The Long Slow Lizarding of Hermione Granger

by mp3.1415player

This side story started life as a series of Omakes in my Worm/Luna Varga crossover story "Taylor Varga." It's more or less outgrown that now, with enough words involved to make it viable as a (sort of) standalone story as an experiment. However, it most likely won't make sense unless you have a working knowledge of that story AND Harry Potter, so I'd suggest reading both first :)

8. PWI Investigates, Part 2

"Hermione came through with this information," Harry said, plonking a large stack of paperwork on Neville's desk then slumping into one of the chairs in front of it. Ron detoured via the tea urn then joined him in the next chair, handing him a cup without a word. He had a glum expression on his face. The DMLE director looked at the pile, then the two men, his eyebrows up.

"All that? In three days?"

"You know our Hermione, Nev," Harry said after swallowing a mouthful of tea. "This is the sort of thing she's really good at. I don't know anyone else who could have found half that stuff at all, never mind in under a month or two. Or annotated it in the relevant places, cross-referenced it, indexed it, come up with examples of similar crimes in the last thousand years throughout Europe, and added a suggested reading list for further information on aspects of the various topics. Oh, and a glossary too." He shrugged with a small grin. Sometimes his best friend amazed even him. Even after nearly fifteen years of knowing her, and living in the next flat for the last eight of those, he still didn't either fully understand or fully know her.

She was a pretty private individual these days. He sometimes wondered what she'd have been like if those weird lizard-people hadn't wandered in during that whole goblet of fire fiasco and set the cat among the pigeons. The fallout from that little escapade had changed an awful lot of things, in ways that echoed down to the present day. He suspected he had no idea quite how much had been altered as a result, although he also had a suspicion that Hermione did.

He'd never asked. He didn't really want to know, considering how his early years had gone, and how the first three or four years at Hogwart's had been. His ability to end up in the middle of the weirdest adventures with no real effort wasn't something he could see having ended well if it kept escalating like it had been heading for. Even now he still didn't know why he'd gotten involved in half the things he had. Old Dumbledore probably had done, he'd spent several years after that night looking at Harry with a sort of quizzical expression, which had only intensified after the bizarre event where all Riddle's people had ended up dead as doornails, but if so he'd taken the secret to the grave.

Yet another thing to thank Hermione for, Harry mused. Not that either of them ever talked about it after that one night… Although it did sometimes amuse him how the old man would have reacted if he'd learned what had happened and who was responsible. He'd still been researching the event when he died peacefully in his sleep last year.

Shaking his head slightly, he rejoined the present, where Neville was intently reading the top document, a neatly written summary of the rest of the stack. His face was growing more and more disturbed, an expression of horror taking root. When he finished the last page, he looked up at the other two, pale and scared.

"This is… about as not good as anything I've ever heard," he said after opening and closing his mouth a couple of times. He coughed, his throat seeming dry, and tried to add something but didn't have the words. Harry silently handed him his cup of tea, his old friend nodding thanks and taking a large swig before handing it back.

"Thanks."

"You're welcome."

They looked at each other, then the paperwork. "Shit." Neville massaged his temples, looking angry, depressed, and worried. "We have to find these sods and stop them. Even the least terrifying thing in that report scares the life out of me. And everything else is worse."

"Did you see the suggestion how it could be used to summon something from the pit and release it into the world?" Ron asked with a dark look. Neville glanced at him, then shuddered.

"Yes, thank you, I did. I prefer not to think about that. Merely contemplating the magical equivalent of a mundane tactical nuclear weapon is bad enough," he replied tartly. Ron almost smiled, but slumped back into his chair with a black expression.

"Maybe they'll only turn a small city into a zombie horde, Nev," Harry said, trying to lighten the atmosphere. "If they pick someplace like Milton Keynes, no one might even notice."

Apparently his attempt wasn't very effective. He busied himself with finishing his tea under the weight of both his friend's glares.

"Again, thank you," Neville grated. "Not quite as helpful as it could be, but points for trying. Please stop trying any more."

"What do we do about it?" Ron asked after a long silence.

They all looked at each other, then at the pile of documentation. "Find them, kill them, burn everything, and salt the ground, would be my favorite idea," the DMLE head said in the end. "I don't care whether you kill them before burning them or the other way around. But before that, we need to find them."

"Have Tonks or Colin found any leads?" Harry asked.

"Not really." Neville sat back in his chair and tapped his fingertips together, thinking. "They traced the family of that last poor girl and at least managed to let them get some closure. But no amount of questioning has produced any real results. No common acquaintances with any of the other victims we've been able to identify, no idea how she ended up in Hull, nothing useful either on the magical or mundane sides. We've liaised with our mundane counterparts, who are putting a lot of effort into tracing what they believe to be a prolific but subtle serial killer. Which is essentially the truth, of course. The ones in the know are feeding everything they find back to us, since the mundanes are a lot better at this sort of thing than we are and have a lot more resources. But so far, nothing we can act on."

"We've talked to everyone we could think of as well," Ron commented. "All the scum we've met over the years, all our informants, you name it. Even had a few volunteer some information, since word seems to have got around about this lot and even the sort of people who live on Knockturn Alley don't much like it. Nothing useful there either."

"Everything we've found is in that," Harry added, nodding at the pile of parchment. "Maybe some of your people will find something we missed, but I sort of doubt it."

"So do I," Neville sighed, reaching out and flipping through the stack for a moment. "You two are irresponsible, dangerous, insane, and generally annoying, but you're good at what you do."

"Only the best, Nev," Harry grinned.

"Pity what you do is mostly be irresponsible, dangerous, and so on," the man behind the desk grumbled, making both of them chuckle. "Life would be much simpler if you could avoid that sort of behavior."

"But much more boring," Harry replied.

Neville fixed him with a hard look. "From my position, Harry, boring is a state I very much wish to achieve. Small chance of that with you two running around, and his brothers aiding and abetting." He flicked a finger at Ron, who appeared amused. "And stop trying to poach Tonks. She's mine."

"We could use her," Harry objected. "Her talents are… exceptional."

"I know. They're mine too. Find your own metamorphmagus."

"Spoilsport."

They shared a mutual smile, then went back to pondering the problem. "I suppose we're at the point where we should probably talk to this bloke Hermione suggested," Harry finally said.

Pulling the report over, Neville opened it and checked a couple of lines in the margin of the first page. "Cardinal Merico Pisani, rare books curator, Vatican Library Department S," he read out loud. Raising his eyes, he stared at his old friend. "The Catholic Church?" he asked doubtfully. "Really? And not just the Church, but the bloody Vatican Library?! Even I've heard rumors about how many weird things that place has, which is only exceeded by the rumors about how difficult it is to get into. Worse than the Department of Mysteries, I'm led to believe."

"From what Hermione told me, that's a pretty close analogy," Harry nodded. "I know it's strange, but she swears this fellow not only knows about magic, and the magical world..."

"She said he probably knew more about the magical world than we did," Ron interjected, looking confused.

"Exactly. And she said he was helpful and very knowledgeable about certain... Rituals. Very Dark rituals."

"Why does that fill me with foreboding?" Neville sighed.

"Common sense and experience, probably," Ron quipped.

"You're just full of helpful one liners today, aren't you, Weasley?" Neville griped. The red-head merely snickered, although he kept quiet. Turning back to Harry, Neville regarded him for a moment, then asked, "So how do we actually contact this man? I somehow doubt we can owl him, and he's probably not on the international Floo network."

Harry put a mobile phone on the desk. Director Longbottom looked at it, then him, his expression puzzled. "That won't work down here. The place is saturated with magic, and has additional anti-electronics wards."

"Hermione told me it would work anywhere," Harry shrugged. "Do you want to assume she's wrong? It's Hermione Granger we're talking about, after all."

"She did tell me once that there was no reason magic should cause problems with technology unless there was something wrong with it," Neville murmured, picking the device up and inspecting it. "Despite all the evidence to the contrary."

"But she also had a radio in her room the last year of Hogwarts that was tuned to Classic FM, remember?" Harry pointed out. "No one could figure out how she did it and she just looked smug when anyone asked."

"She told me she'd mathed it one time," Ron added, shrugging when they both looked at him curiously. "No idea. Maths and me don't get on."

"There's something very strange about that woman," Neville finally sighed. Both his friends nodded soberly. Pressing the power button for a couple of seconds, he released it and waited. Moments later the screen lit with a full color logo. "Draco-Tech Industries," he remarked as the logo faded away, replaced shortly with an animation of a mechanical dragon that flew across the screen, then dissolved into a pale blue background covered in small symbols. "Never heard of them. These mundane tech companies come up with some strange names. Here, you know more about this sort of thing than I do, Harry." He handed the phone across the desk. "It does appear to be working, which is impressive. And a little worrying."

Harry accepted the device and prodded the relevant icon to produce a phone keypad. "OK, let's see… +379 for Vatican city, then the number is..." He mumbled to himself as he poked virtual buttons, faint beeps sounding for each one in a long sequence. "And add the extension code… Right, hopefully he'll be available."

"Don't just blurt everything out, Harry," Neville warned. "We can't break the Statute after all. Let's find out if this chap really does know about everything first."

"Put it on speaker thingy so we can all hear," Ron suggested. With a nod Harry touched the appropriate icon, then put the phone on the desk. All three men leaned forward, listening as the ring tone sounded a few times. Then there was a click, and a man's voice said in a jovial manner, "Pronto? Il Cardinale Pisani parla."

Harry cleared this throat quietly, and said "Hello, my name is Harry Potter, Cardinal Pisani. A friend of mine suggested you might be able to give some advice on a problem I have..."

"Ah, Signor Potter!" the cardinal replied with a very obvious smile in his voice. "I have been expecting your call. Signorina Granger explained about the unpleasantness your community has been experiencing. My sympathies."

"Thank you, sir," Harry said, glancing at Ron and Neville, who were listening intently. "Did she explain all about our problem?"

"She did, Signor Potter. Please bear with me for a short period." The line clicked a couple of times, then beeped rapidly for a second more. A message popped up on the phone screen which read 'Secure line established, encryption active.' After a couple of seconds it disappeared. "Eccellente. We can talk freely now. Yes, Signor Potter, I am fully cognizant of the magical world. May I ask who else is with you?"

