"Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead." —Aldous Huxley, Do What You Will: Twelve Essays
ALL BUT DEATH
XVI
THE CONSISTENT DEAD
Empty.
Empty.
Empty.
Empty.
An endless parade of doors flashed before Harry's eyes, only distinguishable by the distinct creak of the hinges as the door was opened, and the final, sharp click of the same doors slamming shut. Every single room in the house seemed emptier than the last. The only thing filling the empty rooms beyond cobwebs and cold walls were piles of dust and shadows, along with an almost haunting silence that seemed to make the very air feel frostier. Harry shivered as he shut yet another door behind him, sighing into the chilly air of the corridor and imagining he could see his breath fanning before his face. Was it really as cold as it seemed or was Harry simply imagining that the darkness of the house could not be anything but icy? They had been searching for Stephen for what felt like hours, and yet they seemed to be no closer to finding him than they had been when they started.
Christ, how many rooms did they still have left to check? How many more empty rooms were they still to be met with? What if they couldn't find Stephen? There was no way he could have just disappeared, absolutely no way in hell. And yet…
Sighing, Harry and the others shuffled into the newest empty room and performed a thorough sweep before stepping back into the hallway.
"Jesus fucking wept," Harry muttered into the air, trying to roll the tension from his shoulders. It felt as though they had been searching for days. The sky outside was steadily getting darker, drenching the inside of the manor into thick shadows and black gloom, a gloom so heavy Harry could taste it on his tongue and feel it settled over his skin. He felt coated it in, soaked in it—they were drowning in gloom. They were drowning in fear, drowning in shadows, drowning in their own damned lack of answers. Harry felt nearly suffocated beneath the uncertainty, lost beneath an entire ocean's worth of questions and doubts. Confusion had become nothing more than second nature to him at this point, falling just behind lingering fear and mounting frustration. All three emotions were slowly curling tighter and tighter within him, coiling into a tense ball of turmoil within his torso, sitting heavy in his stomach and seeming to press on every vital organ it could touch with its sticky, clawing fingers. His heart felt weighted and thick, his stomach was tied in painful, twisted knots, his lungs felt dry and strangely raspy, feeling raw and sore as though they had been scraped with something sharp. There was a cold, dense feeling in his guts, an odd agglutinative feeling, icy and yet strangely syrupy at the same time, as though he had swallowed the shadows around them and could now feel them sloshing through his insides.
It was not a comfortable feeling.
Beside him, Draco stood as silent and unmoving as a cemetery, a pale gravestone with empty eyes made of ice that seemed to stare right through everything in their path. The thought made Harry shiver and he reached out without thinking, slipping his hand into Draco's and squeezing, feeling immediately warmed when Draco squeezed back, casting a single lingering glance in his direction before turning away once more. Draco still felt distant, but he was not ignoring Harry. The feel of Draco's hand in his own warmed the brunet, a contrast to the feel of Draco's cold fingers against his skin. Harry was grateful for the touch regardless, and he squeezed tighter, trying to warm Draco's hand.
Sighing, he released Malfoy as they stepped back into the corridor, and Harry glanced over as the other group entered a room ahead of them on the opposite side of the wide hallway. He watched as the Slytherins entered their next room and began their search anew, listening to the murmured detection spells and revealing charms, and yet once again, were met with no results. The silence felt nearly stifling, weighing down on him like a boulder he would soon be crushed beneath.
On the other side of the hallway, Hermione stood before a closed door, slowly passing her wand in a "t" shape across the frame. He had noticed her doing that to every room that had been searched so far by both groups, and he wandered over to stand at her shoulder, waiting until she had turned around.
"What are you doing?" he asked, checking the door behind her to see if he could spot a difference. It did not appear to be any different than it had been before.
"Setting wards," she said simply, "on every room we've checked. They'll tell me if anybody has attempted to enter or exit a room."
"Clever," Harry said. "Could you not do one on the house to tell where everyone is?"
She shook her head. "The more advanced home wards disallow such a thing, and Malfoy's house is one of the most heavily warded homes I've ever been in. And this house is so heavily drenched in magic that setting even simple internal wards is a bit tricky. He said that magic was built into the very foundation of this building, which makes attempting to alter the natural flow of the centuries-old magic somewhat difficult. I'm not sure how long the spells on these rooms will hold, to be honest." Her words slowed, becoming soft and hesitant, and she glanced around the two of them before leaning in close to Harry. "This house is strange. It's disquieting in a way that I've never really encountered in a home before. There's something almost…" she paused, searching for the right word, "alive about it, isn't there? Sentient in a way that's different from many magical homes I've been in. I'm not sure if I know how to really explain," she finished, sounding apologetic, but Harry waved her off.
