Despite knowing Hermione better than she sometimes knew herself, Harry couldn't stop the small inkling of something bubbling up from his gut pushing him to question if his friend perhaps possessed some dormant psychic abilities—even if only to spite Professor Trelawney and her dooming prophecies.
Hermione's insight into the Ministry's sudden involvement at Hogwarts unfolded like the aging pages of a well-read book. In the weeks following the beginning of term, Umbridge worked fearlessly, tirelessly and mercilessly in her quest to take over the school and mold it to her vision of perfection in the name of her beloved Minister Fudge.
She domineered the professors with strategic feline smiles and candy laced threats. She reined in the students with razor sharp taunts and painful punishments. And she escaped Dumbledore's masked, broiling rage through coyly placed reminders of her cosy position by the Minister's side.
She could do whatever she wanted whenever she pleased to whomever she desired and there was nothing to be done about it.
She was poison. A black, viscous cloud of poison weaving in and out of the halls, climbing the walls, clinging to their clothes, sneaking under locked doors and crawling through any conceivable crack until she was everywhere and everything.
It was two and a half weeks since school had started and Umbridge had dug her claws into Hogwarts so deep that the castle and the residents inside of it—from the students to the teachers to the ghosts to the portraits—were unrecognizable. Harry didn't have to reflect for too long to realize that he possibly hated her more than he ever hated Voldemort.
He aggressively turned the page on his potions textbook and had to bite the inside of his cheek as it caused the rough fabric of his gloves to rub against the tender, reddened skin on the back of his hand.
"You okay there, mate?" Ron hissed out of the corner of his mouth, "you're looking a bit peaky, I think Snape's taking notice."
A glance to the front of the room and sure enough, Snape was glaring at him from behind his oak desk, black eyes boring through Harry's own as the professor continued to drone on and on, heedless of his students' struggles in keeping up with his rapid-fire spew of words.
Snape waved his wand and two cupboards at the back of the room sprang open with a bang, springing to attention more than one drooping head.
"As I have thoroughly explained in the course of this lesson, the potion you are about to attempt to brew requires precision—minute detail to attention. It is highly corrosive and therefore will not react well were you to foolishly expose it to your skin. Needless to say, the resulting experience would be extremely," —Snape locked eyes with Harry and continued in an unaffected, monotone voice— "unpleasant. You will work in pairs to complete this assignment. Begin."
There was a scramble as everyone stood up at the same time and approached the materials at the back of the room. As he hadn't been paying much attention, Harry stayed back to review the potion from the book while Ron went ahead and fetched the necessary supplies. They worked in tandem preparing their work station, Harry's private lessons over the past two summers having granted him a patience and understanding of potions that he'd sorely been lacking under Professor Snape's tutelage.
Leaving the potion to simmer for the thirteen minutes it required, Harry fell back on his stool and absently scratched the back of his hand where he could feel his skin drying and flaking off as the wound healed. He was absently running his fingers over the scabbed skin when he felt something he couldn't describe, like a nudge to his shoulder or someone flicking his ear but it wasn't quite that either because it felt like it was happening inside him. Similar to a fly buzzing around his head and getting too close for comfort, it was as if there was something or someone that was trying to circumvent his mental barriers without him noticing and failing.
The feeling went away all at once, just in time to be turning off the fire under the bubbling potion. He was passing Ron the crystals he was scraping off the sides of the cauldron when he felt it again: a nudge or a push that he couldn't quite place. He focused on the sensation and narrowed down the source when the feeling hit him again, only this time it was more like a jab to his brain. He almost lost his hold over one of the crystals, much to Ron's squeaking horror.
Harry mumbled an apology and kept his head down. The mental attack persisted. He did nothing to stop it as the person behind the Legilimency probe ran ice cold fingers across his Occlumency shields and scratched along their surface, grasping out for a weakness to exploit.
It was unpleasant. It was as though he were watching someone from underneath his Invisibility Cloak as they stood on the porch of his house on the verge of breaking in and ransacking his home.
The attacker became more insistent and as one of his attempts sent a searing pain through the back of Harry's head, the young wizard decided to catch the intruder in his own game. He carved out a hole in his defences, big enough for the attacker to get in, but not too big that he would question its origin. He felt it as the attacker slithered inside, a sickly weed quietly flourishing in a growing field, and took hold of that thread connecting the two of them together. Just like Dumbledore had taught him, he chose the most benign and boring memory he could think of (one repetitive enough to get lost in) and let loose a zap of power down the line when his attacker least expected it.
