The right thing...what is it? I wonder...if you do the right thing...does it make...everybody...happy?
Disclaimer: In case it wasn't obvious enough, I do not own the Harry Potter franchise, nor do I make any profit from writing this piece of fan fiction. The series and its characters belong solely to J.K Rowling and Warner Brothers.
Chapter 7: The End Has No End
"You can't hide from me, Potter!"
He was fucked, he was so hilariously fucked.
"Bombarda!" An earth shaking explosion from his left nearly made him stumble out of his cover. "Awwwww, c'mon! I promise I'll make it quick."
Not bloody likely he thought darkly.
Another explosion to his right, and Harry prepared himself to return fire. He couldn't see Tracey from where he was hidden, he could only hope that she was still alive.
With one more mental push, Harry leaped out around his cover.
"Expelliarmus!"
It was swiped away with a cackle. "Got to do better than that, Potter! You're positively pathetic!"
He knew the man was right, it'd been far too long since he used his wand for anything other refilling a glass. Having to duel so suddenly? Forget about it. He was so out of his depth that it was almost comedic.
Harry racked his brain for a spell, one that would surely catch his opponent by surprise. A memory came to him then, one from so long ago it hardly felt real at all.
Dumbledore set down his empty glass and drew himself up in his seat, the tips of his fingers together in a very characteristic gesture.
"Let us speak openly. Why have you come here tonight, surrounded by henchmen, to request a job we both know you do not want?"
Voldemort looked coldly surprised. "A job I do not want? On the contrary Dumbledore, I want it very much."
"Oh you want to come back to Hogwarts, but you do not want to teach any more than you wanted to when you were eighteen. What is it that you're after, Tom? Why not try an open request for once?"
Voldemort sneered. "If you do not want to give me a job –"
"Of course I don't," Dumbledore said. "And I don't think for a moment you expected me to. Nevertheless, you came here, you asked, you must have had a purpose."
Voldemort stood up. He looked less like Tom Riddle than ever, his features thick with rage. "This is your final word?"
"It is," Dumbledore said, also standing.
"Then we have nothing more to say to each other."
"No, nothing," Dumbledore said, and a great sadness filled his face. "The time is long gone when I could frighten you with a burning wardrobe and force you to make repayment for your crimes. But I wish I could, Tom…I wish I could…"
For a second, Harry was on the verge of shouting a pointless warning; He was sure that Voldemort's hand has twitched toward his pocket and his wand; but then the moment had passed, Voldemort had turned away, the door was closing, and he was gone.
Harry felt Dumbledore's hand close over his arm again and moments later, they were standing together on almost the same spot, but there was no snow building on the window ledge, and Dumbledore's hand was blackened and dead-looking once more.
"Why?" Harry said at once, looking up into Dumbledore's face. "Why did he come back? Did you ever find out?"
"I have ideas," Dumbledore said, "but no more than that."
"What ideas, sir?"
"I shall tell you, Harry when you have retrieved that memory from Professor Slughorn," said Dumbledore. "When you have that last piece of the jigsaw, everything will, I hope, be clear…to both of us. But first, I have something that I feel I should have given you from our first lesson." He reached into a pocket of his robe with his undamaged hand, and pulled out a thin blue book. "In this book is a collection of notes I've made over the years. While I pride myself on my excellent memory," He then smiled with humour in his eyes. "I am not exactly getting younger." He pressed the notebook into Harry's hands.
Harry was still burning with curiosity and even though Dumbledore had walked to the door and was holding it open for him, he did not move at once.
"Why was he after the Defence Against the Dark Arts job again, sir? He didn't say…"
"Oh, he definitely wanted the Defence Against the Dark Arts job," said Dumbledore. "The aftermath of our little meeting proved that. You see, we have never been able to keep a Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher for longer than a year since I refused the position to Lord Voldemort."
That notebook had helped Harry survive more than the old man could've ever known, and so with only the smallest hesitation, he jabbed his wand into the general direction of his opponent and shouted.
"Fulminis!"
The bolt of lightening shook the room far more than the explosions did.
Two hours earlier
"Ah, there you are Mister Potter."
Harry nodded politely. From his last meeting with the Head Auror, he felt that they parted on bad terms.
Tiberius Davis looked at him pointedly from his seat. "I hear my daughter's been able to finally convince you to accept our request."