He knew exactly what she meant.
"I know," he said in a low voice, eyes darting around the two of them as they crossed the hallway to the room the Slytherins were searching in. "It almost feels as though the very walls are breathing, doesn't it?"
They both glanced to the nearest wall, and Harry saw Hermione visibly shudder.
"Yes, it does," she whispered. "As though they can hear us, right?"
Harry nodded. "And the shadows…" he trailed off, fighting a shudder of his own. "It always feels as though the shadows are watching everything we do."
She nodded. "This house is even darker than I remember it being." Another shiver raked through her, and Harry put a hand on her shoulder in comfort.
"I don't remember it being this cold either," he said hollowly. His memories of the manor on their previous visit were rooted in pain and fear, but he could not recall the sharp iciness that seemed to now permeate the air and pierce his flesh, hooking beneath his skin with barbs made of snow.
And for the millionth time, Harry asked himself how Draco could possibly live in such a place. The house was as cold as winter and as lifeless as a mausoleum. It creaked and groaned around them, and yet also had the same sharp, stabbing silence as a crypt, one they had all somehow gotten trapped inside. The thought was not a comforting one, and Harry fought down another shiver.
Now that he and Draco were involved with one another, Harry knew that he would not allow the man to continue living in such a location by himself. Once they found a way out of there, Harry was taking Draco far away from that horrid place, somewhere warm where the blond could finally relax without the haunted air of the manor hanging around him in stale, icy sheets. It was the most miserable home Harry had ever been in, and he had lived in Grimmauld Place by himself for nearly a year, for Merlin's sake.
No, Draco could not reside in such a place, Harry would not allow it.
"What if we don't find him, Hermione?" he asked softly, trying his hardest to avoid looking at the creeping shadows that seemed to stretch so much farther than they should. "What if we can't find Stephen?"
"I don't know," she whispered, biting her lip. "I have no idea how he could have simply vanished."
"What if this is some kind of red herring?" Harry wondered, keeping his voice low. "What if the real killer murdered him and hid his body somewhere just to make us think it's Stephen we're really looking for? What if he Transfigured his body into something? Or what if he Vanished the body entirely? What if the real killer is still here with the rest of us?"
"Anthony was the last person to be seen with Stephen before Stephen disappeared," Hermione said slowly, tugging one curl around her finger absentmindedly.
"And he could have easily Obliviated himself to make himself look innocent." Harry's mind was racing, his heart pounding. "What if all we're doing now is chasing ghosts?"
She sighed in frustration. "It's all plausible, I'm afraid. But I think we should focus on the search for now and wait to draw any sort of conclusions. If we don't find a trace of him at the end of the search, then we'll have no choice but to go from there and hope some of the missing pieces fall into place somehow."
"We still need to make a decision about Justin and Zacharias," Harry reminded her hollowly, feeling his mind whirl and spin from the terrifying and stressful situation.
"That will have to wait until later as well," she answered, walking forward to ward the room ahead of them. "We can't make any decisions yet until we have as many facts as we're able to find. If we do find Stephen, hopefully alive, then we should be able to shed at least a bit more light on everything that's been happening."
Harry nodded listlessly, watching the progression of the two groups as they slowly and methodically made their way up the large corridor. How many more rooms did they still have to go? How many more chances of overlooking Stephen did they still have to face? Even if they didn't find him on the newest search, it didn't mean he wasn't still there, somewhere in the house. What if he had been Transfigured into a lamp, or a wardrobe, or a bloody candlestick, and they walked right past his body without even a second thought? Magic was not foolproof—it did not always guarantee straight answers or success. In fact, it was often even more confusing and tricky, because for every revealing spell out there, there were just as many spells that prevented such things. For every variant of alohamora that existed, there were just as many different spells that could lock a door. Magic had just as many answers as it did the lack of them, and Harry wasn't even sure what it was they should really be looking for. They could try as many detection spells as they knew, but that didn't guarantee success, even if Stephan really was hiding somewhere.
God. Harry's knuckles tingled and he was struck with the urge to hit the nearby wall. They were just as in the dark as they had been from the very start.
"It's okay, Harry," Hermione said quietly, reaching out to rest one hand against his upper arm. "It'll be okay. We're aware of the dangers now, at least, even if we don't know precisely who or what it is that we're facing up against. I know we still have far more questions than answers at this point, but we'll find a way out of here, I know we will. And we're still only on the ground level, we're not even halfway through checking the rooms. We'll find something. It will be okay."
