Their brief – but blissful – respite from everyday life came to an end the next morning. Ginny and Harry, still glowing in the aftermath of what had truly been a spectacular night, sat down for breakfast, and Ginny opened the Daily Prophet and began reading.
"No word yet on what happened to you," she commented. "You'd think the Ministry would report on your arrest by those Muggle policemen, right?"
"Then they'd have to explain that I got away as well," Harry said after swallowing a mouthful of scrambled eggs. "Wouldn't look too good for Lord Castlereagh. By the way, did Craig and the others manage to cover up what really happened?"
"Oh yeah," Ginny said. "They made up an excuse for not seeing the notification of your arrest. Something about responding to a pub fight in Manchester that got out of hand and involved several wizards. Robards was puzzled that the fax machine was an hour late in reporting your arrest, but he's blaming the charms and not his Aurors."
"Excellent. But no sign of Yaxley still, right?"
"Not a word," she said. "But that doesn't really mean anything, seeing as he now has your Invisibility Cloak. He could be anywhere."
"Right," Harry muttered, suddenly much less interested in his breakfast. "We'll have to be on our toes at all times now. I don't think we can afford going out on our own either."
"You're probably right. I'll need to get back to Quidditch practice soon, though. I've been on sick leave for half a week now, but we'll need to keep up an illusion of normalcy. You're still wanted for that investigation into Auror practices."
"I know," Harry said. Her comments on work brought him up short as he realised how far removed from normal day-to-day life he'd really been. "We'll need to figure out how to solve that. At least we have incriminating evidence against Lord Castlereagh, but I'm not sure how to use that yet."
"We'll figure something out."
"I'll also need new glasses. I hate these."
"We can do that today. Muggle London should be sufficiently busy to avoid any Auror attention."
"I also want to go to Hogwarts," he said.
Ginny froze, her hand holding her fork hovering in mid-air.
"Why?" she asked, laying the fork back down on her plate.
"Cause I know what Yaxley's really after now." He rubbed the stubble on his chin. "He wants to become the Master of Death because he thinks it will give him the power he needs to "punish" the Ministry for what they did to his father. And I think he's particularly keen on the Resurrection Stone as well because of his father. So I want to find out if it's still there where I left it in the Forbidden Forest."
"That'll have to wait," Ginny said. "You can't just waltz into Hogwarts while the Ministry is still looking for you."
"Right."
A pause.
"So then Lord Castlereagh is our first priority."
"Your first priority is finishing your breakfast before it's cold," Ginny said, pointing at his plate. "Then we'll get you new glasses, and then we'll talk to Dad like we promised."
"Good plan."
Ginny paused, and then laid her small hand on top of his. "We'll be okay," she said, squeezing his hand. "I just know it. We'll get through this, love."
Harry found himself smiling widely at her. Their relationship still had a long way to go, but he truly felt like telling her everything, every single detail he remembered, had done a lot to mend what had been broken between them.
It needed time. And they were both prepared to give it that.
Their trip to the optician went by without a hitch. They found themselves constantly looking over their shoulder for any sign of the Ministry or Yaxley, but it proved to be unnecessary. Harry picked out glasses that looked a lot like the thin, round ones that he used to wear, and after being told that they would be ready in a week at most, they went home again.
An owl was waiting for them on the dining table.
"That's Humboldt!" Ginny exclaimed. "Luna's owl," she added when she saw Harry's questioning look. "She got him not long after her father…"
"Right."
"What have you got for me?" she asked softly, stroking the brown owl's feathers. Humboldt hooted in appreciation and stuck out his leg. Ginny untied the note and read its contents.
"Luna wants to see us," she said. "But there's no other information. Strange, normally she just pops over via Floo."
"It would be lovely to see her again," Harry said. "But is it definitely her handwriting?"
"Yeah, it is. Here, look." And she stuck the note out to him.
Ginny and Harry,
Come see me at the Rookery as soon as possible.
Luna.
"Yeah, that's short," Harry commented. "Are we sure she hasn't been put under the Imperius Curse? Remember Crouch and the letters he sent to Percy?"
