Book 4: Draco Malfoy and The Golem Army
Chapter 7: Break In
"The most important factor in planning a break in is making sure you have someone to arrange your bail."
It was mid-December before they got their chance to sneak out again. The two weeks of exam preparation provided enough chaos so they would go unnoticed. Everyone knew exams were not going to be hard, so they spent the preparation time causing mischief instead of studying. Headmistress Umbridge had her pudgy hands full trying to keep a lid on the fireworks that kept going off in the bathrooms and dodging all the Fanged Frisbees that were flying down the hall. Fred and George had made it their personal mission to harass the Headmistress and had just covered the floor of her office with long spikes. Anyone trying to walk into it would never walk again.
The Fifth House was walking down a side alley near the Salazar Commodities building. They were all huddled in their coats and staying close to the wall to shield themselves from the wind.
"Okay," said Harry, stopping, "according to the map. This is where we get in."
Draco looked around, but there were no doors anywhere in the narrow alley. Harry was looking down. Draco followed his gaze and saw a man hole.
"The sewer?" he asked.
"It's the only unsecured entrance I could find on the blue prints." said Harry.
"Is it..." asked Hermione, "a working sewer?"
"I hope so." said Harry. "I'd hate to go down there if it wasn't working."
"Hey!" slurred a voice from down the street. They all turned to see seventeen or so men at the entrance to the alley. The one who called them seemed to have more tattoos than skin. "What ya doin' in a place like this?"
"Passing through." said Harry, shifting to stand in front of Hermione.
"Werll, this is a private alley." said Tattoo. He and his entourage were closing in on them. "Since you passed through, you have to pay rent."
"Toll." said Marcus.
"Huh?" he said, stopping in mid-stride.
"You pay a toll to pass." said Marcus. "You pay rent for lodgings."
Tattoo's jovial expression morphed into a scowl.
"It's ok." said Hermione, pushing Ron aside. "I've got the toll right here."
She pulled out her wand and jabbed it at them. There was a sound like a electric guitar with the volume of a cannon. The gang was lifted off the ground and blown back straight out of the alley. Draco watched them scramble to their feet and run away down the main road. Tattoo didn't even manage to get back up.
"Impressive nonverbal magic." said Marcus.
"Getting Cynthia's hairdo has made you fearless." said Harry, grinning appreciatively. "The sewer should be no problem after that." he stomped on the ground and the man hole cover flew up into the air and hovered ten feet above the ground. "Gryffindors first."
"Why me?" asked Draco, indignant.
"Because Gryffindors are all brave and chivalrous and I don't want to go first." said Harry.
"I didn't dress for this." said Draco, weakly.
"We spent a month on sanitation charms." Harry countered.
"It smells like excrement!" said Draco.
Harry pointed his wand at him. "Ebublio!" A bubble formed around Draco's head like a helmet. He took a deep breath and could no longer smell the scent wafting out to the man hole.
Realizing he hand no more valid objections, he gritted his teeth and jumped down into the hole. He heard a splash and felt water, or what he hoped was water, come up passed his ankles.
"Lumos." he incanted. His wand lit up and illuminated the tunnel. The walls were solid smooth rock. It was barely high enough to accommodate him. He was going to have to bend down. Ron was going to have to walk through on his knees. He tried very hard not to look at the 'water' at the bottom of the sewer.
He heard a splash behind him and turned around to see who had followed him. There was no one there.
"Ok." he called up. "No alligators. Come on down."
Once they were all down, Harry consulted the map on his console.
"We just need to go this way," he pointed down the tunnel, "about twenty meters. Then we go straight up into the building."
They closed the man hole, then started walking. Draco couldn't tell with any certainty how far twenty meters was. Harry seemed to be making marks on the wall every few steps.
"Stop." said Marcus from the back of the line. They all stopped. Draco turned around to see what was wrong.
