A/N: The original plan of a chapter a week may go out of the window in light of the current situation. Unusually for me, that may mean the update rate increases. It largely depends on the rate at which I am able to gather feedback on the darklordpotter forums. I will be keeping the story there a few chapters ahead of it here, and posting here once I have had a chance to address any feedback.

Chapter 2

Heavy rain fell from a leaden sky as he stepped out of Gotham Central station, a typical Gotham welcome. All around him men and women in dark business clothing, each carrying a black umbrella, moved with purpose, blind to the world around them. Not so far away a single gunshot sounded, echoing across the streets. Not one of the hundreds of people filling the streets so much as faltered in their purposeful stride. A moment later there was the scream of tires and a siren wailed into life, only to rapidly fade into the distance.

No-one looked up, no-one looked around. Everyone stayed firmly, safely, within their own little worlds. In Gotham, curiosity most certainly killed the cat.

Over them all, tall buildings reared upwards, until they were lost amid clouds, rain, and fog. Bright lights shone through distant windows, filling the air above with shafts of dull orange light. Long shadows cast by the many chimerae that adorned the older buildings filled gloomy sky with shadowy leviathans.

The sun had not yet set, but the streets below were still lit by street-lamps. The combination of tall buildings and thick low clouds left the streets wallowing in a bleak yellow haze. Here and there, the setting sun would find a path through the maze of concrete and fog to cut a brilliant channel through the shadowy menagerie, but it was slowly being pushed back. Soon it would fail, and the monsters that haunted the night would be free, restrained only by the flickering lamps.

Harry wended his way through the rush-hour crowds, each and every man and woman among them oblivious to the monstrous shades which flew overhead. His chosen destination? A hotel, had been recommended to him by an incessantly talkative, yet still somewhat helpful woman whom he had met on the train. She'd assured him it wasn't a long walk to the hotel. He didn't have an umbrella and, surrounded as he was by muggles, conjuring one was more trouble than it would be worth if the walk was as short as promised. Instead he opted to rely upon the impermeable charm cast on his Auror's long-coat.

The woman hadn't been lying, the walk was indeed only a couple of blocks. Harry, however, had very definitely misjudged the rain. By the time he reached the hotel, his usually wild hair was plastered flat to the top of his head, and he could feel water running in rivulets down his back. He made his way through the revolving door into the foyer and, with a snap of his fingers, cast a quick drying charm. By the time he exited the door, along with a puff of warm damp air, he looked as if he'd never been in the rain in the first place. If anyone wondered about it, they didn't say anything.

The sense he got upon walking into the foyer was one of ageing decadence. The floors were made from well worn slabs of different types of marble, arranged into geometric patterns that had surely been stylish at some point in the past. A once-luxurious carpet, now sadly threadbare occupied the centre of the room, and on it were a small collection of high-backed armchairs arranged around a heavily scuffed coffee table made of an expensive-looking dark wood.

The walls were adorned with geometrical patterns similar to those found on the floor, but this time they were constructed from wood in three different colours. A number of paintings were hung around the room, old, bewhiskered men in tweed jackets stared down at the hotel's clientele with looks of vague disappointment.

At the back of the foyer, against the wall, there was a reception desk. It was easily the most modern part of the decor and looked distinctly out-of-place as a result. Harry made his way over to the desk, where a gangly young blond-haired man could be found tapping away at something on the screen behind the desk. His free hand was worrying a dog-eared and clearly much-loved set of playing cards. The actions were well practiced as he cut and shuffled the deck one-handed in an absent-minded way.

"Excuse me, any chance I could get a room for, say, a week or so?" said Harry, after the man looked up. The playing cards swiftly disappeared into some little cubby below the counter-top.

"Uh, yeah, sure, sir. Of course," the young man said. Harry judged that he was probably new to the job from the way he hesitated. "Let me just check to see what rooms we have available."

"Thanks," said Harry easily, as he leant one elbow on the counter and looked around while the young man started tapping once more on the screen in front of him.

