DISCLAIMER: Is there a whole world of magical traditions and folklore and history that could have informed the Potterverse better than the sources that actually got used? If so, I don't own Harry Potter.

For the few of you who got it (and the one who mentioned it in comments) yes, "Paraclete" actually was the random word I got from the dictionary for "Mal's Shoulder Devil" as that one reviewer put it. I nearly rejected it as being too near the knuckle (even though I was laughing like a drain from the moment the last coin toss decided the matter) but my morbid curiosity about possible audience reaction won out in the end. Also, random processes like that are open to influences which have a sense of humour all of their own and it doesn't pay to thwart them … meanwhile, in better news, things have subsided on the home front enough that I have a buffer of unpublished writing again.

CHAPTER 24

"Okay," Sirius says after a moment of silence, "subject to a reasonable plan, I'm in. I'm guessing Moony's not being included?"

"Yeah. Since this whole proceeding is wildly illegal to start with and I'm thinking we can take the opportunity to do for a couple of the more dangerous Death Eaters while we're there, I think he needs to not be exposed, for the reasons we've been over already."

-oOo-

"Mal, why hang-gliders?" Having to keep discussions to times when Remus is out of the building, or at least thoroughly engrossed in his work, is hampering the jail-break planning, but we're managing. Remus is at Gringotts, picking up some contract documents Barchoke wants me to look over. They're apparently too sensitive for owl post, so they're coming via werewolf courier. I can't be too sarcastic about the excess of caution, the goblins have been sneaking past the wizards for centuries at this point and you don't build a record like that by being slap-dash.

Sirius's question is a good one, though, and deserves an answer. "Magical flight suppression charms start about five miles out from the shore of the island. Regular flight works fine, though, unless you're a post owl. Or even a regular owl, the spell is apparently that specific. Nobody tries to put the messenger bird charms on seagulls or similar." Which they totally should, because here in Britain gulls are ubiquitous all the way inland, as well as being smarter than owls and about thirty to fifty times as vicious. Cheaper, too, as they can and will eat literal rubbish, unlike the fussy diet of raptors.

"Can't we go by boat? Only I've looked up hang-gliding and the amount of instruction you need. I sort of weighed up the likely conditions relative to the amount of skill we'll be able to pick up in any reasonable time, and, uh, well, yikes."

"Well, if you can make the case for refining that part of the plan in a way that gets around the limitations, sure. Can't use a boat, though, we need to make a covert entrance on the roof of the main fortress. There's an alarm charm on incoming boat traffic: we can leave that way, but we can't arrive that way. Not to mention I don't fancy trying to scale the walls with Dementors in the mix."

"What was Tom's plan?"

"Fly over the anti-flight charm, about ten thousand feet apparently because brooms don't go that high, and then fall through it, using the arresto momentum charm just before he splats. He'd use his own flying trick if there wasn't an anti-flight jinx in play. It's how he made it look like he apparated through even the strongest jinxes. Nobody noticed a disillusioned wanker plummeting from the sky, all they saw was him appearing in the cloud of black mist that he'd conjure as he landed. Hand it to the fucker, he had a real flair for showmanship." I'd discounted doing the same, of course. I haven't got nearly the confidence in my skills that Tom acquired, even if using charms under pressure weren't a non-starter for me.

"Huh. Yeah, that'd do it. Do you know how to do the flying trick?"

"The theory. For some reason I can't get it to actually work, which I'm hoping is just a psychological block that I can get over with a bit of practise." The psychological block is a bit of a fear of heights and flying. Neither to the point of what you'd actually call a phobia, but definitely things I'm uncomfortable about.

"Wouldn't mind learning that trick myself, although we'll have to be careful not to get spotted doing it. I mean, we could claim we figured it out ourselves, but His Lordship would want to know how we got one of his best-kept secrets and, well, I don't know what he'd do. Nothing I'd care for, I imagine. Anyway, unless there's something about hang-gliding that I'm not getting, I don't think we can get good enough fast enough. What other methods are there for getting in there without using magical flight?"

"How about learning to parachute? Means a bit more of a difficult escape, since we can't glide off the roof and straight to the water, but no reason we shouldn't abseil down and walk to the shore so long as we stay on the side away from the guardhouse. But I'm pretty sure parachuting's easier than piloting a glider, they teach squaddies to do it after all."

"I'd prefer that. Although where are we going to get an aeroplane?" I can see Sirius picturing himself as a paratrooper in a war movie. Literally: he's not occluding the mental image.

"Don't need one. Apparate straight up and then across until we get to the right point to deploy chutes. Now I come to think about it, we've a lot more leeway with that, since the apparition jinx doesn't extend nearly as far up or out. And yes, apparating up into the air is possible, it just takes practise. Likewise with apparating in distance increments without having a mark to aim for." It's not even terribly difficult: the focus on Destination absolutely can be expressed as a distance offset from your start point, you just have to have a very clear idea of how far your chosen distance actually feels like when you're in apparition transit. Tom didn't fly long distances, he just got up to altitude and apparated across the sky. Gave him a ridiculous effective speed, faster than portkeying over anything but the shortest distances. His skydiving trick meant he could ignore magical protections at his destination.

"Parachutes it is, then. So, are we doing this as The Longest Day, or A Bridge Too Far?"