Tracey, ever present in the corner of her father's office, spoke up too. "Wasn't just me, and besides, its been a long time coming."
He had the decency not to look down or flush. "It has." He agreed simply. "A lot of my close friends have given me a push in the right direction, I don't even want to think about what might've happened if I had stayed gone."
The older man looked oddly happy at this. "Well, good. I was afraid she had threatened you into it. Ah the amount of boys I've seen her sent running for the hills."
"D-dad!"
"Alright, alright." He said with a soft smile. It was quickly replaced by a businesslike look. "Truly though, I am glad you're here. We all are. Straight to it now, we'll get you sorted out with a temporary visitor's badge, but soon enough we'll have a proper position for you." At Harry's nod he continued. "No doubt Kingsley's already spoken to you, so there's no real need for me to keep you much longer. You and Tracey will enter the Department of Mysteries, where an Unspeakable will be waiting there to accompany you and answers any questions that pertain to the case." Tiberius sighed, before leaning back into his chair. "No suspects currently, but feel free to ask Theodore Nott, he's the head of the department, and thus looks over the punch-in clock. We've already spoken to him but at least you'll have your options open."
Harry thought about Nott, and how the man was eager to speak to him after he had escaped from the room of doors. He remembered the boy being reserved in school, never one to join in on Malfoy's taunts, though he certainly never stepped in to stop it either.
"Of course, after the war, we needed an almost entirely knew batch of Unspeakable's. Many were killed by Voldemort and his followers, which is why Nott rose to the top as fast as he did." Tiberius went on. Tracey coughed something that sounded suspiciously like "slimy git" and Tiberius gave his daughter an admonishing glare, but Harry swore he could see the corner of his mouth slightly upturned in a small grin. "Yes, well, personal opinions of the man aside, he'll be your best help in this."
Harry watched in growing amusement when Tracey rolled her eyes at the statement.
"I believe that's all for now, when you're done for the day report back here."
It was a dismissal if Harry had ever heard one, so with Tracey leading the way, they went over to the Department of Mysteries. She was wringing her hands together as she went. Opening her mouth and then closing it. This continued for sometime until she apparently finally found her nerve.
"My dad likes to joke, y'know." She mumbled as they walked. "I don't scare boys off, they've just almost always been pricks."
He chuckled dryly. "I'm sure."
Tracey glared at him a little, but said nothing else for the rest of the way there. At the entrance, Harry noticed that the door he once found himself escaping from was cordoned off. Tracey sighed.
"Speaking of pricks."
Harry followed her line of sight and had to smother a grin when he saw Theodore Nott approach them.
"Potter, Davis." He said curtly. "I'll be escorting you throughout the department today. Shall we?" They followed without word, going through a separate hallway that wrapped around a corner. "The door's been cutoff from ministry staff, as you no doubt saw. We'll have to use a different way its magic works is quite fascinating, really."
"Potentially dangerous too." Tracey muttered.
Nott just smiled sardonically. "As are most things in our world, Davis."
The tense atmosphere in the back and forth between the two was quickly making Harry uncomfortable. Nevertheless, before he could even speak up to diffuse the brewing argument, both parties suddenly dropped it.
They walked in silence for a while longer; turning corners at seemingly random. Before long though, Nott spoke again.
"The bag's moved." He said, and Harry knew that he was speaking to him now. "We haven't found it yet but..." He trailed off.
"What bag?" Tracey asked, looking between the two men.
Harry spoke first. "It was with me when I was trapped here." He said. "It... talked, to me."
She raised an eyebrow at him.
"It told me that the gap in the door led to a separate reality, whatever that means." He explained. "And I'm almost inclined to believe it, considering one of the doors in the room was ajar."
"Doors?"
Right, he hadn't told her the full story about his little escapade.
"I'll explain later, just know that there's a paranormal brown paper bag somewhere in the department of mysteries."
The news of that just made her frown but say nothing more.
"Those doors aren't the proper entrance into the department of course, but just something that formed there randomly. We've moved the proper one since the war though, just to be safe." Nott said. "We're here."
Sure enough, they were now at an inconspicuous looking broom closet door at the end of a hallway. A chill ran through him involuntary at the sight. Nott opened the door, and Harry frowned.
