Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to Harry Potter

Author's Note: Well, I finally updated. It would have been much sooner, but I've been extremely busy lately. I don't know when you can expect the next chapter, but I hope it will be soon. Now that my basement isn't flooded and I have my computer back, I'm moved in to my new house, and I'm getting done with my college and bank paperwork, I may be able to update regularly. Until then, enjoy. And thanks to all of you who've given me reviews.

It was three weeks later that Harry finally got the chance to go on his first mission with Neil. Three grueling weeks of brain wracking tutoring sessions and training scenarios, but even he could see his improvement. It was amazing what a bit… well, a lot of hard work could do. The personalized training he was getting was making him progress at an alarming rate. For example, he was at about the same level that Cutler was when they'd last dueled… not in experience or power, but he could look back on the duel and see the mistakes that each of them had made and improve upon them. The fact that Cutler was lazy and took classes in a large group had dramatically hampered his training, but the Department of Mysteries just didn't have enough manpower to individually instruct each trainee. If they did, Harry doubted that he'd be anywhere close to the young Unspeakable's level.

Neil was finally allowing Harry to accompany him on a mission because he'd deemed that the young man was competent enough to stay out of the way effectively. Harry really didn't like the sound of it, but he was too excited about seeing the older man in action to care very much. Plus, Neil had said that this wasn't supposed to be a very dangerous mission, just a quick attack on a low ranking Death Eater's home. The only reason that another Department wasn't taking the job was that they didn't have any set plan; their informant had only given them the Death Eater's location the day before. Plus Neil had also requested an easy mission for the purpose of training him, but Harry liked to ignore that part.

Not much had happened since his stroll through the Minister's office… well, unless you counted Minister Fudge's mysterious disappearance as newsworthy. After a few more articles had appeared in the Prophet, Fudge's office was found empty… with only a brief note addressed to the generally public, confirming their suspicion.

The Dark Lord's power knows no bounds, only a fool would dare stand before him.

Am I, therefore, weak for submitting to His will? would you condemn me?

Cornelius Fudge

When his office was found abandoned, aurors were dispatched to all of his known properties… most of them were found empty as well. The Minister of Magic had just vanished from the wizarding world, not leaving any trace of his whereabouts. Of course, it didn't matter in the long run as he was replaced by a temporary stand in a few days later…

All of that was in the past however; right now Harry was on his way to one of the briefing rooms before heading out with Neil. He opened the door to the room and found the older Unspeakable hovering above various diagrams, blueprints of the house they were invading.

"Come over here and take a look," The old unspeakable said.

The diagrams were extremely detailed, even going so far as to display every piece of furniture found in each room. The house itself, while not overly large, was fairly big. From what he could see, Harry guessed that it would be about twice the size of the Dursley's home. "We'll have to do with these, they're all we could get on such short notice," Neil said, gesturing towards the large stack of diagrams.

"You mean there's normally more than this?" Harry was a bit skeptical, what more could you put on paper than this… He noticed that the chart even mapped out the locations of the pictures hanging on the walls, as well as indicating whether or not they were magical in nature.

"Of course there is, we normally have the wards and magical residue levels recorded as well. Oh, and a complete index of items and their locations." Seeing Harry's slightly bewildered look, Neil elaborated. "For example," He said, "if we'd had more time to snoop around, I'd be able to tell you what could be found in each drawer, on every shelf, or under any of the beds. You'd be surprised at how often people hide dark magical artifacts underneath their socks."

Harry was stunned, that kind of detailed information would take… weeks to obtain. Right? Well, if what they had for his upcoming mission was collected in only one day, then maybe it wouldn't take as long as he'd originally thought. This was the Department of Mysteries after all…

"What we're gong to do," Neil said, snapping Harry out of his musings, "is enter through this window." He designated the window in question. It was on the second floor of the house, in one of the unused guest rooms. "That is of course, after we determine what security wards are placed on it and break through them. Once we're in, I want you to wait while I make a quick scan of the house. If our target isn't there, I'll place a few proximity wards that will alert us when he arrives. If he is home, I'll return to the room you're in and walk you through the mission." Harry didn't like the fact that he was pretty much doing nothing… just sitting in some empty room and waiting, but there wasn't anything he could do about it.

Neil began organizing the papers scattered about the table and stopped suddenly. "Oh, one more thing, if something doesn't go to plan, I want you to lay low in that room. If the situation looks bad enough, then I want you to get out. There is no sense in either of us getting hurt on this mission, it's not very important in the grand scheme of things." Harry nodded in agreement, thought he knew that he wouldn't leave Neil to fend for himself… no matter that the old man could hold his own far better than Harry could.

A few minutes, and a couple of apparations later, they were about a block away from their target house.

The house was a little larger than Harry had thought it would be, and the second story was also much higher than he'd pictured… he couldn't guess how were they supposed to get in the window, let alone use all kinds of diagnostics spells on it.