Marcus stood stock still for a moment, then he swung his arm back. He hit nothing, and nothing fell back into the sludge making a splash. He grabbed forward and pulled back a hand full of fabric that appeared from thin air. He pulled more and it turned out to be an invisibility cloak that was covering Ginny Weasley.
"Ginny!" cried Draco and Ron. "What are you doing here?" asked Draco as he dashed past Marcus to help her up.
"I wanted to sneak out with you." said Ginny as Draco cleaned her off with his wand.
"I'm sorry I struck you." said Marcus, putting the bubble head charm on her. "I didn't recognize you with this on." he held up the invisibility cloak. "I wouldn't have loaned it to you if I knew you wanted to follow us."
"Draco would never take me out with him." complained Ginny. "It sounded fun when he talked about exploring London after dark." she looked around the sewer. "It looks like he oversold it."
"I didn't take you because it's dangerous out here." said Draco, taking her gently by the shoulders and turning her to face him. "I'm trained to fight. You are not. You saw that gang up there."
"I could have taken them." she said.
"And we're not here to go to a rave." said Hermione. "We're investigating a rampaging monster. Go back to № 30 St. Mary Axe."
"She can't." said Draco. "She doesn't know the spell to open the passage, and I don't want her walking back alone." he looked directly into Ginny's eyes. "Keep the cloak on, and stay close to me."
"Ok." she said.
He made Ginny walk in front of him. As they all started walking again, he could have sworn he saw Marcus wink at him.
It was a few more paces before Harry stopped them.
"It's straight up here." said Harry. "We'll come in through the bathroom."
"Boys or Girls?" asked Ginny and Hermione at the same time.
"What's the difference?" asked Harry.
"All the difference." said Ginny. "We piss in the loo for one thing."
A short while later, Draco was emerging through a hole in floor. It was dark as pitch inside the building. He pointed the light around the bathroom to see a few sinks and a bank of toilet stalls.
"It's empty." he said, pulling himself the rest of the way out. Harry and Marcus jumped straight out using their Hopscotch skills. The three of them helped pull Ron and the girls out.
"Homenum Revelio." said Hermione. There was a series of soft pings. "there are thix people in the building bethideth uth" she whispered. "theyre all together on the other thide of the floor"
"right" said Draco. "wandth off and monoclth in" he pulled out the monocle Cynthia had given him when they first left home to go to the Silvana. He reached back and took Ginny's hand.
"dont worry" he said. "ill keep you thafe"
"How," she whispered tersely, "are you whispering like that?"
"thereth a trick to it" he responded "ill thow you latter" then he added. "you thould probably jutht not talk"
They proceeded out the bathroom door to an equally dark hallway. There were doors here and there that they split up and tried opening. Ron poked his head out of the office he just went into and waived them over.
"what ith it" asked Hermione.
"ith thith muggle money" he asked pointing inside the room. Draco squinted at the desk Ron was pointing to, but the monocle only showed shapes. It couldn't tell you the difference between a bill and a coupon. In the end, they all piled into the office and switched on the light.
Yes, it was muggle money. The desk was covered in it. Stacks of it. Stacks too big to carry. It wasn't just the desk. Money was stacked up on every available surface. The shelves were full of it. There were neat piles on the floor as tall as Hermione. In the darkness, Draco had just thought they were furniture.
"Bloody Hell." said Harry, forgetting to whisper.
Marcus poked around for anything that might be useful.
"thith ith definitely a muggle front" he said. "only withardth would be thith careleth with ₤8,000,000"
"ith that a lot" asked Ron, who didn't know a shilling from a shepard.
"itth about one and a half million galleonth" answered Marcus, as Ron's eyes bugged out of his head. "therth a ledger back here"
They all followed him around to the other side of the desk. There was book sitting open on the blotter. It was full of blank lined paper that someone had been writing on.
"lookth like nameth and dateth" said Marcus. He closed the book and put his console on the cover. He poked the screen a few times an the word 'COPYING' flashed on the screen. The ledger gave off a faint blue glow, then it stopped. The screen of the console flashed 'SOURCE COPIED'.