Again, Harry turned to Neville, who sighed and shrugged. "My partner Ron Weasley and Director Longbottom of the British DMLE."

"Ah. Perfetto. I can be frank with you all. Very good." The man still sounded like he was enjoying the talk, his Italian accent noticeable but faint. "I so seldom manage to discuss these matters outside my domain."

"Cardinal Pisani, this is Director Longbottom speaking," Neville said, causing his companions to look at him. "Before we begin, can I ask how it is that you, and if what I'm lead to believe is the case, the Catholic Church, are aware of the magical world? We've generally gone to considerable trouble to prevent that exact scenario and I'm curious..."

He was interrupted by a snort of laughter from the other end of the phone. "Scusa, but I find that rather amusing, Director. Your culture is very secretive, I will agree, but it is hardly perfect at secret keeping. Even hundreds of years ago it wasn't unusual that your obliviators missed the occasional witness. These days… Shall we say that you might be surprised at quite how many organizations around the world are very well informed as to the goings on in the magical cultures. Government ones, us, various others. Most intelligence agencies around the planet maintain entire departments dedicated to keeping track of which particular lunatic wizard or witch is the next major threat to the rest of us. Admittedly you mostly self-police fairly effectively but there have been occasions on which you have definitely… Dropped the ball, I believe is the English expression?"

He sounded both mildly annoyed and on the verge of laughter as they exchanged looks of shock. "Your Thomas Riddle was a particularly problematic individual. By the grace of God events conspired to deal with him, and someone helpfully finished off his followers, may the Lord have mercy on their blackened souls."

"But..." Neville looked torn between being angry, being shocked, or being stunned rigid. Ron was merely gaping, and Harry was thinking. "If all those people know… Why doesn't the mundane public know? Why doesn't the mundane government step in, when someone like Riddle pops up, for that matter?"

"Signor Director, the governments of the world have their hands full dealing with entirely mundane lunacy on a world wide basis already," the cardinal chuckled. "They don't want the public to know about the magical version, any more than you do, although for more prosaic reasons. They fear a panic and public unrest. People in large numbers tend to be unpredictable when something new happens. Your paranoia about being unmasked for a number of reasons, not all of which are in fact supported historically from a more neutral viewpoint, plays nicely into their hands. For well over two centuries the various governments have spent a significant amount of effort cleaning up after you when you've missed people. Which happens more and more often these days. Technology is very pervasive and getting better by the day. As our current conversation proves nicely, does it not?"

All three men looked at each other. After a moment, he continued, "And don't think that they aren't prepared to step in if there is no choice. Or that on occasion this hasn't already happened… However, this is straying beyond what we need to discuss. If you wish to talk more about it at some point, please call. I do enjoy a nice chat, it gets quite tiresome here at times no matter how much I like my work. My department is small and necessarily rather cloistered, you understand."

"I… see," Neville managed.

"So. To business. Signorina Granger has, how do you put it, filled me in on the current issue. I agree with her conclusions as to the purpose of this dark ritual, which is an obscenity even in the terms of such things. To take a life in such a manner, and for such a reason… Those responsible will have a special place in Hell waiting for them, I am certain. Based on what she told me, I have done some research of my own, and I have identified the most likely source of the base ritual as being a book titled 'Concerning Lyfe and Deth, The Rituals Moste Puissante,' written in 1427 AD by one Baron von Roth in Steyr, Austria. Only three copies are known to still exist. Two of them are in front of me at this exact moment."

"And the third one?" Harry asked slowly.

"Was stolen from the non-public and extremely well guarded special collection housed in the Library of Congress in the USA nineteen years ago." The Cardinal paused meaningfully. "No traces of a break in were found, although two guards were discovered dead without a mark on them or any signs of what killed them. Interestingly enough, a man associated in certain circles with one Thomas Riddle had been known to be living in the same city at the time, and subsequently vanished overnight with his entire family. Ten years later he was seen several times in the company of Aldous Margrave, a name you will be familiar with."

There was silence for a while. "The modifications to the ritual which I have been told about were probably derived from another book, 'On the Nature of Ritualistic Arithromancy,' by Smythewick Gobbs, in 1829. It isn't considered a Dark work, but is far outside the abilities of most to understand or follow and as such is seldom encountered. I have four copies. Signorina Granger gave me two of them. She was the one who suggested it was a possibility, and she was, yet again, correct. And is one of the very, very few people I have ever encountered who would consider it a beginner's book." He laughed slightly. "That young lady is truly remarkable at the mathematical arts. And most other things she determines she wishes to learn about."

"That she is," Harry remarked, nodding to himself. He was extremely curious how she had met this odd man, and when, but didn't want to complicate an already weird situation any more. "The question is, does this get us closer to finding these people before it's too late?"

"I have taken the liberty to make some discreet inquiries with certain suppliers of exotic literature, Signor Potter," the cardinal replied. "The name of the former associate of Thomas Riddle is Aubin Devost, a disgraced expatriate minor member of the French nobility. He was known to visit your Lucius Malfoy on occasion, I believe they had some distant relative in common. He hasn't been seen for approximately eighteen months, although his name was recognized by several of my contacts. Two of them with the comment that he owes them a considerable sum of money." He chuckled faintly. "They were quite displeased about that. One of these people was sufficiently displeased he passed on a list of other people in Britain who he believed might be contacts of Devost from past dealings. If you can trace them, they may lead you to him, and if you can find him..."

"He might lead us to Margrave," Ron finished.

"Esattamente. Yes. I am sorry I can't be of more help, but with luck and God's grace, you may find it enough to aid you."

"Thank you, Cardinal Pisani," Neville said after a moment. "You have been a great help."

"It was my pleasure, my son," the other man said in a good-natured manner. "I will text you the information I have. Good luck, and God's blessing on you all."

"We appreciate everything you've told us," Harry added.

"Give my best wishes to Signorina Granger when you next see her, and I will consider it time well spent, Signor Potter. And be careful. These people are dangerous and will show you no mercy."

"We're unfortunately aware of that," he replied with a sigh.

"Until next time. Addio."

The phone beeped and the line went dead. A few seconds later it made a different sound. Picking it up, Harry tapped the relevant icon, reading the screen. He passed it over to Neville, who examined the text. "Never heard of any of these people, but it's worth a try," he said.

"More than we had twenty minutes ago," Ron pointed out, leaning over to snag the phone and scanning the names. "This one here, I think I've heard of. Unpleasant chap, deals in dodgy potion ingredients."

"We'll start with him then." Harry turned to Neville, who was scribbling down the names on a bit of parchment, craning his neck to see the phone, which Ron turned to show him. "Any chance of some Auror backup?"

"I'd love to, Harry, but practically everyone I have is tied up right now. There's a mini crime wave going on at the moment. Must be the hot weather, people go strange in hot weather."

"This is a bit more important than some idiot shoplifting from Harrods with an invisibility cloak or something, Nev," Ron pointed out.

"I know that, and you know that, and even the Minister knows that, but there are still a lot of other ministers who are getting pushy about it." Neville frowned irritably. "Too many thefts from the rich and powerful. So of course their problems become my problems." He tapped his fingers on the desk. "I can let you have Tonks and Colin, and maybe one other person, when and if you find something. If you get real proof, or even better actually track these crazy buggers down, I'll get the entire department to drop everything and go after them, believe me. But until we have a positive target, I'm rather limited in how many people I can pull off other, more high profile, work."

"Mostly because it's mundane people by and large who this cult is killing," Harry muttered under his breath.

Neville sighed and spread his hands. "Yes. Of course. Things have changed in the last decade but not so much as to make most wizards give a toss about most mundanes. Prejudice doesn't go away that fast, you know that as well as I do."

"Unfortunately." Harry scowled. "Damn it. Oh, well, we'll have to push on and see if we can find the sods. We may need Tonks sooner rather than later, she could be a big help."

"As I said, you can borrow her. But you can't keep her, so no trying to bribe her away from me, or I'll be very annoyed. Understand me?" He glared at Harry, who looked innocently back.

"Would I do that?"

"In a heartbeat, and we both know it. Stop snickering, Weasley, you're just as bad as he is."

"I'm not snickering."

"You were almost giggling. Stop it."

Harry grinned, standing up and retrieving the phone. "We'll get to work, Neville. PWI is on the case, you have nothing to worry about."

As he and Ron left the office, the DMLE director was just dropping his head into his hands and groaning. It was odd, he did that almost every time.

For some reason.

---

Feeling a familiar presence even as he heard the faint sound of his flat front door closing, Harry looked up from his desk to see Hermione watching him from the door to his study. She was leaning on the door frame, smiling slightly, and seemed happy to see him. "Hi," he said as he put his pen down and leaned back in his chair, stretching. She walked over and put her hands on his shoulders, massaging the tension away. "Oh, Merlin, your hands are amazing," he moaned.

She laughed slightly, continuing the massage. "You say that every time," she remarked with amusement.

"I mean it every time," he sighed, relaxing in stages. "You could charge anything you want for this sort of thing."

"I make more than enough money already, Harry, I don't need more," she said quietly, leaning down to his ear. "But I'm happy to help a friend."

Putting his right hand on hers, he squeezed it in thanks, then released her. "I'm happy to have you as a friend, Mione," he muttered. "Even if you won't tell me where you disappear to every year."

She giggled, finishing the massage, then straightened up. "You probably wouldn't believe me anyway," she replied lightly, stepping back. "Tea?"

"Thanks," he smiled, watching as she walked out the door and disappeared around the corner. He heard the sound of cupboards being opened and closed moments later. "And I'd probably believe anything you told me," he called more loudly.

Her head reappeared around the doorway, a mischievous grin on her face. "You say that, but you really wouldn't. I'm half tempted to tell you just so I could say I told you so."

"Go on then," he challenged, only getting a wink back as she vanished again. Snickering, since he'd had this conversation more than once and knew full well she wasn't going to divulge her secret, he closed the folder he'd been reading and pushed all the paperwork into a couple of piles, then got up and went into the kitchen.

"Are you back properly now, or only for a few days before you rush off again?" he asked, while she poured hot water into the teapot. As always he was rather tickled by the way that she, probably one of the most powerful and learned witches in recent history, tended to avoid casual use of most magic without really thinking about it. She seemed to prefer to do things the hard way the majority of the time, something quite alien to the bulk of wizard-kind.

