"You're late!"
Ron, who'd been waiting with his back to the door, turned as the door was open by a very enthusiastic Fred. "Fred?" he asked, confused, blinking. "Isn't this Bill's house?" He was pretty sure it was, with its neat rows of petunias, white washed fence, and "happy" yellow paint. A small, one-story house, very pleasantly set out in the countryside. Ron had just Apparated onto the front porch, ready to pick up his small nephew.
"Yes, I am Fred and yes, this is Bill's house," Fred replied, grinning. "Bill forgot to tell you that he had to leave in a hurry, so I'm just babysitting for awhile."
"Oh, my word. Is the kid alright?!" Ron said, trying to look shocked. Fred gave him an evil look as he let Fred into the house.
"Kid? What kid?" Fred asked innocently. But his ploy was ruined as Timmy entered quietly into the front hall.
"Hello, Timmy, how are you?" Ron asked, crouching down to his nephew's level. "Are you ready to come with me?" The boy nodded, silently, and left the room to get his suitcase.
"Can't get the kid to say a word," Fred said as soon as Timmy had left the room. "He's been silent except for a 'hello' and an 'excuse me'. Can't imagine a Weasley to be so quiet!"
"Bill was quiet at that age, Mum tells me. But then he went to Hogwarts and came back with that earring. Remember the first time Mum saw it? She freaked!"
"Ron, you were two," Fred replied, looking at him skeptically.
"I was five when he came back with the earring," Ron argued. "It wasn't a fang then, just a simple hoop, but Mum went ballistic."
"It was nothing to his seventh year, when he came home with hair past his shoulders!" Fred replied, and both chortled at the memories. "Though I'm glad he decided to cut it. I mean, he's respectable now!"
"You make that sound like it's a bad thing," Ron replied, trying to look shocked.
"Oh, shaddup, 007. I'm in the black market for jokes nowadays, you know," Fred joked. He tried to look petrified. "Oh, no, are you gonna turn me in?"
"I work for the Prophet. Not the Enforcers," Ron said with a sigh. "Two totally different things."
"Okay, 007."
Ron sighed again just as Timmy entered the room, trucking a suitcase after him. "The fireplace is in here, Uncle Ron," he said in a voice barely louder than a whisper. He pushed open another door just as Ron grabbed the suitcase and picked it up.
"I'd best be off," Fred said and grinned. "Ta-ta, 007!"
"Farewell, Dr. No," Ron replied, finally relaxing into the joke. Fred tossed him a cheery salute and disappeared on the spot, much to the bewilderment of Timmy.
"Do they all do that?" he asked in an awed whisper.
"Do what?" Ron asked, leading him to the fireplace. "Disappear, you mean? Of course. You'll be able to when you're older." He pretended not to notice the fact that Timmy did not move from the spot where he'd seen Fred disappear. "We'd best be off, like Fred said."
* * *
"We have a muggle arson clipping, a letter that Hermione's special is to be in on the case, a bunch of random words on the thought slip, and nothing else," Jani repeated for the fourth time as she and Harry sat in the debriefing room.
"You're telling me that Granger WAS sighted, in a muggle truck?" Officer Wahles asked, looking skeptically at Harry, who was getting frustrated.
"Yes. She Apparated out of the truck, just before it crashed and she left some words that are everyday children's words on the slip of paper in this here thought box!" Harry snapped, holding up the black box. "The orange Apparating box showed nothing. She somehow managed to lose that tracker some of your agents placed on her."
"You can't lose that tracker," Wahles argued, slamming both hands down onto the desk in front of him. "It's bonded to her NDA!"
"Do you mean DNA?" Jani asked, cocking an eyebrow. "If it's bonded to her DNA, why aren't your agents picking the bloody thing up?" She, unlike Harry (who was sitting stiffly in his seat, growing more and more perverse as the conversation trailed on), had kicked her legs up and was resting her sneakered feet on the table.
