We see something of the rest of this version of the Wizarding World...
"Ron! Down!" Harry shouted the warning to his friend, diving after him as the red-headed man whipped his head around, eyes wide, then launched himself across the foyer of the building they'd just entered in a small town in the middle of Somerset. Both of them sheltered behind a stone column as dozens of horrific spells shot past on either side, smashing into the doorway they'd come from and blowing it, and the door itself, right across the street. The noise was unbelievable.
As more spells chipped away at the column, both of them exchanged a glance.
"Well, I think we found them," Ron quipped, looking somewhat worried.
"Apparently so," Harry agreed, before leaning a little to the side and returning a few shots of his own, the end of his wand barely protruding from the cover they'd found. There was a scream from somewhere up the stairs at the rear of the building and he smiled darkly, before yanking his hand back with alacrity as more spellfire came his way after a brief pause.
"Wards were a good indication, though," he added. "I haven't seen ones like that for years. Blood sacrifice, I'm thinking. That's why it took so long for the ward-cracker to bring them down."
"Bastards," Ron gritted, blindly firing a few reductos with his off hand, then shuffling further away from the edge of the pillar. A massive blast from behind them made the entire area jump and stone fragments bounce around the entire entrance area. Both of them cast the strongest shields they could manage and waited for the shrapnel to stop flying.
"Now what?" Ron asked after it got slightly less noisy, the attackers apparently regrouping. They could hear people shouting outside, and more quietly several voice upstairs and to the rear urgently discussing something. Probably the best way to kill them. "We can't apparate out because they've put up anti-apparation wards, and they can't apparate out because we put up other anti-apparation wards. Same with portkeys. If we make a run for it even you're not going to be able to shield us against… what do you think, eighteen of the sods?"
Harry leaned around the pillar for a brief moment, then retreated, going over the scene in his mind. "Eighteen, yes," he agreed. Then he leaned out again and snapped off a piercing spell. "Seventeen, sorry, I miscounted," he continued as he hastily retreated from the new barrage of spells that followed the scream.
"Nice one. But we can't keep doing that," Ron grinned. While the attackers were firing at Harry's side of the increasingly unstable pillar, he dropped to the floor, rolled out to the left, waved his wand in a complex sequence, then quickly rolled back. There was another yell of pain and agony. "Sixteen, by the way."
There was a momentary lull in the firing, then two more massively powerful reductos came past, one increasing the size of the opening in what used to be the front of the building, and one removing close to a third of the top of the pillar. Stone fell towards them, both of them looking up in panic then as quickly as possible deflecting the fragments heading towards them. Ron received a cut down his cheek from one bit he missed, and Harry winced, biting his tongue to rein in the yell, as a piece the size of a brick bounced off his thigh.
"Fuck, that hurt," he snarled, quickly using his wand to numb and at least partly heal what was going to be a very impressive bruise.
"Good thing it missed your head," Ron commented with black humor. He glanced up again. "This cover won't last much longer."
"No," Harry agreed. He looked around frantically. "Remind me why we decided free-lance dark wizard hunting was a good idea again?"
"Err..." Ron put up another protego as more shrapnel came their way, sweating a little at the effort. "No idea, mate. Seemed like a good idea at the time, maybe? We were getting bored, I think."
"OK, just for the record, bored is better than dead," Harry growled. Ron nodded agreement.
"No argument here. But it doesn't pay as well."
"Money's no good if you're dead," his friend snapped, fumbling in his pockets for something to help. Pulling out one of the experimental sleep gas potions the twins had come up with, he tapped the vial with his wand to activate the timer then banished it towards the nearest wall, the selectively unbreakable glass tube pinging off and disappearing behind them. Two seconds later the spells holding it together collapsed and there was a loud popping sound.
Seconds after that the firing diminished sharply. "Got at least a few of them," he said.
"Doesn't last long, though, and their friends will wake them up," Ron pointed out. "Not to mention they won't get caught like that again."
"Yes, but it gives us some time," Harry replied, poking through his stock of special effects from his friend and partner's brothers. He picked a couple more vials from the collection, holding them up.
Ron paled slightly.
"Oh, hell. Not that one."
"Best chance we have. We need to retreat, there are too many of them."
"Fuck. OK, give me the other one," Ron sighed, plucking a tube from him. He placed his wand tip on it and looked at his friend. Harry did the same with his and met his gaze. "On three. Then we run like bastards."