"A broom closet?"
The pale man smirked. "Just watch." And then he entered and gestured for them to do the same.
Harry and Tracey shared a look, but only after a moment's hesitation they both followed suit. It was dark and cramped. Nott stayed to one side as much as he could, and Tracey clearly didn't want to be so close to the boy, so she sidled up next to Harry.
"Lumos." He muttered, wand taken out of his robe and at his side. He could now at least see Tracey.
She winked and waggled her eyebrows suggestively.
Harry put out the light.
Tracey laughed.
The broom closet whirred ominously and all of a sudden it was moving downwards much like a muggle elevator. Tracey let out a startled gasp, and even Harry grabbed out at the wall on instinct. They went down for quite a while, before finally the broom closet stopped. Harry and Tracey stepped out warily after Nott, who looked far too at ease with it all.
"A little inconvenient, don't you think?" Harry asked, and beside him, Tracey nodded.
"Perhaps," Nott admitted with a small, humourless smile. "But nobody would ever think to check there for the entrance to our department."
And so room after room they went, working their way to the antechamber. The department had expanded during the war, no longer were there just a few specific chambers, but whole other rooms that were tacked on in the front that defied space entirely. Rooms that shouldn't have the space to be there now were plentiful. Just thinking about it made Harry's head hurt, but, he thought with a smile worming its way onto his face, Hermione would certainly have a field day here.
What had Kingsley told him to ask her about? The multiverse theory? He had no idea what that was, but still somehow doubted that's what was going on here in the new expansion of the department.
There was a man with soot all over his robes fiddling with a large golden gauntlet, holes were in each knuckle and in the middle as well. A woman across from the man was working over a bench with an assortment of lime green crystals. A tap of her wand, and one of them turned blue, then red, and then pink.
"Bloody hell." Tracey murmured from his right. Nott was still briskly walking ahead to the next door.
A loud explosion went off, stopping everyone in their tracks. A bald man jolted back up to his feet from the floor.
"I'm alright!" He said with an excited grin. Behind him was a brown box with intricate red glowing patterns all over it. Harry spared him a wary glance before going through the next door with Nott, Tracey following closely behind.
The next room was much more tame, with several Unspeakable's at desks scribbling away at parchment. One of them looked up at the trio as they entered. He had silver hair and a very serious expression.
"Nott." He grunted in greeting.
"Lockley." Nott said with a small incline of his head.
Harry spotted Blaise Zabini sitting in his own cubicle in the corner of the room. He didn't look up from his work at all though.
The third room they entered, was less of a room and more of a hallway. The walls weren't walls, they were more cages than anything. What Harry hoped was reinforced glass was the only thing protecting them for the creatures that lurked behind it.
"Everyday we find new species' that come through the veil." Nott said offhandedly.
Harry did a double take. "These things came through the veil?" He asked incredulously.
"You mean you don't know?" Nott sneered, and Harry's dislike for the man increased a hundred fold. "The veil does not act as an agent of death, but a portal to another dimension. At least, this has been our recent hypothesis." He said as they passed by a vile looking man leering at them from his glass prison in the wall. He wore a red and green flannel with a brown hat. "Something has changed with it, clearly, and as a department we must now revaluate what the veil really is."
A loud thump against the glass to his right made him and Tracey jump, the latter having her wand out immediately. A giant red and angry looking beast of a man glared at them from behind it, his only source of clothing being a large pair of baggy black cargo shorts.
Needless to say, Harry was very happy to move on to the next room. This one was more familiar, at least, though still not providing any comfort at all. It was the antechamber he and his friends had found themselves in back in his fifth year.
Nott looked around with his wand out for a moment as the doorways spun. When they stopped, he motioned to a door to the far left and tucked his wand back into his robes. "This way." He said.
The large ornate door opened for them without issue, and the three of them walked through.
Harry frowned at the sight that greeted them. He knew that Kingsley had said that the veil had moved, but he didn't imagine in to be like this. On the arch, there was no obsidian portal with a black curtain flapping slowly. He heard nothing at all either, no whispers like last time.
"The body was found over there." Nott said emotionlessly, pointing over to a spot in the corner just ahead and to the left of the door. Tucked in that corner, was a small desk and chair. "We've had this here since the veil moved, just to have someone run some readings, you know - tests." He explained. "And to note if any more changes occurred."