He nodded dully, forcing himself to focus on her words and not on the rising swell of hopelessness that was gradually engulfing him more and more, piece by piece, shading him in grey from his insides out, and he could almost see the greyish cast to his skin if he looked hard enough, the flesh slowly starting to resemble old dusty newspaper more than human skin.
"How long do you think 'til the Ministry tracks one of us here?" he asked, missing the warm weight of Hermione's hand on his arm when she dropped her hold on him, biting her lip as they followed behind the two groups.
"I don't know," she confessed. "This is the first time any of the four of us have failed to turn up for work. Our records so far have been spotless, but with all four of us failing to turn up to the DMLE at the same time, hopefully it will spark immediate concern. I shudder to think what will happen if they delay the search in any way."
"The invitation for the party is in my sitting room," Harry said in a low voice. "Lying on the table. They'll see it as soon as they get inside my flat. I don't know how long it will take them to get past the wards, though. I tried to make them as impossible to break into as I could. There are so many layers it might take them weeks."
"You're not the only cautious one," Hermione said with a wry smile, but Harry noticed that her eyes remained troubled. "Frankly, I'd be amazed if they managed to break into my flat. Wards are much harder to dismantle than they are to stitch together. The wards on this house, for example, are so thick that the entire manor may as well have been coated in iron. They weren't up when we first arrived—all the wards were down. I think the new wards must have been put up during the first murder, or immediately before. I wonder if that's why it was such a horrid spectacle, to keep us from noticing the bars of our cage locking in on us. None of us noticed we were being trapped until it was too late."
"How long 'til you think George gets worried about Ron not coming home?" Harry wondered, trying not to think about Hannah Abbott's murder. Horrid was not a word that even began to describe the spectacle of her death. "He lives with George and Lee, so the Aurors won't even need to break through any wards to get access to his flat. Do you think George has called them already?"
Hermione sighed as she warded another examined room. "I really don't know. George isn't exactly the worrying type. And Ron stays over at my flat often enough that it might not even occur to George or Lee that he's in danger. Neither of them works at the Ministry, so they won't know that he never showed up to work. I think the department may be our best shot at getting out of here. They should be the first ones to realize that something's wrong when they discover that the three of us and Neville have all failed to show up."
"But how will we even know? If they're here, I mean. If the wards keeping us in extend all the way out to the gate, we may not even know the Aurors are here. They could be out there right now trying to break in and we'd never know it. And if the wards are as strong as you say they are, then who knows how the hell long it will take for them to crack through?"
Hermione sighed again, warding the next room shut before glancing away into the distance, her eyes following the two groups steadily making their way up the large corridor. "Malfoy would be the only person to ask about such things, but he's no longer attuned to the wards the way he should be. I don't even know how it's possible to build separate wards over long-established ones, especially foundational ones. I would assume that in order for that to be possible, you would first have to strip away the pre-existing wards in order to lay down new ones, especially if the person laying down the new wards is someone who was not previously tuned into the old ones." She paused to sigh. "But I don't understand how someone other than Malfoy was able to strip them away enough for new ones to be added. I don't know how the wards were taken out of his control the way they were. Unless…" she hesitated, chewing her bottom lip as she pondered something for several moments.
"Unless what?" Harry asked cautiously, stumbling over his feet as he gazed at her without blinking. What was Hermione thinking?
"Unless…" she began, sounding thoughtful. "I mean, unless it's the wards themselves, and not the caster. Maybe the old wards were stripped away and replaced, but if they weren't…maybe they were merely covered up. Maybe these wards don't need to be attuned to familial magicks or specific signatures. Maybe it's like one of those giant steel locks you buy in Muggle hardware stores, the heavy-duty kind that are meant to be impossible to break. You buy the lock and then set the code yourself."
"You can put the lock on anything," Harry said slowly, "but it will only open for the person who knows the code."
"Yes," Hermione mused. "Something to that effect. Although, I still don't understand how—"
"Potter!" a sharp voice called, and Harry's head immediately snapped in the direction of the voice. The group of Slytherins stood half a dozen meters away, all grouped around a closed door. The two Gryffindors hurried over, noticing the second group across the wide hallway peering at them curiously.
"What is it?" Harry asked immediately, glancing around. Had they found something inside?
"The door won't open," Nott explained in his usual bored drawl. "It's sealed shut. And Draco said that no rooms on the ground floor should be sealed."
"It wasn't sealed the last time we searched this floor," Parkinson added, shooting Zabini a worried look.
"No," Harry said quietly, staring hard at the door, "it wasn't."
