- Chapter Four -

The Assassins

Frightened, Ron brushed the cobweb-like material off his shoulder, which dissipated with a tiny pop. The tattooed man gave no sign that this would bother him, he just kept smiling at them, but he was also the only one of the three who held his wand in his hand.

'What do you want from us?' Harry hissed at them, aiming his wand at the grinning man's head.

His question, however, was answered not by him, but by the long-haired wizard in a suit, who now stepped forward with two hands raised in conciliatory gestures.

'Please forgive us for intruding, but there was no other way for us to talk to you...'

'How were we followed?' Ron interjected nervously, clearly not the least bit reassured by the pony-tailed man's polite speech.

The one with the tattooed face laughed.

'Nice spell, eh? You bet it is! This lasso charm... Laqueus missil. Useful for tracking fugitives on the run.'

'We are no fugitives!' Ron snapped with a splashing anger that even made his wand sparkle. 'But you are trespassing! Get out of here or you'll be sorry!'

At that moment, the front door burst open behind Harry and Ginny burst through it, wand in hand; Kinkaku flew overhead with a howl and settled down on one of the gutters of the house, squawking, keeping an eye on the intruders, who were, however, not frightened by the bird.

'Harry, Ron! Are you all right?' she asked, not taking her eyes off the three men, who were still standing calmly in one place.

Harry squinted at them as well. They didn't flinch at the phoenix's song, didn't back off, didn't even make the slightest move to indicate that they found anything sinister in Kinkaku's menacing voice. Which meant...

'We have followed you with no malicious intent, Mr Weasley,' the long-haired wizard continued to try to be diplomatic. 'I appreciate your mistrust of us, and I understand it perfectly. But please... I beg you, listen to what we have to say!'

He still spoke with upraised hands, but his seemingly harmless manner was somewhat spoiled by the grim-faced sorcerer behind him, who, one could tell, would never in his life use the word beg. Their third companion, the wizard who had first approached Ron in the Merry Hog, had so far said nothing, but lurched from one foot to the other in the back, his hands in his pockets, occasionally adjusting his spectacles as they slipped off or scratching the tip of his nose.

Ginny, who was somewhat calmer than her brother, stepped forward beside Harry.

'If you want to talk to us, throw your wands down first!' she shouted firmly.

The tattooed one laughed again, mockingly, hostilely. Harry realised that he really disliked people who could laugh like that.

'You don't seriously think that...'

'Yes, she does!' the long-haired man in the suit suddenly cut in. He glanced back at the taller one, who made a grimace. 'We'll hand over our wands. There'll be no trouble here...'

The wizard slowly lowered one hand and, pinching it between two fingers, drew his wand and dropped it on the grass at Harry's feet. The bespectacled, goateed third man in the back did the same, only the tattooed man didn't move.

'I will not give my wand to a werewolf!' he growled, glaring at Harry with undeniable disgust.

Now it was Ron's turn to laugh.

'It's three against one. The odds are against you, baldy!'

'If only you were right, I'd like those odds!' the wizard shouted back, turning his wand from Harry to Ron. 'Then this would've even be worth thee trip, but looking at you...'

'Prosper!'

Harry and Ginny flinched in fright. They thought that the long-haired man had been shouting some sort of incantation without his wand, but then they realised that he was just saying his stubborn partner's name, losing his temper. He seemed to be the boss of the three, for the tattooed one fell silent, and for a while he scowled at them as he considered the situation.

'You owe me a lot for this...' he growled under his breath, but finally, reluctantly, he dropped his wand at his feet.

Harry now collected all three with a summoning charm and pocketed them. The bald man's face was red with rage beneath his dark tattoos.

'All right,' Ginny blurted out, 'now tell me what the hell you want from us!'

'Can we go inside the house?' asked the wizard in the suit, still extremely polite.

Harry, Ron and Ginny looked at each other. Ron didn't look pleased, although Harry suspected that his friend's short temper would only calm down if he could curse all three uninvited guests to the depths of Azkaban, but Ginny wasn't so upset by the developments. She had seen what Harry had seen: if the three wizards had wanted to harm them, they could have done so the moment they appeared behind them as they made their unsuspecting way towards the house.

