Dozens of fireplaces marched either side of the entrance hall, belching out emerald flames which writhed and coiled to form the thousands of witches and wizards employed by the Ministry. Overhead, the gold-flecked, navy ceiling was barely visible through the swarm of paper birds soaring and swooping between departments. Harry whipped his wand around once and at least twenty birds dislodged themselves from the rest and circled him as he ducked under the flash of a reporter's camera several feet to his right.
Someone appeared at Harry's left, beaming, blonde hair tied into a long ponytail, fuchsia robes flapping around her ankles. "Mr. Potter!" she exclaimed, skipping like a baby goat. With her wand, she tapped a pair of pink, fluffy earmuffs. There was a pop, and they warped into a headband. Affixing it, she said, "Good morning!"
"Hullo, Charlene," Harry said, mustering up something of a smile for her. If he didn't, she would have badgered him all day to try one of her homemade energy drinks (refused classification by the Department of Food Administration no less than three times for containing 'essence of abomination', as the reports had consistently remarked). She pulled one of said energy drinks out from her pocket and offered it to him regardless, grey sludge wobbling horribly like jelly in a crystal phial.
"Go on!" she insisted.
Harry shook his head rapidly, raising a hand in defence of the personal space Charlene had begun to invade. "No, thank you," he said hurriedly, glancing around. He caught sight of a dumpy man with no hair and far too much torso. "Hello, Archibald! How's the wife?"
But Archibald had neither seen nor heard him, because he had already shuffled over to the pressing mob of reporters Harry and Charlene had passed moments prior.
"Oh!" Charlene said suddenly. "I figured I'd help you out, so before you left yesterday, I put a bunch of completed forms and stuff in the bottom drawer of your desk. You just need to give them a once over and then send them off."
They passed the last pair of fireplaces and went under the archway leading into the Ministry's main hall, as high and wide as a cathedral and busier than ever. Halfway down it was the Fountain of Magical Brethren. In the centre of a circular pool, with his wand pointing to the ceiling, a statue of a wizard stood with glittering robes billowing around him, frozen in solid gold, and around him, and much shorter than him, sparkling jets of water tinkled from a centaur's arrow and both of a house-elf's ears. The wizard's wand, and that belonging to the beautiful witch gazing adoringly up from his side, had become clogged with the papier-mâché of the messenger birds that had either flown too close or been pushed out of formation by newer, more urgent messages and become caught up in the falling water.
Hundreds of witches and wizards added their pops of Apparition to the fountain's hiss, wearing the same solemn, early-morning look that made Harry's face sag as he joined their ranks, pacing in-step towards a set of golden gates at the other end of the hall.
Charlene plucked a paper bird out from the air around Harry and unfurled it. Her eyes flicked over the message like a typewriter, slowing down as boredom set in. Eventually, she crumpled it up and thrust it at Harry, who raised an annoyed eyebrow at her.
The golden gates squealed open for them. Beyond, silver railings lined a platform similar in size to Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters and shaped like a half-moon. About a hundred carriages trundled along invisible cables above and below and around the platform, some occupied, others empty, and a further twenty crested the platform's edge, swaying in the cool breeze whistling up from a cavern lost in darkness.
Harry poked the note with his wand: it jumped, as if startled, and smoothed the creases out as it levitated in front of him. Harry recognised the untidy scrawl; he had seen it almost every day for the last fifteen years. "Push my morning appointments back by two hours."
"Rightio. Should I take care of the rest of your messages or do you want them leaving until later?"
The responsible thing to do would be the latter. On the other hand, if one of them were truly important or confidential, whoever had sent it would never be as stupid as to clump it in with the rest of the public memos. Harry said, "I'll let you deal with them. If you do come across anything super-important, leave it on my desk and I'll get around to it."
Harry waved his wand and the birds flew over to Charlene. She entered the eighth carriage along with a frail witch who immediately engaged her in lively conversation as they headed away from the platform.
The latticed, sliding door of carriage number seven grinded open. Harry stepped aside; the only occupant was an amorphous blob of black fur with too many unblinking eyes.
"Morning, Bill," Harry said, finding it impossible, even after years of working in the Auror Office, to work out which eye he was supposed to be smiling at, as the ball of fur rolled out of this carriage and over to the third, which led to the Department of Mysteries.