"That's what we sent you to find out!" Wahles snapped, aiming a finger at her. "You're the Muggles specialist, being half muggle yourself – "
"I am NOT half muggle. I am completely a witch, thank you very much. The rumour that I am half squib is not true and I'm shocked that you haven't put false to those rumors," Jani snapped.
"Wahles, we're telling you what you saw. We have the file here. Your mission specifically stated to find her, not her tracking device. So we're gonna find her. That's my best friend we're talking about and I don't care about any mission. I'm gonna find her. I'm gonna figure out WHY she's gone, and I'm gonna find her," Harry interrupted before Jani could go on. "Peterson, would you assist me?"
"Of course," Jani replied, shooting a malignant glare at Wahles. "When do we start?"
"As soon as we pick up a friend," Harry muttered, standing. "Thank you, Officer Wahles. We were granted a week's vacation and I'm pulling rank to get us a month. Once again, thank you and have a nice day."
He stalked out of the room, followed by Jani.
* * *
Timmy was silent for a full twenty minutes when Ron turned on the muggle television he'd bought at a pawn shop and let him watch it. But after twenty minutes, he blinked up at his uncle and said quite clearly, "Do you have a fairy that comes here, too?"
"Fairy?" Ron, in the middle of cooking, asked, glancing up. "What sort of fairy?" The word fairy brought a picture of a Cornish Pixie to his mind.
"She's a tall fairy. She's pretty," Timmy replied. "Very pretty." Ron, who had never heard his nephew string together more than a full sentence, was startled. "Do you?"
"Have a fairy? No," Ron replied, going along with the game. "Why do you ask?" The soup looked about done, so he turned the cooker off and placed the pot on a hot pad.
"Because she just looked in the window," Timmy replied simply, pointing to the glass door that led to Ron's balcony. Turning to look out of curiosity, Ron saw a glimpse of a black cloak and leapt over the bed and yanked open the glass door. Unfortunately, the balcony was empty. "She was just there," Timmy continued, scrambling so that he stood under Ron's elbow.
Ron glanced warily at his nephew. Whatever fairy had been visiting the boy had just shown up on his balcony. And there was no way to tell whether they were in danger or not.
* * *
Jani followed Harry into the equipment room and watched as he pulled several things off of the shelves. "Gag wands," he explained, pulling a box of wands off of one of the top shelves. "They work great for a duel. If you 'drop' your wand and your enemy picks it up, they'll find themselves faced with a rubber chicken."
"Sometimes I wonder about this place," was all Jani said.
"Always have three of these on you," Harry continued, picking up another box and withdrawing six pill-like objects. "They're smoke-capsules and they're very useful. One is never enough, two is just enough, and three is perfect. So always have three."
"Three smoke-capsules, a gag wand. Anything else? Dungbombs?" Jani asked sarcastically.
"I almost forgot!" Harry slapped his forehead with his hand and reached into another box. When he saw the look Jani gave him, he stopped. "What?"
"We seriously are NOT gonna carry dungbombs around, right?" Jani asked, her eyes wide.
"Dungbombs? Why would we do that?" Harry gave her a strange look. "Are you feeling all right?" He handed her a smallish green object, the shape of a pyramid. "As long as you keep this with you, we'll be able to contact you. Simple, eh? Sort of a muggle technology, but better."
"Simple," Jani replied, tucking it into her pocket. "I hope. But I thought I was the items specialist!"
"Well, I have a large stock of joke items and some, er, personal items that I feel we need that the Enforcement Agency doesn't," Harry replied, gesturing for her to precede him out the door and shutting it behind him. "But before we go anywhere, we need to pick up two people."
"Two people?" Jani asked, staring as Harry dropped a long coil of rope that was hanging next to the door in the storage shed into her hands. "Which two people?"
"First, a friend of mine. Lance Petrol. Lance's an undercover agent, an actual half-muggle, but darned good with computers and a great tracker. He'll get the technology side working while we work the magic side."