"Fine with me. One..."
"Two…
"THREE!" Simultaneously they activated the vials, shot them back over their heads, and closed their eyes while putting their hands over them.
Another pop sounded, then the world briefly went entirely white. People both inside and outside the large house started screaming and carrying on. "Run, get up, go, go, go!" Harry yelled, blinking spots from his vision. Even through closed eyes he'd seen the bones in his hands, the light had been so intense. Both of them lurched to their feet and legged it towards the door while the remaining members of the cult randomly fired in every direction. At least one more of them died from a misdirected spell from his own side.
The two men were counting under their breaths even as they ran as fast as they could. Out the door, over the rubble in the street, then charging away from the house at a rate of knots, waving frantically at the handful of people who hadn't already had the foresight to evacuate the area. "RUN!" Ron screamed.
Several panicked faces looked back, most of the people then turning and leaving as quickly as possible too. A small girl of about six was staring at them, the tall red-headed man grabbing her on the way past and ignoring her screech of fright as he didn't even slow down.
"Eight… Nine…." Harry said out loud, his breathing harsh in his ears.
"Ten..." Ron put in, then they exchanged a look. "Over there," he shouted, changing direction and taking them down a small alleyway. Harry followed.
"Fourteen..."
At the mark of fifteen, there was a rumble. It went on for a couple of seconds, stopped, and just as they exchanged a glance, came back with friends.
The entire area vibrated like it was being shaken by a giant. A sound like the biggest organ pipe in existence rolled over them from the direction of the manor house, going on and on for far longer than seemed reasonable. The little blonde girl put her hands over her ears and screamed, then vomited all over Ron, who was looking very green himself even before this little act.
Harry was doing his best to hold in his lunch but could feel his innards squirming around. Moments before he was afraid he was going to have to get new robes, the sound died away.
Complete silence fell.
They looked at each other for a long moment, then Ron glanced down at himself and sighed. Carefully putting the very unwell-appearing little girl down he cleaned himself off with his wand.
"If it was like that out here I almost feel sorry for the sods," he muttered. "Remind me to strangle George. That horrific thing is going too far."
"I should never have let him see that Mythbusters episode," Harry sighed. "He and Fred get way too many ideas from the television these days."
"Thanks for that, by the way. Introducing them to the telly, I mean. Really helped out a lot." Ron looked sourly at him. He couldn't help grinning back, despite lingering intestinal distress.
After a few more seconds, they went to the end of the alley and looked down the street. The manor no longer had any glass in any of the windows, nor did any other building within at least two hundred feet. Glass shards littered the area.
Harry winced. "Oops. We're going to get shouted at for that," he sighed.
"That's what normally happens," his friend nodded wisely. "But at least this time the building is still sta..."
A crunching sound interrupted him as the largest of the three chimneys protruding from the roof of the grand building shuddered, then gracefully tipped over, falling across the slates and vanishing through them. Dust came out the glassless windows of each of the four floors in sequence, accompanied by more and louder crunches and rumbles.
When it was finally silent, a gaping hole left behind where over half the roof had once been, he finished, "...nding." then put his hand over his eyes. "Fuck."
"Might have used a little too much brown note potion," Harry noted evenly. He pulled out a small book and wrote in it for a second. "Better mention that to them."
"I hate you," Ron mumbled under his hand. Harry slapped him on the shoulder in a cheerful manner.
"No, you don't, this is much more exciting than playing some stupid game, isn't it?"
"Ten minutes ago you were complaining that you had no idea why we were doing this, and now you're saying it's exciting?" Ron exclaimed with a moan. "You are a complete lunatic at times, Harry. Make up your bloody mind, will you?"
He lowered his hand and peered at what was left of what had been one of the more expensive and grand, not to mention old, houses in the area. "We're never going to hear the end of this, you realize? The contract was to find the cult, not wipe them out and take out a nationally famous building in the process."
"We found them, didn't we?" Harry smiled. "And each of them had a price on their heads, the entire set was worth nearly a million galleons. Dead or alive."
"And we just did about a million galleons of damage," Ron muttered. "At least. Repairing that lot is going to be a nightmare."
His friend shrugged. "Collateral damage. They started it."
"You get to tell the DMLE that, mate. Me, I'm staying out of it. I wonder if we can blame the cultists?"
"Probably."