Of course, Neil had already prepared for that. He pulled out a miniaturized ladder from the inside of his cloak once they'd gotten fairly close to the house. It was ironic that some of these Death Eater's protected their homes form all sorts of flashy magical modes of transportation when a simple enlargement charm was just as effective for breaking in unnoticed.

OoOoOoO

Neil had been at the window for a good five minutes and Harry was getting worried. The whole mission could be thrown off if their target saw them outside. Neil had said that he would have normally disillusioned the ladder and made himself invisible, but he didn't want Harry to do something stupid… like fall off of an invisible ladder. Actually, the Unspeakable had mentioned some other form of breaking in undetected that he couldn't use because Harry was tagging along as well. It had sounded really cool at the time, like walking through walls or something, but Harry wasn't paying all that much attention.

Harry's worries were relieved a few moments later when the older man made a quiet noise of triumph… he'd done it! The old Unspeakable with years of training in elite magical arts had conquered the window! Now that the easy part was over, they could face whatever challenges lie within.

When they were both inside, Neil proceeded with their prearranged plan and slipped, silently, through the door, leaving Harry alone in the small room. The room was larger than the one he'd resided in at Privet Drive, but not by much. So it was fairly hard to navigate around the bulky furniture that was in it. But besides the large bed, dresser, nightstand, and a plush chair, the room was empty. With nothing else to do Harry sat down in the chair and whipped out his wand.

When he had just started to get bored with rearranging the furniture, the old man reentered the room. It wasn't a good time for him to come in either; Harry had almost dropped the bed from where it was sticking to the ceiling when the old man startled him. Neil had placed a silencing charm on the room, so the noise wouldn't have mattered, but the Unspeakable happened to be standing directly underneath of the heavy piece of furniture.

After everything was safely back on the ground and Neil had given Harry his 'we'll talk about this later' look, the Unspeakable began giving Harry instructions.

"There's a few more than we bargained for, but I'll be able to take care of them. Follow me and whatever happens, don't attempt to confront any of them." He whispered loudly… which sort of defeated the purpose of whispering in the first place. Nevertheless, Harry followed him out into the empty hallway and down the stairs before Neil stopped him. "There are three of them in the fourth room down the hall, I detected the presence of another… but they've most likely left by now. The reading I got was rather faded. I want you to get in the room and stay hidden… once I have them subdued we'll go over everything."

Harry just nodded before setting off down the hall by himself… Neil was just watching him…

A carpet runner going down the middle of the hallway muted his footsteps, so he wasn't very worried about being caught. The house, while large, wasn't lavishly decorated. It was nothing like the Ministry… it was more like Grimmuald place, dark wood finish and old gas lanterns. The place was clean though, and the walls weren't faded, this was probably what Sirius's old home looked like when he lived in it. One thing he noticed was the lack of wall decorations, he supposed that the house either wasn't used often or whoever lived in it was just exceedingly boring.

Before he reached the fourth room, Harry made sure to disillusion himself and use a localized silencing charm. They still hadn't covered the invisibility charm, which was a much more advanced version of disillusionment. It would have been much more useful in this situation as it didn't leave any kind of distorted afterimage. The only real drawback of the invisibility charm was that it was fairly noticeable in well-lit areas, oftentimes it would reflect some of the light and cause a glare. If somebody knew what to look for, then they'd know exactly where you were. He was getting proficient at judging when and how fast to move while under the disillusionment charm though, Neil had made him practice by sneaking through some of the classrooms while training was in session.

Getting in to the room was easy… because it didn't have a door. All Harry had to do was slip through the open frame and duck down behind the nearest piece of furniture. It was only a few seconds after he'd gotten settled that the show started. And Harry couldn't even see it.

All the lights in the room simultaneously extinguished… and there was no light coming from the windows either. Harry literally couldn't see his hand in front of his face, for a moment he thought that he'd gone blind. The Death Eaters seemed to be having the same problem, if the noises of people falling over various items in the room and the shouts of, "Lumos," were anything to go by. After only a few seconds, the noise stopped and the light slowly faded back in. Harry didn't know how he'd done it, but Neil had bound and gagged all three Death Eaters in under ten seconds… with no light. He was standing in the middle of the room and fishing for something in his pocket and keeping his wand trained on the one Death Eater that he hadn't stunned.

Harry got up from his hiding spot and walked over to Neil, talking care to step on two of the Death Eaters on his way. "That was… what did you do?" He asked, he would have commented on how cool it was that Neil took the three out so quickly, but he didn't even see it happen.

"Darkness spell, Totus Nox, it's very difficult to hold it for a long time, especially when you're trying to do something else at the same time. The only flaw with it is that it's easily canceled… If these three were any smarter, then they might have tried ending the spell instead of trying to produce light." He seemed to be getting frustrated with his pocket now… He finally seemed to give up and pulled out his empty hand. "I don't have a portkey for the holding cells, I'll have to apparate them one at a time to the Department and hand them over. The house has wards against apparition, so I'll have to do it from outside. While I'm doing this, you can get started looking for anything… well, pretty much anything that looks interesting, especially if it's linked to Voldemort in some way."

