She of the Mountains

by Estoppel

Two months after Harry is appointed Head Auror, the New Ministry of Magic pushes for change, but with a Dark Wizard on the loose killing Muggles, the Wizarding World's capacity to change is put to the test-if it ever really had the will to change in the first place. On the trail of a killer, Parvati learns that an Auror's job is never clean.

Chapter 1: Auror's Privilege

It's only been two months since Harry took over as Head of the Office, but I can already tell he's going to be the death of the Auror Department. It's not like its death is going to be an end. When I was growing up, my mother told me all kinds of stories about Jiva and Atman—that when someone dies, they're reborn in the form of something better. Something healthier. It's going to be that kind of death.

The problem is, I don't want something better. I want something that works.

Where I'm sitting is the curb in front of a Muggle home, on a Muggle street surrounded by Muggle neighbors. There isn't a Muggle in sight. The men and women walking in and out of the house work for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. It's a sunny day—late in the morning—so they're wearing jackets that say they work for SOCA instead of the robes that signify where they're really from: Muggle Items and Customs Enforcement. We call them MICE.

It's a relatively new branch of the Ministry. Kind of like the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office's older brother, if its older brother was built like Viktor Krum. If I were going down for something, I'd almost rather have a squad of HIT Wizards kicking my door in. When the office first opened, I'd only ever worked with them once a year or so. These days it seemed I was out with them every two or three months. The MICE guys are here for the contraband. I'm here about the murders.

"You want to tell me what they're going to pull out of there?" I ask the man sitting next to me.

His name is Edan, and he's been body bound up to his neck with his hands behind his back. He rolls his head as if he's trying to shrug." Bum a cigarette?"

"Been trying to quit, myself," I tell him, even though I haven't. "You'll be doing me a favor." He's a half-blood or Muggle born, probably, or at least he's been living in the Muggle world long enough to know up from down—they don't teach a unit on bad habits in Muggle Studies.

When he's got a cigarette in his mouth and lit, he sucks deep. Closes his eyes like he's on a recliner. "You're Indian, yeah? What's your name?"

"Parvati."

He nods, eyes still closed. "Is that Hindi or Hajji?"

"Hindi." You can tell who's been picked up before by the way they deal with the small talk. It's almost relaxing, but I'm more than a little ashamed to admit that the best conversations I've had in recent memory were with people I was arresting. "I get the English in me from my father, but my mother was straight off the boat. She was adamant on raising good Hindu girls."

"That's cool, though," Edan says, and he's blowing smoke with each laugh. "I always liked those Hindu myths, you know? Like, what, that guy with all those arms and the moon on his head—"

He keeps talking, but I'm not listening. Instead I'm watching one of the MICE Agents come out of the house with a bundle in his arms. He catches my eye and walks over, all smiles, and drops me the first catch of evidence. It's a handgun.

Edan's still going on about all the wrong myths, so I hold it out in front of him. "This look familiar?"

It's a few seconds before he says anything, but after a moment he tries to shrug again. "I don't even know what that is."

"You seemed comfortable enough asking me for a cigarette."

He laughs. "Well, you know how it is when you need a light."

More than I'd like to. I set the gun aside and reach for the rest of what the Agent carried over. "Oh, here we go." It's a package. Edan stops laughing when I hold it out far enough for him to catch a glimpse. "This looks an awful lot like—" I pretend to search for the word "—what do you guys call it?"

The Agent says, "Heroin."

"That's the one. How much you find?"

"Fifteen kilograms, give or take."

Whistling has always been one of my strongest skills. For whatever that's worth. I belt one out, bringing the pitch high before letting it sink. "What's the average sentence on that?"

"At a guess?" the Agent asks, and I wish for all the world that Eden could see his face. "Thirty-five."