"I'm back for a few months now," she replied, putting the lid on the pot to allow it to steep for a moment. Leaning back on the edge of his worktop, her hands to either side, she looked at him. "There's a possibility I might have to pop away again every now and then but it would only be for a couple of days most of the time. We've got one or two projects that may need monitoring."

"Fair enough," he nodded.

"Well, then, aside from this recent case, how is PWI doing?" she asked after a few seconds of companionable silence. "I did hear a rumor that you managed to remodel another valuable house. Right down to the foundations, in fact." She was grinning again, making him sigh. "You really should stop doing that, Harry. They're going to start naming the craters after you, you know."

"They already do," he sighed, making her eyes light up with amusement. "But I still say the last one was that crazy cult's fault."

"And nothing at all to do with a field test of George and Fred's latest little experiment?" she quipped. "Possibly to excess?"

"I have no idea where you might have picked up such an odd idea," he said calmly. She snorted with laughter and turned back to the tea, quickly finishing it and putting the pot and a couple of cups on a tray along with milk and sugar. He preceded her back into the living room, dropping onto the sofa. She sat at the other end, at a slight angle so she could face him, putting the tray down on his low table. Soon both of them were holding cups.

"I have my sources, Harry," she said after a trial sip, while she added a splash more milk. "These sort of stories get around." After another sip, she smirked a little and added, "I won ten galleons from Fred."

"Oh, thanks very much," he growled. "My best friend, the woman who has my complete trust, is taking bets on whether I blow up another house. The shame of it all."

Lifting her cup in a salute she winked. "It was indeed shameful. I should have bet more."

Both of them grinned at each other. "I've got some really nice lemon meringue pie in the fridge," he said. "Fancy a piece?"

"Ooh, yes, please, I love it," she nodded eagerly. "Is it from that new place on Diagon?"

"Yes," he replied, heading for the kitchen again. "Best bakery I've ever been to." Shortly he came back with two plates and a couple of forks, handing her one. She accepted it and quickly tried the pie, moaning in satisfaction.

"Oh, that's so good," she said in the tones of one who is enjoying their food. "I missed this. Although a friend introduced me to a bakery that does very good doughnuts. I'll have to bring some back next time." They finished the pie in silence after that, until she was left scraping the last traces up with the edge of the fork. Looking mildly disappointed, the brunette put the plate down and leaned back. "Was my information of use to you?" she asked after a while.

Harry, who had put his plate down again and poured them both more tea, nodded. "It was. Your friend the Cardinal was very helpful too. One day I'd be interested in knowing how on earth you met the chap..." He looked meaningfully at her, but she only smiled mysteriously back at him. "I see. Well, in any case, the names he gave us are beginning to pay dividends. We've traced four people on his list so far, and managed to get more names and a couple of locations out of them. Tonks was a big help in that. I wish she'd come work for us."

"Neville would go mad if you nick his best Auror," she pointed out with a giggle.

"So he said." Harry sighed forlornly. "He's changed too. When did all my friends become so… so safe?"

Hermione gaped at him, then started laughing like an idiot. "Oh, Harry," she snickered, wiping tears from her eyes. "Only you." He grinned back and shrugged. "Poor Neville has a lot of responsibilities these days, you know that. He has to at least appear to be the sane one. And Ron is just as mad as you are or he wouldn't be working with you in the first place."

"And you?" he asked, wiggling his eyebrows up and down. "Are you mad?"

"Oh, completely," she smiled. "But in a very different way. All wizards and witches are, you know. Completely barking, the lot of us."

"You're not wrong," he agreed. "But I prefer my mad people to be amusingly eccentric, not homicidally crazy. These loonies we're chasing are definitely the wrong type of insane."

She sobered up, nodding. "I'd have to agree, yes," she said quietly. "That ritual was close to brilliant, but the sort of mind that would even think it up in the first place is… broken. Never mind use it. They need to be stopped as soon as possible. Before whatever they're trying to do gets done."

"Don't suppose you have any more ideas about what that might be?" he asked with slight hope. She sighed and shrugged a little.

"Not really, not enough to nail it down to one specific thing. I'm almost certain it will turn out to be one of the things on the list I gave you, but which one I couldn't say at this point. I'm afraid there isn't enough to go on yet."

"All the things on that list are horrifying," he commented with a shiver.

"I know, Harry, believe me, I know. If I could point you at them right now, I would. And I'd happily help you deal with them. Permanently." She watched his face for a moment. "You know you're going to have to do that? These people, they're not going to stop unless you stop them. Anyone who would stoop to the things they've been doing has gone far past any morals we'd recognize as such and won't hesitate to kill anyone who gets in the way."

"Yeah, I realize that," Harry replied after a while, leaning his head back and closing his eyes. He felt her take his hand and squeeze it gently. "I don't want to kill people, Mione," he added softly. "Sometimes I have to, usually because they're trying to kill me or Ron or some innocent bystander, but I never want to. This world sucks at times."

"They mostly all do," she replied, equally quietly. "Free will is a bastard like that."

The pair sat in silence for a while. He was just idly wondering about what exactly she meant about 'all' worlds when she spoke up. "Be careful, Harry. Please. I couldn't bear to have you hurt. Or Ron. You two mean the world to me, even if we don't see each other much of the time."

He opened his eyes and rolled his head to the side to look at her. "Thanks," he finally replied. "I don't know what I'd do without you either. You've got enough brains to make up for Ron and me both."

She smiled a little. "You're both quite bright, Harry. Despite what some at Hogwarts might have thought years ago. Even Ron finally started to take his work seriously, and he was surprisingly good at it when he did. Neither one of you would be so good at what you do if you weren't intelligent. Power only takes you so far after all."

"Quite bright," he echoed with a faint smirk. "Compared to you we're just monkeys with sticks, though."

"I quite like monkeys," she giggled, making him chuckle. "Don't put yourself down." She paused, then added with a snicker, "That's my job."

"Oh, ha ha, very funny." He shook his head a little. "Enough of this doom and gloom. I can't do much more tonight, and I haven't seen you for more than a couple of hours for months. How are your parents? And that thing you call a cat?"

"Mum and Dad are fine, thanks," she smiled. "I must go and see them tomorrow, but we spoke on the phone when I got back. Their practice is going well, they're thinking of expanding to take on more NHS work since there's a call for it locally. Crookshanks is fine too. Don't let him hear you say that, though. You know what he's like."

Harry looked around a little nervously. He did indeed know what her incredibly ugly cat was like. Vindictive, evil, much too smart for its own good, and very, very sneaky. And he was pretty sure it actually did understand a lot more English than even a magical animal should, although luckily the thing was also a typical cat and too lazy to go out of its way unless you annoyed it. If Hermione was back, it meant her demonic cat was too, so he needed to be careful…

She was now grinning at him, knowing full well what he was thinking. "Can't you do us a favor and leave him wherever it is you go?"

"He would miss home too much, Harry," she giggled. "Would you leave Hedwig somewhere?"

"No, of course not," he replied, shaking his head. "She'd find me and kill me. Or worse."

Both of them looked at the currently empty perch for the aforementioned owl, who was out terrorizing the rodent population of the area. "You would probably regret it, I agree," Hermione nodded. "She doesn't suffer fools gladly."

"Not even a little," he agreed. "And like your cat-monster, she's too smart for her own good. I managed to forget to leave the window open a few weeks ago when I went out with Ron, and when I got home, one entire pane of glass was missing. Not broken, missing. I still don't know how the hell she did that. There wasn't a trace of it anywhere. And she was sitting on her perch looking as smug as the twins after a good prank, waiting for me."

He sighed while she laughed. "And when I went to bed, you know what I found?"

"Go on," she urged, her hand over her mouth.

"The head of the biggest sodding rat I've ever seen in my life on my pillow," he grumbled. "Only the head. It was huge, and really revolting."

"Have you been watching 'The Godfather' again?" Hermione said when she finally stopped giggling. "She's impressionable and learns very fast."

"Don't remind me." He glanced at the perch again. "Sometimes I wonder if I should lock the door when I turn the telly on. Just in case." They shared a smile again. "Thanks for whatever it was you did to my electronics to keep them working, by the way. Oh, that reminds me, Fred wants you to pop around and sort out a faster computer for them. They're getting a broadband internet connection now, they say the internet is full of ideas for pranks."

"Oh dear," she murmured. "Possibly trying to mix mundane culture with wizarding culture has gone too far..."

"Way too late for that, Mione," he grinned. "Way too late. And it's all your fault."

The woman beside him shrugged after a moment of thought. "Well, at least it's having a slow but steady effect on our generation. Which is long overdue." Moving slightly and leaning against him, she finished the last of the tea then put the cup down. "As much as I love my work and all my friends, I'm glad I'm back here for a while," she remarked quietly as he put his arm over her shoulders. "I miss you daft buggers when I'm away. And worry you'll get into something even you can't handle."

"Ah, no need to worry, Herms," he smiled. "We can handle most things. And we know that if we can't, you'll turn up sooner or later and pull our balls out of the fire."

"I have no intention of going anywhere near your balls, Harry," she sniffed archly with a roll of her eyes. "As I have made plain more than once. However, I will certainly always come to help you if you need it."

He grinned, pulling her closer and dropping a kiss on top of her head. "I know, Mione. And I'm very grateful. Not many people have friends like you."

She smiled up at him, both of them simply sitting there in companionable silence for some time. When she finally gently disentangled herself and got up, she watched him sleepily stretch.

"Go to bed, Harry, you need the sleep," she advised. "You've been working very hard recently."

"I will, Hermione," he promised, yawning. "See you tomorrow?"

"I'll be around. If you're very good, I'll even help you with your case." She smirked at him. "I could do with something nice and easy after all the really hard thinking I've been doing for the last few months."

He snickered, getting up and starting to clear away the tea things and the plates. "The horrifying thing is that I can well imagine you're not joking," he retorted, making her laugh again. With a wave, she headed for the front door. Moments later it softly closed behind her. Shaking his head at how she could always put him in a good mood and wondering yet again where she went and what she really did for a living, he finished tidying up and went to bed. She was certainly right that he needed the sleep. This case wasn't going to solve itself and he would have to maintain a clear head to get anywhere.