Next to him, Hermione began casting a murmured stream of spells at the door, tapping the handle and drawing strange shapes in the air over the wood and around the frame, and Harry motioned for the others to back up and give her enough room to work.
"Hey," Ron said behind him, and Harry turned his head to face the man. Ron took several paces away from the group, gesturing for Harry to follow. "What's going on?" he asked in a low voice, gazing over Harry's shoulder at Hermione.
"The room's sealed," Harry explained, glancing back to check on her progress. The door was still closed. "Draco said it shouldn't be locked, and it sure as hell wasn't the last time we checked this floor."
"That's got to be where he's hiding then," Ron said immediately, eyes gleaming. "That little rat bastard, we've finally caught him!"
"Maybe," Harry sighed, much less convinced than Ron. If Stephen had managed to remain out of sight all that time, he wasn't so sure the man would be caught in such an obvious manner. It was far more likely to be nothing more than a distraction, something to throw them off course and make them think they were closing in on him. Maybe he was just trying to lull them into dropping their guard enough to be able to sneak up on one of the others without anyone suspecting the danger.
"Why else would it be locked? That's got to be where he's hiding!"
"Just 'cause it's locked doesn't mean he's in there," Harry pointed out.
"Yeah," Ron frowned, tugging at one ear. "I s'pose. Fuck, though, I hope he really is behind that door."
"So do I."
Falling silent, they both turned back to the group, rejoining the others to watch Hermione's progress. The wood of the door creaked, and Harry thought he could hear a protesting squeal of hinges, but the door remained firmly shut. Eyes narrowed, Hermione cracked her neck before continuing with her litany of spells, tripping their way free so quickly Harry was having trouble catching the individual words. Everybody stood statue-still in the corridor, watching Hermione's progress with wide eyes and twitching fingers, hardly daring to breathe as the tension and expectations mounted higher and higher, twisting tightly together in Harry's chest. What would they find behind the door? Was Stephen hiding away in there, laughing at their attempts to break inside? Or would it be his cold, rotting corpse that the door swung open to reveal? There was still every chance that Stephen was not the guilty one, but they would find no answers on their side of the door. They needed it to open first.
"Fucking son of a goddamn bitch!" Hermione swore unexpectedly, visibly startling everyone. Harry knew by her language that she was frustrated—Hermione rarely swore. "I can crack this," she said with determination, rolling her shoulders as she turned enough to eye the group behind her. "Dismantling wards is always a bit of a puzzle, but I can shatter it if I can find the chink. But," a heavy frown crossed her face, "it will take a while. You lot continue with the sweep while I work on this. This may be nothing but a red herring."
"But you can get in, right?" Davis asked, shooting nervous looks around the hallway, and Parkinson put an arm around her shoulders in comfort.
"Yes," Hermione said simply, turning back to the door. "But I want the two groups to continue checking."
"I'll stay here too," Ron said, planting himself directly behind Hermione's back.
"Me too," Harry added, but Ron shook his head.
"Nah, mate," he said quietly. "You go with your group. That way, each group still has one Auror. Hermione and I will be fine. If Stephen really is in there, we can handle him."
"He's right," Hermione said without looking back, studying the door with an intense gaze, as though looking for any visible signs of holes in the magic veiling it. "Everybody stick with their groups. Harry and Neville, Ron will send you both a Patronus the second I get this door unlocked, I promise. For now, let's just focus on checking the ground floor. If you lot finish the rooms down here before I've managed to take down the wards on this door, I want you to head back here immediately. We won't go upstairs until we've cleared this entire floor."
Harry opened his mouth, wanting to argue, to tell them that he should remain there with the two of them, just in case, but a cold hand slid into his and gripped tightly, and Harry glanced to his left to see Draco staring at him with worried eyes.
"All right," Harry sighed, squeezing Malfoy's hand before pulling away. "We'll go finish up then."
"Stay cautious," Hermione told them, tearing her eyes away from the locked door to pin everybody in place with a serious gaze. "Go slowly. Check everything. I don't want anybody rushing anything just because you think the answers might be in this room. We can't afford to overlook a thing. This sweep needs to be thorough. Look for anything that strikes you as being off, anything you think might even be slightly odd, I want to hear about it. Stay vigilant and be aware of your surroundings. And nobody goes into a room alone."
Turning her back on them, she began to murmur more spells at the door, continuing to draw strange symbols in the air, tracing the frame with lines of color that seemed to linger and burn in the empty air for ages before fading away. Ron stood between Hermione and the others, arms folded but limbs tense, his wand clutched tightly in his right hand.