"Yaxley would be up for that, yeah," Ginny said. Fear reflected in her eyes. "All the more reason to see her immediately, right?"
"Yeah, but–"
"I'll just stick my head through the fireplace and look around, okay?" Ginny interrupted him. "If there's anything wrong, I'll pull back immediately."
Harry shuffled his feet and clenched his jaw. "I suppose I can't just show my face everywhere without making sure there are no Aurors there," he said. He sighed. "Alright, but be careful."
Ginny made her way to the fireplace and threw a pinch of Floo powder in it. She kneeled in front of it and then stuck her head through.
Harry stood there, fiddling his wand in anxiety, ready to pull her back by her legs at the first sign of danger…
But then she pulled her head back from the fire and looked back at him, her eyes twinkling as she smiled at him. "It's okay," she said. "And there's someone here who wants to see you."
"Who is it?" Harry asked. "Apart from Luna?"
"Just come and see," she said with a giddy tone in her voice.
They stepped through the fireplace and into the Lovegood home, curiosity burning inside Harry.
He looked around the round room, noticing how much more tidy the kitchen area looked than the last time he'd been here, when he heard Luna's voice drift down, calling them to come upstairs.
Harry exchanged a glance with Ginny, whose lips quirked.
"After you," she said.
"I'm getting kind of tired of the secrecy, you know," he said in amusement, but he nonetheless ascended the round wrought iron staircase.
Up there, next to the printing press stood Luna. But Harry's attention was shifted to the person next to her.
This woman looked just as bad as Harry must have looked when Ginny found him. Her brown hair was knotted and dirty, her face was gaunt and smudged, her clothes torn in a few places, and her limbs trembled as Luna held her on her feet. He thought he vaguely recognised her, something about her made him ring a bell, but it wasn't until she looked up at him (her eyes were golden-brown now) that he recognised who it was.
"Lydia?" he asked in a small voice as Ginny came up the stairs as well.
"Recognised me without the disguises did you?" she asked. He was shocked at how frail her voice sounded, but nevertheless he rushed forward to wrap his arms around her in a gentle embrace. Luna let go, and Harry braced his legs to support Lydia as she leaned on him now. Her breathing, close to his ear, sounded far too faint.
"C'mon, you need to sit down," he said.
"Yes please," she muttered. "Standing up is a lot harder than I anticipated."
Harry carefully helped her into one of the bright yellow chairs, and then turned to Luna.
"It's been too long," he told his friend as they hugged. He lost count at how many people he had embraced over the last few days, but he didn't mind in the slightest.
They separated again, and Harry glanced from her to Lydia.
"It's so good to see you again," he began hesitatingly. "I thought the worst."
"You too."
"You're Lydia?" Ginny asked.
"In the person," she mumbled, slumping in her chair.
"Harry has told me a bit about you," Ginny continued.
"Fantastic."
"I'll make some tea, I think," Luna said. "No Gurdyroot tea. I've bought green tea," she added when she saw Harry and Ginny's apprehensive expressions.
"You look done in," Harry said, seating himself next to Lydia. "Don't you want to lie down?"
"No, I want to talk to you," she said. She pushed herself up to sit more straight. "A lot has happened, and… Just stay here for a while, please, and I'll explain."
"Don't worry, take all the time you need." He looked up at Ginny, who looked uncertainly at the exchange between the two. "Erm… do you mind if Ginny stays here as well?" he asked.
"Sure," Lydia said without lifting her gaze.
Ginny cocked an eyebrow at Harry before sitting down in one of the chairs as well.
"Where do you want to start, then?" Harry asked. He tentatively reached out to squeeze her limp hand.
"The night of our planned escape is good enough, I suppose." She sighed. She had her hands in her lap and twiddled her fingers nervously. She finally lifted her head and looked up at him. He hid his reaction, but her blue eyes looked like those of a doll rather than a human being. Life, happiness, energy, everything was sucked out of them, leaving two dull brown orbs that regarded him.