---

{Do you need any backup?}

{No, not at the moment. They're closing in on the sods, I'm certain they'll find them sooner or later. Probably sooner, knowing Harry and Ron. They're very good at what they do and very persistent too.}

{OK. When they do, are you planning on stepping in?}

{Only if I have to. But I'll be keeping an eye on them. I've got monitoring spells on both of them and several others too, so if anything goes wrong I can get there instantly. And I've got the BFG if I really need the firepower. Kevin insisted.}

{You of all people hardly need a weapon, but it's always good to have options. I understand why he's like that. He worries about his friends, Hermione. We all do. You're as much a part of the Family as anyone. Be careful, and look after your friends. I'd like to meet them one day.}

{You probably will. I want to see their faces when you do, with a camera ready.}

{We'll have to work out who to introduce them to first, in that case...}

{Quite. I'll keep you informed about what happens. I'm curious to find out where these people got the information they used to modify that ritual. Some of the math involved is definitely not locally derived, I'm certain. I recognize parts of it. Which leaves me wondering who else has visited in the past.}

{We're certainly not the only ones with the ability to travel between worlds, but I agree it's somewhat odd. That part of the multiverse doesn't have a lot of inter-reality travel as far as I know for a number of reasons. It's not like some places we've been.}

{No, true enough. I'm going to have to look into it, just in case there's some threat. I doubt there is, from what I could tell it's probably information that's been hidden in plain sight for centuries, so whoever brought it here is probably long dead. But why take chances?}

{Fair point. And just because it's a few centuries, it doesn't necessarily mean the people involved are dead at all. As you know.}

{Well, yes, I admit that's true. But there aren't many humans around these parts that can look forward to much more than a hundred and fifty years or so at most.}

{Yet.}

{That's still a long term plan. A lot of things here need to change before it's viable. We know what happens if you rush these things.}

{All too well. All right, thanks for updating me. Good luck. Say hi to your parents for me.}

{I will. They wanted to know when you were going to be in the area again, they were thinking about another meal some time.}

{My schedule is pretty full for the next… month or so. But we can probably arrange something after that.}

{Wonderful. I'll let them know. I'd better go now, though, I've had a long day and I still need to write up a report for Merico.}

{OK. Tell the crazy old man I'm looking forward to the next chess game.}

{All right. You really shouldn't keep teasing him about Churchmen playing games with demons, though. Someone might get annoyed sooner or later.}

{Hey, he started it! For a priest he's got a very weird sense of humor, and the most open mind I've come across in years.}

{I'm sure he likes you too, Taylor. I'll call again soon. Bye.}

{Bye, Hermione.}

---

Harry nudged Ron, then nodded discreetly towards the old wizard who was hobbling in their direction, grumbling audibly about the pointlessness of the young these days and how youth was wasted on the ungrateful little bastards. Even in the more than a little sketchy area they were currently inhabiting, he was having people glance at him and detour cautiously around him.

They waited for him to pass, both of them covertly watching the reflections in the shop window they were apparently browsing the contents of, then exchanged a look when he turned left and limped into a small alleyway a few doors down from their location. After a handful of seconds, they began moving slowly and naturally in that direction, discussing the weather and other random subjects as well as stopping every now and then to look into other shops. A minute or so passed until they were sure no one was either following or watching, then they both nipped into the same alley after the old man.

"You two are getting slow," a querulous voice snapped, making them turn and whip their wands out, then relax as they found the ancient wizard standing behind a pile of boxes to their rear.

"Had to make sure no one was following, didn't we?" Ron growled.

"Think I can't do that, boy?"

"I think you're getting too much into the role, myself," Harry chuckled. The grizzled and bewhiskered face in front of him suddenly smiled, then the old man straightened up. 'His' face flowed into a much more familiar and much more feminine one. Tonks grinned at them.

"You have to immerse yourself in the character to make it believable," she said in her normal voice. "Trust me, I'm a professional. I know what I'm doing."

"Sure you do," he snickered. She stuck her tongue out at him, then shrugged.

"Most of the time."

"Any luck?" Ron asked, looking both ways down the alley. They were some sixty feet in, around a couple of corners, but he was still on edge, as the other two were as well.

Tonks nodded. "Yeah. I found him. Got him good and drunk too, lightweight can't hold his fire-whiskey. But we're going to have to nab him and take him somewhere for proper questioning. He's definitely the right one, and he definitely knows something about Margrave's group. The guy went a very weird color when that name came up while we were talking about Devost, and shut up on the spot. Even drunk he didn't want to say anything."

"Did you manage to get the tracer on him?" Harry inquired.

"Of course I did," she scowled. "How long have I been doing this job? This isn't my first covert mission by a long, long way."

"Wonderful." Harry smiled at her. "You really should come and work for PWI, you know. Talent like yours could take you a long way in an up and coming company like ours."

She cocked her head a little and smirked at him, her hair briefly taking on her customary bright pink. "The Director would be furious if he heard you say that. He warned me not to listen to your temptations."

Harry winked. "I will tempt you again some other time, then."

Twitching at a faint sound, Tonks reached into her robes and pulled out a small device, checking it quickly. "He's on the move."

"Good." Harry glanced at Ron, who nodded. "Everything's in place. We just need to get him away from the crowds."

"All right." The woman quickly shifted her appearance back to the old wizard, bending down into a perfect pose of an ancient and partly crippled man. "Plan A it is," his creaky voice continued. "Let's see if this is the one that cracks this case."

"Give us two minutes lead, OK?"

'He' nodded, stepping back into the shadows of the tower of crates. Harry and Ron quickly disillusioned themselves, then hastened out back to the street, splitting up and going in opposite directions. A couple of minutes later the old wizard hobbled back out of the alley and headed off towards the next pub, entirely coincidentally bumping into someone staggering down the road reeking of alcohol. The much younger man nearly fell, caught himself on a lamp-post, turned to berate whoever had got in his way, and ended up in a drunken argument. Harry watched from a couple of hundred yards while the disguised Tonks managed to persuade her new acquaintance that 'he' knew a place that served much cheaper alcohol, both of them soon wandering off in a different direction.

Following at a distance as they turned down a side road, he waited for them to go into one of the most disreputable-appearing pubs he'd ever seen, then followed, dropping the disillusion spell on the way. None of the random passersby appeared to either notice or care, not surprising around these parts. People tended to stick to their own business for many reasons, self-preservation being the main one.

By the time he entered the pub, the old wizard and his younger drinking friend were nowhere to be seen. Catching the eye of the ratty looking bartender, he raised his eyebrows. The man made a discreet motion to a door at the back of the bar area as he turned to serve a patron. Walking over to the door without appearing to look around, although he was very aware of the scattering of other people in the place, Harry listened for a second, then opened it and slipped through.

"What kept you?" Tonks, now looking like her normal self again, asked as she looked around. She appeared satisfied with her work.

He shrugged, glancing at Ron who had preceded them all here. He had just finished lifting the unconscious form of their target into a chair. Making sure the door was firmly locked, both mechanically and with several spells, Harry went to help arrange their captive. "Good work, Tonks," he said when the man was bound in place and had been carefully searched. Both the wands he'd been carrying, as well as a number of rings and other items, were securely locked away in a small warded box.

"Like I said, I'm a professional," she smiled. "Snatch and grab routines are my bread and butter, along with covert investigations. I'm very good at what I do."

"Job offer is still on the table," he said mildly. She just looked at him, then sighed.

"You know, I see far more of Sirius in you sometimes than I should do."

He grinned. "What can I say? He's a bad influence."

"Tell me about it." She grinned back. "I'll have to stop by and see him next time he's in town."

"Better get on with this, sooner or later someone's going to notice him missing," Ron pointed out, having pulled a number of things out of his pockets and set them up on the wobbly table next to their captive. "You two can flirt some other time."

"We're not flirting." Both his companions spoke at the same time, then exchanged a look of humor.

He stared at them. "Of course you're not," he grumbled. "Tonks will flirt with anything, and we all know what Harry's like."

"To business, then," she snickered while Harry smiled a little. "Hand me that vial, legally I have to be the one to administer it. And get his mouth open."

Very soon, they'd administered the correct amount of truth potion and woken the captive up. He blinked blankly, looking at them. Picking up a notebook, Harry started asking questions while Tonks and Ron wrote down the answers.

---

"Lubachoinnich? Never heard of it." Neville looked puzzled. Harry spread a map out on his desk, pointing to a spot north of Inverness in the far north of Scotland.

"Right here. Tiny little place. The mundanes think it's only half a dozen cottages or something like that, but there's a biggish manor house off to the west about four miles with a little village near it, under aversion wards and so on. The usual stuff. The family that owned it died out completely back in the late seventeen hundreds, as far as we can tell, but the house and village are still there up in the hills. Our chap said that Devost found details of the place in an old book he acquired ten or eleven years ago, and managed to reset the wards to him."

"He also said that Devost sold the place about five years ago to an older man who matches the description of Aldous Margrave," Ron added. "Someone the fellow was very insistent he never wanted to meet again. He's apparently rather terrifying." He shook his head, adding, "As if we couldn't work that out from what he's done. In any case, it's looking very likely that this group is probably based there. Nothing around for miles. But what we could find out about it suggests it's capable of supporting dozens of people without any trouble."

"I think it's worth checking out at least," Tonks put in from where she was leaning on a filing cabinet listening. "We've tracked down everyone on Hermione's tame Cardinal's list except Devost himself, and everyone all of them pointed us at, and this is the only real clue we have. Other than this, the entire group is running completely dark, so it's not like we have many alternatives."

Leaning back in his chair the DMLE director considered the problem, looking at each of them in turn. "No other leads?"

"No." Harry shook his head, then paused. "Well, perhaps one. But it's a long shot. There's a bare chance that I know someone who might have more information. Assuming he'll talk to me."

"Who?" Neville asked curiously.

Harry sighed a little. "Draco Malfoy."

Peering at him with a raised eyebrow, the Director said, "How are you going to get him to even agree to talk to you, never mind tell you anything useful? He's not your biggest fan, you know."