"The Longest Day. The good guys won that one, or at least didn't end up cut off, surrounded and fighting off overwhelming odds. Although what we're doing is more James Bond than War Movie, but you haven't started watching those yet."

Sirius snorts his amusement at my reasoning. "I actually read a couple of the books, back before, you know. Back before." He shuts down, briefly. I let him take a moment: they're getting less frequent, but I suspect he's always going to have them. When he's collected himself, he gets a thoughtful look. "You know, that made me think. Well, more of a bit of a mental ramble really, what with the whole James-Bond-Licensed-to-Kill thing. I was thinking, how are we deciding which of the blighters we're going to kill? It's going to cause a serious to-do if we just slaughter the lot of them."

"Yeah, I'd been thinking that over a bit, too. What we want is something that won't cause a huge political fuss, over and above a couple of prisoners escaping and turning up dead a few days later. What I was thinking is dimethyl mercury, transfigured into syrup, and injected into liqueur chocolates. It de-transfigures in the prisoner's belly, and it can take months to kill. There was a famous case where a scientist got a few drops on her hand, didn't realise it could go through her gloves, and carried on. She didn't even realise she'd been poisoned until three months later, by which time it was too late to save her, and she was something like a year dying despite all they tried to do to save her. Since prisoners die all the time in Azkaban, nobody's going to ask questions. Wizards don't make industrial use of mercury, so the healers at St. Mungos don't have institutional experience with the signs." Naturally, I'll be working with the stuff via telekinesis inside a sealed chamber, because brrrrr. And apparently the famous case - about which I can remember only the horror story - hasn't happened yet. The stuff is available to purchase, albeit with a sheet of warnings and disclaimers that runs to a couple of dozen pages, so I don't even have to learn how to synthesise it.

"How on earth do you know this sort of thing? More importantly, how do we get the prisoners to eat the chocolates?" Sirius is looking at me funny. I don't know why, it's not like I went with my first idea of sneaking into Porton Down and nicking a bucket of V-series nerve agent. That would have killed the investigating aurors too, if they didn't know to vanish it before getting close.

I shrug. "I had an old school friend who went into biomedical research. We kept in touch, correspondence mostly, and she liked to tell horror stories. As for getting the chocolate into the prisoners, we're going to lie to the other prisoners who see us anyway, so a bit of a story about how we didn't need all the chocolate we brought can be part of that. Some of them won't trust it, of course, but they'll dump the contraband because they know the place will soon be swarming with aurors. That'll get rid of the evidence, and randomise the deaths in a way that'll have the DMLE unable to find a pattern, if they even think to look."

"Sometimes you frighten me, Mal. Whatever. Pettigrew doesn't get one. Let the rat suffer."

-oOo-

It's the after-party for Daisy's christening: the boys have invited friends around and they're playing at Mediaeval Men At Arms with the wooden swords and shields I made for them, and pretty much everyone female is cooing over the star of the show. She, for her part, is focussed on trying to extract her toes from under the cute little christening dress so she can suck on them. Vernon and a couple of the neighbourhood dads are cheering the boys on in their mock battle, as is the vicar. Who, for a C of E clergyman, is a decent sort, and could probably top Vernon's Japanese Golfer joke if his wife wasn't on the premises. Remus and Sirius are standing with me at the barbecue, as are Ripper and Skriker. Why Skriker is grokeing alongside Ripper I have no idea, since he can't actually eat any of the stuff I'm cooking. Still, both dogs are being Good Boys. Apparently the presence of a werewolf, a grim, a legilimens with a knack for dog-handling, and a massive amount of meat is all that is required to make Ripper mind his doggy manners. I reckon if I crack and throw him a morsel or two he'll fall to worshipping me as a god.

"You know, we should've suggested inviting Dumbledore to this," Sirius says, gesturing around the back garden of Number Four with his beer bottle.

Fortunately I wasn't doing anything with the barbecue when Sirius came out with that gem. When I collect myself from the fit of sniggering, "I can just see me trying to sell that to Vernon and Petunia. Doubt Dumbledore would've cleared his diary for it, either. Last time he was here he got punched in the face, tied to a chair, and given a proper bollocking."

Remus frowns at the disrespect to the Great and Powerful Dumbledore, but doesn't say anything.

"Well, it'd have been nice to rub his nose in how much better a job you made of Harry's living situation than he managed."

I snort. "He'd not accept anything of the sort. He knows exactly what he did, exactly what he cost Harry, and he doesn't strike me as the sort to deal constructively with guilt. He'd start throwing around specious accusations of dark magic. Has done, come right to it. Plus, if that nasty case of projection he's got starts acting up, he'd be making sly digs about underhanded dealing and manipulation." I'm fairly sure I know where Sirius is going with this, we have discussed the matter. It took trips in the pensieve to view my memory of beating Dumbledore up and his memory of the Gryffindor boys' dorm circa 1974, but he got the message about how important it is. It took a deal of prompting before he remembered that Lily wrote to him and mentioned that Albus had the Cloak, from which it was a short step to him grasping that Dumbledore having even one of those legendary artefacts is bad news, never mind two. The plan was to build a 'visions and divinations' cover story and nudge Remus into acting as our stalking horse, but Sirius has decided to improvise a bit.