There was a commotion at the head of the room. All eyes turned to see Professor Snape bent over his desk with one hand clutching the other, lips white and pressed together as the contents of his cauldron ran down the table and dripped on the floor. He glared at the room.
"If this is the type of focused, quality work that I'm to expect from this class then I might as well save myself the trouble and give you all a T this instant," Snape barked. "Get back to work!"
Everyone hastily averted their gazes and turned back to their potions. All except for Harry.
He openly watched as the professor vanished the potion spilled on his desk and took down a salve from a shelf behind him. He proceeded to cover his hand in the dark grey substance before winding a bandage around the ailing appendage. The man's eyes wandered over the room as he put the finishing touches to his hand and his scowl soon landed on Harry.
Snape's nostrils flared while his top lip curled up to reveal yellowing teeth. Harry kept his expression blank and met the Professor's challenge with one of his own. The hook-nosed man narrowed his eyes before snatching them away.
"I think we're supposed to dip the crystals in the toad's blood solution and then introduce the pixie dust but I'm not really sure… What do you think, Harry? Harry?"
At Ron's inquiry, Harry cleared his throat and pretended to search the book for answers as he whispered, "I think Snape just tried to use Legilimency to read my mind." Ron dropped the pair of surgical tongs he'd been holding. "I also think that it's time we invested some time teaching you all a bit of Occlumency before he gets over his humiliation and decides to try again. And you're right, it's toad's blood solution and then pixie dust."
Ron huffed, shaking his head. "Blimey, I can't decide if this stuff follows you around or if you're the one calling it to you."
"It's a new record. Two and a half weeks at school before someone tries to do me in or hurt me," droled Harry.
"Yeah, well, they'll have to get through me first," Ron said it like it was a forgone conclusion, like it was just another fact after the grass being green and Hermione being the smartest witch of her age. And Harry was struck with immeasurable gratitude for Ron Weasley.
Their potion was finished with no further interruptions and it wasn't long before they were climbing out of the dungeons. Hermione and Neville caught up with them halfway to the great hall and the four of them sat together to eat their lunch, then left to attend the least favourite class of the year: Defence Against the Dark Arts.
Umbridge was sitting primly behind her desk when Harry, Hermione, Ron and Neville walked in. Her high back chair rose imperiously behind her. She surveyed her students as they sought out their seats and didn't speak a word until the last one had walked through the door, at which point she jabbed her wand and locked them all inside. Harry felt Neville tense beside him and saw Ron and Hermione subconsciously shift closer together in the row in front of him.
"Good afternoon, children," said Umbridge.
"Good afternoon, Professor Umbridge," they called back, having long since learned the consequences of facing off against her. Harry grit his teeth and could have sworn Umbridge chanced a look at him and smirked.
"Today we'll be continuing with the next chapter in the book. If you'd all please turn to page sixty-four."
Harry turned to the page and was greeted with the same smiling boy and girl from the cover only this time they were sitting behind two desks, their wands placed neatly out of reach on the wooden surface as the boy dutifully raised his hand and the girl copied something down, grinning all the while.
"Would someone please care to introduce us to this new chapter? No?" Umbridge asked sweetly, eyebrow raised coquettishly as her eyes perused the students in front of her to her leisure. "Mr Potter, you seem to be uncharacteristically quiet today, why don't you start us off with reading this chapter for everyone?"
The temperature in the room sunk a couple of degrees as the tension between Harry and Umbridge spiked. The students around them held their breath, waiting for the confrontation that was bound to take form.
"Certainly, Professor," Harry replied evenly, pleased when one of Professor Umbridge's eyes jerked in response. "The Use of Defensive Magic in Response to a Conflict - Chapter Seven. As per Ministry of Magic laws and regulations, the use of Defensive Magic in the face of violence or the promise of future violent acts can lawfully be used as a means to protect oneself and even others in the vicinity and would, in a court of Magical Law, be ruled as an act of self-preservation with no corresponding fines or incarceration time.
"However, what the Ministry of Magic would like to impress upon its young readers is that we do not, in any way, encourage the use of any type of aggressive spells, jinxes or curses in any type of situation. This following chapter will look into ways of avoiding this outcome altogether by taking a closer look at age-old methods of conflict resolution…" Harry couldn't read any more. He looked up from the book to see Umbridge's unblinking eyes staring at him, a hungry gleam glinting in them.
