CHAPTER ELEVEN
If he didn't know better, Harry would think that he wasn't being kept prisoner at all. Rather, as he sat on the lush oversized armchair in a room full of comforts and amenities, it seemed as if he were being treated as a guest of honor. But the armed guards outside his door said otherwise. This was a cell. A nice one, certainly, but a cell nonetheless.
He assumed that these men had also captured Sirius. How else could they have known the location of the manor? The only way would be if Sirius divulged the location. And that fact alone caused a shiver to run through his bones. Sirius was an auror, taught to withstand torture. What had been done to him to cause him to reveal the secret? He would never do it of his own volition. Something must have happened.
And he had been unable to fend for himself. He could only hope that his owl had been received, that even now there were people looking for him, looking for Sirius. He had no wand; there was no way that he could mount an escape on his own. And anyway, he couldn't leave Sirius. He'd have to find him before anything else could happen.
But there was nothing he could do. That was abundantly clear. No windows, one door – locked and guarded, and no other signs of weakness. The room itself was beautiful, but contained absolutely nothing for him to do. And so all he could do was continue to wait. And so he did.
He waited for several hours, it seemed, although there was no way for Harry to verify the amount of time that had passed. The lighting in the room did not shift, and so he could not tell whether or not it was day or night. He tried to sleep, but his mind was racing. He knew he was in trouble. The nature of it, though, was alien to him.
Finally, there was the squeaking of hinges and the door swung slowly open. Revealed in the doorframe was a woman. She was taller, seemingly middle aged although still quite beautiful, with long platinum hair. As she stood, an elegant grace seemed to radiate from her body, this woman was clearly confident and in control of the situation.
She strode into the room, with soft steps, and quickly sat in a delicate armchair across from Harry's position. She crossed her legs and looked at Harry expectantly.
Harry himself was baffled; with no idea what it was she was waiting for. So he decided not to speak at all. He would let her make the first move.
But she was also willing to wait, apparently, and several minutes passed in complete silence, Harry stubbornly unwilling to speak first. Finally, with a sigh, the woman shook her head and stood. She stepped towards Harry and reached for him, brushing his hair from his face, her long fingers trailing his scar as they went.
Harry recoiled slightly at her touch, but was determined not to let the woman get to him. She smiled softly at this, and kissed him directly on his scar before standing straight and sweeping elegantly from the room, the door shutting with a slam in her wake.
Harry reclined back in the chair, completely unable to comprehend or understand what had just happened. Had he failed a test? Had he passed? Was it a test at all? There was a significant possibility that they were simply messing with his mind. To what end, he did not know. He had no information that could do anyone any good, he was only eleven!
He sat there still for many more hours, completely without food, there was a single glass that had appeared which would occasionally refill itself with what seemed like water, but was somehow heavier. Desperately thirsty, he had no choice but to give in and drink what he had been provided with.
And he grew groggy and tired, he tried to sleep, but to no avail. His mind simply wouldn't let him. He was too on his guard, not able to relax into sleep. It was starting to drive him up the wall. Hell, he wanted to sleep! But he couldn't.
And, after those several hours, Harry once again heard the squeaking hinges of the door swinging open, this time to reveal a burly looking man with a long black beard and wild looking eyes. He carried with him two wands, one of which Harry recognized as his own. And striding forward with purposeful steps, the man grabbed Harry roughly and pulled him to his feet.
"Come with me." He spoke harshly, and pulled Harry towards the door.
Harry spoke without thinking. "Where are we going?"
He was rewarding with a cuff on the head. "No questions. Just come with me."
Harry was led down a winding labyrinth of hallways, all of which were painted the same off-white color, nothing like the room he had just inhabited. He walked, wand held to his back, for what felt like fifteen minutes before they reached a blank and nondescript wooden door. The man opened the door and pulled Harry through.
Harry couldn't see very much, the room was filled with an odd haze. Situated in the center of the room, cuffed to a chair, head lolling groggily, was Sirius. Harry tried to move towards him, but he was held off by the bearded man, who forced him into a chair directly opposite where Sirius was placed. Cuffs wrapped around his arms and legs as well.
The bearded man proceeded to prod Sirius with his wand, waking him from his stupor.
"Black." He spoke. "We have your godson."
Sirius' eyes opened wide, looking more conscious than they had previously.
"Harry" he croaked, his voice raspy. "Harry, are you alright?"
Harry nodded. "Sirius, I'm fine. What have they done to you?"
