The Imposter Complex; Chapter Thirty: When In Rome
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The deep, bassy chimes of the Hogwarts belltowers rolled into the classroom, and my students tensed in pavlovian anticipation.
'...And that's about our time for today. Tonight's homework: three feet on Chimera; their abilities, their hunting habits, their weaknesses!'
The chamber full of fifth year Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws beginning to pack their things groaned at the news. Yeah, me too kids, me too. I had to read the things.
'Oi, no whinging! Be lucky it's not four. And Fawley, if I see that Whiz-Bang in my classroom again it'll be going in my desk!'
Fawley scowled, and shoved the reusable firework back into his bag. He'd have to get up earlier in the morning to fool me; I bankrolled the place he'd bought it from.
The students filed out, my last class of the week. I sat down at my desk, completing my own notes from this class. A few minutes passed this way, the only sounds the scratching of my quill, and the soft pitter-patter of September rain against the windows.
'Well well well, the Headmaster's pet adventurer has become domesticated.'
I sneered at the familiar drawl. 'How've you been, Snivellus?'
I looked up at my fellow teacher. This was not the first encounter we'd had since the Welcome Feast, almost a month ago, but it was the first where we'd been alone. The scar that slashed diagonally across his face remained just as livid as it had then, twisted by his foul expression. Now that I was up close, I could see traces of some cream that had been rubbed on it, a vain attempt to mitigate the damage.
Snape had purpled with fury at the insulting nickname. From what Sirius has told me of their time in school, it probably carried a lot of bad memories for him.
'How dare y-'
'Just kidding, I don't give a fuck. What do you want?'
I leaned back against my desk, smirking. Snape had nothing to even try and fire back with; he knew next to nothing about me, his opening comment was evidence enough of that.
'I-' Snape stopped, and looked like he'd just swallowed an underripe grapefruit.
'The Headmaster demands your presence.' He ground out.
'Hm. He could have sent a House Elf with that information, but instead he sends you. I guess he really does just see you as an errand boy.'
'I wa-'
'Still don't give a fuck.' I said dismissively, breezing past him toward my office. 'Go tell him I'll swing by his office in a tick, there's a good boy.'
Beneath my outward veneer, I tensed for an attack that never came. A pity, I'd have to provoke him a little harder in future.
In truth, I had no core reason to be so nasty to him myself. He'd done nothing of real harm to me, beyond a bit of sneering and jibing. It was mostly just for sport, and to laugh about with Sirius later. Snape was simply too ugly to count as people.
:—:
'Come in, Professor Grey.'
I grimaced at the closed door to Dumbledore's office. That little parlour trick of his still irritated me.
I entered. The place was as tacky as ever. I sneered at the spindly silver trinkets before turning my attention upon their creator.
'Dumbledore. What's the go?'
The headmaster had a sheaf of parchment lying on his desk. Well, he had many sheafs of parchments on his desk, but one in particular lying directly in front of him. He turned it around to face me as I approached, and tapped on it meaningfully.
'As we agreed, I am keeping you in the loop. So to speak.'
I plucked up the sheaf. It was a report, a thorough one, on the movements of one Argo Pyrites. My lip curled. I remembered him from the Hog's Head after the Triwizard Tournament.
By the looks of things, he had been a busy little bee since last I laid eyes on him. Scuttling back and fourth between Scotland and France for several months, bribing merchants, smuggling goods, though sadly whoever had compiled this report could not say precisely what he had been dealing in.
So far, I wasn't seeing the relevance. I turned over to the next page. Ah, there it was. A photo, labelled as having been taken in Nice yesterday. It had been taken by a long-distance lens by the look of it, depicting Pyrites sitting at a coast-side cafe across from a man dressed in thick clothing, with a long beard and heavy sunglasses. As disguises go, it was hardly subtle, but certainly effective.
Unfortunately, it did not cover some extremely distinctive root-like burn scars across the back of the man's hand as he reached for his drink.
I looked up from the parchment at Dumbledore. 'Crouch. Voldemort's plans are shifting phases.'
