Obligatory disclaimer: All the characters, world building, and story beats here that don't belong to JK Rowling belong to Jim Butcher (or their associated media empires).
This is the fourth and final story in the Born in Fiendfyre series. Please check my profile for the completed previous year stories, or this one will likely be hard to follow.
"Your stepmom is going to kill me."
Mathilda and I had just finished a mid-July showing of The Crow, which had been out for a few weeks, at a cinema not far from Remus' house. Well, I guess it was our house now. My girlfriend and I were renting the place from Remus Lupin—famous teen lit novelist, Hogwarts defense against the dark arts professor, and secret werewolf—with our friends Penelope Clearwater and Percy Weasley. The large suburban home in High Wycombe had two things going for it: access to muggle amenities, and a fidelius charm that kept dark wizards from finding me. It was a bargain at twice the price.
But right now, a few miles from our new rental home, all I could think, watching the brutal movie of supernatural murder, was that I'd told Mathilda's uncle that, based on the comic, it probably wouldn't be too bad for her baby brothers to watch. But it was very violent.
"I thought it was romantic!" Mathilda disagreed, as we walked through the lobby of the local theater. "If we got murdered by bad guys, you'd come back to avenge me!"
"I think I already did," I told her, quietly, my arm draped across her shoulders. Back in the spring, we'd been kidnapped by dark wizards in a (successful) bid to restore their lich of a dark lord to some form of life. In the process, she'd been dropped off a cliff, I was briefly worried that she had died, and I had technically died myself for a few seconds after the bad guy came back and killed me.
I got better. Mathilda had been responsible.
Between Lord Voldemort and his many minions, all seeking us for the affront of escaping from their death trap and destroying three of his get-out-of-death-free cards on the way out, we probably shouldn't be taking in a movie a couple of weeks after school let out. But when you're 18, out on your own for the first time, and trying to figure out how dating works when you live together, risks must be taken. The dirty little secret was that, while murderous and powerful, Voldemort's gang of dark wizard friends, the Death Eaters, were pretty limited in number. Realistically, there were only a couple dozen of them of any consequence, even after breaking several out of wizard prison. If they had the information network necessary to catch us taking in a film at an arbitrary time in a random muggle theater thirty miles from the only parts of London pureblood wizards ever visited, then we were already screwed.
It was little leaps of logic like that keeping me from going insane, being hunted by dark wizards.
Also, they'd been surprisingly quiet for a few weeks. Hardly any innocents had been murdered, that anyone knew about.
"I want to know what was up with that dedication!" Mathilda said, still talking about the movie we'd just finished. "For Brandon and Eliza?"
One of the other film-watchers exiting the theater intruded on our conversation and explained, "You didn't hear? The main actor, Brandon Lee, died during filming in some kind of accident. Eliza was his fiance."
"What? No!" Mathilda clutched at me on hearing the news. "He was so good!" We both stopped for a second, considering the enormity of the dark romance underscored by tragedy. No wonder it was still getting crowds, weeks after release.
Digesting that news, we stepped out onto the streets of our new neighborhood. High Wycombe wasn't a very big town, but had a college and was midway between London and Oxford, so there was more nightlife than you'd expect from a sleepy hamlet in the middle of a nature preserve. Remus had mostly picked it because of said nature preserve; if he got out on a full moon, he was less likely to accidentally run into people and animal control if he was racing across the fields. But Mathilda and I were more interested in figuring out which of the hole-in-the-wall restaurants was our favorite than in rambling through nature.
Technically, it didn't really matter where we lived. The house was three miles from the town's shopping area, so we'd apparated rather than walking. While the repeated damage to the Veil from fae invaders had severely limited the range that wizards could teleport, we probably could have made it to Oxford or a London suburb almost as easily. But it seemed to both of us like part of the experience of living in a place was actually living there.
We felt that way even if, due to the fidelius charm cast over the house, nobody in the area even realized that there was anyone there to be their neighbors.
The night's winner for hole-in-the-wall dining was a spicy chicken place that claimed to be some kind of African/Portuguese fusion. It was shockingly tasty and affordable: the perks of a college town for small budgets. My new private investigator business with Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody hadn't really started raking in the funds yet, but he was paying me, and I still had some income from transcribing superior potions recipes the previous year. Honestly, the biggest trick was exchanging galleons for pounds, since you couldn't exactly pay for a taco dinner with a gold coin.
