Harry Potter and the Lady Thief (Harry Potter AU) (Complete)

Chapter 58: Trapped

London, Ministry of Magic, January 17th, 1999

The Sunday night graveyard shift was the worst. Evelyne Blishwick hated it. Working when everyone else was enjoying the weekend was bad enough, but having to spend the night standing guard in the deserted Ministry, with sleep as the biggest threat? And then, as usual, having the late or even graveyard shift again on Monday? She wouldn’t see her family and friends until Tuesday, at the earliest. Unless Selwyn was in a particularly bad mood - then it would be Wednesday.

Though, truth be told, she didn’t particularly mind missing her family. Dad was a nasty drunk and Mum still ragged on her for her less than stellar N.E.W.T.s - after three years! Not even joining the Hit-Wizards, with the recruiting bonus, had been enough to shut the witch up. Who cared that Evelyne could’ve become an Auror if she had passed her Potions N.E.W.T.? Who wanted to be an Auror, anyway, and patrol Knockturn Alley or chase down escaped pets?

She scoffed. At least Hit-Wizards had important duties - guarding Azkaban and the Ministry, and supporting the red robes when they had trouble handling criminals. Which was all the time unless they were dealing with first-years pranking each other in Diagon Alley.

Useless red robes! What good did it do if you could find a dark wizard but couldn’t arrest them? Not that they could find any dark wizards, anyway - if the Aurors weren’t so incompetent and had caught Crouch already, Evelyne wouldn’t be stuck guarding a service lift and staircase.

A service lift! As if Crouch would break into the Ministry, fight past the guards in the Atrium and then use the service lift to sabotage the Air-Cleaning and Air-Refreshing Charms in the attic! She scoffed again. That had been tried before, when the Dark Lord had attacked the Ministry, and there were now Air-Cleaning Charms on every floor. Whatever poison spell Crouch might use wouldn’t make it past them. Guarding the service lift was completely pointless. The sort of duty you should give one of the foreigners.

But no, according to Selwyn, this was a ‘critical post’ and therefore couldn’t be trusted to the foreigners. She rolled her eyes. Weren’t they hired to free up Hit-Wizards for more important duties?

And the worst thing was that she was alone and couldn’t talk to anyone. Fighting sleep was getting harder and harder. Brown, who had had this shift last week, had told her that he had cast an Alarm Charm to wake him up if anyone came close and then slept through the whole night, but that had been all talk - not even Brown was so stupid as to risk doing that. It was bad enough if Selwyn caught you asleep at your post, but if you had deliberately slept through your shift?

She shuddered. Well, she’d manage - she had a potion for emergencies. Which really should be standard issue for such a shift and so covered by the Ministry. But the Old Families didn’t give a damn about their own guards. Things had been different when the Blishwicks had been an Old Family, but that had been over two hundred years ago. Nowadays, though, if you weren’t a relative of an Old Family, you got the short end of the wand. In your face.

She grinned. At least three more Old Families would join her own in mediocrity soon enough. Served them right! If they only…

A wailing alarm interrupted her thoughts. She drew her wand. An attack? On the Ministry? Now? She took a few, quick breaths. An attack would have come through the Atrium. She would have heard that, wouldn’t she? Unless the attacker had silenced everyone - but who had sounded the alarm then?

Was someone sneaking up on her, disillusioned and ready to kill her? She wet her suddenly dry lips and cast a Human-presence-revealing Spell, hoping the incantation wouldn’t draw attention to her.

Her hallway was clear. She took a deep breath, relieved. If someone had been sneaking up… someone was coming! She heard footsteps. Getting closer. Someone was running.

She aimed her wand down the hallway. If anyone attacked her, she’d stun them… Gasping, she realised that she had forgotten to cast a Shield Charm!

“Prote…”

She gasped when a Hit-Wizard - no, a mercenary, the robes were a lighter grey, and no Hit-Wizard she knew had such a full beard or such a large nose - rounded the corner and flicked her wand towards him.

The man ignored her pointing her wand at him. “Blishwick! There’s an attack on Bones Manor! All Hit-Wizards are to report to headquarters at once! I’m your relief!”

Bones Manor? Someone was attacking the boss? Evelyne gasped again. “Alright!” she snapped. “Who’re you?”

“Veton Hyka.”

The accent matched the name. She nodded and started to run.

She noted with relief that she wasn’t the last of her shift to reach headquarters and quickly saluted Selwyn - where had he come from? Had he been working on a Sunday? Or were the rumours that he slept next to the fireplace, wearing his robes and waiting for an alarm, true? “Blishwick present, sir! I was relieved by Hyka,” she added - it wouldn’t do if the old wizard thought she had left her post.

“Yes. I sent him,” he growled. “Join the rest.”

Evelyne hastily obeyed, moving to the slowly growing group of Hit-Wizards. Half a dozen so far. The only one she knew well was Theresa Boot. “Theresa? Do you know what’s going on?” she asked in a whisper as Selwyn was talking to an Auror.

“Someone’s attacking Bones Manor with Fiendfyre,” her friend replied in a whisper. “That means it’s Crouch! We’re going to provide support to the Boy-Who-Lived!”

“Ah.” Evelyne pressed her lips together and tried not to tremble. Crouch. And Fiendfyre. That was bad. But Potter would be there. The Boy-Who-Lived knew how to fight Death Eaters - he had defeated the Dark Lord himself! “Good.”

“Good?” Theresa looked at her. “Are you one of his admirers? Remember how he bungled the Greengrass robbery?”

Evelyne glared back. “He killed the Lestranges!” she whispered. Who had killed so many Hit-Wizards in Azkaban - Evelyne’s older colleagues still talked about that.

“You are!” Her friend giggled - though it sounded forced. They were going into combat, after all. Their first real fight.

Evelyne sniffed. “So what? He’s handsome, rich and famous.” And not arrogant - he was, after all, dating a mudblood. Though, seeing as that thief had seduced him, he had to be looking for a better witch. So maybe a witch from a pureblood but not wealthy family had a chance…

Selwyn’s bellow interrupted her fantasy. “Alright! We’re headed to Bones Manor. The wards are holding the Fiendfyre at bay - for now. We’ll support the Aurors engaging the attackers. Auror Potter is in charge of the operation, but I’ll be giving you your orders. Move!”

Evelyne swallowed drily and moved. Her first real fight. Against the worst dark wizard currently active in Britain.

She really hoped that the Boy-Who-Lived was as good as people claimed.

*****​

London, Ministry of Magic, January 17th, 1999

Hermione Granger held her breath as she pressed herself against the wall and listened. Lots of people were running above her - but she couldn’t hear anyone running downstairs, towards her. And the words and orders she could make out - the Supersensory Charm was a little too effective, letting her hear too many people to properly understand any of them - didn’t mention intruders or thieves, but an attack.

She sighed with relief, then bit her lower lip in sudden worry. This kind of reaction - a general alert and scrambling Aurors and Hit-Wizards - could only have two possible causes. And since she was currently here, that left Crouch.

The cacophony of people yelling at each other suddenly ceased, and she could focus on one voice. “...to Bones Manor. The wards are holding the Fiendfyre at bay - for now. We’ll support the Aurors engaging the attackers. Auror Potter is in charge of the operation, but I’ll be giving you your orders. Move!”

She gasped. Harry - and Ron - would be facing Crouch again. And Fiendfyre. If she hurried, she could help… She clenched her teeth. She didn’t know exactly where Bones Manor was located, just that it was somewhere in Oxfordshire - Harry had mentioned that once. And even if she knew where it was and managed to reach it - what could she do? She was a thief, not an Auror. And her mere presence would do more harm than good, given her reputation - and put her at considerable risk.

She briefly closed her eyes, hating herself, as she heard the Hit-Wizards and Aurors rush towards the fireplaces. She couldn’t help Harry.

But she could continue the heist. Especially since if she didn’t, her plans would be ruined. Gritting her teeth, she checked the stairs, then ended the Supersensory Charm and sneaked downstairs, towards the Floo Network Authority.

The attack on Bones Manor meant that instead of a lone employee ready to react to a problem in the middle of the night, there would be several employees checking the connection to the manor and the whole network. That would complicate matters. On the other hand, the employees would be quite distracted.

She bared her teeth - she hadn’t come this far to let a bunch of maintenance wizards scare her off. Disillusioned, she approached the door and studied the spells on it - or, as it turned out, the lack of spells on it. A Silencing Charm, a Dirt-Repelling Charm that looked rather sloppily cast and an Alarm Charm most likely serving to alert whoever was on night duty that a visitor had arrived.

It was child’s play to defuse the Alarm Charm and then drill a small hole in the lower part of the door for her periscope. No one was watching the door - she didn’t see anyone in the entrance area. Good.

Hermione quickly widened the hole in the lower part of the door with a small saw until it was large enough for a lithe cat. A quick change and squeeze later, she was inside the office, darting behind the closest desk.

There, safely hidden from view, she changed back, vanished the sawdust - she needed to enchant her tools to do that automatically - and repaired the hole with a quick Mending Charm.

Another Supersensory Charm told her that no one had noticed her and that everyone was focused on re-opening the connection to Bones Manor - even though they couldn’t do anything about the Anti-Floo-travel Jinxes from here. Perfect.

She disillusioned herself and silently made her way to the room at the back of the office area - the centre of the Floo Network Authority: the big map, carved into gleaming marble, representing Wizarding Britain’s Floo Network. Runes covered the edges - not unlike on the Pensieve at home - and delicate lines glowed. Those would be the active connections, or so it seemed - some lit up with a flash for a moment, others glowed steadily but not as brightly. Floo transports and Floo calls, she presumed.

Two wizards and two witches were staring at a blinking spot - Bones Manor, unless another Floo connection in Oxfordshire was currently being blocked. She made a mental note of the location - just in case; Bones wasn’t on her list - then looked for the spots indicating the Parkinson and Malfoy Manors. Cumberland and Wiltshire, respectively. The miniature manors rising from the map were barely visible, but she managed to find them.

Then she took a step back and pondered the situation. The four Ministry employees did look quite focused on their task. They wouldn’t notice a few charms added to the map. Or so she thought.

But she would have to cast silently, and the charms were rather complex - whoever had invented them hadn’t spent much time refining them, in her opinion. Mr Fletcher hadn’t said who had taught them to him, but she suspected it had been Dumbledore; for a thief such as herself, these charms were very situational, but they would have been invaluable for a spy - say, for the Order of the Phoenix. Not that she would press her mentor, of course.

She shook her head. She had a task to do. Taking a few deep breaths - silently, of course, she raised her wand and pointed it at the map, then started to weave it in a complicated pattern. And hoped that the spells on the map hadn’t been changed in the past twenty years.

They hadn’t, she found a minute later, fighting the urge to wipe sweat from her face - her mask’s spells were taking care of that. No alert, no sudden glowing indicated her addition of a special listening charm to the spells on the marble. Smiling, she repeated the spell on the representation of Malfoy Manor.

That left the more complex sound-altering charm. Biting her lower lip, she went over the motions in her head. Just in case. Then she started casting.

She took her time, moving her wand very carefully - casting silently meant she didn’t have to time the movements to the incantation, but any minor mistake would affect the results to a much greater degree than when casting normally.

When she finished the spell without mishap two minutes later, she shivered with relief and leaned against the wall for a moment. Then she smiled. She had done it - now all that was left was to leave the same way she had entered: gracefully and without anyone realising she had ever been here.

She left the offices the same way she had entered them - she still didn’t want to risk opening the door, despite that being much faster - then readjusted the Alarm Charm on the door. The main stairs would be too dangerous, she decided - Aurors and Hit-Wizards might still be arriving, to relieve or reinforce others, and there might also be messengers.

She’d take the service stairway instead.

*****​

Oxfordshire, Bones Manor, January 17th, 1999

“Bloody Hell! Crouch’s been busy!”

Harry Potter nodded in agreement with Ron’s outburst. Three Fiendfyre blazes surrounded the Bones Manor, and they were spreading rapidly - soon they would form one big conflagration. And the wards of the manor wouldn’t withstand that - they wouldn’t last much longer even if the Fiendfyre stopped growing, or so he thought.

He muttered a curse of his own under his breath - as the Auror in charge, he had to appear confident - and addressed the Aurors and Hit-Wizards on site. “Status report!” he barked.

Most of them jerked. One Auror - Smith, Harry thought - answered: “They keep recasting the Anti-Apparition and Anti-Portkey Jinxes, so the Boneses are trapped in the manor.”

Which meant that the attacker was still around. They should have spread out and started looking for them already. Harry clenched his teeth - this wasn’t the time to snap at them. “Everyone, cast a Human-presence-revealing Charm! Then spread out - on brooms - and find the dark wizard. He has to be in range of the manor! Brown, you and Wilkinson keep dispelling the Jinxes!” He took a deep breath - the Bubble-Head Charm kept the stench of the fires away - and added: “I’ll keep the fire at bay until the Boneses are safe.”

“And I’ll watch your back,” Ron added.

Harry nodded. Crouch would know that he couldn’t stay hidden and keep casting the jinxes. So this had to be a ruse - or a feint. And since the Prophet had covered Harry and Ron’s actions in the previous clashes with Crouch extensively, the Death Eater would be aware of who had killed his accomplices and dealt with the Fiendfyre. Which meant that this was a trap for them in particular.

He sneered, baring his teeth as he rushed towards the closest blaze and drew the Elder Wand. They’d turn it into a trap for Crouch.

But holding the cursed fire at bay turned out to be more difficult than he had expected. It was already at the wardline, which meant that Harry had to conjure stone walls inside the flames. That meant they were quickly consumed. And he had to conjure walls between himself and the flames, to protect himself and keep the cursed fire from spreading even further.

Which meant that despite the Elder Wand’s power, it was impossible. The best he was able to manage was to slow down the spread of the fire and keep some of the pressure off the manor’s wards. He wouldn’t be able to save the manor. Or much of the lands around it. All he could hope for was to buy enough time for the rest of the force to find Crouch and force him to stop recasting the jinxes that kept the Bones locked inside their manor. Or hope that Crouch took the bait and came after him.

Harry was about to conjure another wall between the cursed fire and himself when the ground near him exploded. His Shield Charm took the brunt of the blast, though, and held, but he was still pushed to the side, which almost ruined his spell-casting.

“We’re under attack!” he heard Ron’s voice both through his badge and from his left.

He glanced up - there was a marker floating twenty yards above him. Ron was already casting, and two red spells flew towards the marker. One hit a shield - Harry caught a glimpse of the flashing lights as it shattered before he sent a Piercing Curse upwards himself.

That one missed, as did his follow-up Bludgeoning Curse, and then he had to conjure another wall since the one he had just created was crumbling to ashes already - far more quickly than before.

And the fire had grown in size - wide enough to start enveloping his wall. He took a few steps to the side, his Shield Charm weathering another, not quite so close, Blasting Curse, and conjured two more walls.

That bought him a few more seconds. He whirled round and kept moving, raising his wand to support Ron, who was sending curse after curse at the still disillusioned Crouch. They had to take him out quickly before the Fiendfyre grew out of control and consumed everyone and everything around it.

Harry quickly cast two Cutting Curses, but Crouch was flying erratically, and both missed. Aurors and Hit-Wizards started to converge on them - finally! - and more spells flew at the Death Eater. They weren’t well-aimed, though, and Harry didn’t see any hits.

He had to conjure more walls. He could feel the heat now - he needed to retreat further. He flicked his wand, halting the fire for another few seconds, then ducked when the fire roared up behind the wall - and grew in size.

He knew what that meant: the wards had fallen and the cursed fire was ravaging Bones Manor. He tapped his badge. “As soon as the Boneses are safe, cover the area in Anti-Apparition Jinxes to stop Crouch from escaping!”

Harry ignored the idiot asking if the family was safe already - someone would report it as soon as they knew - and glanced at Crouch, who was flying above and between the roaring flames. Was he crazy? Was that why he hadn’t fled already and, instead, kept sending badly aimed curses at Harry and Ron?

Badly-aimed curses… and mostly Blasting Curses. Harry muttered another curse just as Ron finally hit the disillusioned attacker with a Bludgeoning Curse that sent the marker tumbling down - towards the conflagration.

Harry snapped his wand up. “Accio Death Eater robes!”

The marker flew towards him, barely missing the flames reaching for it, and slammed into the ground a yard away.

“Finite Incantatem!”

A wizard in smouldering Death Eater robes appeared. He wasn’t moving. Harry stunned him anyway - twice.

“Harry! Watch out!”

His last wall had crumbled, and the fire was racing towards him. A flick of his wand conjured a new stone wall in its path, and the flames crashed into it as if they were a tidal wave, quickly overwhelming it.

But another wall appeared, blocking the fire - Ron’s work. And more walls appeared - solid ones. Followed by tons of sand falling onto the flames - the Unspeakables had finally arrived.

Some Aurors cheered, but Harry summoned the Death Eater again. The man’s robes were still smoking but there wasn’t any Fiendfyre on him. His chest was caved in, though - and there was blood seeping through the fabric.

“That was too easy,” Ron said.

Harry pulled the mask off. Broken eyes stared into the smoke-covered night sky. The wizard was dead.

And it wasn’t Crouch.

*****​

London, Ministry of Magic, January 17th, 1999

As she went up the service stairs, Hermione Granger was tempted to take a detour on her way out of the Ministry. It wouldn’t take that long to break into Undersecretary Umbridge’s office, and the documents and whatever else Hermione found in there might be useful in dealing with the bigoted witch. Hermione hadn’t forgotten that Umbridge had tried to send her to Azkaban, after all. And the ugly witch was also doing all she could to oppose Sirius’s proposals in the Wizengamot, so if she were to be forced out of office - or sent to Azkaban herself, see how she liked it! - that would be one less obstacle to reforming Wizarding Britain.

She was very tempted, but she wouldn’t do it. She was already a little behind schedule, and Umbridge could be dealt with easily once Sirius controlled the Wizengamot. It wasn’t as if her efforts were very effective, anyway, thanks to Sirius’s gold.

Still, if she had the time… Hermione bared her teeth at that thought.

She reached the flight before the Atrium and cast a Supersensory Charm. Several people were talking - the guards at the fireplace, she realised. There weren’t many Aurors and Hit-Wizards around, so it was easier to follow what they were saying. It seemed that Bones and her niece had managed to flee their manor shortly before it was consumed by Fiendfyre, and the battle was still going on.

Which meant Harry and Ron were still fighting. Still in danger. She pressed her lips together. She couldn’t do anything for them. She had to trust that they would survive. And she had to get past the guard at the entrance of the service stairway. That would be tricky. She could change to defeat a Human-presence-revealing Spell, but even a graceful cat could be spotted.

But she didn’t have the time to go through a wall a floor above, and going down and taking the main stairs would be even more dangerous. Besides, who’d suspect a beautiful cat like her?

She changed and strolled up the last flight of stairs as if she had every right to be here. Which she had since no one had been able to stop her. Now she just had to slip past the guard… who wasn’t present. But there should be a guard!

She moved forward and sniffed the ground. Her sense of smell wasn’t as good as a dog’s - the dumb animals needed good noses to compensate for their lack of brains - but it smelled as if there had been a guard here earlier. Cheap perfume. But there should be a guard here - that was standard procedure.

Perhaps they had called the guard away. It was possible - this was an important post, and close enough to support the guards in the Atrium, but it wasn’t truly essential. But… She turned her head and looked at the next flight of stairs. It led up to the attic, where most of the Air-Cleaning and Air-Refreshing Charms were maintained. And other, similar charms. She had been there once before, during Voldemort’s attack on the Ministry. And she had caught a Death Eater trying to commit sabotage there.

Crouch wouldn’t try to repeat a failed plan, would he? He was attacking Bones Manor. Fighting Harry. Could he have found an accomplice? Unlikely.

She glanced at the corner. She should be sneaking out, and then up the main stairs, towards the secret tunnel. Use the opportunity generated by Crouch’s attack to get away clean.

But she couldn’t leave while someone might be preparing a trap or attack in the attic. Hissing with frustration, she started to go up the stairs. Towards the attic.

A flight below the entrance, she changed back and activated the spells on her mask to check for protections on the door - the Ministry might have added some spells in the years since she had left the Death Eater there. They might have forgone that, though, because protections made maintenance more complicated since employees had to pass through them.

There were indeed spells on the door - an Alarm Charm and a Locking Charm. But she couldn’t see any detection spells linked to them to let anyone with the right passphrase or item pass. Which meant only the caster could pass through them without triggering the alarm.

She drew a slow breath through clenched teeth. There was no way a Ministry employee would do this. There was an intruder in the attic. A saboteur. She sneered. She had dealt with those before. And the spells on the door wouldn’t stop her for long.

She aimed her wand at the door, then reconsidered. This wasn’t like when Voldemort had attacked. There wouldn’t be a thorough search of the Ministry for traitors and spies. If she stunned and bound the saboteur, he might not be found before the spells wore off. Or he might be able to claim he was attacked by a thief - which would be the truth anyway.

And she couldn’t alert the Aurors in the Atrium; not without giving away her presence and ruining the entire point of the heist - they’d search the Ministry to find out what she had been doing. She bit her lower lip. There had to be a way to stop this Death Eater saboteur without ruining her plans. She needed an excuse, something that would explain her presence. But she didn’t have the time for that, not when…

She grinned as the solution came to her. It was risky. Mr Fletcher would call it reckless. But it would stop whatever the saboteur was doing and cover up what she had been doing here.

She changed and raced down the stairs, stopping on the Atrium floor. After changing back, she removed her mask and quickly transfigured her suit into the dark brown robes of a Ministry maintenance employee. She left her wig on and slipped conjured inserts into her mouth. Coupled with the fake tan of her skin, that should disguise her enough.

Then she rushed into the Atrium, towards the two guards there. “Hey! Hey!” she called, waving. They drew their wands but didn’t cast at her. She didn’t give them a chance to ask questions and started talking before she reached them. “I was told to fix the Air-Refreshing Charms for the Undersecretary’s office, even though it’s night-time and she shouldn’t be working now. But when I went up, the guard who should have let me past wasn’t there, and the door to the attic was locked - it’s not supposed to be locked.” She swallowed. “Someone must be in there - but I’m the only one on duty. There shouldn’t be anyone in there. And where’s the guard?”

The two guards looked at each other. “Bloody hell!” the witch in charge - she was an Auror - swore. “If we have another intruder in the attic… Go down to Auror Headquarters, and tell them we have a possible intruder in the attic. We need all the wands they can spare!” she told the Hit-Wizard with her. “I’ll secure the stairs!”

“I’ll tell the Undersecretary so she can evacuate!” Hermione yelled. She turned around before the Auror could say anything else and started running towards the stairs right after the Hit-Wizard.

She kept pace until they reached the floor above the Auror Office, whereupon she ducked into the next alcove and changed, hiding behind a flower pot. Less than a minute later, a dozen Aurors, Hit-Wizards and mercenaries rushed past her towards the Atrium.

Which meant the Auror Office would be almost empty.

*****​

Oxfordshire, Bones Manor, January 17th, 1999

Harry Potter was staring at the dead wizard. It wasn’t Crouch. That explained the rather common curses the man had used - Crouch would have used more exotic, and darker, curses. And he wouldn’t have missed so often.

“Could be Polyjuice,” Ron said.

Harry shook his head. “Possible, but I don’t think so.” Why would Crouch have used such a disguise if he was wearing his Death Eater robes and mask?

“Potter! What are you doing, lollygagging? There’s Fiendfyre to contain!”

Harry rolled his eyes as he turned to face Dawlish. “The Unspeakables have that under control.” They should have, at least - it wasn’t as if they hadn’t gotten lots of practice thanks to Crouch. “But this isn’t Crouch, which means he’s doing something else while we’re gathered here.”

To his credit, Dawlish didn’t contest that. He cursed instead. “Merlin’s arse! He could be anywhere!”

Harry couldn’t spot Bathilda. He hoped the witch was safe. Dawlish would have said something if she had been hurt, wouldn’t he? He shook his head. “This was a distraction, which means he needed a lot of us here. He wouldn’t have done that for just any attack. And we’d have been alerted if he had attacked Diagon Alley, Hogsmeade or Hogwarts.”

“He’s doing something sneaky, then,” Ron said.

Harry nodded. And there was one target that would require such tactics. Especially on a Sunday. “The Ministry.”

Dawlish cursed again.

Harry touched his badge. “Potter here. Tonks, keep a dozen wands here to support and protect the Unspeakables. Everyone else, return to the Ministry at once - we might be under attack.”

He was about to apparate when he heard Scrimgeour through his badge: “Hold that. What’s going on?”

Harry clenched his teeth. “The Death Eater wasn’t Crouch. This might be a distraction - and the Ministry’s the obvious target.” And even if it wasn’t, it was the logical rally point - they would be able to react without delay if they were gathered there.

“Alright. Proceed.” Scrimgeour sounded slightly annoyed.

Harry didn’t care. What counted was catching Crouch. “Be ready to enter combat when you apparate!” he ordered through his badge. Then he focused and apparated.

He appeared in the designated arrival area in the Atrium and instantly moved away, towards the Thief’s Downfall. It was guarded by two mercenaries - something was wrong. There should be an Auror or Hit-Wizard in charge. “Report!” he bellowed, with Ron at his side as more Aurors and Hit-Wizards arrived.

“There’s an intruder in the attic!” one of the mercenaries, a witch, replied. “Everyone but us went up to arrest them.”

Everyone? That would have been a dozen Aurors and Hit-Wizards, at least - it depended on how many off-duty wands had been alerted and come in. “When was that?” Harry asked as he started towards the hallway leading to the service stairway.

“A minute or two ago,” the witch answered. “At most.”

They had arrived in time, then. Harry smiled and turned to give orders to the dozen Aurors and Hit-Wizards behind them.

Before he could say anything, though, an explosion blew out part of the wall on the second floor of the Atrium. Stones, mortar and what looked like a body crashed to the floor. A grey-robed body.

There was movement on the balustrades, too - Harry could see red robes running. Away from the service stairs. And he heard a buzzing sound growing louder and louder.

Then a dark cloud billowed out of the hole in the wall and came down upon them. Harry gasped when he realised what it was - a gigantic swarm of bugs.

“Mosquitoes!” he heard Ron yell, right before the swarm enveloped them.

Harry couldn’t help but flinch as thousands of insects slammed into his Shield Charm and obscured his vision. At least his shield was holding. He flicked his wand - the Elder Wand - and water shot out of its tip, blasting a clear path through the mosquitoes. He turned and let the water wash over the other Aurors as Ron followed his example. The stream of water bowled over a Hit-Wizard, but the others stood their ground.

A few moments later the swarm had been pushed back from the Atrium and visibility had been restored - mostly. “Cover the second floor!” Harry yelled, moving towards the service stairs with Ron.

He had barely taken a few steps when screaming from behind them made him stop and whirl round. His eyes widened. One of the Aurors - Cumberland, Harry thought - was on his knees, weakly flailing as red pustules sprouted all over his exposed skin. In moments, they had grown large enough to cover all his skin - and they kept growing, reaching the size of apples.

An instant later, they burst, showering the area and another Auror - Smith - who had bent down to help Cumberland, with blood. As Smith screamed in horror, Harry stared at Cumberland. Of the man’s skin, only a few strips were left, exposing the dried remains of his flesh. Drained of all blood, Harry realised.

“Blood Magic,” he muttered.

Smith was still screaming, staring at her blood-covered robes and hands. Before Harry could snap at her, she suddenly started coughing, vomiting blood. She tried to say something, but the only sound she managed was a gurgling, choking sound before she toppled over.

Harry took a few steps back. “Don’t touch the blood!” he yelled. “Keep your Shield Charms up!”

A Hit-Wizard started coughing. His Shield Charm was still up. Harry saw him grab something from his pocket - a bezoar - and swallow it. But it didn’t help - the man kept coughing, blood running down the front of his grey robes. A moment later, he, too, fell.

The Hit-Wizard hadn’t touched the blood. And others had been closer to Cumberland and Smith. That meant… “Keep your Bubble-Head Charms up as well!” Harry yelled, flicking his wand to cast a quick Air-Cleaning Charm.

“The Aurors and Hit-Wizards on the balustrade are dead.” Ron pointed at the second floor. Blood was dripping from a crack in the railing.

And Harry could see another swarm disappear into the main stairway. Towards the Ministry’s main floors.

*****​

London, Ministry of Magic, January 17th, 1999

Hermione Granger grinned behind her mask as she flicked her wand and made a stack of parchment, four quills and two bottles of enchanted ink float towards her. A moment later, everything disappeared into her enchanted pocket, joining the shrunken filing cabinets, chairs and other assorted furniture in Dawlish’s office. That only left the two now bare desks. And the carpet and the pictures on the wall. A few more Levitation and Shrinking Charms later, the office of that stupid oaf was stripped completely bare.