He nodded gravely. 'Read on.'
I did so. Whoever this spy of Dumbledore's was, they were exceedingly good at their job. Crouch had handed Pyrites a map, which our spy had managed to swipe a clone of through a very swift use of the gemino charm and a pair of switching spells. It took up much of the third page of the report.
I peered at the map closely. It was some kind of office, or perhaps a lab. The layout was familiar, but I couldn't place it. Looking down the page, I saw the spy had already worked that out for me. Ah, of course I recognised it now.
My gaze rose to Dumbledore once more. 'I can't go to Italy, at least not as myself. I still have a travel ban until September of next year.'
The Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards, designated defender of all international law and relations, shrugged unconcernedly at me.
'Indeed, I would never ask you to do that. If I did, I'd have to hand in my badge of office.'
'I see. And why are you definitely-not illegally sending me instead of this spy? He seems capable.'
'Dedalus is a many-gifted man,' Dumbledore said delicately. 'Unfortunately, combat is not one of those gifts. A trained Death Eater like Crouch, or indeed Pyrites, would undoubtably be more than a match for him. It is a shame that we do not have someone specialised in that field who I could possibly permit to go in his place.'
I grumbled to myself.
'If you were to go - though of course if you were to voice such intent I would be honor bound to prevent you - you would want to go as soon as possible. After all, who knows how long this lead may last?'
I rolled my eyes, turned on my heel, and walked out of the office, sheaf still in hand. I could almost feel his smugness, and as I left I could already hear his quill scritching away at something else.
I stomped back down the stone staircase, plotting the swiftest way to sneak back into the country.
I was so distracted, I almost walked straight into Potter at the entrance. He had had one arm outstretched, about to use the ostentatious gryffin door-knock.
Potter sprang back, startled, clutching a piece of parchment to his chest. He looked up at me with a shocked expression, then averted his gaze.
'What is it, Harry? Is something wrong?' I asked.
He shook his head rapidly. 'N-no, er, nothing's wrong. I just wanted to, er, show something to Professor Dumbledore.'
My brow furrowed. 'I'm afraid he's rather busy at the moment. Is it something I could assist you with?
Potter shook his head rapidly. 'Um, no, I don't think so. I'll, er, just go to see Professor McGonagall instead. Goodbye.'
He took off at a brisk yet stiff walk down the corridor, looking awkwardly over his shoulder once to see if I was still looking at him.
I shook my head. This hero worship thing was getting more out of hand by the day. Now he was too nervous to even be near me.
Whatever. I'd talk to Sirius about it when I got back. I had business on the continent, and I was going tonight. Dumbledore was right: I needed to catch this lead while it was still loose.
:—:
It turned out that Rome in the autumn was wet. Very wet.
I'd been to the city in my school years, on one of my many international forays over the summers. The city of marble had been lovely in the summertime, gorgeous place. But today, it was miserable. Bucketing down like the end of the world.
Even with the rain pelting down, there were still a surprising number of tourists hanging around in the streets. But I was unconcerned of being witnessed, for I was wreathed in my Invisibility Cloak. An impervious charm kept me dry, and through this deluge it was impossible to notice the parting of the rainfall as I stalked by.
I strode swiftly northward down the Piazza del Arco di Costantino, the Colosseum looming tall before me. But it was not my destination. Not yet, at least.
Instead, I took a sharp left after passing the Arch of Constantine, and approached the Arch of Titus to the west. I spied a couple taking cover from the rain beneath it, right where I needed to be. That would not do.
A couple of quick confounding charms sent them scurrying out into the inclement weather to find another shelter, neither of them paying any mind to why exactly they had abandoned their own.
I took their place beneath the ancient monument. The reliefs carved into the inner sides of the arch were as marvellous now, lit by stray flashes of lightning, as they were when I first saw them so many years past.
I hopped up the twelve foot gap to them with ease, clinging to one of the sculptures. Had anyone been close enough to see, they would doubtless be bemused by the sight of a disembodied arm clutching the head of a marble horse. I steadied my grip, then touched my wand to a very specific yet innocuous little divot on the horse's jawline.