Harry gestured them as they set off, with the long-haired man in the front and the glasses-wearing man in the back, who sighed heavily when they were invited in. Once inside, they were ushered straight into the living room, and Ron ordered them to sit down. He, Ginny and Harry remained standing, surrounding them on three sides, their wands still pointed at their guests. This was visibly disturbing the bespectacled, goateed wizard, who now spoke hesitantly:

'Could the wands be put away? There's absolutely no need...'

'Don't get your hopes up!' Harry shook his head, not even letting the young man finish. Ginny cleared her throat.

'Let's hear what you have to say!' she said to the boss of the small group, who nodded readily, but before he would start, he reached into his pocket and took out a bag full of tiny seeds.

'Do you mind?' he asked them. 'I'm crazy about sunflower seeds. I always nibble them when I'm nervous... So, where were we?'

'That you finally tell us what the hell they want from us!' Ron snapped impatiently.

The man grabbed at his head, then cracked a seed open with his teeth, and only then did he finally speak.

'So... My name is Michael Svetich. I work in the internal audit department of the Hungarian Ministry of Magic. This is...' he pointed to the man in the armchair with the glasses, 'the Deputy Head of the Institute of Magizoology and Botany of the ICW, Mr Rolf Scamander - you've heard of his grandfather, Newt Scamander, haven't you?'

Harry, Ron and Ginny just gave a moderately surprised look at the faintly smiling young man.

'The gentleman sitting on my other side is one of the finest aurors of the Italian magical forces...'

'Enough with the swagger, Svetich, that's not why we're here,' said the tattooed man lazily, who was sitting comfortably back on the sofa, arms folded, apparently bored out of his mind.

Michael Svetich rolled his eyes, as if he too had had enough of his rude companion, but finally swallowed his comment, whatever it was.

'Okay.' he sighed patiently. 'So this is Mr Prosper Cipollo, Auror, of the Italian wand-breaking special commando force.'

'From the Pusses?'

Now it was Ron who interjected, but this time expressing genuine amazement, and staring wide-eyed at the bald, tattooed man and the dozens of piercings that adorned his face. Harry did not understand his friend's strange question, but he was not alone:

'What?' Ginny looked at him puzzled.

'The Italian wand-breaking squad is world famous,' Ron explained, looking at Prosper Cipollo. 'They have a common nickname - I heard it from Proudfoot. They're called the Pusses in Boots.'

'Meow,' added Prosper in a bored voice.

Harry just smiled to himself.

'That's the stupidest name I've ever heard...' Harry muttered softly, but the tattooed wizard heard it, and now turned to him, eyes flashing dangerously, which even without his wand, sitting on the couch, made his whole persona menacing.

'The last wolf who told me that is now lying in three different pieces at the bottom of the sea,' he growled quietly.

Harry frowned. It was the second time he'd heard him say that. Would it be so obvious...?

'How do you know I'm a werewolf?' he asked.

'I've dealt with enough filth in my work to recognise one when I see one,' said Prosper with a sneer. 'I only have to look at you... Your sweating forehead, your pallor, and the fact that there was a full moon yesterday are suspicious enough, but the circles of blood around your irises tell everything: you've only had one or two transformations, because your body isn't used to it yet. People with weak hearts usually die at the first transformation because they can't cope with the strain. But you survived... You probably turn out to be a pretty big obscenity...' he finished his lecture with a sneer.

Harry was getting very fed up with him and close to curse him with a Stinging Hex for constantly teasing them in their own house, but Ginny turned what he had only imagined into action:

'Expecto Vespertilo!'

There was a crack, and from the girl's wand flew out a full-grown, red-eyed bat, throwing itself at Prosper Cipollo's face.

'Ahhhh! Get this thing off me!'

'GINNY!' shouted Harry and Ron at the girl in shock, but while Harry thought it was a bit much to actually curse the loudmouthed wizard, Ron seemed to be entertained a lot from it.

Prosper flapped his hands, trying to knock down the bat that was working to pull a shiny, glittering piercing out of his nose.