"I hate death cults," Ron finally sighed. "Even more than I hate you. Come on, let's see if any of them are still twitching. Then we have to call this in." He looked back and down as the little girl approached and poked him in the back. Kneeling on one leg, he smiled at her. "Are you all right?" he asked solicitously.
She punched him in the eye with a tiny fist, then stomped off grumbling, while Harry fell about laughing like an idiot.
"Ow," Ron finally said, standing up and giving his chortling colleague a dark look. "And that's why I don't want a daughter."
"Need to find a woman who will let you marry her first," Harry snickered, wiping a tear from his eye. Ron was gingerly feeling his injury and wincing. "Only problem with that is they have to meet you before that can occur. We know what happens then."
"Prat." The taller man pointed a sour expression at his friend of fifteen years before grabbing his shoulder and directing him towards the house that was now smoking slightly. "Stop laughing and let's get on with it."
The pair began walking back to inspect the damage and capture any of the terrorists who were still functional, wands out and senses alert. Harry was still grinning to himself even as he was mentally composing the report he was going to have to write.
And carefully spin to put all the blame on the idiots who'd opened fire first...
"You, Potter, are a complete pain in the arse," the Director of the DMLE growled, leafing through the parchmentwork on the desk. "Ten dead, five nearly dead, the rest injured, twenty-three claims for damage from the locals, a stately home in rubble, two hundred and sixteen mundanes needing memory work, and that's just the preliminary reports."
Harry shrugged mildly. "But we completed the contract. And none of the cultists got away." He glanced at Ron who was sitting in the chair next to him with an expression of one who is hoping he won't get asked any questions. "The collateral damage was fairly minor all things considered. Especially compared to last time."
"Do not mention last time, Potter," the Director snapped. "We do not talk about last time!"
Harry mimed zipping his lips, badly suppressing a small smile. The person on the other side of the desk glared at him for a few seconds, while Ron rubbed his forehead and didn't say anything although he was looking like he wanted to. After a moment, the flipping through sheets of parchment resumed. "I suppose you're claiming it was their fault?"
"They started it," Harry reiterated for the third time. There was another stare accompanied by a sigh.
"Fine. I don't believe you, but fine." The last sheet was signed, then pushed across the desk. Harry picked it up, scanned it, folded it a couple of times, and tucked it away.
"Why don't you believe me?" he asked.
The man behind the desk sighed once more. "Because I went to school with you, Harry. You were as mad as a tree full of fish even then and you're worse now." He looked at Ron, who winced slightly. "You too, Ron, and the less said about your brothers the better. I have a sneaking suspicion that they're involved in this mess somehow as well."
"George and Fred were nowhere near Somerset, Nev," Harry smiled. "Honest, it was just the two of us. We were following a lead, we got lucky, and look at the results! One less Dark Cult at no extra charge!"
Neville fixed him with a hard look. The green-eyed man at least had the grace to blush a little. "No extra charge?" he echoed. "You're lucky I don't have you arrested for… for…" He searched for the right words. "For doing a Harry Potter. Every time! Why we keep hiring you two madmen I have no idea."
"Potter-Weasley Investigations is the best in the business, you know that," Harry chuckled. "We always get our man."
"And most of the surroundings, usually," Neville muttered. "Amelia warned me about this. Private contractors are more trouble than they're worth."
"You could always build up the Auror force and then you wouldn't need us," Harry pointed out, getting up to fetch some more tea from the urn to one side of his old friend's office, handing Ron a fresh cup on his return.
"It's not that easy, as you well know, Harry," the shorter but more solidly build man sighed. "Despite her best efforts, the Minister can't just wave her hand and authorize new recruiting at the levels we need. Fudge could have, I suppose, but things are different now. Better generally, there's no question of that, the man was a venal idiot who would have led us into disaster, but these days the Minister needs to be accountable. And that makes expanding the DMLE a political hot potato at best."
"Glad I didn't get involved in politics," Harry noted wisely. Ron nodded, still staying quiet.
"Blame my Gran, I do," Neville sighed. "And you, of course. It's usually your fault, whatever it is."
"Hey, I didn't push you into this job. If anyone did, it was Hermione," Harry objected. "She told you that you were exactly the right sort of person to become a good Auror, and she was right. As usual. Youngest Director in history. We're all proud of you, Nev." He smiled winningly at his old friend. "Minister Bones obviously agreed, considering how fast you ended up on that side of the desk."