Gravity briefly forgot which way was up, as I fell sideways through the marble as though it were air. The sensation reminded me rather nastily of the Australia debacle, but thankfully was over almost before it began. I stumbled, finding myself in a narrow little passageway that was hidden within the Arch.
The relief to my side was translucent, allowing me to see the world outside, but I knew that it remained hard marble to anyone who might walk by.
I grinned, and followed the passageway down a deep spiral, where it transitioned into a long underground corridor, also of stone. My stride did not slow.
Any muggle with more than a passing knowledge of Rome could tell you of the pervasive network of ruined buildings and passageways laying beneath the surface of the city. The inevitable product of nearly three thousand contiguous years of civilisation. But the muggles had barely even scratched the surface.
Entire wizarding towns existed in Rome's underdark. It was even easier to hide our settlements below ground than it was to hide them behind old pubs. Like many of their Mediterranean brethren, Rome's wizards liked to stay close to their muggle counterparts. The hidden network of tunnels running beneath allowed them to do just that at a moment's notice, without risking the Statute.
This spot, however, was unconnected to that network. This had been the entrance to the very private laboratory of Aelius Galenus of Pergamon, the (by modern standards) Dark wizard who had been both childhood physician and tutor of magic to Emperor Commodus.
I'd discovered it from Galen's own journal, which had somehow wound up in the Restricted Section of Hogwarts' Library at some point or another. It had been a step on my quest to retrieving Herpo the Foul's Grimoire, a quest that would eventually end at Mount Oeta a year later.
But that was a tale for another day. I could hear voices up ahead, and the irregular but distinctive chime of metal striking stone.
I resisted the instinctive urge to hide, still getting used to my Invisibility Cloak. Though I'd stolen it over a year ago, this was the first time I was finally getting to wear it in the field.
I laid silencing spells on my boots, and slunk forward. The corridor let out into a vast, two-tiered, book-shelf lined chamber, illuminated by dim torchlight. Once upon a time, it had been filled to the bursting with aged scrolls, and all the state-of-the-art alchemical equipments of the 2nd century.
Those days were past; clearly Lord Voldemort had taken the time to clear the place out. The bookshelves lay bare, the tables swept clean of all but dust.
Instead of the quiet lap and billow of the gubraithian torches, the hall was filled with the sounds of men chattering, and wandering the chamber, and the steady ting! ting! ting! of stone being chipped away.
Specifically, only two wizards were speaking, the two in the center of the chamber with the pickaxes, hacking away at the floor. The others, half a dozen men in black clothing and featureless masks, scattered across the chamber in a loose patrol, were silent.
All this I observed from the entrance. I examined the nearest wizard without getting too close. He was dressed for combat, and his demeanour screamed military, but neither his robes nor mask bore any insignia.
My lip curled. Mercenaries.
'Imperio.' I murmured. The man stiffened for an instant, then relaxed. A dull glaze fell across his eyes. He had a strong will, but I was me.
I instructed him to betray his allies when the time came, and moved easily past him down a set of crumbling stairs.
From this angle, I could get a better look at the men with pickaxes. I recognised the one furthest from me, by the tight, frilly suit that he wore. Pyrites, the Dandy. The other I did not know. His face was piggish, but his body was more broad with muscle than fat.
They were still chattering.
'But Argo!' oinked the pig-man. He sounded as dim as he looked. 'How do you know for sure that this is the right spot?'
Pyrites scowled, and wiped his brow. 'It is the right spot because I have advised you it is the right spot, cretin. Now be silent and excavate!'
That they were swinging the picks manually told me that whatever they were digging up was sensitive to magic. Or they were very stupid. One of the two. Looking at piggy, I gave it a fifty-fifty shot.
Well, if they were going to do the hard work, far be it from me to interrupt. I perched invisibly on one of the tables, and listened to them bicker.
Pig-man's name never did come up, but I was able to discern that he was no mercenary like the others. He knew Pyrites personally, and for a long time. A fellow Death Eater presumably, given their oblique references to "the war".