The hotel was a nice one but, according to the woman on the train, not quite so nice that it was often frequented by mob-bosses or other unsavoury types. The clientele seemed to be mostly mid-level businessmen and women, probably visiting Gotham for some meeting or other. It would do for Harry's purposes. He certainly wasn't worried about the muggle criminals of the city, but he knew that his search was probably going to quickly start racking up the complications. One fewer from the get-go was always a good idea.

Like the Auror manual said: Control what you can, mitigate when you can, and acknowledge what you can't.

"Uhh, yeah, looks like there's a few one-beds available." said the young man, drawing Harry's attention back to him. "Do you have any preferences? Twin or double?"

Harry shrugged. "Not really bothered, but if you have any rooms with a balcony that would be good."

The receptionist bobbed his head quickly and tapped his screen a few more times. "I'm afraid the only balcony available is in the Presidential Suite," he said, looking apologetic.

"That's fine, how much per night?"

"Uh, $840, sir."

Harry whistled almost appreciatively. That did sound steep. He did the conversion in his head and came up with about 140 galleons a night. Still, he wanted that balcony, and what use was money if he didn't use it? "I'll take it," he said. Maybe he could bill it to the department, he just had to make sure Padma didn't see it.

In short order, Harry handed over his credit card, which bore the name of a real muggle bank. Such things had become something of a necessity in recent years, for a wizard who wanted to stay in touch with the muggle world.

As the receptionist was entering his details, Harry decided to see if he could get anything useful out of him. He decided to play a hunch. "So, my friend suggested I try and catch this magic show while I was here, but he didn't know where I had to go. I think he said she was called Zatanna, or something like that anyway?"

"Oh, you mean the Mistress of Magic show?" said the receptionist, his eyes lighting up. "I think you're in luck. She performs most Wednesdays at the Illusionist down in the Theater District. Do you like magic?"

"I guess so," Harry said with an indulgent smile. "When it's done well of course."

"I tell you man, she's like nothing I've ever seen," said the receptionist, his eyes wide, before he seemed to realise just where he was. "There's this trick she does with… Ah, that is to say, um. She's very good, sir. I can certainly recommend her." He paused, seemingly realising what he'd managed to insinuate. "Um, her show, I mean."

"Then I'll be sure to check it out," said Harry, restraining his own chuckle. He supposed that there was a generous helping or irony in the fact that knowing magic really existed, and just what was required in order to pull a rabbit out of a hat, could quite literally take the magic out of some things.

A short while later, Harry was inspecting his suite. It was nice enough, with a small dining and living area, and two adjoining bedrooms containing very comfortable beds. The whole thing had a fairly lived-in feel to it, like the rest of the hotel, but it was clean and the furnishings may have been aged, but they were high-quality.

The view from the balcony wasn't anything to write home about; the hotel itself was among the shorter buildings on the block, and so the view was merely an elevated one of the road below. The city still seemed to press in on all sides, the tall, imposing architecture of Gotham could never be described as neither open nor friendly. Gargoyles and other grotesques, the like of which Harry had really only seen on cathedrals back home, studded many of the buildings. The echoing sounds of a bustling city were only slightly muffled by the dozen or so floors of separation but none of that mattered to Harry.

Before he began his search, however, he had to secure the room. With Gotham being such a black hole for magicals, there was very little chance of a rogue wizard trying to take him out, but it always aid to be cautious. Something had happened to Neville, and that fact alone was enough to prompt Harry to add a few alert charms to his door. Anything more would mean he wouldn't be able to request room service, so it would have to do.

Satisfied, he stepped through a set of worn french doors and into the rain. It had died down significantly since his walk from the station. It was reduced to a dreary mixture of drizzle and fog that gave the already thick inner-city air the consistency of a particularly heavy soup. He didn't bother with any drying charms, as they'd soon be pointless. In a few more quick strides, he reached the edge of the balcony and, without pause, leapt off into the open air.

A moment later, a small, black-feathered falcon winged its way into the skies over Gotham. When Harry had finally managed to complete his animagus transformation, a process that had resulted in more than one visit to the St Mungo's spell damage ward, to discover that his form was that of a melanistic falcon, he'd been overjoyed. Nothing could compare to the feeling of freedom he had when he was flying through the air, no broomstick, no magic, just the wind in his feathers.