"To say that Damien was angry does not begin to describe it," she said. "He was covered in blood and bruises but he didn't care. All he wanted was to find you and kill you. Even Thomas was intimidated by him…" her gaze then focused past him on some scene in her memory, and she shivered. "There was no chance for me to get away. I think Damien suspected something, or maybe he just did it because he knew how much time we'd been spending together. Whatever the reason, he had me paired up with three others at all times while we scoured the city looking for you, or any sign of a broom, Portkey or used Floo. I wasn't even allowed to sleep, unlike the others. And he got angrier and angrier as the night went on and the next day began, and you were still without a trace…"
"But you did escape," Harry said.
"Eventually," she sighed. "When I heard he was looking for me personally to interrogate me, I knew I had to leave quickly. He's not a good Legillimens, but he has his ways to extract the truth from people, and they're not fun. So I made an excuse of going to check up on Gerry, because no one had done so all day. I went to his room, said goodbye to him, blew a hole in the wall, and flew out."
They heard footsteps on the iron stairs, and Luna reappeared with a tray containing for tea cups and some biscuits. She placed it down, kneeled in front of Lydia and gently helped a tea cup into her hands.
"Are your hands still shaking too much, or is this going to be okay for you?" she asked softly.
"I'm fine, thanks," Lydia replied.
For a moment the two women stared at each other, and Harry was struck by a feeling that he was intruding on something. Then Luna stood up again and smiled at him. "Did you teach her that kind of response, Harry, or was she always like this?"
"I claim innocence," Harry said, raising his hands in defence. "So after you flew away, Lydia, what happened then?"
"Lots of running around, basically. I had to be sure that I couldn't be followed. I went to Dublin after a few days and took a ferry across the sea there, because I was pretty sure they were watching the Belfast docks." She took a sip of her tea with trembling hands. Some of it spilled over the shaking cup and onto her hands, but she showed no reaction. "Turns out they had people in Dublin as well. I narrowly escaped them and took a ferry to England, but somehow they managed to alert the police in Liverpool, and I was arrested on the grounds of smuggling drugs. Not that they found anything on me, but that didn't matter, because there's years and years of evidence against me that the Buckriders were more than happy to supply. After a few days I was given to the Belfast police, and it was basically an open-and-shut case, and I was put in jail."
She paused to take another sip. "At this point I was simply waiting to be poisoned or assassinated in jail. I wouldn't have been the first Buckrider to end up like that after trying to run away, you know. There was this one bloke called Norman who was in way over his head, and after joining he decided the gang life wasn't for him, so he tried to leave. He got arrested that same day, convicted of gang activity and smuggling, and a month or so later he was found dead in his cell. Hanged himself was the story, which was probably true, but then again: the police didn't know about the Imperius Curse he was put under." She sighed. "That was the outlook I was waiting for in there."
"But you got away?"
"I did." She looked up, and for the first time he saw a faint trace of amusement in her eyes. "Remember those brooms I bought for us? I had mine still on me, but it was really small due to the charm I'd put on it, and I managed to convince the wardens that it was a personal token from my late father. I didn't have my wand on me, so I couldn't increase the size again, but I hoped that the charm would run out one day. It took a good while, but eventually it did, and so I simply flew away."
She took another sip of her tea before she continued. "I don't know what happened in the prison after I left. I presume the Ministry Obliviated the wardens, or at the very least modified their memories. But I needed to know where to go. I knew your house was under the Fidelius Charm, Harry, so that didn't really leave many places. Only one, to be precise." She and Luna shared another look, and Harry saw a tenderness in Lydia's gaze that he had never seen from her before. "But I couldn't go here straight away, because I didn't want the Buckriders to be able to trace me here. So I've kind of… wandered until I was absolutely sure I was untraceable."
"Thank God that you made it," Harry said. "I feared the worst when you missed the ferry."
"So what happened to you, then?" Lydia said. "I know you got away, otherwise Damien wouldn't have been that furious, but what happened after you got the ferry?"
Harry told her an abridged version of his own wanderings through Britain.