It used to be that you could own anything Muggle-made so long as you didn't try to charm it. It worked out well enough because our worlds were so segregated that most wizards couldn't name even the most basic Muggle inventions. After the Second Wizarding War, though, we realized we were going to have to do something about the whole 'Muggle Issue', and the answer the reformed Ministry and Her Majesty's Government came up with was accommodation. Not a complete integration or disclosure—nobody really believed it would be a good idea to let the Muggles know we existed, at least outright—but enough that when we started seeing the benefits, it also came with the Muggle problems. Guns and drugs were just two of them.

"They call the guy with the moon on his head Shiva," I say, and I have to look twice to make sure the body bind hasn't crept up and engulfed Edan's head for how still he is. "If you still care."

The smoke from his cigarette is making his eyes water, so I pluck it from his mouth and toss it into the street. Sparks fly from the cherry as it strikes the pavement. "You haven't shown me a warrant," he says.

"Auror's Privilege. I don't need a warrant."

"That's Dark Arts." He's breathing like he's trying to keep himself from throwing up. Rocking his head gently like he's back in the cradle. He still manages to smile. "Auror's Privilege only lets you search for evidence of Dark Arts. You still need a warrant for the Muggle stuff."

"Oh shit." I'm honestly surprised, and more than a little impressed. "Ten points for whatever house you came from. You know your stuff."

This is where he gets smug. Gets that glimmer in his eyes like he's won The House Cup. It might be my favorite part of the day. "This isn't my first round of Quidditch," and almost as if it's an afterthought, calls me, "bitch."

The Agent standing nearby laughs. "Plain view, buddy," he says, patting Edan on the shoulder.

"But you still don't have a warrant."

The Agent only laughs harder. The best part about criminals is that even the ones who've spent more time inside Azkaban than out of it aren't nearly as smart as they think they are. "Hey," I say to the Agent, "why don't you give me a few moments with Azkaban Lawyer here and have your guys run another sweep. Anything even looks charmed, I want it booked and recorded. Anything that smells like Dark Arts gets special care, alright?"

When it's just the two of us again, I pull out another cigarette and light it for myself. Unlike the heroin, the cigarettes aren't contraband. Yet. They really should be. "You know where you want to be in thirty-five years?"

His eyes are aimed at the pavement, but it looks more like he's staring through it than looking at anything in particular. "Do you?"

No. Not even close. I know that I don't want to be here. "Four days ago, two Muggles were killed in Southampton. The day before, another three were killed in Brighton. Avada Kadavra like. What do you know?"

He spits. "I want a lawyer."

"Auror's Privilege. You get a lawyer when I'm done with you."

Back in Hogwarts I hated Malfoy and his gang. Not because they were Slytherin, although that didn't help. Not even because they were mean. I hated them because they'd salivate at even the thought of having power over somebody. I never understood how they got off on it. Then I became an Auror. Sometimes I wonder what house I'd be sorted into if I started over at Hogwarts the way I am now.

I know I'm not a Gryffindor.

"Who killed the Muggles," I ask.

A car rolls past us, and the people inside are watching. There are two children in the backseat—girls, maybe seven or eight years old. They keep their eyes locked on us until they disappear around a corner. "My kid's starting Hogwarts in seven," Edan says. He's got his eyes closed again. "It'll be another seven before she graduates. She'd be—" He's doing the math in his head, and it doesn't take him long. "Thirty-nine. She'll be thirty-nine when I get out."

"She'll be forty-four. You get thirty-five for the drugs. The gun is a mandatory three consecutive on top of that. Plus Two for Felony Firearm."

What sounds like a respirator is Edan sighing. "Forty-four, then."

"Alright," I say, "how about we do a quid pro quo thing. If you—"

"Quid what?"

"I'm offering you a deal." Part of me wants to blow smoke in his face, just to watch his expression when he can't move out of the way. The other part of me wants to hit myself for it. "Look, I don't care about that Muggle stuff. That's not my job. Guns, drugs—" I shrug "—I really couldn't care less. What I do care about is wizards going around executing Muggles. So here's my offer: If you tell me what you know about those killings, I'll make sure MICE can't keep chain of custody on those drugs."