"Probably. Huh. Hundred thousand galleons, though. And that's not the half of it, actual heirlooms gone, just like that. All poor Harry got was the blanket out of his cot."

Sirius has agreed to not get on Remus's case about not looking in on Harry. This sounds perilously close to the line, so I shoot him a sharp look that says watch it, mate. This is not the time and place for these two to blow up at each other, which injudicious needling could well bring on. That said, I can try and steer this back into the vicinity of the plan we actually had. "We know where most of it ended up, at any rate," I say, keeping my tone light, "The embezzlers Dumbledore turned the estate over to, well, they kept quite comprehensive records of their thieving. Have to say, there didn't seem to be anything in there that jumped out as an heirloom."

"Not James's cloak?"

"There was 'clothing, miscellaneous' that they disposed of in the shonky shops of Knockturn Alley, so if it was in that lot I'm not hopeful of getting it back." There probably were some cloaks in among that lot, so I can keep my face straight as I say this without much effort.

"If Sirius means James's invisibility cloak," Remus puts in, "that wouldn't have been in with a job lot. And the invisibility will have faded by now anyway."

"Ah, no." Sirius says, taking a moment to give Ripper's ears a scratch. Ripper doesn't know why he finds Sirius so fascinating, he just does. "That was the thing about James's cloak. It never wore out. It was his father's before him. Practically unique as invisibility cloaks go, that one. Probably worth more than everything else the Potters had put together, not that you'd sell a thing like that."

I fuss over the grill to cover up the wave of relief that runs through me. It was probably very unfair of me to worry that Sirius would blab about the whole Hallows thing - we're both more than a little sceptical about them being artefacts of Death Personified - but they are special, unique items. A certain amount of care when talking about them is warranted, and Sirius can be a bit inclined to overlook proper procedure.

"You think someone out there has it?"

"If they do, it didn't go through the administration of the Potter estate," I say, "But if we can get a look at its distinguishing features in the pensieve - you both saw it while you were at school?"

They both nod.

"Well then," I go on, "unique item with a known history and distinguishing marks? Between the strides I'm making in divination research and a computer to brute-force the arithmancy with," A brand spanking new Sun 3, which my two wizard housemates treat with superstitious dread and I regard as shockingly primitive, "I dare say we can find who has it now. And then, ah, 'negotiate' the return of it with the threat of lengthy and very public litigation. I mean, the publicity alone if it gets out that someone stole one of the Boy-Who-Lived's family heirlooms?"

Sirius chuckles darkly. "It's the sort of thing I'd ask Grandfather to help with. He's been trying to butter me up since I got out of Azkaban, and it's the sort of cause he'd gladly open the family blackmail files to help with."

"You two should stop machinating," Remus observes, "Petunia's coming over."

Petunia spends a minute or two doing the good hostess bit, expressing relief over getting away from everyone fussing over Daisy and complimenting me on how the barbecue is smelling.

"Have you been in the new greenhouse yet today?" She asks, "That thing you did with the copper pipes is working wonderfully. I've got a test planting of tomatoes and cucumbers, but I'm confident the next thing to go in those beds will be the herbs you want."

The copper pipes thing is a bit of heat management magic. Fill a copper pipe with lead and you've got a heat sink with a lot of capacity. From an engineering point of view it's a bit rubbish due to the difficulty of getting heat in and out. Magic, however, removes that difficulty and engraving runes on copper is dead easy. It's needed because even a space-expanded greenhouse has a problem with heat management: it usually has to be vented so you don't cook the plants on hot days, but too much venting and you might as well not have a greenhouse at all.

Magical heat control charms can be, often are, temperamental. Rune-spells that just move heat from place to place according to a short list of rules? Much more reliable and less power-intensive. Hence: magic heat sinks, so rather than waste the excess heat by venting it, you store it by magically sucking it in during the day and letting it out at night. Makes the greenhouse more efficient and extends the season over which it's useful. There's a rack of tubes along each wall, and a couple of portable sets that can be put around plants that need particular temperatures. Magic and engineering, each leveraging the other's strengths.

Remus has a bit of a smile at that. In return for being Petunia's wizard-on-call for her magical greenhouse, he's getting the botanicals he needs for his Wolfsbane more or less free. "I popped in earlier, Petunia," he says, "and the tomatoes do look promising. Who knew that a touch of dragon muck in the compost would do so much good?"

"I couldn't really put it into words," she says, "Somehow I just feel what's right or wrong about soil and plants. My mother was the same."

Sirius and Remus exchange a look. I've been banging on about magic being a continuum rather than three separate boxes for muggle, squib and mage, and I just know they're bracing themselves for how insufferable I'm going to be over this. Not that they disagreed with me at any point, but Remus in particular advocated a cautious approach until we had evidence collected.

"The service was quite lovely," Sirius says, changing the subject, "and thank you for the invitation." Sirius is being polite, of course: a village church christening isn't 'lovely' so much as it's about the comfort of old-fashioned ritual. Not that either Sirius or Remus would have known much about it. While you'd search long and hard to find a magical atheist, what with daily involvement with the supernatural, the nearest most British mages get to actual religion is a vague self-identification as christian and recognising the major holidays. They're more alike to the non-magical community than they know, at least in Britain; organised religion has fewer regular participants than angling.