Sirius could only lower his head. "I'm sorry Harry, I'm so sorry."
The bearded man stepped between the two of them. "That's enough now." He spoke. "Now, Black, as you can see, we have your godson right here."
"What do you want with him?"
"Nothing specifically. He's only of minimal importance at the moment. What we need, Black, is information you posses."
Sirius growled. "Just drug me again, you piece of shit. Don't drag Harry into this."
"Oh we would, Black, but you've quite quickly developed a resistance to it, and we're not positive it would work to the best possible extent without you having some other… motivation."
Sirius physically pulled at his restraints, but they would not budge. "I don't know anything more. I'm not even assigned to the case. I can't tell you what they know, what we know."
The man with the beard shook his head. "I'm not inclined to believe you, Black. Truly, I'm not. Why don't I give you a little more incentive?"
The man withdrew Harry's wand once again. And with a dark smile, he snapped it in two. Harry gasped, and Sirius bared his teeth with the promise of bodily harm evident on his face.
"The next time, Black, that will be his neck. I'm serious here. Don't toy with me."
Sirius spoke haltingly. "Funny… I thought I was the only Sirius here. Seems I've met another."
The black bearded man slapped Harry across the face. "You want to make jokes, Black? You'll find that you really aren't as funny as you think."
Sirius shut his mouth at this, silently seething. Harry was speechless himself. His wand. That was his wand, and now… it was gone. He had no idea what he was going to do, if he managed to get out of this alive.
"Tell me now, Black. What do you know about us? What have you found out?"
Sirius shook his head, and the bearded man leveled his wand directly at Harry's temple.
"You really don't want to test me on this." And with a bang, Harry toppled to the ground, still cuffed to the chair.
Sirius shouted, but Harry was still moving, signaling that he was at least not dead or unconscious. Sirius finally spoke. "I'll tell you what I know; I'll tell you what I can." And the bearded man smiled in triumph.
But at that moment, the door that Harry had come through burst apart, several aurors storming the room. The bearded man jumped in to action, diving to the ground and sending whips of flame towards the aurors before rolling to his feet in a defensive position. The aurors scattered, dodging the flames and attempting the flank the man.
The bearded man, realizing that he was likely outclassed and clearly outnumbered, did the one thing he could before being captured. It had been the contingency plan, after all. If he was going to be captured or killed, he had one task to carry out first.
He turned towards Sirius and with a slice of his wand sent a jet of purple light streaking towards Black's temple. One of the aurors, seeing this course of action, cast a shield in front of the cuffed Sirius, but the shield could not hold, and the spell shattered through it, the direction only slightly altered, and struck Sirius across the chest, a shower of blood spraying from the wound.
Harry cried out, still stuck in the chair. He watched with morbid fascination as the third auror sent a strong cutting curse towards the bearded man, who being distracted by the other two aurors, was too slow to respond, the curse neatly separating the man's head from his shoulders. The two other aurors immediately went to Sirius, removing him from the chair and, using a portkey, transported him quickly away. The third stepped towards Harry. As he removed the chains holding Harry, he spoke softly. He was a sandy haired man who looked far younger than Sirius.
"Are you okay? Did they hurt you at all?"
Harry shook his head softly. "Not really. I'm alright."
"Good. Now, wait for a moment, and I'll bring you to headquarters." He turned and went to the now lifeless body of the bearded man. He searched it momentarily, pocketing the man's wand and another item that Harry could not identify from where he was seated. The auror stood, and stepped towards Harry.
"Okay, now hold this." He spoke, thrusting a small thin chain in Harry's direction. Harry touched it, and the auror spoke softly. "Portus." And the two were whisked away to the relative safety of the ministry and auror headquarters.
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It was chaos. As Harry and his auror appeared in the midst of the law enforcement department, it was completely impossible for either of them to catch their immediate bearings. Another auror, this one older, approached the two of them along with a mediwitch who immediately went about verifying that Harry was ok.
"Good. You've got Potter. I'll take him from here. Go fill out your report and get in touch with Moody. He'll debrief you and handle things from there."
The younger auror nodded and hurried away as the mediwitch nodded, signaling that Harry was in fact quite alright physically. The elder man took Harry by the shoulders and silently steered him down the hallways. Harry felt numb, but couldn't help himself from asking questions. "Is Sirius okay? What did they want us for? How did you find us?"