"… And that's why we had to be so careful when Flooing over to you," he concluded. "I'd be thrown in Azkaban, and Ginny as well, if the Ministry caught wind of my whereabouts."
Lydia nodded. The talking seemed to have given her new energy. She sat up straighter, and there was a certain spark in her eyes that was completely absent when they first got here.
"Well then," she said, and she grinned. "I guess then it's time to shake things up, isn't it? I think Lord Castlereagh has enjoyed his position at the top for far too long, if you ask me."
Excitement bubbled up in the pit of his stomach. "Is it time, then?" he asked, matching her grin.
"Oh yes. Erm…" she hesitated, then glanced at Ginny. "Does she…"
"Ginny knows everything," Harry said.
Lydia's eyes sparkled. "See? What did I tell you, you old worrywart? Luna?" she asked, turning to the blonde witch across her. "Are you willing to help us in this?"
"If I wasn't, I wouldn't have taken you in, would I?" Luna said happily. "I'll need both your accounts of that conversation between Lord Castlereagh and Damien, and of the times you've seen Yaxley. If what you said about their interactions with Damien is true, then this should be enough to cause quite a stir."
"Not only that," Lydia said. "After Harry escaped, I saw Lord Castlereagh one more time together with Damien, and they were accompanied by an old man called Gawain Robards."
Harry froze in his chair.
"Robards?" Ginny asked, her voice rising by several notes. "Head Auror Robards? Him too?"
"The very same," Lydia said, her mouth twisting into a smirk. "I don't think they were too concerned with pretensions and privacy in the chaos of Harry disappearing."
"So he's in on it as well," Harry murmured. "Not that I'm surprised, given what things he did during Voldemort's short reign… But this could help us immensely. If the corruption is that widespread, then we've got a lot to clean up. Luna?"
"Yes?" she replied.
"D'you…" he trailed off when she brandished a notebook and self-writing quill. "Erm, yeah, I was going to ask for that," he said, staring as they hovered in front of her.
"We're going to make a lot of people very angry, aren't we?" Ginny asked. The excitement in her voice was palpable, and infectious.
"We are," Luna said. "Harry, Lydia – are you ready?"
"More than ever," he replied, watching as the quill began writing down his words on the pages.
"We should warn Ron and Hermione," Ginny said to him later that night. They were back under the safety of the wards of Grimmauld Place, sitting side by side on the couch in front of the fire.
His and Lydia's interview with Luna had taken all afternoon, as she asked in detail what Harry had gone through in Belfast, under the thumb of Damien. They had agreed that Harry would be the public source of the story, and that Lydia would remain anonymous. Given her past and the nature in which she had entered the gang, they couldn't risk her going public.
Raking up the memories of what had happened in Belfast was far from a pleasant experience, and Harry was glad that Ginny had come with him. She simply held his hand as he talked about he had been forced to do, but that simple gesture made all the difference in the world.
"I don't know," Harry replied after a long thoughtful silence. Luna had promised them that it would be printed in a special edition of the Quibbler the next day. "Maybe they'll be questioned about it at the Ministry. If they don't know about it in advance, it would give them plausible deniability."
"I don't think they'd be too happy with this surprise, though."
"Good point. But I'd rather have them be angry at us than being interrogated under Veritaserum."
"Right."
Silence dragged on for a while.
"Remember back at Hogwarts, that year with Umbridge?" Harry asked. "I keep thinking of the interview with the Quibbler I did then."
Ginny giggled. "It was beautiful. Remember that Umbridge tried to forbid everyone from reading it, and it only caused the article to become more famous?"
"Here's hoping they'll try something stupid like that this time as well," Harry chuckled.
"We'll see," Ginny said.
Harry woke up the next morning and was instantly awake and alert. He checked his watch; it was half past six. The Quibbler wouldn't arrive for half an hour yet, but he knew he would not be able to handle lying still until then. He pecked Ginny on her cheek and jumped out to grab a quick shower.