As Harry flew between Gotham's many towers, and the ominous shadows they cast, his sharp eyes stayed fixed on the streets below. Through the thick evening fog, even his falcon-sharp eyes couldn't see much more than dark shapes moving deep within the murk, each one picked out in blurry contrast by streetlights and headlamps. His falcon form was able to move through the gridlocked city streets far faster than any car would have been able to achieve and it didn't take long for him to see an obvious hole in Gotham's brick and concrete landscape.

It was as if a great chunk had been carved from the bleak grey firmament of the city, and in its place was revealed a small patch of nature. Tall trees, dwarfed by the forest of steel and concrete that surrounded them, were scattered haphazardly across rolling hills of green. A few ribbons of brown trailed over and across the space, flanked by rivers of pastel colour. From his unparalleled vantage point, it seemed to Harry that the Gotham National Botanic Gardens were utterly alien to the city: a sliver of idealized naturalism amid the towering gothic and brutalist architecture of Gotham.

From on-high, Harry was able to quickly identify the starting point for his investigation. In the middle of the gardens stood a group of three large glass-houses, connected by smaller glass tunnels. Each seemed to be full almost to the point of bursting, and all were surrounded by easily visible yellow police tape.

Harry dove quickly through an open window pane, and landed lightly on the branch of a large tropical tree which dominated much of the space. He sat there for a few long minutes, his bright eyes watching for any motion, and his hearing straining to pick up any sound.

Nothing but a few rodents. Either all the employees had been sent home as a result of the police investigation, or they didn't actually have any night-shift. He dropped again, this time all the way to the ground, his wings flaring out to arrest his fall just before he hit the ground. Then, his avian body rippled and his body fluidly resumed its usual human shape. He landed with practiced ease, his wand already in hand.

"Lumos Occultatem," he said, and for him the tip of his wand lit up light a torch, yet to any watching eyes the gloomy darkness with the glasshouse remained unchanged. A useful modification of a common spell, and one of the first spells magical investigators learned.

The ghostly light swept around the room, as Harry inspected his surroundings. There was obvious evidence of a fight. Near the middle of the room there was a work-bench of sorts, or, what had once been a work-bench. It had been snapped in half, and given its sturdy construction, whatever had done it had been either pretty heavy, or extremely powerful.

Whatever the previous occupant of the room had been doing was unclear, as both the bench and the floor had been stripped of anything more interesting than dead leaves. Harry could see numerous patches of ground where it was clear a plant-pot had once been placed. The only things that remained in the room were the larger trees and bushes, and it was easy to confirm that none of those had any magical properties.

With a flick of his wand, Harry detached his torch from the tip of the wand, and directed it to hover lazily a couple of feet overhead, and he started casting more spells.

"Mageia Revelio," he said, waving his wand grandly around the space. Unlike the related charm for revealing people to the casters, this one resulted in a thick mist issuing from his wand until the entire space was filled. Then, after it had settled, it started glowing faintly in areas which had previously been touched by magic.

It was a charm of dubious usefulness in many cases; most normal wizarding homes would have left him dazzled. Muggle Gotham, however, would not have nearly the same amount of magic permeating the air. As Harry looked around, he saw something, there was the merest suggestion of the outline of a person. It was hard to tell but with the faint star-burst pattern in the middle of it, it looked like the tell-tale signature of apparition. That was probably Neville.

If Neville had found anything interesting, Harry could find no clue of it. The light from his earlier spell was too bright. "Nox," he said, and night rolled back into the glasshouse.

With the light of his floating lamp gone, Harry waited a few moments for his eyes to readjust. There was Neville's outline, and beside it, almost invisible, was a large shapeless cloud of latent magic. It didn't look like a spell, those usually had some kind of focal point, or recognisable shape.

Harry looked around the rest of the room and found no other traces. Neville's apparition, and the strange cloud were the only clues that anything not strictly muggle had happened.

A twirl of his wand had the mist sink slowly down to, and then into, the ground and moments later, his wand was once again lit. What he had been unable to see in the darkness was that there was a large circle of dirt on the concrete floor below where the unidentified signature had been.