The man sighed, responding softly while continuing to lead Harry towards an unknown destination. "It was Dumbledore. He's the one who made it possible. He went to Davis, the only known death eater in custody. He found from him their hideaway, well, more than one; we sent teams to all of them in an attempt to rescue you. Fortunately, one of the teams hit the right place, and here you are."
Harry nodded slowly. "And my Godfather?"
Another heavy sigh. "Black will likely survive. That's all I know at the moment. You'll be taken to see him as soon as he's able to handle it."
Harry's shoulders slumped, but he couldn't see what use arguing would be. "So where are you taking me now?" he asked softly.
For the moment, we're taking you to the auror dormitories. You'll stay there until we figure out where to take you. Your home is out of the question, as the location has clearly been compromised. At some point we may need to interview you, depending on how much Sirius can tell us.
"And where will I go after?"
"We don't know yet, Harry. I'm sorry to say, but something will be worked out shortly. For the meantime, you will be… chaperoned, for lack of a better word, by two of our auror trainees."
Harry tried to muster up as much indignation as possible, saying "I'm hardly a child." But his heart wasn't in it. He was too numb from the encounter to really care.
"Be that as it may, Mister Potter, we can't leave you to your own devices here. Trainees Fawcett and Tonks will be your guardians for the short term."
Harry nodded slightly once more, and allowed himself to be brought into a room that was something like a cross between a locker room and a bedroom, with a row of cots mirroring a row of lockers on the other side. It was a bare room, for the most part, excepting the two (he presumed) auror trainees who were sitting on two of the cots, lightly bickering between one another.
"And I'm telling you, ass face, I'm hardly a babysitter. "
"Tonks," Came the reprimand from her superior officer, "Fawcett as well. This is Harry Potter. You two are to make sure he doesn't get in to any trouble."
Fawcett, a youngish looking brown haired man with bright eyes and a hint of sunburn, nodded. Tonks, on the other hand, with her bright blue hair and startlingly purple eyes, looked fit to burst. But she also nodded, before turning away slightly.
"Alright, Harry," The older auror spoke, "You stay here, and we'll come for you when we need you or when your godfather wakes up. Whichever comes first."
Harry inclined his head, and with one last sigh the older man left the three of them to their own devices.
He turned to the two would-be aurors. He was pretty sure he didn't have anything in common with them, and so he didn't quite know what to say. So he said, in startlingly Gryffindorish fashion, the first thing that came to his mind.
"Why are you so angry?" He directed towards the one called Tonks. She looked at him balefully for a moment, before snorting and turning away from him. Fawcett was apologetic.
"I'm sorry," he shrugged, "she's been like this all day. Ever since they wouldn't let the two of us go with any of the teams."
"That's hardly my fault."
"True," he conceded, "but think about it. We were left out of the action and now our main responsibility is to watch after an eleven year old kid fresh out of his first year at Hogwarts. I mean, you can probably take care of yourself, but here you are anyway. It makes sense to be a little upset."
Harry himself shrugged. "Maybe so, but not at me."
Fawcett had no real response to this, and a veil of silence fell between the three of them. In that moment, it finally began to weigh on Harry, the enormity of what had just happened. Sirius. Was he okay? The words of the senior auror were only somewhat reassuring. They thought Sirius would survive. But if he didn't? He couldn't imagine what his life would be like without the man.
He had to face the truth. For all his excellence in school, in defense, he had been powerless to stop the inevitable tide that led him to where he was at the moment. He couldn't fight successfully against men with experience like that. For as much as he had done well in his class, it had meant nothing in the real world. The weight of this realization hit him like a stone. He was weak. He was too weak to save himself.
And that was unacceptable. He couldn't be weak. Not in a world where he was such a target. For his actions as a one year old, he would likely be sought by factions from across the country, each with different purposes, but each of which would like to use him or get rid of him for one reason or another. Certainly those followers of Grindelwald who had never been put behind bars.
It could be that it was those types who were responsible for what had just happened. He had no idea who they were, his kidnappers. The bearded man, now deceased, and the blond woman. He didn't know what had happened to her, if she had been caught, killed, where she was at the moment. She had kissed him. His scar. What did it mean?
There were too many mysteries. Too many questions he couldn't answer. And he wouldn't know anything, because he was stuck here. Stuck with these two trainees who really for the life of them did not want to be there.
And as he thought, he also realized just how exhausted he was. He hadn't slept while captive, and that meant he had likely gone more than twenty four hours since he had last slept, his last night at Hogwarts. He lay on his back on one of the unoccupied cots and let himself fall into the peaceful oblivion of sleep.