"Is there something wrong, Mr Potter?" Harry sealed his lips shut and closed his eyes, counting back from ten in his head as Professor Umbridge's innocent voice wafted over to him again. "Why ever did you stop? You were just about to get to the interesting part. You've left us all on the edge of our seats."
"You can't be serious with this," Harry blurted out, unable to keep silent any longer and already resigning himself to whatever punishment she doled out to him.
Umbridge smoothly tilted her head, her perfectly coiffed curls framing her round face. "With what, dear?"
"This," hissed Harry, waving a hand over the book. "It's got to be a joke because otherwise I can't think of a single reason why the Ministry would be stupid enough to refuse to allow us to learn defensive magic. Even without Voldemort back, that would be—"
"I have told you time and time again, Mr Potter, I do not tolerate you spreading your lies in my classroom and I would encourage you to extend that practice to the rest of your classes as well. Really, a little boy can only cry werewolf so many times before the Aurors stop coming by and we've long since reached that point with you." Her smile grew larger then, bigger than Harry thought possible, as she said, "Of course, given your history with those half-breeds, I do think you might be exempt from that particular expression, but the point stands."
"How dare you!" Harry exclaimed, body tense with the effort not to lunge himself across the rows of desks. "You'd be lucky to be even half the person some of those so-called half-breeds are."
Umbridge laughed merrily. "Oh many things I would be, but lucky would certainly not be one of them. I would consider my options carefully now if I were you, Mr Potter. You still have time to retract your filthy lies and apologize for disrupting my class. I promise you no punishment would befall you for recognizing your outlandish statements for the fiction they are."
"Voldemort is back," Harry hissed, his thoughts too preoccupied with his anger to notice the windows rattling in their frames. "I saw him get back to his body, I heard him order Pettigrew to kill Cedric and I fought him when he tried to kill me again." The windows closest to Professor Umbridge were hauled open as a gust of wind shot into the room. "While your precious Minister is more concerned with office politics than anything else, Voldemort is out there, building back his army and killing people, torturing Muggles. You're giving him free reign over the entire world—"
Professor Umbridge interrupted before Harry could finish.
"Detention, Mr Potter," she said softly, one of her hands reaching up to push a lock of hair behind her ear. "Five o'clock today and every other day of this week. I'm sure you know the arrangement pretty well by now."
"Like the back of my hand," said Harry.
One of Professor Umbridge's eyes twitched again and Harry noticed that she'd dropped her smile.
"Quite right," she said. "If that will be all, Mr Potter, I have a class to teach and a chapter which won't read itself. Mr Finnegan," —Seamus's head shot up from the cradle of his folded arms, face pale like the piece of parchment he'd drooled on— "if you would please continue from where Mr Potter left off."
Harry didn't have to try very hard to let Seamus' voice fade into the background along with everyone else who was called on to read. From the startled and terrified looks on some of his fellow classmates' faces when their names were called out, Harry didn't doubt for a second that they found the class as dull as he did. Before Harry knew it, class was over and they were packing their bags for Herbology. He was partnered with Hermione and though he'd made a promise to himself to try harder in school, he didn't feel too guilty for letting her take over the joint assignment. Time sped up and soon they were clambering through the portrait hole under the light of the last rays of a setting sun pushing in through the common room windows.
"Let me guess. Rough day?" Chocolate eyes and a freckled smile drew him out of his spiraling thoughts. Ginny was standing a couple of metres away, hair drawn back from her face in a braid which reached down to the lower half of her back and a sympathetic quirk to her lips.
"You could say that," Harry said, dropping the bag on his shoulder with a dull thump.
"She wants you to antagonize her, you know this," Ginny shook her head when all Harry did was shrug helplessly. "Come here." She opened up her arms and Harry didn't hesitate to sink into them, burying his face in the crevice where her neck met her shoulder.
"It was nothing I hadn't heard before," he said, the words becoming muffled as they were spoken into her skin. "I don't know, there's just something about that...woman that makes me want to just—" Harry made an aborted sound in the back of his throat.
Ginny huffed out a laugh. "I know. She's bad with everyone but she has it out for you, no question. It doesn't help that when she dangles her hook in the water you latch onto it like it's the last piece of fish in the ocean," she admonished him.