Ron snickered, making Harry glare at him. "I'm well aware of that, Nev," he grunted. "Little blond tit. Never did like him."

"The feeling was entirely mutual, Harry," Ron smiled.

"It's not you liked him any more than I did," Harry told him with asperity. "In fact, I seem to remember that the day I met you, and him, you were the one to start things."

Ron rocked a hand from side to side. "I think it was more mutual, really. Although as I remember he started it."

"Hmm. Not how I recall it, but whatever. At least he grew up pretty sharpish when his father popped his clogs. To a point, anyway. He was still an irritating and arrogant little prick, but he stopped most of the deliberate provocation." Harry sighed again. "I can't really blame him for some of it. We weren't exactly nice to him either."

"Being nice to a Malfoy was usually a waste of time," Neville pointed out with a shake of his head. "They took it as a sign of weakness half the time, and a trick the other half. But I'd agree he did change after that, mostly for the better."

"He could hardly change for the worst without becoming a cold-blooded murderer like his father was," Tonks muttered. "Never liked that bastard. Bloody man should have been executed the first time he was caught."

"Agreed, but it's a moot point now and has been for years," Neville nodded. "You think Draco would have more information?"

"Cardinal Pisani did say that Devost visited the Malfoys every now and then and was distantly related. Perhaps Draco would know about that, and it might help to talk to him. Worth a try, anyway." Harry shrugged. "We have so little to go on and I really don't like walking into something like this blind. It's bad enough when we know for a fact that some cult is waiting for us. For all we know this is just an elaborate trap. Margrave isn't an idiot from what we've managed to find out and he seems to have a lot of resources."

"True." Neville pondered the situation for a while as they waited quietly. "All right. I agree it's worth talking to him. Although how you're going to do that I have no idea. It's not as if we have any legal leg to stand on at the moment, so I can't send Tonks with a warrant. And PWI doesn't technically have any authority in this sort of matter either. You're going to have to persuade him nicely or something of that nature." He looked amused as Harry frowned. "Somehow."

"We do know someone who could probably help," Ron suggested. Everyone looked at him. "I happen to know that Hermione actually gets on with Malfoy. More or less, at least as much as anyone does. Why, I have no idea, but they at least respect each other."

"That's… a valid idea, Ron," Harry nodded after a few seconds of thought. "You're right. I know she's spent some time talking to the Malfoys over the years. It's worth asking her if nothing else. Worst case she can't help and we're back where we started."

"All right." Neville sat up, picking up the paperwork they'd put on his desk and leafing through it. "Good work, all of you. I'll talk to the Minister and update her on the case. You talk to Hermione, see if she can get you a meeting with Mr Malfoy. Tonks, write up your final report on the interrogations and get it to me as soon as you can."

All three of them nodded. "Harry, stop trying to steal Tonks," the Director added casually.

Harry gave his cousin a hard look. "Why did you tell him?"

She grinned. "I didn't. You just did."

He put a hand on his face as Neville chuckled. "I mean it, I need her more than you do. Be polite and I'll let you borrow her again. Get back to me as soon as you have anything more."

With a shake of his head, Harry motioned to his partner and both of them got up and headed for the door. "You're getting sneaky in your old age, Nev," he complained as he left.

"Old age?! I'm the exact same bloody age you are, Potter!" Neville shouted as they left. A faint chuckle came back through the door before it swung closed, while Tonks started laughing.

---

"Try not to antagonize him, Harry."

"Would I do that?" Harry asked. Hermione gazed evenly at him, making his insouciant smile slowly fade. Eventually he nodded, sighing. "Fine. Take all the fun out of it."

"You're the one who wants his help, so at least pretend to be civilized," she commented with a small evil grin.

He stepped back, putting his hand on his chest in mock outrage. "Me? Uncivilized? What you think me am, savage?"

"Idiot." She glanced at her watch, then nodded. "All right. I'll go first. Please try, for once, to behave."

Harry looked at Ron who was watching them both with amusement. "She's so strict," he complained.

"She always has been, Harry. You know that."

With a sniff of annoyance they both knew meant she was suppressing a smile, Hermione walked over to the fireplace and tossed some floo powder into it. "Malfoy Manor," she commanded as the fire turned green. "Really must come up with something less ridiculous than this one day," he heard her add under her breath. He snickered, she'd always said that jumping into a fireplace to get anywhere was daft, and he tended to agree. Still, it worked.

A face appeared in the flames. "Oh, hello, Hermione," Narcissa Malfoy said once she'd looked around the room. "Mr Potter. Mr Weasley. You'd better come through, I suppose." Her face displayed controlled neutrality, although Harry was fairly sure she'd momentarily looked slightly pleased to see his friend. Her face disappeared and Hermione stepped into the flames, vanishing as it flared up. Ron and Harry repeated the process, soon finding themselves standing in the entrance-way to Malfoy Manor.

Harry looked quickly around, noticing that it didn't look any different from the single other time he'd been there years ago. Still overly elaborate, still showing off wealth in a manner he didn't personally find attractive. He much preferred his fairly modest flat, although he could certainly afford something bigger. There was just no real need for it at the moment.

"Draco is expecting you, he's in his study," Narcissa said to Hermione.

"I remember the way," she nodded.

"In that case I'll leave you to it, I have some letters to write." The older woman glanced at Harry and Ron, then leaned a little closer to the brunette. "Please try to keep your… friends… under control."

The corners of her mouth twitching, Hermione nodded soberly, causing Narcissa to look mildly approving for a moment. She straightened up, nodded to both men, then left. They heard her calling for one of the house elves moments later.

"It's this way," Hermione said, turning and pointing in the other direction. "Past the library, upstairs." She headed for the exit from the foyer, both the others falling in behind her.

"How on earth do you know your way around Malfoy Manor, Hermione?" Ron asked curiously.

"Because I've been here before, a number of times," she replied over her shoulder. "Obviously."

"It's not obvious at all, to be honest," Harry pointed out with a small frown. "Why would you be in Malfoy Manor?"

"To look through the library," she said, looking back at him with a roll of her eyes. There was an amused glint in them. "Again, obviously."

They headed up a flight of stairs at the end of the long corridor they'd just walked down, turning at the top to go back in the other direction. Their footsteps were almost silent on the thick carpet.

"You're doing this on purpose, aren't you?" Harry complained. She looked back and winked, then stopped at an elaborately carved door and knocked a couple of times before opening it.

Harry exchanged a look with Ron, both of them shrugged, and they followed. "Hello, Draco," their friend said, greeting the familiar ice-blond man who stood up and came around an enormous desk to meet her.

"Hermione," he said, almost smiling momentarily. He shook her hand, then turned to the two men. "Potter. Weasley. Still sneaking around chasing idiots?" Draco had a definite smirk when he said that, one they were long familiar with.

"We are indeed," Harry smiled broadly, nodding. "So many idiots, so little time. And so much money in catching them."

"Which is mostly going on repairing the damage you two cause from what I hear," his old school nemesis commented with a certain amount of snide humor. "I'm genuinely surprised you can turn a profit. Or that Director Longbottom hires you rather than arrests you."

"Draco," Hermione said softly, causing him to look at her. "Be nice."

He sighed faintly. "You never let me have any fun, Hermione," he complained. Glancing at the other two, he added, "She's so strict, have you noticed?"

"We were saying that not ten minutes ago," Harry agreed. He was still trying to work out why the man was so mellow, considering that the last time they'd met in public it had ended up with a whole series of fairly imaginative insults on both sides. Draco's wife had ended up dragging him away while lecturing him on how to behave in public.

They shared a look of understanding as Hermione folded her arms and tapped her fingers on her elbows while looking at them. "Shall we dispense with the dubious humor and get down to business?" she asked when they stepped back simultaneously. Yet again, Harry was impressed with how intimidating she could look when she wanted to.

It was a gift, definitely.

"I suppose that is the sensible thing," Draco said, waving to a set of expensive chairs around a table on the other side of the room. "Please sit. Coffee? Tea?"

"Coffee, please," Ron replied.

"Same for me." Harry took a chair, both his friends doing the same.

"And tea for Hermione, as usual," Draco said. "Kitty!"

A muted pop heralded the appearance of a house elf, who looked around at them with huge eyes, then concentrated on her master. "Three coffees, and Miss Granger's usual, please."

"Yes, Master Draco," the elf said quietly, and disappeared again with another faint pop. Ron and Harry exchanged a look. They remembered how Draco's father had treated house elves, and it was nothing even remotely like his son did based on what they'd just seen. He was almost respectful, more so than most wizards were by a long way.

He noticed them looking at him with surprise, pulling the last chair out and sitting in it. "I am not my father, Potter," he said by way of explanation. "It was pointed out to me rather forcefully quite some time ago how one could get much better service in many places in life by being polite rather than rude." He was carefully not looking at Hermione, Harry noticed. "Remarkably enough, it turns out to be true. A lesson my father never taught me. Perhaps, thinking back, one he didn't know himself." He shrugged. "It would go some way to explaining a few decisions he made that I have issue with even now."

A silver tray with the coffee and tea on it appeared in the middle of the table, completely silently, a smaller one with some snacks on it coming into existence next to the first tray moments later. "Kitty does anticipate my wishes far better than I would have believed," Draco added, standing to serve Hermione with her tea. He offered both the men their coffee too, then sat down with his own. "Please help yourselves to the food."

All four were silent for a little while, Ron eating a couple of sandwiches after looking slightly suspiciously at them until Hermione took one with a very faint sigh. After that he seemed entirely fine with the things. "So. Hermione told me you wished to talk to me, and persuaded me I should allow this." Draco leaned back and watched them over his coffee cup, cradling it in both hands. "We're here. I'm listening."

Putting his cup down, Harry pulled out a notebook and pen, putting them on the table. "We're investigating a very nasty case for the DMLE at the moment," he began. "Multiple murders, torture, blood sacrifice..."

"Another death cult," Draco noted as he trailed off.

"Yes."

"And this concerns me how?"

"Aside from the fact that possibly over a hundred people have so far died, you mean?" Harry met the eyes of the other man evenly.

"Aside from that. I don't, after all, know any of them."

"Very cold. Very Malfoy."

Draco shrugged with a small smirk.

"A name came up. One we're led to believe may be familiar to you?"

"Oh?"