Harry pegged his nose shut before stepping into the carriage. Not that it helped much. Bill was an Amoeboid, and Amoeboid fur was thinly coated with a wax that emitted a nauseating stench of burnt rubber and horse manure. In all the time Harry had worked in the Auror Office, 'Billy Odour' as his colleagues had dubbed it, had remained as unpalatable as the first time he had met Bill.
The carriage and Harry's stomach both lurched in the same motion, as the platform at first inched steadily away, like the beginning of a rollercoaster, and then picked up speed. Metal gears screeched overhead.
Harry glanced out the side of the carriage, down at the infinite blackness, and then back to the platform. Everything moved on as normal, the witches and wizards shuffling amongst each other like ants.
The carriage grinded to a slow, stopped for a moment, and then its angle shifted – it took him down and below the platform and now all he could see were the half-dozen stalagmites erupting from the chasm around him.
Harry checked his watch, tapping his foot. The whistling breeze eased up the lower he went, and a numbing chill took over in its stead. He travelled in total darkness for another minute or so until the carriage jolted again and fed into a torchlit passageway barely able to accommodate it. At long last, the carriage came to a final, stuttering end at a one-man-wide walkway, which led down a short corridor, splitting into a fork at the end. More torches lined the walls up ahead, flickering in the heavy sighs coming from the underground cavern.
Harry stepped out of the carriage and patted it like one would a horse after a show-stopping performance. The sound of rattling followed Harry down the corridor as the carriage trundled back to the platform for its next quarry.
Harry took the right path, half of which was enveloped in darkness. He backtracked a couple of feet, hoisted a torch out of its bracket, returned to the dead corridor and swung the flickering flame out in front of him like an offering. Halfway towards an iron gate, an entire section of wall had eroded away and taken a chunk of the flooring with it.
"That explains the missing torches…" Harry mumbled to himself. He raised his torch a couple of inches and watched as the dim light fell through a hole almost as wide as one of those lifts.
He would need to tread carefully, lest he plummet into whatever waited in the looming abyss. There was a three-foot-wide ledge across which Harry could walk without needing to hug the wall. With his torch extended for balance and a hand against the rock face for support, Harry stepped cautiously onwards, lungs tight. He trained his eyes on the ominous maw below as he moved, and breathed again when he reached the other side.
He swung the torch around again, aiming ahead. There was a wooden door at the end of the pathway, hidden until now because the torches bracketed to the walls leading up to it had burnt out long ago. Harry took out his wand and flicked it. A whoosh of air swept down the corridor, breathing new life into the torches. Harry set his torch down and sighed.
About a week ago, there had been a minor earthquake caused in no small part by the Norwegian Ridgeback the Ministry used as security. As far as Harry was aware, the higher-ups had been unable to determine the reason for its outburst – although Hermione was adamant that restraining such a beast could only ever end in tragedy. The dragon's rampage had sent shockwaves through the damp, rocky passage, culminating in the hole in the wall. Harry had arranged for repairmen to tend to it three days ago – the estimated time until completion was another two days, but they were supposed to have started yesterday.
Harry walked to the wooden door, grabbed the metal handle and heaved it open.
Ron waited on the other side, in freshly-pressed navy robes, tapping a polished shoe against the floor with his eyes on his watch. Harry stepped shut the door behind him, the dull click drawing Ron's attention.
"You look like you just went seven rounds with a troll and lost," Ron said, visibly struggling to suppress a laugh.
Harry removed his glasses and rubbed one of his bleary eyes. He was running on no more than three hours of sleep over the past two days. "I've barely slept," he said, agitated. "Can we make this quick?"
Ron scoffed. He moved aside. Three rows of twelve desks were lined neatly down the middle of a pearl-white chamber almost as large as the Hogwarts entrance hall, each of them piled high with paperwork. This was the main section of the Auror Office – Ron's office lay behind the silver mesh gate to the left of a noticeboard bolted into the farthest wall, and that was where they were headed.
Situated behind all of the desks was an easel which supported a large corkboard. Various maps and criminal and victim profiles had been pinned to it, colour-coded threads of string weaving between them, connecting them via a great spider's web of confusion.