There was a time when Europe's magicals played their part in the religious life of their communities, to the point where mages who took holy orders tended to end up as bishops, the wizard-healer St. Mungo being only the most famous example. Around about the renaissance, however, christianity reversed itself hard, starting with the newly-minted protestant sects, and took to equating magic with devil-worship.

"Speaking of matters religious," I put in, "Is Winky okay? I know she's nervous of clergy, and I don't get the sense she's about." Not least because I'm being permitted to cook on the premises. The lady of the house and her elf do the cooking, as far as Winky is concerned, not some brute with a pile of meat and a charcoal grill. Vernon and the boys occasionally get their way on the subject of Uncle Mal's barbecue. It is always met with an air of resigned, grudging acquiescence to the temporary departure from capital-S Standards. As a Good Elf, though, she'd never be so rude as to say anything. So I'm sure I just imagined seeing Winky out of the corner of my eye, smacking a rolling pin into her palm while glaring indignantly.

"She's having some quiet time in her nest in the attic," Petunia says, "While I've assured her that the Reverend Whicker won't try and exorcise her, she doesn't want to take any chances." The various local legends of the clergy banishing hobs and brownies with prayers and psalms and trapping them in wells and similar may or may not have a grain of truth in them. They do, however, feature heavily in the oral history of the elves themselves. Winky's worried over nothing, of course. I've put enough muggle-worthiness rune-parchments about the place that she could probably have danced a can-can across the lawn and not raised any eyebrows.

As to the likely winner of any fight between the good Reverend and nineteen inches of unyielding elfin censoriousness, my money's on the elf every time.

"Psst! Uncle Mal!" Harry's tugging at my sleeve and trying to discreetly point across the garden.

Daisy is in her bouncer chair, under a parasol, with Dudley and his friends taking turns to play peek-a-boo with her by way of change of pace from reenacting medieval battles. She's giggling and cooing and generally being a cute baby. Which I think we're all glad of, because grumpy smelly sticky babies are altogether not what's wanted on heartwarming family occasions like this.

This, however, is quite clearly not what Harry feels we should pay attention to. All around Daisy's bouncer, the grass has grown and flowers have shot up around her. She clearly likes flowers: she's got an unnaturally-tall dandelion grasped in her left fist and is trying her level best to get it in her mouth. On a lawn that was mown within an inch of its life only yesterday. Nobody's paying it any mind, of course. The muggleworthiness runes I put up for Winky's security work just as well for a horticulturally-minded baby having her first bout of accidental magic.

"That you, Harry?" Have to say, it doesn't look like Harry's usual style.

Harry shakes his head. "I was in the loo when it happened."

I take a quick look for Petunia's reaction. There's a little whiteness about the pursed lips, a certain fixity of stare.

All hands! Man Damage Control Stations!

"You know it's not going to be like you and Lily, Petunia," I say in the most soothing tone I know, "Dudley's already comfortable with magic and has his heart set on science and alchemy, and okay it's too late for another godparent but magical godparents are a more secular thing and you've a choice of three right here -"

I'm cut off mid-soothe as she fixes me with a haughty stare. "That's not the problem."

"Oh?"

"That little madam has just grown dandelions on my lawn."

That, right there? Peak Petunia. Sirius is cracking up despite his best efforts to hold it together. Harry has both hands clamped over his mouth and wide, wide eyes.

"Not to worry," Remus says, "when everyone's gone, well, I'll vanish the dandelions."

"You can do that?"

He shrugs. "When I agreed to help in the greenhouse, I brushed up on my herbology charms."

-oOo-

It took a lot of back-and-forth over the telephone and in correspondence to get a meeting at the British Museum. The keepers and curators and staff here are busy: they have the loot and plunder of an entire empire to catalogue and preserve. And - I imagine - a constant stream of academics and researchers in and out the place like fiddlers' elbows. Not to mention the leavening of what we might genteelly call 'people with firmly fixed ideas'. Wouldn't do to call them crackpots, you might forget and call them that to their faces.

Lacking academic credentials and without the backing of an actual institution, my request to visit, view and photograph a particular accession number seems to have been quite a long way down the priority queue of the British Museum's Department of the Middle East. It took them four weeks to answer the letter, even with my up-front offer to cover the costs of accommodating me with a hearty donation to the museum's funds on top. After that it was a fortnight of telephone tennis to get an appointment. Which was another six weeks before they could fit me in. Only to be expected, I suppose, they're probably booked up solid with desperate doctoral candidates fighting for the appointments left over after the likes of the Regius Professors have hogged all the good slots that leave time for a leisurely lunch.

Even after I arrive on the appointed day, a polite ten minutes early, I end up having a long wait. I entertain myself with visions of academics fighting vicious hand-to-hand duels for scarce Curator time, bludgeoning each other with heavy tomes and rare artefacts. That only goes so far, and I end up reading every piece of printed matter left within arm's reach in the area I was directed to wait in. The days when you could carry a smart phone full of books and time-passing games can't return soon enough for my tastes.

My increasingly desperate attempts to cope with the boredom are interrupted by the appearance of a chap with what appears to be an auburn bird's nest stapled to the front of his head. The presence of round wire-rimmed glasses in the middle of the explosion of hair suggests a face behind it, but really the only feature my mind is able to grasp is a Beard that positively requires a capital B.

