impressed. "This is a military security agency, not Oz. Get used to a bit of rough language. The opposition will be a lot worse."
Though he backed off, Potter gave the Inspector a resentful look and said with surprising sarcasm, "I suspect this place is more fantastic than Oz; but you know what? I can guarantee this monkey doesn't fly."
Johnny thought, they’ll throw him out now. But Bones merely gave him another quelling look and this time Potter colored and backed off further.
Then Bones gave the tough one a stare as cold as granite and said, "What's your name?"
"Sergeant Norway," the hard man answered. The slight emphasis on his rank betrayed Norway's opinion of regular police, even Scotland Yard.
Bones' face grew colder and he replied, "You gave up being a Sergeant when you applied for this job, Norway. Right now, you're a first year recruit, the same as everyone else. And you'd better learn the difference between casual language and harassment, hadn't you?" The gray eyes held Norway's muddy brown ones until Norway also backed off and nodded. They followed the huge man as he turned and climbed the steps out of the auditorium and noted when Norway turned back to give the Potter kid an unforgiving stare.
***
“Why’d you stop me?” Ron said at the same time Ginny said, “I can deal with him myself. You didn’t have to.”
Suddenly exhausted and unreasonably annoyed, Harry said shortly, “Next time I won’t then.”
“What idiots,” Hermione said at a near whisper. “You’re supposed to be grown-ups. We’re not supposed to be fighting with fellow officers as if they were Draco Malfoy and his gang.”
“Well that guy was nearly as nasty as Malfoy and bigger than Crabbe and Goyle together,” Ron answered. “And we don’t have to put up with scum, even if they are fellow officers.”
“Well, we don’t want to be thrown out on our first day,” Hermione answered.
Harry, on the other hand, wasn’t so sure about that.
At lunch, he pushed his food around on his plate and eyed his surroundings with disfavor. The utilitarian hall, with its linoleum floors and plastic chairs, could not compare to the stately grandeur of Hogwarts’ Great Hall. He didn’t like the classroom to which their Team was directed afterwards. It was a stuffy interior room without windows and there was a computer monitor and keyboard at every seat. In the front, a large white screen was set up for displaying videos and presentations fed through the computers. Mercifully, however, Lieutenant Daniels did not show them any more videos of people being blown up or shot.
Pushing aside fatigue, Harry forced his attention on the Lieutenant’ words.
”The first thing you all need to understand is that we are a team,” Daniels said. He was a stocky man with rather bushy eyebrows and a deep, baritone voice. “Every year, recruits come in thinking they’re going to be heroes, they’re going to land the big fish, they’re going to save the world all alone. Every year, we have to teach you all the meaning of teamwork. What we do requires the coordination of vast amounts of information, sometimes seemingly unrelated. It requires enormous amounts of drudgery, making phone calls, checking web sites, following suspects for days on end, and all of it has to be shared and coordinated or crucial pieces of information get lost. I’ll tell you now and I’ll tell you every day from now on, there’s no place for grandstanding and improvisation. You follow the chain of command, you follow the procedures, and if you can’t, then get out.”
Harry felt as though Daniels’ bright blue eyes were directed right at him. Had Bones said anything to him? Or had his fight with that pig Norway given the Lieutenant a bad impression of him already? And did he care if it had?
Daniels had begun calling on each of the team members to introduce himself and explain why they had applied. The first one, Austin, another tall man with black eyes and a sallow complexion was speaking: “I spent three years with the National Crime Squad tracking down drug dealers and organized crime. When we saw more and more links between them and all these crazies, I took in an interest in how much of the trade was really being run to finance them and my boss recommended I apply for a transfer here.”
”Were you involved in Inspector Bones’ investigation?” Daniels asked with interest.
“No, sir,” Austin answered. “We were seeing connections to the jihad types. They were connecting up with the opium growers in the Middle East and doing deals with the cartels that purified and moved the goods.”
Harry let out a breath he hadn’t know he was holding. He did not want these people to be connected to Voldemort or the Death Eaters or to any of the Muggle gangs that Voldemort had persuaded or terrified into his orbit. He didn’t want to think about Voldemort at all. They were talking again, only this time it was Carter who spoke his piece.