"This meeting was all Hermione's idea," Ron said conversationally, following Harry down one of the aisles. He had his eyes on the corkboard, concentrating on a photo of a blonde girl with a mole on one cheek and half her teeth missing.
Harry traced his fingertips lazily over the surface of each desk as he passed. In thirty minutes, they would all be occupied by faceless heads whose names Harry hadn't even tried to remember. His index finger caught on the corner of a stack of paper on a particularly neat desk, and he hissed. His arm snapped back and he glanced at his finger; a single red bead peered out from a papercut.
"For the love of…" he grunted, biting back the urge to swear. To distract himself from the stinging pain, and before the filter in his head had had chance to catch up with his early-morning thoughts, he said to Ron, "How's Ginny?"
Ron stopped in his tracks. His shoulders and biceps tensed, and he bunched his hands into fists. He let out a deep breath, and responded with a simple but impactful, "Don't."
Harry gulped, saying nothing else. Ron was still trying to be his best friend despite the divorce. Harry could thank him for that, but he wasn't sure if Ron would accept his gratitude; in all likelihood, Ron remained his friend solely because it was convenient. The head and deputy of the Auror Office at each other's throat? That would be a scandal heard throughout the Ministry and the rest of the wizarding world – especially because the name Harry Potter was involved.
"If you need to know," Ron said eventually, "she's a broken mess. She's thinking of selling the house you both lived in and splitting the money with you."
"She can keep the money," Harry said immediately, and realised that he had spoken too fast and too coldly. He amended, "I don't need it."
Neither of them dared look at the other. Harry struggled against the tension, like wading through waist-high mud at the heady heights of summer.
Harry already knew the answer, but he needed to ask. "Why is she selling it?"
"Oh, come off it, Harry!" Ron shouted. He slammed a fist on one of the desks. Metal legs clattered against marble flooring, the noise hollow and shrill as it resounded off the walls and ceiling. The tall, glass windows quivered. They were enchanted to provide a view of the nondescript high street miles above – a bus whizzed by, headlights cutting through the mid-winter's night. "Do you really think she's gonna want to stay there? Bloody hell, I knew you were dense but I'd hoped you'd at least think before asking such a stupid question!"
Harry clenched his jaw, not from malice or anger, but from an instinctual urge to berate himself.
Ron swept his hands through his short, Weasley-red hair, and turned to regard Harry with stern warning. "I want us to be proper mates, Harry," he said. He gave a heavy sigh, and continued, "It's hard – trying to wrap my head around you and Ginny – I mean, you were married – and now it's just, I dunno. I see her the way she is, and she's my sister, you know? So, I have to defend her, but at the same time, you've been like a brother to me for fifteen years and I don't want to just throw that out of the window."
Harry kept his mouth closed and his ears open, waiting for an inevitable 'but'.
One didn't come.
"Say something," Ron murmured.
"Like what? Do you want me to tell you whose side to choose?"
"I want you to tell me that we've still got a friendship."
Harry frowned at Ron, whose eyes fell to the floor. He said, "You've just given me a whole speech – shouldn't I be the one asking you that question?"
"Just answer me, please."
"Does it even need saying?"
The tension flushed away like raw sewage.
Standing there, moonlight beaming in through the windows, one half of Ron's face was bathed in relief. Smiling, he offered a hand to Harry, who accepted and pulled him into a hug. They parted with a mutual clap on the back.
Someone cleared their throat, quiet but deliberate – a woman, as Harry turned and saw her, clad in grey business attire, a red, silken bow tied around her neck, and a familiar warmth in her bookish face. Hermione's bushy hair had at last been tamed, fastened into a bun on top of her head. She beamed at Harry and walked briskly across the chamber to embrace him like a long-lost sibling, a faux-leather handbag rattling by her side like a cargo hold as she ran. Archibald, who had been standing behind her, remained in place, watching with beady, unblinking eyes.
Hermione pulled away from the hug and pecked Harry on the cheek. She said, "Harry, it's so good to see you again! Are you all right? Have you been sleeping and eating properly? Eight hours a night, remember! You look exhausted – let me see if I have something in here for you." And as if she had just remembered that he was there, she added, "You may go now, Archibald. Thank you for the escort."