"And the second?"
"Ron Weasley. Granger's school sweetheart."
* * *
"Is she an angel or a fairy?" Timmy asked as Ron filled his bowl with soup and set it in front of him. "Is there a difference?"
"There's a very big difference," Ron replied, filling up his own bowl. "She's a fairy. A big one. She has to be. Because she doesn't have wings."
"But fairies have wings, too," Timmy argued, putting his spoon down and glaring slightly. "Pretty lacy wings, Mummy says."
"Not all fairies have wings. There are human fairies," Ron told him, wondering why he was holding an argument like that. "Now eat your dinner. Then you'll have to tell me what this fairy looks like."
"She has pretty yellow hair," Timmy said after a moment. Ron didn't reply, so a slightly tense silence descended upon the table. Therefore, both heard the sliding glass door open, slowly, as if somebody was trying to be quiet. "She's back," Timmy whispered, not daring to glance over his shoulder at the sliding glass door.
Ron only reached out and gripped his hand, for Timmy had started to shake. "She can't hurt you, I'm here," he whispered. He slowly turned to face the sliding door and stared as he saw a black clad arm holding a flame torch to the cheap curtains Ron had bought at the pawn shop. "Timmy!" Before either knew what was going on, Ron had grabbed the four-year-old by the middle and was sprinting for the door. He hurtled through and shot down the stairs before either of them could come to harm.
"Uncle Ron! She's following us!" Timmy's voice was muffled in the sleeve of Ron's robe, but Ron sprinted on. "She's pointing something at us!"
Ron turned his head and stopped, shocked. The black-clad figure, or fairy as Timmy had called her, had stopped and was standing, her cloak whipping about her, face hidden, and a gun pointing at them. "What do you want with us?" Ron called, his voice cracking.
"I want you dead."
She was pointing the gun specifically at Timmy. Ron fumbled for his wand, but the pale hand holding the gun had moved back to him and he stopped, petrified. "Why do you want me dead?"
"Who cares about you, fool? He's the link." The voice was deep and cold with anger and hatred. The gun was back to Timmy.
The next few seconds were a blur of black and white as the door to a nearby apartment crashed open, a figure cloaked in blue sped out and whipped the gun out of the hand of the figure cloaked in black. Ron blinked and turned and sprinted towards the elevator. But before he could get there, the figure in blue shouted, "STOP!"
It was a voice he had not physically heard in two years, but also the voice that lulled him to sleep every night. He stopped, but his feet kept churning and his heart beat faster, and he fell to his knees. Timmy squirmed free and started sprinting back to the fighting figures, shouting "Angel, Angel!"
There was a loud explosion sound, like a bomb going off somewhere in the distance and then everything froze. Ron, on his knees and reaching out to grab Timmy's arm, glanced about. Timmy hung suspended in the middle of a childlike bound, the figure in the black cloak frozen in the middle of a high kick. The faint smell of smoke tingled in Ron's nostrils, but he could hear nothing. And only one thing moved.
The figure who had been cloaked in blue was now removing the blue cloak so that she faced Ron in a pair of slightly baggy jeans and a black T-shirt that was cut at the bottom so that it looked ripped. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail, and she had no glasses to cover her aqua-colored eyes. "Hermione," Ron choked, staring.
"You know, it's really not polite to stare," Hermione replied, walking up to him and wrapping her arms around him. She laid her head on his shoulder as he, numbed with shock, hugged her back. "It's been too long!"
Before he could convince himself that it was just his imagination playing tricks with him, Ron grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her away so that he could look her in the eyes and get the honest truth. "Why did you disappear? Why?"
Hermione's face grew closed, and her eyes shut for a moment. When she opened them again, they were red-rimmed. She opened her mouth, as though caught off guard, and shut it again. When she finally spoke, it was in a broken voice. "I had to leave. You can't possibly understand now, because if you did, you'd just be a danger to all of us. But I had to leave. I stopped time to visit you…visit you and Timmy." She turned to the boy and swept her hand to him, so that he continued his bound and stopped, confused.