She eyed the wall, bereft of any decoration. Perhaps she should add a taunting message? If only she had a calling card. Or at least an elegant nom de guerre. Well, she would have one if her friends had any taste and hadn’t rejected all her proposed names.

She frowned. She would have to settle for having looted Dawlish’s office of everything in it - it was sort of her calling card, anyway.

Nodding, she turned and opened the door slightly to check whether the main part of the Auror Office - the bullpen, Harry sometimes called it - was still deserted. It was. Thirty seconds later, she was on the stairs, moving towards the Atrium.

One floor below the Atrium, she suddenly heard a buzzing noise. A very loud noise. And screams. A moment later, a dark cloud - a swarm of insects! - filled the stairs above her and billowed towards her.

She barely managed to cast a Shield Charm before the swarm reached her and countless insects - mosquitoes - flattened themselves against her spell. She took a few deep breaths - the spells on her mask took care of the air - then flicked her wand to dispel the animals.

It didn’t work. Either they weren’t conjured or transfigured - and where would you get such enormous numbers of mosquitoes? - or she wasn’t skilled enough. Baring her teeth, she raised her wand again. It didn’t matter - she had other ways to deal with this.

A swish of her wand conjured a mass of powder. A flick set it on fire. She heard dozens of insects burn, causing a crackling noise. Another swish, and more powder appeared, further up the stairs. And ignited.

A moment later, fake Fiendfyre rushed up the stairs, consuming the cloud of mosquitoes in seconds. She hesitated a moment, then turned and sent more flames down the stairs before rushing upwards. She had to hurry now since whoever was in the Atrium would have noticed that - and would know she was here.

Fake Fiendfyre was, after all, also a sort of calling card of hers.

*****​

Harry Potter’s eyes widened when he saw Fiendfyre shoot out of the entrance to the main staircase - from below. Crouch must have gotten past them, and set the Ministry on fire! “Watch out!” he yelled, raising his wand to conjure a wall to contain the cursed flames - if they were quick enough, they might save part of the building.

Then the flames flickered out. He blinked. There was plenty of material in the entrance to fuel the fire, so… “Fake Fiendfyre!” he exclaimed. The thieves! What were they doing here?

“I’m casting Mosquito-repelling Charms,” Ron yelled, joining him. “It’ll keep the bloodsuckers away even without a Shield Charm, but I’ll need a lot of them to seal the Atrium!”

And more mosquitoes already started to fill the Atrium again - Harry saw a cloud of them enter the staircase before the rest descended upon his force, only to part and recoil when they hit Ron’s spells.

Then green fire shot out of staircase again, frying the bugs in the area - he saw the brief flash of light. His own Water-Making Spell cleared a section of the Atrium as well, if not quite as fast or efficiently. But it allowed Ron to cover more ground with his charms.

“Luna will be thrilled to know that her spell works so well,” his friend said with a fierce grin.

“Sirius will pay for her next expedition,” Harry replied as he conjured a wall to seal off part of the balustrade. That would channel the mosquitoes and make it easier to deal with them.

They moved ahead, followed - slightly reluctantly - by the rest of their group. Once more, green fire filled the staircase.

“Fiendfyre!” Harry heard someone panic behind him.

“It’s not Fiendfyre,” he snapped. “And it’s burning the insects!”

“But…”

A blast that tore a new hole into the second floor of the Atrium shut the complainer - he had to be a Hit-Wizard since Harry didn’t know him - up. Crouch was still trying to flood the Atrium.

But the mosquitoes descending on them were held back by Ron’s charms, then incinerated by green flames. Harry couldn’t help but shudder - up close, it looked very convincing. But he had seen where the flames had started and where they ended, and that meant… he turned and stared at the entrance to the main stairs. The thief had to be standing right there, to have a line of sight for that last spell. A step closer, he saw the marker of his Human-presence-revealing Spell appear, right where he had expected it.

Harry hesitated a moment. It was against regulations. It was against the law. He hated to do it. But it had to be done. “Night Nargle! Keep the stairs and Atrium clear of mosquitoes! We’ll get Crouch!”

“What?” Ron muttered next to him. Harry ignored him, as he ignored the comments from the rest of their force.

In the middle of the entrance, the thief appeared. It was her - the witch in the leather suit, and the stripes - whiskers, he realised - on her black mask.

And she nodded at him.

*****​

Hermione Granger knew she didn’t have to end her Disillusionment Charm. She could have simply answered Harry in her altered voice - if she were able to say something, anything, that wouldn’t ruin her cover. Seeing Harry there, about to charge into those swarms of mosquitoes to fight Crouch… it was all she could do not to run over and hug him or follow him as he and Ron led the rest of the Aurors off.

She shuddered as they turned the corner and ran up the stairs, biting her lower lip to keep from crying out. Dear Lord, she hated this. Even though she knew she wouldn’t be of any help - she wasn’t an Auror or Hit-Wizard, they didn’t trust her and she hadn’t trained to fight dark wizards with Aurors.

Taking a deep, shuddering breath, she forced herself to focus on her task. Which, apparently, was pest control. A cloud of mosquitoes was growing denser in the corner near the service stairs - held back by spells, she noticed. She flicked her wand and reduced them to cinders with another cascade of fake Fiendfyre.

Then she noticed the bodies in the Atrium. What was left of them, to be more precise. She felt nauseated at the horrible sight. If even one of the mosquitoes bit her... they had to be even more dangerous than she had assumed, to do this. Probably enchanted… no, to enchant so many animals individually would have been impossible. And there was no way to enchant them en masse. At least as far as she knew.

But she couldn’t dwell on that, though. Not now. Harry was counting on her. She filled the rest of the Atrium with her fire, then turned to face the hallway leading upstairs. She could stay here and protect the main stairs. No insects would get past her. But more Aurors would arrive - and they wouldn’t know about Harry’s offer. Nor could she expect them to uphold this ‘truce’ even if they knew.

No, she had to move and deal with the mosquitoes at the same time. That meant stopping the insects from entering the Atrium or the main stairways. Harry and the others had taken the service staircase, so that would be covered.

More mosquitoes were flying into the Atrium once more. She took care of them, then tapped her mask and studied the second floor above her. There had to be… there! A gap in the wall. She flinched at the flashes of light she saw through the hole - signs of fighting - and filled it with conjured stone, then mended the wall. And hoped that no one would blow it open again.

That left the main staircase and the second floor of the Atrium - the balustrades. Well, she needed to get up there, anyway, to get away. And she needed to exterminate every mosquito in the area anyway, or she wouldn’t be able to safely change into a cat to sneak out. Though the irony of a thief helping to save the Ministry wasn’t lost on her.

Baring her teeth, she led with her wand, incinerating a few hundred stragglers on the way up.

*****​

“Brandon, seal up the staircase below us!” Harry Potter ordered as he took a step forward, his wand pointed up at the first flight of the service staircase. “Everyone else, follow me - we’ll get that Death Eater!”

He cast another Water-Making Spell to clear the stairs of mosquitoes, then rushed up them. As soon as he turned the corner, he stopped. Holes littered the walls of this flight - and mosquitoes rushed through them, towards the Atrium. He flicked his wand, conjuring a solid stone wall along the wrecked wall. That stopped the insects - but redirected them towards him and his group.

He took a deep breath, hoping his Shield Charm would hold, when Ron pressed himself next to him, his wand pointed up.

“Vallum Culicum!”

The mosquitoes stopped as if smashing into an invisible wall - Ron’s charm held them back - and quickly started to fill the staircase, forming an almost solid mass of buzzing, squirming insects.

“Merlin’s arse!” someone cursed behind Harry.

“My charm won’t hold them back for long - not if the sheer weight of them pushes them down!” Ron snapped.

“Aguamenti!” Harry yelled - even with the Elder Wand, every little bit helped. A stream of water shot towards the mass of bugs as if the wand were a firehose. The water cut through the swarm, opening holes which quickly closed - but it pushed the insects back. For now.

“He can’t have unlimited numbers of them!” Ron yelled. “They’re not transfigured or conjured, and you can’t duplicate living animals! He must have bred them!”

So it was a question of who ran out first - Crouch of mosquitoes or them of ways to keep them away and kill them. Not odds Harry liked. Not against Crouch. And not in a narrow staircase.

He kept the spell going, gritting his teeth at the effort it cost him, slowly moving his wand back and forth, up and down, to cover the entire space in front of them. Water was running down the stairs now, inches deep and carrying thousands of dead insects. And rising. If the water rose even higher, and spilt into their boots, with those deadly insects…

“We’re running out of time!” Harry muttered. “Ron, cast a wall as soon as I drop the spell.”

“Alright. On three.”

“One. Two. Three!” Harry flicked his wand, ending the spell, and a moment later, a wall appeared in front of him, sealing off the staircase.

He took a deep breath. “Fall back!” he yelled, looking at the ceiling. “He won’t stay idle!”

“Need to smoke him out,” Ron said. “Before he drops the ceiling on us.”

“Merlin’s beard! We can’t stay here!”

Harry ignored the yell from behind them and kept his eyes on the ceiling and the walls. “Or when he’s dropping the ceiling on us,” he said with bared teeth. He quickly turned his head, staring at the two Hit-Wizards in the back. “You! Get out and start repairing the wall between the Atrium and us!”

They hesitated. “Ah…”

“Bloody Hit-Wizards,” Ron muttered. “Can’t do anything but fight.”

Harry swallowed his own curse and addressed the two Aurors left with them. “Ben, Mary-Anne - you do it.” At least Aurors could be trusted to know such spells.

The two almost bowled the Hit-Wizards over in their haste to get out.

Harry turned his attention back to watching the staircase - just in time to see it blow up. The explosion drove him and Ron back a few steps, but their shields held. But then fragments of wood and stone rained down on them. Followed by a cloud of mosquitoes. As soon as their shields shattered, the insects would cover them, and it would be over.

As Ron cast his Insect-Repelling Charm again - it wouldn’t be enough, Harry knew - he flicked his wand. Fiendfyre would cleanse the entire area… No! He managed to conjure an angled wall instead, stopping the avalanche.

“Fall back!” Harry yelled again. “Out!”

He pushed a frozen Hit-Wizard out of the service stairs, sending the witch tumbling to the floor, then whirled around, Ron at his side.

“We have to smoke him out,” Ron repeated. “We can’t leave him up there for much longer.”

Harry nodded. Sooner or later, Crouch would use Fiendfyre as well, Harry knew. But they couldn’t use the staircase to attack - and going in through the ceiling would allow Crouch to be ready for them. What could they do?

Fiendfyre would do the job… He shook his head and gripped his wand more tightly. No. He couldn’t unleash that. But he had to do something.

He caught movement behind him and whirled around. The thief was there, back at the main stairs, watching them. For a moment, she seemed frozen.

“The Atrium’s clear,” she said - sounding, oddly, as if she were apologising. She was also ignoring the wands the two Hit-Wizards aimed at her.

He wondered what she was doing here. Why hadn’t she fled? This wasn’t her fight. So why… His eyes widened as he found the solution. “Night Nargle!”

She jerked. “That’s not my name!”

He ignored that. “We’ll blow up the ceiling above us. You’ll flood the area with your fake Fiendfyre!” That would distract Crouch enough to allow them to charge him.

For a moment, she tensed. Then she nodded.

“Mount your brooms!” Harry ordered, pulling out his own and aiming his wand at the ceiling. The attic’s corner would be directly above them.

“Ready!” Ron said a moment after Harry had mounted his Firebolt.

The two Hit-Wizards took a few seconds longer. “Ready.” “Ready.”

“Ready.” That was the thief - but, as a glance told Harry, she wasn’t on a broom.

It didn’t matter. All she had to do was cast her fake Fiendfyre.

“On three!” Harry said. “One. Two. Three!”

His and Ron’s Blasting Curses tore up the ceiling. Two more curses hit it a fraction of a second later. And then green fire shot through the cloud of dust left by the curses.

Harry was already in the air, his Shield Charm deflecting both stone fragments and the green fire surrounding him. He thought he heard a scream when he passed through the cloud. Then he was in the attic, pulling hard on the shaft of his Firebolt to avoid crashing into the ceiling.

There was Crouch! The man - he didn’t look like Crouch, probably Polyjuice Potion - was stumbling inside the green fire, waving his wand. Harry clenched his teeth and aimed his wand, accelerating. He saw the man’s eyes widen - he must have realised the fire was fake - and move his wand to aim at Harry.

But he wasn’t quick enough. Harry ploughed into him, both their Shield Charms shattering on impact, and then the tip of the shaft of his broom hit Crouch in the stomach with the full force of his accelerating Firebolt, only the safety charms on the broom preventing it from impaling him, before Harry’s shoulder slammed into Crouch’s face as he let go of the Firebolt and let his momentum carry him onwards.

The two of them slammed into the wall behind Crouch. The man’s head was thrown back and hit the stone with a crack before they fell to the floor. The impact knocked the breath out of Harry, but he rolled over his shoulder, ignoring the pain that caused, and came up casting, slashing his wand down. His Cutting Curse sliced off Crouch’s hand and wand before the dazed Death Eater could react.

A Stunner cut off the man’s scream, and three Bone-Breaking Curses ensured that he wouldn’t get up and do anything any time soon.

Panting, Harry recast his Shield Charm as he turned around. The dust was still settling so he couldn’t see far, but Ron was there, a few yards away.

“I’ve got his trunk sealed and the insects contained,” his friend reported, pointing at a chest nearby. He, too, was protected by a Shield Charm, though.

The two Hit-Wizards were still on their brooms, just now coming out of the dust cloud. “We saw no other enemies,” one of them belatedly reported.

Harry cast a Full Body-Binding Curse on their prisoner for good measure, then rushed back to the hole in the floor. A glance down filled him with both disappointment and relief.

The thief was gone.

*****​

 

Chapter 59: Debriefing

London, Ministry of Magic, January 18th, 1999

“Brocktuckle! Where have you been? It’s almost noon!”

Zacharias Browtuckle refrained from rolling his eyes as he approached his superior. Javier Rosier was the nephew of the Head of the Rosier family but expected everyone to treat him as if he were the heir. And he never got Zacharias’s name right. “I had the Sunday shift, Mr Rosier,” Zacharias said. “I was in the office until two in the morning.”

“But you had the regular shift today, and that starts at eight, not ten!”

“I did two hours of overtime,” Zacharias started to say.

Rosier cut him off. “I don’t want to hear it! It was an emergency - everyone is expected to do overtime when that happens! We, Britain, depend on the Floo Network - especially in an emergency! You should have been here at eight o’clock sharp!”

Zacharias swallowed his retort - he had almost died last night! If one of those cursed mosquitoes had managed to get into their offices… “Yes, sir,” he snapped instead. Then he looked around. “Where are the rest of the shift?” They hadn’t been on duty last night!

“They’re sick,” Rosier answered. “I’ve called Jenkins and Wilson, but they didn’t answer the Floo. Bloody slackers!”

Zacharias coughed. Sick? More likely, they were too afraid to come to work. “Wilson mentioned that she’d be visiting her mother over the weekend.” And if Jenkins’s tales about his amorous exploits were to be believed he’d be waking up in a stranger’s bed right about now.

Rosier sneered. “And, of course, her mother has no Floo connection! Muggleborns!” he added in a low voice.

Zacharias nodded in agreement. It was safer than saying anything. “So there’s no one else coming?”

“No,” Rosier growled. “This wouldn’t have happened if we had more purebloods of good families in the department.”

Zacharias didn’t point out that the purebloods of good families were currently ‘sick’ and would probably be sick for a few more days, until they were certain that there was no danger any more. Merlin’s beard, he would be ‘sick’ as well if he didn’t know it would land him in St Mungo’s since he had been present during an attack with unknown curses… “I’ll handle the main board, then,” he said. It would be tough, but doable - as long as there was no trouble. All he had to do was watch out for connections that didn’t work as they should.

Rosier shook his head. “No. I’ll handle it. You need to go over the charms.”

“What?” Zacharias stared at him. “Did anything fail while I was away?”

“The night shift didn’t report anything when I arrived today,” Rosier said. “But the Aurors want us to check if anything is amiss since we had two intruders in the Ministry last night.”

“Two? I thought there was only one?” Zacharias blurted out.

Rosier shook his head and leaned forward, lowering his voice. “No, the Night Nargles broke into the Ministry as well. My cousin told me - he’s a Hit-Wizard. So the DMLE wants every department to run a full inventory and check all their spells.”

“A full inventory? What do they think - that thieves who empty manor vaults would steal our office supplies?” Zacharias scoffed. They didn’t even have an inventory, anyway - at least not one that had been updated in the last few decades, as far as he knew. Half his colleagues also brought their own chairs and quills. Whoever did the inventory would have to report a lot of missing things.

Rosier shrugged. “Jenkins and Wilson can do that,” he said with a sneer. “But we need to check the map for any tampering.”

“I was at the map the entire time!” Zacharias protested. “With Smith, Fawley and Davis! It’s impossible for anyone to have snuck in and cast a spell on it!”

Rosier shrugged again. “I know that, but you know the Aurors. They already checked the office for dark curses. Go and check the charms.”

This time, Zacharias rolled his eyes. Those bloody Aurors were all paranoid - like that ugly relic with the enchanted eye. And arrogant - did they think everyone else was incompetent? They had no idea about the Floo Network, much less the map! If they had, they would be able to do the checking themselves.

He clenched his teeth as he entered the map room. Stupid Aurors!

“Ah, finally!” Edgecombe, the witch on duty greeted him. “My shift ended two hours ago, but Rosier wouldn’t let me go!”

“And you can’t leave yet,” Zacharias told her. “I have to check all the charms. Rosier will relieve you.”

“What?” She gasped. “It’s already past ten o’clock!”

Zacharias shrugged. “Blame the Auror Office - they want us to thoroughly check all the charms, and I’m the only one of my shift who isn’t hiding at home or on vacation.”

“Bloody cowards!” Edgecombe muttered.

Zacharias raised his eyebrows. He remembered her reaction when she had relieved him last night. “Would you have come to work if you had known what happened?”

She scowled but didn’t contradict him. “And where’s Rosier?”

“Probably reading the documentation so he doesn’t mess up when he relieves you,” Zacharias said, after glancing behind him to check that their superior wasn’t close by.

That made the witch chuckle. “Probably a good idea,” she said. “If he messed up we’d have to fix it.”

“Yes,” Zacharias agreed, then sighed and knelt down on the floor and cast a detection spell.

The glowing network and runes on the map made him squint. He was supposed to check every charm? That would take him longer than the entire day! He started to check the closest rune. It looked perfectly fine. No tampering. No deviation from the norm. One down, a few hundred to go. And there were even more spells that created, maintained and ended the actual connections.

Half an hour later, Rosier finally came in and sent Edgecombe home. “How’s it going, Brocktuckle?”

“It’s Browtuckle,” Zacharias muttered under his breath, “and it would go better if you didn’t disturb me.” More loudly, he said: “I’m working on the runes.”

“Be quick about it!” Rosier said. “The DMLE expects our results this afternoon.”

“What?” Zacharias looked up and hit his head against the edge of the map. “Ow.”

Rosier snorted. “That wouldn’t be a problem if you hadn’t been late this morning!”

Zacharias opened his mouth to protest, then closed it and clenched his teeth. It wasn’t his fault - but Rosier would blame him if he didn’t finish on time. Which was impossible. He ducked back under the map, steaming. Another black mark in his file. And just because Rosier wouldn’t stand up for his employees when the stupid Aurors asked the impossible.

It wasn’t fair! He hadn’t done anything wrong - he had just reclaimed his overtime right away, which everyone did! And this was pointless anyway - Zacharias had been in this damned room, staring at the cursed map for the entire night! No one could have done anything to it. Not with four people in the room!

He scoffed, then pressed his lips together. He wouldn’t take the blame for not finishing a stupid, pointless and impossible task. He shook his head.

No, he’d finish checking the runes, then check a few connections, and, when it was time, he’d report that there wasn’t anything wrong with the charms. Which was the truth, anyway.

*****​

London, Ministry of Magic, January 18th, 1999

Harry Potter wished he hadn’t told Bathilda off for abusing Pepper-Up Potions - he certainly could use one as he had only slept for a couple of hours. Ensuring that there were no other attackers, checking - futilely - for the Night Nargles and flooding the Ministry with pesticide to kill the last of the mosquitoes had taken too much time, and he and Ron couldn’t afford to sleep longer or Dawlish would have tried to take over the investigation.

He entered Bones’s office, and, as expected, Dawlish was already there, with Bathilda. As was Scrimgeour, of course - the Head Auror would have probably made a sarcastic remark about being late, if this had been his office.

Bones, though, merely nodded at them. “Aurors Potter and Weasley.”

“Ma’am.” Harry nodded back. “We’ve just got the results from the Department of Mysteries.” That implied that that was the reason for their slight tardiness, which wasn’t entirely correct. “The man we arrested is Barty Crouch Jr.”

“What?” Dawlish blurted. “He doesn’t look like him, and we put him through the Thief’s Downfall!” Scrimgeour glared at the Auror, but Dawlish didn’t seem to notice. “Are you claiming that he found a way to fool the goblins’ magic?” he asked, before Bathilda tugged on his sleeve.

Harry looked at Bones, who frowned but nodded, before answering. “In a manner of speaking. He used muggle plastic surgery to change his face.”

“What?”

Harry explained the procedure, which left Bathilda looking rather queasy. He assumed that the others were simply hiding their reaction better - even Ron had been taken aback when he had read about plastic surgery.

“They found the scars left by the procedure. And his wand - the one he used fighting us, not the one he carried in his disguise as ‘Veton Hyka’ - matches the one used during the prior attacks, as does the spell residue according to the Unspeakables. His blood also matches our records. Unlike the wizard we killed at Bones Manor, he wasn’t under the Imperius Curse. And he admitted to being Crouch Jr.” Although in a rather ranting way.

“That could be the result of a False Memory Charm,” Scrimgeour said.

“The Unspeakables don’t think so, at least according to their preliminary report,” Harry replied. “They might do a DNA test as well.”

No one asked what that was; they probably thought it was something magical the Department of Mysteries had invented. Although they might indeed have invented a magical way of doing DNA testing - a way to check their ancestry certainly would appeal to the Old Families. Or not, in some cases. Harry smiled. “All in all, the evidence that we caught Crouch is compelling.”

“But it’s not certain,” Scrimgeour said. “He could be an accomplice.”

“Theoretically. But everything we’ve found so far points at him being Crouch, who had infiltrated the Ministry in the guise of an Albanian mercenary.” And Harry’s gut instinct also told him that this was the man who had fought him before. Not to mention that he didn’t think Crouch would sacrifice his wand with a decoy.

“What you’ve found so far isn’t much,” Dawlish grumbled.

“Let’s assume for the moment that the wizard you arrested is Crouch. What was he doing?” Bones ended the debate.

Ron took that one. “At the moment, as far as we can tell, he’d bred mosquitoes en masse and fed them a blood magic potion that made them carriers of a magical disease - or a curse. Or both. There were two distinct effects, the blood boils and the blood cough, but that might also be the result of a two-stage curse or disease. We have found at least one of the locations where he must have induced them to come out of their diapause so he could collect them for breeding. He probably also used a few special spells to accelerate the breeding cycle to gather the numbers of mosquitoes he had in his extended trunk. He didn’t magically control them, as far as we can tell, but simply used some sort of repelling potion to drive them out of the trunk and attic - and away from himself.”

Ron had really spent a lot of time helping the Lovegoods, Harry thought. Admittedly, it had paid off - if he hadn’t learned the Mosquito-repelling Charm during one of their expeditions… So as long as he wasn’t talking about the ‘poor abused mosquitoes’, Harry wouldn’t complain.

“That means he used blood magic to attack us,” Scrimgeour said.

“Yes, sir.” Harry nodded. “The similarities to the spells used in earlier crimes are clear.”

“Why didn’t he use Fiendfyre if he had infiltrated the Ministry already?” Bathilda asked, then flinched a little when everyone looked at her. She straightened quickly, though.

“After his past attacks on Gringotts, we were prepared for such an eventuality and had considerable experience dealing with Fiendfyre,” Scrimgeour said. “Which was proven during the attack on Bones Manor.”

“Which was likely a distraction,” Bones added with a frown - as if she were unhappy about that.

“Compared to a Fiendfyre attack, which would have been limited to whatever floor or room our suspect could have entered, the planned attack with the mosquitoes would have had considerably worse effects. Especially if he had managed to sabotage the Air-Cleaning Charms,” Scrimgeour went on. “If he had released the insects during the day, in the middle of a Wizengamot session, he might very well have managed to decapitate our country.”

Harry nodded in agreement - he had worked that out already.

“We were very fortunate that he was detected and accosted before he could finish his preparations and forced to release the mosquito swarm early.” Scrimgeour nodded. “Although this brings up the question of who exactly noticed and reported him to the Aurors on duty.” He looked at Harry and Ron.

Harry didn’t wince, but he felt like it. He cleared his throat, then clenched his teeth - that made him look guilty. And he hadn’t done anything wrong! “The witch who reported him to the guards in the Atrium was very likely a member of the Night Nargles. We’ve...”

“Night Nargles?” Bones interrupted him.

He grinned. “They don’t like the name The Quibbler chose for them.” The witch had sounded angry when he used it.

Scrimgeour smiled at that, Dawlish scoffed, but Bones nodded. “Go on.”

Harry went on: “We’ve checked with the guards who talked to her, and their description fits the witch that robbed the Greengrasses.” He’d have to check in the Pensieve, but there hadn’t been enough time for that yet.

“They should have arrested her!” Dawlish growled. “And I want to see their memories!” he added with a glare at Harry.

“That’s not my decision to make,” Harry retorted, matching the man’s glare.

Scrimgeour spoke up: “We will discuss the investigation after we have all the available facts.”

Harry nodded. “As far as we can tell, she noticed the absence of the guard at the entrance to the service staircase, then found the attic locked and decided to disguise herself as a Ministry maintenance employee and alert the guards on duty.”

“And then she used the opportunity this created to break into the Auror Office as the Aurors responded to the alert!” Dawlish spat. “It’s even possible that she let the dark wizard inside to betray him for this very purpose.”

“That’s stupid!” Harry blurted out.

“You would say that!” the other Auror retorted.

“Enough!” Bones raised her voice. “This isn’t a Wizengamot session! You will behave in a civilised and professional manner. Auror Potter, you will finish your report. Auror Dawlish, you will refrain from interrupting him.”

“Yes, ma’am!” Harry refrained from grinning at Dawlish. He took a deep breath. “The guards on duty, reinforced by the Aurors and Hit-Wizards in the Ministry, moved to the attic and tried to arrest the intruder, but were driven back by dark curses while trying to break through the door’s protections. At the same time, we stopped the attacker at Bones Manor and we realised that he was a decoy, not Crouch - he hadn’t displayed the competence of Crouch during the battle, and his face didn’t match Crouch’s.” He could see that Dawlish was clenching his teeth - no doubt the man wanted to mention that the wizard they arrested didn’t look like Crouch either. “At this point, I ordered all wands we could spare to return to the Ministry. Both to defend it if it were under attack as well as to be able to react more quickly in case other attacks were reported.”

Both Bones and Scrimgeour nodded at that.

Now came the tricky part. “We arrived in the Atrium moments before the mosquito swarm was unleashed on the Atrium and the upper floors. It was soon obvious that the guards who had gone to the attic had been killed, and we were preparing our own assault when we noticed fake Fiendfyre clearing the main staircase of the mosquitoes inside it. I realised that this was the work of the Night Nargles and, in light of the urgent need to stop Crouch, I decided to ask them to support us. They agreed, and we fought our way up to the second floor of the Atrium, clearing the mosquitoes on the way, then broke through the attic floor using the fake Fiendfyre as a distraction and took Crouch down.” He paused for a moment, then added: “During the arrest, the Night Nargle disappeared.”

Dawlish scoffed at that.

“Is that all?” Bones asked.

Harry nodded. “I’ll make a detailed report once we have additional information.” And the time to write it.

“Why didn’t you arrest the thief?” Bones asked with an unreadable expression.

Harry had helped save her life at Bones Manor, but he knew that the Head of the DMLE wouldn’t let that affect her. “We were hard-pressed to contain the mosquitoes and prevent them from spreading through the entire Ministry. After observing the effects of the cursed mosquitoes, it was obvious that Crouch had to be stopped at once. He is a mass murderer while the Night Nargles haven’t seriously hurt anyone during their heists.”

“As far as we know,” Dawlish muttered.

Bones didn’t glare at the Auror, Harry noted. She narrowed her eyes at him, instead. “So you decided to recruit a known thief.”