Archibald gave her a curt nod. With his all-black eyes, ivory skin, a body that was at least sixty percent cylindrical torso, and as pointed teeth were unsheathed from behind thin, grey lips, Harry thought with a terrible sense of dread that he resembled a ghost bat. Harry had never paid much attention to him because he clung to Hermione like a shadow, as silent and shady as such and moved with such inconsequence, despite his considerable mass, that one would never know he was coming until he had already arrived.
Archibald turned on his heels: his black robes fluttered around his ankles like a cape as he swooped from the chamber.
Hermione faced Harry and Ron, and shuddered. "Archibald is a fantastic assistant," she said, "but he can be somewhat unsettling."
"Somewhat?" Harry retorted. "Stick him in front of a mirror, Hermione, and I doubt you'd see a reflection."
Hermione gave him a reproving stare, brows knitted in disapproval.
Then, she unclipped her handbag, stuck an arm inside, right to the shoulder, and with her eyes turned up to the ceiling in concentration, she rummaged around; metallic clinging and clanging echoed from within like tin cans tumbling down a tunnel. Hermione nodded to herself, as if in confirmation, and pulled out a pentagonal box the size of her palm, royal purple at its topmost point and gold around the outside.
The box ribbited.
"A Chocolate Frog?" Harry said, holding a hand out as Hermione gave it to him.
"That's right. Come now, Harry, it doesn't require a NEWT in Divination to see that you've not been sleeping properly. Your eyes are dark, your skin is ghastly pale and you've begun to slouch. Eat – you need the energy."
Harry stiffened, more from shame than indignation. He thumbed the stray hem of his shirt back into his trousers and rolled his shoulders in some attempt at ironing out his robes – whether they were creased or not, he didn't know.
He tore into the box. The Chocolate Frog leapt up immediately but he snatched it. With all the ferocity of the twenty-four hours since he had last eaten, he shovelled it into his mouth, chewed once, twice, thrice, and swallowed. Barely tasted it. His stomach groaned, and it left him feeling hungrier than before, but it was something.
"Thanks," he said. He was about to put the box in his pocket for later disposal when he remembered the Famous Witches and Wizards card he had yet to look at. He took the card out but didn't look at it.
Ron eyed the card as Harry slid it into his breast pocket – even now, Ron's collection was incomplete. Agrippa and Ptolemy continued to evade him despite the boxes of Chocolate Frogs he requested for Christmas each year, most of which were larger than his head. Currently, and if Harry's memory served him correctly, the trunk in Ron and Hermione's attic contained roughly four thousand Famous Witches and Wizards cards. Of them, several hundred were copies of Harry, Ron and Hermione.
Hermione gazed around the chamber. It was rare for her to venture anywhere beyond the cramped four walls of her cushy Ministerial office. Rarer still, she had taken time out of her busy schedule to travel the length and breadth of the Ministry and meet Harry and Ron here, miles away from the suffocating bureaucracy of reports, official complaints and laws redrafted more times than she cared to count. Harry had barely seen her in two weeks, even outside of work; her hours were far longer than either Harry or her husband, and yet she seemed to be coping well.
Eventually, she turned to Harry and Ron and said, "We should make this quick. The other Aurors will arrive soon, I expect, and I have other duties to attend."
Ron gestured up a short flight of steps leading to his office door. Hermione made sure that her bag was clipped shut as she walked past the remaining desks and the corkboard, and up to Ron's office. She threw back the metal lattice, Harry and Ron following closely behind, and entered.
Atop a beige carpet, a narrow desk staggered under the weight of countless books, papers, rusty artefacts and a recently-polished, gold confectionery jar, the lid of which no longer fit because of the Every-Flavour Beans spilling over. Tall bookshelves lined the walls, the books so dusty they couldn't have been touched in years.
Apart from one.
Harry pointed it out. "Been catching up on your reading?"
Moving over to the bookshelf, Ron plucked the leather-bound book in question out from the rest amid a billowing cloud of dust. He coughed once, and then said, "Do I look like the reading sort? Nah, this is where I keep the really important notes and stuff."
He took up the chair obscured by the nest of paper on his desk, laid the book down, and pried it open. Harry and Hermione joined him. Aligned perfectly with the centre crease were three sheets of parchment, brand-new and immaculate when compared with the yellow, dogeared pages which had enclosed them. Ron pulled them out, closed the book and nudged it to one side with his elbow as he scrutinised the scribblings on the first sheet. He swept a few intrusive scraps of paper onto the floor before laying all three on the desk in single file.