They all leaped when they heard a moaning sound. Draco grabbed Ginny's hand while Hermione ran over and switched off the lights. They waited a few seconds, then they heard it again. Hermione opened the door and they followed her down the hallway. They passed a few more rooms, the moaning sound was getting closer.
They finally came to a door that was hanging open. Dim light was coming out of it. Hermione pulled out her pocket mirror and used it to check around the corner.
"empty" she said. They all went in. Draco saw that the source of light was a window with the blinds drawn. He walked up to it and peered through one of the small gaps in the blinds. He instantly wished he hadn't.
"Oh, God." he said, forgetting to whisper.
He heard a rustling sound as the others walked up to the window to peak through whatever gap they could find. They were careful not to jostle the blinds so whatever was on the other side didn't get a clue that they had company.
The window looked over some kind of operating theater. Instead of a surgeon's table there were five people standing around a giant circle drawn onto the floor. The circle had a bunch of strange symbols and meridian lines drawn in it with lots of crisscrossing shapes. The writing was tiny and detailed. The ink they used was a familiar shade of red that Draco was willing to bet was really blood.
The moaning was coming from inside the circle. There was a man halfway between the perimeter and the center. He looked feverish and was rocking back and forth. He had a tired look on his face. He didn't seem to know where he was. Every so often, he would moan softly.
Standing directly in the center of the circle was what looked like a suit of armor, except the dimensions were all wrong for a person and it was far too tall. It looked like it was solid steel. Blades were welded on to every available extremity: hands, elbows, heels; it was a walking wood chipper. The helmet had spikes like horns. There was no face.
The wizards were chanting now. Symbols in the blood circle began to glow. Draco could swear he even saw some of them move. The wizards chanted louder and faster. The man in the circle fell over backwards. He was limp on the ground. Draco saw something rise out of his mouth. It was a small, glowing, blue dot. Draco had no idea what it was. He wondered if that was the man's life leaving his body.
The blue dot floated in the air and slowly made it's way to the spiked armor in the center of the circle. Eventually, it made contact with the armor and disappeared. The wizards stopped chanting and the whole building was silent. The kids, Draco included, all held their breath.
Then two glowing red eyes appeared on the faceless head. The armor took a step forward and raised it's hands. It waved them around and rocked on it's feet, like someone stretching after they get out of bed.
Marcus finally broke the silence. "I know what it is."
~o!o~
Marcus flipped open the book on the Fifth House's table on the Great Floor the next day at lunch. The page he opened to had an illustration of a statue with bright red eyes.
"It's a Golem." he said. "A statue with a human soul. The first Golem was made by the Rabbi Loew in Prague circa 1540. He built it to kill his rival and it worked perfectly. They've been illegal to create since 1780."
"Wicked." said Ron, looking over the page. "I could turn myself into a giant suit of armor?"
"You could if you had nothing else to live for." said Marcus. "You wouldn't take your magic with you. That stays in your body, and you can never change back."
"Why not?" asked Harry.
"Because the spell that transfers the soul is imperfect." said Marcus. "It's like peeling the price tag off a box. It always rips and leaves some of itself behind. If you transfer yourself to a Golem, you wouldn't be you anymore. You'd be grotesque parody of you. There's no magic that can heal a soul."
"They've been doing this to helpless muggles." said Hermione with condemnation. "That's disgusting. Why couldn't they just enchant a statue to walk around?"
"A Golem retains a thinking mind. It can do more complex tasks than a locomotive statue." said Marcus. "The spell that seals the soul into the statue makes them totally obedient. They feel neither pain nor hunger and never tire. They can last as long as the materials they are made off."
"They're made of things besides rock?" asked Harry.
"They can be anything." said Marcus. "Ceramic. Stone. Metal. Plastic. Glass. Sugar. That's really all the book says about them. Someone scrawled a note in the corner that a Golem can't function as a Horcrux. Whatever that means."