“Trying to arrest the thief would have run the risk of Crouch succeeding with his plans,” Harry retorted. “And she had the means to keep the mosquitoes from spreading. I decided that saving lives was more important than arresting a thief.”

“Saving lives and saving the Ministry,” Ron added. “I completely agree with his decision.”

Harry smiled at that and nodded. “We could have conjured walls and cast charms to stop the mosquitoes, but that would have delayed and weakened our attack on his position. I stand by my decision.” And Crouch could have blown up those walls and dispelled the charms.

“Even though you don’t know what the thief was doing in the Ministry?” Bones asked.

“She robbed my office!” Dawlish cut in. “Obviously, she wanted to find out about my investigation and sabotage it.”

Harry scoffed. “Or this was just a distraction, to deceive us.”

“What?” Dawlish stared at him. “What are you insinuating?”

“She might want us to think that your theory is correct,” Harry answered. And throw off suspicion from Dawlish himself, of course, by making him appear to be a victim of the Night Nargles.

“That sounds like something Moody would come up with!” Dawlish retorted.

Harry glared at him. Moody was ten times the Auror Dawlish was!

Scrimgeour spoke before Harry could tell off Dawlish. “Auror Moody is one of our most experienced Aurors, but I think no one can dispute that he is a little overzealous - and still on sick leave after getting cursed by Crouch. However, arguing over the motives of the ‘Night Nargles’ while we’re still investigating the entire incident is unlikely to be productive. I suggest this discussion be postponed until we have more information - especially from the interrogation of Crouch, once he is fit to be interrogated.”

Harry pressed his lips together. He hadn’t hurt the man that much. A day or two with Skele-Gro should see him recovered enough to answer questions.

“It’s my case,” Dawlish said, “and I will continue the investigation with all urgency.”

Harry scoffed. “You yourself said that you suspect the Night Nargles of having worked with Crouch. That means it’s our case.”

“You will both continue your own investigations,” Scrimgeour said, after a glance to Bones. “And I expect you to cooperate with each other.”

Harry nodded but glared at Dawlish, who frowned at him in return. He knew that this wasn’t over. At least no one had made jokes about Harry letting the thief go - so far.

Scrimgeour looked at them both, then frowned. “There is another matter of concern,” he went on. “Having an infamous thief save the Ministry is both embarrassing and problematic. If people think we need the help of criminals, they might lose confidence in the government.”

And that would be such a tragedy, Harry thought.

Scrimgeour sighed. “I would suggest keeping the thieves’ involvement secret, but, as I understand it, the press has already been informed of the entire incident.” He narrowed his eyes at Ron.

Harry’s friend met the man’s gaze. “I needed the expertise of the best naturalist in Britain, who was already looking into the matter, anyway. I didn’t tell him about the Night Nargles’ involvement, but too many saw the thief in the Ministry, and even more people heard about her.” Such a rumour would spread like Fiendfyre.

And, Harry knew, The Quibbler wouldn’t fold under pressure from the Ministry - unlike the Daily Prophet. They wouldn’t be able to keep this a secret.

“That’s a matter for the Minister to handle,” Bones said. “We’re here to solve crimes and arrest criminals, not meddle in politics.”

Even though, as Harry was all too aware, politics meddled with their investigations all the time.

*****​

London, Greenwich, January 18th, 1999

For a heist, this was a rather pitiful amount of loot. Hermione Granger told herself that she had broken into the Ministry to prepare for a real heist, not to loot it, but she still felt disappointed. The furniture was both ugly and cheap, the office supplies weren’t worth keeping and the files had proven to be far less illuminating than expected. Dawlish might have scoffed at Moody’s paranoia, as Harry had complained, but he certainly hadn’t trusted his real case files to his office.

She dropped the parchment on the floor of their new lair with a sigh. It would have been really convenient if her unplanned excursion into the Auror Office had netted crucial information.

“I take it that the files you stole are not important.”

She didn’t frown or pout. Not really. She calmly faced Mr Fletcher and nodded. “The files contain nothing we didn’t already know.” Before he could comment, she went on: “That doesn’t mean that my diversion won’t work. Dawlish might assume we wanted to find out what he knew.”

“I doubt that,” her mentor retorted, frowning at her. “Compared to your other heists, you stole much less.”

“He might attribute that to the fact that the heist was disrupted by Crouch’s attack,” Hermione said, raising her chin slightly. Her mentor was being unfair - she had done her best to salvage the plan when it had been ruined through no fault of her own. Who would have expected that Crouch would use the same time for his attack as she’d picked for her heist? Admittedly, it was the best time to break into the Ministry, but still!

“He wouldn’t have had to do that if you hadn’t exposed yourself.” Mr Fletcher pressed his lips together - he was angrier than she had expected, she realised.

“I couldn’t do nothing once I’d noticed Crouch!” she protested. Harry and Ron had been in danger.

“Of course not!” Sirius cut in, smiling at her, then glaring at Mr Fletcher. “Did you expect her to sacrifice Harry and Ron for her cover?”

“Of course not!” Mr Fletcher snapped. “But she could have done that without exposing herself - or risking herself.”

“How?” Hermione asked.

“Trigger an alert in the attic,” he replied. “Or fill a few offices and hallways with a nasty stench - the Ministry employees would have gone to check the Air-Cleaning Charms in the attic at once.”

“That might not have been quick enough to stop him!” But even as she said it, she knew he was correct.

“In the middle of an attack on Bones Manor, which Potter spotted as the diversion it was?” He raised his eyebrows at her.

She pressed her lips together and huffed.

“No one would have known you were present, and no one would suspect that you had ulterior motives for robbing Dawlish’s office.”

“I left no traces in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures.” She crossed her arms. “And it’s unlikely that they will find the charms I cast on the Floo Network.” There were so many charms on that stone map, it would take days to sort them out.

“And if they do and prepare a trap?” Mr Fletcher shook his head. “We cannot risk that. Never depend on the other side making a mistake or getting sloppy!”

She clenched her teeth. “We can pull off the Parkinson heist without the charms.” Probably.

“You’ll need to find another way to verify your fake identity then,” Mr Fletcher replied.

“I’ll manage,” she said, huffing.

Sirius spoke up. “Worst case, we’ll have to let the Parkinsons be and focus on Malfoy.”

She clenched her teeth to avoid blurting out that she’d never let the Parkinsons be until they had paid for what they had done.

“That heist also relies on the charms she cast last night,” Mr Fletcher pointed out.

Sirius shrugged. “We’ll find another way. And robbing Dawlish’s office was certainly worth it - it’ll enrage him, and he’ll make a mistake.” He chuckled.

“It won’t stop him,” Mr Fletcher said.

“But it’ll help. It won’t take much more to get rid of him after such a humiliation,” Sirius retorted. “He lost a lot of the trust of his superiors and my esteemed colleagues, or so I gather from my earlier meetings this afternoon.” After they had ‘officially’ returned from France in response to the ‘emergency’.

“It was still reckless!” Mr Fletcher glared at them both. “You also risked your life attacking a dangerous dark wizard! That’s not what thieves do!”

“Harry needed my help!” she defended herself.

“He’s an Auror - one of the best they have,” Mr Fletcher shot back. “Do you think he wouldn’t have managed to get Crouch without you?”

“Not as quickly,” she replied. But it was a weak argument - though only apparent in hindsight.

“In any case, we need to finish this - we can’t spend too much time on this detour, or Moody might notice that we’re later than expected and tell Harry,” Sirius said. “Is there anything we need to do right now? Apart from handling the Wizengamot, I mean.”

Mr Fletcher shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. But I taught you better,” he added with a frown at her.

She felt guilty - what she had done had been against the rules he had taught her. She had shown off - a little, at least. And she had acted less like a thief and more like an Auror. But Harry had been there.

“She’s a Gryffindor,” Sirius said, grinning.

“She was a Gryffindor for less than two years,” Mr Fletcher shot back, then winced slightly, glancing at her.

She didn’t react to the reminder of her expulsion. It was years ago. She was over it.

“Once a Gryffindor, always a Gryffindor,” Sirius said. “Or something like that. More importantly, the Night Nargles have saved the Ministry and the Wizengamot! That’ll confuse them!”

“That’s not our name!” Hermione protested.

“Harry and, I gather, the entire Ministry disagree.” The dog grinned at her. “And I like the name myself! We should put it to a vote.”

“No, we shouldn’t!” she snarled. But even Mr Fletcher was, well, not really smiling, but not frowning any more.

This was all Harry’s fault, for using that stupid name in the middle of an emergency!

*****​

London, No 12 Grimmauld Place, January 18th, 1999

There he was! Hermione Granger knew - she had been told so last night - that Harry hadn’t been hurt in the fighting, and neither had Ron, but knowing intellectually, even after talking to him and seeing his face in the enchanted mirror, wasn’t the same as seeing him standing there, in front of the fireplace, with her own eyes.

Or hugging him. Hard.

She could feel his arms going around her, his body’s warmth and his hands rubbing her back and wanted to stay like this forever. Just the two of them. No Auror business, no heists, no secrets. Just her and Harry.

And no damn dog, she added to herself when she heard said dog cough behind her. “Well… I think we should give these two a little privacy.”

“Probably, yes,” Jeanne added.

She rolled her eyes and released Harry, turning her head to frown at Jeanne and glare at the dog. “Ha ha.” She added as much sarcasm as she could to her reply.

Of course, it rolled off the dog’s back like water off a duck’s. He grinned and even bowed, before addressing Harry and Ron. “And here’re the heroes of the hour! You saved us all!”

Hermione huffed. “And risked your lives!”

Harry shrugged with that almost shy smile of his. “We did our duty.” He did reach out and squeeze her shoulder, though.

“And we had help from the Night Nargles,” Ron added.

That bloody silly name! She glared at him. “I’m certain that that’s not the correct name for the thieves.”

“But using it annoys them,” Harry said with a grin. “You should have seen the reaction of the witch when I called her that.” He made a face and said in a false falsetto: “That’s not my name!”

She pressed her lips together. She hadn’t sounded like that! And it wasn’t their name!

And the dog was eating it up - he was laughing far too loudly. “Oh, I can imagine!”

Even Jeanne was giggling, the traitor! Hermione shook her head. “Well, I think it’s childish.”

“That doesn’t matter as long as it annoys them,” Harry said. “After the humiliation they caused us, we owe them payback.”

She’d like to see them try! Or not.

“She emptied out Dawlish’s office last night, too,” Ron added, which earned him a glare from Harry. He shrugged. “It’s the talk of the Ministry - they’d have heard about it anyway as soon as they returned tomorrow.”

“Well, given the distinct lack of courage of many of my esteemed colleagues, the next Wizengamot session might not happen for a while,” Sirius said. “At least not until they are certain that the Ministry is safe.” He shook his head. “You captured Crouch, and they are still afraid.”

“Crouch might have prepared more curses before he was caught,” Hermione pointed out. They couldn’t underestimate that Death Eater.

“We’ve been checking every department for dark curses,” Harry replied. With a smile, he added: “You don’t think I would let you back into the Ministry if I thought it wasn’t safe?”

She huffed at that - both because it felt patronising, even if he meant well, and because she didn’t know if that meant that they had found her charms or not. For a moment, she was tempted to try and find out but decided against it. It wouldn’t be fair to Harry. And it was better to assume that they had been found, anyway. Instead, she asked: “So, will Dawlish lose the investigation now?”

Ron shrugged. “I don’t think so. Not yet - Scrimgeour and Bones didn’t seem to consider it. But he can’t weather another such blunder.”

“And if he’s part of the Night Nargles,” Harry added, “he’ll be aware of that. So he’ll try something soon. And we’ll be ready for him.”

Hermione clenched her teeth at the stupid name. But she’d be ready as well.

“If they remove him, they’ll probably wait until Crouch’s trial - so we can get the investigation,” Ron said. “That’ll take at least a week. It depends on how the interrogation goes.”

Harry nodded. “If we take over the investigation, then we should try and get Bathilda on our team. She shouldn’t suffer for Dawlish’s mistakes.”

Hermione wasn’t certain what was the worst news she had heard today - that the stupid name Luna had coined was sticking, that Harry and Ron might be the ones hunting her or that that Auror might end up on their team.

She glanced at Sirius, but the stupid dog didn’t seem to be concerned in the least. Typical!

*****​

“I’m sorry,” Harry Potter said once he and Hermione reached his room after dinner. She looked confused for a moment until he went on: “For saying that I wouldn’t allow you into the Ministry. I wasn’t serious.”

She huffed at the last word. “I know that. You don’t need to apologise.” After a moment, she added: “I’m not mad about that.”

He opened the door. “But you’re mad.” She had been angry - well, annoyed - for all of dinner.

“I’m angry at the whole situation,” she said as they stepped inside. “Crouch almost succeeded, you had to risk your life again - twice - and the silly names…” She shrugged. “It’s a little much.” She sighed as she sat on his bed - close to Crookshanks, who was, once again, occupying his pillow. The fat cat looked asleep, but Harry didn’t trust appearances. He knew better where the orange tomcat was concerned.

He sat down next to her and wrapped his arm around her shoulders, pulling her slightly against him. She had to be mad at him risking his life - Crouch was captured, and the thieves deserved every silly name he could think of. “If I hadn’t done what I did, Crouch might have succeeded. And escaped.”

“I know!” she snapped, tensing for a moment. Then he felt her relax a little with another sigh. “That doesn’t make it any easier. And now they’ll probably send you after the thieves.”

“The Night Nargles,” he corrected her with a grin, but she glared at him instead of smiling. He winced - she had to be more annoyed than he thought. “Well, they’re much less dangerous than Crouch.”

“But your reputation might suffer. It already did, didn’t it?”

He scoffed at that. “Once we catch them, that’ll be forgotten. I almost had her before. Twice she only narrowly escaped.” And no one was lucky forever. But Hermione didn’t look convinced, so he added: “Worst case, we lose the investigation, and someone else gets to try and arrest them.”

“But that would hurt your career,” she said. “Malfoy would exploit that.” She had her head turned so she could look at him despite leaning against his shoulder.

He almost shrugged, but that would have dislodged her. “That we caught Crouch will help a lot. If Malfoy tries to make an issue out of this, Sirius can counter his attacks - Crouch tried to murder everyone in the Ministry including the Wizengamot.”

She sighed again - he could see her chest rising and falling. “Have you ever considered quitting the Ministry?”

Not seriously. “What else could I do?” He was a good Auror - one of the best.

“Play Quidditch professionally. Or become a broom racer. Or a teacher. You’d be great at any of those.”

He chuckled. “I thought you loathed my Defence lessons.”

She huffed in response and pouted adorably. “I can’t deny that they are effective, though.”

“But the post of Defence teacher at Hogwarts is taken,” he replied. He wouldn’t want to get Remus fired.

“You could be a tutor. Or an instructor for the Aurors.”

She must really be worried about him. “I’m a little too young to teach other Aurors. And a tutor?” He shook his head. “I don’t think there’s a big demand for them. At least not for my kind of training.” And he couldn’t reform the Ministry if he quit.

“Well, it’s not for everyone, I guess…” she started to say, then frowned. “Is that a wand in Hedwig’s beak?”

“Huh?” Harry looked up. His owl was sitting on the windowsill with a stick in her beak. He tapped his glasses and activated the zoom. “No, it’s not a wand. It’s a piece of metal.”

“What does she want with it?” Hermione wondered.

Harry glanced at Mr Biggles habitat. And at the lock on the lid. He could imagine what his owl was trying to do. “Nothing,” he said, glaring at Hedwig. “It was probably lying around on the street, and she picked it up without thinking.” About his orders not to eat Mr Biggles.

The owl turned her head away as if she were huffing. And Harry caught Crookshank’s ears perking up, even though the cat still faked being asleep.

“She’s a silly bird,” said snake commented from his favourite spot in his terrarium. “You should get rid of her.”

Harry was tempted to answer the snake that he wouldn’t get rid of his first friend, but that would have meant revealing to Hermione that he was a Parselmouth. And that would be… awkward. Not because of the reputation Parselmouths had - Hermione wasn’t the kind of witch to care about such prejudices. But she might be hurt that he hadn’t told her sooner.

And with everything going on right now, he’d rather not start more trouble. He could always tell her once things had settled down.

At least then she would believe him that her cat really was trying to eat his snake. Unless she blamed his owl instead for leading the fat little monster astray. She was really quite biased in favour of her cat.

But that was a worry for another day. He bent down and kissed the top of her head, smelling her hair. She giggled, then turned and slid into his lap, putting her hands on his shoulders before kissing him on the lips.

And gently pushed him down on the bed until she was straddling him. And the belts of their house robes had become undone, somehow.

Yes, he could worry about this later. Much later.

*****​

London, Ministry of Magic, January 19th, 1999

Harry Potter checked that the Dictaquill was still recording, then leaned forward. “How many times did you attempt to resurrect the Dark Lord after the Battle of the Atrium?”

“A dozen times.” Crouch - the Unspeakables had verified his identity; not that it had been needed in Harry’s opinion - droned on, his gaze unfocused thanks to Veritaserum.

He was a fanatic. Harry suppressed the urge to whistle. Bathilda, sitting next to Dawlish at the other desk, gasped, though. Harry hoped it wouldn’t be noted on the scroll. “Where?” he asked.

“Plouarzel. Locmariaquer. Kerlescan. Raon-l’Étape. Holzhausen-Externsteine. Untersberg...”

Harry listened as Crouch listed all the locations up he had used for his rituals. France, Germany, Poland - he had finally stopped trying when he’d reached Russia. “What did you do then?” They could check those locations later - it wasn’t as if the other countries were too cooperative anyway.

“Returned to Britain.”

“Why?” It was annoying to have to draw out every answer, but that was Veritaserum for you.

“To take revenge on my Master’s enemies.”

How surprising. “And who were your master’s enemies?”

“The traitors and the blood-traitors and the mudbloods and the Wizengamot and the Ministry.” Crouch slowly blinked.

That wasn’t news either. But it was good to have confirmation - especially for the trial in front of the Wizengamot. “Did you murder Elias Selwyn?”

“Yes.”

Another crime confirmed. They had already heard enough to close half a dozen unsolved murder cases, including the murders of Crouch’s father and of Millicent Bagnold, and they hadn’t even started on the period after the Azkaban breakout. Well, the Azkaban breakout Crouch had instigated - not his own. And hadn’t that been a revelation!

Harry glanced at Dawlish, who was clenching his teeth. It was obvious that the man longed to ask his own questions. But this was Harry and Ron’s case, so Dawlish had to wait until they were done with their interrogation. Harry almost smirked as he asked his next question. “Did anyone help you?”

“Yes.”

Dawlish leaned forward, his eyes wide with anticipation.

Harry would enjoy the next answer. “Who helped you?”

“Rabastan, Rodolphus and Bellatrix Lestrange.”

“Anyone else?”

“No.”

Dawlish deflated. Had he really expected that the Night Nargles had helped Crouch? Or was he a much better actor than Harry had suspected? Well, if he was an accomplice of the thieves, he’d have to be a great actor. And it might explain why the thieves sounded the alert and helped against Crouch. And the fact that they robbed his office could have been a ploy to make him look innocent.

Harry cleared his throat. He had to focus on the interrogation. As amusing as these questions had been, they were a detour from the core of the case. “How did you gain access to Selwyn Manor?”

“I impersonated a French acquaintance of his and claimed to have scandalous news about his daughter’s lovers.”

Harry closed his eyes. Had Selwyn really been as gullible to fall for that? On the other hand, Jeanne’s father had drunk a lot during the wedding reception and dinner. And such a claim would have played into British stereotypes about French wizards and witches. He glanced at Dawlish again. The man was, once more, paying rapt attention.

Harry pressed his lips together. If the Daily Prophet published an article attacking Jeanne, he’d know who leaked this.

*****​

London, No 12 Grimmauld Place, January 22nd, 1999

Hermione Granger was in a foul mood. Not only had she had to get up far too early - practically in the middle of the night, when proper cats were supposed to start their naps - because there was a Wizengamot Session today, but there was a special edition of The Quibbler on the breakfast table. That damn magazine was responsible for that silly name the Ministry had saddled her with. Night Nargles! She did her part to save the Ministry, and that was the thanks she got!

She muttered a few dire threats under her breath as she took another sip from her tea and watched Harry and Ron pick up the magazine. The two were disgustingly awake - of course, they were used to getting up this early. And the dog was still sleeping in - he called it ‘taking care of my pregnant wife’s mornings’. Since Jeanne had hardly been affected with morning sickness and still wasn’t showing, much less was in need of any assistance, Hermione could imagine what they were doing. Which wasn’t a bad idea at all, of course. If it weren’t so ungodly early.

“‘The Mystery of the Blood Magic-using Mosquitoes - Vampire connection?’”

Hermione blinked. What did Harry say? She tilted her head to read the headline as Harry stared at Ron.

“Well,” their friend said, “Xenophilius thinks that there’s a possible connection between vampires and the mosquitoes.”

“We now have confirmation that the Blood Murders three years ago were the work of Crouch and Voldemort,” Harry replied. Which, Hermione noted, implied that Ron would have told the Lovegoods that. Well, it was practically public knowledge, anyway - with the trial scheduled for today, such news had spread like wildfire through the Ministry and beyond.

“Yes, but there are still unsolved vampire murders dating back to that time,” Ron pointed out.

“Rumoured vampire murders,” Harry replied. “They never found any bodies, and no one could prove the supposed victims had existed in the first place.”

Well, one had. Hermione knew that for certain. She resisted the urge to rub her neck, remembering how the monster had grabbed and threatened her before Sirius had killed him. But they hadn’t killed any other vampires.

“That doesn’t mean that there weren’t,” Ron stubbornly insisted. “And vampires are experts on blood magic. We still don’t know all that Dumbledore and the Order members did during that time. We don’t even know all members of the Order.”

Hermione saw Harry flinch slightly - he knew what Ron was not quite saying: That Dumbledore had been researching blood magic during that time and might have arranged for such a hunt. He was correct, too - in a way. Dumbledore hadn’t sent them out to kill vampires, but to steal tomes on blood magic. Although he might have had others doing the same thing - Hermione didn’t know and likely would never know the truth. And Harry didn’t want to talk about what exactly he and Dumbledore had been doing.

Harry shook his head. “Crouch used mosquitoes for the spell because they suck blood and spread various diseases, which made them ideal for his curses. And he had no contact with vampires.”

“Voldemort might have, though - he didn’t tell Crouch everything,” Ron retorted. “Crouch told us that.”

“Well, some crimes you might never solve,” Hermione told them.

Harry frowned at her, even though she didn’t sound smug about it. “Not every rumour is a crime, anyway.” He turned to Ron and stabbed his finger at a particular line of the article. “And even if Voldemort did murder vampires, we know that Crouch’s attack on the Ministry wasn’t their revenge.”

Ron frowned. “Well, that’s true as far as Crouch knows. Of course, the Night Nargles were well-prepared to foil Crouch’s plan, so maybe they were working for the vampires.”

Hermione couldn’t tell whether her friend was serious or pulling Harry’s leg. And she didn’t know whether being thought a vampire was worse than that stupid name.

It was all Lovegood’s fault, anyway.

*****​

London, Ministry of Magic, January 22nd, 1999

“Have you heard the latest?”

Harry Potter looked up from the Unspeakables’ report about blood magic - now that they knew not only that Crouch had indeed murdered Michael Smith, but also what he had stolen from Smith’s library, the matter had grown even more important - upon hearing Ron’s question. “Obviously not, since I stayed here while you went to fetch us tea.” He wasn’t using the break room. Not when Macmillan and his friends had started to heckle him about letting the thief go a second time - for ‘obvious reasons’.

Ron snorted and handed him a cup. “Well, I met Percy on the way…”

“That’s why you took so long,” Harry interrupted.

Ron went on as if Harry hadn’t said anything. “...and he told me that the goblins demanded that Crouch be handed over to them. Percy heard it directly from Cresswell. They were quite insistent.”

Harry shook his head. The Ministry would never extradite a wizard to the goblins. Not even - or, rather, in light of his crimes against the Wizengamot, especially not - Crouch. “Trust him to cause trouble even after his arrest,” he said. That the Unspeakables had been so eager to investigate the tomes Crouch had had hidden in his last hideout wasn’t a good sign either, in Harry’s opinion. He hoped that they would at least find a way to help Moody recover faster.

“Oh, yes.” Ron sat and sighed. “Percy said that the goblins are threatening that if they can’t interrogate Crouch to find out what he had planned for their vaults, they’ll have to do a thorough security check of all vaults, which could take weeks and during which they couldn’t provide regular services.”

“Bloody hell.” That would hurt everyone who didn’t have access to an Old Family’s vault.

“Yeah. Things are dicey again.” Ron glanced at the report Harry was reading. “You think you’ll have to testify about blood magic?” He raised his eyebrows at Harry, obviously joking.

“No.” Harry wasn’t an expert and couldn’t be expected to answer such questions. “But it’s better to know what the Unspeakables found, in case anyone asks anyway.”

“Right,” Ron conceded. “Malfoy might do that. With Crouch out of the way, he doesn’t need us any more.”

“The Night Nargles are still at large,” Harry pointed out.

“They aren’t murderers. Malfoy might very well think someone else can handle them. Or he’s planning ahead in case we arrest them as well.”

Ron apparently had discussed this matter extensively with Percy, Harry thought. “Well, Sirius will be ready for him,” he said, shrugging. “And after Crouch’s testimony, Malfoy will have his work cut out for him.”

“Don’t underestimate him. Dad’s been struggling lately as well - nothing overt, just small things going wrong, requests getting lost or denied, people being difficult…” Ron shook his head.

“Well, sounds like the Corps,” Harry replied. “Nott’s exactly like that, and the rest are still jealous.” And they could deal with that. Had dealt with it.

“Malfoy might have been behind that as well.”

Harry frowned. That sounded… quite plausible, actually. Moody had warned them about Malfoy’s plots. “We’ll need to look into that. If he and Dawlish work together…”

Ron winced, then suddenly grinned. “But if Dawlish is a Night Nargle, then they might be setting up Malfoy.”

“We can’t depend on our enemies making mistakes,” Harry reminded him. He smiled, though - that would be poetic justice. Well, it would be, but for the thieves who had made a fool of him getting away with another robbery. “Let’s prepare for our testimony this afternoon,” he said.

“Don’t know why they’d bother - we have a full confession,” Ron said.

“Unless someone wants to make us look bad,” Harry pointed out again.

*****​

“Yes, I killed my father, the blood-traitor! And Bagnold. And her nephew! And none of you had any idea! Not even Dumbledore!” Crouch threw his head back and laughed loudly.

Sitting next to Sirius in the Wizengamot Chamber, Hermione Granger clenched her teeth and wished someone would silence the gloating murderer, no matter his right to a fair trial. She glanced at Sirius. He was snarling at the Death Eater, looking far too close to his dog form. It was understandable, of course - he had been suspected of those murders for years. His enemies had kept bringing those ‘suspicions’ up at every opportunity, trying to ruin his reputation. And it was all Crouch’s fault.

And Voldemort’s, of course. But the Dark Lord was already dead. Not that anyone expected Crouch to survive this day. Not even Crouch himself. It was his last act of defiance, a last attempt to lash out and hurt people. Some spectators had already left, unable to stand the detailed descriptions of the man’s crimes. Relatives of his victims, probably. Hermione wouldn’t let him affect her, though - she would deny him that shallow, spiteful triumph.

“...and then I sacrificed them to the Dark Lord! Painted the menhir red with their blood!”

She quickly checked her notes. Those were the ritual murders in France. She sighed silently - this would take a while. But at least the verdict would be clear. This time, no innocent would be condemned.

*****​

Crouch was a murderous criminal without conscience or scruples, but he was brave, Harry Potter had to admit. The man was facing his death - the Veil - without flinching. He was even smiling as the verdict was read to him, listing all his crimes. The second time within an hour - the Ministry wouldn’t waste any time executing the death sentence the Wizengamot had rendered. Not with a prisoner who had broken out of and into Azkaban and had come so close to murdering such a large number of their employees.

That was also the reason Harry and Ron were present - together with ten more Aurors and Hit-Wizards - instead of the usual half a dozen in the Death Chamber: the Ministry was taking absolutely no chances.

“...and therefore you are sentenced to death by the Veil.” Scrimgeour finished and lowered the scroll before addressing Crouch. “Do you have any last words?”

Crouch chuckled. “Indeed, I do.” He turned his head and stared straight at Harry. “Don’t think you’ve won! The Dark Lord will return! He has defeated death! And when he returns, all of you will pay for your crimes! You’ll see your loved ones dead, your legacy destroyed, your country ruined! You will all…”

Scrimgeour twirled his wand after cutting off the man’s ranting. “That will be enough, I think.” He nodded at the two Hit-Wizards holding Crouch’s bound arms. “Execute the sentence.”