”I think what we’re doing is the most important bit of military or police work you can do today,” Carter said. “Terror is the future of warfare. I think a lot of experts agree with that. No one’s going to attack a country like Britain or our allies these days with a real army. They just couldn’t do it. But they can throw us all into confusion, they can force us to pacify them by making us afraid. It’s a psychological kind of war, because the enemy is faceless.”
Harry found himself impressed with the others in spite of himself. They all seemed so full of vitality, so sure that they were doing something worthwhile. And they all had university degrees. Carter had published a paper on the psychology of terror. Another one, MacCready was engineer and chemist. He wondered again how he belonged with this lot. Despite the Prime Minister’s insistence, Harry thought it rather unlikely that any wizards would be allying themselves with Muggle criminals again anytime soon. He jumped just a bit when Daniels called on him. He opened his mouth to say, I dunno why I’m here; I don’t even want to be here, but he bit those words back because it just wouldn’t do.
He had paused too long before answering and Daniels said, “Well?”
He shrugged and said, “All this, that video this morning, it all looks like it’s something special, something different from the usual. I don’t know if this is the future of war, like Johnny said. What I see is they’re just evil. They’re just murderers. There’s nothing special about them just because they spout a lot of words, politics or philosophy. They’re still killers. They steal people’s lives, people they don’t even know. It doesn’t matter if they have bigger weapons or how organized they are. They’re still the same as every other killer. That’s what I think.”
Everyone stared at him and Harry wondered what he had said that was so extraordinary. Maybe it wasn’t what he had said. Maybe he’d been too vehement, he thought. He closed his mouth and sank down a little in his chair.
Daniels looked at him with interest now instead of impatience. “That’s a way of putting it,” he said. “A good way, maybe. Makes you see the enemy as human, catchable.”
***
The sun was rising as Carter commenced his daily run around the Compound. He ran every morning even though they had daily physical training and defense classes, partly because he reveled in the motion, the action, and partly because he wanted to be the fittest, the best recruit in the class. He was not the only one either. Hawk was out most mornings and so were Austin, and MacCready. And Norway, whom Johnny really disliked.
It wasn’t just that the incident on the first day that had got to him. In any of the classes where both teams attended, Norway went out of his way to try to provoke Potter, and the few times they had been paired up in defense, Norway had taken full advantage of his greater height and bulk to flatten the poor kid. What he didn’t get was why Potter didn’t complain about it.
The previous day, Worthington had them working on basic unarmed combat. They had worked in pairs, switching from time to time so that no one worked with the same opponent. When the rotation had put Potter in line to pair up with Norway, Johnny had been sure that Worthington would switch them. He didn’t let the women work against the larger men yet, but he had not made the same concession then, even though Norway had to outweigh the kid by eighty or a hundred pounds. The kid had said nothing though. He had gone through the short round with the same cool, almost indifferent expression, he wore every day in physical training, getting up for more, even when Norway had thrown him harder than necessary, but seeming to make almost no effort at all at anything.
”No guts at all,” Norway had said contemptuously afterward. “What a weakling.”
Johnny was sure the kid must have heard, but instead of the irritation he had shown when Norway had insulted the Weasley girl, Potter had gotten up from the mat looking simply fatigued. His friend Ron, on the other hand, had turned beet red at the sergeant’s insult and had only been stopped from attacking Norway by Granger. Johnny grinned at the recollection. Granger, he thought, was clearly the brains of the bunch, and she seemed to spend a good deal of time keeping Weasley from acting rashly. They were a tight little group, the four. Except that three of them also seemed to spend a good deal of time anxiously watching Potter, while Potter shrugged off their concern and anyone else’s criticism as if it was all air. Johnny had remarked as much to MacCready and Austin afterwards. Austin had his own ideas about it.
”I wonder what a search of Potter’s room would turn up,” he’d said.
”What d’you mean?” Mac had asked.
Austin had leaned in and said quietly, “What do you think? He’s okay in the morning, most mornings, but by the afternoon, he’s gone. His attention wanders, he looks exhausted, he’s seriously underweight and has no strength to speak of. I’m just curious what he’s taking and how come none of our instructors have figured it out.”
“I don’t know, though,” Johnny had responded. “He’s got no tracks on his arms. You can see that easily enough in class when he wears one of those gawdawful t-shirts.” Awful wasn’t the word for half the kid’s clothes. The t-shirts and sweats looked like hand-me-downs from a homeless man the size of Norway. And his dress shirts and regular trousers looked like he’d grown out of them.