"Aubin Devost. Our information is that he's a distant relative, and may well have been in this house on a number of occasions."

Harry didn't miss the slight twitch Draco made at the name. He glanced at Ron, who had clearly spotted it too. Apparently content to let Harry do the talking, the red-head merely waited.

"Devost. Hmm. Yes, I do vaguely recognize that name from somewhere." Draco leaned forward and snagged a sandwich, taking a bite from it and chewing contemplatively. "I can't think quite where, though."

Harry looked at Hermione with a long-suffering gaze. She peered back at him, then nodded sideways at Draco as if to say 'Go on.' So he did.

"Possibly in connection with the name Aldous Margrave?"

Draco went completely, utterly still, his sandwich half raised for another bite. There was an uncomfortable silence for nearly twenty seconds, until he swallowed, then put the half-eaten food down on his saucer. "Could you repeat that?"

"Aldous Margrave."

Another silence, then the man closed his eyes. "Oh, fuck," he said very quietly. Harry was almost shocked by the comment, since in all the years he'd known the fellow, he'd never actually heard him swear.

"You know that name."

"Unfortunately, yes, I do. And if that lunatic is involved in anything, it's bad." Draco opened his eyes and met Harry's, who was startled by the worry he saw there. "I thought he was in prison. Or dead. I was hoping for dead, to be honest."

"He got out about eight years back and vanished."

"And entirely coincidentally people started disappearing, I suppose," Draco muttered. "Probably muggles."

Hermione cleared her throat.

"Mundanes then." The blond glared at her. "Although why you insist on that name..."

"Muggle is deliberately provocative, racist, and demeaning, as I have explained," Hermione said firmly.

"Yes, yes, fine. Whatever. Margrave. Merlin help us all." Draco shook his head. "And Devost is involved with him?"

"As far as we can establish, yes," Ron nodded. "From what we can tell he's the source of some rare books that may have been used in the rituals they came up with."

"That doesn't surprise me," Draco mused out loud. "That man was always much too interested in Dark rituals. He even made Father nervous, at times. And I'm positive that at least one of our own more disturbing books vanished the last time he visited. No real loss in a sense, it's probably best gone, if it wasn't concerning who took it." He looked up from staring into his empty coffee cup. "All right. Tell me more about what you have on Devost and I'll see if I can fill in the gaps. But in all honesty I don't know all that much about him. He's something like a fourth cousin on Father's side of the family, I believe. He visited a few times, the last one being… Oh, probably about fifth year of Hogwarts, I think. Some time before… it… happened."

Harry opened his notebook and scribbled down a few words.

"From what we've heard, I'm slightly surprised that he didn't join Riddle's lot," Ron commented.

Draco shrugged. "He wasn't interested in that sort of rubbish, really. Dark, yes, but not in the way that Riddle was. He valued his own skin far too much to get involved in the blood wars. Ran away to America and hid there until Riddle was safely dead, as far as I know. He only visited occasionally after that, probably mainly to steal books from private libraries. He was… acquisitive."

"That fits what we know," Harry nodded.

"Margrave, though..." Draco thought for a moment, and shivered slightly. "I know very little about him but Father once mentioned in passing that he was the sort to make Voldemort nervous. And didn't think the Dark Lord went far enough. Personally I'm glad I don't know much about the man."

Flipping pages, Harry stopped on the list of questions he, Ron, and Hermione had hashed out the night before. Looking up at Draco, he said, "All right. This is what we currently have..."

When they left over two hours later, none of the three were feeling particularly happy, but Harry at least was pleased with the results. They were a step closer, he could feel it. Neville would want to know about this as soon as possible.

They'd left a pensive Draco Malfoy staring into his fireplace, apparently thinking about certain relatives without much love.

---

"One day you really have to tell me how you've managed to meet all these people," Harry said with a smile, watching as Hermione prepared some sort of stir-fry with significant skill. She shook the wok around, then put it back on the burner, tossing the contents with a wooden spoon. "You seem to have friends in strange places, and the strangest of all is Draco Malfoy. How did you ever end up on friendly terms with him?"

She looked back at him, then returned her attention to what she was doing. "Draco is an intelligent man despite his early problems," she remarked softly, adding a pinch of a spice Harry didn't recognize. "When his father passed on, so horribly, it awakened a certain level of common sense he'd lacked up until then, I think. He certainly changed, as you'd expect. Over the years we've corresponded a number of times, and I've visited them as well. As I said, I requested the chance to go through his family library a couple of years ago. It took considerable persuasion but I persisted. He gave in eventually." She glanced back again, grinning briefly. "They usually do."

Harry shook his head in wonder. "I can believe it, somehow."

Pouring some sauce she'd prepared beforehand into the wok, a great cloud of steam rising with a loud sizzle, she briskly stirred the thing for a few seconds, then turned the gas down to allow it to simmer. "Hand me that jar on the counter, please," she requested without looking, motioning behind her. He did so.

When the brunette had finished mixing up another saucepan, this one full of noodles, she turned to him. "It'll be about ten minutes."

"Smells delicious," he said appreciatively.

"A good friend taught me this one," she smiled, leading the way back into the living room. Both of them sat, picking up the glasses of wine she'd poured a little earlier. "My job does seem to involve a lot of libraries," Hermione noted after a few sips. "I get around. And you meet the most fascinating people in libraries, too."

"Like a cardinal in the Vatican Library?" he chuckled.

"Quite. Merico is a nice man, and terribly smart."

"Is he a wizard? Or a squib or something?"

"No, he's entirely non-magical," she replied. "But I would pit his knowledge of magic against almost any wizard I've ever met. If he was a magical, he'd easily qualify for at least two masteries, possibly more. And his knowledge of magical history is second to none. He could easily teach at Hogwarts, for example, aside from minor issues like being mundane. Or the fact that the true history of magic would be… unpalatable… to the British magical world."

Harry looked strangely at her. "What do you mean?"

She sighed slightly, glancing at him. "Much of what we were taught in school is misleading at best, and a total untruth in several places. People tilt the records to support their own positions, of course. The saying that history is written by the winners isn't wrong, by and large. And the magical culture, certainly in this country, and to one degree or another everywhere else, is both paranoid and insular. There are some good reasons for that, but there are a lot more that are… debatable."

Hermione shrugged. "It's far too long winded to get into now. Let's just say that the official histories leave a lot of things out and misrepresent several of the things they left in. One day I'll explain in more detail, but right now it's just a distraction."

"Cardinal Pisani did mention something of that nature," Harry mused. "I think Neville was very curious about it too."

"Merico would happily talk his ear off about it if he got the chance," she giggled. "Although I think poor Neville's head might explode. I doubt very much that he'd have been brought up to believe quite a few things he'd learn." She checked her watch, then stood up. "Will you set the table, Harry? I'll be right back."

When they were sitting down at her small table eating, Harry nodded in satisfaction. "This is delicious. Your friend knows some good recipes."

"She literally wrote a book on it," Hermione smiled. "Two, actually. Both were best sellers some years back."

"I'd like to see them one day," he commented.

"I'll see if I can get a copy of them at some point," she told him. They ate in silence for a while, until Harry sighed.

"Problem?"

"Just wondering what's going to be waiting for us in Lubachoinnich," he muttered. "I still can't help thinking it's a trap."

"It might be," she said calmly. "But if you know it's a trap, you can spring it and get useful information on the trapper. It's only bad when you walk into one without your eyes open. Draco gave you enough extra information that you've managed to prove that Margrave was up there recently. He may well still be. His cult is definitely based in the area, that old manor is the most likely place, and you also know a number of other possibilities are now off the table. Everything points towards it being their base. Having looked at everything you've dug up, I'd put it at better than ninety percent probable."

"Neville agrees, as does Minister Bones," Harry nodded. "I'm just worried about that ten percent."

"Of course you are. It would be foolish not to be. But you're going in with your eyes open and as much equipment as the DMLE can provide. Fifty trained Aurors, including Tonks, you and Ron…" She smiled at him. "There are no more than thirty of the cultists, so I'd put your chances of complete success as very high."

"I certainly hope so," he said after a few more mouthfuls. "Hate to go all that way to fail. Or die."

"Don't die, then. Simple enough advice that even you should be able to follow, Harry." She grinned impishly at him as he rolled his eyes in humor. "Oh, that reminds me. I'll be right back."

She got up and left the room, coming back a little later with Crookshanks following her. The large and amazingly ugly cat jumped up on a chair and fixed Harry with an unnerving green-eyed stare that felt slightly disapproving. This was not unusual. Harry sometimes thought the animal felt he was a bad influence on his human.

Hermione put a box about the size of a load of bread on the table next to his plate and sat again. "That may help."

Putting his fork down, Harry picked up the box, finding it to be heavier than he expected. "What is it?" he asked as he found how to open it and did precisely that. Inside were a number of spheres about the size of snooker balls, covered in dozens of runes.

"Improved anti-portkey and anti-apparition wardstones, combined with a general purpose ward cracker," she said with a small smile. "Something I've been experimenting with for a while. They're similar to the ones Fred and George came up with, but better. They should block all incoming and outgoing portkeys and apparition for anyone not authorized, and at the same time take down any other wards in the area. In theory if you set them up around the target zone and activate them, you will be able to come and go and they won't, and it will knock out all their existing wards in one shot."

Harry stared at the half-dozen spheres in shock, then raised his eyes to his friend's. She was looking pleased at his reaction. "Holy Merlin's nutsack," he breathed in amazement. "You came up with these yourself?"

"I did. As a side project from some research I was doing. The idea came to me one day and I made a few to test. They seemed to work, but I had limited time to properly experiment. I can't guarantee how long they'll work for, since these are only prototypes. They should be good for at least half an hour though."

Harry put the box down and reached in, picking up one of the oddly heavy gray metallic spheres, rolling in around in his fingers. He didn't recognize any of the runes at all, the symbols peculiarly hard to focus on. "Amazing. How do I use them?"

"It's simple enough. You'll need to place them evenly around the area you want to ward, which can be up to half a mile across. That little pendant in there is the activation unit. There's a manual as well. Make sure you read it! Always read the manual." She grinned. "A friend of mine is constantly annoyed that people don't read the manual, so don't let me down. It tells you how to key people into it, and how to turn it on and off."