As the water ran over his body, he once again thought about the repercussions that would come today. He didn't know what to expect. He knew what he wanted to happen, of course, which was Lord Castlereagh's resignation, along with the dropping of the charges against himself and Kingsley. But would this interview be able to make shockwaves that big? The Quibbler was no longer the joke that it used to be when Harry was still in school, but still he didn't think the changes would come that easily. But nonetheless, the weight of today was tangible.
The problem was that he had no ways of finding out. He was confined to Grimmauld Place and careful visits to Luna and Ron and Hermione. And he was pretty sure that even leaving the house would become impossible now. The Ministry would know that he was in contact with at least Luna, and that meant that they would renew their search for him. They would probably start to monitor the Floo network a lot more closely.
He was stuck under the Fidelius Charm of Grimmauld place. Just like Sirius had been.
He went downstairs to find an empty kitchen. Hunger wouldn't come to him, so he simply poured himself a glass of water and sat down at the dinner table, waiting for either Ginny or the Quibbler to arrive.
Ginny came first, in her pyjamas, blearily rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
"Morning," Harry said, taking his eyes off the nearby window.
She mumbled something back, plopped down onto the chair next to him and laid her head on his shoulder.
"Why are mornings so hard?" she sighed as Harry put an arm around her and squeezed her shoulder. "Did the Quibbler arrive yet?"
"No, but it's still a couple minutes to seven," he replied. "It should come at any minute now."
They sat there in silence, Ginny slumped against him as they waited, until a few minutes later they saw a shape appear at the window, and an owl flew in with a rolled up copy of the Quibbler in its claws. It landed in front of them and looked up expectantly. Harry pushed his half-empty glass towards the owl and retrieved the magazine with trembling hands.
The interview contained nothing new, but now that Harry saw it printed out, he began to reconsider what he had said, trying to think of the impression they would make to readers to whom this was new.
"And?" Ginny prodded after he laid the magazine back down onto the table. "Happy?"
He smiled and pecked her on the cheek. "I am, because you're here."
"Merlin's ballsack, Harry, can it get more sappy?" she asked, but her eyes sparkled.
"Sorry, dear," he said in a flat tone. "How can I make it up to you?"
Her lips quirked. "Make me breakfast, and you're forgiven."
He'd hoped the interview would make an impact, but he didn't expect it to start that very same afternoon already. Just after two o'clock, the Floo flared to life and Lydia tumbled out looking hassled and stressed.
Harry got to his feet immediately and approached her. "Is everything alright?" he asked.
"Yeah," she said, sounding a bit distracted. "Yeah… I had to leave the Rookery, though. We had visitors from the Ministry."
"And Luna?" he asked quickly.
"Don't know," she said, her jaw clenched as she looked back at the Floo. "She said she'd come as soon as they were gone."
"As soon as who are gone?" Ginny asked as she entered the living room. "Lydia?" she asked when she saw the woman standing there in front of the fireplace. "Is everything alright?"
"Aurors from the Ministry visited us," she answered. "Quite a lot of them as well. I had to leave before they could see me."
"Come and sit down," Harry said. When she remained standing there, gazing at the fireplace every few moments, he continued. "You can't go back now, you'll only get Luna into trouble."
Lydia scowled at him.
Let's just… let's just have a drink while we're waiting," he said carefully. "Accio Butterbeer!" he caught the three bottles that zoomed towards him and moved back to the dinnertable.
"Not the kind of words I expected from you," Ginny said, one eyebrow raised archly, but she entered the living room proper and placed a hand on Lydia's back, steering her to the dining table. "C'mon. He's right. Luna's a big girl, and she'll be with us soon enough."
Lydia hesitated, but eventually she let herself be coaxed into sitting down with them. Harry made a pot of tea for them all, and then they sat there in silence as they anxiously waited for the fireplace to come to life once again.
"I feel like shit for bringing this onto Luna," Lydia eventually said, breaking through the tension.
"Me too," Harry admitted.
Ginny glanced from one to the other. "She wasn't exactly an unwilling part of this, you know," she said.
"Yes, but still–" Lydia began.