He looks at me hard. As best he can, at least. "That can't be legal."

"I wonder what I'd say to my father if he vanished until I was fourty-four." Actually, I have a pretty good idea. Padma's laid it into me more than once. It hurts every time. "Would he even still really be my father at that point?"

Malfoy and his goon squad had nothing on being an Auror. Being an Auror is getting paid to find leverage over people, then crushing them under the landslide. It's using a man's daughter as a playing chip. And everyone respects me for it.

Fuck the Aurors.

"The gun, too," Edan says, finally. "Get rid of the gun along with it and I'll tell you what I know."

"Gun stays. You're going down for something here. That's just the way it is." I had seven years to study Professor McGonigall. I never masted her snap—that sharp crack of a command she wielded when someone broke a rule—but she taught me more about laying down the law than anyone from The Office. "This isn't a bad deal. Getting rid of the drugs gets rid of the Felony Firearm too, so you're just looking at the three for possession. You do your three and that's it—you're home before your daughter gets sorted. You can throw her a party or something. See she gets put in her old man's house. I'm going to guess, what? Ravenclaw?"

He nods. "Ravenclaw."

"Blue and bronze, then."

He's silent for a long time. My aim is to get him thinking, but not too hard, so I hold out my pack and, with a wink and a smile, say, "I'll throw you another smoke."

We both laugh. It isn't funny, but it's a way to fill the gaps in conversation that would otherwise be awkward silence. I've gotten really good at faking laughs, and not just with criminals. "I don't know who did it," Edan says, and he pauses long enough for me to put a cigarette in his mouth. "But I know who hired the guy."

"Contract killing?"

He nods. "Guy's name is Leslie Burke." After a puff, he adds, "He's a Muggle."

I'd rather he have taken his thirty-five and stayed silent. Crimes involving Muggles got real complicated after Voldimort fell and Her Majesty's Government demanded we keep a stronger grip on our kind. Azkaban opened a ward for Muggles convicted of Wizarding offenses. Her Majesty's Prisons hold more than a few Wizards in return. "Did he know he was hiring a Wizard?"

"Does it matter?"

"Matters a lot." If he knew he was hiring a Wizard, we can put him in Azkaban. If he didn't, we don't have jurisdiction—he wouldn't have committed a Wizarding crime.

"Couldn't tell you."

Figures. "How do you know it was him?"

"I'm not giving anyone else up, if that's what you're asking."

"I'm not. Just need some corroboration."

It doesn't take a legilimen to tell he's picking his words carefully. "Heard it from an acquaintance," he says. "He got picked up last week, so if you need information you can go interrogate him. Name's Leiven something. Never got a last name. Anything I got, I got second-hand from him."

Good enough. I throw my own cigarette away before I stand and dust myself off. Unlike the MICE Agents, the Auror's uniform blends in well enough in the Muggle world that I don't need a disguise. It's a long, tan trench coat, and it looks good. I look good.

I hate how much I still care about how I look.

Towering over Edan, I tell him, "I'll be expecting an invitation to your daughter's party."

He laughs, and it's a good laugh—full and warm. "You pull this through I'll have you sitting at the head of the table." As I walk away, he continues, "You are going to take care of those drugs, right?"

I'd be fired if anyone found out. Hell, I'd be sitting in the cell-block next to him. "So long as your tip checks out. I keep my word."

He laughs again, but it's not the same laugh. This time it's caustic. Derisive. "You guys are so broke."

And as I turn to Apparate, all I can think is: He doesn't know the half of it.