Neville leaned his chair back and just stared at them for a moment, then shook his head. "I still blame you." He reached out and picked up another sheet of parchment, inspecting it for a moment, then flicking it across the desk to the other man, who stopped it with a finger before reading it. "Next job, if you're interested. Nasty one, this fellow. Our information is he's trying to do what Riddle nearly did. He may be one of the ones that got away from the Voldemort Cult before whatever happened to them happened. We know there were a few that never took up the Dark Mark at the time but were true believers even so."
"Aldous Margrave," Harry read out loud. "Age sixty nine, suspected necromancer, known pedophile, convicted of assault twice, implicated in three murders… Nice chap."
"Yes. Or rather, no, not at all."
Ron leaned sideways and read the sheet too. "Ghastly sort of bloke. Why is he still on the loose?"
"Mainly because we can't find him," Neville replied. "He's slippery. As soon as he got out of prison the last time, eight years ago, he simply vanished. We started getting rumors of a new Dark Lord on the rise a year ago, but so far they're just rumors, no real facts. But there have been a number of murders that had a ritualistic component we're almost certain are linked to him. So far we've been able to keep it quiet but that won't last, and you know what the public are like. They'll panic if they think there's yet another one of these idiots running around killing people, same as they always do. The ones that don't want to help the bugger that is."
"Funny how many people there are that always want to join a cult," Ron grumbled. "That's what, seven of them in the last ten years?"
"At least, and that's just in Britain," Neville agreed with a scowl. "They've had another half dozen on the Continent in the last five years alone."
"We've had a couple of inquiries from the French about helping them out," Harry told him, which made him wince.
"Please try not to start a war between France and Britain, Harry," the other man begged. "Probably best to turn them down. You two have a… special… way with your investigations that I'm not sure would help international relations even a tiny bit."
"That thing with Bulgaria was a complete accident," Harry said indignantly. "We were there on holiday watching a Quiddich tournament and things just sort of happened."
"Four times in two days?" Neville looked at him suspiciously. Harry shrugged, smiling slightly. Ron looked away guiltily. "Hmmph. Right, fine, I don't really want to know. Just… try not to do it again? Please? For me?"
He got an innocent smile back.
"Ron's right, there's something not quite right with you," the DMLE Director mumbled. "I wish Hermione was back from whatever she does this time of year, she's the only one who can keep you under control."
Harry snickered. "She won't be back for another month or so, it's only July yet," he commented.
"Where does she go?" Neville asked curiously. "She's your best friend, if anyone would know you would."
Harry shrugged slightly helplessly. He remembered a very worrying conversation he'd had with the woman some years back, but it wasn't anything he could ever mention to anyone else for a number of reasons. Not that it answered the question in any case. "I honestly don't know," he replied. "Six months of the year, she just vanishes. Some sort of research job is all I know about it. She's the smartest person I've ever met, so I could believe almost anything. Maybe she's working for the Unspeakables? Or… I don't know, knowing her she might even be working for MI6 or the CIA or something. I wouldn't put it past her. But she won't say a word about what she does, where she goes, or why. I've learned not to ask."
"That's very strange," Neville mused. "I know that the Minister has tried to get her to come and work for the Ministry several times but she's always turned it down. I doubt she's an Unspeakable, but I suppose some private research company is possible. Oh, well, maybe one day she'll tell us." He waved at the sheet still in Harry's hand. "Do you want to accept this job?"
Harry looked at Ron, then at the sheet. Meeting his partner's eyes again, he nodded. "I think we do. Right, Ron?"
"May as well," the red-head said, finishing his tea and putting the cup on the desk. "The bounty is impressively large. PWI needs the work." He looked hard at his friend. "But this time we don't just run into the building, right? We investigate, we don't assault."
"You've changed, Ron," Harry complained. "What happened to the boy I grew up with who was up for anything?"
"He nearly died half a dozen times because his best friend is a bloody nutter who tends to jump out of the frying pan while screaming 'Follow me, the fire's this way!'" Ron groused. "And somehow manages to persuade people around him to actually follow him. Somehow. No more, get it? We play it safe this time."
With a smirk of amusement, Harry inspected him for a moment, then turned back to Neville who was smiling a little. "We accept the contract."