Harry awoke several hours later, alone in the room except for the sleeping form of the trainee Tonks on the cot next to him. He stood groggily, but decided that he really didn't want to just be sitting around waiting for who knows how long while the adults continued to treat him like a helpless child. And so he walked to the door, careful not to wake the sleeping woman, and slipped out of the room.
He found himself back in the hallways, with a few doors to his left and right, but no real idea of where he was going. He needed to find Sirius, that he knew. Or at least find out what was going on, why he had been attacked, who had attacked him. He wanted answers and he felt he deserved them.
And so thinking, Harry started up the hall, looking for a signpost or a directional arrow or something that would help him on his way. He had never spent any time at the ministry in the past, despite Sirius working there, and so he was mostly guessing. But as he was walking, he saw in front of him the sun-burnt form of the trainee Fawcett walking in his direction from the opposite side of the hallway.
Knowing he was caught, Harry sighed as Fawcett reached him.
"Potter," he spoke softly, "where do you think you're going?"
Harry spoke softly as well. "I've got to find my godfather. I've got to see him."
Fawcett looked concerned. "What did you do to Tonks?"
Harry scoffed. "I didn't do anything to her. When I woke up, she was asleep. So I left."
"Harry, I've got to take you back…"
Harry interrupted quickly. "Look. How would you feel if a member of your family was seriously injured while you were there and nobody would tell you how he was doing or why it happened in the first place? I've got to know. Take me to see him."
The young man's face was clearly conflicted. "I'm sorry, I understand entirely. But I can't take you anywhere. I'm not authorized to."
"So you won't help me?" Harry asked very softly, looking to play on the young trainee's heartstrings just a little bit.
Fawcett sighed heavily. "Fuck it. You know what, I'll take you to the infirm. We'll see there if they'll actually let you see or talk to him. I know he's alive, Potter, so that's something at least."
Harry nodded, and the two walked in the direction Fawcett had just been coming from. As they walked, Harry looked around the ministry that ran the entirety of the country. It seemed frazzled, to say the least. The farther down the hall they went, the more people could be seen scurrying from room to room, the more there was a continuous buzz of voices coming from almost every direction.
"So what happened?" Harry asked as they walked.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, who was it? Who took us? Just, you know, the whole general story. What the hell happened?"
Fawcett took a deep breath. "I'm not sure that I'm the one to be telling you any of this, Harry. I'm in enough trouble as it is for even taking you to see your godfather."
Harry shook his head. "You shouldn't be."
"I know, and I agree. That's why I'm taking you. But don't ask me to tell you things I can't. It will all get sorted out with time."
Harry fumed. "It shouldn't have to be that way."
"And it likely won't be, when you're older. For now, they view you as an eleven year old –"
"Almost twelve."
"Almost twelve year old who can't handle things that adults can."
As they reached a door marked INFIRMIRY, Harry's hands were balled up into fists. "But I can handle these things. Hell, I was there! I saw a man get killed today. How many other kids can say that?"
Fawcett nodded. "Harry, preaching to the choir and all that. Here's the infirmiry. Go in, tell them you're there to see Sirius. I've got to get back to work now, I'm late enough as it is."
Harry shook his hand. "Thanks a lot. I really do appreciate it."
"Go now." Fawcett said, opening the door for Harry. Harry nodded once more and walked in.
Inside, he found himself in a room that was sterile in every sense of the word. The walls were tope, which he heard was very soothing, but couldn't help but cast an image of unearthly cleanliness to the surroundings. He walked to the desk situated to the side, where a young girl, maybe seventeen, was working. Harry actually recognized her face from school, but he did not know her name. He walked up to her.
"Hello, I'm here to see Sirius Black."
"Name?" she asked, not looking up from the papers in front of her.
"Harry Potter." He said shortly.
She looked up quickly at his response, her eyes flickering to his scar and back to his face. "Yeah, ok. Umm, one moment." She grabbed at some other papers on her desk. "I'm not entirely sure you're supposed to be here."
"I'm not."
"Oh."
"But I'm here just the same. I've got to see my godfather. I've got to be sure he's okay."
She stood sharply. "Alright, Harry. Just have a seat over there. I'll go find out whether it's ok. Be back in a moment."
And with that, the pretty brunette stood and walked back up the sterile hallway, leaving Harry to sit behind, to wait.
And so he waited.