"Mr. Reynolds?" I nod in acknowledgement that he's found me, "Marvellous. Well, step this way, sorry about the wait, something of a kerfuffle about who was the right person to see you, as you might imagine we get all sorts in here. Hah! We have all sorts working here, myself not the least of them. Just in here, please, we can discuss your request. Tea?"

"Oh, yes please," I say, a little bemused. Things have taken something of a turn here and I'm not sure how to address the disparity between what I expect and what I'm actually presented with. There's something about the Beard, too, but it's not coming to me.

He leads me along a short corridor into an office that's a clone of pretty much every academic workspace ever. Walls lined with bookcases, desk piled high with more books and paperwork, framed photo of wife and kids, and rather irritatingly, no nameplate on door or desk.

While he's attending to the electric kettle and teapot on one of the side tables, I decide to address my present confusion. "I was, ah, expecting to meet with a Ms. Cassidy. Now, one doesn't like to jump to conclusions, but …."

The Beard has turned to regard me with some amusement. "You were expecting someone prettier?"

I grin back. "Oh, far from it. What you have there is a handsome Beard, one for the books by anyone's measure. Just, you know, not the sort of distinguishing feature one expects on the face of someone that signs their name 'Mary.'"

"Not as a rule, no. And just so you know, Mary does not in fact have a beard. Unless she's grown one in the last five minutes. No, now normally you'd have seen Mary about this sort of thing, Second Temple era Aramaic is very much her thing, but she didn't actually realise exactly what you were asking for until she went to get it, since you asked for it by accession number rather than name or description. At which point she realised she wasn't the one you needed to talk to and went looking for me, hence the slight delay. Sorry, seem to have got the pleasantries in the wrong order, Irving Finkel, at your service."

He holds out a hand, which I shake, choking down my surprise. I actually know this chap from the future, I've just never seen him looking this young. He has, bluntly, been on the telly. Or will be, time travel tenses strike again. "Oh!" I say, hoping to cover up the moment I've just had that totally doesn't involve rampant fanboyism, "Aren't you all about the cuneiform?"

"I am, yes," he says, raising an eyebrow that is not yet as magnificently bushy as I know it will become, "you seem rather unusually well informed, Mr. Reynolds?"

"Ah, well, yes. I got bored while waiting and read the internal telephone directory that someone left out in the waiting area." Which has the advantage of being true, and I did recognise his name when I read it. I just wasn't expecting to meet him, and my mental picture of him has him white-bearded and old. This far back in history, he's in his thirties, early forties at the outside.

"Oh dear. Sorry again about that, it took Mary a while to find me, and then we had to find someone to stand in for me as the duty officer, we get a steady stream of members of the public with artefacts they want to know about. Usually rubbish, of course, but I had a chap come in last year with a tablet his father brought back from the middle east with an extraordinarily complete text from the Atrahasis story."

"The flood myth?" I'm cracking on that I'm sort of amateurishly informed, but I have in fact read the book that Dr. Finkel will be writing about that very tablet in a bit over twenty years' time. And seen the TV show based on it.

"The very same! Marvellous find, but he wasn't for leaving it with me and alas, the Trustees frown on clubbing people unconscious and taking their things. I don't doubt I'll see it again, though, I impressed the importance of it on him."

We yarn on a bit over tea, and I spend some time selling an image of myself as a rich dilettante with no day job. Indulging interests on which to spend the interest, as the saying has it. Early purifying rites and rituals as part of a history of science as it pertains to the precursors to the germ theory of disease. It is, as a reason for wanting the text I'm after, plausible.

Once I've finished setting out my stall vis a vis cover story, he gives me a level look. "The thing is, you see, and I'm afraid it really is quite tiresome, there are certain items here in the Museum that we, which is to say the Trustees, do have to be quite careful about letting out to the general public. As you can imagine, some of what we keep here can be a little bit on the culturally sensitive side, to say nothing of the political ramifications which I don't pretend to have any patience for, but it's more than my job's worth not to respect, now, where was the wretched thing, ah, there," he quite casually puts down a sheaf of papers from the inside pocket of his jacket with a wand on top, "so I do rather have to take something of an interest in where and how you intend to publish, you see? Tiresome, I know."

I'm impressed with the casualness of it. If I wasn't in the know, well, it'd just be an eccentric museum curator with an odd artefact in his pocket just like the curiosities he's got scattered about the shelves among the books. "I do take your point," I say, resisting the urge to punch the air and exclaim that I fuckin' knew it! "And I don't doubt that the conversation we have about the manuscript will depend greatly on the answers to those questions." I keep eye contact as I lay my own wand on my side of the desk.

A cheery smile breaks through the Beard like the sun through clouds. "Ravenclaw, class of '69, yourself?"

"Didn't go to Hogwarts. Educated abroad, only started learning the wand arts a year or so ago. And since I can speak plainly, I need to get a particularly nasty curse off without damaging the property it's on." Which is an entirely honest description of what I want this for. Slaves are property, after all.

"And you think the Qumran Rite is the only tool for the job?" That isn't the proper name of the ritual, of course. It gets called after the place where it was invented because it's a deal shorter and easier to pronounce.

"Well, I have the notes of the jackass who put the wretched thing on in the first place, and he seemed to think that was what it would take. I haven't followed his working through in all the details yet, but so far I haven't seen anything to suggest that he's wrong."