"Try not to blow up another manor house this time," the Director requested as he watched them both sign the document, then hand it back. He countersigned, filed it with a tap of his wand, then pushed a thick envelope across the desk. "Usual information pack, everything we have on this bastard. It's not much to go on but somehow you two usually manage. Good luck. And please, please, don't let this hit the papers again." He looked plaintively at the other two. "Be discreet and careful."
Harry stood up, nodding happily. "Just like we always are," he replied, causing Neville to sigh faintly. "You can trust us."
"Oh, hell," the other man muttered as they left. "Why do I keep doing this to myself?"
"Because we're the best, Nev!" Harry called back as the door closed. Left alone in his office the DMLE Director examined the reports on his desk, rubbing his brow tiredly at the damage estimates, then decided to go for lunch before he got too stressed.
Sometimes he really wondered why he'd accepted this job. Those were generally the times when his old school friends were out there causing chaos.
In other words, almost every day.
"Grim." Harry inspected the remains clinically, while Ron ran some diagnostic spells on them. A couple were ones that Hermione had taught them, and he suspected based on the fact that he'd never seen anyone else use, had quite probably invented. "Poor girl."
"Dead for forty-nine hours, this says," Ron replied, straightening up and frowning down at the withered husk of what had been a young woman of about sixteen. "Non-magical, she was sacrificed for some sort of ritual as far as I can tell."
"That's the third one in the last week," Harry sighed. "And two the week before that, another one each of the previous weeks. It's picking up by the looks of it."
"Seems so," his friend agreed with a shake of his head. "Same ritual each time, but no one seems to know what it is or what it's for. Damn, I wish Hermione was here, she'd probably have at least some idea about this."
"She does know an awful lot of pretty disturbing things," Harry agreed quietly, making some notes on their results, then putting his ordinary mundane pen and notebook away. "If she ever went Dark we'd be fucked."
"She's about the last person I can think of that would do that," Ron noted. Both of them started carefully scanning the entire area for more clues. They'd found the body, or what was left of it, drained of blood and showing more than enough signs of torture to show that the girl hadn't died easily, in an old factory to the west of Hull. "She hates death cults with a passion. Sure, she's got more than enough ability to do some terrible things, and she can be ruthless like no-one else I know, but she's a good person."
"One of the best," Harry nodded, smiling slightly despite their unpleasant job. "I'm just saying that if she wasn't, we'd have a lot of trouble dealing with her."
"Oh, fair enough, Harry," Ron chuckled. "I agree, for what it's worth. If she went Dark we'd definitely be completely fucked." They shared a small grin, then kept looking. "She should be back in a few days, you could ask her advice."
"Might do that if we can't figure this out," Harry snorted. "This bugger is a lot sneakier than the last one, and I have a horrible feeling is a lot smarter too." He stopped, peering at the ground, then bent down. Waving his wand he watched as a small cluster of glittering shards of glass, shining in the evening sun coming in through the broken windows, collected together in the air a foot off the ground. "Got some sort of vial here, smashed on the ground. Might have contained some potion we can trace, I can see some smears on the fragments."
Ron looked over as Harry carefully levitated the fragments into a plastic bag he pulled from his coat pocket, then cast a stasis spell over it before putting it away. "We'll see if the twins have any idea before we take it to the DMLE."
They scoured the entire area, taking photos of the ritual circle and the symbols traced out in some foul mix of blood and something else inside it, the small crumpled corpse of the girl in the middle. Eventually they finished, having found a few small items of interest but nothing that jumped out as critical. A couple of popping sounds from outside made them look around to see a pair of familiar people walk in cautiously, wands ready.
"Tonks, Colin, you two took your time," Harry said in greeting, lifting a hand and waving the pair over. "Watch out, there's some evidence on the floor about six feet in front of you to the right."
Both Aurors looked to where he was pointing then altered course a little, shortly joining Harry and Ron next to the circle and human remains. "Morgana, that stinks," Tonks muttered.
"Bodies tend to in this heat after a couple of days," Ron said sourly.
"Sorry about the delay, boys, we had a nasty assault to deal with in Manchester," the somewhat older woman said, looking away from the body to them. Her hair was a more subdued color than normal, a deep red rather than her favorite pink. It showed she was stressed and tired. "Third one in two days."
"Catch them?" Harry asked. She nodded, looking momentarily satisfied.
"Yeah, we did. Took both down after a lot of running around. They'll live, but they're not going to enjoy it."