'Now you don't have such a big mouth, do you?' Ginny asked him.

'Get it off me, you bitch, or I swear... Svetich! Svetich, get it off me...! Ouch!'

Michael Svetich, however, either believed that the man deserved the bat-bogey to his face, or he was afraid that he would be cursed if he helped him, so he just kept popping the sunflower seeds with his teeth. But Rolf Scamander had had enough and jumped up from his seat.

'Stop it!' he yelled at Ginny. 'We just want to talk to you, there's no need for violence!'

'But there is no need to be rude to us either!' she squealed back, with a downright terrified expression on her face.

Harry had almost forgotten how wild his girlfriend could get when people close to her were insulted.

'Is your answer to rudeness always violence?!' Scamander, who until then had looked like a quiet, reserved man, shouted at her, but the shouting almost made his glasses slide off his nose.

'You can get one too if you don't shut up!' Ginny's voice was almost as high as the squawking bat's.

With all the noise, they did not notice that the front door had opened and someone had come in, now standing open-mouthed on the threshold, staring at the events in the living room.

'Hermione!' Harry was the first one to notice the girl returning home, and he was already wondering how they were going to explain this to her.

Hermione - still with her jaw dropped - slowly came in, and by then Ron and Ginny had noticed her.

'What in the name of Merlin's pants is going on here?!' she asked amazed as she ran her eyes over the bat-warring Prosper, the calm Svetich watching him, Rolf Scamander shouting at Ginny and the baffled Ron and Harry.

'Hi Hermione!' said Ginny to her. 'As you can see, we have guests!'

'Uninvited guests,' Ron clarified.

The girl dropped her bag on the shoe cabinet and immediately began to bombard them with questions. Meanwhile, Ginny had taken pity on Prosper who was holding the fidgeting bat with his two hands, barely restraining it, and made the summoned creature disappear. The bald wizard, panting, with a nasty scratch or two on his face and a few bits of body jewellery removed, sat on the sofa, glaring murderously at Ginny. Then he noticed that Michael Svetich had been staring at him for some time.

'What?'

'You deserved it,' the long-haired wizard told him, two sunflower seeds in his mouth.

Rolf Scamander did not return to his seat, he must have felt safer if he stayed on his feet.

Harry and Ron reported everything to Hermione, who first called the two boys all sorts of irresponsible jerks, why they had gone off on their own to investigate, and then started asking them about the visitors:

'The thing is, we were just getting to know each other when Ginny lost her temper...' muttered Ron, glancing at his sister, who grimaced back at him.

But Michael Svetich must have been waiting for just that, because now he turned to Hermione and, after a second quick introduction, picked up where he left off:

'We come to you because we know that you are aware of what is happening in our world. The inner circle of dark sorcerers has taken control of the ministries of magic!'

His words silenced everyone in the room. Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny stared silently at the three wizards, who waited for their reaction without blinking.

'So... you know about it, too?' Harry asked cautiously. Svetich and Scamander nodded.

'It was Mr Prosper who it first caught his eye,' continued the younger man with the glasses. 'He was appointed last year as the commander of Benedetto Modesto's personal bodyguard, and he knew that something had happened to the Supreme Mugwump. He was the one contacting us...'

The Italian wizard was somewhat calmer now, and ignoring his bleeding ear, he nodded, confirming Rolf Scamander's words.

'Benedetto had a strange habit: when he was in an elevator, he would tap the toe of his shoe with his walking stick and grind his teeth,' Prosper told them. 'I once even asked him why he did that, was he afraid of tight spaces? But he said he hadn't noticed it before, it was just a habit he had. He used to do it afterwards when we were in the lift, tapping with his stick and grinding his teeth. Then one day he stopped doing it, he never gritted his teeth and never tapped his walking stick - and that day coincided, as I later found out, with the drastic change in policy of the ICW...'

'I told you someone would notice!' Ron remarked triumphantly when Prosper had finished.

Harry also remembered that his friend had said loudly after their return from Nurmengard that there must be some of the many officials and Aurors who would notice the swap of ministers and do something about it.