"Come on then," Harry muttered, signaling to everyone to continue what they had been doing before Nott's words had stopped them all dead in their tracks. Slowly, the others began to shuffle away, the scuffling sounds of footsteps against the cold marble floor sounding against the low murmur of Hermione's voice.
Turning his back on his friends, Harry followed the Slytherins to the next room over, wondering if they really would find anything once the wards were down on that door or if they would be left just as clueless as before.
"Do you think he's behind that door?" Draco asked quietly, brushing his shoulder against Harry.
"Honestly?" Harry sighed. "No, I don't. If it really is Stephen, then he's been too clever so far to have put himself in such an obvious situation. Most likely, that's not the only door he's sealed shut. If he was smart, he wouldn't lock the door to whatever room he's hiding in."
"That's assuming he's even still in the house," Nott interrupted without looking to either of them. "If he's the one who set the wards to trap us in here, then he must be able to remove them. What if he's just been coming back into the house to kill and then leaving immediately after?"
Fuck. Harry sighed again. "It's possible," he said, voice sounding exhausted. "But I think we should at least try to rule out the possibility of him still being inside before we jump to any conclusions about his whereabouts. There's something about these murders…the way the killer has been executing them. It makes it seem like he's toying with us. Like this is some sort of game. The only way to play a game is to actually involve yourself in it. No, whoever it is, I'm sure that they would want to be close enough to watch our reactions. I think it's the reactions that they're really after. The murders are a secondary consideration. It reminds me a bit of a case I once worked on…" Harry trailed off as he thought once again of Dodson, mutilating innocent animals and leaving them to be discovered by their owners, all so he could enjoy their horrified reactions. He wondered if Dodson had thought of that as a game.
"Secondary consideration…" Draco muttered, a sneer crossing his face. "I suppose our lives really would be secondary to that sick fuck's entertainment."
"We'll find him," Harry said softly, daring to reach out and brush his hand across Draco's arm.
"I told you not to trust Cornfoot," Nott said in a bored drawl. "I always said his smile was just a bit too obscene to be real. Anyone that overtly friendly is clearly hiding something."
Harry rolled his eyes. "Yes, Nott, we know, there's nothing you trust less in this world than emotion."
Half the Slytherins snickered but Nott merely shrugged, making no visible reaction to the comment. "Don't ever trust a person who smiles for no reason, Potter. You, as an Auror, should know that by now."
Shaking his head, Harry felt his mouth pull up in a reluctant grin. "Lord, the number of enemies you must see everywhere, Nott."
"You have no idea."
The group fell into silence as they slowly made their way down the hallway and through the widely spaced rooms. Harry could feel more than see the way everyone continued to glance back at Hermione's progress, until she was finally out of sight and they could see her no longer. It made him uneasy, unsure if she was making any progress or not, unsure if she and Ron would be in danger when the door was finally opened. Harry had no idea what to expect anymore.
The search dragged on, the sky outside growing darker as they continued to trudge down hallways and peek behind doors into cold, empty rooms. But there were no signs of anyone. Not even the dust in the rooms had been disturbed. Every room was just as lifeless and uninhabited as the last, and the more rooms they checked, the more hopeless Harry became. He could feel desolation festering deep within, growing louder with every closing click of a door marking yet another empty room.
Where the hell was Stephen hiding?
Finally, the last door of the ground floor was closed with a soft sound. The group stared around at one another in silence, nobody wanting to say that they had failed to find a single hint of anything out of place.
"There's still another floor," Nott finally said, shattering the strained quiet, and Zabini huffed at him as Parkinson rolled her eyes.
"Yes, Theo, thank you," she said sarcastically. "That's exactly what we want to hear after we just spent hours searching the enormous ground floor."
Nott shrugged. "I'm just stating facts. There are still plenty of rooms the dickhead could be hiding in. Plus, it's not my fault that Draco's house is ridiculously massive."
"Maybe the other group found something," Harry sighed, certain that the other group had been just as unsuccessful as them. "I need to speak to Ron and Hermione."
Wordlessly, the Slytherins all nodded as they fell into step, following Harry through the labyrinthine corridors back to where Ron and Hermione still were. Malfoy walked beside him, as silent as a wraith. He looked drawn and exhausted, and his skin seemed even paler than normal. A flush spread across Harry's face as he gazed down at Malfoy's hand, swinging slightly as he walked. Would it help ease some of the tension in Draco's shoulders if Harry were to reach out and entwine their fingers? Holding hands was something he had always done so little of in his life but had always enjoyed it when it happened. When he had been with Ginny, holding her hand had always somehow seemed even more significant than sharing a kiss. Would Draco feel the same? Harry glanced back at the others, wondering how they would take it if he were to reach out and take Draco's hand. He was sure that at least one of them would have some snide, sarcastic thing to say, but at that moment, Harry didn't care. All he wanted at that moment was to feel connected to Draco and hopefully comfort the both of them with the action.