---

My cubicle is the emptiest in the office. It's not barren. In fact, it's so cluttered I have to move things around to get any work done. Files. Reports. Newspaper clippings. I'm up to my neck in office supplies. But at his desk, Neville has a framed picture of Hannah that he pretends he doesn't look at every four minutes. Dean's got a football on his bookshelf signed by every player on the West Ham team, along with portraits and paintings he's done hung up on the walls of his office. Harry has a dummy each for of his two sons, though I've heard he's been hiding them in his desk now that he's taken over the department. Either way, he's also got pictures of his parents. And Sirius. And Remus. And Ginny. Et al.

I've got jack-shit.

It's not that I don't own anything sentimental. I'm not cold. I'm not dead inside—at least not for the most part. I feel just as much as anyone else in the office. Just not here.

When I was going through training, I fell under the wing of a guy named Chambers. He was one of the old guard—one of the Aurors who stuck around after Voldimort's fall, and had been in the business long before his rise. Chambers told me that being an Auror wasn't a job. It was an identity. A part of you that you couldn't kill. If you could imagine yourself doing anything else, he said, you weren't really an Auror.

That's true for most of the guys in the department. Harry was literally born for this. Ron may as well have been. I can't picture Neville without an army behind him. So on and so forth for everyone wearing the uniform. They don't separate their work from their personal lives because they can't. Everyone who picked up the mantle and found they couldn't sew it into their skin washed out years ago. Except me.

But maybe I'm just not really an Auror.

There's a sharp rapping on the wall of my cubical. Behind me, Padma says, "You need to start getting warrants."

Padma isn't an Auror. She's worse than that—a Prosecutor. The joke is that I bring Dark Wizards in, and she finishes them off. The unspoken punchline is that she delivers harder, better justice than I do. It's not wrong.

She's also the reason I became an Auror in the first place. After the war she went straight to law school, then went straight from law school to the Ministry. I kind of ran away from everything for a while. When I came back I didn't have much of anything else going for me, so she set me up for an interview. Apparently anyone who participated in the Battle of Hogwarts got a free ticket for employment in the Auror's Office. It was good enough. "Hey Padma, why is Shiva depicted with the moon on his head? I remember there was a reason, but I can't pin it down."

"How many times do I have to tell you?" Padma asks, and the breathiness between her words is exasperation.

"Auror's Privilege. I didn't need a warrant."

She steps closer, and without bothering to move anything, sits on my desk. I know my sister. I know what's coming. "Things are changing." The way she looks at me, if I didn't know any better I'd say I was her daughter instead of her twin. "Harry runs this office now, and under Harry we get warrants."

Even after the war, people were afraid. The Ministry didn't repeal any of its wartime powers. With the Ministry reforming and elections to worry about, nobody wanted to look weak on crime, and everyone wanted to reassure the public that they would be protected. Death Eaters and Dark Wizards were hunted down and sent straight to Azkaban. No trials. No process. It wasn't nice, but it was what it was.

Harry's first initiative on becoming Head Auror was to change that. He and Ron have been meeting with legislators at least twice a week trying to convince them to pass something that'll get rid of those privileges. In a reforming government where every department is scrambling to grab as much power as they can get, we're the only office asking the Ministry to take our powers away. "Last I checked Auror's Privilege was still valid."

"Department policy. We need a united front on this, and you going off on your own isn't helping anyone."

Except, I don't say, the victims of Dark Wizards. We've had this argument before. We'll have it again. I can't win, so I stay silent.

Padma sits straight up on my desk, glaring down at me like it's a cross-examination. When I hold my silence longer than either of us can take, she gestures toward my lunch—a double bacon cheeseburger I picked up from a fast-food joint in London. "What would Mom say if she saw you eating that?" she asks. "Or those sticks you put in your mouth?"

"What am I, fourteen again?"

"You want me to tell her?"

Mom couldn't be more proud of us. A lawyer and an Auror. As far as she knew we were the golden children. Always together. Always faithful.

The truth is we only look the same. I stopped wearing my hair in a plait, but otherwise Padma and I are still identical. Same eyes. Same nose. It's always been what's inside that separated us. She's smart. Independent. Dedicated. Plus her soul hasn't been fractured.

