Chapter 5: The Abyss will see you
Michael, Mich for those few that still acknowledged him as a friend, was waiting in his usual spot at one of the nameless taverns of Knockturn Alley, one of those places where you could find the worst that the wizarding society had to offer, but also a place where you could get useful information with the right questions and incentive. He was a muggle born, almost a year had passed since the battle of Hogwarts and the rise and fall of the more zealot blood purist movement, fortunately for him when all the craziness was at its peak he was far way serving the final years of his first and only period in the Foreign Legion, his family, while he cared for them, little by little had casted him out as a black sheep, or was the other way around? It didn´t matter, they lived in two different worlds, and his one or two visits a year were enough for them, so they were at no more risk of death eaters that to suffer an attack from IRA.
Why he joined a muggle army then? "Isis", one of the girls he met in the office asked once, well that was an easy answer, Pure-bloods had the final word if you wanted to find a good job, even in the Auror ranks there was a little disdain as Muggle-borns were not familiar with the more hardwired traditions and culture, worst, some even believed that muggles lived in Victorian times, like if little had been done since the XIX century, so to make some money and live in his own terms he joined the only place where his birth status or even his name didn´t matter to anyone.
Life as mercenary was not easy, far from it, 5 years in the Legion starting from his training had been the more painful emotionally and physically for him, he was never a deeply religious person, but he had gone to wars and conflicts around the world, only to be witness of hell in earth, people killing each other's for purposes that sometimes no one really understood, he served as infantry, let others join to the flashy special operations squads, it was his personal pride to be one of the first to enter and last to go from battlefield, he killed with no joy, it was necessary for his own survival, and of course, magic came useful many times, he didn´t have any course or knowledge of advanced magic, just the school repertory, but even a simple repairing spell was worth gold in the middle of battle, also he discovered something, he was really good at silent and wandless magic, is not that he trained for it, or that he was a genius, it was more like an accident, but may be the trick was to be in such a danger and near death that magic started to respond to your own instincts and intend, who knew? Maybe someday he would research about it, to this day he only used his wand to cast the more tricky or difficult spells, or when he wanted to keep a low profile.
And here he was, waiting for something to happen, the investigation had been going on for almost a month, it started with rumors of some really dark and dangerous tomes being sold on the black market, Magical Britain society liked to live as if with the death of Voldemort all the problems had been solved and there were no more dark arts practitioners, but magic was all about power and knowledge, and the more ambitious and devious ones will always look into the darkness for answers that the light didn´t have, danger never ceased to exist, it only changed his mask, the Devil had always his way.
It was almost midnight and he was getting nervous, his contact, an old foreign scholar specialized in some questionable branches of magic, had promised to be there at eleven o´clock, while he cast a quick Tempus he got Goosebumps, he felt as he had returned to combat, something was wrong, he could feel danger lurking in darkness, may be his charade had blown up, or may be something else, but he trusted his instinct and in silence he got up and left some sickles in the table, quickly as possible without getting attention he got outside and walked to the safety of Diagon Alley, in the first chance he got into a deserted street and disillusioned himself, he waited ready for anything that was coming towards him, just few moments afterward three men came in the same street, it appeared as they were only common drunks getting back to home, but he knew the truth, they were looking for him, he could tell they were professionals, keeping a combat formation even with the drunk act, and their wands ready in hands, may be Aurors? Maybe it was just paranoia, but better safe than sorry, he used the portkey hidden in his wallet, a simple black business card, and with an almost silent plop he got the hell out of there.
Back in the Department of Mysteries he wrote a codified report for his Handler, he was thinking about tonight, it was a failure, of course, but from another perspective he had confirmed that they weren´t the only ones interested in the rumors about "Hades", It was the code name for a mysterious buyer that had been asking around for some very dangerous and rare necromantic materials, artifacts and tomes that gave shivers even to the more seasoned scholars of the department, he only could guess why someone would want them.
Hi Again! Ok, this was a tricky chapter for me, in fact, it started as an idea for another story, but I wanted to give Hermione a kind of antagonist, or at least someone neutral to her position, so I don´t know if it will work out and if not I just will delete this. So hope you like it and would love to read your opinion.