Harry heaved a heavy sigh and squeezed his arms around her one last time before pulling himself away, though he didn't go far, merely lowering his arms to wind loosely around her waist.
"She got what she wanted. I have detention tonight and the rest of the week. Five o'clock." If he hadn't been so close to her, Harry might have missed the slight pull at the corners of Ginny's lips and the small crease between her eyes. "I'm sorry, Gin. I'm gonna miss Quidditch tryouts and I know how hard you've been practicing—I didn't even realize until later what it meant, but I bet it was Umbridge's plan all along. And I played right into it," he frowned, looking away from her.
Ginny shook her head and said, "It's all right, Harry. It's only tryouts. I wouldn't be trying out at all this year if it wasn't for you. Weren't you the one who said I was a sure thing for Chaser? "
"Angelina would be crazy not to pick you."
"Then you won't be missing much, will you?" Ginny prodded gently, all too aware of how down Harry could get on himself if she gave him time to wallow in his thoughts. "As long as you're around to celebrate with me when I get made reserve Chaser, I don't mind if you don't make it to the tryouts."
Harry couldn't resist the impish grin on Ginny's face and covered her mouth with his own. The kiss didn't last very long, it was a simple press of lips to lips, and yet he was still left with hitched breath and a pleasant warmth in his chest. Kissing Ginny was still a relatively new thing for him (kissing any girl, really, but especially Ginny) and so he didn't know if his reaction could be attributed to the novelty of its practice or if it was just something about the girl under his arm. Whatever the case may be, it took a while for him to get back to himself and actually make a halfway decent effort on his Herbology homework.
Five o'clock arrived quicker than he thought it would. Harry waved goodbye to his friends, brushed a kiss on Ginny's cheek, and didn't allow the sinking sensation in his stomach to slow him down as he marched down the halls to Professor Umbridge's office. He used the knocker with the shape of a cat and waited to be called in.
"Enter."
Professor Umbridge was sitting behind her desk, arm bent and pinky extended as she raised a cup of milky tea to her lips and took a delicate sip.
"Mr Potter," she simpered, "please take a seat. I've already set out everything you will need on your table here." She tapped a manicured nail to the smaller desk set up almost against her own. "You remember what you have to write, yes?"
Harry took his place at the desk and picked up the quill she'd set out for him, the same one she'd been giving him every time he misbehaved. His left hand, he laid it over the top corner of the piece of parchment, the sentence inscribed on the back shining at him in an angry red. "I must not tell lies."
Professor Umbridge beamed but the joy didn't reach past her lips. "Very good. Thirty-five this time, I would like the lesson to really sink in for once."
Harry tried holding back his winces and hisses as he put quill to parchment and felt the familiar cuts slicing open the back of his hand. He didn't want to give Umbridge the satisfaction of seeing him in pain but by the way she would pause every once in a while in the middle of grading papers to look him over with her cold gaze, he knew she was aware of what her punishment was doing to him.
Thirty-five lines later, Harry put the quill down with a shaking hand. With no magical outlet to work with, blood began to run freely down his left hand. So much so that he had to untuck the bottom of his shirt and use the extra fabric to staunch the bleeding. Professor Umbridge didn't say anything, or even look at him, as he stood up and made his way out the door, though when he looked back one last time, the Black Quill had disappeared alongside the parchment and the few drops of blood that hadn't made it into his lines.
Harry kept a straight face as he rushed through Hogwarts on the off chance that he might run into a Prefect or a professor making the rounds. He didn't though, and when he finally made it to his destination he almost tripped over himself in his haste.
He ignored his reflection as it passed through the bathroom mirrors and dropped to his knees to dig out the healing kit he'd stashed in the prefects' bathroom after his first session with Professor Umbridge.
"Tergeo," he ground out, wand pointing at his sleeve and then the bottom of his shirt to remove the blood stains. He took out a jar of salve and spread the yellow concoction over the bloody words, then covered it with a bandage and disillusioned its presence. Harry stashed everything away and leaned back against the bathroom wall, breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth over and over again until his heart didn't feel like it was about to break out of his chest and the urge to run to Umbridge's office and curse her six ways to Sunday had receded, though not quite disappeared.
A glance at his battered watch told him it was quarter to six. If he hurried, he might be able to make it for the end of Quidditch tryouts and maybe even get to see how Ginny and Ron had fared.