There was something odd about the kid, though. Every other recruit was perfectly fit and healthy and Potter so obviously wasn’t. And he hadn’t shown any outstanding talent in computers or some other tech area either. Maybe he had connections. Bones had known him and his friends on the first day; or was that only because they’d all met with their mentors at their orientation?
***
Dreams of men in ski masks leaving a bombed out pub...in the ruins of the pub, a sound could be heard, a baby wailing...the cry came from a cupboard behind the bar...
Harry woke with a start, fighting his blankets, which were smothering him, and feeling utterly dislocated. He pushed his hair away from his sweaty forehead and reached for his glasses. The sky outside his window was still pink and the air was cold, drying the sweat on his face into a chilly glaze. He breathed deeply and waited for his heart to slow down.
The walls in his single dormitory room were a cool blue painted over cement blocks. There was a single student desk and a chest of drawers stood next to it. His trunk sat under the window next to the bed and served as a night table. He kept it securely locked, just in case.
He focused on the cool blue of the walls and imagined them as pools of calm water. No, the cement blocks were the blocks in the wall in his mind. As he had done every day since he had finally gotten up the nerve, he took the wall down again and sank into himself, plumbing his very depths, seeking the bottom that wasn't there, searching for a trace, a wisp of another presence. He found nothing, neither breath, nor thought, nor feeling that meant the other had survived along with him. Relief washed through him and he did as he had done every day since, built the wall back up again, solid and strong, just in case. Because if he, Harry had lived, then maybe the other had, too. Maybe it was like the last time, when he had stuck the sword through the other's heart, but he had lived, moved on and lived, because Harry had lived and their lives were one. He built the wall and stilled his mind and tamed his emotions. Just in case.
They had class with Inspector Bones first thing and Harry didn't want to be late. He set his mug of coffee on the table and hoped Bones wouldn't make him dump it out.
This was a smaller group class and Harry was irked that Ron and Hermione and Ginny were not in his group. He wondered if that was deliberate, but thought not when he saw that Carter had two of his friends, Hawkins and MacCready there. The fifth recruit was a woman who could have been Carter's sister, his twin even. She smiled at him encouragingly and Harry nodded back thinking, at least he'd been spared Norway's unpleasant presence.
Bones entered and they all snapped to attention. The Inspector, Harry thought, had a similar effect on people as Snape. It must be something to do with being a policeman, Harry supposed. He knew he had something extra: power, authority.
Bones set a box down on the large table around which they all sat and handed out a packet of papers to each of the five recruits.
"You'll be meeting in this small group daily for the next two weeks," Bones said. "This will be your introduction to case investigation. You've each been given the same packet of materials, copies of e-mails, a transcript of a meeting that was overheard on a wire, some photos, and few other things. There are some other materials in the box, but those aren't things we can duplicate. You'll have to handle them as a team. They're bits and pieces of what could be tangible evidence and you'll be working to together to piece together the case; if there is one. At the end of the two weeks, you write a team report and recommend further investigation, if it's warranted, or not."
"Was this an actual case?" Carter asked, "Or is it a hypothetical created for training?"
Bones hesitated a moment and then said, "We don't know if it's a case or not. These are bits and pieces collected that were tangential to some other things going on, but we're so overworked right now that we'd nobody to put on it. K decided to throw several of these kinds of things at you all. He figured it would be doubly useful -- give you something that could be real to learn from and get something looked at by a few extra eyes."
"K?" the woman asked. "The big man? Really?"
Bones nodded. He smiled a little and said, "For those of you who don't know, the head of our agency is always referred to as K because our first head used his initial to sign everything. It's got to be a tradition, you see."
Harry looked at his packet of papers curiously. The brief e-mails were simple and vague. One read, "Your birthday present will be delivered to your favorite place." It was from someone named Hengist to someone named Big Jock.
There were more, in a similar vein. They didn't seem to mean anything, but Harry had an inkling they did. They reminded him of the letters he'd tried to write to Sirius when he thought his mail might be intercepted. This could be innocent, or it could be simply worded but covering something else.