That had been Neville's plant, and it certainly seemed that Neville had identified it, though from the age of the traces, he'd been a few days too late. Quite how Neville had found it, Harry was not sure. Neville was no Auror or magical investigator, and almost certainly didn't know the spell Harry had used. He crouched down to get a closer look at the patch on the floor.

There were a few leaves, twigs and similar bits and pieces scattered around, left behind by whoever it was that had cleared the glasshouses out after the fight. Harry was no herbologist, but he stashed a few of them into a stasis charmed bag anyway. If he had to guess, he'd say that Neville had seen something in the leaves that Harry had not.

He stood back up and started to consider his next move. As leads went, his were pretty thin. An apparition signature that probably belonged to Neville, and the suspicion that Neville's own quarry had indeed once been present wasn't much, but it was a start.

Neville had likely found what he'd been looking for, so while Harry would find it difficult to trace Neville, he might just be able to track down the plant. If he found where the plant had gone after being removed from the glasshouse, he'd probably find Neville. Or, more likely, he'd find where Neville had been, but that might just be good enough. There was a chance that he'd find some clue as to Neville's onward movements.

That was the hope anyway. It should be easier too. All he needed to do was find a witness to whoever had cleaned out the greenhouses. In a city like Gotham, there were surely eyes everywhere.

A few seconds later, Harry was once again flying over the gardens, sharp eyes scanning the ground below for his prize. It didn't take long. After less than a minute, he identified a group of five bedraggled men huddled around an oil-drum fire. They were out of sight from most of the gardens, a likely necessity given how permanent their little camp looked, but they couldn't escape Harry's airborne gaze.

He landed again a short distance away from the group, far enough that his arrival would pass unnoticed. A quick muffling charm cast on his shoes ensured that they wouldn't hear him coming. He didn't want them hearing him coming and trying to do a runner, which he judged to be a very real possibility. The homeless of Gotham were probably rousted from their camps fairly frequently by irate landowners.

Hands in his pockets, he ambled towards their make-shift camp. The idea was to look as unassuming and nonthreatening as possible. Thanks to the darkness and his muffling charm he was able to walk right up to the fire before he was noticed.

"Hey, what— What the fuck man?" said the first man to notice his arrival. His speech was a little slurred, though Harry couldn't tell if it was from drugs or drink or a bit of both. The other men gathered around the fire started and jumped away from Harry as if he was cursed or something.

"I want no trouble," Harry started, his hands held up and open to show he wasn't carrying any weapons. "I just have some questions about what happened in the greenhouses."

It seemed Harry's wish to avoid trouble was not one his new acquaintances shared. He quickly noted that every single one of them was holding some kind of weapon. Two held dirty flick-knives, another only had an empty bottle and one had pulled a baseball bat out of the leg of his ratty trousers. The one that had been the first to notice Harry was holding an old, beaten-up revolver. It weaved back and forth as the stoned man tried to keep it pointed at him.

"I'll pay for any information you can give me," he said in the same calm and level tone he'd been using. "I'm not the police, or with the government. I'm just looking for a friend who might have gotten caught up in something."

"The fuck you doin' coming here, man?" said one of the other homeless men. This one had on a much-patched overcoat and fingerless gloves. Bloodshot eyes glimmered behind long tousled hair. "You think you're cool shit, huh? Climbing down into the dirt to poke the shit at us?"

Somewhat belatedly, Harry realised that the homeless of the most crime-ridden city in America probably would be rather more quick to violence than he was used to. You didn't survive long on the streets in a city like that if you didn't learn that particular lesson.

"Lets just calm down, huh?" Harry tried, feeling very much like he was swimming against the tide. "No-one needs to get hurt. I just want to know if you saw a guy, about my height, short brown hair, no glasses, no beard, poking around here about a week ago. He's my friend, and he's missing."

"So you thought you'd come on down out o' your ivory tower to play hero, huh?" said another of the men, though Harry realised upon hearing their voice that this particular homeless man was, in fact, a woman. "How 'bout we take them nice clothes you're wearin' and you go on your fiddlede-de way, yer Lordship?"

Harry sighed and one hand rubbed at his temple in a vain attempt to fend off the headache he felt would inevitably be coming. He'd never really understood why it was that some people felt the need to make things so hard for themselves.