"So," Hermione said, after a few moments of scanning Ron's notes. "Has there been any progress at all with the case? Or will I need to become more hands-on with helping?"
Ron balked. The concerned look he fixed Hermione with had never worked before, and there was no reason it would work now. Hermione's involvement with the case so far had been strictly office-based, and only when her Ministerial duties had laxed enough to give her time to come all the way down here. That last part was vital; every time she had come to the Auror Office, it had always been with Archibald, and had always been under the pretence of a friendly visit. If the Wizengamot were to find out that the Minister for Magic, their Chief Witch, had become embroiled in an Auror investigation, heads would spin, curses would fly, and Hermione Granger just might find herself without a job.
"Hermione," Ron said warningly, "you need to keep your head down. It's bad enough that you're doing clerical work for us – you're not doing field work. I won't let you, it's too dangerous."
Hermione glared at him. "Let me? Ronald Bilius Weasley, you don't have a choice. There's something more to this recent spate of crime – a missing link – they're all connected. From petty thievery to murder, there's a pattern, and neither of you appear to be making much progress. Since when did numerous cities and boroughs around the country all succumb to the same crime wave at the same time – and how is it possible that, out of all the Aurors on this case, none of them have noted anything of import?"
Harry shifted uncomfortably, made to feel worthless by Hermione's remark despite it not being intended as a personal slight. His eyes trailed away from Hermione's contemplative frown and landed on the middle sheet of notes on the desk, on a rough sketch of the United Kingdom and Ireland. From Scotland to Plymouth, Ron had drawn circles of varying sizes according to the severity and frequency of the reports coming in from those locations. The largest circles surrounded Essex, Middlesbrough, Liverpool and Bristol.
Before he realised he had opened his mouth, Harry said, "I flew over Bristol last night."
Two pairs of expectant eyes scrutinised him, from the dust on his clothes to the day-old dirt under his fingernails. Thoughts of last night shuffled forward, through the waist-high pile of detritus steadily building up at the forefront of his mind. The Firebolt lay on the living room floor at home, cold and dead and not worth much of anything to anyone, and not discarded but not paid much of any kind of attention either. It was just… there.
Like a trowel through parched clay, the utterance of his name burrowed into his skull. "Harry?" Hermione said, and the look she gave him was disgustingly patronising, as if she were a mother comforting a child. "Are you okay?"
"Er – what – yeah, I'm fine," Harry lied.
In the ten seconds Ron and Hermione had spent watching him, he released he had forgotten to shower – had forgotten to wash his clothes. Neither of them had mentioned anything to him, nor had anyone else. When he thought about it, would he tell a reputable employee of the Ministry of Magic that their shirt was inside-out, that they stank of stale sweat, that their hair, in all its wild and untameable glory, had become sodden with grease so thick it practically sizzled in the sun? Of course not.
Hermione didn't seem convinced.
Ron, perhaps rescuing Harry from the lecture visibly swelling in Hermione's throat, asked, "What were you doing in Bristol last night? I didn't order any fieldwork."
Something clunked in Harry's head: a deluge of lies and excuses had all barged ahead of one another and become lodged in his sinuses as they marched towards his mouth. All that escaped him was a noise like static.
He cleared his throat, and tried again. "We needed new leads and I was getting all stuffy cooped up in the flat. Figured I might get lucky this time, you know? But once I got there, my broom died and I ended up cutting the trip short."
Hermione's face relaxed in sympathy, and she offered her condolences with, "Oh, no. How old was it?"
"Thirteen," Harry replied quickly. He had hoped neither of them would draw attention to the fact that he was now without a broom. Essentially, this was akin to hoping they wouldn't notice one of his limbs falling off. "Anyway – Ron – it's not a problem, is it?"
Ron merely blinked at him. "Huh? What're you on about?"
"The unauthorised fieldwork."
"Oh. No, it's not a problem. Good job, actually. You should give the others a pep talk on motivation."
As if on cue, the world beyond Ron's office door began to hum, lively with early-morning greetings and chatter of last night's Quidditch game.
Quidditch.
The match between Puddlemere United and the Wimbourne Wasps – Harry had meant to listen to live coverage on the radio.