"But nothing!" Ginny cut her off. "And don't you start either, Harry! It's bad enough to deal with one of you blaming yourself all the time, so don't start encouraging each other like this. Luna's going to be fine, and she chose to involve herself in this."
But despite Ginny's assurances, they still kept looking at the fireplace every few seconds, their Butterbeers hardly touched.
But eventually, after an agonising period of time that seemed to drag on forever, the flames turned green, grew larger and larger, and Luna tumbled out of the hearth. She smiled at them, but there was no serene quality to her gaze.
"I don't think they were too happy with the interview," she said.
"Are you okay?" Harry asked as he, Ginny and Lydia got up from their seats as one.
"Oh, I'm fine," she said as they approached her. Lydia reached out to her, but seemed to change her mind just as quickly, and she drew her hand back again. "Really, it's okay. It's just that the living room will have to be cleaned up, because they were quite rough in their search for you, Harry."
"Bastards," Ginny muttered.
"They didn't hurt you in any way?" Harry asked, grabbing her shoulders and regarding her at arm's length.
"Honestly, they didn't," she replied. Harry saw no cuts, bruises, or anything to prove otherwise, and so he drew her into an embrace.
"I'm sorry to bring this onto you," he said after they let go again. From the corner of his eye he saw Ginny glare at him.
"You weren't the one who made a mess of my house," Luna simply replied. "Lydia, you'll have to stay here for a while, I'm afraid," she continued, turning to the witch standing next to her. "They put a lot of monitoring charms on my house and hearth, and so they'll know exactly who enters and leaves."
"Oh poo," Lydia sighed, her shoulders sagging.
"Don't worry Lydia," Ginny said. "You can stay with us here as long as you like. We've got far too many rooms anyway."
"Thank you," she said, and Harry knew that she meant it.
Luna left soon after to clean up her house again. Ginny went with her, as she was the only person who was able to do so out of the three of them. Harry and Lydia remained standing there on the carpet in front of the fireplace for a short while after they left. Then Harry rubbed his left forearm and went upstairs to find something useful to do in the meantime.
That night, long after Ginny came back again and Lydia had disappeared upstairs into one of the guest bedrooms Harry had prepared for her, they had more visitors in the shape of Ron and Hermione.
"Alright," Hermione said without preamble after they entered through the fireplace. "Explain. Now. What's going on with that interview? And why weren't we warned?"
"Hey Hermione, it's good to see you too," Ginny replied, sitting next to Harry on the couch.
"Imagine my shock when I come into work this morning, and an Auror drops this morning's special edition of the Quibbler on my desk," Hermione continued. She plopped down into one of the sofas and Ron followed suit, looking torn between anger on his fiancée's behalf, and happiness at seeing Harry and Ginny again. "Why didn't you simply tell us you were going to be doing this?"
"Precisely for that reason," Harry replied. "We knew you'd face inquiries, and we wanted to make sure they didn't think you were involved. You must've acted quite surprised, right?"
Hermione fixed him an icy stare. "You could say that. Ron as well when they turned up at George's shop."
"Nothing bad happened," Ron interjected when Harry and Ginny turned to him. "A couple of Robards' new Aurors showed up, asked a few questions, then left again."
"This is good news, then," Harry said. "Now hopefully, Hermione, they'll be out of your hair for the time being, because we have something we'd like you to do."
"You do, do you?" she asked in a not too friendly tone.
"Yep," Harry said happily. "And it was all Ginny's idea."
He winked at his girlfriend when Hermione's ire was transferred from Harry onto her. Ginny threw a scathing look at him, but nonetheless began explaining the idea that she and Harry had come up with earlier that day.
Hermione didn't show her anger outwardly the next day when she went into work. Why had she agreed to this? It was madness to attempt something like this while she knew that she was being watched the whole time by Lord Castlereagh's consorts.
She took the same route across the Atrium, into the lifts, got out at level four ("Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures", the cool voice announced – Hermione was still working on getting the name changed to a less morbid one) and entered the head office of the floor.