With that, the older Unspeakable stunned the remaining Death Eater and began levitating them out the window. He didn't bother to set them down slowly, once they were clear of the house, he just ended the spell and let them drop. Afterwards, he hopped out the window, not bothering to jump clear of the pile of bodies… Neil seemed to harbor as much hate for Voldemort's supporters as Harry did.

Harry decided to start upstairs; he remembered what Neil had said about hiding dark artifacts in the sock drawer, so it would be worth a look. Just as he'd exited the sitting room however, he was almost immediately had to duck under a vicious silver spell that nearly took his head off! There was somebody else in the house!

He was surprised when another curse didn't immediately follow, but he took the opportunity to get a good look at his opponent.

There was a man further down the hall with his wand out. The guy was huge, possibly half the size of Hagrid, but his movements seemed rather slow. The person seemed to have realized that Harry wasn't dead and began throwing curses again. All of them were easily dodged... the guy left long periods of time between his curses for some reason. His power though, was fairly impressive. The mysterious man threw up a shield as Harry shot off a few low-level spells. He wanted to get a good idea of what he was up against before getting killed as the result of some stupid mistake.

Unluckily for Harry, the shield didn't show even the slightest of reactions to the curses. He was trying to gauge the man's power when another curse came barreling towards his head.

Harry rolled under the bright red curse… luckily it missed him; the damage to the wall behind him was pretty extensive. The man wasn't a very good duelist, he tended to wait and calculate his next move for too long, which left him open for counterattacks. Harry took advantage of the pause in the fighting to turn the situation in his favor. He knew that the shield the guy had up would block just about any spell Harry could throw at it and if he used a more powerful spell it might leave him drained. No, he needed a way to get around it.

Until he could figure out how thought, he'd have to bide his time. Harry threw a few more low level curses, at the ceiling above his opponent this time, causing plaster to rain down in fine dusty particles, before disillusioning himself. The combination of both would make him much harder to aim at.

Apparently it didn't make him hard enough to aim at however, he hastily put up a strong shield as another red curse came flying at him. The curse deflected off into stairs, leaving a sizable portion of them missing. In response to the curse, Harry rolled across the hall and began running towards the man. A moving target would present more of a challenge and closing the gap between them would make it easier for Harry to hit him. As he was running, he threw a couple of reductos around the man's feet, blasting planks of wood in to the air and almost taking his opponent's head off… darn, so close.

The fact that he'd almost been killed didn't sit very well with the man and he began casting in earnest. About seven balls of dark purple energy flew from his wand and straight at Harry. The balls were hurtling towards him rather quickly, and he didn't want to lose any limbs, so he dove to the ground, hoping they would pass straight over him… But, to his surprise, each one altered it's course to accommodate for his movement. They were following him!

Harry quickly rolled over as the first struck the ground where he'd been laying… then the second… he was running out of room and the balls weren't disappearing, they bounced off the floor and then, like bludgers, turned back came racing after him again.

Thinking quickly, he threw another reducto, this time at the side of the hallway, before rolling through the hole he'd made and into a dimly lit dining area. Behind him, the wall was shaking as each ball impacted against it. Dishes rattled on the table and dust rained down from the ceiling until they finally appeared to be done chasing him.

The man didn't seem to be trying to get in… he was possibly drained from the advanced bit of magic that he'd just pulled, but Harry wasn't going to take any chances. "Visum Ferveo," he whispered out, whilst circling his wand in a figure eight pattern around his eyes. The result was Harry being nearly blinded by the bright colors, indicating differing levels of heat, which overtook his vision. He had practiced this spell with Neil last week for uses in situations where he might be following the older Unspeakable while he was invisible. It wasn't a particularly hard charm, but if you messed up you could end up permanently blinded… hence the reason that he was practicing under Neil's direction.

The hallway outside was practically glowing. The amount of heat given off by the spells they'd thrown at each other in the closed hallway was fairly significant, but he could still see what he'd been looking for. On the other side of the wall, the man he'd been dueling was doubled over and breathing heavily… Harry hadn't noticed how drained the man was earlier, of course he was also dodging deadly balls of energy that were attempting to lodge themselves into his head, so he wasn't surprised that he'd missed it.

After marking his opponent's place, he canceled the charm on his eyes… he didn't want to blind himself by casting any more spells; they were extremely bright as they first left your wand. Once he was ready, Harry simply cast the most destructive curse that came to his mind… directed at the spot where the other man was recovering.

The resulting explosion rocked the whole house and left an unsurprised Death Eater lying somewhere in the next room... on the other side of the hallway. Harry was pretty sure that the man would have been surprised if he weren't unconscious though.

It wasn't until the threat of attack was over, that Harry realized how much his back hurt. Apparently, when one of the walls had exploded, he'd gotten fairly torn up. He hadn't even fully calculated the extensiveness of the damage before his fatigue caught up with him and he blacked out on the floor.