Eventually, Pig-man huffed and puffed and heaved a big oaken trunk out from beneath the stone. It gave me pause for a brief moment, but I was relieved to see this was nothing at all like the Ebony Chest. This looked fairly mundane, actually. Some enchantments, but at first glance I could probably unravel them in a jiffy.
It was time, I think, to step in.
'Expulso.' I said conversationally from behind them, and Pig-man's head detonated like a hand-grenade coated in steak. His corpse, cartoonishly, fell to its knees before the casket like it was admitting defeat, then flopped wetly onto its side.
Pyrites let out an involuntary wail of sheer horror. His delicate frock and suit was utterly splattered with the brains and associated ichor of his associate.
But his shrieks were almost immediately drowned out by a storm of spellfire across the room. The mercenary I had turned had immediately recognised the signal to attack, and had killed two of his mates before they even processed what was happening.
He went down quick, only for the infighting to be immediately renewed as I imperioed a second mercenary.
Pyrites, to my surprise, blocked my stunner on reflex when I tossed one his way. The action broke him from his shellshock, and he leapt up, firing off curses in my general direction.
The man was clearly skilled, laying on a supersensory charm in between hexes, honing in on my exact location within only a few moments of combat. Relocating did me no good, and the cloak was hampering my movements. It was useless for actually fighting under. I cast it aside, and began to duel in earnest.
Coatings of stone dust draped across the floor coalesced and morphed into a dozen bats, flying screeching at Pyrites. He scorched them with an incendio, and sent the great mass of smoke billowing back at me, searing red hot.
I ignored it happily, letting it sweep across me untouched, taking the opportunity to hammer at the dandy with siege bludgeoners. Sheets of flash-frozen air shattered between us, absorbing the impacts, Pyrites swapping tactics without a trace of hesitation.
A hearty volley of Glacius Pilum bore down on me, and I sublimated the ice spears with a surge of power that almost distracted me from the Avada Kedavra that followed. If not for my enhanced reflexes, that would have been it.
Damn, he was very good actually. I needed to start taking this seriously.
I gritted my teeth, and brought my full power to bore. I summoned great venomous serpents already disillusioned, and set them charging at the man, as I feinted with a flurry of darker-than-dark evisceration.
Pyrites' eyes widened at the kaleidoscope of death. He conjured beasts of his own to take the blows, shoddy, ill-textured abominations, but they got the job done, false gore spraying like firehoses between us.
My serpents struck, only to flare into visibility as they were immolated from within, revealing Pyrites's thermal bubble shield in their flailings. I grinned anyway, and pressed the attack, forcing him on the defensive.
But his doom came not from me. A slicing curse careened into Pyrites from the side, severing both of his legs at the knees. My forcible ally, coming to my aid. The Dark wizard howled with agony as his stumps slammed onto the now-wet stone, and our gazes met for the first time.
I lanced forward with my mind, invading his own. His mental defences were ravaged, a great bloodied hole torn through their centre. I forced my way through, giving the language centre of Pyrites' brain a nice solid metaphysical kick on the way, just for fun. Flashes of memory flickered by me, distorted by fear, and I could catch the barest of glimpses.
...Crouch, showing up in his home, covered in livid burns...
...Lord Voldemort, his form twisted and childlike, his face a terrible mask of serpentine hate...
... Minerva McGonagall, accepting his shipment of Dark goods with a grim but sadistic smirk...
My connection with Pyrites ended abruptly, and I shuddered in pain as my mind forcibly returned to my own head. Empty space occupied where he had been. The bastard had disapparated.
I staggered, leaning back against the nearest bookcase, rocked by what I had seen. McGonagall. Why the fuck had Pyrites been delivering Dark shit to McGonagall? No way she was a Death Eater, that just wasn't possible. Dumbledore, Sirius, hell Filius, they'd known her for decades. She'd fought Lord Voldemort in the war for Merlin's bloody sake!
A shifting on the stone broke my attention. My gaze whipped up, to see my enslaved mercenary, looking rather confused. His cronies were dead, and Pyrites was gone; I'd given him no further instruction.