A sheaf of photos was attached to the back of the packet. They had been taken from a distance through a wide angle lens and showed three men meeting. One, whose face was most easily distinguished, was a large man with dark hair dressed in a black leather jacket and denims. He looked like what some of Dudley’s gang might look given another twenty years of bullying and crime. The other two were partially obscured by the first man’s bulk. One of them was shorter and had a graying beard. The other could only be seen in shadow, so it was impossible to tell what color his hair was or much of anything except that he was taller than the bearded one and seemed to be holding a walking stick of some kind.
”Do you know who these people are?” Harry asked.
”We know who that one fellow is,” Bones answered. He pointed to the man whose face was most distinguishable. “Jack Cantwell. He’s been involved with running drugs and importing illegal arms for one gang or another for years. He’s served time only once, about ten years ago.”
”Big Jock, maybe?” he asked.
”It’s one of his nicknames,” Bones agreed. “Although we don’t know for sure that the Jock in the e-mails is the same as this fellow. There are several fellows who’ve been tagged with that nickname,” he added dryly. “All you have to do is be large and have some connection to Scotland.”
“Have you been through all of this yet?” Harry asked.
Bones raised his eyebrows and said, “Not at all. That’s your job. I’ve seen a couple of the e-mails and the photos. That’s all.”
The others had snickered just a bit when Bones had said that’s your job, but Harry didn’t mind. He’d had his question answered for once.
Harry looked through the papers again and saw that two of them were copies of handwritten letters, not e-mails. These were from a third person to each of the others. The one to Big Jock was only one sentence: “I believe we may all come to an agreement for our mutual benefit.” The other was even shorter. It said simply, “July 30 at midnight.”
He pulled out his notebook from his and began taking notes. He drew a triangle with big Jock at the middle connecting the other two. Next to Jock, he wrote: drugs, weapons, imports. Next to the others, he placed question marks. He drew an arrow from Hengist to Jock, and in the middle, wrote, present?
MacCready glanced over his shoulder and said, “What is that, one of those riddles where you have to figure out who sits next to Mary by knowing that George sits next to John?
Harry frowned at him and said absently, “I’m just trying to figure out how they connect.” He looked up at Bones and asked, “The box, is that the present? And where did you get it and when?” He was itching to open it up and was hoping that no one would stop him if he tried.
“I’m not sure where they got it,” Bones answered. “I think they may have raided Cantwell’s place and this stuff was among the things they found that didn’t seem to connect with his main operation.”
“What was that?” Carter asked.
“He was bringing in weapons,” Bones answered. “Big ones, too, Kalashnikovs and bazookas. It looked like he was equipping an army.”
”Can we open the box?” Carter asked.
Bones shrugged and nodded.
The woman reached for the box, her blue eyes sparkling with curiosity, but Carter pushed her hands away. “You don’t want to break your nails, do you Brittany?” he asked.
“Has it got any postmarks or anything on it to show where it’s from?” Brittany asked.
"Where do think it would be from?" Hawkins asked. "Germany, maybe?"
"Why there?" Bones asked with interest.
"There's something in the transcript about Sturm and Drang," Hawkins replied. He had light brown eyes that were almost yellow and Harry could see where he had gotten his nickname. He did look very like a bird about to strike.
"Where's that?" Harry asked.
"In the middle somewhere," Carter replied. "But whoever it was had it backwards. He must have been trying to sound educated."
"I don't get it," Harry said.
Hawkins replied impatiently, "He reversed the words. Durm and Strang instead of Sturm and Drang." He turned back to Carter and said, "Open it, Johnny. Only be careful in case it's a bomb or something."
Harry, however, felt a chill run down his spine, and he laid a hand on Carter's wrist to stop him. "That's not a joke." He looked up at Bones and said sharply, "I think we'd better be very careful with this. In fact, maybe you should open this under controlled conditions."
He tried to send a message to Bones, this isn't for the others, but Bones didn't seem to be getting it. "Go on," he said. "It was x-rayed when it came in. It hasn't got any bombs in it."
Carter pulled his hand out of Harry's grip and before Harry could protest again, he slid a finger under the brown paper wrapping and lifted up the flap. Beneath the wrapping was a cardboard box, which was further sealed by heavy tape. Hawkins offered him a pocket knife and he slit the sides and center where the tape kept it closed.
Inside, there was lots of little white Styrofoam balls like the Muggles used for packing fragile things. Harry eased out a breath thinking his sudden hunch must be wrong. Carter scooped out the top layer of packing, carefully sifting through each handful to check for anything of interest. He paused after the fourth scoop and then gingerly lifted out a metal shape.