"That Golem we saw was entirely made of blades." said Ron. "The one Draco saw was knocking down brick walls like spider webs."
He opened his mouth to say something else, but his gaze shifted to the book and his eyes widened in terror.
Draco followed his gaze and saw that the book was slowly rising off the table. He wondered for a terrifying moment if the book knew they were on to it and was going to silence them, then he noticed his plate was floating, too.
Then he noticed he was floating. The rest of the Fifth house was also starting to rise weightlessly into the air. Hermione grabed onto the table's edge to anchor herself, but it started to follow her up.
Draco looked around the hall and saw that everyone else was in exactly the same position. All the students, their tables, and whatever they had with them at the time, was floating through the air. Luna Lovegood was doing breast strokes across the room.
"I get the feeling," said Draco, grinning, "that Fred and George have made progress with their Anti-Gravity charm."
"I'd be very impressed if I wasn't caught in the middle of it." said Hermione, swimming through the air to get her book bag, which was now orbiting Terry Boot.
"I'm still very impressed." said Ron as he heard Umbridge swearing.
"So, these wizards." said Ron, getting back on topic. "It looks like they're creating Golems that can fight. And we don't know how many they made. They could have a Golem Army."
"This may be the case." said Marcus, pulling out his console. "The ledger I copied had a list of names corresponding with times, dates, addresses, and a hexadecimal number that doesn't mean anything to me, probably code for something."
He enlarged the screen of the console and showed them an exact replica of the page they had seen last night; identical right down to the coffee stains. He tapped the screen and the pages flipped back. The console had managed to copy every single page of the ledger in one go. It was Draco's single favorite feature about the console. He never had to submit himself to Madame Pince's judgemental gaze when he wanted to check out a library book. He just found the book he needed, had the console copy it, and two seconds later the book was back on the shelf and he was gone with his own copy.
"Number 221 on the list is dated February 8th and the name is David Rakotswe." said Marcus, pointing at one of the names written in the ledger before shrinking his console back down and pocketing it.
"David Rakotswe left home for the job Horntail offered him on February 7th." said Draco, recalling the visit to Mrs. Rakotswe's house.
"Presumably, they turned him into a Golem on the eighth." said Marcus. "I have a feeling that we'll find more leads if we track down the families of the other people in the ledger."
"I don't know." said Hermione, swimming back to them. "We have an a lot of evidence now. We could just turn it over to the authorities. People are being killed. Kind of. They deserve justice and so do their families. We've been doing this because we're bored, but this isn't a game anymore."
"How about we sit down Dumbledore, Mother, Kingsley, and Tonks over Christmas break and tell them all we know." said Marcus. "Until then, we can gather more evidence."
Hermione thought about it for a while. "Al right, deal." she said. "Dumbledore and Cynthia make the last court appearance for the year on the twentieth. They have a lot to deal with until then, anyway."
"Poor Dumbledore." said Ron as a copy of the Daily Prophet floated past him. "This week they've been parading dozens of his former female students through the courtroom. They all claim he groped them."
"Well, we know they're lying." said Marcus.
"Allegations of sexual misconduct should always be taken seriously." chided Hermione. "No matter who the accused is."
"Still, they are definitely lying." insisted Marcus.
"How do you know?" asked Draco.
Marcus worked his jaw around like he was trying to mold his next sentence into the right shape.
"Dumbledore," he started slowly, "doesn't...like..."he gestured vaguely, "batting on our...side."
"Eh?" said Ron. Draco was confused too. Hermione, however, had started blushing.
"He...likes his...candle...snuffed out...differently." Marcus tried lamely. This was odd behavior for Marcus. He usually wasn't afraid to say anything in the frankest way possible.
"Eh?" Ron repeated.
"His bread...is buttered... on the other side." Marcus tried again.
"Eh?" Ron repeated.
"Dumbledore's gay!" shouted Hermione. The entire room of floating people went quite and turned to look at her.