The minute he stepped foot outside the castle, he was hit with a wave of brisk, chilly air which cooled down his overheated skin. He took a chance and pulled his hands out of his pockets, almost moaning in relief as the cold seeped past the bandage and into the words carved into the back of his hand. He approached the Quidditch pitch at a leisurely walk, already able to make out the scarlet robes of the Gryffindor Quidditch team flying laps and practicing plays in the air.
In a manner that felt decidedly odd to him, Harry veered away from the grassy pitch and climbed the stands to sit by Hermione. She was stiffly bouncing on the edge of her seat, hands tucked into her jacket and chin pulled down to cover her mouth and nose in the folds of her scarf. Harry dropped unceremoniously at her side, pulling a startled squeak and a jump out of his friend.
"Harry!" she chastised him. "Maybe give me some warning next time you're planning to drop in out of the blue."
"It's not like I was sneaking up on you. It's not my fault you wouldn't take your eyes off the pitch. I thought you didn't care for Quidditch. What's so interesting that you didn't notice me walking up?" To Harry's surprise, a rosy hue bloomed on the apples of Hermione's cheeks. She snapped her head away immediately after, eyes bouncing from one place to another.
"Just because I don't enjoy playing it—or even consider it a real sport, sort of like chess—doesn't mean that I can't enjoy watching it being played," she said, nose stuck up in the air defiantly. "Besides, Ron and Ginny are out there trying out for the Keeper and Chaser positions. The least I could do, as their friend, was to come by and offer them my support."
"Of course," said Harry, leaning back on the bench, hands resting firmly inside his pockets, "but I only see Ron out there right now and by the look of him, I'd say he's been floating up there for quite a while now."
Hermione made a strange sound with her throat but otherwise said nothing as they both settled down and watched the practice in silence. As the minutes passed and the grey in the sky turned from light to dark, Hermione's shivering became more pronounced. Harry wordlessly freed one of his arms to wrap them around her trembling frame and pull her to his side. She'd stiffened at the first touch to her shoulder but her surprise gave way to muted delight and she let herself be pulled in.
They watched the rest of the tryouts like that, bundled up together to keep warm, and when it was Ginny's turn to take to the air and she looked around the pitch carelessly (more out of a reflex than anything else) only to spot him in the stands, Harry sent her a winning smile. Ginny sent him a brilliant one in return, much brighter and uninhibited than any Harry could ever come up with, and then sped off to fall into formation at Angelina's orders.
"You're ridiculous, you know," said Hermione, breath fanning out of her in a cloud.
"What? Me?"
"Yes, you," she said impatiently, "and Ginny. All it takes is one glance from her and it's like you melt to pudding on the spot. You don't make it too obvious, though, but I've known you for five years now and it's the first time you've acted like this."
"You say that like it's a bad thing," said Harry.
"It's not," Hermione shrugged. "At least, I don't think it is. It's kind of sweet in a nauseating way."
Harry rolled his eyes. "You're impossible. I saw you with Krum last year and you weren't skipping around the castle giggling at everything he said, but you didn't have to do that for me to know that you liked spending time with him."
"Viktor," Hermione said pointedly, "was very kind to me and he was interesting to talk to. I liked spending time with him, but it wasn't like it is with you and Ginny. What you have is different—special, I think."
Harry didn't know how to respond to Hermione's last comment, so he said, "Maybe if you'd been together longer, it could've been different between you and Viktor." But Hermione was already shaking her head, an expression that Harry had never seen before clouding her face.
"I don't think so. We still talk, we send each other letters, but we decided we are better off being friends."
"Don't let Ron hear you say you still write to the bloke," Harry warned because whether the others noticed it or not, Harry could be observant when he wanted to and even if he weren't, it didn't take a genius to figure out what was going on between his two best friends. "He might blow a gasket or something."
"Don't be ridiculous. Why would Ron even care?"
I can think of a few reasons why.
Harry bit his tongue to keep from voicing what was going on in his head. He didn't mention the hundreds of times Ron had nervously glanced in their direction when he was supposed to be keeping an eye on the Quaffle and he certainly didn't talk about how one of Hermione's coughs had sounded suspiciously like the incantation to the Confounding Charm when it had looked like Cormac McLaggen was about to outscore Ron.