She deposited her quill and notebook on her desk and quickly went to the bathroom. She locked the stall door behind her and then fished a quill and a memo from the inner pocket of her jacket, and she quickly wrote a note, hoping that the woman in the stall next to hers wouldn't hear the scratching of the quill on paper. After she exited the loo again, she discreetly sent the memo on its way in a different direction.
Back at her office she began sorting through her inbox. She rejected the offer of Amanda Baynes, her secretary, to get her a cup of coffee, and she opened up the quarterly report on House Elf behaviour across magical households. Halfway through page two (which contained the announcement that Gimpy and Beamy of Greengrass Manor had married), there was a knock on her door. She waved her wand to open it, and a memo zoomed in.
"To the head of the Department for the Regulation etc. etc. etc. Advice is required at the Ministerial Archives a.s.a.p."
She'd written it with a self-writing quill, so the handwriting was quite different from hers. She placed the note down on her desk and took one last look at the picture that stood there next to her inbox, where Ron laid on his side, watching Rose crawl in and out of the picture frame, chasing Albert the giraffe as it shuffled backwards, its neck twitching painfully. After a while she got up, leaving the memo in plain sight for any visitors, and walked out of her office, back to the lifts.
The archives were on the same level as the Department of Mysteries, as both departments required completely sterile air, a cool temperature, and low humidity. The Department of Mysteries was staffed well enough. The Archives, on the other hand, weren't.
The perks of multiple generations of witches and wizards being taught history by Professor Binns, she thought, remembering all those classes where she was the only one awake enough to hear what the dead-and-dull Professor had to say.
But that didn't excuse the Ministry for failing to hire a new archivist since the last one, Arnold Ritchie, had died a few months ago. It was unmanned at the moment. She entered through an inconspicuous door in the black hallways leading to the Department of Mysteries and was greeted by piles and piles of boxes, papers, pieces of parchment, inheritances, newspapers, notes of meetings and whatever else had gathered here. It all lay loose in the archivist's office, waiting to be sorted by the poor soul that would eventually have to be hired. But for that to happen, someone higher up would have to remember that the Archives still existed, and that would probably only happen once the papers started spilling out onto the corridor.
On the other hand, this situation did make what she had stupidly agreed to do easier. The idea, as Harry and Ginny had explained to her, was that the interview in The Quibbler would not cause the amount of unrest that they wanted. It would take a lot more for Lord Castlereagh's position as Minister to become unsalvageable. Still, though, the signs were hopeful. The Auror visits to her, Ron, and Luna showed that it had attracted attention, and the interview had been the talk of the day at work and that night on the Wizarding Wireless Network. The interview had clearly made an impression, judging by the shocked tone of the talk show hosts.
But Harry and Ginny thought that it needed a little extra, which was why she was here now.
It was time to find out what really happened in Belfast at the time when Damien Smith was conceived.
She took one last look back at the corridor she just came from, but it was deserted. She closed the door, stepped over the piles of paper as she moved towards the desk that stood to her right. An old heavy key lay there, unguarded, just open in plain sight. She grabbed it and made her way to the heavy vault door at the end of the room. The key fit inside the hole, and she turned it with quite a bit of effort. The mechanics inside the door squeaked and ground to life. She heard a click, and pushed open the heavy door.
Cold, stale air greeted her when she stepped inside the pitch-black room. She gave the door an almighty shove, and it closed behind her with a clang! that shook her entire body. Then she conjured several lights with her wand and sent them on their way to float through the room.
She saw rows and rows of cabinets that reached up to twice her height. They were filled to the brim with folders, boxes, or loose rolls of parchment. With a whispered "Lumos" she lit up the end of her wand and held it close to the cabinet closest to her, to look for a date.
01-01-1944, it read. She moved one cabinet to the left and saw the year 1956. A few more rows further, and she was at 1980. Harry had told her that he didn't know how old Damien really was, but that he suspected that Damien wasn't that much older than him, and that he was born before Voldemort's first fall. 1980 seemed like a good place to start, so she set to work.