"Angel!" he cried suddenly, sprinting for the two. Hermione smiled down at him as he attached himself to her leg.
"I thought I told you angels had wings," Ron found himself saying.
"But she's a human angel," Timmy replied with an air of knowledge. "She protects me from the fairy." He glanced solidly at Ron and Ron no longer saw a shy four-year-old, but an intelligent genius working in that mind.
At this, Ron glanced back at the figure in black and started toward her. "No!" Hermione cried, grabbing his arm. "No, you mustn't know who she is until the time comes! If you do, you could screw up the whole plan!" She clung with her whole might to Ron's arm and hauled him back. "Please, don't. Just find me, the right way. Find me and everything will be right again."
And then she kissed his cheek, a simple, quick movement, and walked back to her cloak. Ron reached out to her, to hold her, to make her stay, but she shook her head at him. "Run while you can," she whispered to him. With a salute, she tossed off, "Until we meet again," and disappeared. The black-cloaked figure disappeared as well.
"The angel disappears again," Timmy muttered. He and Ron stared at each other for a long moment before the smoke started pouring into the hallway.
"We'd better get out of here! Quick!" Ron snapped, and grabbed Timmy around the middle again. He sprinted for the elevator once again, praying that this time, nobody was chasing him with a gun.
* * *
"Since Lance is half muggle, we can't meet him the normal way, through Apparation," Harry explained to Jani as they walked up the front walk to Lance Petrol's one-story house. "So we Apparate a couple blocks away, into a telephone booth, and then we walk up to his front door, like 'normal people'."
"Understandable," Jani replied, hefting her bag as they reached the front porch.
"Watch where you step," Harry advised. "And I mean this seriously." He was careful to avoid standing on the front mat. "This is rigged. If you stand on it too long, it's a trap door and you fall into a cage until Lance decides to let you out."
"Why?" Jani asked, eyes widened.
"His idea of a joke. Thinks it's funny as heck," Harry replied nonchalantly. Jani stepped onto the front porch and was about to move to the right of the doorstep. "No! Don't step th—too late." Jani shrieked in surprise as a loud alarm pierced through the late evening air and the front door flew open. Sparks shot out of the doormat, shooting everywhere and bouncing off trees and trash cans and telephone poles.
"Who's there?" a startled shout rang out and Lance Petrol himself appeared, wearing blue striped pajamas. Jani was dancing about, trying to avoid the sparks, and Harry was laughing maniacally. "Oh, it's you."
"I'd like to let you know that you are under arrest for enchanting a muggle item," Harry said humorously as the sparks suddenly stopped and Jani, panting, stood still. "Petrol, how many times do I have to tell you?"
"Can't I just bribe you and you two be on your way?" Lance whined, brushing both hands through his dishwater blond hair. He had keen brown eyes and a lithe figure, but his face was pitted with several scars.
"Yeah, you'll have to do some serious bribing, though. Luckily, I'm not here on Enforcer business. I've come to ask a favor. And if you turn my favor down, I'll whip out my badge and be back to business, so here's the deal," Harry said coolly. "Got a friend missing and Jani and I are out to find her. You either help or it's to the Wizard Jail with you, even if you ARE half-Squib."
"Fine, fine, let me just get changed. As I obviously don't have a choice," Lance grumbled. However, he shot Jani a kind of flirty look just before he disappeared back into the house.
"He's coming onto you," Harry said, laughing.
Jani just glared.
* * *
A/N: Okay, what do you think? If you made it this far, surely you can post a review! C'mon, ppppppppppllllllllllllleeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaasssssssssssseeeeeeeee???????? Please, please, please? Okay, enough begging. What do you think? Who's your favorite character? (Mine, personally, is Jani for reasons I will not reveal for now) Leave those in your review, if you will!!