We were just finishing when my ring heated up, and Mathilda checked hers as well. I'd made all my friends a private method of communication for the previous Christmas, but it was a party line rather than letting anyone send direct messages. It was at least quicker and less obvious than using the patronus—a spectral protector animal that took a lot of skill to cast—to send messages, which was the main way other wizards did it. Inside the band, small writing said: "Harry, Ministry owl for you at home -PW."
"Late for a delivery," Mathilda commented, having read the same message from our roommate, Percy Weasley. She had her shoulder-length reddish-brown hair pulled back so it wouldn't get in her food, and I smiled seeing more of her face than usual. And that she had a bit of sauce on her nose.
"Yeah, I guess we better check it out," I agreed, reaching over with a napkin to clean the spot on her nose that she obviously didn't notice. Owls were the other way of sending messages between wizards, but they were more like the post office than the telephone. One showing up after dark probably meant it was important. At least it had showed up at the house rather than tracking me down and landing on a table in a muggle restaurant.
Honestly, the particulars of owl post were very confusing. Sometimes the smarter owls could track you down wherever you were, unless you set up some kind of spell to prevent them finding you, but mostly they went to wherever the letter was addressed. But our house had a charm that prevented anyone from finding it that wasn't in on the secret, except it didn't really work on animals. There was probably some extremely narrow conceptual space that allowed an owl to be sent to "Harry Dresden's residence" and have it all work. I'd have to ask my roommates about it: they were both big brains working for the Department of Mysteries now.
The Unspeakables of the Ministry's magical research department probably didn't cover the deep secrets of owl post as part of new hires' first couple of weeks of orientation, but it was worth a shot.
We paid up, found an unobserved alley, and apparated home. Neither of us was nearly good enough at magical teleportation to keep our air displacement to a minimum, so our roommate poked his head out the back door as we appeared with loud pops in the backyard. "Good speed," Percy nodded, his curly red hair currently cut short, round glasses glimmering in the porch light. For the back of the house, the lamp was magically-powered, since the wards to keep our magic from burning out the electrical system were mostly on the front of the house. He'd obviously been home long enough to shuck his official work robes, and was just in sweatpants and a comfy plain gray t-shirt. Generations of purebloods would be simply scandalized by his muggle attire. "The owl at least let me retrieve the message. It left, so I assume no response was required. You can use Hermes if one is."
"Thanks," I told him, walking up and taking the small parchment letter he was offering me. "Think we should get another owl for our mail?" I asked. Hermes was Percy's personal owl and familiar.
My own new familiar, Mister the oversized kitten, bumped my leg affectionately as he used the open back door as an excuse to go exploring outside. He was only a couple months old but already bigger than most full-grown cats, and we'd given up on trying to keep him inside already. He mostly stayed in the fenced backyard anyway, so far. He'd probably be out on the nature preserve hunting in no time, though.
With an amused smile at the escaping cat, Mathilda offered, "I can ask my parents." Her family was wealthy, and probably had owls to spare.
"How was work?" I asked Percy as we all walked back into the kitchen through the rear door, leaving it cracked for when Mister wanted to come back in.
"If we told you, we'd have to kill you!" Penelope, our other roommate and Percy's girlfriend, called from the living room. I could hear some kind of TV show playing from the front room, where Remus' custom wards did allow us to keep muggle conveniences safe from magic energy.
"Not that we could tell you, since those oaths of secrecy are comprehensive," Percy added with a smile. The magical bindings would probably just prevent them from accidentally saying something, well, unspeakable, rather than severely punishing them if they answered a question. "It was fine. Still a lot to learn," he shrugged, avoiding specifics. He leaned against the kitchen counter, clearly curious about the letter.
I obligingly broke the wax seal on the tightly-folded piece of mail (a Ministry-official stamp) and read the letter aloud. "Harry Dresden, your presence is requested at the Ministry Auror's office to identify a body. Please attend as soon as possible, after business hours if necessary."
"Who would you recognize that nobody else would?" Mathilda asked, taking the letter from me and confirming what I'd quoted.
My heart felt like it fell into my stomach as I came up with the only name that made any sense to me, "Elaine?" My ex-girlfriend had disappeared after the fire I'd caused escaping her and my former mentor, and I'd never been sure if she'd been caught in it or escaped. She was the only person I could think of that nobody else in Britain would recognize for sure.
Mathilda grabbed my hand and squeezed, breaking me out of whatever spiral of doubt and memory I was falling into, "I'm coming with you."
Percy nodded, "And you can contact us if they refuse you entry." I didn't think the Ministry was especially mad at me right then, but I had at least one auror who hated me and we didn't know if any other Death Eaters had infiltrated the government, so it was a good idea to be cautious about weird, late-night summonses.
