Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any related characters, locations, creature, buildings, etc. Nor do I own the Blue Duck Inn, which is an actual place and is located in Angler's Rest, Victoria, Australia. Anything else that you see in this story may or may not be original to my Imagination.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I already posted a chapter three with his title but after thinking about it for awhile, I realized that it was truly terrible. Anyway, this is a repost of chapter three and the first part is the same. However, I completely changed the ending in order to make it work better, hopefully it does.
Chapter Three: Of Spies and Such
. . . .About Six Months Later
The door to room twelve of the Blue Duck Inn slammed open and the room itself was quickly swarmed with black-robed people. Not showing any particular care. The room's new occupants began rifling through its contents, slamming drawers, ripping cupboard doors from their hinges, and tearing apart mattresses. The leader of the group was a tall, dark haired woman whose cruel eyes shone with the contempt she felt towards her charges. Bellatrix Lestrange, trusted servant of the Dark Lord and thoroughly evil.
"Forget it, they have obviously left, you won't find anything of importance here."
"But if they were in a hurry, is it not possible that something was left behind?" One of the others inquired nervously.
"No, I know these two; we won't be finding anything here. Search for them in the remaining rooms and then burn it to the ground."
The man who had protested mumbled something quietly to his friend.
"What was that, Malfoy?"
"Nothing important." Draco replied sullenly.
"Really, then you should have no trouble repeating it, unless you need a little help loosening your tongue?"
Obviously realizing that his mouth had just gotten him into some trouble, Draco answered, watching her warily. "I was just wondering why it is such a big deal for us to catch these two people. We have tracked them over half of the world and we still haven't caught them after five months."
"I believe that Malfoy senior and I will be having a little chat soon about your insolence. However, as to catching this God-forsaken team, they are currently causing far too much trouble for My Lord's liking. These two have been put up on a pedestal by the fools who disagree with our beliefs and we believe that the man is none other than Harry Potter himself."
"Do our spies know who the girl is?" asked a timid female voice to Bellatrix's left.
"No, our spies have been unable to discover this information. However, it's only a matter of time; now get this place out of my sight!" She snarled and stomped out of the room.
Halfway across the world, the two people in question were approaching the Scottish wizard village of Hogsmeade to fill Dumbledore in on their latest mission.
"How in the hell did those stupid idiots find us when half of them are too thick to string two words together without being prompted?" Ginny Weasley seethed, flailing her arms about angrily.
"I would assume that they were tipped off. Of course that is just a suspicion." Her partner, Harry Potter replied, raising an eyebrow at her wild antics.
"Well who? Who would have known that we were staying in that pub, let alone the damn country? Someone in the Order has to be spilling to the dark side!"
"Very astute of you Ginny." He replied, smirking cheerfully.
"You are such a wanker, Potter, how can you laugh at a time like this, we could have been killed!" Ginny groaned, swinging playfully at him.
"Not very likely, those are just the new death eater recruits; most of them wouldn't have stood a chance against the two of us. The biggest problem would have been Lestrange, and I doubt that she would have gotten into the middle of things until she had a clear shot at my back anyway."
"How do you take this so calmly? We were very nearly ambushed!"
"I am fully aware of that, but screaming won't help anything and even if it would, you are doing plenty of that for the both of us."
Ginny blushed, slightly embarrassed at his subtle chiding of her emotional outburst.
"Don't worry Ginny; we'll talk to Dumbledore about it. Together, the three of us should be able to come up with something."
"Okay. How long are we going to be in the area before our next mission?" Ginny asked, her bright brown eyes shining hopefully.
"Oh, I figure about as long as it takes to finish up our report to Dumbledore. After that, we'll be heading in a southward direction from here."
"Oh, okay then, let's get this over with." She sighed dejectedly, not noticing the twinkle that shone in Harry's eyes or the fact that he seemed to be having trouble keeping a straight face.
"Yes, I figured that if you weren't at the Burrow in time for Christmas then Molly would probably string me up."
"I understa- wait, it's not another mission?"