"You are truly something, Mione," he said after a few seconds, shaking his head slowly. He put the spherical device back and closed the box. "Thank you. This will be an enormous help."

"Sure you don't want me to come with you?" she asked, before putting the last of her stir-fry in her mouth.

He shook his head firmly. "As smart as you are, I'm the one with combat experience. You're a researcher, not a fighter."

"If you say so, Harry," she replied calmly. "Make sure you come back safely. If I have to come and rescue you I'll be quite irritated."

Reaching out, he patted her hand comfortingly. "We'll have to avoid that, then. No one wants to see an angry Hermione Granger."

"Not twice, certainly," she giggled. "Finish your food, I have mint ice cream for dessert."

He finished eating remarkably quickly.

---

Late that night, Hermione looked in the mirror in her bedroom, turning from side to side. "Still fits," she nodded, glancing at Crookshanks who was watching her alertly from her bed. "What do you think?"

"Meow," he said evenly.

"Of course." She ran her hands down her sides, feeling the rough surface of the leather. "Hopefully we won't need to go after them, but just in case..."

Walking over to the bed, she easily picked up the huge energy rifle that was lying there, activating it with a flick of a finger. It hummed faintly, a deep blue light somewhere deep inside the square barrel illuminating a patch of ceiling as she held it upright and checked the display on the top. Nodding, she turned it off and put it down again.

"Kevin is probably right, better to have it and not need it," she smiled to her cat, who yawned at her.

Shaking her head good-naturedly, she packed the weapon away, then undressed. Shortly she was under the covers, Crookshanks a familiar heavy weight leaning on her back just above her tail.

She fell asleep quickly, hoping that her friends would be successful and safe.

---

"All right. Listen up, you lot!" Tonks looked around at the robed Aurors standing about the place. "Our target is just over that hill. We have positive ID of twenty-three people, and we suspect there are up to six more on site. This bunch is particularly nasty. They make the last death cult look fairly harmless, if that gives you an idea, and you know what they were like."

"Mincemeat, after Potter and Weasley got through with them," someone called. Beside her Harry sighed audibly and Ron mumbled something rude. She shot them a glance, grinning a little.

"Shut up, Gibson," she said with good humor. "As I was saying, they're violent, deadly, and probably very skillful. You all have the information we gathered on the cult. Aldous Margrave is the priority target. He is to be killed on sight. The Minister signed the execution order this morning, so don't hesitate. Be assured he won't. If you can take prisoners from the rest, without putting yourself at risk, do it, but if there's any danger, shoot to kill. This is a proscribed death cult under the Act of 2001, every member in it can expect the Veil. And they'll know it. They have nothing to lose, we do."

"So don't lose," Harry put in. She nodded firmly.

"Exactly. Everyone is keyed into the anti-transport wards, so as soon as they go up, the cult is trapped. They'll probably work that out right quick so expect the fireworks to start almost instantly. Whatever it is that these crazy bastards are planning must not happen. We don't know for sure what it is, but it would be bad. Or worse. We go in, we kill Margrave, any cultists who get in the way, grab anyone we can, and get out. Then we blow the manor. Orders are nothing is to be left other than a smoking hole in the ground."

"Good thing we have Potter with us, then!" the same wag shouted. Harry gave him a middle finger, which made everyone laugh.

"Yeah, it probably is. OK, any questions?" She looked around, a sea of now-intent and serious faces looking back at her. "Good. You all know your assigned places. Get ready, we go as soon as the wards go down."

As one, the entire team nodded. "Stand ready. Wands out."

There was a ripple of motion, the Aurors separating into groups of five and moving to all face outwards, wands ready. "Do it, Harry."

Harry pulled the chain around his neck up to gain access to the control pendant for the system Hermione had given him the previous night. It had completely changed their battle plans in one shot, very unexpectedly, but they'd quickly rolled it into the planned operation. He glanced at Ron, who was holding his wand firmly and braced for action, then Tonks who was doing the same. "Three… Two… One..." he counted, before tapping the pendant with his wand. Everyone felt a wave of unusual magic pass through them.

"GO!" Tonks shouted. With a fusillade of sharp cracks, every person in the small clearing in the woods vanished.

---

"Get down!" Harry yelled, knocking Ron to the ground just in time while he snapped off a shot from his wand. The cultist who had somehow managed to sneak up on them despite the raging battle dropped with a scream that died away in a gurgle of blood. A simple piercing spell was perfect for this sort of operation since it was literally point and shoot, and completely lethal if your aim was good. No sane person used anything fancy in a real battle. Reductos, piercing and cutting spells, and AKs were the order of the day.

And there were plenty of all of those flying about the place. When the cultists had realized they were under assault, they'd rallied appallingly quickly and well, barricading themselves into the manor and putting up some sort of warding none of the attackers had ever seen. It didn't last long each time, Hermione's experimental system dropping it nearly as fast as they could put it up, but they seemed able to reestablish it over and over again. Each time it went down everyone fired everything they had at the defenders, who returned the favor with great enthusiasm.

Every now and then one of them appeared from nowhere, doing his or her best to kill everyone in sight. So far they'd hadn't lost anyone, more by luck than anything else, but they had over a dozen with wounds of one level of severity or other, some very nasty. Harry had a large scorch mark down his right arm, and several cuts from near misses on his face and torso. Ron was limping due to a hastily patched hole punched through his left calf by a lucky shot from some distance.

The cultists had lost approximately half their number, but the remainder weren't showing any signs of giving up. If anything, they were getting more and more serious, and they'd started as fairly bloodthirsty.

"Thanks, mate," Ron huffed, rolling over and looking at the corpse of the man who'd nearly taken his head off. "That was close."

"This is awfully familiar," Harry agreed, ducking behind a rocky outcropping as a number of reductos zipped overhead and sprayed them both with shrapnel as they blew holes in the hillside. The manor was over a hundred yards away, right at the limit of spell range, but getting any closer was almost impossible due to the sheer intensity of spellfire coming from it. "Why do we always seem to end up hiding while people shoot at us?"

"Lucky, maybe?" Ron asked, peeking around the rocks they were lurking behind. He fired a couple of shots, taking careful aim, and was rewarded by a distant scream. "Not the good sort of luck, of course," he added. "How many of these sods are there? I thought we'd estimated only about thirty, and we've taken at least sixteen down so far without making much difference."

They both spun at the sound of someone approaching, wands up, then lowered them when they saw it was Tonks. She was covered in blood but seemed intact. Looking down at herself as they stared while she shuffled into place between them, she said, "Not mine. Well, most of it isn't."

"I'm beginning to think that fifty Aurors wasn't enough," Harry growled, sticking his head up then hastily retracting it. "These bastards are far too good shots for my liking."

"Hindsight, eh, Harry?" she quipped, quickly transfiguring a small rock into a mirror and holding it above her head and the rocks. Inspecting it, she sighed. "Damn it. They can't get away, but we don't have enough people to force our way past the defenses without risking losing most of them. This is a lot more resistance than they should have been able to rally."

"I think they might be tapping into whatever it was they've been making with all the sacrifices," Ron said darkly. "Can't you feel it? Something really horrible is happening in there, and it's been getting steadily worse for the last twenty minutes."

They exchanged glances. The red-head was right. The oppressive aura that everyone had noticed had been intensifying since they'd arrived, and was making their bones itch. Whatever was in there was nearing completion, they could sense that. And it wasn't going to be good, whatever it was.

"I've called for backup, but they're going to have to come in the hard way," Tonks replied. "With the anti-transport wards up, even brooms aren't working. I've seen two of the cultists try to make a run for it that way. They didn't make it." She smirked a little. "Hermione's work is… comprehensive."

"She didn't mention some of the things it does," he agreed. "And if we turn it off, they'll get away."

"Yeah. So we have to finish this here. And if she was right, we might only have another ten minutes or so before it fails." Harry checked the pendant he was still wearing. It was intermittently warming up slightly then cooling, and the pattern of runes on it indicated it was under heavy load. Even so, it didn't show imminent failure based on the manual he'd read carefully.

"We should be good for now, but I have no idea how long for," he said.

Another cultist appeared some fifty feet away, shouting something incomprehensible and furious. Three spells hit him simultaneously. When the echos died down, there was nothing left except for a large splash mark and a pair of smoking boots.

"Why are the boots always left behind?" Ron mused.

The other two shrugged. It was one of life's mysteries.

"No sign of Margrave yet," Tonks said, turning back to her mirror. "Or Devost. They must be inside somewhere. I think Ron's right, something is building up. I wish I knew what it was."

"Something we're not going to enjoy," Ron muttered. "Ten galleons says they're summoning a demon or something."

"I bloody well hope not," Tonks growled. "That's all we'd need. Death cults are bad enough without demonic aid."

The sensation of imminent doom kept increasing. The volume of firing from the manor did as well. "Holy shit, how are they doing that?" Harry yelped as dozens of spells roared past.

"No idea," Ron shouted over the sound of a volley of explosions. Screams on the other side of the manor could be heard echoing around the area as someone died horribly.

"Damn it," Tonks yelled, leaning around the boulder and firing a massively overpowered blasting spell that splashed uselessly against the on-again-off-again wards around the manor. "We're going to get slaughtered here, even without whatever the hell they're up to."

"You could probably do with some help, then," a voice said from a few yards behind them. All three spun in shock, reflexively firing at the figure that had suddenly appeared there.

They gaped as it silently vanished before any of the spells hit, reappearing a few feet to the side in a manner entirely unlike any apparition they'd ever seen. It simply blinked from one place to another without any fuss.

"No need for that, I'm a friend," the person said with a note of mild humor in its voice.

Or rather, her voice. It was clearly female, dressed in form-fitting blue leather that Harry recognized as some form of extremely high quality dragon skin, although he didn't know which particular species it was. She was of medium height, slim, and had of all things a mask over her eyes.

He stared. Then he looked at Tonks and Ron, who looked back, appearing as bewildered as he felt. All three of them went back to inspecting the mystery person, who smiled at them.

Harry couldn't work out how a simple mask over the eyes rendered her face entirely unrecognizable, but it did. When he looked away, he couldn't for the life of him picture this new arrival at all. It was the weirdest thing he'd ever come across. Not really an aversion ward, he had no trouble looking at her, he simply couldn't retain any details.