"And you haven't gone through Gringotts to hire a cursebreaker because … ?"

"Nothing to do with the expense. I've given undertakings of confidentiality, quite strong and sincere ones, and Gringotts has been known to leak." Gringotts, indeed, has been known to not give two shits what any outsider knows or doesn't know so long as you don't try to steal from them. Confidentiality is a bit of an alien concept to goblins, very much learned behaviour on the occasions when they practise it. They live in small, tight-knit groups where everyone knows everyone else's business. If they like you, they see no problem in gossiping with you: paying them for information gets you past that 'if they like you' hurdle at the price of confirming everything goblins believe about human venality. That's by the by, though. "On top of that, I'm a bit of a sucker for an intellectual and magical challenge, and it promises to be rather fun. Adding the Rite to my own personal arsenal of cursebreaking tricks is sort of a useful bonus."

"That settles a whole lot of the questions I wanted to raise with you, yes. We get the occasional wizard in here who thinks himself awfully clever because he's researched the history of the killing curse -"

"And thinks 'It was a cursebreaking accident, officer' would be a defence to charges of using an Unforgivable Curse?" I'm shaking my head at that one. "Have they even read the Statute of Unforgivable Curses? It's surprisingly clear for wizarding legislation: it defines the incantation, the wand motion, specifies that neither is necessary but either is sufficient, that the target be a reasonable creature under the peace of the realm, and that the spell be cast with sufficient success to have visible effect whether it hits the intended target or not and whether it actually kills him or not. While I don't know the specifics yet - if I did, I wouldn't be here - I do know enough to say that the spell just doesn't work the same way in its proper context of the Rite."

"Quite," Finkel says, leaning back in his chair. "They get awfully discouraged when I explain to them that you can't just fire it off at someone without being caught by that law."

I frown, "Do you get that a lot?"

"Every couple of years. I've dealt personally with two."

"You pass their names to the DMLE, I trust?"

"The names they give us, yes, along with a photograph if we can manage to get one. We're willing to be a little more discreet if you convince us that you're genuine, which I'm pleased to say you have."

I nod. "Sensible." And, of course, he hasn't told me specifically that he will exercise that discretion.

"It seems to work. We've only had to send someone along to testify on the matter once in the century and a half we've had this particular Rite."

"The Museum works with the Ministry?"

Finkel snorts. "The Ministry has people in the Museum, I'm one of them. The Department of Mysteries isn't just the Unspeakables, although that would be a career option if I didn't already have my dream job. There are a few of us here, keeping an eye on the magical accessions and controlling who gets to see them. The Qumran Rite is one of the less explosive items."

"I would've assumed that the Ministry would insist on the dangerous stuff being squirrelled away on Ministry premises?"

"The Department of Mysteries likes to think of itself as a bit more sensible than the rest of the Ministry, and takes the view that things can be secured and controlled here and in other places," and oh, does that 'other places' bit sound like something to follow up, "as easily as under Whitehall. There's also the very real concern that putting some of these things in a place that the greater mass of wizards and witches frequent is akin to storing a crate of grenades in a monkey house."

That knocks me back a moment. Common sense? Among magicals? "I'd grow affronted on behalf of Wizarding Britain if I didn't read about their antics every day in the Prophet."

"Quite. I was more than a little relieved to learn that the Department would fund my degree and doctorate and get me a job here. Not only does it keep me away from the lunatics, it was a lifelong ambition of mine from before I got my Hogwarts letter. Now, how's your first century Aramaic?"

"Fairly dreadful, but I'm working on it." Mostly when I'm being Kid Mal. Juvenile neuroplasticity is a wonderful thing, and for the first time in my existence I'm actually getting on with languages outside the Indo-European group.

"Well, since you've ticked precisely none of the boxes that an aspiring murderer would, I can let you have the crib we keep for the serious researchers and the Gringotts trainees, along with this print of the photograph of the whole parchment that expands to actual size if you cancel the shrinking charm on it. It can be engorged to double size without losing detail." He's passing items across the desk as he speaks, "This is a pronunciation guide for the incantations, the IPA version down the right hand side is my own work and I can confirm it personally. We had a second century Roman curse-tablet last year that turned out to be the genuine article rather than the tourist tat, the IPA pronunciation worked marvellously."

Score!

-oOo-

The back door slams. Hard.

Sirius and I look at each other.

After a moment, "Wonder what's got Moony in a bate?" Sirius wonders aloud.

"He didn't say where he was off to today," I say, and after a moment of thinking about the lunar calendar so as to be sure it's not that, "and if it was anything serious he'd have called for backup, right?"

"Right. At least, I hope he would."

At that moment Remus comes into the living room. I hit pause on the video we'd been watching - Aliens, although I've a wait ahead of me for the Director's Cut - and look to him for an explanation of the ruckus.

"Sorry about the slamming door," Remus says, collapsing on to the end of the sofa Sirius isn't occupying, "and also sorry about every time I doubted you on the subject of Albus Sodding Dumbledore being a complete wally." He's clearly well and truly ticked off: his native welsh accent is poking through the elocution.

I have to grind my mental gears a moment. I'd completely forgotten that bit of '80s invective, and surprisingly haven't heard it once since I came back. Have I lost touch with The Kids? Whatever.