In a blur of motion, he jumped forward. As those closest to him reared back in shock, the one holding the gun panicked, and a shot went wild into the bushes around them. A moment later, the gun was torn from his hand, and Harry swiftly clubbed him over the head with it. No need for magic, the well-trained reflexes of an Auror were more than enough to best a run-down drunkard.

The man went down instantly clutching his head and Harry held the gun out at the remaining four who'd only just started reacting to his attack. "Uh uh," he said shaking his head and gesturing with the gun. Now that he had it in his hands he figured that the chances of it actually working after that first shot were probably the wrong side of even. That didn't really matter though. He didn't need a gun, he could subdue them with but a word, but they wouldn't understand that. The gun was unnecessary, but it was a more recognisable instrument of power than his wand and would be much more effective at driving home to them that he was the one in control.

"Now, I think we got off on the wrong foot here," he said reasonably. "So shall we try that again. I'm looking for a friend of mine. You seen him?"

He pulled a large picture of Neville out of one of the inner pockets of his coat. In truth, he'd conjured it after realising that simply describing Neville's appearance wasn't going to be all that useful, but they didn't need to know that.

The group remained quiet. If anything their scowls had deepened, which was perhaps understandable in the circumstances.

Harry sighed again and lowered the gun. He took a few steps back, away from the fallen man. "Look, I wasn't lying. I don't want to hurt you, and I'll pay you for any information you can give me. But don't for a second think I'm going to roll over and die because you don't like the way I bloody well talk. Understand?"

He pointed at the woman, who kept glancing between Harry and the man on the ground. It was clear where her attention was, she was barely holding her pen-knife straight. "Help him if you like," Harry said, meeting her eyes, and nodding his head at her compatriot. "I don't mind. I'm sorry I had to do that."

As she quickly stowed her knife and crawled to the injured man's side, Harry turned his attention back to the remaining three. One baseball bat, one knife, and one bottle remained in evidence.

"Right, look, I'm getting tired of this," he said firmly. "I have a 50 for the first person who can tell me what my friend was doing here a week ago." He reached into his coat again and this time pulled out a crisp $50 bill and held it out towards the three men.

This time the silence lasted only a moment before all three started speaking at one. Even the downed man tried to join in, though his words were so slurred that Harry wouldn't have been able to make them out, even if it hadn't been lost amid the other voices.

"Stop!" Harry called, and he held the fifty up to make sure he had their attention. "One at a time. It's your lucky night, as I have enough fifties for each of you to get one, so don't worry about it. Now, who wants to go first?"

The three men still standing looked between themselves for a few seconds before the baseball-bat owner cleared his throat. "Look, we didn't see much, yeah?" he started, clearly unsure if honesty was the right way to go. "It was like three nights after the thing, yeah? On the… uhh…"

"Tuesday," the man with the bottle supplied.

"Yeah, the Tuesday. He was like sneakin' around that night in like all black bathrobes or some shit, like he thought he was a ninja. He looked through the two smaller houses first, no more'n twenty minutes in each one, yeah? Then he went into the big one and didn't come out."

Yeah man, he was just gone," bottle-man interjected again. "Steph went a-lookin' for him when he didn't come out and he was gone man. Musta gone out some back way or some shit."

"He didn't see you, didn't speak to you, didn't ask you anything?"

"Naw man, he didn't say nothing to no-one when we was around," the final man answered. Up until that moment he'd not spoken more than the 'fuck' he'd uttered when Harry had appeared in their midst.

That wasn't especially helpful. Harry decided to try a different tack. "What about the 'thing' then. What actually happened?"

"Hey, man, we—" the first man started, before being interrupted by baseball-guy.

"It was crazy, yeah?" he said quickly, his eyes wide with excitement. "They've been calling her Poison Ivy, yeah? Like this absolute bombshell babe who's crazy as shit about plants or someshit? I tell you, man, crazy or not, I wouldn't mind tending that garden, you know what I mean?"

"She's who was working in the glasshouses?" Harry asked. He really didn't want to know about the man's fantasies.

This time it was the man who'd had the bottle that answered. "Not just working, man, living. Like all the time. She was some hot ass, man, but she was mean as a pitbull too. After what happened to Miguel we all learned to keep our distance."