Crouch was glaring at Scrimgeour, but he wasn’t trying to talk any more. But as the two wizards marched him towards the Veil, Crouch kept staring at Harry, baring his teeth in a madman’s grin.

And Harry met the man’s eyes, not flinching, until Crouch disappeared through the Veil.

*****​

 

Chapter 60: Deceit

London, Ministry of Magic, January 24th, 1999

Dolores Umbridge took a sip of her favourite tea - Ceylon’s Best Fairy Selection - as she listened to her co-workers talk about their weekends.

“...and we had a great time in Diagon Alley. All the pubs had halved their prices, now that Crouch’s dead. I didn’t get home until Sunday!” Barney Smith chuckled as he finished his tale. The man had no class at all - no wonder, with a muggleborn mother.

Fay Abbott laughed. “Heh! I took the husband to Hogsmeade for the weekend, to meet the kids and walk around Black Lake. I didn’t realise just how much the threat of an attack by that madman had been affecting me until it was gone, you know? I just felt so much better.”

Dolores nodded approvingly. Abbott was a pureblood, although quite removed from the main line, and it showed. A proper witch wouldn’t go out carousing like a student.

She cleared her throat to draw their attention.

“Ah, hello, Dolores,” Abbott said. “How was your weekend?”

“Madam Umbridge.” Smith’s greeting was less cordial, but what could you expect from someone with his lack of breeding?

“I was working Saturday,” she said. “Crouch’s execution left a lot of paperwork.” Both statements were true, though she hadn’t been involved in the case and had been working on something else. But her two colleagues would think differently, as their impressed expressions showed. Dolores beamed at them. “But I enjoyed Sunday with my darlings. Mayfly is feeling better again, after a nasty case of indigestion. And Butterbeer caught another garden gnome.” They were such good cats!

“Ah.” Of course, people like Smith, who didn’t even have children, wouldn’t appreciate cats.

Abbott, though, smiled at her. “That’s nice.”

“It is,” Dolores said. “Especially after the week we had.”

Of course, everyone agreed with that. “Oh, yes. Half of my coworkers were so shocked by the attack, they didn’t come to work until Thursday!” Abbott said. “I had to handle double the paperwork.”

Dolores nodded in sympathy. Not too much, of course - such a crisis was always an opportunity to improve one’s prospects. If Abbott were smart, she would have ensured that her absent coworkers came out worse afterwards.

“Yeah, ‘shocked’.” Smith scoffed. “Try ‘scared’ instead! My superior probably needed Potter himself to hold his hand to return to work!”

That was the opening Dolores had been waiting for! She cleared her throat again - that always made people pay attention since they knew something important was coming - and said: “Indeed. It’s a little disturbing how many of our colleagues seem to trust Potter more than the rest of the Ministry. It’s not as if he’s the only one keeping the country safe, after all.”

“Well, he is the Boy-Who-Lived,” Abbott replied. “He defeated the Dark Lord, and now Crouch.”

Dolores refrained from scowling. Obviously, Abbott had been influenced by the propaganda Black paid for.

“Of course, he wasn’t alone,” Smith said, to her surprise. “Weasley was always at his side.”

That wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

Abbott nodded several times. “Oh, yes. My cousin went to school with them - they were always together and fought the Dark Lord together, too!”

Dolores took a sip from her tea to keep from scowling. Weasley! The sixth son of that disgrace, Arthur Weasley. A pureblood obsessed with muggle rubbish - how low could you sink? That the man was now a department head was bad enough, but his brood was following in his footsteps! If nothing was done, then, soon enough, three Weasleys would spread their poison from positions of influence. All paid by Black’s gold, of course.

She set the cup down and took a deep breath, then leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Yes, he did fight the Dark Lord and Crouch - not alone, of course. But I’ve been hearing things…”

Abbott took the bait, as Dolores had known she would. The witch eagerly leaned forward as Smith frowned. “Things?”

Dolores nodded, glancing around as if she were concerned about people listening. Spreading these rumours was the point, after all. “He is said to be working with those thieves preying on manors.” She nodded slowly. “He let that witch escape three times, you know.”

“Well, my cousin told me that he’s got a weakness for pretty witches,” Abbott said.

Of course, Smith had to ruin it again. “He’s not working with the Night Nargles - they tried to rob his house, remember?” He scoffed. “And they made him look like a fool at the Yule Ball. If he didn’t have to deal with blood mosquitoes, he’d have arrested her in the Ministry.”

“I heard the thief helped against Crouch,” Abbott said.

Dolores pressed her lips together before answering. “That is well-known.” It was reported in the newspapers, after all. And not surprising at all - even a thief had to realise that everyone had to work together to put down a mad Nundu to save themselves.

“And she fled during the fighting,” Smith added. “Potter didn’t let her escape.”

“Well, if she helped, then it would have been rather poor manners to arrest her afterwards anyway,” Abbott said.

“In any case, Potter saved us all - again,” Smith said. “Who cares about a thief escaping? He’ll catch them soon enough!”

Abbott nodded as Dolores forced herself to smile. She was fuming inwardly, though. This was worse than she had expected - this was the second group of her colleagues that had fallen for Black’s propaganda. If nothing was done, Black would grow even more powerful, thanks to his gold and Potter’s fame. Powerful enough to convince Cornelius that Dolores should be moved into another position in the Ministry. A position without any influence.

And that would not only leave Black to corrupt poor Cornelius with his radical, muggle-spawned ideas, which would doom Britain - it would also leave Dolores at the mercy of her enemies. Enemies she needed her position to handle.

She finished her tea as the two idiots gossipped once more about their cowardly colleagues. For the good of the country, and for her own survival, Potter had to be stopped. And it didn’t look like a few well-placed rumours would be enough to achieve that.

But, looking at a couple of foreign mercenaries sitting at a table nearby, she realised that there were other options. With Crouch dead and his plans foiled, the Aurors would be able to focus on the thieves and catch them. More importantly, though, without the threat the last Death Eaters had represented, there was no longer a need for hired wands. Which meant that a number of foreign mercenaries would be looking for work soon.

This time, Dolores wouldn’t waste her gold on a couple of incompetent thugs. She’d use the Ministry personnel files to find the best wand for the task. Or wands - Potter had proven to be quite good at fighting, after all, and she couldn’t afford another failure. Not when the stakes had risen so high that the country’s survival was at stake.

Not when Potter had to be dealt with. Permanently.

*****​

London, Ministry of Magic, January 25th, 1999

“Off to a rendezvous with your thief, Potter?”

Harry Potter rolled his eyes as he stopped on the way to the break room and turned to face Macmillan. “You should go and get examined at St Mungo’s, Macmillan - you’ve been saying the exact same thing for a week now.”

“And it’s always rubbish,” Ron added.

“Rubbish?” Macmillan sneered as he pushed off the desk he was leaning against and stood. “You let a wanted thief go free in the middle of the Ministry so she could ransack our office! Any other Auror who did that would have been arrested! How much did Black have to pay to save you this time?”

Harry clenched his teeth and fought the urge to hex the git. Before he could answer, though, Mary-Anne spoke up. “Shut up, Macmillan! You weren’t there, or you wouldn’t say such things. I was there, and I know that we needed the help to stop those mosquitoes!”

Ben, her partner, nodded. “Yeah. If you had seen Cumberland and Smith die, you’d have kissed the thief for using her fake Fiendfyre on the swarm. Bloody git!”

Macmillan sneered, baring his teeth, but others nodded in agreement. “Bet you like kissing her,” he snarled at Harry before turning round.

Harry sighed. That idiot wouldn’t stop. And he didn’t know anything - Harry didn’t even dream about kissing the thief! She might be attractive, but she was a criminal!

*****​

“Hello, Bathilda. Nott.” Harry Potter smiled at the witch and nodded curtly towards the wizard as he took a seat at the usual table in the break room.

“Hi, Bathilda. Nott.” Ron followed his example.

“Hello,” the witch replied. She was smiling, though not as widely as usual, Harry noticed. Or rather, as widely or as thinly as had become usual during the last few weeks.

“Potter. Weasley. Finally decided to grace us with your presence again?” Nott’s sneer was barely visible - it was almost cordial for the former Slytherin.

“We were very busy,” Harry said.

“Crouch’s trial was last Friday,” Nott pointed out. “It’s Tuesday.”

“The case wasn’t over just because Crouch’s out of the picture,” Harry said.

“He has a portrait?” Nott suddenly straightened from his slouch.

Harry reminded himself that certain phrases didn’t work well when talking to purebloods. “Muggle figure of speech,” he said. “I meant we still had a lot of work even after his execution.”

“And we’re not yet done,” Ron added. “There’s the matter of the imperiused mercenary he had attacking Bones Manor.”

“The Imperius Curse ends when the caster dies,” Nott said, frowning.

“Yes,” Harry replied. He refrained from saying ‘real victims of the Imperius Curse’. “But that doesn’t make identifying the dead wizard any easier.”

Nott shrugged. “The Unspeakables can handle that.”

“They don’t bother unless it’s a magical mystery. And, of course, there’s a lot of paperwork,” Ron said, “since we were the ones who killed him.”

Nott snorted. “As if you could do any wrong right now, after catching Crouch.”

If that were true! Harry scoffed. “Tell that to Macmillan.”

“He doesn’t matter.” Nott waved his hand. “You saved the Wizengamot, and they know it. At the trial, they didn’t ask you even one question about you recruiting the Night Nargles for your battle with Crouch.”

“I didn’t recruit her,” Harry said through clenched teeth.

Ron chuckled. “Well, you did order her around, and she obeyed.”

Harry glared at him. It wasn’t funny. He glanced at Bathilda. The witch hadn’t said anything, he suddenly realised. And she was looking at her cup. “Bathilda?”

“Huh?” She looked up. “What?”

“You seem a little out of it. Are you getting enough sleep?” Harry asked.

“Yes, I am,” she said, frowning at him. “I was just thinking.”

“About the Night Nargles, I suppose,” Nott cut in.

“It’s our case,” she replied. Then she looked down at the cup in her hand again. “For now, at least.”

Harry glanced at Ron, feeling more than a little guilty. His friend winced. If only Bathilda weren’t so loyal to Dawlish! “I’m sure you’ll catch them next time,” he lied.

Judging by her frown, she didn’t believe him. And telling her that he’d try to get her on board once Ron and he took over the case wouldn’t help either.

“Well, at least you know that Crouch wasn’t working with the Night Nargles,” Ron said.

She sighed. “We still don’t have a decent lead. At least I don’t think so.”

“Dawlish still keeping things from you?” Harry asked, then bit his lower lip - he shouldn’t have gone there.

She glared at him and stood. “I need to return to work.”

“Nice work, Potter,” Nott said, glaring at him as the witch left the break room. To Harry’s surprise, the Auror didn’t follow her, though, but leaned back in his chair and sighed. “She’s under a lot of pressure.”

“We know,” Ron said.

“So why did you push her, then?” Nott asked, frowning at Harry.

Harry clenched his teeth. He hadn’t meant to. “It slipped out,” he said.

Nott snorted again and took a sip of his tea. “Don’t do it again.”

“Or?” Harry narrowed his eyes at the man. If that was a threat…

“Or you’ll hurt her even more.”

Damn. Harry pressed his lips together. There wasn’t much he could say to that.

“You’re much more civil than usual,” Ron remarked. “Especially considering…” He pointedly looked at the door through which Bathilda had left.

Nott glared at him. “I know better than to make her feel even more stressed.”

“Since when?” Harry snapped. Nott hadn’t previously been a paragon of restraint.

That earned him a glare. “Since you caught Crouch.”

Harry frowned. That almost sounded… “Are you grateful?”

Nott scoffed. “Don’t get a big head, Potter. You were merely doing your duty, weren’t you?” He stood. “Work calls. You’re not the only ones with paperwork to handle.”

“That’s all he does,” Ron muttered as Nott left.

“Yes,” Harry agreed. “But he was more civil than I expected.” He couldn’t tell if that was a good sign or not.

*****​

London, Diagon Alley, January 26th, 1999

“Thank you for agreeing to this meeting, Auror Potter,” Malfoy said with a wide smile.

“Thank you for your invitation.” Harry Potter smiled politely - obviously politely - as he took his seat opposite the older wizard in ‘Le Canard Vert’, one of the most expensive restaurants in Diagon Alley.

“You’re the man of the hour. I’m certain that you’ve been deluged with invitations after saving us all.”

He hadn’t been, actually. “I think it’s a little early for that - we’re still working on closing the case.” Which was a good excuse to turn down the invitations that he had received - the majority of which didn’t include Ron. If Sirius, Jeanne, Hermione and even Ron hadn’t told him to meet Malfoy if only to see what the wizard wanted, Harry would have refused this invitation as well.

Malfoy sniffed and waved his hand. “Crouch is dead. Anything else is unimportant next to that.”

“It still needs to be done,” Harry replied.

“Of course, of course.” Malfoy flashed his too-wide smile again. “And it does you credit that you care so much about it. In any case, the country, the Wizengamot and, of course, myself, are in your debt.”

“You’re too kind,” Harry said, forcing himself to smile. Fortunately, the waiter arrived to take their order, which prohibited further conversation for a few minutes during which Harry politely but firmly turned down Malfoy’s suggestions about the best dishes.

As if he’d make it easier for the git to poison him.

But as soon as their drinks were served - wine for Malfoy, water for Harry - the other wizard continued his spiel. “You will be a very popular wizard, Auror Potter. The people love a hero, and you’ve proven your mettle over and over by now. The Dark Lord, the Lestranges and now Crouch… Not even Dumbledore managed as much in such a short time.”

“I wasn’t alone,” Harry retorted. “It was a team effort.”

“That may be the case, but that’s not how it’s perceived by the public. Or by my colleagues. They want a hero, not a group effort. And who better than the Boy-Who-Lived to be the hero?”

He made it sound as if Harry was a mere figurehead. Harry refrained from frowning and shrugged. “There’s not much I can do about that.”

Once more the waiter interrupted them with the hors d’oeuvres. Harry surreptitiously tapped his glasses to check for poison and curses. He didn’t find any.

Malfoy seamlessly continued: “Such popularity is very valuable, Auror Potter.”

That could be taken in two ways, of course. Harry nodded anyway. “I am aware of that.”

Malfoy chuckled briefly. “No doubt the influence of your godfather.”

“He’s the politician of the family,” Harry replied. Which should imply that Harry wasn’t. And didn’t want to be.

“And a more skilled one than many of my peers would have suspected when he first took his seat among us,” Malfoy said. “Working together, there’s not much we cannot do for our country.”

Harry was tempted to answer ‘and for yourself’, but forced himself to smile politely. He was so sick of politics. “And if you disagree, there’s not much that can be done.” He didn’t bother to hide his opinion of that state of affairs.

Malfoy’s smile didn’t waver. “Indeed. But we don’t have to disagree - politics is all about making alliances and finding a compromise acceptable to everyone who matters.”

Which, in Malfoy’s opinion, wasn’t a very large group of people, Harry knew. And he didn’t want to be included. Not in the way Malfoy saw them. He caught the waiter walking towards them, two covered dishes floating beside him, and smiled. “I’m just an Auror, not a politician. We enforce the law - we don’t make it. And we certainly don’t bend it,” he said, just before the waiter interrupted them again. And smiled when he saw a brief frown flicker over Malfoy’s face.

They made polite conversation about nothing for the rest of the excellent meal. Malfoy had gotten Harry’s message. He wouldn’t be making any deals. And certainly not with the man who had framed Hermione.

*****​

London, Ministry of Magic, January 28th, 1999

Hermione Granger took care to appear visibly annoyed as she approached the Ministry Archives. Just as the secretary of a member of the Wizengamot would be when sent on an errand that would force her to stay late at work. It wasn’t hard - she was annoyed at having to do this. If not for Crouch’s plot, and her completely justified involvement in taking the Death Eater down, she could have gone with the original plan instead.

And if someone hadn’t turned her boyfriend and her best friend into paranoid Aurors who’d turn the entire Ministry upside down trying to find hidden traps and curses... She pressed her lips together at the thought that Moody was currently a guest in her home. And that his presence had forced her to find different accommodations for the loot and planning heists.

“The archives are already closed, Miss.”

It was a small consolation that all this aggravating interference by a crippled Auror put her in just the right mood to deal with an uppity archivist who was about to leave his post. She sneered at him. “It’s not past five yet - it’s five to, Mr… Clark, was it?” She pointedly looked at the clock on the wall. “Which means the archives are open. Or should be.”

“Sorry, my mistake,” he mumbled. She could see him clench his teeth as he pulled up the forms to note her visit. “How long will you need to use the archives?”

“I don’t know yet,” she replied with a sniff. “As long as it takes to fulfil Mr Black’s request. Is there an archivist on duty able to render assistance?” There wouldn’t be. Not at five in the afternoon.

“I’m sorry, but they are occupied elsewhere in the Ministry.” Which meant they were already gone.

“And, of course, you have to stay at your post.” She rolled her eyes slightly as she reminded him that she remembered him from her visit in October.

“Yes, Miss.” He was faintly smiling - no doubt thinking that he would be able to go home on time, as soon as the night shift arrived to relieve him, while she would be stuck in the archives for however long it took her. And, given her attitude, he’d certainly tell his relief not to help her. Just how she wanted him to react.

Sniffing once more to reinforce that attitude, she signed in and entered the archives.

She went to the back of the extended room - her usual spot when on legitimate errands - and conjured a desk for herself, on which she dropped several scrolls and a list that indicated she’d need material from all over the archives for her task.

A quick spell let her know that they still hadn’t stepped up security in the archives since her last visit - no one was observing her. Again, as she had expected. She flicked her wand to cast an Alarm Charm which would let her know if anyone entered the archives, then proceeded to head to the corner where the closest air duct opening was located, right above the shelves on the wall.

That opening wasn’t protected either, apart from a grid any semi-competent muggle thief would be able to remove and replace in under a minute. The state of the Ministry’s security was almost an insult to competent magical thieves. She shook her head as she removed the grid, then added hinges and a simple mechanism to keep it open before she stuck it back onto the opening.

Perfect.

She pulled out a small leather bag, dropped it on the floor and changed. After picking up the bag in her mouth, she climbed the corner shelves in a few jumps from wall to wall, until she was on top. The air ducts were far too narrow for an elf, much less a human, but a lithe cat had no trouble passing through, and a swipe with her claws caused the grid to fall down, covering the opening as though it were still fixed.

She turned inside the duct and proceeded towards the closest shaft. At least the ducts were all freshly cleaned - a result of Crouch’s attack, she assumed - so she wouldn’t leave any traces, and her fur wouldn’t get dusty. That made climbing the shaft more difficult, but she was an agile cat, with lots of experience. And claws that allowed her to find purchase where the segments forming the shaft had been welded together.

Sometimes, she thought as she reached the floor of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, the tendency of Wizarding Britain to copy muggle inventions a little too perfectly was very handy.

As during her last visit, the department’s offices were again deserted - since mosquitoes, even cursed ones, didn’t fall under the definition of magical creatures according to the department head, they had managed to avoid getting involved in the clean-up after Crouch’s attack.

Now came the tricky part. She dropped the leather bag and tapped the symbol on it twice with a paw, causing it to open and reveal the enchanted tools inside: a hook on a string and a magical screwdriver. Tweaking the screwdriver’s standard enchantments to work as she needed had taken her all week, and far more embarrassing failures than a cat should endure, but she had persevered. No thanks to that stupid dog’s jokes - who would have thought that Lily had shown him Dr Who?

She placed the hook on the grid, aided by the spells on it, then nudged the screwdriver close to the opening and bit down on its grip. As the tool lifted in the air and passed through the grid, she took hold of the string with both her front paws and her mouth. Two minutes later, the screwdriver had loosened all four screws holding the grid in place. She nudged the grid with her head, then had to struggle with the string as she slowly lowered the grid down to the ground without making a noise. As she tried to get the taste of hemp out of her mouth, she lamented once more that she hadn’t managed to enchant an item with a silencing spell in a way she could activate as a cat. Jeanne had said she was working on it, but recently Hermione’s friend had been more concerned with her pregnancy than enchantments. That was understandable, of course.

And right now Hermione was a thief on a mission. She gracefully leapt to the ground and changed back, then headed to the secretary’s desk and shift planner, noting who would be on duty tomorrow. And who their replacements were, in case they couldn’t come to work.

A few spells later, carefully altered files and memos were flying to several desks, landing in the various post baskets. She nodded, vanished any traces she might have left in the office or the air duct, then changed back and, with the help of a desk and a shelf, climbed back into the air duct.

Even with the help of a hook enchanted to keep the grid stable and aligned, it was a pain to pull it back up with her mouth and hold it in place while the screwdriver went to work again, but she managed.

A few minutes later, she was on her way back to the archives with the leather pouch dangling from her mouth. A few spells would clear any traces from the air duct there, and then she could go home, her work done.

*****​

London, No 12 Grimmauld Place, January 28th, 1999

“...and it looks like Dawlish is growing desperate; Bathilda’s doing all she can for him, but he still doesn’t trust her,” Harry Potter said, shaking his head as he leaned back in his chair.

Moody scoffed - the gesture slightly ruined by his twitching; the Unspeakables hadn’t yet found anything in Crouch’s books to help him recover faster - and said: “G-g-got s-so-o-me-th-thing t’ hide.”

“Well, if he’s working to frame us, he can’t trust her,” Ron said. “She’d stop him.”

“T-t-t-try.”

Harry nodded. Bathilda was a good friend and a hard-working Auror, but he wouldn’t bet on her against Dawlish. Not in a duel and not when it came to plotting. “But Dawlish won’t be on the case much longer - people are getting impatient with his lack of progress.”

“Not that he can do much but wait for the next heist and hope the Night Nargles make a mistake,” Ron said.

“N-n-ever c-c-c-count on m-m-m-mist-t-takes,” Moody spat with a snarl. “T-t-t-trap.”

Harry frowned. “You mean we should be wary of a trap, or we should lay a trap for the Night Nargles?”

“B-b-both.”

It was kind of eerie how Moody’s artificial eye, which was usually spinning around, was now fixated on him and Ron. It simply didn’t fit Moody. Well, lying helplessly in a bed didn’t fit the old Auror, either.

“We’re ready for him, should he try something,” Ron said. “And we’ve been getting more support from the rest of the Corps - even from Nott.”

“With the exception of Macmillan and his friends,” Harry added.

“F-f-f-fools.”

“Yes.” Harry sighed. “But in order to trap the thieves, we’d have to know their next target. Or targets. And they’ve hit a wide range of manors. They could hit anyone.” And if they had a mole in the Ministry, they’d be aware of any trap.

“M-ma-ma-malfoy.”

“Malfoy?” Harry frowned. Of course, Malfoy was among the likely targets, being the second richest family in Britain, but… “I don’t think he’ll let us place Aurors in his manor.” Not after their lunch together. And Harry didn’t want to work with the man or his son. Not at all. But he was an Auror and sworn to uphold the law.

“F-f-f-fear th-th-th-thieves m-m-more.”

“I don’t think that’s the case, yet,” Harry said.”And it’s not our case, anyway.”

“Not yet,” Ron said. “But if the Night Nargles rob another manor?” He shrugged. “Malfoy might grow desperate.”

“Desperate enough to let us in his home?” Harry didn’t think so.

“Stranger things have happened. Nott’s been polite,” Ron pointed out.

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Harry said.

“C-C-c-const-t-tant V-v-v…”

“...Vigilance!” Harry and Ron finished for Moody.

Of course, they’d be ready for a trap or double-cross - you couldn’t trust Malfoy.

*****​

London, Diagon Alley, January 29th, 1999

“And here I thought that after getting promoted, we wouldn’t have to do guard duty any more.”

Harry Potter glanced at Ron and checked his privacy charm was still up - they were in public, in front of the entrance to Gringotts, and you never knew who might be listening in. “Someone has to be in charge of this, and with Tonks still on her undercover assignment and our case almost closed after Crouch’s execution, we’re the only ones available.” Which Ron knew very well, despite his griping. And it wasn’t as if you could trust such a task to Hit-Wizards - they were far too eager to curse anyone seen as a threat. And since Jeanne had all but commanded Sirius and Hermione to help her deal with another problem in France - she was showing some mood swings now - Harry wasn’t missing much even if this assignment ran late.

“There’s Shacklebolt,” Ron said.

“He’s needed for other duties,” Harry repeated the official line - no one he had spoken to had actually known exactly what those ‘other duties’ were.

Ron scoffed. “Bet he’s doing errands for the Wizengamot. He’s the type.”

“Probably something related to international affairs. He’s done that before.” Harry shrugged. It ultimately didn’t matter. “Scrimgeour is said to be grooming him as his successor.”

“Unless Fudge resigns and Bones gets elected as Minister, Scrimgeour won’t give up his position for a long time,” Ron replied. “I think Shacklebolt will actually move to another department.”

“You think, or Percy thinks?” Harry raised his eyebrows at his friends.

Ron snorted. “I just got a second opinion.”

“Yeah, right.” Harry smirked.

“Anyway, if Shacklebolt wants to get promoted past Scrimgeour, he’ll need a lot of friends in the Wizengamot, and probably a few years in another department, to widen his options,” Ron went on.

“And that’s why we’re here, and he isn’t,” Harry said.

Ron frowned at him. “You’ll have to do the same, you know.”

“What?”

“If you want to advance in the Ministry, you’ll have to leave the Corps.”

“I can stay in the DMLE,” Harry retorted. He didn’t want to work in another department - he already had enough paperwork to deal with. And his talents and experiences didn’t really lend themselves to clerical work. And neither did his temper, he knew.

“If you want to get stuck under Scrimgeour for ten years or more,” Ron said.

He was right, and Harry knew it. Had known it before he joined the Corps. “That doesn’t matter,” he replied. With Sirius, he should have enough backing to do what he needed to no matter his position. “But what about you?”

“Me?” Ron blinked, looking surprised before he grinned. “Mate, I’m here because you need me. I’m not going to make a career out of it anyway - do I look like Percy?”

Harry hadn’t known that. He hadn’t asked, either - he had just assumed Ron had the same plans as he had. But the middle of Diagon Alley wasn’t the time to discuss this. “Well…” He squinted at Ron. “In the right light…”

“Sod off!” Ron shot back, shaking his head. “That’s a low bl...Ah, damn.” He stared at the bottom of the stairs.

Harry turned his head and frowned. The crowd of angry wizards and witches demanding their gold from the goblins were waving their wands at the Aurors holding them back. “Let’s go stop this before it grows out of control,” he said, casting a Shield Charm.

“We should just let them through,” Harry heard Ron mutter as his friend followed him. “Let them and the goblins sort this out.”

Harry glanced at him; that wasn’t something you were allowed to say in public. Especially not if you were assigned to keep a mob from storming Gringotts. Even though the goblins had brought it upon themselves when they blocked access to all vaults for a ‘security check’ - which everyone knew was a lie.

They reached the line of Aurors, and a few Hit-Wizards, facing the angry crowd, stopping a little way behind them, on the stairs so they had a good view of everything. A quick Amplifying Charm let Harry be heard by everyone. “This area is closed off. Please go home.”

“We want our gold!” Someone yelled from the back of the crowd. Others took up the cry.

Harry’s amplified voice still drowned them out. “The goblins have closed Gringotts until further notice. Even if we let you through, you wouldn’t get your gold.”

“Yeah? We can take our gold!”

“We’ll show ’em!”

“Damned cheating beasts!”

Harry was tempted to blast the lot with a Water-Making Spell. That would disperse them. Instead, he tried to talk sense into the idiots again. “If you attack Gringotts, the goblins will attack you. And you’d be fighting them on their own ground.”

“We have wands! And they haven’t!”

“Uppity goblins need a lesson!”

“We want our gold! We want our gold!”

Harry glared at the front rank, but that didn’t seem to impress them.

“Do we have to go through this again? This time, there’s no one using curses to rile them up, so they have no excuse,” Ron said next to him.

Harry raised his wand and cast a Cannon-Blast Spell in the air above the crowd that shook the area and broke a few windows. And probably ruptured a few eardrums as well. But technically, it wasn’t an attack. For a moment, everyone but a few people holding their ears fell silent.

“We’re bound by treaty to defend the goblins,” Harry said. “I’ve done so before - multiple times. Have you lot forgotten what happened the last time you gathered here?” He ignored Ron’s muttered “and the time before that” and shook his head, then waved his wand and conjured a wall that ran in front of the Aurors’ line - high enough to stop anyone unable to climb, low enough so he could still see over it. “If you try to damage or cross this wall, we’ll consider it an attack and respond accordingly.”

For a moment, it looked like they were seeing reason. Then the idiot from the back yelled: “We can take them! They’re just a dozen!”