A cog turned once in his head with a rusty squeak and fired off a couple of quick calculations. Professional Quidditch divided by Puddlemere United equalled Oliver Wood. Likewise, Oliver Wood plus Puddlemere United equalled professional Quidditch. Puddlemere United and professional Quidditch minus Oliver Wood equalled… what? And, then, where did employment at The Leaky Cauldron factor into said equation?
Ron and Hermione were whispering to one another, both with their eyes fixed on Harry.
"He's staring again," Hermione said. Harry could still hear her, and Ron for that matter. Her eyes flicked from his hair to his feet to his somewhat pudgy stomach and back again. "Should I recommend some time off for him to recuperate? He doesn't appear to be taking things very well right now."
"Nah, he'll be all right," Ron said, shaking his head. "The man's a fighter. He'll come out the other side stronger than before. Always has."
"I'll be fine," Harry said insistently. "I've made it over a month without a wife, and I can make it through another. Now, can we get back to the more important problems? We've been in here for half an hour and all we've established is that the investigation is a farce so far and that I appear to be crumbling under the weight of my recent divorce."
"Harry…" Hermione said cautiously. "It's okay to-"
But Harry didn't get chance to find out what was okay; on the other side of door, rapping against it with a desperate urgency, someone – a recent Hogwarts graduate by the name of Demira Labronte, judging by her tell-tale, foghorn-like voice – called Ron's name.
"Mr. Weasley! Mr. Weasley!" she boomed. With each heavy pound on the door, particles of dust coughed away from the old wood and cascaded to the floor like ancient snow. "We got a new lead!"
Before Harry and Ron could move, Hermione barrelled across the office and hurled the door open. Almost immediately, Demira's chocolatey complex grew pallid and her eyes popped out of her skull, her jaw hitting the floor.
"Minister!" she stammered, and in her hurry to conduct herself appropriately for such company, she became stuck somewhere between a courteous bow and a curtsy. For a minute she lingered there, chocolatey cheeks tinted with pink, barely moving save for the subtle tremors in her hands. "I'm sorry, but – can I ask – oh my God – what are you doing here?"
Hermione chuckled at her. "You know, Demira," she said amicably. "I had a name before my career. Use it, please."
Gulping, Demira's head tilted to the floor. She wouldn't look at Hermione, remaining in place as the trio paced past her and down the short flight of steps.
A huddle of Aurors had gathered around the corkboard at the front of the chamber. One of them had broken away from the rest, a box of tacks bobbing in the air beside her candy floss hair as she dismantled the previous display. Worn threads of string littered the floor at her feet and she drew the old pins from the corkboard using the tip of her wand, which she flicked once. The pins vanished.
All the Aurors apart from this one woman had focussed their collective gaze on Hermione, who appeared unfazed by the attention. Hermione unzipped her handbag and felt around for a few seconds. There was no rattling now, no raucous echoes of distant clutter banging together. Only the muffled scratching of nondescript items being rummaged through.
"Ah," Hermione said, finally and with simple delight. In her hand, as she removed it from the bag, she held a small mound of red, yellow, blue and white powdery sweets. Harry recognised them immediately: bonbons were one of the many sweets Dudley Dursley overindulged in as a child, so much so that he would leave himself in a sugar-induced stupor and make them easy pickings for Harry.
Hermione tossed one to each of the Aurors, who each showed their thanks through their own unique gestures. Ron had never understood why Hermione would offer confectionery to the Ministry's employees. Not that he needed to; there hadn't been a person yet who had spoken ill of Hermione, and Harry put that down to her staunch refusal to work by other people's standards – handing out sweets and treats was one of her more unorthodox methods, but she was popular because of it.
"Minister?" said one of the Aurors, a giant of a man whose uniform had to be tailor-made due to his hulking muscles. He had yet to eat his bonbon. "Might I ask – what reason do you have to be here?"
Hermione folded her arms and regarded him with a casual smile. She said, "My husband happens to be leading this investigation, Mr. Sazlak. As there appears to be little in the way of progress as of late, I offered assistance."
Ron stepped forward and passed Hermione. He gestured towards her without looking at her. The woman with candy floss hair approached him, handing him a single sheet of paper, which he considered. Assuming an air of authority, he announced to the crowd, "Hermione is an unofficial member of the Auror Office for the duration of this investigation. For security reasons, her involvement needs to stay strictly confidential. Until now, she's given me and Harry advice and that's it."