She knew that it would take long, far longer than today. She found several boxes labelled with "Auror Office", but none of them had any relevant documents, only reports on Death Eater activity and killings of Muggles. All too soon the half hour that she had given herself was up, and she placed the latest box she was digging though back on its shelf. She cut a small "X" into it to remind herself of where she last left off, and then she exited the Archives again to get back to work before anyone would ask too many questions.
When she got back to level four, though, she saw that there was someone standing there in front of her office, wearing red robes. She stopped to quash the stab of fear that rose up in her, and then approached him. He noticed her halfway and walked towards her with a friendly expression.
"Ah, Miss Granger," he said. She now recognised him as Fabian Fletcher, one of Robards' new additions. "I wanted to speak to you, but I noticed you weren't there."
"Good morning, Fletcher," she said. "I was in the Archives, responding to a memo. What did you need me for?"
"Oh, it's nothing," he said with an easy smile. "I wanted to ask you something about the Centaurs, but somebody else already answered that for me."
"The Centaurs?" Hermione asked, raising her eyebrows. "What for, if I may ask?"
"They're acting a bit strangely, and we think there's some trouble brewing in the Forbidden Forest," he replied. "The creatures there are getting a bit restless, but that's all I can really say on that matter. Anyway, I'll stop wasting your time now. Have a nice day!"
And he pushed past her and strode out the corridor. Hermione watched him go for a short moment, but then went inside her office again.
The point of that strange encounter was clear enough to her: Castlereagh and Robards wanted her to know that she was being watched. She would have to be extra careful from now on with her search for more details on Damien's past. Again, she cursed Harry and Ginny for talking her into this.
Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnegan did not have regular contact anymore with their old schoolfriends. In fact, they practically lived as Muggles, as neither could find the proper job in the Wizarding World. The depressing fact was that the Wizarding World was quite far behind the Muggle one when it came to gay rights.
Despite that, they followed the news surrounding Harry Potter anxiously, ever since his disappearance a year and a half ago. When they read in the Daily Prophet that Harry was wanted by the Ministry for unauthorised usage of Unforgivable Curses as Auror, they were shocked and in disbelief. They'd seen the signs from afar: they knew that this was a slander campaign by the new Minister, Lord Castlereagh, who was openly hostile to the previous government. And when he turned out to be a homophobe as well, calling Kingsley and Harry "weak-willed faggots", the last doubts disappeared and their feelings towards the new minister turned to open dislike.
Things quieted down after that, until one day they caught wind of an incredible new article in the Quibbler. Harry Potter had resurfaced with shocking claims against Lord Castlereagh: that he was conspiring against the Ministry with his disowned half-brother, who was a ruthless gang leader in Belfast. It sounded far-fetched, but The Quibbler was no longer the strange sensationalist magazine it used to be. Plus, this was Harry. And Harry wouldn't just lie about these things.
And so, after they had both read through the article inside their apartment in East-London, Seamus placed the magazine back on the table and turned to Dean.
"I think it's time we did something about this," he said. "When I had that coffee date with Lavender yesterday we talked about Lord Castlereagh and how his new policies have been geared towards the old discriminatory nature again. She's scared because she's still affected by those bites she got from Greyback. And now this… This can't go on any longer."
"I know, luv, you don't have to convince me," Dean said, rubbing circles on Seamus' back. "But what do you want us to do?"
"We protest," Seamus said readily, and Dean guessed he had this answer prepared for quite a while already. "We gather up some others and we protest in Diagon Alley. That way we can show the others that they're not alone in their worries and discontent. And…" he fidgeted the ring on his middle finger. He'd bought it together with Ginny on the day she helped him admit his sexuality. It was a cheap thing from some touristic shop, but he never stopped wearing it since that day. "I don't exactly think we should keep it to just one demonstration, to be honest. We could make it a monthly thing. Or weekly. Whatever we can do to make the new Minister's life hell."
Dean looked away from Seamus, mulling over the proposal for a while. But when he met his eyes again, there was a steely glint in his gaze that made Seamus' heart jump a little.
"Alright," he said. "Who do you have in mind?"
The first of a series of protests started that Friday.