“We want our gold! We want our gold!”

And someone blew a hole into the wall with a Reductor Curse.

Harry’s Water-Making Spell bowled the crowd over.

*****​

Cumberland County, Parkinson Manor, January 29th, 1999

Hermione Granger didn’t like Polyjuice Potion. To move in someone else’s body was cumbersome. Everything felt off. She lacked her usual grace and agility - as if she were caught in the body of a clumsy dog. Not that she would admit that, of course. Not when a particular dog hadn’t uttered even one complaint despite sharing her burden. Well, for a dog, wearing a different body was probably an improvement. Even if it was the slightly overweight body of a middle-aged employee of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. At least her borrowed body was fit and, if not lithe, then at least not carrying around more fat than muscle.

“Relax, it’ll be fine,” she heard Sirius whisper as they approached the gates of Parkinson Manor.

She almost hissed at his presumption. “Of course, it’ll be fine - it’s my plan, after all.” She huffed. Even though the original plan had been much better and more elegant. But Mr Fletcher insisted that they couldn’t risk using the charms cast on the Floo Network. And so they had to trust the bureaucracy of the Ministry. Which, in a warped way, was fitting. And she wished that they had a better alibi than ‘helping Jeanne in France’, but what else was as plausible as that? But she couldn’t dwell on that. Not in the middle of a heist.

She cleared her throat - Mrs Winkleborough, whose body she was using, was the more senior of the two Ministry employees they were impersonating - and tapped her wand against the plaque next to the wrought-iron gate.

A high-pitched voice - a house-elf - answered after half a minute. “Yes?”

“Who is this?” she snapped. No witch in her position would be polite to the little creatures.

“This be Debby. Who is this?”

Hermione stepped on Sirius’s foot before he could comment on that name. “Mrs Winkleborough and Mr Smith, from the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. We’re here to check up on Mr Parkinson’s latest creature keeping license.”

“Oh! Debby will inform him! Please wait!”

She was certain that the elves had some mice or rat blood in their ancestry. Their squeaky voices alone were proof enough. As they waited for Parkinson to answer - he wouldn’t hurry for two Ministry employees, not as the Head of an Old Family - she looked the manor over. It was built in a similar style as Greengrass Manor. Sixteenth century, she guessed, but there had been some work done to make it appear older. Though the defensive features added were obviously fake - this was no manor built to repel marauding bands of soldiers during the War of Roses. The fake battlements would make it very easy to climb the walls, though - they were tailor-made to attach lines and hooks to them.

The gardens weren’t as well-kept as the Greengrasses’ or the Smiths’. Or rather, they looked less like a cheap copy of Versailles, but wilder. With higher fences, and denser foliage... She suddenly wondered what kind of creatures had been kept there. Or were still being kept there.

A gruff voice interrupted her thoughts. “Who’s this?”

She cleared her throat as a regular employee would, afraid to offend a member of the Wizengamot. “Mr Parkinson? We’re Mrs Winkleborough and Mr Smith, from the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. There are a few questions regarding your license to keep a Sphinx that have come up.”

“What questions?”

She took a deep breath. “The Egyptian authorities have been inquiring after the health and dietary needs of the specimen since its subtype might have been incorrectly filed.”

“‘Incorrectly filed’? You are bothering me because of a mistake you made?”

“I’m very sorry, sir,” she grovelled. “But it wasn’t our mistake. As far as we can tell from the files we received from the Egyptians, the fault was theirs - a mix up in the documentation you received and passed on to the Department. We’re sorry that it wasn’t detected earlier, but with the recent attack on the Ministry, our Department has been very busy.”

Sirius scoffed loudly next to her. “Even though it’s not our jurisdiction at all since they weren’t magical creatures! And yet we’ve had to spend the entire day in a swamp looking for African Shadow Mosquitoes some drunk muggleborn claimed to have seen! The bloody idiot couldn’t tell a Flobberworm from his...”

Hermione hissed: “Smith!”

“What?”

“Mr Parkinson can hear you!”

And Mr Parkinson chuckled. “I can hear you indeed.”

“Sorry, sir,” Sirius said.

“Although unless there’s a swamp near my manor of which I’m not aware, I wonder why you didn’t use the Floo Network to travel to my home.” Mr Parkinson sounded wary now.

Hermione swallowed. This was the crucial moment. “We apparated directly here, sir, after we finished our previous assignment.”

“Almost splinched myself just so those slackers at the Department wouldn’t hand us another pointless assignment,” Sirius added just loudly enough for Mr Parkinson to pick up.

“You can check with the Department,” Hermione said. “Or we could apparate to the Ministry and use the Floo Network from there.”

“Bloody hell!” Sirius muttered. “You want to get splinched?”

Hermione held her breath. If Mr Parkinson insisted that they do that, then the heist would have failed. And he would be warned. But even as the Head of an Old Family, the wizard wouldn’t lightly annoy the bureaucracy - even lowly clerks could take their revenge by abusing red tape, and the Parkinsons did a lot of business with the Department.

“No, no. I’ll check with the Department myself. I’d rather not have to clean up body parts from my lands,” he added with a chuckle.

Hermione laughed - slightly forced, just as a witch in Mrs Winkleborough’s position would laugh at such a crude joke from the Head of an Old Family. It wasn’t hard. If they had found something amiss with the documents she had filed… If the real Mrs Winkleborough or Mr Smith had shown up for work unexpectedly… Perhaps this plan wasn’t as perfect as she had thought.

But a few minutes later, she saw Pansy Parkinson walk towards them to let them through the wards. Judging by her scowl, she wasn’t happy about having to do this - probably whined for a minute or two until her father put his foot down.

Hermione, though, was relieved. If this were a trap, Mr Parkinson would have sent the house-elf, not his daughter. She kept her smile polite and respectful, of course, as the witch let them through the wards after a curt greeting.

Her plan was working perfectly!

*****​

“My father is expecting you in the entrance hall.” Parkinson’s expression was barely polite as she gestured towards the manor, and she didn’t even wait for Hermione Granger and Sirius to respond before she turned and started to walk off. A typical pureblood princess of an Old Family, in other words.

Hermione told herself that the witch’s arrogance would only help them. If she tried to ignore them then she wouldn’t notice anything off about their disguises. It didn’t help as much as her brief fantasy of the pureblood witch’s face when she discovered she had been robbed.

After a minute or two, they entered the manor. Mr Parkinson was waiting in the grand entrance hall - expecting them, as his daughter called it; the Head of an Old Family didn’t wait for mere Ministry employees.

“Welcome to my home.” The greeting was polite enough, but his nod was barely a twitch. And Parkinson simply left without a further word, head held high as if she were a prima donna exiting the stage.

Hermione’s nod was more of a short bow. “Thank you, sir,” she deliberately mangled the proper response, “We’re very sorry about this.”

“Yes,” Sirius said. “But orders are orders. Ours is not to question why…”

Mr Parkinson chuckled at that. “A good attitude to take with one’s superior.”

Hermione took care to show a slightly forced smile, as the actual Mrs Winkleborough would when reminded of Mr Parkinson’s good relations with the Ministry officials and especially the Head of her Department. “Yes, sir. We all have to do our duty, especially with all the chaos caused by the recent attack.”

“Ah, yes. Quite tricky. But at least Crouch was executed and won’t be a threat any more.” Mr Parkinson nodded. “Now, you said there were some questions about my licence?” He narrowed his eyes at them.

Hermione nodded nervously. “Yes, sir.” She pulled out a stack of parchments and acted as if she were almost fumbling them as she searched for the right form. “Here! The Egyptian authorities demand that we verify that the subspecies of the Sphinx you imported is actually correct and that her dietary needs are met.”

“The nerve of those Ottoman flunkies!” Mr Parkinson growled. “I bet they want more bribes, the greedy peons!”

“Yes, sir,” Hermione agreed, “but if we don’t heed their request, they’ll block further trade in magical creatures.” And that would annoy a few more families - some of them with enough influence to make trouble for the Parkinsons.

Mr Parkinson knew about that, of course. He shook his head and scoffed. “I checked the species myself when I acquired her!”

“Of course,” Hermione hastened to say. “But they want our report.” She winced and hunched her shoulders, acting far more like a mouse than a proud cat. “I’m terribly sorry, sir.”

“It’s not your fault, I gather.” Mr Parkinson huffed. “But she’s in our vault, which poses a little problem.”

“Oh.” Hermione faked surprise. “I assumed she would be in a habitat. But the vaults…” she sifted through her sack of parchment again. “That would require a new form… wouldn’t it, Smith?”

She caught Sirius glance at Mr Parkinson and roll his eyes at her. “Yes, I think so,” he said.

“Ah!” Hermione held up another parchment. “Yes, this is the correct scroll if you’re employing a sphinx as a guardian. Although now we need to ask her about her employment as well,” she added hunching her shoulders again. “I’m sorry.”

“But she’s in my vault,” Mr Parkinson snapped.

“Oh.” Hermione acted surprised. “I see. That presents us with a problem.”

Sirius asked: “Could you bring her up here? So we can talk to her?”

“We still need to check her living conditions,” Hermione said before Mr Parkinson could answer. Cringing at his glare, she meekly held up a sheet of parchment as if she wanted to use it as a shield. “It’s on the forms the Egyptians sent us.”

“We will, of course, hand over our wands,” Sirius said, holding his own out. Or rather, the one he was using as Smith.

Mr Parkinson still hesitated. He was staring at her, Hermione realised. He might even be wondering whether she was the most wanted thief in Wizarding Britain. She slowly drew her own wand and held it out, handle first. “Here?” She sounded like a meek mouse. Prey.

He hesitated another moment, then grabbed her wand and Sirius’s. “It’s this way.” He stashed their wands and waved his own, opening a door to the side. “After you.”

She didn’t like having him at her back, but Mrs Winkleborough wouldn’t dare object. And as long as he felt safe and in control, he would let them enter his vault. Just as planned.

Hermione still couldn’t keep from shivering when Mr Parkinson waved his wand, and a staircase appeared in the middle of a hallway. It would be heavily warded. Lethally so. If this were a trap…

When she saw him starting to cast a spell, she almost drew her real wand from its hidden holster before she recognised the privacy charm. She controlled herself, though. As soon as he had finished, he tapped her and Sirius on their heads with his wand, whatever passphrases or incantations he was using hidden by the privacy charm.

A flick of his wand later, she could understand him again. “Follow me. And do not stray from the path.”

“We won’t, sir!” she replied, staring at the ground. When he turned and entered the staircase, she tapped her glasses, a gift from Sirius for the heist, and started the recording. Just in case.

The staircase was narrow - far too narrow for a Sphinx unless it was a newborn. Either the Parkinsons could widen the stairs when needed, or they had transported the animal in a magically expanded cage. Hermione would bet on the latter - if you could expand the walls, it would make breaking in much easier.

The stairs went on and on as if they were descending into the bowels of the earth. Transparent jars on the walls filled with glow worms - or some magical variant - provided enough light to not lose her footing and stumble. After several minutes, they arrived at a massive door - the vault. Hermione almost hissed with delight.

Mr Parkinson cast another privacy charm, this one obscuring his entire body so that she could only see a vague silhouette, before turning towards the door. Hermione tapped her glasses again, but none of the spells on them could penetrate Parkinson’s charm - they weren’t up to those on her mask. But a Supersensory Charm let her smell blood and hear the clicking of a mechanical lock - a little awkward for daily use, but quite effective. Unless you were facing a professional thief like herself.

Then the vault door swung open - it was two feet thick and made of gleaming steel - and she gasped: Behind the door was the largest vault she had seen so far - and the largest magical creature bar the Giant Squid she had ever seen. The Sphinx was huge, much closer to an elephant than a lion in size, and her head would have fit a giant’s body. And her wings… they were bigger than an Abraxan’s.

She was a fearsome guardian, and Hermione shivered as the creature’s eyes gazed at her. She was playing her role, she told herself - to no avail. Hermione was a fine cat, a paragon of her species, but this was… even a pride of lions would flee from her.

Mr Parkinson, though, was utterly unimpressed. “Hello, Neith. These people have come to ask you a few questions - on orders from the Egyptian authorities.”

The Sphinx nodded in return. “I see. What do you wish to know?”

Hermione took a deep breath. This hinged on her knowledge of Sphinxes being correct; if the books she had studied were wrong… “What is your riddle?” she asked, letting her right arm drop and her wand slide into her hand.

To her side, Mr Parkinson gasped and raised his wand - apparently, he had immediately realised that he had been duped. But Sirius, who had taken a few steps back as if frightened by the Sphinx, was almost behind the wizard and far quicker. A volley of Stunners hit the man, shattering his shield and taking him down before he could send a curse at Hermione.

Hermione stood still, tense and ready to dart to the side. Like a cat facing an oversized dog - but this was no dog but another cat. Far smarter and far, far more dangerous than any dog.

But the Sphinx was chuckling. “Clever, clever, little kitten. You know about our customs.”

Hermione inclined her head. “You are bound by the agreement to guard the vaults, not him.” Sphinxes weren’t bodyguards. No proud cat would guard their prey, after all. “And you have to let anyone pass who can answer your riddle.”

“Indeed. And I will rend anyone who fails to.” The creature smiled, revealing razor sharp teeth, each the size of Hermione’s index finger.

Trembling, she nodded. She could do this. She was smart - very smart - and she had studied Sphinxes. And riddles.

When the Sphinx next spoke, her voice was deeper and more gravelly. “So, riddle me this: A thief is facing three doors. Each of them leads to the prize she seeks - after an obstacle. The first leads to a hallway full of raging fires. The second to a hallway filled with poison and traps. And the third to a hallway that holds a grown dragon who hasn’t eaten anything in years. Which door will the smart thief pick?”

Hermione bit her lower lip as her thoughts raced. She could cast a Flame-Freezing Charm, so the first hallway wouldn’t be a real obstacle. But the Sphinx had said there were raging fires - not a raging fire. So, if there were multiple fires, or fires that kept spawning, then she would need to be able to keep casting the charm quickly enough to hit every fire. Poison and traps could be dealt with as well, but she had no hint about the kinds of traps. But that was probably still better than a dragon - they were notoriously hard to affect with spells. She could deal with poison and traps better than with a starving dragon… She blinked. Starving… “Door Three!” she stated, smiling and ignoring Sirius’s gasp. “The dragon would have starved to death already!”

The Sphinx smiled as well and took a step to the side. “Well, reasoned, kitten. You may pass.”

Hermione sighed with relief and took a step forward, then turned to glare at the dog. “She said I may pass; you didn’t answer her riddle.”

“But…” Sirius blinked, then looked at the smiling creature eyeing him.

“They love word games,” Hermione explained. “Stay here, I’ll get the gold.”

She strode past the Sphinx and into the narrower part of the vault, where a dozen chests were lined up along the wall. Her plan had worked perfectly!

She tapped her glasses and activated the detection spell on them - that one she had cast personally, so it would work just as she wanted it to. There were spells on all the chests - various detection spells and alarm charms. Standard fare, so far. Although… she narrowed her eyes. Would Parkinson go as far as to duplicate the same method he used for the vault door? Judging by the number of chests, he didn’t let relatives use the vault to store their valuables, so he would not have to visit it as often…

She bit her lower lip and knelt down in front of the first chest to get a better look at the entwined spells on it. The spells were interlaced quite effectively, forming a solid pattern that was self-supporting. That was professional work.

But it was professional work that was at least twenty years old and had been standard then, down to the Fire-Resistant Charm on the chest. She knew the pattern - Mr Fletcher had taught her how to deal with it years ago. She grinned as she went to work. Two minutes later, a flick of her wand opened the chest, revealing the gold coins inside. Jackpot! A swish of her wand had them floating into her enchanted pocket.

“If you take much longer, we’ll have to take another swig or we’ll change back.”

Leave it to the dog to ruin the moment with his impatience! Frowning, she replied: “I’ll be done in twenty minutes.” Provided that there weren’t more complicated defences on the other chests.

“The Sphinx is eyeing me rather hungrily.”

Hermione rolled her eyes. She had been the one to face the creature and solve her riddle! All the dog had to do was wait and keep an eye on Mr Parkinson. Scoffing, she went to work on the next chest.

Five minutes later, she was on her fourth chest and had to remind herself to keep looking at each chest as if it were the first, as Mr Fletcher had taught her. Complacent thieves got caught - or killed. Even though this chest, too, had the same old protections. And was filled with the same gold coins and jewellery.

The next chest, though, was different. The spells were newer - but sloppier. As if someone had been trying to imitate the spells on the other chests, including the Fire-Resistant Charm, but hadn’t quite managed it. She could immediately spot a weakness.

But she hesitated. What if it were a trap? She went over the chest’s defences again, but couldn’t find a trap. Frowning, she disabled the spell, holding her breath. Nothing happened. But… she tapped her glasses, wishing once more that she was wearing her mask, and zoomed in on the front of the chest. The small, dark stain there looked like… A Supersensory Charm confirmed it by its faint smell: dried blood.

But the chest didn’t have a blood lock, unlike the vault. And she doubted that Mr Parkinson had forgotten to fix his small cut before walking into the vault. His daughter, on the other hand, might have done so, if what Harry had told Hermione about her time at Hogwarts was correct. Still… She took a few steps back before flipping the lid off with a flick of her wand.

And jumped behind the closest chest when a stream of fire burst forth, followed by a screeching noise that would have blown her eardrums if she hadn’t already dispelled her Supersensory Charm. She raised her head to take a look and gasped.

A reptilian creature shot out of the chest, lifting itself into the air with fast beats of its leathery wings - Mr Parkinson had hidden a sort of dragon in his vault!

That hadn’t been in his files! Hermione sent a pair of Stunners at the creature, but, to her dismay, both glanced off the creature’s red scales. All she had done was to alert the creature to her presence, and Hermione had to jump behind the closest fire-resistant chest to avoid getting burned by the next stream of fire the dragon - it had to be a dragon - unleashed.

She barely made it and landed far too hard on the stone floor - this body simply wasn’t in shape. She had no choice - she changed and darted towards the larger part of the vault as fast as her paws could carry her. She barely noticed more spells hitting the creature - Sirius was casting from where he stood. After three seconds, she threw herself to the left, behind a chest she had already emptied. Once more, fire washed over her, singing her fur as she pressed herself against the chest. If the dragon pounced, she was dead.

She changed back and jumped up, back in her own body and leading with her wand. The dragon - it was about her size, she realised; it had looked far bigger at first - was tethered to its chest by a chain. It couldn’t leave this part of the vault.

But its fire breath could still reach her spot. And it was rearing its head, opening its maw…

Hermione banished the empty chest towards the dragon. The chest hit its head before it could unleash another stream of fire and smacked it backwards, followed by three colourful hexes that splashed against its scales.

That was enough for Hermione to dart outside the narrow part of the vault, back to Sirius and the Sphinx.

“That’s a dragon! What did you do?”

Breathing heavily, she glared at him. “I opened a chest. It wasn’t…” She caught sight of a white wing swinging towards her and changed in time to avoid getting blown into the wall behind her.

“What the?” Sirius blurted out, but his wand was already moving towards the Sphinx. She intercepted the curses he sent her way with her other wing, though - apparently, her wings were as resistant to magic as a dragon’s scales. That hadn’t been in the books Hermione had read.

She changed back and tried a Stunner from an angle. “She only agreed to let me pass - once!” she yelled to Sirius as her curse missed.

“You are indeed clever, kitten - but not clever enough!” Laughing, the Sphinx whirled around and pounced at Sirius, claws as long as Hermione’s shin extending from her giant paws.

But Sirius hadn’t stopped moving or casting. He threw himself to the ground and slid away - he had covered the stone in grease, Hermione realised as the Sphinx crashed into the floor where he had been.

And grease burned. Clenching her teeth, Hermione swished her wand and set it ablaze. Flames licked at the creature’s paws and tail, and her shriek dwarfed the dragon’s roar. A moment later, conjured oil drenched the Sphinx courtesy of Sirius, and the screams grew even louder as the Sphinx disappeared in a roaring fire.

Not for long, though. Suddenly, the fires vanished, and the temperature dropped as the Sphinx reappeared, covered in rapidly melting ice.

The stupid Egyptians had actually made a mistake when noting the Sphinx’s subspecies, Hermione realised - it was a Cyrosphinx! She conjured a wall in front of her just in time to stop the freezing breath of the creature, and even so, she shuddered from the sudden cold. If they didn’t stop the creature quickly… She gasped as she spotted Mr Parkinson in the corner. He was bound and stunned - if the creature breathed on him…

“Summon Mr Parkinson’s robes!” she murmured, dragging the man behind her makeshift shelter. Explosions rocked the room on the other side, and she darted around the wall, almost slipping on the ice. The Sphinx had backed Sirius into a corner, and the wall Hermione’s partner had conjured was cracking under the blows from her paws.

She had to do something! But what? Her spells hadn’t affected the creature. Fire was this Sphinx’s weakness, but she could freeze herself if she started burning. But… dragonfire! Hermione sprinted towards the narrow part of the vault. If she could set the dragon on the Sphinx…

“Down!”

She dropped to the ground at once, changing before she hit the floor, and a giant shape flew over her head, crashing into the wall next to her. Panting, she darted away. A moment later, thick pillars of stone appeared around the dazed creature, hemming her in. The Sphinx screamed, but couldn’t turn around enough to breathe at them.

“What were you thinking?” Sirius yelled as he raced up to her, his wand flicking as he filled the space between the pillars with more stone, turning it into a prison for the immobilised Sphinx.

Hermione changed back, still panting. That had been too close! “I wanted to set the dragon on her,” she explained.

Sirius stared at her. “What?”

He didn’t have to react like that. “Its fire would have hurt her.”

“And us.”

“I was desperate,” she admitted.

He smiled at that. And at her. “There was no need for that. I had the situation in hand.”

She rolled her eyes at his attitude. “Yes. You had her right where you wanted her.”

He beamed at her. “Exactly!”

They stared at each other for a moment. Then Sirius winced. “Maybe we shouldn’t go into too much detail when we tell the others about this.”

Hermione nodded. “Good idea.” Then she turned around and faced the dragon which was still struggling against the chain.

“Let’s deal with that pest.”

“Do you have a plan? A not-desperate plan, I mean?”

She glared at him. “Indeed I have. On my signal, cut the chain.”

“What?”

“Trust me.” She conjured a low wall, barely a foot high, at the entrance to the narrow part of the vault, then disillusioned it.

“Ah.” He nodded and aimed his wand. “I’m ready.”

“Do it.”

His spell cut the chain, and, a few seconds later, the enraged dragon crashed into Hermione’s suddenly enlarged invisible wall. Head-first and at high speed.

Hermione stared at the still creature and at the blood leaking from its nostrils, maw and eyes. Then she smiled and turned to Sirius.

“We’ll have to find a fence for dragon parts!”

*****​

 

Chapter 61: Going Undercover

Cumberland County, Parkinson Manor, January 29th, 1999

Pansy Parkinson was sitting in her room. She wasn’t sulking - proper witches didn’t sulk. She was merely making a statement to her parents by retiring to her room. Namely, that answering the door was beneath her dignity. That’s what they had a house-elf for! Remembering how her father had ordered her to walk to the gate and let those Ministry flunkies bothering their betters through the wardline made her clench her teeth. Why couldn’t those stupid people have arrived through the Floo Network, like civilised wizards and witches?

She sniffed. That they were from the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures didn’t excuse them; Pansy’s family was heavily invested in the trade of magical creatures, yet she shouldn’t have to walk up to the manor’s gate like some muggle! A witch of good breeding had standards to maintain! At least no one of importance had seen her acting like a house-elf. If Draco had been there, she would have died of embarrassment!

She sighed at her plight and went back to her letter. With that undesirable finally being caught and executed, as he deserved, Draco was, at last, allowed outside again by his mum. They could go and visit Diagon Alley instead of staying in his or her manor! With the Bulstrode, Davis and Greengrass families ruined, Pansy and Draco’s circle of friends had drastically shrunk over the last few months.

Not that she minded being alone with Draco, of course! There were quite significant advantages to that. But part of the duty of a prominent member of an Old Family was to be seen in public - to be an example of class and poise for their lessers. Not that those unfortunates would ever manage to equal her, but even a doomed effort would improve their manners.

She chewed on her quill as she pondered how to word her desire to visit Florean Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlour. It was, without a doubt, the best location in Britain to eat ice cream. Nothing could compare to their creations. But, as she had recently discovered, it was also a business run by a mudblood - not a distant relative of the old pureblood Fortescue family, as many had thought. Which presented her with a dilemma. She was not about to subject her refined palate to lesser ice cream than the very best available - that would be beneath her dignity; like wearing robes from that tailor in Hogsmeade, instead of from Madam Malkin’s. But to frequent a business run by a mudblood?

She pressed her lips together. That was also beneath her dignity. And people might think she approved of the business. But she really liked the Fire’s Touch Coup that the man made. That melange of spicy and sweet, hot and icy cold... She closed her eyes and sighed.

On the other hand, hadn’t father told her - repeatedly, if she cared to remember, which she didn’t - that she should make some gestures to show that the family didn’t support the Dark Lord’s ideals? Draco had complained about his father telling him something similar, although he hadn’t had to actually do anything after that Death Eater had started murdering people.

She nodded. Yes, that was the right way to word this - a sacrifice for their families. She smiled as she finished the letter. Sometimes the duty of a pureblood witch of an Old Family was a heavy burden. But also, in this case, a sweet and spicy one.

She cast a quick charm to dry the ink, rolled up and sealed the scroll, then raised her wand to ring the bell behind the curtain in her room, which would signal Floppy that she had a letter to send, when, suddenly, Floppy burst into her room without having been called.

“Mistress Pansy! Mistress Pansy! There be an emergency!” he squeaked.

Pansy felt as if her heart stopped beating for a moment. “What? What happened?” Crouch was dead, so… Merlin’s beard! The Night Nargles!

“Your father, Mistress Pansy! The Sphinx attacked him and the visitors! He be hurt!”

“What?” The Sphinx, attacking her father? That was inconceivable. Sphinxes only attacked if you tried to pass them without solving their riddle. Father would never make such a mistake! And he was hurt? “Where is Mum?”

“Mistress Marissa left a while ago.”

Mum had said she was going to visit an acquaintance, but Pansy hadn’t paid attention. And now she was the witch in the house during an emergency.

“The visitors insist that you come. They say there be an illegal animal.”

Pansy felt a cold shiver run down her spine. The Anatolian Fire Drake! But how had those bothersome bureaucrats discovered it? “What happened to it?” she snapped as she rose and rushed out of her room - a witch was supposed to never run, but her father was hurt!

“They say the Sphinx released and killed it,” Floppy gasped as he ran after her as fast as his short legs could carry him.

She blinked. That still didn’t make any sense. Sphinxes wouldn’t damage the treasure they guarded - everyone knew that. Unless… Had father worded the contract in a way that wouldn’t cover other creatures? She didn’t remember, not having paid much attention to his explanations. Though she knew that a Cryosphinx would hate to guard a Fire Drake. But to go as far as to reveal it to their visitors…

She scoffed as she took the stairs down to the entrance hall. Of course, the beast would dare - Pansy had learned at a young age that magical beasts and creatures needed a firm hand and a ready wand or they would turn on you. Still, her father was the most experienced wizard in Britain when it came to magical creatures, far above that barbarian simpleton at Hogwarts, and to make a mistake like this…

But there were more urgent things to worry about. “Is the Sphinx dead?” She didn’t want to run into a rampaging Sphinx.

“I don’t know, but it wasn’t moving, Mistress.”

Dead or under control, then. Good.

She smelled the smoke before she entered the - still open, but warded - staircase leading to their vault. So the drake had indeed escaped. But her father hadn’t made a mistake - those idiots from the Ministry must have bungled things up - hadn’t they mentioned there was something wrong with the contract? And if they had mentioned it in front of the Cryosphinx…
She would teach those idiots to cause such an incident in her home! And Father would ruin them!

But he was hurt. She ran down the stairs. There he was - on the ground. Unconscious, but she couldn’t see any blood…

“The Sphinx turned on him and knocked him out!” The stupid witch blurted out before Pansy reached her father.

“Be quiet!” Pansy snapped as she ran her wand over his chest - every Parkinson learned to treat wounds from creatures. But there were no wounds - no bleeding. No frostbite either. And his head was fine as well. But he was unconscious, as if he were stunned. But Cryosphinxes couldn’t cast spells…

“Mistress!”

She looked up in time to see the Stunner hit her in the chest as Floppy slumped down at the bottom of the stairs.

*****​

Pansy Parkinson woke with a gasp. Her father! The Stunner! What had happened? She looked around as she reached for her wand… where was it?