"A Sig-Sauer 9 millimetre automatic," he said.
Harry blinked and breathed out again. It was a good sized handgun, nothing to worry about then.
"That is one mean weapon," Hawkins said. The amber eyes took sight on Bones as though he were to be the next prey. "You said it was okay."
"I said there weren't any bombs," Bones replied.
Carter continued to scoop out the packing pellets and soon came up with a box of ammunition to match the gun. He continued down to the next layer and then reached into the box and brought out --another box.
This one was made of wood and had carvings on the exterior. There was a silver latch on the front, which resisted all Carter's attempts at opening.
Once again, Harry's curiosity was roused. Carter muttered in frustration and Harry leaned over to get a better glance at the box. The latch looked rather like a silver serpent. He said impatiently, "Come on, open!" The latch gave suddenly and Carter made a soft whoof of satisfaction.
Inside the box were further layers of boxes nested one on top of the other, but these were not locked. They laid them out on the table and slid the cover off the top box. Harry could feel the hair lift on the back of his neck.
The long shallow inner box was divided into smaller compartments and each one contained a brightly colored powder of some kind.
"Drugs?" Hawkins asked. He reached out a large hand to touch one of the powders and Harry caught his hand as quickly as one would seize a striking snake.
"Not street drugs," he answered. He looked at Bones to see if he had registered their problem. What they had before them was a very nice container for potions ingredients.
***
Carter looked at the kid in surprise. Instead of his usual detached demeanor, the kid's green eyes were bright with interest and alarm. And that was the second time he had prevented someone from touching the stuff.
Hawkins pulled away, but the kid held him for a moment in a surprisingly strong grip. His hands looked too big for the thin wrists and the long fingers were thin and elegant. He released Hawk and pointed at a compartment filled with yellow powder. "Sulfur," he said. Pointing to a grey metallic colored powder, he said, "Saltpetre. There may not be a bomb in here, but you've got the ingredients to start making some nice explosions. Homemade fireworks, for a start."
The kid tipped his head consideringly and the untidy mane of black hair fell across his brow and into his eyes. He brushed it back absently and peered at the other compartments. "Belladonna, valerian, scurvy-wort, skull-cup," he noted. "Quite a pharmacopiea."
The long fingers slid the top off the second box more cautiously than he had the first. This one was also compartmented, but instead of powders, there were vials of liquid. Potter drew in a quiet breath and carefully withdrew a glass vial filled with a thick silvery liquid.
"Mercury?" Hawk hazarded. MacCready, the engineer, said, "No. Wrong color and viscosity."
Potter ignored that and held up the vial for the Inspector to see. "If this is what I think it is, what I'm sure it is, we have got major problems." He added, "Sir," as an afterthought.
Bones was frowning, the grey eyes looking almost as silvery as the liquid in the vial. "I don't recognize it," he said.
The kid shook his head. "Well, not many people would dare collect or use it," he responded.
The kid replaced the vial carefully in its compartment and pulled out another. This one looked to be of a similar consistency, only it was a bright green, almost as green as the boy's eyes. He held it up for the Inspector to see and this time the Inspector recognized it. His reaction was brief, concise, a time honored Anglo-Saxon curse.
That one went back in the box and Potter pulled out another. This one was a milky-pearlescent fluid. He replaced that one more carefully than all the others. Johnny could see that his face had gone nearly as pale as the milky fluid. His eyes had narrowed and his mouth tightened so that you could see faint brackets of tension beside them. "Snake venom, I think."
"How do you know what all this stuff is?" Hawkins asked.
Potter blinked and paused so minutely that if you hadn't been watching, you wouldn't have noticed the time taken for prevarication or evasion. "Science class in school," he said innocently.
"What is your degree in then," Hawk asked, "chemistry or pharmacology?"
The kid goggled at him and said, "Degree? What degree?"
"Your specialty," Brittany asked, "from university."
The kid closed his mouth and Carter could see the blood flush back into his pale cheeks, embarrassment, he supposed. "I haven't been to university," he answered.
"You have to," Johnny answered. "It's a requirement to get in here."