"What'd he do?" Sirius asks, blowing off the obvious question about why Remus has come into contact with the Headmaster of Hogwarts. Hopefully Remus won't think too hard about that. 'Yeah, we knew you were a spy all along, you were dead obvious and we've been laughing at you behind your back' would be a bit cruel if we had to admit it to his face.

"Well, I happened to be in Hogsmeade, just generally being out and about -" he mentions an old school chum who revels in the nickname 'Chunders' who asked to be remembered to Sirius and they take a moment to reminisce between them.

When the story comes back to its actual point, there Remus is, "about to leave the Broomsticks when I bump into Dumbledore, and he asks if I'd care to stop for a drink with him if I'm not in a hurry anywhere. Which I wasn't, so I did, and we got to chatting and I caught him up on how you chaps are doing, and how Harry's doing, and that Harry's baby cousin had early accidental magic, just gossip," which I notice seems to have all gone in one direction, Remus, but let's let that lie, "and I brought up your concerns about James's heirloom cloak and that when you figure out where it went you're likely to go after whoever took it wands blazing and with the full force of the law, not to mention the bad publicity."

Remus takes a stiff belt of the drink Sirius got him while they were yarning earlier. "At which point Dumbledore admits that he's had it all along. Prongs lent it to him just before, before, you know. Before. And he's basically stuck to it ever since. Oh, he had some story about keeping it out of unscrupulous hands or some such, and I took him to task right away about knowing what that cow Avery was up to with the estate, and if he didn't know why was he hanging on to the cloak? Well, he didn't have an answer to that, and I'm afraid I was making a bit of a scene, stood up and shouting with the evening crowd in and staring and I felt I ought to get away before I gave in to the urge to fetch him a wallop, so I told him Harry had better have it back in his hands by early morning owl or there'd be hell to pay."

"Good thing you were in public," I say in the best and slyest drawl I can manage as Kid Mal, "or you'd have been obliviated."

"What?"

"Well, you think dear old Albus is going to let the kind of source who'll cheerfully natter all kinds of useful gossip over mulled mead stay angry at him?"

Remus is frowning, "I've not been spying -"

"Good heavens, no," I reassure him, "almost nobody ever is. They just talk, the way everyone does, to a friendly face that they've known and trusted for years and they don't realise how much they're giving away. Tell me, what prompted you to get back in touch with Sirius?"

Remus's face goes white. "Dumbledore sent me a clipping from the Prophet, with a note that said I ought to know what was going on back here in blighty."

I give him the ol' finger-guns. "That is how you recruit agents. Did you make a routine of looking in on ol' Chunders? Other old friends who now live in Hogsmeade, of which the Headmaster of Hogwarts is ex officio Mayor?"

Sirius is carefully looking anywhere but at Remus.

"Every few weeks," he says, in a small voice. "Ran into Dumbledore more often than not."

"Well, assuming we get James's cloak back here in the next day or two - and it's getting the full Magic of Measurement treatment, you may depend upon it - send Dumbledore a note of apology for the harsh, high-handed tone you took with him, and go back to your routine. Apologise again when you run into him, and you will. Let him apologise to you."

"And that, Moony," Sirius says, reaching over to grab the whisky bottle off the coffee table, "is how we recruit double agents."

Remus snorts in affronted amusement. "Not sure I can," he says, "Can't help but feel I've burnt that bridge. Loudly and publicly."

"Two answers to that," I tell him, "the first is that a bit of a blow-up like that isn't a burnt bridge unless it was the absolute last fucking straw,"

"Can I just say that the f-word out of someone who looks eight years old is a bit unsettling?" Remus puts in.

"Fuckin' cope," I reply, grinning at him, "and the second thing is that while Dumbledore absolutely doesn't want to lose you as a source, he will try and hold your loss of temper over you and think it makes you more beholden to him. Don't disabuse him of that. We'd like to know what he thinks he knows, you see."

"You've been feeding me false information?"

"Being careful about what we let you see, nothing more than that. Lying when you don't absolutely have to? That's a fool's bargain. Speaking of which, make sure Albus knows you're helping Harry and Dudley with their French lessons, won't you?"

"Am I?"

"Yes you are. Or was your residence for three of the last four years not Marseilles? They've got to the point of speaking in complete sentences, they need conversation partners to build vocab and fluency, and your accent is better than mine."

"Well, of course, although your accent isn't that bad. Why should I emphasise that to Dumbledore?"

"So he understands that when it comes to schooling, Harry has options."

"Ah, leverage. I get it. Why do you think Dumbledore held on to the cloak? By rights he should have put it with the estate, or at least put it back in the Potter vault when the administration period was over."

"Well, if I had a valuable, useful keepsake of an orphan's family, what effect would it have to say I'd held on to it and kept it out of the hands of the vultures who stole said orphan's inheritance, and here it is kept all safe for you?" Totally unfair, of course. In the books, Dumbledore returned the cloak anonymously and Harry didn't find out for certain that Dumbledore had ever had it until after the man was dead. That is absolutely not stopping me from holding it up as a thing he might do and letting Remus's current ill temper lead him to a prejudicial reading of the situation. An agent you know about is useful, but a double agent who's turned on a matter of principle is gold.