There was a hushed murmuring among the gathered, rippling over them like a quiet breeze. Harry watched the two men closest to him whisper between themselves, both of them apparently coming to the same conclusion. The quieter of the two, no older than twenty, raised his hand. Ron placed a finger to his lips before raising a hand and pointing two fingers at this young Auror. "What is it?" Ron asked him.
"Sir, does that mean the Minister will be helping with fieldwork, too?"
Whatever Ron had been about to say, it didn't matter; Hermione had thrown the Auror another sweet and started speaking. She said, "On a trial basis, yes," and when she noticed the cold stare Ron was giving her, she added, "and only with Mr. Potter and Mr. Weasley. I will still have Ministerial duties to attend to, which, of course, must take priority. As Mr. Weasley rightly said, my involvement must remain a complete secret to everyone beyond these four walls – and we mean everyone.
"I understand how daunting a prospect it may be to work alongside your Minister for Magic. Please, if it makes you more comfortable, treat me like you would a colleague and address me by my first name."
This short speech was met with lukewarm applause. Hermione raised a hand to silence it, adding, with a light-hearted chuckle, "There'll be none of that, thank you. Whilst working with the Auror Office, I'm simply another employee." She was apparently pleased with the lack of reaction to that. She made a motion as if handing the conversation over to Ron.
"Right," Ron said. The way he carried himself had shifted; he seemed uncomfortable, swaying from foot-to-foot with one hand in his pocket and the sheet of paper in the other. "First things first. Demira mentioned a new lead – am I to take it that this is it?" he flipped the page over to face the Aurors. "Just a drawing?"
Not just any drawing, Harry thought, as his gut seized and the clutter in his head scattered; a beautiful woman, whose cheek was graced by a sapphire tattoo curling down from the centre of her forehead, and the ornate wings expanding from a point on her cheek were lost in a curtain of violet hair, all immortalised in chalk.
Loudly, and before anyone else could say anything, he shouted, "Her! Last night! She was at The Leaky Cauldron!"
Ron and Hermione (and all the other Aurors) stared at him, wide-eyed. They didn't need to ask him for more information, because he was already stumbling over his words as everything from the past twenty-four hours flooded out of him. Everything except for his reunion with Oliver. When he finished speaking, he drew in a long breath and adjusted his robes.
"Wow, we might actually have a breakthrough here!" Ron said in surprised excitement. "Okay, Harry, you've got new orders: no more reconnaissance for you. The Leaky Cauldron is your new second home. Search the surrounding streets every once in a while, too, and keep an eye out for our lady friend here. Just don't fit in with the punters too much. Don't want you coming in with a hangover, yeah?" Low laughter rumbled throughout the chamber. Harry, in some hollow attempt at fitting in, puffed through his nostrils.
He was distracted by a baffling warmth in his stomach. The only thing his new assignment meant was that he would spend much more time near his flat. That gave him fewer chances to escape from the drab reality of unmarried life in London – now, the only escape he could really count on were regular visits to The Leaky Cauldron. As far as he was concerned, the last thing he wanted was to swelter in amongst the sweat and burnt air seeping from those whose lives decayed around them. If anything, the only mite of hope in all this was that he would be around Oliver a lot more, and right now, he needed an impartial ear. More specifically, he needed a friend.
While Harry shrivelled into his reverie, the world carried on as normal around and without him.
Ron issued orders to a handful of Aurors and accepted completed reports and paperwork from others, while Hermione busied herself with helping Demira set up the corkboard. All of the string and notes were connected in much the same way as before they had been dismantled, only now they were each tethered to the drawing of the Auror Office's new person of interest, pinned to the centre of the corkboard.
"One more thing!" Ron shouted. "We're operating under a new name. From now until we get to the bottom of this, we're the Blue Swan Unit."
It was ten-past-three by the time Harry found time to pull his head away from the reports Ron had given him. Conveniently enough, Ron had waited until Hermione had returned to her duties as Minister for Magic before slamming the pile of papers on the desk in Harry's office.