Face burning, Harry reached out and slipped his hand into Draco's, who glanced up at him with a startled expression before it smoothed out into a small smile, and Harry felt relief sweep through him when Draco did not hesitate to squeeze his hand and tighten his grip. He stared at Malfoy in silent inquiry, who nodded, somehow understanding exactly what Harry had been trying to ask.
Lifting Malfoy's hand, Harry pressed a kiss to the man's knuckles, ignoring the sets of eyes he could feel burning into his back. He shifted closer into Malfoy's body, their clasped hands hanging between them as they walked down the dark corridor.
Up ahead he could see Ron and Hermione, standing before the same door, occasional bursts of light flashing as Hermione continued to aim spells at the resistant frame. The other group was standing against the opposite wall, watching silently.
Ron turned his head and spotted the approaching group, walking toward them with one hand raised to indicate silence. His gaze darted down to Harry and Draco's clasped hands, which made Harry flush, but he stubbornly refused to let go. Ron raised one eyebrow, face unreadable, before he turned back to rejoin Hermione.
Glancing over, Harry noticed Neville leaning against the wall silently watching him, and he released Draco's hand to walk over to speak to the man.
"I'm assuming you lot didn't find anything," he said in a low voice, unsurprised but disappointed when Neville shook his head.
"We still have a whole upstairs floor to check," Neville sighed, running one hand over his short hair.
"Do you think we'll find anything in there?" Harry asked, jerking his head in the direction of the room Hermione was still trying to break into.
Neville sighed again, shrugging. "To be honest, Harry, I don't. So if he's not in there and he's not on the ground floor, that leaves only the first floor he could be hiding in."
Harry groaned. "We just spent hours searching this one, Jesus Christ."
Neville made a soft noise of agreement.
"I guess all we can do is hope Stephen really is stupid enough to be hiding in there," Harry said, gesturing back to the door.
They fall into silence as they turn to watch Hermione casting spells, Ron standing diligently behind her. The shadows on the walls stretched as time passed, and Harry had no idea how long they all stood there, watching Hermione work and holding their breaths, waiting for even a hint of results.
Finally, after an eternity, the lock on the door clicked open. Everybody froze, staring at the knob with wide eyes. Hermione's back was a rigid steel bar as she stared at the door, breathing hard. She raised her wand and murmured several spells, what sounded to be a shield charm and a few wards of her own, before nodding to Ron, who took up point behind her. Harry and Neville automatically stepped up beside them, the four Gryffindors falling seamlessly into position. Hermione glanced to the three men standing beside her, nodding to them once before raising her wand and murmuring a final spell, everybody watching as the door swung open.
Everything was silent. Not a sound escaped the dark room.
Harry could make out the shape of furniture spread across the floor and along the walls, but he could not see anybody there. Cautiously, the four Gryffindors moved forward, wands raised. Harry and Hermione stepped forward to take lead, both approaching the door together. Hermione sent him a quick hand gesture, signaling that she would take shield and allow Harry to take point. He nodded in agreement, tightening his hold on his wand. Hermione raised her left hand, flashing another hand signal to the four of them, a quick starburst followed by a closed fist. The three men nodded, shielding their eyes with their left hands.
Three seconds later, a spell shot from Hermione's wand into the room, a sudden explosion of blinding light. The second it started to fade away, Harry leaped forward, casting a wide net spell at the same moment he heard Hermione cast a shield charm over the two of them. Ron and Neville followed through the doorway, rattling off a series of detection spells and revealing charms. The differing colors of the spells all faded away into darkness and silence, and Harry glanced around, trying desperately to spot someone lurking in the shadows of the small room.
There was nobody inside. Nothing moved; nothing made a sound.
Stephen was not there.
"Well," Hermione finally said, lowering her wand. "I'm disappointed, but I can't say that I'm surprised."
Ron swore loudly. "What do we do now?"
"We do what we were already doing," Hermione sighed, tucking a stray curl behind her ear. "We continue with the search. There's still the upper floor to check."
"This does prove one thing," Neville said quietly, relaxing on his back foot. "Stephen is definitely still alive. This room was sealed recently. The only other suspects we have are Zacharias and Justin, and they've both been locked up for hours."
"I dunno, Nev," Harry disagreed. "All we know was that this room was unlocked the last time we searched. We don't actually know when it was sealed though."