Harry opened his mouth to ask the obvious question, but was cut off before he could even start.

"Fucking fed him to her one of her plants. Like, no shit." Baseball bat guy started getting into his story as he spoke and began waving his arms around wildly. "He was straight-up eaten, yeah? Like he was a snickerdoodle or some shit. Crazy shit too. Like one of them octopussys or something. All tentacles and shit covered in fucking spikes, yeah?" They all shuddered, clearly remembering the moment.

"So what happened?" Harry asked. "Someone told the police, and they took her in, I assume?"

The woman laughed as she was helping her friend to his feet, though it was more like a derisive snort than any true laugh. "All the pigs in the city couldn't have taken her down. It was the Batman that did it."

The word Batman garnered a strange response from the rest of the group. The guy Harry had put on his arse got a hunted look on his face and his eyes started darting around, searching shadows. The others responded with some combination of fear, dislike, and awe.

"Fucking Batman, man!"

"Yeah, the goddamn Batman!"

"Don't say his fuckin' name, man. Bart said his name and next day he was in the pigpen with a broken fuckin' face!"

Harry had no idea who or what the 'Batman' was. "What's that? A gang or something?"

"Nah, man, the Batman fuckin' eats gangers," said the one with the baseball bat. "He's like a fuckin' demon or some shit, man. I'm telling you, that monster ain't human."

The bottle-wielder added, "No way, no how. Irish Pete saw him get shot, and he just kept coming, like the terminator or some-shit. No way that shit's human. The way I hear it, some priest down in the Narrows is saying he's an angel of vengeance, come to cleanse Gotham of its sinful ways."

"Since when do you listen to priests?," said the woman. "He's been sayin' Gotham's gonna be destroyed for' the last fifteen years. Guy's crazier'n a sack of bees."

There was no denying that Harry was intrigued by whatever the 'Batman' was, but it wasn't why he was in Gotham. "Whatever. So the Batman took this woman down. Then what happened?"

"He disappeared, left her tied up," said the woman with a shrug. "Then the pigs came in later, when they figured it was safe. Carted her ass to the joint."

"And what about her weird plants?"

"Suits turned up and took them away too," said the man with the bottle. "Like CIA, FBI motherfuckers, man. Real men in black types."

"They weren't no CIA or FBI or nothing like that," said the quiet one. "They were from Wayne. I saw one of 'em give his card to some pretty lady-pig. Had the big W on it."

"Fuckin' Wayne man. Same fucking shit as CIA, I say," said the man with the bottle. "Only you fuck with the CIA, they kill you. Fuck with Wayne, they fuck you right back till you kill yourself."

The name Wayne did ring some bells, and it was certainly a lead, but he needed to make sure he didn't miss anything crucial. "Who are Wayne? Why do they want the plants?"

"Who the fuck knows, man. It's fucking Wayne. Probably saw that there was some shit in Gotham they handn't already fuckin' stolen and swooped in." That statement by the baseball player got nods from all his companions.

That was why it rang bells. It seemed that half of Gotham was if not directly owned by Wayne then at very least funded by one of their many subsidiaries. If Neville had worked out it was a group of people from one of the Wayne companies that had picked up the plants, then that surely had to have been his avenue for investigation.

The obvious place to start was Wayne Tower. It dominated the skyline of the city, the huge stylised 'W's on each side proudly proclaimed its supremacy. That must have been Neville's next move.

"Well, gentlemen," Harry said, before nodding at their sole female member. "Madam. I won't say it has been a pleasure, but you held up your side of the bargain."

He reached into his coat again and pulled out a few more fifties. He handed a couple to each of the group before quickly stepping back. He could see the thought pass through their minds that a man with 10 fifties probably had more, but fortunately they all seemed to think better of it. With a somewhat relieved 'Thank you', Harry made a hasty exit before they changed their minds.

This time he didn't take flight into Gotham's night sky. It was getting late, and thanks to both the time-difference and the company, it had been a very long day indeed. With a twist and a snap, Harry disapparated. He was looking forward to seeing if he'd gotten his money's worth with the beds in his hotel suite.