Tempest Savage caught Harry's eye. "Do you mind if I come into your office for a chat some time, chief?"
"Yeah, I'm going that way now, if you want to join me," Harry replied.
Tempest put some paperwork away in his drawer and followed Harry over to the side office. They went in and Harry dropped the blinds. Then, unseen from outside, he cast a Muffliato charm. Harry indicated to Tempest to take a seat.
Harry nodded to the auror. "OK, we should be secure, Tem. What do you have?"
"They've made contact with Lewis Kettleburn. They must have heard about his muggle baiting stunt, trapping that MP in his train carriage with those… young ladies."
Harry suppressed a smile. "Who thought of that one?"
"It was his own idea. A spur-of-the-moment opportunity, he said."
Harry raised his eyebrows. "Do we believe him?"
Tempest smiled and shrugged. "Do we care?"
Harry sighed. "So, what happens next."
"They've given him a time and place for a rendezvous, tonight. This is where we all get a bit twitchy. Do we accept it's legit and not a trap? Do we try to watch over him and risk blowing his cover? Hard call."
Harry fidgeted. "Does he have his panic portkey?"
"He has it, but he won't be taking it tonight," Tempest said in a grim voice. "They're bound to check him over. The portkey would be a dead giveaway. He'll have to see how things go. At least his reputation's pretty solid, from their point of view."
Harry nodded. "Veritaserum?"
Tempest grunted. "Well, I would if I were them. But he's got that antidote your friend gave us. Seems to work perfectly. I wish we had more so that I could get it analysed."
Harry gave a mirthless laugh. "My friend is too clever for that. I hope you didn't try duplicating it."
"Harry, it's me. I gave my word. And I'm not so green that I couldn't tell it was protected."
Harry sighed. "We just have to sit and wait."
Tempest gave a slow nod. "We don't even know when we'll know. They may just have a chat with him, or they might recruit him and put him straight to work. If he can't get away, he can't contact me."
Harry pursed his lips. "Let me know as soon as he does."
"Will do, chief."
Harry was at home, having recently got into bed when his replicating scroll began to buzz. It read, "My flat, now". Harry didn't even bother to dress.
"Tem," he said to Ginny, by way of explanation, then disapparated.
Tempest's flat was not far away and Harry knew it well. He apparated directly into Tempest's living room.
Tempest raised an eyebrow on seeing Harry's pyjamas but said nothing. He was pouring himself a fire whisky and offered Harry one.
Harry was suspicious. "Do I need one?"
"The news is good, chief. Or, at least, not bad. Lewis seemed a bit spooked, reading between the lines, but he's in and they trust him enough to have told him where they're meeting. Either that or they expect us to follow him and want to set a trap."
Harry nodded. "We, of course, will not be following him, yet. What spooked him?"
Tempest pulled a face. "He didn't say, he just seemed on edge. I reminded him he can pull out any time he likes."
"Let's hope he doesn't. This is our first break in this case for nearly a year and a half."
Whoever had contacted Lewis Kettleburn was very circumspect. From the information Tempest relayed to him over the next few weeks, Harry found that Lewis's part of the organisation was calling itself 'The Seekers'. They were currently making contact with wizards and witches they felt they could recruit. This gave Harry the hope that they might get more than one undercover agent into the organisation. It was nice to have some hope, at last.
Harry strode up to the gates at Hogwarts and announced his presence. In little more than a minute Draco and Hagrid appeared at the gate to let him in. Harry's visit was nominally his usual trip to talk to the first-years in their Defence Against the Dark Arts lessons. Draco knew otherwise but they kept up the pretence in front of Hagrid. Hagrid left them as they reached the castle and headed for McGonagall's office.
"News, Harry?" Draco asked as they strode along the seventh-floor corridor towards the headteacher's office.
Harry brightened. "Slowly getting to where we want to be. I'll give you more in Minerva's office. How about you with Lydia?"
Draco nodded. "Slowly getting where we want to be. The readings I took at Trenton are starting to make sense now. Here we are. Punctuality!"
The gargoyle moved aside, revealing the moving staircase.