I waved my hand dismissively at him, and turned away.
'Diffindo!' I heard him mutter, then two wet thuds, the first small, the second larger.
I crouched over the corpse of Pig-man. I had to know if it was true. This man had better bloody have some answers for me.
I thanked my lucky stars the Resurrection Stone did not require me to know the real name of my victim if I had their corpse on hand. I began to turn the Gaunt Ring on my finger, and thought very hard about the individual I had known and dubbed as Pig-man.
His shade unfolded from nothingness before me, as had become customary. He looked around in confusion, again customary, but I had no time for the usual fucking with the dead.
'What? Where-'
'Pig-man, yes, welcome back to the land of the living, it's all very exciting I'm sure.'
'Did-did you just call me-'
'Shut up. Speak when spoken to.'
His trap snapped shut, to his visible surprise. I got straight to the point.
'Minerva McGonagall, does she work for Lord Voldemort.'
He struggled to withhold the answer, but no man yet had resisted the Ring's commands.
'I... yes. She is his spy on the inside. Gah!'
'What has he commanded her to do?'
'To-to-to bring the P-potter boy to h-him between the e-e-e-e-equinox and the solstice!'
The equinox. That had been last week.
An agent of the Dark Lord was in Hogwarts at this very moment. An agent with the absolute trust of everyone in the castle.
An agent, I realised with horror, whom Harry Potter had said that he was going to go and visit. Alone.
I immediately reached for Potter with my mind, activating the link between embodied soul fragments, to see through his eyes. Nothing. Either he was asleep, very early for a Friday night, or...
I swept from the room in an instant, leaving the oaken chest behind. There was less than zero time. I had to get back to Hogwarts. Now.
:—:
I tumbled out of my office floo, haste crippling my usual grace. I ripped off the Cloak, threw it the side, and ran straight through my oaken office door without slowing. I leapt over the bannister of the stairway beyond, landing with a crash on one of the student desks. The classroom door got the same treatment as its predecessor, as I sprinted full pelt down the third floor corridor.
For the millionth time in the last half hour, I cursed my inability to cast a Patronus spell.
McGonagall's office door became the third shattered in under a minute. A thousand shards of timber coated the office with mahogany. She wasn't there.
I swore brutally. She could be anywhere in the castle right now, and Merlin knew where the fuck Potter might be.
'Professor Grey?! What are you doing?!'
I whipped around. Granger, of course it was Granger. I sprang forward and seized her shoulders with both hands.
'Granger, where the fuck is Potter?'
'Ouch! Sir you're hurting me!'
I released her immediately. Fuck. Fuck.
'Potter, do you know where he is?!'
'No I don't!' She exclaimed, rubbing her shoulders with a wince. 'Dumbledore sent me to leave a note in your office, he wanted to talk to you when you got back.'
Dumbledore! Dumbledore was the only option, if anyone could track down a student in this godforsaken school it was him!
I left Granger in the dust. I must have set a record for the speed with which I traversed this school, literally screeching to a halt in front of Dumbledore's door.
I did not try to shatter this one; I knew it was well enchanted.
'Acid Pops!' I barked at the ornamental gryffin, and shoved through before it could make any smart-arse remarks.
I leapt up the spiral stairway in three great bounds, and hammered on the inner door of the office until it clicked open. I shoved roughly inside.
'Dumbledore! Dumbledore do you know where Potter is?!'
As soon as my gasped question was complete, my vision caught up with the rest of me. Wait, why was Sirius in here?
For Sirius was indeed there, standing beside Dumbledore on the far side of his desk, and looking grave indeed. Was I too late?
'Good evening, Tom.' Dumbledore said evenly, looking up from a piece of parchment on his desk.
'It's fucking not!' I wheezed. 'Potter, Harry, he's in danger!'
They looked at me unimpressed.
Hang on.
The way he'd called me Tom... he hadn't same my name in that tone since... since...
A furious cry came from behind me.
'Sectumsempra!'
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A/N: It's all starting to come to a head...
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