"And Luna had been assigned there?" Tracey asked, walking over to the desk.
"No," Nott said slowly. "But she was the only one signed out for the overtime, there was nobody else here."
"Unless someone conveniently forgot to." She muttered.
"They wouldn't," The pale man said, high cheekbones framing his face in a scowl as his eyebrows furrowed. "The Ministry is very strict about these things now."
Harry gaped at Nott in barely contained shock and anger. "Luna Lovegood just dropped dead then, did she?"
There was no answer given to that.
He and Tracey then walked around, while Nott stood awkwardly by the door, looking bored.
"I still don't understand how it could have moved." Tracey murmured. Harry nodded his agreement. "Is it weird? Being back here - I mean. It can't be fun, knowing what you did in fifth year. Actually, forget I said that please, really really insensitive of me to ask." She said in a rush, becoming redder and redder the longer she spoke.
Despite the situation, Harry cracked a small smile. "Insert foot in mouth, yeah?"
She swallowed back further apologies and nodded. "Yeah." Tracey then clapped her hands together, suddenly becoming more serious. "So, let's get our facts straight. We know Luna Lovegood died close to the entrance."
Harry glanced warily over to Nott, who found something on his nail particularly interesting at the moment. He had the distinct feeling that the man could hear every word of their conversation.
"Nott say's nobody else signed in for the overtime, but it's obvious that's not the case." She continued, getting closer this time to whisper. Harry felt her breath tickle his ear. "You ask me, we should look this entire place over. I'm not sure what we'll find, if we find anything at all, but we should at least make an attempt."
He found himself readily agreeing, and so they split up. Harry staying on the entrance side of the chamber, while Tracey went to the opposite end.
But after what was perhaps only a few minutes, maybe even less, Harry found himself with nothing to go on. Nott was becoming impatient, and every time Harry glanced over to Tracey she had a grimace on her face. He had checked the desk and looked around the area nearby, but that was about it. The disappointment he felt when a bland wooden finish greeted him as he pulled the handle towards him only to reveal an empty drawer was immeasurable.
"Specialis Revelio." Harry murmured softly, wand pointing out in front of him.
He tried not to curse when nothing happened.
"Are you quite done staring a hole into the desk, Potter?" An annoyed voice called from his right, it appeared that Nott had finally had enough. "Or do you think it'll do a few backflips eventually?"
Harry barely spared him a glance. Thought the temptation to tell the man where he could stick his complaints nearly won out. Nott scowled at him and stalked off when he continued casting in spite of him. He was running out of ideas quickly though, and one of the only spells he could think of for revealing was left. His hopes weren't exactly high.
"Homenum Revelio."
Magic was a wonderful thing, and Harry's suppression of it during his childhood meant that when he was introduced to even the simplest of things, he was amazed. It was an amazing feeling, to have your breath taken away at the marvellous sights before you. The magically enlarged tent from his trip to the Quidditch world cup during his forth year sprang to mind. He hadn't felt that way about magic in years.
This wasn't like that at all. He sorely wished it was.
The revealing spell showed a form tucked away in the drawer of the desk. Unmoving. The spell was supposed to pick up life forms, more attuned to humans than anything else really, but living things in general too. It didn't give an outline or general shape of what was being detected, just a little pulse and a swooping sensation that the castor could feel.
Slowly, not believing what he saw to be true, Harry reached a shaky hand out to the handle of the drawer, and pulled it open.
There was a paper bag, the top of it unfurling out into the newfound space above it. The bottom was wet with an unidentifiable liquid.
"Little hero, little pawn." It murmured in an eerily garbled voice. "You've avoided the gap, but not for long."
Harry quickly glanced at Nott, he hadn't heard what the bag had said.
"Liars are not long for this world," It continued. "Sixty-six X, seventy-one Y, one-hundred and thirty-three Z."
He didn't understand at all, and the bag's next words didn't clear anything up either.
"The blood will show you the way."
"What does that even mean?" He asked aloud. Not even sure anymore to whom he was talking to. And then a sudden idea came to him. They weren't just random numbers and letters, he'd seen something similar to this on the Marauder's Map in the top left corner, always changing depending on where he was. He laid his wand flat on the palm of his now open hand.