"Well, shit," Ron said, kicking the nearby wall. "This whole thing is always gonna be one step forward, two steps back, isn't it?"
"It does appear that way," Hermione murmured, squinting at every piece of furniture she studied as she wandered around the room.
Harry wanted to scream in frustration. Would they ever find even a single answer to any of their million questions?
"So what do you want to do now, Hermione?" he asked dully. "You wanna go straight upstairs and keep searching the rooms?"
She thought for a moment before shaking her head. "No, I think we should take a break. I don't want anything getting overlooked due to impatience or exhaustion. We'll take a break and fix dinner, and then we can continue the search."
The words sent a feeling of relief shooting through Harry. He wanted everything solved and over with, but the task of searching yet another fifty thousand rooms throughout Malfoy's enormous mansion was daunting, to say the least.
"I s'pose we should probably feed Smith and Justin as well," Ron said. "They've got to be hungry."
Harry shook his head. "I think we should speak to them first. If they get hungry enough, it might make them more willing to talk."
"Yeah," Ron muttered, "or it'll make Smith even more of a contrary arsehead."
Harry snorted softly. "Come on then," he said, stepping around Neville toward the door. "Let's go tell the others to start on dinner while we go up to talk to Zacharias and Justin."
"Someone should probably stay with them," Neville said quietly. "I'll go with the others, you three can go speak to the two upstairs."
"Do you need someone to stay behind with you, Neville?" Hermione asked, but Neville shook his head.
"No, now that Smith isn't there, they're not nearly as combative as they were. And there will be plenty of us, so we should be fine watching out for one another. I don't want you lot wandering through the halls with only two of you."
"All right," Hermione agreed. "But send us a Patronus if anything happens."
"You too," Neville said with a nod.
Harry split off from the other three Gryffindors, drifting toward the Slytherins, who stood huddled against the wall in a tight group.
"Hey," he said softly, eyes flicking to Draco. "You lot are gonna go with the others and get started on dinner. Ron and Hermione and I are gonna go try to speak with Zacharias and Justin again."
Zabini raised one eyebrow. "You're leaving us with them?"
"You'll be fine," Harry promised. "Nothing's going to happen. Neville's going with you lot and he'll make sure that everyone is okay."
The Slytherins all stared at him in silence for nearly a minute.
"If any of them do attack us," Nott finally said, sounding bored, "I will be coming back as a ghost and haunting you for at least the next sixty years just so you know. It will not be pleasant, Potter, for either of us."
One corner of Harry's mouth lifted in a smile. "Noted. I guess, either way, I'll definitely see you later though, yeah?"
Nott laughed, and Harry nearly fell over in shock. Nott laughed. He actually laughed. Well, all right, it was more like a soft chuckle, but Harry counted it as a laugh all the same.
"Just stick with Neville," he told them, gaze lingering on Draco. "You'll be okay, I promise. I'll come find you lot as soon as we're done. Just wait in the dining room for us."
Draco nodded, staring at Harry with a tense expression that Harry could not read. He offered Draco a tight smile, reaching out to wrap one hand around the nape of Draco's neck and squeeze lightly.
"It'll be okay," he repeated, squeezing Draco's nape once more before dropping his hold and stepping back. Draco nodded once, expression still stiff, and Harry wished he could stay with the man. He did not like letting Draco out of his sight, but he also did not like the thought of Draco wandering the darkened corridors, even in Harry's presence. He would be safer with the larger group.
Stepping back, he stared at Malfoy once more before turning around and heading back to his friends. As soon as he was close enough, he grabbed Neville's arm and leaned close. "Watch out for them," he said quietly, jerking his head in the direction of the Slytherins.
Neville glanced at them as well, and Harry noticed the way the man's gaze kept shifting between Harry and Draco. Finally, he nodded, offering Harry a somber sort of smile. "They'll be fine, Harry."
Satisfied, Harry nodded in return, stepping around Neville and continuing to where Ron and Hermione waited for him. Without a word, they fell into step on either side of him, the three of them making their way down the shadowy corridor. Hermione lit her wand with a spell, offering them a bit more light and a thousand more shadows to trek through. The only sounds he could hear were their footsteps against the hard floor.
"What do we do if they still won't talk?" Harry asked quietly, shattering the silence. "Do we still give them something to eat, or withhold the food and try to put a bit more pressure on them?" He really did not like the thought of withholding meals, considering his upbringing and the way he had often been punished in such a manner, but their situation was literally life or death for all of them, and since he adamantly refused torture as a means of interrogation, they weren't left with many options. He supposed the next step after using hunger as a motivator would be Legilimency, but that option he was even more hesitant about. He wasn't sure if anyone in the house had ever cast that spell on another person, and he knew just how dangerous it could be. They were more likely to damage both the minds of the caster and the subject by entering the mind too rashly without knowing what they were doing. As Snape had told Harry years ago, the mind was a delicate thing, and using Legilimency was by no means a guaranteed way to get answers. He still remembered what Snape had said about the mind not being as simple or straightforward to read as a book.