"Well, I haven't," the kid said stiffly. He glanced at Bones for guidance, but the usually cool Inspector seemed to be at a loss for a moment. Johnny could have sworn he was trying not to laugh.
"Well, what school did you go to?" Hawk asked.
The kid flushed further and said, "A small public school. It's way up north. You won't have heard of it."
"I'd have guessed Eton and Oxford or Harrow and Cambridge," MacCready offered.
The kid raised one winged brow and said coolly, "No. But one of my classmates went to my school instead of Eton." He said it stiffly, as if daring them to inquire further.
Taking advantage of their distraction, Potter carefully closed the lids on the boxes and placed them back in the larger wooden casket. He handed it swiftly to Bones and said, "I think you'd better put that somewhere secure, sir."
"How old are you?" Hawk asked quickly.
"I'm eighteen," Potter answered defiantly. "Old enough." As they left the classroom, he stared down the others as if challenging them to comment, but Johnny knew they were all too surprised. They only ever let university graduates into this program or those who had substantial army or police experience.
He lingered in the corridor and heard the inspector ask the kid very quietly, "What was it, then?" And the kid, who really was just a kid, responded, "Unicorn blood." They were both silent and then Potter added softly, "This looks like something very nasty, sir. You don't think it could connect to..." and other hesitation and then, "You Know Who?"
Bones said in surprise, "How can it? Riddle's dead."
And the kid said softly, as if relieved, "Yeah. Okay." He came out of the classroom looking as though he was back in a reverie, his green eyes seeing a landscape that wasn't there, and his face as cool and fixed into inscrutability as any cats.
Unable to contain his own curiosity, Johnny stopped the Inspector and asked, "How did they let a kid that age in here, Inspector?"
The Inspector stopped and looked at Johnny closely, his grey eyes darkened with some worry, but attentive nevertheless. "Harry," he said slowly, as though choosing his words with the utmost care, "has some special talents."
I'll bet he has, Carter thought, as he watched the Inspector stride away carrying the box as though it did indeed contain a bomb.
***
"I've got to talk to you," Harry said to Ron and Hermione and Ginny. He pulled at Hermione's arm and tugged her toward a table away from the other recruits. Ron and Ginny exchanged identical looks of alarm and followed right behind.
Quickly, Harry recounted what had happened in the class. He could see right away that the others weren't coming to the same conclusions as he had.
"You've never seen the men in the pictures before," Hermione asked.
"No," he replied impatiently. "But if these were all Muggles, why were they talking about Durmstrang and where would they have gotten a hold of a dark wizard's potion box?"
"Whoa," Ron said. "How do you know it was a dark wizard's?"
"Unicorn blood and snake venom!" Harry hissed as softly as he could. "Voldemort was feeding on that before his rebirth to strengthen himself and keep his body alive."
Ginny frowned. "I thought he didn't have a body before his rebirth."
Harry could feel his whole body tighten with the remembrance. “He didn't at first. He possessed animals and people, mostly snakes. But after Wormtail escaped, he helped Voldemort to make a rudimentary sort of body. It looked like a baby only it wasn't really human. It was..." He stopped there and pushed his lunch away.
"Look," he said, "if some wizard is collecting those ingredients and if he is connected to a Muggle criminal gang, he's probably a Death Eater. And maybe he thinks he can bring Voldemort back again. Maybe that's what they're up to."
Hermione looked at Harry and he saw with surprise that she was near to tears, and that Ginny and Ron were flushed as though they too were suppressing great distress. "Oh, Harry," Hermione said, "He's dead. Voldemort is dead and he can't come back."
"Are you sure?" he asked. It was the question he had asked himself for weeks but had been unwilling to raise until now. He had been right not to, he saw, from the looks on their faces; but the words, the fear, tumbled out anyhow. "If I'm alive," he added quietly, "maybe he is, too."
Hermione and Ron flinched, but Ginny looked at him squarely and asked, "Do you have a reason for thinking he is? Beyond the fact that you've survived?" And when he didn't answer immediately she pressed on, "Have you...that is, have you been dreaming about him, or felt him, seen his thoughts?" Her face was pale with the thought and both Ron and Hermione looked more horrified than before.
He shook his head mutely and then feeling horrible for having scared them so badly, he said, "No. No. It's just...I don't understand..." But he cut that off. He should be dead along with Voldemort. He had expected to be dead. He had died, he thought, or had begun to die and something had changed that. It was a mystery. But still, he worried; maybe Voldemort had survived bodiless again.