'Prosper came to see me shortly afterwards,' Michael Svetich took over again. 'He was an old acquaintance of my father, but he followed me for a while to make sure he could trust me. Then we met, and I told him that the work of the Internal Audit Department had been made almost impossible recently by legislation that seemed to have been deliberately put in place to hide something from us. We knew then that something was very wrong. We quickly ruled out the Imperius curse with a few simple tests, and so we looked for traces of Polyjuice Potion. We used kneazles to identify the replaced individuals. So far, we know for sure that fourteen ministers and twenty-three other witches and wizards are not who they say they are.

'And how did you get involved, Mr Scamander?' asked Hermione the man with glasses.

'Please, call me Rolf,' he said.

The way he smiled back at Hermione did not please Ron at all, and he was not at a loss for words:

'Rolf-rolf!' he grunted with a pig's voice, grinning as the young wizard's smile faded, but Hermione rewarded her boyfriend's performance with a scowl.

'I apologise, Rolf,' she apologised for Ron, who fell into a rude silence. 'I met your grandfather, I was there when... when he died in the Durmstrang incident.'

'So you saw it happen?' Scamander asked, looking a little pale. 'It's because of him I started investigating within the ICW. I was very unhappy with the way the case was being handled, I found contradictions almost everywhere, there was always something to prevent me from finding out details, and meeting minutes were mysteriously and incomprehensibly disappearing. Then, a month ago, I was simply fired from the Institute, my research permits were revoked, and everything, including my work, was made completely impossible. That's when I was approached by Mr Svetich and Mr Cipollo.'

The long-haired and bald sorcerers nodded again, and again Svetich continued:

'When we heard about the so-called "resurrection" of the Hogwarts trio, we thought it would be worth taking a closer look at you.'

'Well that's done,' said Ginny. 'And what do you want now that we got together like this?'

'Naturally, we want to expose those who have infiltrated the ICW, and we want to finish off their leader, the mysterious dark lord,' Svetich opened his arms, one hand holding the bag of sunflower seeds. 'Isn't it obvious?'

Harry shook his head and sighed. If only it were that obvious...!

'You have no idea who you're dealing with, do you?' he asked him quietly.

'Of course we have,' Svetich said, spitting seed husks into the ashtray on the little coffee table. 'They call him the nameless sorcerer.'

Harry was surprised again, and so were three of his friends; would they know who was behind the ministerial exchanges?

'How did you find out?' Ron asked, surprised.

'As great heroes as you may be, Aurors were not dropped on their heads either!' Prosper answered. 'The Italian authorities have been investigating the inner circle for years, and we heard of a sorcerer who supposedly has no name a long time ago already. We had no idea he was a dark lord at first, he had come only to our attention because of his murders of filthy magical beasts.'

Hermione's face darkened at the phrase "filthy magical beasts", as Ginny's had earlier, but she didn't immediately reach for her wand. Harry wondered whether Prosper hoped it would stay that way, because then instead of bats, a flock of birds would be eating his body parts.

'The Nameless wants to exterminate the magical beasts and beings,' the girl said. 'You don't seem to be very opposed to that.'

Prosper shook his head without thinking.

'Because I'm not. I think it's a great idea! There's anyhow only problems with...' Then his eyes met Ginny's and he didn't continue his sentence, no doubt learning from what had happened to him earlier. 'My personal opinion is of no concern to this matter. But this dark sorcerer has pulled off the greatest committed crime of the century by replacing and probably killing the ministers, and we cannot let that go.'

Yes, thought Harry, of course that's the opinion of an Auror. It is an Auror's job to catch dark sorcerers, but he wouldn't speak so lightly if he only suspected the power of their opponent.

Misunderstanding the silent musings of the four, Michael Svetich looked at them with a sort of "I-don't-believe-it" look.

'The way we've imagined you, I didn't think you were the kind of people who would just turn a blind eye to this sort of thing. You were the first to defeat a dark lord for half a century, and not even an inferior one. Voldemort is considered one of the most powerful wizards in my country, mentioned alongside Merlin, Grindelwald and Albus Dumbledore. We know that the nameless sorcerer is also a dark lord, and that's without mentioning his possible accomplices. However...'