"Here," he had grunted. Harry's desk, neatly arranged until that point, creaked under the sudden weight. "This lead is getting us further than I thought it would – I'm already reading through some brief reports from Jenkins, Garamont, and Tully and I could really use the help. Apparently, you're not the only one whose seen people with that weird tattoo."
Harry hadn't had much to do at that point, and by extension, neither had Charlene. He dismissed her three hours before she was due to finish work, promising that she would still be paid for those missed hours – what he hadn't told her was that the money would come from his personal funds at Gringotts instead of the Ministry's payroll.
Now, he regretted that decision. He had spent the last two hours trawling through the pile without any notion of what was expected of him, and had done so without coffee or food or any kind of sustenance. He could hear the gears in his head chugging with each arduous thought, and the words on the page in front of him were more like runes.
With a defeated exhale, Harry got up from his desk and circled his office, a room roughly the same shape as a storage container and about as cold. His desk had been tucked into one corner along with one of those muggle office chairs, and was the only remarkable bit of décor to be seen. The walls and ceiling were slate grey and empty, and the uncarpeted floor was as smooth and shiny as glass.
His calves ached and his buttocks had become numb during all that time sitting down. He glanced at the shabby little clock on his desk, functional only because magic decreed it. His working hours ended ten minutes ago, which meant he wasn't getting paid for sticking around like this.
The reports could wait until tomorrow. He was running close to seventy-two hours with only three hours of sleep. Earlier, his head had struggled to keep up with his thoughts. Now, it had all but given up. Thoughts and emotions pressed against his ears and the back of his skull, ceaselessly pushing and shoving and heading absolutely nowhere – they screamed for Harry to acknowledge them, to address them, but he was unable to hear them.
Harry's legs dragged him out of his office and down the steps to the chamber where the other Aurors were working. Half of them were still on-shift from this morning, while the other half were entirely unfamiliar. None of them paid him much heed as he sidled past the desks, shouldering between three colleagues barricading the path with idle chatter ahead of him.
"See you tomorrow, Harry!" Ron called from across the chamber. Harry gave him a lazy wave in response, but otherwise ignored him.
Food could wait. Drink could wait. The Blue Swan Unit could wait. Everything Harry needed right then lay at home, in his dingy, ramshackle flat – in the threadbare living room, where the sofa waited, sultry and seductive, with its knobs and gobs and old leather worn by years of exposure to the elements in the middle of a field.
Harry had passed the Fountain of Magical Brethren again by the time he thought of anything else, and moved down the alleyway formed by the Ministry's Floo network with only the Disapparition point, a black pole groping from floor to ceiling, in mind.
A manila envelope waited for Harry in the passageway, on the floor by the door. He slouched forward and picked it up, wondering why it was so light and why, out of all possible packaging, the sender had decided to use an envelope infinitely larger than the circular object stuffed at the bottom. His eyes drooping, he brought himself and the package into the living room, and laid down on the sofa.
Then he shot up, alert.
The once-haphazard pile of papers on his coffee table had been tidied into a neat stack and his fridge was making a funny buzzing noise – someone had turned it on. There was a square scrap of paper on the counter. Harry hauled himself back to his feet and moved over to the kitchen. The paper turned out to be a note from someone, but he didn't recognise the handwriting. It read:
Harry
Look after yourself, please. You can't mope about like this forever.
One of the cupboard doors was ajar, just beside Harry's head. He pulled it open.
Cereal, biscuits, crisps, tins of soup, packets of instant dessert, tinned vegetables, gravy; whoever had been here, they had done a thorough search of his kitchen, found nothing, and decided to take pity on him by stocking his cupboards up. He dashed to his fridge and found milk, eggs, other dairy products, fresh fruit and vegetables, sandwich fillings, meat, anything and everything he could ever think of during a weekly grocery shop and then triple that. The freezer told the same story.
He moved back over to the sofa and slumped, letting his head fall into his hands. Now was not the time to worry over who could have entered his flat – and it certainly wasn't the time to worry over the plethora of ways Harry could thank them.
Harry grabbed the manila envelope and glared at it as if it was somehow responsible for this dubious miracle. He tore it in half across the middle and tipped it upside-down.
The lump had felt like a token of some description, or a coin. Perhaps a gift or favour of which he had recently asked someone and then completely forgotten about.
What he had not expected to come tumbling out was Ginny's golden, glittering wedding ring.