"Nope, I think that we need a break from each others company, we haven't seen much of anyone else we know for several months after all."
"Oh thank you, thank you, thank you!" Ginny squealed, hugging Harry around the neck.
"Sure, uh Ginny, we're here." Harry's muffled voice replied from underneath the petite redhead.
Looking around Ginny saw professor McGonagall watching them, eyebrow raised, her mouth twitching a little at the corners.
"Hey Gin, uh, what's going on?" Harry asked warily as she stormed into the kitchen and took a swig of his butterbeer.
"D'you have any idea how embarrassing it is to get the birds and the bees talk when you're eighteen? Damn it! Mum, dad, Bill, and Charlie ganged up on me, there has got to be some sort of unwritten rule about that sort of thing. I'm just glad that Fred and George couldn't make it and Ron refused to participate, I can only imagine what that would have been like. Hell, I don't think I've ever been more embarrassed in my whole life!"
"Oh trust me, I understand completely."
"How-…" Ginny started, confusion evident on her face.
"No, I wish it had been Sirius talked to me about it, I'm sure he would have discovered a way of making it less painful. No, I received 'The Talk' from no less than nine different people, all of whom assumed that nobody else would think to do so what with my godfather and both parents dead."
"You're joking! Oh wow, and I thought I got it bad, at least I only had to hear it from my family."
"Yeah, I heard it from your family too, your dad and mum banded together to get both Ron and me when he started dating Hermione – in fact, that was about when Fred and George saw fit to give it to us."
"I'm so sorry, I had no idea. Who else gave you the talk?"
"Well, for the other five talks I didn't even have Ron to share my misery with, they all got me alone. Lets see, there was Remus, of course, and Moody, Tonks, and in what were two of the most embarrassing moments of my life – McGonagall and Dumbledore."
By now Ginny was laughing so hard that Harry wasn't sure she'd be able to go much longer without breathing – she was beginning to look quite purple.
"I…am…so sorry, it…must…have…been…awful!" She gasped as she tried to regain her breath.
"Yes, I can feel the sympathy just rolling off of you in waves, wonderful to have such a supporting friend." Harry grumbled good-naturedly.
"Its just that, here I was about to go blow something up over one embarrassing speech, which I cut off as soon as I could, and you had to listen to seven of them!"
"I'm quite sure that Dumbledore did it strictly for his own amusement."
"Yeah, I really can't see them all being so oblivious to each others actions."
"They weren't. D'you want to come with me to see Ron and Hermione or would you rather stay here and blow up a few unsuspecting Order members? I'm sure that with a little luck you could probably get that spy you were telling me about earlier." He replied, folding up the newspaper he had been reading and smirking at her.
"Yeah, pick on the rookie, it's not my fault that you're usually so thick that I feel obligated to point out even the most obvious facts. But yes, I would love to see Ron and Hermione, it's been too long since I've had female company."
"I'm assuming that you meant Hermione?"
"Yes, and you shouldn't pick on your friends when they aren't around to defend themselves; it's so much fun to watch him splutter. I suggest you get a cloak as it's raining really hard out there."
"Okay, I'll meet you in the entrance hall in five?"
Another AUTHOR'S NOTE: I didn't realize until I uploaded this that Nimbirosa was right, it really is terribly short, I suppose that this just means that I'll either have to write more chapters more often or else I'll need to just make them a lot longer. Well, with that said: ON TO THE REPLIES…
Nimbirosa: My beloved new beta, I do hope that this chapter is an improvement on my previous attempt as it really was pretty bad.
Trek: Thank you.
K3tig: I am very glad that you stumbled across it and decided to review. Your encouragement makes me feel all toasty inside.
Ithilrien-Forasel: Thank you for your encouragement, I think I will.
HP-Scriptor: Thank you, your review was very encouraging and if I get the chance I will definitely check out your site. As it is, I might be awhile, term is just ending for me so things are a bit crazy (Damn Algebra and World History!).
And thank you also to those who added me to their alerts:
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