Ron laid his hand on Harry's arm and said, "He's dead, really, mate. We saw it. I mean, he fried. There was nothing left of him. Don't you remember?"
Harry frowned and thought back to the moment he had been trying to forget. He remembered challenging Voldemort, telling him to do it, to use the Curse. He remembered the thump of the Curse hitting him and the odd sensation of flying out of his body. He remembered dreaming, thinking he had been with his Mum and Dad and his Mum's kiss. He had no recollection of seeing Voldemort die at all.
He shook his head and said simply, "No. I don't remember that." Harry put those thoughts aside and said, "So he's dead, okay. But that doesn't mean they, the Death Eaters, have accepted he's truly dead. He came back once before. Maybe they think he can be brought back again. Maybe they think if I'm alive, he could be too."
The three of them exchanged glances again and Hermione coughed slightly. "It could be they're thinking they can bring him back," she said. "Erm, but, so far as we know, a lot of them have been caught and the rest have gone to ground. The Order's been after them and the Ministry's aurors now, too."
"But some of them are free?" Harry asked. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"You didn't ask," Ron said calmly. "Anytime we've mentioned anything, you change the subject." He stared at Harry and said sharply, "And don't think that means you have to go after them, okay. You've done your bit. It's not your responsibility any more."
"And what if they're still working with the Muggles?" Harry asked. "That is our responsibility, isn't it? That's what we were hired for."
"Right now our responsibility is to concentrate on our training," Hermione said severely.
"Yeah, and this potion box showed up here, as part of our training." Harry looked at the others and saw that they did not want to hear this. They were tired, he supposed, of fighting Death Eaters. They were tired, he supposed, of nearly getting themselves killed running after him.
As if she could read his thoughts, though, Ginny answered, "And you gave the box to Inspector Bones as you should have." She paused and added with less calm, "Harry, you need to get well before you start chasing after dark wizards again. You need to eat and get sleep and do nothing. And remember," she added, "that box didn't show up here because they know you're here. It's a coincidence. It could have sat in the Muggles' evidence room for months. We don't even know when they seized that, do we? Or from whom?"
Harry relaxed fractionally. "I'm fine," he said shortly, but he could see that the others knew he wasn't. He smiled then with affection and said, "Really, I am."
It wasn't until later that it occurred to him to look at the dates on the e-mails again and to notice that the box -- if it was the "present"-- had been delivered within the last week and that the three men had been set to meet on July 30. And he saw that the transcript had been dated July 30. He'd have to talk to Bones about it again. Except that Bones had gone out on some unexplained errand when Harry ducked back into his office after lunch.
~~***~~
Bones laid the carved wooden box on the table in the private parlor in The Leaky Cauldron. "This," he said, "was in a package seized by Special Branch in a raid on terrorist headquarters. We thought they belonged to a thug who sells his services to one of the larger organized gangs in London. Apparently, he's branched out and begun to work for or cooperate with the terrorists."
Dumbledore looked at the box with interest. His snowy beard shone in the firelight and his face was worn with deeper creases than they had been but a few months ago. But the light blue eyes were as sharp as ever. Next to him, Arthur Weasley looked at the box with distaste.
"How would a Muggle thug have a wizard's box in his possession?" Weasley asked, "And even so, why the urgency? We'd an important operation running this afternoon."
Bones looked at Weasley and thought carefully about what to say. The Interim Minister of Magic did not appear to be enjoying his new position. He looked thinner than he had a couple of weeks ago and his remaining bright red hair was dulling to silver-grey. "Yes, well," Bones said, "the urgency is because it ended up in Potter's hands of all people's."
Dumbledore's gaze sharpened at that and Weasley looked seriously alarmed. "What did he do? How could you let that happen?"
"An accident," Bones said without apology. "The box was sent down to us with a load of other materials from the raid that the officers rejected as having direct bearing on their investigation. K, that's the head of our agency, thought they'd make good training materials. The papers and boxes were all x-rayed to check for explosives and then distributed to the recruits in groups of five for learning case investigation techniques. I had no idea what was in that box until they opened it in class."
Dumbledore leaned forward and tapped the box but it did not open. He tried several spells, but still, it would not open. "I thought you said they opened this in class?" he asked politely.