"Good."
"So what do we have here?" Tonks asked, looking around. "Ritual circle, extremely dead girl..." Harry held up the transparent bag and she examined it. "Broken potion vial. Looks like some particularly Dark ritual to me, definitely."
"You can practically feel it," Colin noted uneasily. "She didn't die quickly."
"No, she didn't," his partner sighed. Very carefully she stepped around the detritus on the floor, her normal clumsiness completely suppressed when she was concentrating on her work like this, and moved closer to the body. She waved her wand in complex patterns, testing the scene with her own diagnostics spells. "Damn it. Exactly the same as the previous ones. Definitely the same people."
"And we still have no idea what their specific goal is, or where they're based," Ron grumbled. "But it can't be good even in death cult terms. They're doing something with all that blood sacrifice energy and that sort of thing never ends well."
"Nope." Tonks reached the edge of the circle and squatted down, peering at it closely. She poked the neatly drawn and completely unfamiliar runic symbols with the end of her wand and flinched back. "Oh, Merlin, that's horrible."
"I have no idea what the ritual is, either," Harry pointed out. "Nor does anyone else. My guess is that either it's something brand new, or..."
"Or it's something very old," a familiar voice said from behind them, making all four people jump then turn.
"Hermione?!" Harry controlled his voice with difficulty, trying to stay professional, but his broad smile gave away his feeling. The brunette smiled back.
"Hello, Harry. Ron, Tonks, Colin, it's been a while."
"What are you doing here, Hermione?" Tonks asked, looking puzzled but pleased. "I didn't think you were going to get back from your super secret mission of super secrecy for another week or so."
The woman gracefully wove her way through the rubbish littering the floor, stopping beside Harry. "I had to come home for a couple of days for something I needed, and heard about this new death cult," she explained. "I thought I'd come and take a look, just in case I could help."
"Damn glad you're here, Hermione," Ron said, moving to hug her. She returned it, then did the same to Harry. "We're stumped. If anyone would know, it's you, though. Got any bright ideas?"
"Fill me in on the situation," she replied. All four of them took turns explaining the recent events that had led them here following a trail of desecrated corpses. She listened closely, her face neutral, then nodded when Harry wound up the explanation.
"We used a tracing spell when we found out about this poor girl, since she fitted the profile perfectly, and managed to track her here," he said, waving at the tiny body on the floor. "Unfortunately we were two days late."
"I see," she replied after a pause for thought. "Nasty. Very nasty."
"It's one of the worst things I've seen since Riddle's day," Tonks said. "Might actually be worse since we have very little information about these people. Riddle wasn't subtle, really, marking all his followers like he did. But as far as we can tell there must be at least a couple of dozen in this cult minimum, and we have no idea at all about who any of them are other than their leader."
"And we can't find the arsehole," Ron finished for her. She nodded soberly.
"Do you mind if I have a look?" Hermione said, nodding at the circle and the body. Harry glanced at Tonks, who was technically the one with the authority here. She shook her head.
"Go ahead, at this point we'd all be grateful for the insight if you can come up with something," the woman said, stepping to the side and stumbling slightly as she did so. Hermione's hand snaked out like a shot and grabbed her shoulder, stopping her tripping over. "Thanks. Good catch." Tonks seemed slightly embarrassed but smiled even so.
"You're welcome."
"It's worse up close, Hermione," Harry warned as his best friend headed towards the circle on the floor.
"Thank you, Harry, but I can deal with it," she said over her shoulder, not looking back. Reaching the same place that Tonks had earlier, and Harry and Ron before her, she did much the same thing they'd done and squatted down, a wand in her hand. Harry was as usual impressed since it had appeared there from some sort of hidden holder without any visible action on her part. He was always intrigued watching his friend at work, she'd learned an awful lot since school and even there had been so far ahead of the curve she'd left the rest of them in the dust. Whatever it was she got up to when she disappeared, she was clearly still learning.
The wand was the one she used these days, something that apparently she'd acquired the first time she'd gone away for the summer. When she was home, she normally used her old school one, as he still did, but appeared to prefer this newer one for delicate work although she was fairly uncommunicative as to why. Only that it was in some manner 'better.'
"That's an unusual wand," Colin noted, watching with interest. The brunette looked back over her shoulder for a moment, then went back to work, smiling a little.