So much for Jiva.

After a long pause, I say, "No."

More silence. I can't stand the way she looks at me, so I look at the papers on my desk. Out of the corner of my eye I see her shake her head. "Dean wants to see you in his office. Just thought I'd let you know." She hops off of my desk and walks away. Before she's gone, she shouts back, "Start getting warrants!"

I disappeared for four years after the war. I lived in London. Then Belfast. Then New York. Anywhere there wasn't Wizards. Padma took me in when I limped back. Gave me a couch to sleep on. Got me a job. We leased an apartment together.

It didn't work out.

---

Dean's done well for himself. He's a Superintendent, and the way people are talking, he'll be moving up again soon. Some call it nepotism behind his back, but the truth is, he deserves it. He doesn't play politics with his policing. It's unfortunately rare.

Along with his rank, he's got his own office. It's small, but compared to my cubicle it may as well be The Great Hall. It's big enough for his desk and a few chairs, along with a bookcase and wall space for a few of his paintings. They're very good, actually. Mostly scenic. A portrait of his parents. "He talked," I say when I've walked in. "Apparently it was a contract killing, and—"

"Sit down." Dean doesn't look up, but he waves his hand at one of the chairs facing his desk. I can already tell this is going to be a meeting where the door's shut, but everyone outside's still invited to listen in. After I've taken my seat, he looks up and asks, "What's an Auror's job?"

I say, "Investigate illegal uses of Dark Arts and hunt down—"

He slams his hand down on his desk hard enough to knock off a stray quill. "An Auror's job is to do what she's fuckin' told!"

Dean's a real laid back guy. I promise. Just not right now. "Yes, sir."

He looks at me hard. Padma. Dean. Seems everyone's been looking at me like that lately. "You didn't get a warrant."

"I didn't need—"

"Harry's told you that you need a warrant! I don't care what the Wizengamot says—if Harry tells you that you need a warrant, you get a Goddamn warrant!"

His landscapes are teeming with wildlife. In the paintings, the animals run for shelter. Try to hide from the thunder in his voice. But the portrait of his parents never moves. It's terrifying in its stillness. "Yes, sir."

Sighing deep, he leans back in his chair. He's going to wrinkle young. I guarantee it. "If you had applied for a warrant, would it have been granted?"

The tip that Edan knew something about the dead Muggles came from an informant. All I got was a name and an address. Nothing to corroborate. Nothing even close to reasonable grounds. "No."

Dean starts telling me all about civil rights. About change. About how we need to show the world that the new boss isn't the same as the old boss. This is where I zone out. To take the words of a former Ravenclaw I once briefly met, this isn't my first round of Quidditch. He keeps talking, though, and to his credit he's earnest. When it looks like he's done, he takes a moment to straighten up his robes. He asks, "What did he tell you?"

And that's how things go. One second he's got me bent over his desk, and the next he's dying to know what I'd learned through breaking Harry's procedures. It's not Dean's fault, and I don't blame him. At the end of the day we're all pragmatists. Even the true believers. I tell him everything Edan told me.

He shuffles through some of his papers. Looks at a schedule. "You're buying this one."

"I've got four cases in the red already."

His shrug tells me how much he cares. "They're on hold," he says, and he's already rummaging for another file. "When the Prime Minister himself comes into our office for reassurances, a case tends to jump to the top of the list."

"He was here?"

"Wasn't pretty."

The file he was looking for was stuffed into a pile on the floor next to his bookcase. He tosses it onto the desk in front of me, but I don't open it. "Why me?"

"You spent some time living in the Muggle world."

I laugh. Partly because it's funny coming from him. Mostly to fill a gap. "If I remember right, you were born there."

"Yeah," he says, and while he doesn't share the laugh, he smiles. He's always had a nice smile. "But I'm not getting out of the office any time soon."