"Who the hell are you?" Tonks demanded.

"Like I said, a friend," their visitor said with a chuckle. "Call me… Agent. That'll do for now."

"All right, Agent," Tonks said with heavy sarcasm. "How did you get here? And what are you doing here in the first place?"

"Ah, how I got here is classified, and what I'm doing here is helping you with your cult problem," 'Agent' replied in calm serious tones. Harry felt subconsciously that there was something familiar about her but he couldn't put his finger on what, or why for that matter. It was driving him nuts.

"And how are you going to go about doing that?" Tonks asked. The mystery woman opened her mouth to reply, then blinked out of existence again as a spell went through where she'd been. Reappearing ten feet away she made a gesture at the cultist who had snuck up on them all and who had just appeared in the rocks up on the hillside twenty yards away.

There was a brief glimpse of a rotating circle of weird symbols that flashed into existence around her hand, then the cultist, the rocks surrounding him, and several cubic yards of hillside simply vanished. They gaped at the crater that was all that remained, then looked at her.

"Annoying, aren't they?" she said lightly.

"How the..." Ron ran out of words, his mouth hanging open.

"Magic, of course," 'Agent' replied. "Not your kind though."

While they were processing that, a wave of what Harry could only call 'freezing evil' rolled up the hillside from the manor. Even years later he couldn't describe it better than that, nor could anyone who was present at the time. All of them looked to see the entire building was glowing a dull red color, brighter light coming from the windows. The spell-fire had died away abruptly, the defenders suddenly stopping and the attackers diving for cover in the face of this new threat.

"Damn. Looks like they completed whatever it was they were doing," 'Agent' sighed. She walked past them to stand on a small rise inspecting the scene below them. From this vantage, Harry was startled to see she had a long muscular lizard-like tail protruding from the base of her spine, the end resting on the ground right now. It was scarlet on top, and gold along the underside, colors that made him instantly think of his Hogwarts days.

He, Tonks, and Ron shared a look of confusion. Who or what was this person?

"We don't have long," she said, turning back to them. "The energy buildup isn't going to stop. Call your people, get them to pull back immediately."

"What do you..." Tonks began. 'Agent' slashed her hand through the air, cutting her off.

"Now! Don't argue, just do it. Get them out of there."

After a long moment of staring at this odd person, Tonks nodded. She pulled out a small token and tapped it with her wand, then lifted it to her lips. "All Aurors, fall back to start position immediately."

They heard dozens of cracks echo around the whole valley for a few seconds as the remaining Aurors apparated out. When it stopped, 'Agent' nodded in satisfaction. "Thank you. Now, let's stop this getting out of hand."

"How are you planning on doing that?" Ron asked, half standing to peer over the protection of their collection of rocks. The manor house was glowing more brightly and radiating a horrific sensation that made them feel like cold grease was being poured down their backs. Harry shuddered, and he could see Tonks do the same.

"Destroy the manor," the part-reptilian woman replied. "And the surrounding area. More or less what you were planning, but more thorough. Stay in cover." She made a motion and was suddenly holding the biggest fucking gun Harry had ever seen. It was nearly as large as she was, and must have weighed at least a hundred pounds. Even so, she held it as if it was weightless. Yet again, he just stared. Tonks made a small sound like a mouse being stepped on, and Ron froze.

The woman prodded something on the weapon, which caused a couple of small displays to light up, a series of points of light to run down the massive barrel, and a low, ominous hum to start. All three of them exchanged glances, then shuffled discreetly a little further away.

Whatever that thing was, it was clearly very, very dangerous. You didn't need to know about technology to realize that.

'Agent' aimed the massive weapon carefully, peering through a sight on the side. "Ah. There they are," she muttered in a low voice. More loudly, she warned, "Cover your ears," making an adjustment to a control on the thing. They barely had time to slap their hands over their ears before she pulled the trigger.

Even with their ears covered, the noise was appalling. A deep, rumbling roar like a mundane jet engine crossed with a bolt of lightning, it was so loud he could feel it in his chest. The visuals were even more impressive. An actinic beam of violet light, so bright it looked solid and at least six inches across, formed at the muzzle and linked it to the manor. He snapped his head around in time to see it penetrate the remaining wards like they weren't there, do exactly the same to the manor itself, and disappear into the interior. Moments later the beam stopped, but the light show didn't.

Purple-white light radiated from every window in the building, and a moment later a huge fireball of the same unnatural color roiled up through where the roof had been. Almost gracefully the building came apart, small fragments rising in an expanding cloud hundreds of feet into the air, then arcing over to head back down.

'Agent' made a quick motion and a glowing dome of light formed around them just as the first pieces of shrapnel arrived. Tonks, Harry, and Ron covered their heads as rock fragments rained down, bouncing off the dome with a gonging sound like it was solid metal. The tailed woman simply stood and watched until the shower of former manor stopped nearly a minute later.

"Holy fucking Morgana's tits what the hell was THAT?!" Tonks screamed when the sound finally ceased. "What did you do?"

"Stopped them destroying all life in the UK," the woman replied, not looking away from the crater. She scanned the remains carefully for a while. "Best to be sure," she added in the end, making the gun go back to wherever it had come from in the first place. The dome of light disappeared with a faint plink sound and she took a few steps forward. Raising her hands, she made a series of motions, glowing symbols orbiting them, then pointed at the house with both hands. "Singularity," she whispered almost inaudibly.

Harry watched in astonishment as an area encompassing the entire foundations of where the manor had been, in a perfect circle some fifty yards in diameter, suddenly contracted towards the middle just too fast to follow the motion visually. A loud thump rolled over them, making him think that whatever it was had also included the air above it, the affected zone being spherical. The remains of the manor, the basement, some outbuildings, and the ground itself, disappeared into nothingness in under a second. All that was left was an intolerably bright pinprick of weirdly black light that winked out moments later.

The oppressive air that had flooded the area since they'd arrived vanished. Complete silence fell, broken by faint birdsong from high above.

"And that's that." 'Agent' nodded in satisfaction, her hands on her hips, as she surveyed the vast crater that was the only thing to mark the place an enormous house had been. Aside from a few small sheds, one of which was perfectly cut in half right on the edge of the hole. She turned back to them, smiling faintly. "No more cult. Job done."

"Who or what are you?" Tonks yelled at the top of her voice. "How did you do that? What did you do?"

"I'm sorry, but I can't really answer that. Let's just say I was in the area and saw a problem that needed solving." She walked back and knelt down next to Harry, inspecting his wound. "Let's see that burn." Gently lifting his arm, she rotated it. He hissed in pain, now that the adrenaline was wearing off. "Not too bad." Reaching into a pocket in her leather suit, she produced a small box, popping the lid off one handed. Taking out one of the small bone-colored things that it was full of, without ceremony she pressed it to the bare skin on the back of his hand.

"Hey!" he yelped, having been too surprised by her actions to react quickly enough to stop it. She released him as his hand went numb. "What did you do? What was that?"

"Quick healer," the woman explained. Which didn't really explain anything.

"What the hell is… a..." He trailed off even as he was reaching for his wand, feeling the pain abruptly simply stop. Looking down, he watched open-mouthed as his arm healed in seconds, new healthy skin replacing the blistered and reddened mess that had been there moments before. "How..."

"They work very fast," 'Agent' noted with a small smile. "Here. Enough for all your people. They'll heal anything, but if the patient is seriously wounded they'll need a lot to eat afterwards to replace biomass. Just put them on exposed skin and press until they make a sound." She dropped the closed box into his lap and stood up, her tail lazily waving from side to side in a manner that reminded him of a contented cat.

"Well, I need to go. Nice to meet you all," the woman said pleasantly. "We might meet again if things get out of hand."

"You're not going anywhere, I have a lot of questions to ask," Tonks, who had been staring at Harry's newly healed arm with Ron, suddenly said, pointing her wand at 'Agent.'

"Sorry, I really have to be somewhere else," her target said. As Tonks raised her wand, the woman with the tail smirked slightly, saluted them with a flick of a finger to her brow and silently vanished as mysteriously as she'd arrived.

Slowly lowered her wand, Tonks stared, then slumped. "The Director is never going to believe this," she moaned.

"Who was that masked woman?" Ron asked in befuddled tones. All three of them looked at each other, then stood up to inspect the crater.

"I have absolutely no idea," Harry finally sighed. "None whatsoever." He looked at the box in his hand, before turning to his companions. "I suppose we'd better go and get the others, then tell Neville what happened."

"He's never going to believe it," Tonks said again, sounding both enormously confused and very irritated. "Oh, Merlin, the reports! This is going to be worse than clearing up after you, Potter."

"Hey!" Harry looked insulted.

"It's probably his fault in the first place," Ron suggested, smiling a little for the first time in a while.

"Oi! It's not my fault!" Harry snapped. "I have no sodding idea who that was, or where she came from. Or how she did… that!" He pointed at where the manor had been rather indignantly.

"Hmm. Yes, I guess we probably can blame it on him, Ron," Tonks said thoughtfully, also looking at the giant hole in the ground. "After all, this is more or less what normally happens at the end of a PWI operation. Just a little larger than usual."

"Prats," Harry muttered, shaking his head. Sometimes he wondered about his friends.

At least Hermione would understand it wasn't his fault. Whatever the hell had happened…

---

"How did things go, Harry?" His best and definitely-not-going-to-blame-him-for-mysterious-women-with-tails-and-insanely-big-guns friend asked as he stumbled into her flat and slumped on the sofa. She had, with her usual impeccable timing, already got a cup of coffee waiting for him. He took it with grateful hands and drank most of it in one go.

"I've had a very weird day, Hermione," he sighed.

She sat beside him, Crookshanks jumping onto her lap and curling up. The cat fixed his eyes on Harry's face.

"Tell me about it," she urged.

So he did.

Even when he finally got to bed, he couldn't shake the feeling that her damn cat had been grinning at him the entire time.

Bloody cat. He was very glad he had an owl.

Looking over at where Hedwig was dozing on her perch, he smiled faintly, then fell asleep. He didn't notice the owl open her eyes, look at him, make a small sound that gave the impression of amusement, and settle down again.