"It's a customized one I got years ago," she remarked, moving the thing slowly sideways across the floor in an unusual hold. It was glowing faintly and the ground under it was doing the same, small sparks of light coming and going.
"What wood is it made of?" he persisted.
"An extremely rare one," she replied, studying the results of whatever spell that had been. None of them recognized it. "Interesting." Poking the remains of the circle with the tip, she nodded. "Not good, but interesting." Standing smoothly, she did something that none of them saw and the entire circle flashed blue-green and then went dark. A perceptible changes swept through the old building, the oppressive air lightening considerably.
"What did you do?" Tonks asked, looking around alertly.
"Dismantled the remaining spells," Hermione said, looking back at them. "There was a very low level aversion spell, enough to keep mundanes away, and another one that was absorbing the last traces of life energy from the victim. Probably the one that drained it in the first place, but it had nearly run out of power. It was intact enough to flare up again if someone accidentally triggered it, though, and it would probably have killed anyone inside the circle."
Very deliberately she scuffed her foot through the outline on the floor between two runes while making a small gesture with the hand not holding the wand. A faint pop sounded and there was a momentary smell of something acrid. "It's completely dead now, though."
While they exchanged a glance, she moved into the circle and bent over the body, not reacting at all to the grisly sight or the horrible smell. The four people watched as she waved her wand again, producing a sheet of light in the air with a large number of symbols and numbers on it, which she studied carefully for a few minutes. None of them recognized that spell either, but she was concentrating so hard they didn't dare interrupt.
Eventually she sighed and turned around, the gently glowing symbols fading away. "Her name is Elizabeth Cranwell, fifteen years and four months old. From Aberdeen. She died forty nine hours, fifteen minutes, and six seconds before you first arrived, Harry," she said. "She was tortured first, for over sixteen hours, somewhere in Scotland, probably slightly to the south of Inverness. Then she was brought here and killed."
Tonks was writing all this down, as was Ron. "How do you know?" the red-head asked.
She tilted her head and looked at him. "Honestly, Ron, sometimes I wonder about you."
He chuckled at her expression. "Right. Sorry. Yet another Hermione spell, I suppose?"
"Something along those lines," she smiled. "In any case, the information is accurate. Unfortunately she's been dead too long to get much more data from the body. I could tell you all sorts of things about her blood type, medical history, that sort of thing, but I doubt it will help locate her killers."
"We can easily check the name and city and track her movements now," Harry said. "That's more than we had, it will help a lot."
"Do you have any idea what the ritual is actually for?" Tonks asked.
Hermione's smile faded. "Yes. Unfortunately I do."
"And?"
The woman sighed a little, looking back at the body for a moment, then returning her attention to them. "The spell is an old one, very old indeed. It's based on a Viking ritual for absorbing the power of a slain enemy. Somewhat like the old concept of eating a defeated opponent's heart, but in a manner that actually worked. The original goal would have been to gain strength and physical power from those you took down in battle, but it's been modified to directly absorb the life energy of the victim." She turned to look at the circle again, then around on the floor. "It would require her to be administered a potion made from some very rare ingredients including Unicorn blood. Did you find any empty potion bottles?"
Harry pulled the bag from his pocket and showed it to her. "Only this, along with a few random items of rubbish that might also be related. I think they mostly cleaned up after themselves."
Hermione took the bag and held it up to the light, then opened it and sniffed. Her nose wrinkled a little. "Yes, that's definitely it. I was right."
"So this spell drained the life out of that poor girl into someone else?" Colin, who had been listening quietly for a while, asked. He looked both fascinated and sick.
"That is what the original version would do," Hermione replied with a shake of her head. She walked over to the circle and pointed at it. "You see these runes here, and these other ones over here? They're wrong, if you wanted to do what it was meant to achieve. This changes it, so it's storing the energy in something like a crystal of some sort. Normally a blood sacrifice ritual directly powers a spell as it's cast, but this will allow someone to build up a lot more energy and then use it all at once. And it won't require the same very particular conditions a lot of the Darker rituals tend to need. Those conditions were used to perform this ritual, I suspect, but after the energy is stored it can be released at will."
They were all silent for a while. Eventually Harry said, feeling trepidation, "What spell would require that much energy? They've killed at least ten people we're aware of, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised to find out it was more. Half the time we've practically stumbled over the bodies."