Then she realised where she was. In her family’s vault. Next to her still unconscious father and an equally unconscious Floppy. And a Sphinx! She jerked - but the Sphinx was trapped in stone, as she could see in the dim light… dim light? There was a glass with Brazilian Everlit Fireflies in the middle of the room, but there should be enchanted crystals providing light stuck to the walls...

They were gone. As, she realised with rapidly growing horror, were the contents of their vault. And her wand. And her jewellery. She started to cry as she realised what had happened.

The Night Nargles had ruined her life!

*****​

London, Ministry of Magic, January 29th, 1999

“Another heist? While we were guarding Gringotts?” Harry Potter clenched his teeth. He and Ron had just - finally - finished their shift there and now this!

“In the middle of the afternoon, too,” Nott said. “Stunned Mr Parkinson and Pansy and then robbed the manor. Pansy woke up in the evening and alerted us.” He sighed. “Poor Bathilda was about to head to dinner with me, and now she’ll be stuck there for hours.”

“You sound as if you care more about her than the Parkinsons.” Ron voiced what Harry was thinking.

“Of course I do.” Nott looked at them as if it were obvious. They must have failed to hide their surprise since he rolled his eyes and sighed. “Bathilda is a friend. Pansy’s just a fellow Slytherin.”

Harry held back from commenting that they had seemed quite close during their time at Hogwarts. Although all Slytherins had appeared to be close to each other, in his opinion.

“No Old Family solidarity?” Ron asked.

Nott scoffed. “Pansy cut off contact with Millicent, Tracey and Daphne as soon as their manors were robbed. She won’t get any solidarity from me.” He smirked. “I should start a betting pool how long it takes Draco to break up with her - and if he waits until he has found a better prospect or not.”

That sounded very vindictive to Harry. On the other hand, it was Parkinson. She was simply reaping what she had sowed.

“This will weaken Malfoy’s allies, though,” Ron commented again.

The other Auror shrugged. “Parkinson will keep his seat until his death, so Malfoy will still have his vote.” He grinned. “In the short term, it’ll even make it easier for Malfoy to control his allies. Parkinson will have to go along with everything.”

“They still have their business and other assets,” Harry pointed out. “And I doubt that they kept all their gold in their vault.”

Nott shrugged again. “Even if they saved part of their gold, the loss of face is too great. Your vault and manor robbed while you were there?” He shook his head. “They’ll be the laughing stock of the Old Families.”

Sirius’s description of the Wizengamot as a school of sharks ready to turn on each other as soon as they smelled blood was really quite accurate.

“Aren’t you rushing there to help?” Nott asked.

Harry glanced at Ron. “Unless we missed the memo, Dawlish hasn’t requested our help.”

Nott sighed. “Stupid fool. This is his last chance. Does he really think he can catch the thieves by himself?”

The question was whether Dawlish wanted to catch the thieves at all, in Harry’s opinion. And if he did, if he was so delusional that he thought he could arrest them without their help. Which probably was the case - it certainly was a common attitude in the Corps.

“Well, we’re going home - no point in waiting for a call to the scene that won’t come,” Ron said.

Which meant, Harry knew, that Ron had a rendezvous with Luna in Hogsmeade or at Hogwarts. And Hermione would be returning from France - there was no way Sirius would be staying there, not when another manor had just been robbed. He just hoped that his girlfriend wouldn’t be kept too busy helping his godfather with his political machinations.

Although he had to call them first to inform them of the latest heist. And with Dawlish around, it would be better if he did that from home.

*****​

Argelès-sur-Mer, Pyrenées Orientales, France, January 29th, 1999

“Stop fidgeting, Hermione. You’ll be able to sort through the loot soon enough.”

Hermione Granger glared at the dog. It would be at least another day, probably three days if Harry wasn’t called in to work over the weekend, until she could properly sort through their loot from Parkinson Manor!

“Mr Fletcher’s checking for traps and curses already,” Jeanne added, sitting in her chair at the fireplace, one hand resting on her stomach as she held a book - about child-rearing - with the other. Hermione’s friend wasn’t yet ‘nesting’, not really, but she was certainly getting there. Not that Hermione would ever fault anyone for reading a book, of course.

Which reminded her that an entire library was waiting for her to sort through! She clenched her teeth. She could almost hear all those books crying out to her, to come and read them. Or, at least, organise them properly - the Parkinsons had merely stuffed their library shelves with their books, without even a hint of a system, from what Hermione could tell when she had looted their library. Which was focused on Magical Creatures, too - a subject Hermione’s own library didn’t cover in detail yet. If she had had access to those books, she wouldn’t have failed her N.E.W.T. exam and only gotten an Acceptable!

“Besides, Harry hasn’t called us yet about the heist,” the dog added. “It wouldn’t help our alibi if we cut our trip short without official knowledge.”

“He might have been called to the manor before he could inform us,” Hermione said. Which would mean they would be stuck in France for even longer than she had thought! Perhaps they should have taken the loot with them when they left Britain after the heist… She sighed. “Parkinson should have woken up an hour ago! We didn’t stun her that hard.” Unlike her father - but that idiot deserved it for almost getting all of them, including himself, killed by that dragon! On the other hand, the witch was rather vacuous. Perhaps she would take far longer than usual to recover her wits? Hermione didn’t think anyone ever did a study comparing intelligence to the average recovery time after getting stunned. Perhaps…

Her mirror vibrated. Harry!

She quickly picked the mirror up and activated it. “Yes?”

“Hermione?” He smiled at her. And from what she could tell, he was in their living room at Grimmauld Place. So he wouldn’t have to spend the entire evening investigating Parkinson Manor!

“Hi, Harry!” She beamed at him.

He smiled as well, then grew serious. “I hate to interrupt your trip, but the Night Nargles struck again.”

Hermione had to suppress her annoyance at that stupid name again as she faked her surprise at the news.

*****​

London, No 12 Grimmauld Place, January 29th, 1999

“...and we had to blast them with Water-Making Spells from one end of the Alley to the other until they finally had enough and left - soaking wet. Some even lost their wands in the whole mess.” Harry Potter shook his head. “They really thought that they could storm Gringotts and take their gold.” Even though not a single one of them had managed to cast a simple Shield Charm during the confrontation.

“Well, such arrogance isn’t exactly uncommon among wizards,” Hermione said as she leaned forward and took another slice of the treacle tart Kreacher had made as dessert for their late dinner.

“It’s very common among Slytherins,” Sirius cut in.

“Really?” Jeanne cocked her head. “I would have thought reckless acts were typical for Gryffindors. At least that’s what I took from your stories, dear.” Harry tried not to look as she added mustard to her slice of the tart. If pregnancy did that to your taste buds, he was certainly glad he was a man.

Sirius coughed. “Gryffindors are brave, not stupid.”

“Though, sometimes, it’s hard to tell the difference,” Hermione said, smiling sweetly at Harry’s godfather.

“Well, some simple minds might have trouble with that, I agree,” Sirius replied with a very toothy smile at Hermione.

“Oh, really? Well, perhaps...”

Harry put his hand on Hermione’s thigh and interrupted her. “Let’s not start a row, please. I already had to stop a riot at work.” He smiled at her to take the sting out of his words, but she still blushed.

“Sorry.”

Harry glanced at his godfather. Then glared at him. Then Jeanne flicked her wand, and Sirius yelped.

“Sorry,” Sirius finally said with a pout. “So, you’re now on guard duty?”

Harry shrugged. “There wasn’t anyone else to take that assignment. Shacklebolt is busy with various tasks, Tonks is on undercover missions all the time and Dawlish…” He shrugged.

“...is straining his small brain trying to catch the Night Nargles,” Sirius said.

Hermione glared at his godfather, Harry noticed, before turning to him. “Are you certain that the people trying to rush Gringotts weren’t under a spell?”

“We checked,” Harry said. “After arresting the most aggressive of the lot.”

“And the most stupid,” Sirius said. “Makes you worry about the country if there are so many stupid people around.”

“Well, as an Auror, I tend to meet the stupid wizards and witches,” Harry said.

“Why, thank you!” Hermione said in a flat voice.

Harry glared at her. “I didn’t mean it like that!”

She chuckled. “Oh, you meant the other Ministry employees?”

“Well, some of them. Probably.” Definitely. When she giggled, he frowned at her. “Most criminals are stupid.”

“But you’re not dealing with those kinds of criminals. You hunt the smart ones,” Hermione said. “Crouch was a monster, but a smart one.”

Harry nodded. “And the Night Nargles aren’t stupid either.”

Hermione sniffed at that. “Well, since they failed to pick a name of their own, I don’t think they’re that smart. It was obvious that if they didn’t choose a name, someone would do it for them.”

“I certainly hope that you’re correct,” Harry said. “That would make them easier to catch.”

“Though they’d have to be very dumb for Dawlish to be able to arrest them,” Hermione replied.

Harry couldn’t disagree with that. “True. But I don’t think Dawlish will be on that case for much longer.”

“Oh?” Sirius perked up. “Will you and Ron take over?”

“Unless they need us to guard the goblins,” Harry said. But anyone with half a brain could do guard duty. Even Hit-Wizards. And he and Ron were among the best Aurors in the Corps.

“At least you’d be safer hunting thieves than guarding those backstabbing goblins.” Hermione scowled. “They are risking the ruin of a lot of businesses with their power play.”

“They don’t care as long as it hurts wizards,” Sirius said. “They wanted Crouch. But the Wizengamot couldn’t hand over a wizard to them, not even Crouch.”

“Another example of arrogance and pride causing unnecessary trouble,” Hermione said.

“Not exactly,” Sirius said. “Even if we could hand Crouch over without offending most of the country, Crouch knew too many secrets that couldn’t be allowed to fall into the hands of the goblins. For example, I don’t think that he murdered his father and Millicent Bagnold without making them tell him all their secrets.”

He would be wrong about Bagnold, actually - Harry had led the interrogation. But Sirius was correct about Crouch’s father and his secrets. “Well, they threw him through the Veil. There’s not even a body left to hand over.”

“Which we wouldn’t do either,” Sirius said. “Never know what they could do with it.”

“And yet, despite all of this, the goblins still have a monopoly on banking. Or whatever passes as banking in Wizarding Britain.” Hermione scoffed. “I bet if the Old Families didn’t have their own vaults in their homes and were forced to use Gringotts as well, they wouldn’t let this continue.”

“Of course they wouldn’t,” Sirius said, grinning. “But as long it’s just the commoners’ gold put in danger, who cares?”

Hermione huffed.

Harry agreed. That was a very egotistical stance. But common among the Old Families, as he had found out.

Before he could change the subject to something less depressing - or infuriating - Kreacher entered the room. “Master, your half-blood cousin has arrived. She demands to speak with you and Master Harry.”

“Tonks?” Sirius asked - unnecessarily; he only had one ‘half-blood cousin’. “Well, send her in. And get a plate for her - she will want some of that tart.”

Harry pressed his lips together; he had been hoping to eat the leftovers later.

Tonks arrived less than a minute later. “Sirius! Harry!” She nodded at them, then at Jeanne and Hermione. “Jeanne. Hermione.”

“Have a seat, Tonks - and a slice,” Sirius said, pointing at a free chair at the table.

But Tonks didn’t seem to care. She looked straight at Sirius, then Harry. “We’ve got trouble. Someone’s trying to hire an assassin, and I think one of you is the target.”

*****​

“What?” Hermione Granger blurted. Someone wanted to hire an assassin to kill Harry? Or Sirius?

“What?” Sirius mirrored her. Jeanne’s reaction was cruder. And more French.

Harry took the news with more grace. “You said you think one of us might be the target. That doesn’t sound like you’re certain.”

Tonks frowned at him. “It’s not as if there’s a board with open contracts or bounties in Knockturn Alley. Such things are handled very discreetly.”

Sirius scoffed. “Whoever is doing this has no class. My family would have never hired assassins for their murders.”

Hermione rolled her eyes at him - this wasn’t the time for stupid jokes. Even if Jeanne laughed at it. “How did you uncover this?” she asked Tonks. She had been undercover in Knockturn Alley herself, after all. Infrequently, but she was no stranger to that hive of scum and villainy. And she should have broken up with Paul much sooner if she was quoting movies in her head.

Tonks hesitated a moment, Hermione noted. “Now, I’ve been on undercover missions a lot - it’s practically all I do these days. Not that I mind, mind you - it beats guard duty.”

Harry snorted. “Go on, rub your special talent in.”

The Auror grinned, her mouth stretching a little - more than a little - too wide. “So I’ve become pretty familiar with the area and the regulars there. And since I’ve got several cover identities - which I need to maintain even outside missions - I have a unique perspective of things. Some people who’d never trust one of my identities chat with another.”

That made sense. And it made Tonks a greater danger to any heists in Knockturn Alley than Hermione had expected. She would have to inform Mr Fletcher of this.

“And what did you notice?” Harry asked.

“Two of my undercover identities were approached by their contacts looking for skilled wands for hire. Wands that wouldn’t hesitate to take on ‘the most dangerous targets’, as they put it.”

“Well, that would certainly fit us.” Sirius grinned. It seemed as if the dog were proud of that!

And Jeanne nodded in apparent agreement with both the statement and the sentiment. Hermione rolled her eyes again.

“Do you know who’s behind this?” Harry asked. At least he was focusing on the important questions.

“No, I don’t.” Tonks shook her head. “None of my undercover identities would fit that request. But they must be offering a lot of gold if they hope to hire a skilled assassin. And some of it up front or people wouldn’t risk their necks making inquiries.”

“That would mean that they are a member of the Wizengamot,” Sirius said.

“It makes it likely,” Hermione corrected him. “But they aren’t the only ones with a lot of gold to spend. If they even have that much gold; they could be planning to con the assassin.”

Tonks shook her head. “I doubt it. They would need to be very dumb to attempt that - they would not only earn the enmity of the assassin, but the middlemen as well, whose reputations would be damaged.”

“And if they expect to be able to handle that, they probably wouldn’t need an assassin to come after us in the first place,” Harry added.

Hermione frowned. It might be unlikely, but her theory wasn’t impossible. She didn’t think it should be dismissed so lightly. “I wasn’t aware that there were assassins for hire,” she said after a moment. That sounded more like something out of a movie or television show.

“Well, it’s more like mercenaries who aren’t too picky about their contracts,” Tonks said. “I wouldn’t put that past half the mercenaries I know in Knockturn Alley.”

“Half?” Hermione blinked. That was…

“I don’t mean hired wands willing to go after Harry or Sirius; just mercenaries willing to kill someone for gold.”

“Ah.” Hermione nodded.

“And how many of those do you know?” Sirius asked.

“None,” Tonks said, “though there are a few I suspect would be willing to give it a shot.”

“But it looks like you don’t have evidence of a plot against us, just conjecture,” Harry pointed out. “Did you report your suspicions to Scrimgeour?” He sounded as if he expected the answer to be ‘yes’.

Tonks sighed. “Got me there. No, I came straight to you.”

Harry frowned. “That’s against regulations.”

Hermione glared at him. Why would he care about stupid regulations if his and Sirius’s lives were on the line!

“Well, technically, I don’t have any evidence - I only have a suspicion.” Tonks grinned. “So, I’m not required to report it.”

Harry didn’t look like he approved of her reasoning, but Sirius chuckled. “Good thinking!”

“And there’s the matter that whoever is behind this might have moles in the Department,” Tonks added.

“Whoever hired Markdotter and his gang last September to attack Ron and me also leaked our patrol route and schedule to them,” Harry said, nodding.

“Wizengamot member,” Sirius said.

“Or a Ministry employee,” Hermione added. “Although a high-ranking one. One with influence and gold.”

Sirius snorted. “If you have one, you will have the other.”

“We still need to inform Scrimgeour,” Harry said.

“For a mere suspicion?” Sirius shook his head. “He’ll want it investigated, and that might warn whoever is behind this - they must have moles, as you said yourself.”

Harry eyed him. “I take it that you have an alternative,” he said, in a slightly cautious tone, Hermione noticed.

“Of course!” Sirius beamed at him. “We’ll lay a trap for them!”

Hermione hissed: “A trap? With Harry as bait?” She drew her wand.

“Non!” Jeanne’s reaction mirrored hers.

Sirius held up his hands, his smile slipping. “No, no… you misunderstood me. We won’t use Harry - or me,” he added with a smile at Jeanne, “as bait. We’ll create an assassin for them to hire!”

*****​

Harry Potter frowned. Using someone else as bait to uncover who was behind an assassination plot aimed at himself felt wrong. He glanced at Hermione. Even if his girlfriend didn’t seem to share that opinion. Quite the contrary.

Tonks snorted. “You want me to become an assassin willing to take on Harry or yourself.”

Sirius nodded. “It’s your speciality, isn’t it?”

Tonks nodded. “Yes.” She wrinkled her nose. “Though I usually don’t play such high-profile roles. It won’t be easy to manufacture a persona that fits the request out of nothing. That’s usually a lot of work for the Department.”

Harry Potter frowned. “Are you allowed to use your special talents privately?” This started to look like a vigilante operation. Not exactly something in which an Auror, much less two, should take part. Although both of them had been part of the Order of the Phoenix.

Tonks grinned. “Well, they can’t exactly prohibit me from using a natural talent. It’s not as if it’s a Ministry resource.”

Hermione snorted. “I’m certain a number of Ministry officials consider you a resource.”

Harry didn’t doubt that Scrimgeour and Bones saw Tonks’s talent as a special resource - but they didn’t see Aurors as resources. Both of them had been Aurors, after all. The other Ministry officials, on the other hand… He shook his head. “It’ll still cause trouble if this comes out - you know what Bones thinks about vigilantes. And we can’t exactly arrest whoever is behind this without revealing how we found them.”

Tonks winced. “That won’t be pleasant.”

Sirius scoffed. “Bah. If anyone wants to make an issue out of this, I’ll bury them. And the Wizengamot will back me. This is a family affair, after all, and the Ministry should know better than to meddle with that.”

Hermione pouted, Harry noticed. “While I disagree in principle with family loyalty taking precedence over loyalty to the law and government, I can’t, in good conscience, support the Ministry officials in this case. Or this Ministry in any case.”

Tonks chuckled. “You’ve been listening to Sirius too much - this could have been straight out of a speech in the Wizengamot.”

Hermione sniffed. “Who do you think writes his speeches?”

Tonks raised an eyebrow. “You are behind all the colourful language he uses?”

Hermione glared at Harry’s godfather. “No, that’s him improvising. I haven’t been able to train him enough that he stops doing it,” she said.

For some reason, Sirius seemed to find that really funny. Harry shook his head. “Just because we can do it and get away with it doesn’t mean we should do it.” His godfather started to frown, and Harry glared at him. “We’re not at Hogwarts.”

“And thank God for that,” Tonks added.

Sirius sulked, and Hermione rolled her eyes while Jeanne giggled.

Harry sighed: “I think we should inform at least Bones, if not Scrimgeour as well. That will avoid a lot of unnecessary trouble.”

Sirius scoffed. “I don’t trust them to keep this quiet.”

Tonks shrugged. “My undercover missions all went well and had support from the Ministry.”

“But you weren’t investigating a high-ranking official or a member of the Wizengamot, were you?” Hermione pointed out.

Tonks frowned at her. “I’m not supposed to tell anyone about my missions.” Harry was about to nod in approval when the witch continued: “But yes, you’re right. Although I generally don’t know what I’ll find out when I start - I’m often just gathering all kinds of information.”

“Most Wizengamot members who ’ave dealings in Knockturn Alley would use middlemen, probably several of them, wouldn’t they?” Jeanne asked.

“Yes,” Tonks said. “At least for this sort of business.”

Sirius scoffed. “I think a few of them wouldn’t trust middlemen and would go themselves - probably in disguise. And some certainly visit Knockturn Alley regularly for various reasons.”

Harry shook his head. “I don’t think Bones or Scrimgeour will work against us. And I think we should work with them. That’ll make things easier.”

“And we might be able to use resources of the Ministry,” Tonks added. “It’s my skin we’re risking, after all.”

Sirius huffed. “Bones will be mad anyway, for coming to us first.”

Tonks’s grin widened. “Only if we tell her that.”

“I like how you think!”

Harry sighed as Sirius’s grin matched his cousin’s. This was probably the best he was going to get.

He was about to agree when Hermione spoke up again: “We’ll still have to persuade her to let us run the mission instead of the Aurors.”

“You want to be on the mission as well?” Harry blurted out, then winced. Hermione was prickly when it came to what she saw as patronising behaviour.

And as expected, she narrowed her eyes at him. “Only in a planning role. I’m not a metamorphmagus or an Auror, after all.” Harry’s relieved smile must have been a little too obvious since she scowled. “That doesn’t mean I’m helpless.”

“Of course not!” he hastened to assure her. “But this is a mission best kept to Tonks, me and Ron.”

Now Sirius and Jeanne were scowling at him as well. And Tonks was laughing!

If only Ron were here to back him up.

*****​

London, Ministry of Magic, January 30th, 1999

If the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement were someone else, Harry Potter would assume that their rather hostile expression was because they had to work on a Saturday. But Bones wasn’t a witch to fret over such things. And Tonks winced at him behind Bones’s back.

“Auror Potter.” She barely nodded at him. “Sit down!”

“Yes, Ma’am.” Harry forced himself to behave naturally as he sat.

“You were already in the Ministry, even though you aren’t on the weekend shift.” Bones steepled her hands and stared at him.

“I wanted to check up on the Diagon Alley assignment,” Harry said. And he had wanted to see what evidence had been gathered at the Parkinson robbery - though apart from a possible charge against Parkinson for illegally owning a dragon, Dawlish hadn’t filed anything yet.

“And you had no idea that I would meet Auror Tonks today and then call you to work?” Bones leaned forward, touching the tips of her fingers to her chin.

Harry pressed his lips together. He didn’t want to lie to Bones - but he didn’t want to rat out Tonks either.

Bones scoffed and shook her head. And Tonks grimaced at him behind her back. Harry clenched his teeth.

“Auror Tonks was on an undercover assignment and discovered signs of an assassination plot against you, your godfather or possibly other Aurors such as Moody, Weasley or Shacklebolt,” Bones said.

Harry’s eyes widened. He hadn’t considered others as possible targets.

“Now, while I cannot dismiss the possibility that these others are in danger, I cannot deny that you and your godfather are the most likely targets due to your fame, influence and reputation.”

He nodded at that. It was true, after all.

Bones sighed and leaned back. “However, I’m not comfortable with letting you treat this as a family matter. Both of you are Aurors under my command, and I won’t tolerate any vigilante actions in my department.”

Harry nodded in agreement, but she didn’t seem to think that he was being honest.

She snorted again. “We both know that I cannot stop your godfather - his influence is too great, and this would have been a family matter in the past. But you’ll do what you can to keep him from running roughshod over our laws and regulations, or you will find out how far my influence reaches. Understood?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Harry snapped.

“Good. Now, I do know that this requires utmost secrecy. Which means other than Scrimgeour and your partner, no one else will be informed about this.” She glared at him again.

This time, Harry winced. “In the Department.”

Bones closed her eyes. “Who else already knows about this?”

“My godfather trusts his wife and his secretary implicitly,” Harry replied.

Judging by the way her jaw muscles twitched, Bones wasn’t impressed by his evasion. She turned her head and glared at Tonks, who acted as if she didn’t know anything about that. Sometimes, Harry envied her for her talents.

After a moment, Bones sighed. “We will discuss this tomorrow in your home.”

Harry nodded. Sirius wouldn’t like it, but this was for the best.

*****​

London, No 12 Grimmauld Place, January 30th, 1999

Hermione Granger wished Mr Fletcher were here in Grimmauld Place. Tonks was a good Auror, and her special talent was certainly very useful, but Mr Fletcher had decades of experience in Knockturn Alley on her. But with Moody and his cursed eye in the house, Mr Fletcher couldn’t visit - and neither could they leave for a planning session in Greenwich. Not without Moody noticing, which would make Harry wonder where they were going ‘despite the danger’ - even though the assassin hadn’t been found, much less hired yet. And Mr Fletcher had refused to appear as an ‘old acquaintance’ of Sirius with ‘knowledge of the area’ when she had briefly contacted him last night through their mirror. At least he was gathering information in the Alley.

She sighed. “I don’t like this. We should be doing something.” Anything other than waiting for Harry and Tonks to return from the Ministry.

“There’s not much we can do,” Jeanne pointed out. “We need more information.”

“You know what Harry said,” Sirius pointed out from where he was sitting, lowering the weekend issue of the Daily Prophet.

Hermione growled in response. Harry didn’t want to do anything without clearing it with Bones first. But he didn’t know what they could do. What she could do! Tonks was a metamorphmagus, but Hermione had mastered the art of disguise - and she had gone on undercover missions in Knockturn Alley before! She glared at the dog. If not for him, she would have told Harry everything long ago, and they wouldn’t be in this mess.

“What did I do?” the dog faked ignorance.

She huffed in return and tried to focus again on her list of possible enemies willing to hire an assassin. Which was a little too long to be of practical use - someone had a talent for making enemies. Lots of enemies.

Hermione glared at the dog again. Who hid behind the Quidditch results. Which he already knew from listening to the wireless yesterday. When he should have been working on his next bill.

She sighed once more.

*****​

London, No 12 Grimmauld Place, January 31st, 1999

“Welcome to Grimmauld Place, Madam Bones, Mr Scrimgeour.” Hermione Granger felt as if her cheeks should be hurting from her forced smiles. Having Moody in the house was bad enough, but now Bones and Scrimgeour were invading her home! And she had to smile and welcome them because the dog thought that was proper. At least she didn’t have to act as if she weren’t simply being polite.

“Miss Granger.” Bones nodded at her without any expression on her face.

Scrimgeour smiled at her, but she didn’t think he meant it. Or wouldn’t have bothered if she weren’t Sirius’s personal secretary.

“If’ you’ll follow me to the living room…” She gestured towards the door leading into the hallway. “The others are already waiting.” Had Bones twitched at that?

Hermione’s smile grew a little more genuine as she led the two guests to the back. Harry was right - Bones must hate having to work not just with, but pretty much under Sirius.

“Ah, Amelia! Rufus!” The dog waved as soon as they entered the room. “Have a seat and a drink!”

“I don’t drink on duty,” Bones answered. Scrimgeour glanced at her, then nodded. If the boss didn’t drink, the subordinates couldn’t drink either.

“There’s plenty without alcohol,” Sirius said. “Jeanne’s got some cravings these days, and Hermione was kind enough to go to a muggle shop for some variety.”

“I recommend the Diet Cola,” Hermione said.

Bones didn’t look as surprised as Hermione had hoped. And Scrimgeour availed himself of a normal cola with a nonchalance that clearly showed that he was familiar with muggle beverages. Well, both were experienced Aurors. Former Aurors, to be precise.

“Well, all the drinks seem safe,” Ron added. “No suspiciously coloured drinks.”

Fortunately, Harry entered, with Moody stuck on a floating chair, before Ron could quote another of Lovegood’s - either Lovegood’s - theories about magical creatures hiding among muggles.

“Alastor.” Bones actually smiled.

“Auror Moody.”

“B-b-bones, Sc-sc-sc-scrimgeour.” Mody managed to say, shaking while his artificial eye remained steady.

“You’re doing better,” Bones added.

“A-a-a-w-w-w-w-wake.”

Which was not much of an improvement, in Hermione’s opinion. She much preferred Aurors unconscious rather than watching her through enchanted eyes. Especially if she couldn’t tell if the protections against normal See-Through-Wall Spells worked on his eye or not. Well, she wore a disguise under her mask whenever she went on a heist, so it wasn’t a fatal weakness. Still, it was annoying to have to keep taking precautions without knowing if they were truly necessary.

“So now that everyone is here,” Sirius said as Tonks and Jeanne quickly stopped whispering to each other, “let’s discuss how we’re going to catch whoever is looking for an assassin for hire.”

“Before they find someone who will actually come after Harry. Or Sirius,” Hermione said.

“Or anyone else,” Harry just had to add.

Sirius sighed. “Yes, that’s what I meant. Anyway - it seems simple. Tonks can use her talents and pass as an assassin, and when she meets with her prospective employer, we snatch them up.”

So simple, even a dog could come up with it. Of course, the devil, as always, was in the detail.

“That will require a good background, though,” Tonks said, then flinched a little when Bones glared at her. Apparently, she didn’t like her Aurors speaking up without permission.

“Creating such a background will be a challenge,” Scrimgeour point out.

“Not particularly,” Sirius countered. “We can claim she’s a veteran from the New World.”

“Every local gutter rat with pretensions of grandeur claims that they’re a veteran from America,” Tonks replied. “That’s not exactly a good background.”

Moody made noises that seemed to indicate that he agreed with her.

“It just has to be good enough,” Hermione pointed out, “to fool the target. And I don’t think many locals will accept this job, no matter what background they claim.”