Everyone remembers Voldimort's fall. How Harry took him down in a duel. That's what people picture when they imagine Harry as Head Auror today—a man standing tall and taking out Dark Lords face to face. But it hasn't been that way for a while. As Harry rose through the ranks, his job became less about going out and investigating or making arrests and more about administration. That's a good thing. He's doing far more good for us in a Ministry office than he could be doing on the streets.

I can tell he misses it, though. Dean too. "I'm not the only pawn in the office with some experience dealing with Muggles," I say. "Why not Orr? Or Tappman?"

Another gap, but one I can't laugh through. He looks me over again, but softer than before. Not the hard stare I got from Padma today, but the one she gave me when I showed up at her door after a four-year absence. "I missed our seventh year at Hogwarts."

"You really didn't miss much."

"That's what I hear," he says, and it sounds like regret. "Seamus is always telling me the stories though. About writing your messages on the walls. Trying to steal the sword. He tells me you got in trouble a lot."

I still do. It's a different kind of trouble now, though, and they don't deal out torture for punishment. "So?"

"He says you never gave anyone up."

I wish with everything in me that I had. I don't argue though. Instead, I open the file he'd passed me. It holds a few reports and a picture of a man. The label reads 'Suhail Regor'. "This our target?"

"Person of Interest. We don't have targets." He leans forward and glances at the picture. It's not a mugshot. Suhail's wearing a suit and tie. The photograph was taken from across a street, but it looks like he'd just left a business meeting. Briefcase and everything. "Those Muggles who were murdered weren't exactly nice people," Dean continues. "The Prime Minister didn't drop by our office just because some random blokes wound up on the wrong end of a spell. In fact, the way he was talking he seemed to think the world was a better place without them."

One of the reports is a list of pending charges. The standard charges are all there—some drug related Conspiracy charges, Money Laundering, Mail and Wire Fraud. So on. At the top of the list, though, was Counterfeiting. "They were witnesses."

"And politicians just love it when witnesses get killed. Especially with magic."

Especially when the crime charged is Counterfeiting. When the Ministry was in talks with the Muggle government regarding the regulation of Wizards after the war, they talked for days about the Unforgivable Curses. That was nothing compared to the months they spent talking about Transfiguration. Their greatest fear wasn't the rise of another Dark Lord—it was the run of the mill Wizard flooding their economy with transfigured money. "Figures."

"I cut you off earlier," Dean says, and he sits back again. "But you were right. Our office deals with Dark Arts. We don't do drugs. We don't do fraud. Those aren't our crimes. You're on this because of the murders. Be that as it may, the Muggles care a whole lot, and they're so far down Shaklebolt's throat about it they're using his ass for a peep hole."

"So I'm left cleaning it up."

"Gravity, Parvati. Shit rolls downhill, not up."

I've been downhill for the past nine years, and an Auror for five of those. It doesn't feel like I'm getting any closer to the top. "I'll take care of it."

As I gather the file, the animals in Dean's landscapes start creeping out of their hiding places. The storm's passed. For now. I stand from the chair, but before I reach the door Dean says, "Gently, Patil. I don't want to be having one of these conversations again."

Everyone in the office has a reputation. Harry is the savior. That one's unavoidable. Ron's the architect—if anyone's going to plan out any real change here, it's going to be him. Neville's still the General. Dean's that one boss you have that you can't help but want to invite out when everyone's getting together after work for pints.

I'm the attack dog—the one who gets things done, but then shits all over the carpet before you can give her a treat. It's not the best reputation to have, but it is what it is. And sometimes, it's useful.

Still, I get the warnings when other Aurors don't. I make the animals in Dean's paintings run for ground. Even when I'm right, I'm wrong. What they think is that I'm hung up over Greyback spilling five litres of Lavender across the floor of a Hogwarts hallway. That I became an Auror because I want revenge, or so I can hunt what I hate most. They're wrong—I don't want revenge.

And I can't hunt myself.