"It's considerably more than that, I'm afraid, Harry," she murmured, still looking at the runes. "The crystal they used was here during the ritual. It left traces that lets me estimate how many lives were sacrificed to it." She raised her eyes to meet his. "It's a minimum of sixty people, a maximum of two hundred and thirty. The traces aren't strong enough to get a better estimate. If I'd been here within a few hours..." She shrugged. "I could probably tell you exactly how many."
"Oh, Merlin's nutsack," Ron whispered, his face pale. "And they're probably all Mugg..." He caught the look on her face and hastily corrected himself to the term she tended to be quite insistent about, to the point that almost everyone who knew her had ended up using it. "I mean, mundanes?"
"Yes," the brunette woman nodded. "As far as I can tell. It's not precisely magic they're collecting, it's life. Mundane people have exactly the same amount as magical people do. Whatever they're planning on doing with it, they don't need an overwhelming amount of magical power but they do need a lot of life force. And the only things I can think of that would need that are… very bad indeed."
"Such as?" Hermione looked at Tonks, who had a ballpoint pen poised over a sheet of parchment, something that always mildly amused Harry when he saw it. The proximity of two common things from different cultures was odd. At the moment, though, he was anything but in the mood to be amused.
"Creating a large number of inferi would be one possibility," his friend said after a moment. "There's a spell I've come across that would enable, with the correct resources, someone to more or less instantly kill hundreds of people and raise them as inferi in one operation. With the amount of energy they have, that could be closer to thousands than hundreds. Another possibility is a wide area equivalent to an AK spell. I would put the size at approximately half a mile radius." She paused as they all paled. "There are worse possibilities but I'd prefer not to think about them."
It took quite some time before Harry could speak. He swallowed dryly, then licked his lips. "You're sure about that, Hermione?"
"Unfortunately, yes," she sighed. "The references are extremely rare and it would be very difficult to locate them, but I fear not impossible. Several of the more unpleasant spells aren't even particularly complex, they simply require resources that are hard to obtain. And, of course, a total lack of morals and ethics to perform. I've read about similar things that happened over two thousand years ago, and on smaller scales in the Dark Ages, but luckily the knowledge of this sort of thing is very restricted and tends to disappear for long periods of time."
"By the sound of it, you found it," Tonks pointed out, looking slightly worried as she examined Hermione, who smiled a little.
"Not because I'm planning on becoming the Dark Lady Granger, Tonks," she remarked, sounding momentarily amused. The Auror, apparently relieved, nodded. "I would hardly use such crude methods when there are far better ones in any case."
She smirked a little when they all gaped at her. "I'm joking, calm down. Let's just say that my employers have some rather odd books in their library and we have studied some very esoteric fields."
Harry filed that away as another small clue to what it was she did. Not that it left him any the wiser, but it was interesting. "So where would someone look for this sort of information, if they didn't work for… your employers?" he asked curiously.
She thought for a moment, tapping her lip with a finger. "My best guess would be the Vatican library," she finally replied. He raised an eyebrow, glancing at Ron briefly.
"The Vatican?" he echoed.
"Yes." Hermione nodded. "Trust me, they have one of the largest libraries of magical books and other information on the planet. Far larger than the one at Hogwarts. It's probably larger than the one in the Unspeakable's department in the ministry too." She seemed to think for a moment, then nodded again. "Definitely larger."
"How would you know?" Colin looked puzzled.
She glanced at him with good humor. "Because I've seen both of them, of course." While he was staring at her in shock, she turned back to the others. "I can give you a contact at the Vatican who may be able to help. I'll make some notes and get them to you in a day or two, and tell him you'll be calling, but right now I have to dash, I have something urgent that requires my attention."
As she began walking towards the exit, Ron called, "The Vatican? How… I mean… Don't they hate wizards? And what about the Statute?"
Turning around and walking backwards for a few feet, she smiled at him. "You'd be amazed at how many magical people there have been in the Catholic Church over the centuries, Ron. And don't believe everything we were told in school about why the magical world is trying to hide from the mundane one. A lot of it is wrong. Some of it is so misleading it's not even wrong."
She turned around again, going out the door into the sunlight and turning the corner.
"Trying to hide?" Tonks shouted after her. "What does that mean?"
There was no answer. The four of them exchanges looks, shook their heads, and got on with the business of finishing up, Colin raising his camera and taking photo after photo.