"I don't know," Hermione sighed.
"Then we keep at it until they crack," Ron said grimly. "We've cracked tougher perps in the past, without using starvation or torture as a method."
"Yes," Harry said, "but we still had the upper hand then. We don't in here. We're all locked in one giant prison and we don't exactly have the weight of the law backing us in here."
"We'll find a way," Hermione said simply, sounding quietly confident in a way that Harry wasn't sure he believed. Hermione had always been better at hiding her frustrations than them, but Harry knew she was just as prone to fracturing.
"Justin first, you think?" Ron said, voice low and somber. "I'd really prefer to leave Smith for last."
Harry nodded. "Agreed." Ron certainly wasn't the only one who wanted to put off dealing with Zacharias's whining hostilities for as long as possible.
Hermione said nothing, leading the way to the room they had locked Justin up in. The door was closed and the hallway silent and Harry wondered what Justin was doing in there. It was too early for him to be asleep. Harry wondered just how much boredom could be used as a motivator for confession as well as hunger.
He supposed they would find out.
As they neared the door, Hermione extinguished her wand so she could unward the door, and Ron immediately lit his own to give them more light to see by.
She had only cast a single spell when she paused, a heavy frown marring her face as she stared at the door through narrowed eyes.
"Oh no," she whispered, and the two words instantly sent a chill running down Harry's spine. What was wrong? What had happened?
He watched as Hermione reached out one hand, her wand held tightly in the other as she grasped the handle and twisted. The door creaked ominously as it swung inwards, revealing a blackened room. Hermione murmured a spell, casting a shield charm over the three of them as she stepped inside, and the moment she did, the gas lamps flared to life, illuminating an empty room.
Justin was nowhere to be seen.
"Fuck," Hermione breathed, glancing around cautiously before rattling off a series of detection spells.
But there was nothing to detect. There was no one to be found.
Justin was gone.
"Shit," Ron swore, stepping up beside Hermione. "where the hell did he go? How the hell did he get out? He didn't even have a wand!"
"Stephen must've gotten him," Harry said, insides cramping in frustration. Would nothing in this situation work out for them?
"Does that mean he was working with him?" Ron wondered, sounding just as frustrated as Harry felt. "What the fuck though, seriously?"
"Maybe he was worried Justin would talk."
"But then why take him with him?" Hermione mused, sounding thoughtful as she surveyed the room. "Why not just kill him? If Stephen really was behind Kevin's murder, why even leave Justin and Zacharias alive?"
"Maybe he wanted to see what we would do," Harry said darkly. "This whole thing is clearly just a game to him. Maybe he was just testing our responses. Maybe he wanted to shake things up a bit, I dunno. Or maybe Justin really did do it because he really is working with Stephen."
Ron scoffed. "But are you seriously saying that Zacharias Smith is the innocent one?"
Harry shrugged. "I s'pose that depends on whether or not they took him with them."
"Yes, we should go check on that immediately," Hermione said, still sounding thoughtful and distant as she gazed around at the furniture and bare walls. It took her several seconds to move before she finally turned around and began to lead them to the room next door, the one they had locked Zacharias up in.
Raising her wand, Hermione cast a spell at the door before immediately stopping, lowering it to her side.
"The wards are already down," she said in a low voice, and Harry and Ron both nodded and raised their wands, unsure what they were going to find on the other side of that door.
The door seemed to creak even louder than the last as it swung open. Hermione took a hesitant step inside as the lamps flared to life, and Harry heard her gasp loudly at the sight that met their eyes. Everything was in shambles; the entire room seemed to be in disarray. The furniture had been scattered and knocked over, and Harry could see a spot on the far wall where something had cracked the wood, almost as though something heavy had been thrown against it.
But none of that was what drew Harry's gaze.
There, lying on the floor in a puddle of blood, was the dead body of Zacharias Smith.
A/N: Okay, honesty time! How many of us have been waiting for Zacharias to die? If you have, you are in luck 'cause guess what time it is, my friends? That's right, it's time to play the fun, fun game called Guess How Zacharias Smith Was Killed! Not the most well-known game, but a crowd-pleaser, for sure 😊 Stay tuned for the answers, lovers!