"The password is 'Punctuality'?" Harry grimaced.
"Yes. The previous one was 'Cleanliness'," Draco informed him. "She could at least have changed it to 'Why is it always you, Potter?'. That would have been easy to remember."
Harry chuckled and knocked on the headteacher's door.
"Enter," came McGonagall's voice from inside.
They walked in. Lydia, Flitwick and Verdi were already there.
"Late, Potter," McGonagall said.
"How do you know?" Harry retorted. "I didn't give a specific time of arrival."
McGonagall regarded him over her spectacles. "I know you are late because we are here waiting and you have only now arrived. Have you learned nothing from Ginny? You should know by now, Potter, that you cannot win."
Harry gave a silent chuckle and said, "It's 'Head Auror'."
"Ah, my mistake," McGonagall conceded. "You should know by now, Potter, that you are a Head Auror who cannot win."
Harry gave in. "Yes, Professor."
They started their discussion with Harry's report of infiltrating parts of what they believed to be Rowle's organisation. There was no talk of how they were getting their information, simply that they knew of two cells of operatives: the Seekers and the Activators. These were part of a larger organisation and they had specific tasks. They knew that the Seekers were recruiting staff for other cells. They also suspected they were involved, or going to be involved, in supplying muggle candidates to be turned into wizards. They guessed the Activators would be performing the rituals to turn the selected muggle children into witches or wizards.
Draco was next to give news. Assisted by Lydia, he told of their work together testing Lydia's powers. She had used magic in ways which were different from the wand magic she was being taught in her classes. Draco was starting to understand the measurements his equipment was making. The results were astonishing. Compared with the magical energy Lydia had used trying to open the egg at Trenton, the wand magic she used in class barely registered on the same scale.
"I spoke to Lydia's Uncle Ambrose about these findings," Draco told them. "He made a very interesting point. I wasn't there, of course, but he said that at Beverly University he had noticed Lydia's magic seemed, at times, to be directed through her chicken. As the chicken is now Xander, her cat, it would be interesting to conduct tests with and without Xander being present. He also suggested seeing what difference the use of her wand made."
Lydia spoke up. "I don't notice my magic going through Xander like it did with the chicken. But I'm aware of Xander's presence when I'm doing something that's not school magic. I'm also aware of my wand, but it's different – not like school magic, if that makes any sense?"
Harry and the assorted professors nodded.
"Good work, Draco, Lydia," Harry acknowledged. "Keep it up. If we are ever faced with others using this kind of magic then the more we know, the better we can protect people. And, of course, we mustn't let any of this get out. The enemy could use it against us and the public won't understand."
"The other side of my research, understanding the grimoire, has not been going so well, I'm afraid," Draco informed the gathering. "Most of it still needs to be translated and, with her new duties as the Head of Magical Law Enforcement, Hermione has had little time to spare. Translation is only the first step. I'm concerned there will be a lot of interpretation required afterwards. That will take time."
Harry frowned. "If the grimoire needs translating, how did Rabastan and Lucius manage to make weapons from it and try to use the ritual on that little boy?"
"I believe Alorea Rakissen was able to translate her grimoire, somehow," Draco explained. "Perhaps she had a translated copy, it is not clear. What Lestrange and my father were using was a set of extracts from the grimoire that they had been given by Alorea Rakissen. The grimoire we got from Granville in Throakley Mine is untranslated. Somehow, he had learned to translate it, or parts of it. I think it is a duplicate of the original which Alorea had 'inherited'. Parts of it are very simple, ancient Greek and Latin, most is… other things.
"It is also a book which… shifts. It is bigger than the apparent number of pages, which is rare but not unique amongst magical texts. But I get the impression that it changes. It changes itself, possibly. I'm convinced that passages I have read in Greek have been in a completely different language and script when I have returned to them later. It is like… it is encoding itself when there is something it doesn't want me to know. I can't prove it, though."
"Why ever not, Draco?" McGonagall asked.
Draco shrugged and sighed. "Either my memory is playing tricks or it also seems to be deleting the notes I make."
4