When tryouts came to an end and Angelina dismissed everyone, Ron and Ginny sluggishly approached Harry and Hermione who were waiting for them at the entrance to the pitch.
"I don't know what it is about the Gryffindor captains that has them all turning into vicious slave drivers the second they pin that badge to their robes, but it has got to stop," exclaimed Ron.
"I'm sure it wasn't that bad," said Hermione.
"Not that bad! I thought she was going to keep us up there until we froze to our brooms. I've never seen anyone but Oliver push their team so hard and keep in mind, Angelina's only been captain for a couple of weeks and this was only tryouts. I can't even imagine what she'll be like during practice."
"You made it on the team, then?" asked Harry. Ron nodded his head with a huge, proud smile on his face and happily accepted Harry's pats to his back. He was pulled away by Hermione then, who dealt out her own congratulations, leaving Harry and Ginny to walk up behind them, hands loosely entwined.
"I noticed you haven't asked me yet whether I made it or not," she said lightly.
"I don't have to," said Harry.
"And why is that? There could've been tons of people better than me on a broom."
"Nah."
"Nah?"
"Yeah, it means no." Ginny levelled him with a look reminiscent to the one Harry had seen on Mrs Weasley's face plenty of times, the one he'd dubbed the 'Mum Look' which told her children she was the farthest thing from impressed. "I know you got picked because even if there had been anyone around better than you on a broom, you're a natural, both at flying and being a Chaser. There's no way Angelina wouldn't have seen that and it's even less likely she would've passed on the chance to have you on her team, even as a reserve."
Ginny huffed. "There's no way you could've known that for sure."
"But I did anyway." Harry used their interlocked hands to pull Ginny closer, wrapping his arm around her shoulders and breathing in her hair once her head had settled against his chest.
"You can be a downright prat sometimes, you know that?" she muttered into his jacket.
"I don't hear you complaining."
"Then what am I doing now?"
"Touché."
It was eleven o'clock on a Thursday night and Madame Bones felt every strike of the clock resonate in her head as the hour struck. She pulled off her glasses with a heavy sigh and closed her eyes for just a second, lower back spasming as she leaned back in her chair and shook the last remnants of her hair bun loose.
The past few months following Harry Potter's statement at the Ministry had consisted largely of her pulling late nights like this one. She had called in some of the favours she'd accumulated over the years and requested any and all records on Lord Voldemort and Tom Riddle and had been scrounging them for any trace of valuable, or new, information.
Madame Bones had read through hundreds of Auror reports on Voldemort and his Death Eaters and had even managed to get her hands on a couple of Department of Mystery records (which had been redacted to the point where they had been unreadable). Based on the intelligence gathered over thirty years ago, she'd managed to draw up a decent timeline of events starting from the first whisper of his moniker in the streets of London somewhere back in the beginning of the sixties. The British authorities at the time hadn't truly had a reason to fear a criminal making a name for himself in other parts of the world and though Madame Bones would've certainly kept a closer eye on the situation had she been in charge, there were scarcely any records of his stint abroad.
However, the knowledge of Lord Voldemort's true identity had opened up some new doors and while she didn't know what he'd been doing during the decade of the sixties, she had at least narrowed down where he'd been.
"Like that's going to help us when he shows his face again," Madame Bones muttered to herself, picking at the ink stains on her fingers.
She hated to admit it, but even with the knowledge of his real name the records at the Ministry and Hogwarts only showed that he'd been an exemplary student and an even greater wizard. Madame Bones had been able to explain away some curious crimes when they coincided with Tom Riddle's presence, but what good was that to her when the guilty party was guilty of far more heinous crimes and believed to be dead?
"Burning the midnight oil?"
Madame Bones snapped to attention at once and had her wand pointed at the person by the door before she'd even opened her eyes.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry! Don't shoot," Nymphadora Tonks stood in the doorway, short white hair spiking up in every direction as she held up her two hands in front of her. "I didn't mean to startle you, Madame Bones. I thought you'd heard me walk up."
Madame Bones let loose a light breath. "It's all right, Auror Tonks, it was largely my fault. I must have drifted off without even realizing it… What can I do for you?"
"Oh—uhh, nothing," stammered Tonks, her hair already reverting back to her usual bubblegum pink. "I was just heading home—long case on my desk that I wanted to get done before tomorrow—and I saw your light on and thought I'd check in, see if everything was all right. I didn't know the department was heading a big case." She jutted her chin at the mess of papers on the desk.