"That's awful. Again, I'm sorry I took his side. Look, I'll give this secret-squirrel lark you're suggesting a try, but I don't know if I'll be any good."

I wave off his concerns. "You've already been doing it without any trouble. Modicum of acting, make sure you keep your occlumency drills up to date, and remember that we're not ever going to lie to the man. Just, you know, not mention one thing, emphasise another. And yes, there are some things you're just not going to be told at all. Even aside from the situation with Dumbledore, you need your plausible deniability the most out of the three of us. The point, though, is that Dumbledore has a history of high-handed blundering and we want to discourage him from involving Harry if we can, and at least get a warning if he does it anyway."

I'd be happy about the good fortune, but I can't help but imagine the cool, disinterested intelligence of the Defensor Patriae nodding over a good move.

-oOo-

"This is funny how, exactly?" Sirius is standing back from our handiwork, making sure it's square and level.

"Don't look at me," Remus says, "I only work here." He's coming more and more out of himself after the upset with Dumbledore and the awkwardness of reconciling with the man. Which is nice to see. He's setting up to take a photo. Most wizards leave and return by floo or apparition: the gates only get used by guests, and not favoured guests at that. So we're going to have to draw attention to our work by sending an anonymous tip and picture to the press and the DMLE. If someone - hopefully our chosen victim - gets pressured into making a completely ridiculous public statement, I'll be delighted.

"Weeeell," I say, tapping my wand to the final rune-spell that will make the thing remarkably difficult to move, destroy or vanish, "right now it isn't that funny at all. Surreal, yes, and mildly sinister, and not a little insulting, and likely to grow more so every time we come back and replace it, but not actually funny. However! When the movie comes out in a few years' time, it's going to be hilarious."

We're in Wiltshire, outside a gate that you need to be holding a wand to even see. Erected next to it, just narrowly outside the line that delineates the protective magics that guard the estate behind the wall - Magic of Measurement comes through again, I love that book - is a fine, shiny new sign. Not quite big enough to be called a billboard, but certainly large enough to be eye-catching.

MALFOY & SON

DEAD MUGGLE STORAGE

AUTHOR NOTES

Diet of raptors: Owls, like all raptors, need careful management of their feeding when domesticated. They're optimised for high-performance aerial predation, and ought not to stray very far from their natural diet. Giving them eg. bacon is about like trying to run a racing car on farm diesel. (Not a falconer myself, but am on chatting-in-the-pub terms with a couple, one of whom specialises in owls.)

The famous dimethyl mercury poisoning case is that of Karen Wetterhahn, who died in 1997 despite following all reasonable safety precautions. She's the reason why nobody uses it any more if it can be at all avoided: she learned the hard way that it goes right through latex gloves.

Porton Down is the UK Ministry of Defence Research Establishment. I've no idea if they actually keep a stock of nerve agents there, but it's the first place Mal thought of that they might.

The researcher friend mentioned is based on a real person I knew at university, rather than school.

"C of E" is the usual colloquialism for the Church of England, an institution that is a disgusting reactionary throwback or an insidious leftist fifth column depending on which party's extremists you hear about it from.

Yes, the Japanese Golfer Joke is real, I heard it years before JKR put pen to paper. The punchline is "What do you mean, 'wrong hole'?" and you can pretty much reconstruct the entire thing from that.

To "groke" is to stare longingly at someone's food while they're eating it in the hope that they'll share some with you. It's an archaic english word that every dog owner needs to know.

St. Mungo (St. Kentigern on formal occasions, Mungo was a nickname that translates as something like "Sweetheart".) wasn't made up by JKR. He was a noted missionary and healer and founded what later became the city of Glasgow, where his grave and the cathedral named for him still are. He's also reputed to have had dealings with Merlin, albeit in Merlin's considerably declining years.

Stories about bishops and saints from pre-medieval times often recount the wonderful magic they performed. The witch panics didn't start until much, much later, and only after general opinion of magic shifted from 'a thing some people can do' to 'powers granted to people who've sold their souls to the Devil'.

The enmity of clergy toward hobs and brownies is a real part of folklore. (As is the name Dobby, in some parts of the north of England, albeit for the species rather than a particular individual.)

Dr. Irving Finkel delivers lectures on the British Museum's channel on Youtube, covering assyriology, games of the ancient world, the Flood legend, and, yes, magic. He's an erudite and engaging speaker, you should look him up. I personally reckon he's a wizard for real: that beard is a dead giveaway and his PhD is in exorcism spells (not even slightly kidding). You may notice, if you're familiar with his screen persona, that I've toned him down considerably, or Mal would've been in there all bloody day.

Remus has, in fact, never seen Secret Squirrel. He's picking up figures of speech from Mal and not concerning himself overmuch with where they come from.

I'd apologise for the last bit, but I'm not a bit sorry. (I nearly marked it as Omake.) Mal is inspired - over and above the obvious - by the episode from US politics where apparently someone said "I don't actually believe he's a pig-fucker, I just want to make the son of a bitch deny it."

Your fanfic recommendation for this chapter: A Wizard's Guide to 'Banking' by bakuraptor, on FFN only to the best of my knowledge. I won't spoil the central conceit of the story beyond telling you it's hilarious, but it's an excellent story - better than this one, which makes it a crying shame that it has had less reader attention - that does wonderful things with 'wizarding culture' and magical theory.