Bones stared in surprise. "They did indeed. One of the others was struggling to get it unlatched and then..."
"And?" Weasley prompted.
"Well," Bones said frowningly, "Harry said something like, 'Come on, open,' and the box opened. I didn't think anything of it at the time, just that the latch suddenly gave way."
Dumbledore lifted the box and looked at the latch. His snowy eyebrows went up and the blue eyes darkened with worry and then seemed to lighten with amusement. "It's a serpent latch."
"So?" Bones said. "He didn't speak any spells or use a wand."
"He didn't happen to have hissed a bit at it?" Dumbledore asked.
"Hissed?" Bones asked. This was getting more and more peculiar. "Maybe with impatience. We were all dead curious to see what was in it."
"Do we know anyone else who speaks Parseltongue?" Dumbledore asked Weasley.
"Parseltongue? Potter speaks Parseltongue?" Bones was astounded. Shocked, too. Almost the only wizards who spoke Parseltongue were dark wizards and they were really rare.
"An odd side effect of the Curse That Failed," Dumbledore explained. “He might not even have realized that he did at that moment either."
"Just what's in it that made this so urgent?" Weasley asked.
"Aside from a number of ordinary potions ingredients, there were jars of dragon's blood, snake venom and unicorn blood," Bones answered. "Harry was quite upset by it. More upset than I'd have expected just from seeing what looked like a dark wizard's potion box in a Muggle place."
Dumbledore looked more worried than ever. "Unicorn blood?" he asked. "You're sure?"
Bones nodded. "Why," he asked in the tone he normally reserved for homicide interrogations, "why would he have been so upset by that?"
Dumbledore did not answer immediately. He glanced at Weasley and Bones and seemed to measure them against something unspoken in his head. "Lord Voldemort," he said deliberately, "used unicorn blood to keep himself alive. Harry knew that."
"But Riddle's dead," Bones protested.
"Oh, yes," Dumbledore said softly. "He is indeed. Only maybe some of his followers don't believe it."
"And they've got the child," Weasley said. "You don't think--?"
Dumbledore looked suddenly so old and so weary Bones thought he would simply lie down and give up then. "And we missed recovering the child this afternoon," he said.
"This afternoon?" Bones asked.
Weasley nodded. "We had a tip he was at St. Mungo's in their new nursery. Unfortunately, whoever it was in charge of him also had a bit of information. The nursery was empty when we got there and both babies were gone."
"I don't understand," Bones said. "Both babies?"
"There were two infants being cared for there," Dumbledore answered. "Two cribs, two sets of clothes, two sets of everything. We don't know who the second child is or why they took it too, unless it was simply to confuse us more and keep us from ever knowing which is the real target."
"I don't like this at all," Bones said. "Are you sure," he added, "no one else knows Potter is alive?"
"My wife and I," Weasley answered, "Dumbledore, Snape and Madam Pomfrey. And of course, Ron and Ginny and Hermione. No one else."
"Snape knows?" Bones asked sharply.
"Severus Snape fought for our side against Lord Voldemort," Dumbledore answered. "Every Death Eater there saw him."
"Yes. Well," Bones said, "the problem just now is to contain the damage. If there are Death Eaters still in contact with Muggle gangs, maybe terrorists, it will have to be stopped."
"That is what your Department was created for," Weasley answered. He looked at Dumbledore and then said, "We'll get you a few reliable people to assist. Order people, not Ministry aurors."
"I'll see to it," Dumbledore said. "The key thing is, even they must not be told that Harry is alive."
"I'll not tell them," Bones answered. "Your real problem will be making sure Harry doesn't realize he's supposed to be dead. I doubt he'll cooperate very long in that."
"That's your job," Weasley said. "So keep him busy. The last thing we need is for Harry and Ron and the girls to get wind of all this and for the news he's alive to get out."
"He's the one who discovered this," Bones said," pointing to the box. "I'm afraid it's not going to be easy."
"He's got to recover his health first," Dumbledore said urgently. "If it gets out now..." None of the men needed it spelled out. Every Death Eater loose would be after the boy, and in his present state, he'd be dead in days.
It was Weasley, however, who had the last word. "Just keep them busy," he repeated. "If they get caught up in this, we'll never be able to contain it properly and the Statute of Secrecy will be history."