"They aren't. This isn't even an active case, it's something more…personal." Madame Bones hesitated before saying, "Though I suppose I'm not the only one who would think so."
"Why's that?"
The question didn't take her back exactly, but it did pose an issue which she had been avoiding by being deliberately vague on the contents of the papers strewn on her desk. Madame Bones knew Tonks to be a respectable Auror, eager and studious though sometimes clumsy to the point of becoming a safety hazard herself. But all those things, they didn't tell her anything about the type of person she was, not really. While other Aurors were very vocal about their political views—particularly regarding the current fiasco with Dumbledore and Potter—Tonks wasn't one of them.
"I'll answer your question with one of my own, Auror Tonks—"
"Just Tonks is fine, actually," Tonks interrupted, then her eyes widened and her hair turned a pasty green. "Oh Merlin, I didn't mean to interrupt you. I'm so sorry, Madame Bones. Sometimes my mouth runs away from me and I don't know how to bring it back or stop it from talking and—"
"Then you must call me Amelia when it's just the two of us," Tonk's hair lightened to an ailing yellow, "or simply Bones if you prefer." Tonks nodded. "My question has to do with Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter." As she spoke, Amelia kept a close eye on Tonks. "Particularly, whether you believe their claims that You-Know-Who has returned."
For a woman who never stopped talking and tripping over things, Tonks went curiously still as the questions left Amelia's mouth. It hadn't been that long since she was an Auror herself and relied largely on her detective skills, so Amelia channeled that part of herself, the one she'd let slumber for far too long, and took in Tonks through new eyes.
"I've met both Professor Dumbledore and Harry," Tonks began carefully, "I don't know them very well—how well can you know someone like Professor Dumbledore, after all—but they don't seem like the type to lie about something like this."
"The Minister certainly thinks they are," Amelia said noncommittally, cataloguing the slight clench of Tonk's hand. "You are also in a very interesting position yourself. You're a Black by blood and yet nearly all of your family has been in Azkaban for the past decade until just a few short months ago when Sirius went free. It's public knowledge that both your mother and Sirius were considered disinherited by the Blacks and yet, no official document was ever filed for your second cousin. He's now officially the last surviving male heir."
"All due respect, Ma-Bones," Tonks winced, "you're not telling me something I don't already know. What's the point of all this?"
"I require some…assistance, I'd like to know whether you're to be trusted. If the matter at hand weren't so polemic, I wouldn't hesitate asking for your help."
Tonks stepped into the room and walked up to the edge of the desk, one hand resting on its surface while the other settled on her hip. "Have you reached a decision then?"
She had. Pages fell and fluttered to the ground as Amelia dug through the piles on her desk in search of the folder which had started this mission of hers. She spied its blue corner and pulled, holding it in her hands for a moment before presenting it to Tonks, who took it gingerly in hand.
"What's this?"
"A transcript of Harry Potter's statement when he was questioned about Sirius Black's innocence before his trial. In it, he doesn't only talk about his godfather, he also shares some valuable information with Kingsley and I regarding You-Know-Who. His real name, for one." Tonks sucked in a harsh breath, the pages rustling as her hands began to tremble.
"Why-why are you showing this to me?" she sputtered.
"I believe you could help. There is only so much I can accomplish from behind this desk and there are places you can go, people you can talk to, things you can do which would look suspicious coming from the Head of the Department of Law Enforcement," admitted Amelia.
"Something illegal?"
"I'd hope not. But as this is You-Know-Who we're talking about, I wouldn't put anything past him," Amelia said bluntly, her tapping, jittery foot betraying some of her uncertainty. "I'd understand if this is something you don't wish to get involved in. If you say no now, I would only ask that you not share this with anyone else. I'm sure you can understand how it would look like if I were to be found out investigating You-Know-Who when the Minister prefers to ignore the issue altogether." Amelia then said, "Kingsley talks much about you, he seems to think highly of your character which is a big part of the reason why I'm taking this risk. I haven't approached him, but he knows about this folder and what's in it. Question is, do you wish to know as well?"
"Working against the Minister, possibly exposing how deep the roots of corruption run in these offices and gathering intel on the world's most dangerous Dark wizard who's suddenly back from the dead." Tonks had straightened up to her full height, shoulders set, back ramrod straight and hair now a bright, curly red. "Where do I sign up?"