"Point me." He whispered, coordinates firmly in his mind. And so it did. His wand spun before the tip of it pointed towards a random section of wall in the chamber.
Barely believing it, Harry tried not to run to the spot. The closer he got, the more Harry thought he was just going crazy. There was nothing there at all that he could see. He looked over to Tracey again, noticing she was on top of the arch.
And then he tripped. He didn't face-plant, thank Merlin, but his foot caught something solid all the same.
"Potter? Are you alright?" Nott called out, looking at him wearily from the entrance. A red smear just above his lip.
"Y-yeah," Harry stuttered out, heart beating so incredibly fast he thought it was going to explode. "Your nose," He said, pointing at it from afar. "It's bleeding."
The blood will show you the way
He was now looking at Nott in a new light. Harry knew it was so sudden, but what else explained his insistence that nobody had skipped out on signing the overtime sheet? Nott took out his wand to siphon off the blood, and Harry used the split second to reach down with his hand. It met a silky smooth cloth that he immediately recognized. Harry yanked it off.
The face of Theodore Nott greeted him, his body on the ground. Dead. For days, it looked like.
"Avada-"
Harry dove to his right, landing painfully on the cold floor. Another spell fired off, but not at him. When he shot back up to run off, he saw Tracey lying on the stairs, a concerning amount of blood pooling around her head. But she was still breathing. He looked at Nott-whoever it really was and saw them grinning madly. More green spells shot at him, all narrowly missing. He was breathing hard, his heart in his throat. It'd been too long, but he now felt like he was thrown back into the thick of it. Transported back to the war.
Now
Tiberius Davis was in a hurry.
He had been in his office when he heard what sounded like an explosion from below him. Felt like one too, all the paperwork and trinkets on his desk and in his office in general flew all over the place when the ground shook. Now he was running for the department of mysteries, two of his Auror's - the only one's not on active duty at the moment - following right behind him. He had found one Unspeakable running down a hallway, and so he followed.
"Sir," One of his men said. "What could have caused that?"
"Nothing good." He replied gruffly.
"I see that you've made it here as well, Tiberius." The deep voice of the Minister called out as he reached the end of the hallway. The Unspeakable he had followed was furiously tapping his wand on the side of an empty doorway.
He wasn't in the most patient mood, so he just nodded at Kingsley.
"Can't you do it faster?" A shrill voice said from behind the Minister. When Kingsley stood aside, Tiberius saw a downright scary looking Hermione Granger glaring impatiently at the poor Unspeakable. He hadn't seen her before, but she looked downright terrifying at the moment. If looks could kill, the man would be a puddle of blood on the ground right now.
"No," The Unspeakable said, and Tiberius was impressed with his bravery to look her in the eye's. "I can't. It goes all the way down to the lowest level of the Ministry."
Granger looked like she wanted to snap at him some more, but thought better of it. She walked away with a huff, crossing her arms and still staring at the empty doorway as if that would make it go faster.
Eventually, it did come. He, the Unspeakable, Granger, and Kingsley stepped inside. It was a tight fit, but nobody commented on it as they descended.
When they exited, the first few rooms were deserted. Whatever trinkets they worked on down here were left behind and forgotten for the moment.
Granger practically led the charge, easily keeping a determined stride with the Unspeakable. Tiberius tried not to let what he saw bother him. The sight of creatures glaring daggers at the group was an easy and familiar thing to ignore, but the eerie ante-chamber they entered unsettled him.
The lack of people in the previous rooms made sense now. With some force, and no small amount of help from Granger being absolutely terrifying, they were able to part the crowd of Unspeakable's that had blocked one of the chamber doors.
Harry Potter was at a woman's side, and when Tiberius recognized it to be the body of his own daughter, he felt his heart up in his throat. The other man cradled her head in his lap, hands pushing at a spot on her head. Close by was the body of Theodore Nott, knocked out and literally smoking.
The man they used to call "the chosen one" looked up at them, his eyes showing years of pain and fighting that contrasted with his age. He looked dead on the inside.
"He's back." Potter mumbled, raising a shaking hand to point at Nott's body.
Nott's left sleeve was yanked up, and on it, was the Dark Mark. As black as it had been at the height of Voldemort's reign of terror.
"He's back." He grunted out again.
Broken.
Defeated.