“The Ministry’s resources in the New World are limited,” Scrimgeour said.

“If we’re going the American route, we don’t need them,” Sirius said.

None of the Aurors liked that. Even if it was, in Hermione’s opinion, completely true. The risk was acceptable, in her opinion - she had used the same cover story twice so far, after all.

“We usually don’t depend on such flimsy cover stories,” Scrimgeour said.

“I like a little bit more than a story every drunk hired wand can make up,” Tonks added. That was understandable, of course.

Sirius waved those objections away. “If anyone doubts you, just use a few of the family spells to take care of them and you’ll have backed up your claims perfectly fine. Easy.”

“We do not plan to murder people to make our undercover missions more authentic,” Bones spat through clenched teeth.

“The Blacks have non-lethal but impressive curses as well, you know,” Sirius said. Hermione didn’t think it would be helpful to clarify that most of those spells made the victim wish they had been lethal curses.

“Neither do we plan to cripple people to enhance our cover stories,” Bones added.

“We could stage an incident - but that would require extensive use of Ministry resources,” Scrimgeour said. Which, given how many Ministry employee were spies for various influential people, would be a foolish idea, in Hermione’s opinion.

“We could stage such an incident ourselves,” Harry said. “With Polyjuice Potion and disguises.”

Hermione bit her lower lip. As tempting as it was to show off her competence, she didn’t think she wanted Harry to know just how experienced she was in disguising herself.

“I could help with a French background, or rather, my friends in France could,” Jeanne offered.

“That’s a very good idea!” Sirius beamed at her.

Tonks cleared her throat. “One problem with that. I don’t speak French. Not nearly well enough to fool anyone from France. Which, given the recent recruiting spree and upcoming layoffs, will be a mite more common in Britain for a while than usual.”

Hermione wanted to curse. Another fine solution, shot down because people didn’t learn foreign languages in Wizarding Britain!

“I think I know how we can use the New World as Tonks’s background,” Ron suddenly said, smiling.

Hermione tried to remember if any Weasleys had emigrated to the Americas. Or had worked there. She couldn’t recall any such case.

And then she remembered who had been to the New World. And winced.

*****​

Devon, Ottery St Catchpole, January 31st, 1999

“Is anyone else concerned by the fact that we’re relying on the knowledge of a man who hunts imaginary creatures for my background?” Tonks complained.

Harry Potter frowned as Hermione voiced his thoughts. “You agreed to the plan.”

“I’m having second thoughts,” Tonks said, “and this isn’t helping.” She pointed at the rook-like building they were approaching.

“Ron assured us that Mr Lovegood can be trusted,” Harry defended his best friend. “And I trust his judgement.”

“As long as it doesn’t concern animals,” Hermione qualified the statement. “So, as long as you’re not planning to go undercover as an animal, you’ll be fine. And if you’re planning to go as an animal, you won’t need a background anyway, so you’ll be fine in any case.”

Hermione could be rather catty, Harry noticed as Tonks grumbled about Ron not being objective about Lovegoods while they waited to be allowed inside the wards.

But even Harry had a little doubt when he saw Mr Lovegood approaching them - wearing what looked very much like a uniform straight out of the American Civil War. The muggle one.

“There you are! Ron told me everything! Come in, come in, and we’ll get this show on the road, as a good American friend of mine uses to say.” He stepped through the wards and touched every one of their group with his wand. “That should do it for the wards.”

But when Harry was about to walk through the wards - standing out in the open, near a location he was known to frequent often, made him a little nervous with an assassin after him - Lovegood held him back. “Wait! Wait! You still need the Voracious Mole repellant.” He held up a small bottle. “Voley has been a little anxious since Luna went back to Hogwarts, and without that, he’ll try to play with you, which can be a little scary for someone not used to his antics.”

“Voley?” Harry heard Tonks ask.

“Voracious Mole?” Hermione sounded rather sceptical.

Mr Lovegood either missed or ignored it. “Yes, Luna’s latest pet. Adorable, if a little gluttonous. I’m doing my best so he won’t feel lonely, but he really prefers Luna.”

Harry had never heard of such a creature. And he had received an Exceeds Expectations in his Care of Magical Creatures N.E.W.T.. But he took the bottle and sprinkled a little on his robes. He didn’t smell differently, though.

Something he was very glad for when, halfway to the front door, a creature the size of a bear broke through the ground from below and tackled Mr Lovegood to the ground. Only the fact that the man was laughing as he wrestled with the creature kept Harry from cursing it in reflex.

“Down, boy, down… don’t worry, I’ll feed you right after our guests have settled in! You didn’t eat a neighbour’s cat again, did you? You know they ruin your appetite.” Mr Lovegood managed to extract himself from under the creature - which did look remarkably like a giant, bear-sized vole. With very large claws and jaws - and brushed himself off. “Luna’s been trying to teach him not to eat pets, but he’s from Africa, and cats of all kinds are part of his natural diet.”

Hermione took another dose of the repellent, Harry noticed. It was understandable - even he was a little unnerved by the creature’s size, no matter how often Mr Lovegood claimed that the animal had never hurt a person after they adopted it. If Mr Lovegood didn’t have to close a few ‘scratches’ after ‘playing’ before the blood stained his robes, it would have sounded a little more convincing.

*****​

The Lovegoods were crazy. Mad. Bonkers. A public menace.

Hermione Granger pressed her lips together, only half-listening to Mr Lovegood’s attempts to teach Tonks a ‘proper American accent’. She had to pay attention to the door, which didn’t look nearly sturdy enough to keep that giant, cat-eating monstrosity out. And on the ground, of course - the creature could burrow rapidly through soil and only took a little longer to go through rocks. Or so Mr Lovegood claimed.

She couldn’t fathom why anyone would want to keep such an abomination as a pet. It was a crime against nature. Cats being its natural diet? Hermione shuddered.

“Are you cold?”

She forced herself to smile at Harry. He meant well, but he couldn’t help her. “I’m still a little shaken,” she said.

“Ah.” He smiled. “Those Voracious Voles are pretty impressive. I didn’t know such creatures existed.”

She strained to smile at him. “The knowledge about African magical creatures is, unfortunately, still very limited.” Mostly because the Sub-Saharan wizarding countries had been wiped out in the 19th century by the ICW’s response to their refusal to stop using magic against muggle colonialists, and their knowledge about Magical Africa’s creatures had been destroyed with them. To think that part of the Black Family library had been bought with loot from that ‘intervention’...

“Well, at least it has proven to Tonks that Mr Lovegood knows what he’s doing.” Harry smiled.

Or Tonks had been as shocked as Hermione herself but hadn’t yet recovered. She did seem to be quieter than usual, in Hermione’s opinion.

“I’ve found the other uniforms!” Ron announced, interrupting their talk as he floated several colourful bundles into the Lovegood’s living room.

“Perfect!” their host announced. “It’s traditional for mercenaries in the New World to wear parts of old uniforms. That will help you play your role.”

“These uniforms seem to be at least a hundred years old,” Hermione pointed out as Ron spread them out on the couch.

“Indeed, they are!” Mr Lovegood beamed at her. “But if anyone wore a uniform which is currently in use by a Wizarding Enclave, they would risk being mistaken for a soldier of that enclave.”

“And that could be fatal, given the local situation,” Ron added. “Too many wars to keep count.”

That was hyperbole, Hermione knew - she had studied the New World for her own roles. Though, apparently, not enough to have learned this particular tradition. Although she hadn’t been trying to pass as a mercenary, of course.

But this would be useful knowledge should she ever need to.

She watched - without losing track of the door’s state, of course - as Tonks was given an outfit made from several wildly different uniforms. It looked like an eyesore, but that, too, was a tradition, or so Mr Lovegood maintained. Well, it would explain Dumbledore’s fashion choices, she thought - he had had an American mother.

“It must have really galled Bones that this is, to all intents and purposes, a mission run by civilians,” she remarked, leaning against Harry.

“It’s an Auror mission,” he corrected her. “Tonks, Ron and I will be running it.”

“With help from Sirius, Jeanne, me and Mr Lovegood,” she replied. “We outnumber you.”

“You won’t be in the field.”

So you think, she thought. There was no way she’d let Harry risk his life alone if she could help it. And if she could help him, too, then so much the better.

*****​

 

Chapter 62: Revelations

London, Knockturn Alley, February 1st, 1999

Rolanda Rawlins ignored the clacking sound of her leg brace and kept an eye on the entrance to the side-alley next to the ‘Drunken Doxy’ as she approached the pub. It wasn’t very late, yet, and she had a reputation as a dangerous witch - not undeserved, mind you - but in Knockturn Alley, it paid to be on your guard. You never knew when some hag or vampire had gotten too hungry, or some thug too desperate. Or when someone was after you specifically.

Given her line of work, Rolanda was well aware of the last possibility. She’d had to deal with ne’er-do-wells who took business personally before. She nodded at the bouncer, Karl, as she reached the entrance. “Evening.”

“N’abend,” Karl grunted back. Many thought that he was a veteran of Grindelwald’s War. Rolanda didn’t share that opinion. Karl was the right age, but he didn’t act like a veteran of a war. Not like her great-uncle, who had fought Grindelwald’s Storm Wizards.

And she was well aware that there was a persistent, but completely false, rumour that Rolanda herself had been a member of the Hit-Wizard Corps in the last war - she had carefully cultivated it herself, after all. As long as you could back your reputation up, no one cared much - or for long - whether or not your past was a lie.

And Rolanda might not be as quick with her wand as she had been when she’d fought in the Balkan Wars and battled Ottoman raiders on the Greek Isles in the Aegean Sea, but even with her lame leg, she was still more than capable of dealing with the average Knockturn Alley ruffian.

She had to be, in her business.

She cast a Bubble-Head Charm right before she stepped inside - the pub’s hot, stuffy air seemed to be half made up of pipe, and even worse, smoke most of the time - not something she was fond of, especially after the Lung-Rotting Curse that had almost killed her in Albania.

She walked to the bar, paying attention to the regulars’ reactions and greetings. Nothing out of the usual, as far as she could tell. But then, anyone going after her wouldn’t reveal their intentions so easily.

“Evening, Rolanda.” Burt nodded at her without stopping the weaving of his wand as he floated a tray full of beer mugs towards the corner table. “The usual?”

“Yes.”

Half a minute later, he put a glass of Tsipouro down in front of her.

She checked for poison with her wand while she slid a few sickles over to him.

He snorted as he pocketed the coins. “You’re the only one here who drinks that.”

“All the more reason to check for poison,” she retorted. Then she raised the glass. “Yamas.”

He grunted.

She savoured the taste, closing her eyes for a moment, remembering Greece. And Alekos. How he had loved this liquor.

She put the glass down and looked around. “Who’s the witch in the corner?” she asked after she spotted a new face. Hired wand, North American, she thought - she didn’t know anyone else who’d wear clothes that mismatched in public.

“Sam,” Burt answered. “Just arrived from the New World. Looking for work.”

Rolanda snorted. “Who isn’t?” Everyone needed gold, after all.

“The Night Nargles?”

Rolanda blinked, then chuckled. “I don’t think they are regulars of Knockturn Alley.” No one who had stolen as much gold and other loot as those thieves had would slum it in Knockturn Alley.

“Linda claims that they’re hiding from the Aurors disguised as drunks and thugs in the side alleys.”

She shook her head. “That sneaky hag just wants to lure more idiots into her hunting grounds.” She hesitated a moment - but speculating about the identities, motives and fortunes of the Night Nargles had become a favourite pastime in the Alley. And Rolanda couldn’t do business if she didn’t fit in. “I heard that they are orphans who grew up in the Alley after an Old Family cast them out. They survived, they thrived and now they’re taking their revenge on all the Old Families.”

Burt scoffed. “Orphans here either stay or die. No one gets out.”

Rolanda shrugged. “They are robbing one Old Family after the other. This is not about gold. Not just about it, anyway - they must be richer than any Old Family by now, except, perhaps, the Blacks and the Malfoys.”

Brut shrugged. “Everyone claims they’ll retire after they hit it big. None ever do. It’s always one more job - until they mess up and end in Azkaban. Or dead.”

Rolanda snorted. The smart ones would have faked their deaths so no one would go after them any more. That was what she was planning, after all. But it wouldn’t do to announce that. “Someone has to be the first, then. And the Night Nargles might achieve that. They might even be members of an Old Family themselves. Disinherited or illegitimate heirs. Perhaps.” It would explain their ease at out-thinking the Old Families.

Burt scoffed at that rumour as he floated another tray full of mugs to the same table. Hard-drinking foreigners, Rolanda noticed. Probably hired wands who had been let go from the Ministry - the penny-pinchers would have been quick to cut the Ministry budget as soon as Crouch was dead. Perhaps…

“Don’t bother,” Burt said. “They’ve seen the Boy-Who-Lived fight Crouch.”

Rolanda pressed her lips together. Burt knew her a little too well. “No one said that Potter’s the target,” she replied.

“No. But no matter who’s the target, he’ll be the one hunting the assassin.” Burt flicked his wand and polished a stack of plates with one spell. “And not even the French want to risk that.”

Rolanda sighed. How was a smart witch supposed to make a living if the Alley regulars were suddenly growing half a brain? She nodded towards the new face. “What about her?” Americans usually thought they were hot stuff just because they had fought in a few of their little wars on the East Coast.

Burt shrugged. “New face, no rep. Talks big. You know them.”

Rolanda nodded. She knew the type. Most of them were braggarts or fools who’d soon learn that merry old England wasn’t ripe to be conquered by ‘veteran soldiers’. But there was always the lone genuine article - the wizard or witch who could back up their claims.

And she wanted her commission. She pushed off the bar. “Let’s see if she’s good enough.” Or dumb enough to dismiss Potter as another wizard with an overblown reputation.

Burt snorted again. “Good luck.”

“I don’t need luck,” she lied with a grin before she limped towards the new face’s table.

The witch had her wand in hand and was looking at her as if she were ready to curse Rolanda - a good sign. Some fools dismissed Rolanda as a threat as soon as they noticed her leg. They usually regretted their mistake as soon as they tried something against her - or ran into Mad-Eye. “Good evening,” Rolanda said, bowing.

“Evening,” the witch drawled. She looked lean under her robes, and she had a few interesting scars on her face. She wasn’t a werewolf - the full moon was up - but she might have fought one. Or a Skinwalker, since she was an American. If that was true - but so far, she looked genuine. The clothes were real; Rolanda could tell.

“I’ve heard you’re looking for work, Sam,” Rolanda said as she sat down opposite the witch.

“Isn’t everyone?” The witch shrugged, but Rolanda saw her tense up slightly. She was interested - probably not quite desperate, though.

“Not everyone is good enough for well-paying work.”

Another shrug. “I’m still alive.”

Rolanda inclined her head. “That might just mean you’re cautious.”

Sam snorted. “That’s part of being good.”

A view Rolanda shared but didn’t always appreciate when looking for mercenaries. “You might have heard that someone’s looking for a hired wand willing to take on one of the most dangerous targets in Britain. None of the locals has accepted the job yet.”

“They might be too cautious,” Sam said. Her accent sounded genuine as well, Rolanda noted, though she wasn’t an expert. “Or unwilling to move.”

Ah. Sam was counting on leaving the country after the job. Not a bad plan. “Indeed.”

The mercenary flicked her wand - quicker than Rolanda had expected - and a slight buzzing noise filled their ears as the privacy charm took effect. “So, what’s the job?”

“I’m just the middleman,” Rolanda said. “You impress me, and you get to meet my client.”

“Ah. One of those talks.” Sam smiled. “Shoot.” She grinned.

Yes, Rolanda had a good feeling about this one. She’d still grill the witch to see if she slipped up, of course - it wouldn’t do to damage her own reputation by recommending a braggart to her contact.

After all, she had plans to retire before she took that one job too many.

*****​

London, Knockturn Alley, February 1st, 1999

Undercover missions were almost as dull as guard missions, in Harry Potter’s opinion. You stood somewhere for a long time, watching your surroundings for trouble that would probably never happen. The main difference was that he wasn’t wearing his usual red Auror robes, but instead a ratty cloak with a large hood that concealed the part of his face that would otherwise have been visible above the fake beard Hermione had glued to his skin - with far too much amusement if anyone had asked him.

Which no one had, of course. It really was rather unfair. Sirius got to play the role of a dashing French mercenary who had arrived in England just when the Ministry stopped hiring, while Harry had to play a gutter rat in clothes that looked ‘appropriately dirty’, as Tonks had put it. Looked and felt dirty - he thought he could feel the stains on his skin. And he somewhat doubted that Tonks went through the same each time she went undercover - her patchwork uniform certainly didn’t look shoddy and dirty.

And he couldn’t even take solace in the thought that Ron was as badly off as Harry - his friend wasn’t suffering at all. ‘I’ve had to cover myself with mud for days on end when I was hunting Swamp Crawlers with Luna; this is nothing.’ Hah!

But the waiting was the worst. There was someone out there looking for an assassin to send after him or Sirius, and all he could do was wait and hope that Tonks would impress the witch talking to her enough that she’d get to meet them.

Harry almost hoped some fool would try to bother them. It wouldn’t be good for their cover, but he would really like a little action right now.

“Mate, relax,” Ron said. “Everything’s going fine.”

Harry glanced at him. They had cast a privacy charm - something no one here batted an eye at - but that was no reason to be lax about their cover. On the other hand… He sighed. “I haven’t seen Markdotter’s contact. We might have been better off visiting him again in his cell and seeing if he has further information.”

“That would have been hard to do without news spreading - which could tip off our suspect.” Ron shrugged. “Besides, we got his memories of the entire encounter. What else do you think he could tell us?”

Harry frowned but didn’t contest the point. He just wished he could do something instead of waiting. “First the Gringotts assignment, now this. Might as well have joined the Hit-Wizards.”

That made his friend chuckle. “Now, it’s not that bad. It’s more like a stakeout.”

In dirty robes. Harry sighed again and glanced at the table where Sirius was telling tales of his supposed adventures to a few ruffians. Adventures probably related to the bedroom, judging by his gestures. He still wasn’t happy about Sirius being there, much less in such a visible role. His godfather was a possible target as well, after all.

At least Hermione was safely at home, despite her protests.

*****​

Hermione Granger was in her element. A shadow in the night, graceful and silent, she prowled the roofs of her territory, observing all the prey and lesser predators beneath her, keeping guard over Harry and the dog.

The dog who had forbidden her from joining him in disguise inside the rathole where Tonks was making contact with a suspect.

Crouching next to a soot-covered chimney, she pouted. She could have played a French hired wand as well as the dog - unlike Harry and Ron, she knew French. And she had done it before.

But the dog, curse him, had successfully argued that she might have to return home very quickly since Harry expected her to stay at home. And that could be a problem, depending on the situation - Hermione didn’t want to catch a curse because Harry had been trained to be paranoid by that stupid old cursed Auror and so might think an unknown witch leaving right after him was suspicious.

And since she couldn’t be inside and wouldn’t stay at home - she was a cat, not a dog you could order around! - she might as well keep an eye on the area outside the pub. Just in case this was a trap. Tonks was apparently very good at undercover missions, and Sirius wasn’t bad - for a dog with an oversized ego - but Harry and Ron were new at this. Someone might make them and call reinforcements. Even though their disguises were good. But they hadn’t been trained by Mr Fletcher. They hadn’t been trained in this at all, actually.

She shook her head. Amateurs on such a mission - it was all the dog’s fault. If Harry knew what she actually could do, then she would be in there, and he would be waiting outside.

Or he would be trying to arrest her.

She bit her lower lip. She didn’t want to think about that. It was the biggest reason to actually stop stealing after Malfoy Manor - she wouldn’t have to lie to him anymore.

But she loved to prowl the night and sneak into manors, defying guards and Aurors alike. It was what she was - a professional thief. And a woman shouldn’t give up her career for a man - her parents would agree with her, even though they might disagree about her chosen career.

She huffed. She had called them and informed them that Crouch had been caught and that they could now return to Britain, only to be told that they would finish their cruise. They claimed they didn’t want to see so much money wasted, but Hermione couldn’t help suspecting that they harboured some lingering resentment about being sent out of the country because of her. Twice.

Well, it couldn’t have been helped - they had been in danger, and Hermione couldn’t have protected them. Not when she was busy robbing Old Families.

But she did miss them. She loved Harry, Jeanne and even Sirius, but they weren’t family in the way her parents were.

*****​

London, Knockturn Alley, February 2nd, 1999

“It’s too easy,” Harry Potter mumbled under his breath, staring at the dive across the Alley from his vantage point on a rickety roof. At least this time Sirius had to play the gutter rat, and Harry and Ron were on perimeter guard. As soon as Tonks or Sirius gave the signal, they would charge in.

“Sometimes it is easy,” Ron replied. Harry didn’t need to see his friend - and couldn’t, due to the Disillusionment Charm Ron had cast - to know he was rolling his eyes.

“‘If you think it’s easy, it’s a trap’,” Harry quoted Moody.

“Well, we’ll be fine then - you don’t think that it’s easy.”

“Even Sirius makes better jokes,” Harry shot back. He kept his voice low despite the privacy charm protecting them from being overheard.

Ron chuckled. “Well, whether our plan works out or it turns out to be a trap, things are bound to get interesting one way or the other.”

Harry thought that his friend really had been spending too much time with the Lovegoods. Although he had to admit - only to himself, mind you - that he had been complaining about boredom last night. Among other things. He sighed. “Sorry. The whole situation is just…” He clenched his teeth. “We finally catch Crouch, and, almost immediately, there’s another murder plot.”

Ron waited a moment before answering: “Well, you’re the Boy-Who-Lived. Someone’s probably always going to be coming for you. And Sirius is, well, Sirius.”

“I know.” Harry’s godfather was a wizard of many talents. Unfortunately, one of them was making enemies. “But Hermione isn’t like that.” And didn’t deserve to be dealing with such danger.

“Mate, you’re not thinking of breaking up with her for her own safety, are you? You know how she’ll react.”

“No.” He wasn’t. Not really. “And I know.” His girlfriend had been vocal enough about having to stay at home for this ambush. As bad or worse than Jeanne, who had probably only agreed to stay at home because she was pregnant. He sighed again. “But I don’t like it.” Not at all.

“You’d be an idiot if you did, but a bigger idiot if you broke up with her over this. You’re good for each other.”

“Thanks.”

“I mean it.”

“I know.” After a few moments spent tracking a drunk wizard stumbling through the Alley below to check that he wasn’t just putting on an act, Harry added: “At least Dawlish won’t bother us here.” The fool had been harassing them all day - when he hadn’t been turning the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures upside down trying to find who among its employees could have helped the Night Nargles. And the fact that Harry and Ron had been hiding that they were preparing an undercover mission hadn’t helped, of course.

Ron snorted. “He won’t be on the case much longer, anyway.”

“I still can’t believe Parkinson had a smuggled dragon in his vault,” Harry said.

“Well, a Fire Drake, actually. Related to dragons, but most scholars don’t count them as true dragons,” Ron explained. “He’ll still get sentenced for dragon smuggling, though.”

“If they can make it stick,” Harry said. “He claims the Night Nargles framed him, and Dawlish only found some scales.”

“And traces of dragon fire,” Ron said. “That’s not easy to fake.”

“They faked Fiendfyre,” Harry pointed out.

“Only the look of it, not the actual effect. They’re good, but they’re not that good.”

Harry conceded the point with a grunt. “He’ll still get off if Malfoy pulls a few strings. I can already hear him - ‘With the threat of the Night Nargles hanging over every Old Family, can we really condemn a good man for using such measures to protect his family? It’s not as if the Drake could have escaped from the vault, nor could it have bred, so what harm was actually done?’”

Ron chuckled again. “You’ve got his voice down.” After a moment, he asked in a more serious tone: “Do you think he’s the one behind this?”

Harry shook his head even though he was disillusioned. “I doubt it. He wouldn’t be going through the Knockturn Alley regulars.”

“He’s had dealings with them; Dad found out a few years ago. Couldn’t make the charge stick, of course,” Ron replied.

“That was before he got his pardon,” Harry replied.

“I don’t think he’s kept his nose clean afterwards,” Ron argued.

“I don’t think so either - but he wouldn’t risk Knockturn Alley for that.”

“Because he’d hate to get his hair dirty?”

Harry snorted even though it wasn’t that funny. “Because he wouldn’t trust them to keep his involvement a secret. No, this isn’t Malfoy.”

“Unless he’s counting on us coming to that conclusion,” Ron replied. “We’re a little low on numbers here.”

Harry knew that. “That’s why we’re out here - checking for ambushes. Speaking of…”

“Alright, I’ll do another round to check for disillusioned people hiding on rooftops,” Ron said.

“And I’ll keep watch on Tonks and Sirius,” Harry replied. He heard Ron take out his broom and then saw his marker rise in the air and disappear soon afterwards, once it was out of range of his Human-presence-revealing Spell.

Which, of course, was when the coin in his right pocket - Tonks’s - vibrated. Just when they’d split up.

Harry touched his Auror badge while he pulled out his own broom. “I’m going in.”

He heard Ron’s answer as he pushed off the roof. “I’m headed back.”

If it had been Sirius’s signal, Harry wouldn’t have waited. That would have meant trouble. But Tonks’s meant that they could head in and arrest the suspect. They had a little time. And he had to cover the building with Anti-Apparition and Anti-Portkey Jinxes anyway.

The half a minute Harry spent waiting until he saw Ron’s marker appear still felt like an hour. His family was in there, waiting for him. Depending on him.

He touched the ground half a second before Ron did. A few seconds later, he had shrunk and stored his broom and was at the door of the ‘Hag Doll Pub’. “Dropping Disillusionment Charm in three,” he muttered.

“Two. One,” Ron replied.

Harry dispelled the charm, then blasted the door open. “Aurors! No one move!” he yelled as he burst inside, already sending a Stunner at the man opposite Tonks. A moment later, Ron’s Stunner, aimed at the witch next to the man, followed.

The man dropped like a stone, but the witch was already up and moving, and Ron’s Stunner was stopped by her shield. As was his follow-up Stunner. But that shattered her shield, and Tonks’s Stunner took her down before the witch could recast it or send a curse back.

Harry quickly used a Full Body-Bind Curse as well as an Incarcerous Spell to secure the male suspect while Tonks did the same to the witch she had stunned.

Ron addressed the crowd, many of whom had jumped to their feet and drawn wands. “DMLE. Do not interfere with the arrest. We’re not here for anyone else.”

But then a witch in the back yelled: “It’s a raid! There are a dozen red robes coming through the back!”

Harry saw her duck through the same door she had claimed Aurors would be rushing through. But the dozen thugs and ruffians panicking at her yell didn’t notice - and reacted quite predictably.

Harry hissed through clenched teeth as he dropped to the ground, three curses passing over his head and a fourth glancing off his shield. He flicked his wand as he rolled under the next table, reflexively stunning the witch who had apparently had the same idea. He saw Ron flip a table up and banish it, mugs and bottles included, at a burly thug charging towards them before Harry had to focus on the witch’s friend who was leaping on him.

The witch slid off his shield as well and crashed on to the floor. Harry rolled further towards Tonks and cast two Stunners that took out a wizard trying to flank them. Another was hit in the head with a Bludgeoning Charm by Tonks and thrown back onto a table full of empty bottles which were sent flying all over the room. The witch who had crashed into him stood up, screeching as if she were part hag, but before she could aim her wand at Harry, a stray curse took her in the back, and she fell down. A moment later, she screamed as her robes started to burn.

Harry’s Water-Making Spell - they were really far more useful than one would think - extinguished the flames and blasted her into another group of thugs who were peppering the stone wall that Ron had conjured to shelter himself with several curses. Ron didn’t miss the opportunity and leapt over the wall, his wand flashing to take the dazed thugs down as Harry shifted his aim and sent a volley of jinxes and hexes at two figures blasting a hole in the wall. They got hit with several of them and went down as their legs were turned to jelly and they were forced to dance. Harry’s follow-up Stunners put the two twitching, screaming thugs out of their misery before they sliced themselves to ribbons on the broken bottles covering the floor.

“I’ve got the bartender and bouncers! Couldn’t save the booze, though!” Sirius - who had taken the time to shed his ratty robes, of course - announced as he jumped over the bar and landed on a thug Tonks must have stunned during the fight. Judging by the sound of something breaking, Harry’s godfather must have broken the man’s wand or hand. Or both. Harry wasn’t about to ask who had broken the mirror behind the bar.

“Front clear!” Ron announced. “The two hags across the street have vanished.”

Harry quickly scanned the room for any threats still moving, then tapped his glasses for a look at the back rooms. He could see through the hallway leading to the back door and saw the witch who had started all of this on the ground outside, apparently stunned. Someone outside must have been waiting for her - or for the Aurors. And whoever had done this might still be waiting in ambush.