We nodded, and I made sure to gear up. I still couldn't really justify taking my staff into the Ministry, since that would be kind of like showing up to the DMV with a meaningfully-carried shotgun, but I made sure my blasting rod was accessible on my belt, which itself had magically-expanded utility pouches full of other useful things, and I put on my rune-protected long coat even if it was a little much for July. Likewise, Mathilda ran upstairs, changed out of her date outfit, and came back down in her official internship robes. She worked in the department that regulated magical creatures, so her work clothes weren't exactly combat gear but they were close.
Prepared as well as we could be, we went into the den, activated the fireplace, and floo-traveled to the Ministry of Magic.
After a few moments of spinning through an incandescent void, we were spat out of one of many fireplaces ringing an immense underground atrium, each with an excellent view of a problematic golden fountain in the center of the room. I wondered how non-wizards felt when they had to show up and look at an immense idol that cast them as tiny support staff for wizards. Did non-wizards even get to come to the Ministry? I couldn't exactly see a centaur using floo travel or taking the physical entrance from the London street above.
The place was even more empty than it had been when I'd visited over a previous Christmas holiday, with no one there but the one security guard across the hardwood floor from our entry-fireplace. I was a little nervous and barely remembered to check my long-legged stride so Mathilda could keep up as we crossed, footsteps echoing strangely in the room. "Harry Dresden, I got a summons," I explained to the guy, showing him my letter. "And this is Mathilda Grimblehawk. She's with me."
"You're both on the list," the guy nodded. "Let me scan you through."
I blinked and looked at my girlfriend, who was as confused as I was. As convenient as it was that she was on the list, too, would they have just assumed I'd bring moral support? I gave the guy my unicorn-horn focus—the closest thing I had to a wand—and Mathilda offered her own wand once mine was verified.
He gave us temporary badges and pointed us to a nearby elevator, with instructions to go to the second floor (which, since the levels were basically labeled like sub-basements and we came in on the 8th, was the second floor from the top). When we finally stepped off the elevator into the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, I sighed with relief that we were met by Alice Longbottom, one of our friends on the force. The small witch, still keeping her dark-hair cropped short, nodded and said, "Glad you made it so fast. This is going to blow up soon."
"Why was I on the list?" Mathilda asked the older witch.
"Did you not get your letter?" Alice asked. "It must have gone to your parents' house. We'll have to get your address updated in the records if you're living with Harry."
Well that changed things. If they'd specifically called both me and Mathilda, there might be a few more individuals that we'd encountered together. And she'd never met Elaine, so it couldn't be my ex. I didn't really know how to feel about that, the short-lived anticipation of closure evaporating in a moment.
"We managed to intercept a couple of Death Eaters that were moving the body tonight," Alice explained quietly, trusting us to follow as she walked to her left, over to a wing of the offices that seemed to be set up as a morgue. As we pushed into the room, it had the minimalist setup of drawers and tables that I'd expect from TV and movies, but, of course, done in warm woods instead of metals (as was the common wizarding style). The place wasn't cold, either, relying on stasis charms rather than refrigeration to preserve corpses. "I have Harry Dresden and Mathilda Grimblehawk to identify the body," Alice announced to the other living occupant of the room.
The man was tall and had a mane of light-brown hair that was starting to gray, and he regarded us through a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles. "I suppose I can expect this to make its way to Dumbledore almost immediately?" he asked. His tone of voice was such that I couldn't tell if he was trying to warn us away from telling Hogwarts' headmaster and the leader of the order of anti-Death Eater vigilantes that Alice, Mathilda, and I were members of, or tacitly giving us permission. Then, like a muggle magician doing a trick, he quickly pulled the white sheet off of the cadaver on the table in front of us.
Unmistakable once no longer shrouded was a body that I couldn't fail to recognize—it had killed me only a few weeks earlier. Somehow, inert upon the slab and dead like any other man, we were clearly looking at the semi-reptilian corpse of Tom Riddle, the theoretically-immortal self-styled Dark Lord Voldemort.
Author's Note: Thanks for everyone's patience on this one. I have enough chapters in the buffer to get deep into NaNoWriMo in November, and I'll hopefully use that to finish. I'm optimistic that the normal twice a week posting schedule won't be interrupted.
Also, thanks to everyone that read, followed, favorited, and reviewed my side projects while waiting for this story to reconvene. All four are posted at this point, so if you haven't checked them out, there's still time to use your traffic as your vote. It's looking very likely that the Potter/MCU crossover is going to be the main project after this completes, because it was far and away the most popular, but there's still time to help me rank the others as my new secondary project.