“Anyone in the rest of the building?” Ron asked as he was paralysing and binding the stunned thugs.

Harry shook his head. “Someone’s outside, ambushed the witch who started this. And upstairs is protected against my glasses.” Which meant they had to check those rooms the hard way.

But first things first. He summoned the robes of the stunned witch outside, noting with some satisfaction how she was slammed against a few walls on the way in, dragged along by her clothes.

Ron nodded and turned to Tonks and Sirius. “Guard the rest here. We’re going up.”

“Alright,” Sirius said.

“We got what we came for,” Tonks said. And, with a glance at the wrecked bar, added: “And far more.”

“‘Always secure your position’,” Harry quoted Moody.

Tonks groaned but didn’t say anything as Harry and Ron moved to the stairs.

Harry cast an Amplifying Charm. “DMLE! Aurors Potter and Weasley! We’re coming up. Do not resist!”

Sirius, of course, showed no such restraint. “Does that ever work?” he asked.

Harry rolled his eyes as Ron answered: “It’s bound to, one of those days, isn’t it?”

*****​

Hermione Granger huffed as she stared at the witch whom she had just stunned. She didn’t know the witch, but anyone fleeing the pub through the back door right after Harry and Ron had stormed into the place was suspect. And she certainly wasn’t Tonks or Sirius in disguise.

And taking the unknown witch down had relieved some of the frustration and anxiety Hermione was feeling at being unable to rush in herself and help her friends. If only Harry knew what she actually could do…

She sighed. At least it hadn’t been an ambush - Sirius would have called her in that case - nor had she spotted any reinforcements headed towards the pub. Judging by the fact that no more spells were lighting up the pub from the inside - or blowing holes in the walls and windows - the fight was over already. Harry should be safe. Unless both he and Sirius had been hurt… She clenched her teeth and suppressed the urge to hiss. They were alright. They could handle a bunch of ruffians. These weren’t Death Eaters, and certainly not wizards and witches as dangerous as Crouch.

But all it took was a lucky hit with lethal curse…

She drew a breath through her clenched teeth. What was the dog doing? He should have given her the all-clear. Reassured her that Harry was fine. That everything had gone according to plan. What was going on?

A window blowing out on the second floor, followed by flashes of spells going off, made her jerk and almost dart out of the shadows concealing her. Instead, she changed - she was too close to the pub, so a Human-presence-revealing Spell would pick her up if Harry or Ron looked out of the window. But if they hadn’t seen her lithe feline form during their sweeps for ambushers, they certainly wouldn’t spot her now.

*****​

Standing over the stunned and bound wizard who had tried to ambush them, Harry Potter wanted to shake his head at the man’s folly. He couldn’t, though, since he was using the enchantment on his glasses to quickly search the rest of the rooms, now that he was inside their protective spells.

“Stairs are clear,” Ron announced as he appeared in the doorway behind him. He prodded the wizard with the tip of his boot. “I wish they’d come quietly just once. What was the idiot thinking? He tried to ambush us, and he didn’t even have a Shield Charm cast in advance!”

Harry snorted. “He might not have been able to cast one.” It was appalling how many wizards and witches, even Ministry employees, didn’t know how to cast a spell that was part of every O.W.L. exam.

Ron scoffed. “How could he survive in Knockturn Alley without it? Isn’t it supposed to be mandatory?”

Harry laughed as he finished his sweep. “The other rooms and the attic are clear.” He turned his head, then grinned. “But we seem to have scared a cat on the roof across the street.”

“Don’t let Hermione hear you joke about scaring cats,” Ron said.

“I know better than that,” Harry said. Hermione was crazy about cats, especially her orange monster of a tomcat. He levitated the stunned wizard. “Let’s go down. We’re done here.”

Ron nodded. “Do we take the wizard and witch we came for, as well as the troublemaker who caused all this, and leave the rest, or call Bones and let her sort this out?”

Harry sighed. They couldn’t leave helpless people alone in Knockturn Alley. But Bones would be annoyed about the additional suspects - even though the slight escalation of the arrest hadn’t been their fault at all - and the additional paperwork would be murder. “Let’s call her in.”

She couldn’t be too angry - they hadn’t killed anyone, the pub was still standing and they hadn’t started any fires.

*****​

London, Ministry of Magic, February 2nd, 1999

“Knockturn Alley is still standing, despite your best efforts. Are you losing your touch?”

“No, Ma’am,” Harry Potter, standing in Bones’s office, answered smartly. The witch was rather unfair in her sarcasm, in his opinion. It really hadn’t been their fault that the situation had escalated into a larger fight than anticipated.

Bones shook her head. “Well, a dozen additional arrests will look good on your record - provided they are all criminals.”

Law-abiding wizards and witches in that kind of pub? Harry suppressed the urge to snort. “They all attacked us despite our uniforms and verbal identification,” he said instead. “That’s a clear-cut conviction right there.”

Bones’s expression showed she didn’t share his opinion, but she didn’t contradict him.

“We’ve identified the witch you arrested. Rolanda Rawlins - a wand for hire that semi-retired to arranging mercenary contracts of dubious legality,” Scrimgeour said.

So some Auror had recognised her. Which meant she probably had a criminal record of sorts - the kind fitting a witch willing to arrange assassinations.

“She’s ready for interrogation,” the Head Auror went on.

“Let’s first see who else we arrested before we start interrogating her,” Bones answered the unspoken question. “The Polyjuice Potion should be running out about now.”

It took them a few minutes to reach the holding cell. Ron was standing guard in front of it - they weren’t taking any chances. Not with someone who was probably an influential wizard - or related to one.

“You’re right on time,” Ron said. “I was about to call you - she just changed back a minute ago.”

“She?” Harry asked. Ron wasn’t looking very satisfied, he noticed.

“It’s a witch,” Ron said, pointing at the small window in the cell’s door. “And not just any witch.”

“Dolores Umbridge.” Bones said the name as if it were a curse. “The Minister’s Senior Undersecretary.”

*****​

London, Ministry of Magic, February 3rd, 1999

“...then I met with Rawlins and the French assassin.”

Harry Potter sighed. Umbridge’s voice grated on his nerves - doubly so with the Veritaserum affecting her. But Rawlins’s story had now been confirmed - at least as far as establishing that Umbridge had indeed been her employer and had been seeking an assassin.

Of course, since Umbridge had been caught in the act of trying to arrange the murder of one Harry Potter, all they had to do to prove that she was guilty was that she hadn’t been under duress or magically controlled. But that left her motive. If he were leading the interrogation, he’d have started with that.

But since he was the intended victim, he had been lucky that he had been allowed to watch as Scrimgeour questioned her.

“And why did you wish Auror Potter’s death?”

“Finally,” Harry muttered as Umbridge blinked.

“Because I want to save our country.”

What? Harry blinked.

“Blimey!” Ron muttered next to him.

Scrimgeour seemed unsurprised, though. “Why do you think Auror Potter is a threat to our country?”

“He’ll help Black take over the Wizengamot,” Umbridge droned on.

“And how would that threaten our country?” Scrimgeour asked.

“He’s a radical. He’ll fill Cornelius’s head with muggle nonsense. Britain will be doomed.”

Harry clenched his teeth. Umbridge was worse than he had thought.

“Why didn’t you try to have Black killed?”

“He’s too well-protected. Potter’s an Auror - he’s going out on assignments. Vulnerable.”

Harry wanted to curse the witch. Even though he was glad that Sirius, and by extension, Jeanne and Hermione, were safe.

“Was this the first time you tried to hire people to attack Auror Potter?”

“No.”

“Did you hire Raphael Markdotter to attack Aurors Potter and Weasley?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“To take them down a peg or two. Show the proper wizards that they aren’t as skilled as they claim to be. Diminish their reputation and reduce their influence.”

The witch must really care about this - such detailed answers were rare from a suspect interrogated with Veritaserum. Harry shook his head. So much blind hatred.

“Did you make any other attempts?”

“No.”

“Did anyone know about your plans?”

“No. Cornelius wouldn’t understand,” Umbridge droned.

“That’ll simplify things,” Ron muttered. “The Minister won’t make trouble.”

“He’ll still be weakened,” Harry replied in a whisper. Umbridge was practically the Minister’s right hand. But at least he wouldn’t try to mess with the case to save himself.

“Did you work alone?”

“No.”

“Who did you work with?”

“Rawlins… stupid half-blood. Messed up.” Umbridge tried to sneer, or so it looked like to Harry.

“Why didn’t you let her do the hiring?” Scrimgeour asked.

“Can’t trust her that far. Half-bloods are greedy. Could have betrayed me.”

That didn’t make too much sense, in Harry’s opinion. Rawlins could have sold her out afterwards. Unless…

Scrimgeour had the same thought: “How did you plan to prevent her from betraying you?”

“She wouldn’t have known the target. Would have sent her away.”

Ah. Not completely incompetent, then. Just nearly so. Harry shook his head.

“Why did you employ her?”

“Couldn’t find an assassin myself. Needed someone with a reputation.”

“Did you try to find someone?”

“Yes.”

“How often?”

“Three evenings. Then I found Rawlins. Who wouldn’t do it, but said she’d find someone for me.”

Rawlins hadn’t told them that. Harry sighed again. “Amateur hour.”

“Huh?” Ron asked.

“Something Hermione said once. It’s from a movie,” Harry explained. “It means Umbridge wasn’t very skilled.”

“Ah.” Ron nodded. “And that’s a very good thing, considering the alternative.”

Indeed.

*****​

London, Greenwich, February 3rd, 1999

“Stupid amateurs,” Hermione Granger muttered under her breath as she paced in their base.

“You look like you’re insulted by the fact that Umbridge’s plot failed.”

She stopped pacing for a moment and glared at the dog. “I’m not upset about that!” Of course not! “I’m merely remarking on the lack of professionalism shown by everyone involved in her plot.” Some standards should be maintained.

“Which is a good thing,” Sirius said.

“Of course.” She frowned. “It’s the principle of the thing.”

“Mh.” His grin told him that he didn’t believe her.

She rolled her eyes. “But mostly, I am annoyed that I couldn’t do anything to help Harry.” She hated doing nothing when he and the rest of her family and friends were in danger. And if Umbridge had been a little smarter, Hermione’s talents might have been useful.

“You stunned a fleeing witch,” he pointed out.

“Yes,” she said through clenched teeth. A witch who hadn’t been connected to the plot at all. She sighed. “And we can’t even rob Umbridge blind in retaliation - it would be too dangerous if we robbed her house shortly after she was arrested.” People would suspect that there were close ties between Harry and the thieves. Which was, in a roundabout way, completely correct, of course. “Dawlish would try to pin it on him.”

“He won’t,” Sirius said. “He won’t be on the case any longer. Fudge mentioned it during our talk.”

“Oh.” Hermione had known this was coming - that the idiot had managed to stay on her case for so long was very surprising - but now that it was happening… “Harry and Ron will take over, won’t they?”

“Of course!”

Hermione bit her lip. She didn’t know whether that was a good thing or not. They were far more capable than Dawlish, but far closer to her and her friends as well. And each robbery would now hurt their reputation.

Maybe she should seriously consider stopping after Malfoy Manor. One more robbery wouldn’t hurt.

*****​

London, No 12 Grimmauld Place, February 3rd, 1999

“I’m telling you, they are working together!”

Hermione Granger rolled her eyes at Harry’s antics. As if Crookshanks would try to eat his pet snake! It was obvious that the scratch marks on the snake’s habitat were the work of Hedwig - Crookshanks’s claw marks looked different, as the ugly side table her dad had bought when they had moved into their new house a few years ago could attest.

She huffed. “Don’t try to blame my cat for your pets’ differences.”

“It’s true!” he insisted.

“Really? And how would you know that?”

Harry glanced at the snake, then back at her. “I know it. I’m certain of it.”

She sniffed. “That’s not enough. You’re an Auror; you should know better than to accuse someone without even a shred of evidence.”

“The shredded casing for the lock is evidence,” he retorted.

“Evidence that Hedwig tried to eat your snake,” she pointed out.

The owl barked.

“See?” Hermione grinned. “That was a confession if ever I heard one.”

Harry sighed and sat down on his bed, almost dislodging Crookshanks from his spot on his pillow. “I’ll have to get a better lock.”

She was tempted to tell him where to get a good security lock, but it would be a waste of money - his pet’s habitat didn’t need a sophisticated lock to keep a bird out. She changed the subject. “So…” she asked as she sat down next to him, “did Dawlish get removed from the case?” There was no need to specify which case.

Harry sighed again. “Yes, he did today.”

He didn’t sound happy about it. “Isn’t that a good thing?”

“Bathilda was removed as well,” Harry said, “even though she’s not at fault.”

“Ah.” Hermione forced herself not to frown. That witch was just too... nosy. “And did you take over the case?”

“Yes. Officially, we’ll take over tomorrow, but it’s a done deal.”

She nodded. “It was to be expected, wasn’t it?”

“I guess so.”

“You don’t sound happy about it.”

He shrugged and laid down on his back. “I would have liked to finish the Umbridge case first. But, as the intended victim, I was pulled off the case.”

“Well, that’s an open and shut case, isn’t it?” At least judging by what Sirius had told her.

“More or less. There are a few more crimes to investigate, though,” Harry said.

What? “Did she kill other people?”

“She didn’t go that far, but...” He drew a breath through clenched teeth.

“Sirius will hear everything at her trial, and I’ll be with him,” Hermione pointed out.

He frowned at her, then sighed once more. “She used underhanded and illegal means to advance her career.”

“Extortion and sabotage?” Hermione guessed.

“More or less, yes.”

Hermione shrugged, then laid down next to him, on her side, one hand propping up her head. “And the victims of her extortion fear that she’ll betray their secrets if they can’t save her?”

“Well, it’s not my case…”

She chuckled. “You should be glad you escaped having to deal with all that interference.”

He sighed yet again. What was it with him today? “Sirius will probably handle the whole thing.”

“Good.”

“It’ll cost him more gold,” Harry pointed out. “He’s very rich, but if he tries to outspend Malfoy, that won’t be the case forever.”

Hermione shrugged. “I trust Jeanne to keep him from ruining their family.” And Sirius wasn’t spending his own gold anyway - but the gold from Bulstrode, Davis and Greengrass, and now Parkinson as well.

And, soon, Malfoy’s gold.

Not that she could tell Harry that. She snorted and rolled over, on to him, smiling at his surprised expression. “Enough talk about your work.”

He blinked, then licked his lips and nodded.

She bent her head and kissed him.

*****​

London, Ministry of Magic, February 4th, 1999

Dawlish didn’t say a single word. He merely dropped the case files on Harry Potter’s desk - it was more of a throw, actually - glared at Harry and Ron with his jaw muscles twitching, then turned and stomped out of their office.

“Thank you,” Harry said to the man’s back. “Bathilda, please stay,” he added before his friend could leave as well.

She turned back, looking both puzzled and wary. “Yes?” She glanced at the door through which her partner had just left.

“We probably have some questions,” Harry explained.

“Ah, of course.” Bathilda nodded. She wouldn’t let petty grievances affect her work. And she was a friend. “Don’t you want to read the files, first?”

“That can wait,” Harry said as Ron conjured a chair for Bathilda. “Did you find out how the Night Nargles broke into Parkinson Manor?”

The witch hesitated a moment, then sat down. With a wry smile, she said: “I won’t have to repeat everything that’s in the files, will I?”

“Just the important stuff,” Ron said.

She nodded. “Well, Mr Parkinson, his daughter, their house-elves and the Cryosphinx were all obliviated. They couldn’t tell us anything about the thieves.”

Harry nodded. They had known that already.

“But there was a Floo call around the estimated time of the robbery - to the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures,” Bathilda went on. “We investigated that and found out that Mr Parkinson had called the department to check if two of its employees were supposed to visit him. The secretary on duty checked the schedule and assignments and confirmed that.” She bared her teeth. “But the two assigned employees weren’t actually on duty. Both of them were at home, in compensation for the overtime they had done after Crouch’s attack.”

“Clever!” Ron whistled. “They faked the assignments and impersonated them?”

Harry frowned at his friend; Ron didn’t have to act so impressed. This was their case now. And the Night Nargles had made a fool of them before.

“That is - was - our working hypothesis. We investigated the two employees - Mrs Winkleborough and Mr Smith - and they showed no trace of Obliviation or other mind-affecting spells,” Bathilda said.

“Polyjuice?” Ron cocked his head.

“Most likely. Unless they used muggle disguises,” Harry said. “If Parkinson hadn’t met the two employees before, then that would have been possible.”

“But would they have been able to know that?” Ron rubbed his chin. “They would have had to check with the two employees.”

Bathilda frowned. “We considered that as well. But we found no sign that they were interrogated, either. And the thieves did tamper with the assignments and paperwork of the department, which means they would have had the opportunity to secure hairs as well.”

“That’s what they did when Crouch attacked!” Ron exclaimed. “Dawlish’s office was a diversion!”

Bathilda frowned again - it was her office as well, after all, Harry knew. “That’s unlikely. The assignments Mrs Winkleborough and Mr Smith received for the week hadn’t been altered. The paperwork must have been swapped the day before the robbery - after the two employees had already left for the weekend.”

“Or they messed up and won’t admit it,” Ron said. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Their statements confirm each other,” Bathilda replied. “We’re certain that the thieves entered the offices of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures sometime during the evening or night before the robbery.”

“How did they manage that?” Harry frowned. Security was supposed to have been tightened after both Crouch and the Night Nargles had infiltrated the Ministry.

Bathilda winced for the first time. “We don’t know.” She sighed, then bit her lower lip for a moment. “John thinks it was an inside job. Someone in the Ministry.”

Harry refrained from scoffing. If Dawlish thought that, then it was likely to be wrong - or a distraction. Or an attempt to frame Ron and Harry. “Did you investigate all of the employees in the department?”

“I did,” Bathilda replied. She had said ‘I’, not ‘we’, Harry noticed. “But I didn’t find anything suspicious. Those with access to the schedules and paperwork were clean. And none of the employees at work on Thursday before the robbery remember the changes. And the witch working on Friday was certain that nothing was changed during her shift. That leaves the evening and night.”

Harry nodded. “Which means someone sneaked in or broke in.”

“That wouldn’t have been too hard for them - there aren’t many patrols on that floor at night,” Ron pointed out.

“But the security was improved after Crouch’s attack,” Harry replied. “They couldn’t have used the stairs or the lifts without being spotted by the guards.”

“Unless they were disguised,” Ron said.

“We checked with the guards about anyone they saw during their shifts,” Bathilda revealed.

“You’ve been busy,” Harry said, then regretted his comment when he saw her flinch. She had been working very hard and still lost the case through no fault of her own.

“They could have hidden on the floor, though, and left in the morning.” Ron was on a roll.

“Possible,” Harry admitted. “But I don’t think so.” After the Night Nargles had been spotted using Disillusionment Charms during Crouch’s attack the Aurors and Hit-Wizards had started regular nightly patrols using the Human-presence-revealing Spell. Hiding would have been difficult. Not impossible, though.

He stood. “Let’s take a look at the department’s offices!”

*****​

“We checked the offices and we found no trace of the thieves,” Bathilda said a few minutes later, standing near the desk of the secretary of the department head. The witch had, together with the entire staff, gone on an early break on Harry Potter’s suggestion - he couldn’t have them stand around during the investigation.

He nodded, looking around with the help of his glasses. He didn’t doubt Bathilda; she was a good Auror. But she was a little too… not naive, no. But she didn’t think outside the box. Not enough. And Dawlish had all the imagination of a rock. Less, if The Quibbler was correct about talking rocks in the Rocky Mountains.

There were no windows, of course. And Bathilda had checked the walls for any traces of holes - magical or otherwise. That would leave the door as the obvious means of access for a thief.

But the Night Nargles were anything but obvious. Ron was still calling Abigail to go over the spells on the door, of course. But Harry had a feeling that that wouldn’t net them any clues, even if Abigail was a better Curse-Breaker than the one Dawlish had called - and Dawlish would have known that. Perhaps he had wanted to hide something? Or was this another diversion? Did Dawlish count on Harry suspecting him?

Harry shook his head. He had to focus on tangible evidence, not speculation. The thieves had broken into the department. There were no good hiding spots on the floor, either. Not for a human. But his gut told him that the thieves wouldn’t have used the door. But how had they done it?

He spotted the grid up in the corner. Air ducts. A classic in many movies. And after seeing the female thief’s leather catsuit, Harry had no doubt that the Night Nargles were very familiar with movies. Or TV series. But the air ducts were far too small for a human to pass through.

“We checked the air ducts. They are protected against Extension Charms,” Bathilda said. She must have noticed his gaze. Sloppy of him.

He still conjured a ladder to take a closer look, ignoring Bathilda’s eye-rolling and sighing.

“Did you find any spell traces on the grid?” he asked.

“Faint ones. But the air ducts hadn’t been extended.” She sounded more than a little frustrated. But it couldn’t be helped.

But someone had manipulated the grid. “Do you know when was the last time that the air ducts were cleaned?”

Now she sounded a little uncertain - for the first time. “No. But it can’t have been too long ago - they were clean when we checked after the robbery.”

Or someone had cleaned them right after the break-in. Harry smiled.

“Let’s check with maintenance.”

*****​

“You don’t clean the air ducts?” Harry Potter was surprised. And a little concerned.

The head maintenance clerk, Melchior Selwyn, coughed. “What I mean is that we don’t manually clean the air ducts. Charms do that for us. And we checked all of them for tampering after that unpleasant business with Crouch. They’re all fine.”

“Ah. Harry nodded. “And what happens to the dirt and dust in the ducts?”

Selwyn coughed again. “Well, it gets disposed of.” He smiled brightly. “Let me call our specialist. White! Come here! Auror Potter has a question for you.”

Harry didn’t think Selwyn had done much maintenance himself in a long time. Or ever.

White seemed a little more competent. More annoyed, too, though. “What happens to the dirt and dust in the air ducts?” He frowned. “It’s caught in a filter and later vanished. It’s basically a muggle system, just with magic at both ends.”

“And how regularly do you vanish the filter’s contents?” Harry asked.

“Once per week. On Friday.”

Harry refrained from cursing by pressing his lips together.

“Are you looking for something in the ducts?” White asked.

“I was. But it’s been vanished now,” Harry said.

“Oh, not necessarily. As I said, it’s basically a muggle system - some stuff takes weeks to get to the filters. Few years ago, some wizard brought a bag of red sand from the desert into his office - souvenir from a trip, or something. Well, he miscast a spell and created a whirlwind in his office. We had red dust in the filter for weeks.”

Harry smiled. “I need to see that filter. And I need whatever you use to check the ducts for damage.”

*****​

“Mate, if this turns out to be a dead end…” Ron stared at the large bag full of dust that White had just handed over.

Harry would have commented that his friend should be used to dead ends after his trips with the Lovegoods, but swallowed his retort. He couldn’t prove it - although the fact that the air duct was cleaner than it should have been, compared to the other ducts, was a big clue - but he was certain that the Night Nargles had come through the air ducts. Somehow.

And the contraption White handed to him would tell him how they had done it. Or so he hoped.

“It’s basically a sort of Omniocular, but mounted on a moveable and extendable periscope,” White explained. “You strap it to your head, then stick it in a duct and move the periscope with these knobs. You can go around three corners - enough to reach the main shaft.”

“The great Aurors, doing maintenance work.” Ron chuckled.

Harry glared at him and grabbed the Periscopulars, as White called them. “Let’s do it.”

A few minutes later, he was starting to become familiar with the inside of the Ministry’s air ducts. And was very tired of White’s droning, repetitive instructions. But he could check the air ducts. And the main shaft. Which was just wide enough for a slim witch.
And if Harry could use his contraption to reach the shaft from the offices of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, then a thief could reach the offices from the main shaft with a similar tool.

It would be very tight, but with a few Sticking Charms, and perhaps some custom… He narrowed his eyes. What was that, stuck to a welding seam inside the shaft? He fiddled with the knobs until he had a clear line of sight. And smiled.

As soon as he had managed to retract the Periscopulars, Harry aimed his wand into the duct, visualising what he had seen to cast a Summoning Charm.

Twenty seconds later, a lock of brown hair landed in his hand. No, not hair, he realised - fur. He blinked. Somehow, the fur looked familiar.

*****​

Harry Potter stared at the fur on his desk. Ron was still busy with the filter’s contents, and Bathilda had gone back to Dawlish for their new assignment - some altercation in Knockturn Alley. Brown, long, slightly bushy fur.

He closed his eyes and focused. Occlumency didn’t grant an eidetic memory, contrary to popular belief. But knowing your mind made ‘finding’ specific memories easier. And the fur’s colour was familiar...

He opened his eyes with a gasp. The colour was identical to that of the tuft of cat fur he had found in the garden in France. And the length of the hairs matched as well. But how would a French cat end up in the British Ministry? In the main shaft of the air ducts? Past the grills on the ducts? He cursed. The Night Nargles had been spying on them in France! One of them must have a cat and be using it as a spy. Or… one of them was an animagus!

He cursed. With Hermione being so fond of the little furballs, they would have easy access to Grimmauld Place!

He blinked. The stray! Once more he closed his eyes and searched. That damned stray of Hermione’s had the same fur! They had been inside Grimmauld Place! And hadn’t Bulstrode mentioned a stray cat that had been killed? But… why had they tried to break through the wards then? If, with a trained cat or as an animagus, they could swap out paperwork and manipulate schedules, they could have robbed Grimmauld Place as well. That made no sense. Unless they were more limited than he thought - he wasn’t an expert on animagi or cats. Hermione was the cat lady, he thought with a grin.

Which froze on his face. Cat lady. He shook his head. No. That was impossible. She wouldn’t… She couldn’t. Hermione was awful at Defence. Well, not as awful as she had been. And she was athletic, with a toned body - and she could fly well, as she had proven in their Quidditch matches at The Burrow. But… He shook his head again. She wouldn’t rob people, would she?

Granted, she had helped him and Ron steal the ingredients to brew Veritaserum, back at Hogwarts, but that didn’t mean anything - he and Ron were Aurors now, and Hermione was Sirius’s secretary!

This was absurd. He had become paranoid. Besides, Hermione couldn’t be a cat animagus - he had seen her with the brown stray, hadn’t he? He frowned. He couldn’t remember seeing her with the stray. Only with Crookshanks.

It was still absurd. Conjecture. But he couldn’t help thinking about it. She did know a lot about wards. But she wasn’t as stunning as the thief he had met. On the other hand, she always dressed down, never up. Almost as if she wanted to disguise herself. But her body was different - less buxom than the thief’s. And the thief’s face was fuller than hers. And her eye colour didn’t match either.

But those could be altered. Disguised. A padded suit for her curves. Coloured contacts. Implants for the face. Harry had looked into that, after Crouch’s arrest. But that had been plastic surgery. Could you simulate that with magic? He didn’t think so. But he wasn’t sure. Perhaps latex masks? No, those were movie special effects.

He realised that his breathing had sped up. Could Hermione be a member of the Night Nargles? She had an alibi for the heists - she was in France, with Sirius or with her family. As a matter of fact, she had been in France during each of the Night Nargles’ recent heists…

No. Sirius and Jeanne would have noticed. And they would never…

He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth so hard, his jaw started to hurt. No. No. No. He shook his head. Hermione and them? No.

All he had was a tuft of fur that looked like it might belong to a cat that might have similar fur to Hermione’s stray. There were lots of cats around. Many wizards and witches had cats. Like Bulstrode. He huffed. And cats strayed. He had seen one in Knockturn Alley just…

He hesitated. No. He focused. Yes. Probably. The same damn cat. And… the night of Markdotter’s ambush, hadn’t there been a similar cat watching?

No. This was insane. Hermione wouldn’t do this. She wouldn’t.

But, he heard Moody’s voice in his head, she has a motive - so far, all the victims of the successful heists are people who have hurt her. Borgin. Bulstrode. Davis. Greengrass. Parkinson. Everyone who testified against her - ruined by the Night Nargles. All of the ruined Old Families were allies of Malfoy. Sirius’s greatest rival.

He felt a shiver run down his spine. There was the motive. And the means? Hermione had worked for Dumbledore in the Order. And she was very close to Sirius, who had his own cell in the Order. Of which Harry hadn’t been a member. And he had never told Harry what they had done for Dumbledore.

Those were too many coincidences. But it was all conjecture. He had no proof. He thought this was fur from the stray. It could be from any cat. And he didn’t have an eidetic memory - he couldn’t rely on it.

But he could use Sirius’s Pensieve to view his memories. He could check if he had been seeing the same cat all this time.

He could check and find out if the Night Nargles were his own family.

But, deep down, he already knew.

*****​