Maybe they do know what they are up against? – Harry mused to himself, glancing sideways at Ron, who was staring at Svetich.

'The thing is,' the seed-nibbling wizard continued, 'Aurors are not trained in what to do against an opponent who has perfected all aspects of magic. Aurors strike at the dark sorcerers' vulnerabilities with carefully planned actions and assembled teams. If a dark wizard is skilled at duelling, we'll try to lure him into a trap; if he specialises in mixing potions, three or four wand-breaking aurors will simply slam the door; if we're dealing with a necromancer, we'll use fire and patronuses.' Svetich paused and sighed deeply before continuing. 'But we can't... they don't teach us, and they can't teach us in training, how to fight an opponent who simply has no weakness.'

'They always have a weakness,' Hermione interjected, and Ron agreed.

'They just hide it damn well!' he added.

Harry was beginning to see where this conversation was going, so he thought it best to break the Hungarian wizard's enthusiasm before he got carried away.

'We didn't find Voldemort's weakness,' he shook his head slowly. 'If you've read about us in the papers, you'll know that Albus Dumbledore found out Riddle's secret, and we've been following his orders and guidance all along. We could never have defeated him without Dumbledore.'

But before he had finished, he knew that he would not convince Svetich.

'That may be true... I believe that at seventeen you were inexperienced when you faced Lord Voldemort, but in the process you gained knowledge that is unparalleled. You know how a Dark Lord thinks, you know what to look out for, what to watch out for, how to get close to him - and above all, you know the nameless sorcerer. I'd be surprised if you haven't already started plotting against him, looking for his weak spot, perhaps as you learned from your master, Albus Dumbledore!'

Harry noticed that Rolf Svetich nodded at every sentence as if he had invented them, and then he understood that Scamander, being Biritsh, must have known their story better than the Hungarian or Italian sorcerer, and that he must have told it to his two companions, perhaps from what he had read in the papers, or from a book about them by an enthusiastic writer. Hence the whole idea of comparing them to Dumbledore, assuming that the professor taught them everything – truly everything – before his death.

Hermione seemed to agree with his thoughts, because she laughed bitterly.

'Then perhaps you should have a discussion with him. His painting is upstairs,' she pointed to the ceiling with her thumbs up.

Rolf Scamander shook his head.

'We need living help. We need you!'

When the four good friends did not respond, but stood silently, trying to decide what they could say to make their guests see reason, Rolf tried something else instead of persuasion:

'Look... Maybe you should listen to what we've found out so far and then decide.'

Neither Harry nor his friends had any objections to this, so Hermione waved for them to continue. Prosper Cipollo began to speak, this time avoiding the usual insults and taunts - he seemed to take his job seriously.

'When we discovered how many people had been replaced in the ICW, I recognized it as the style of the nameless sorcerer. His habit was to take the form of others using Polyjuice Potion, and as I observed each replaced minister, I also discovered that he was somehow able to prolong the effects of the potion. This is like him, for in a long career that includes a whole series of officially unrelated crimes of our repository, he has always shown himself to be a true specialist in potions and mixtures.'

Harry saw Ron and Hermione glance at each other. He knew that they were both thinking of the Selwyn siblings, who were hiding somewhere in their forms at this very moment, because of the everlasting Polyjuice Potion.

'I have collected the cases that could be connected to the nameless sorcerer,' Prosper explained. 'We can find several of his aliases in the database, and there are even more who we can only suspect to be connected to him. There is Rosamund Garlic, for example, who was wanted for serial murders of vampires and werewolves between '40 and '45. And then there's Nettle Acerby, the prison governor of Nurmengard, who was recently replaced when the ICW moved in. Ursula Ulatov, the headmistress of Durmstrang, is also suspected of being involved - allegedly the most brilliant teacher of potions in the school's history. And quite a few others, such as the Japanese scandal writer Yosomono Fujin, a Welsh resident called Doris Crockford, and a well-known dark witch called Fyrmia Siebenke - the latter name has been in our records for over a hundred years!'

Harry jerked his head up at the sound of a name - Doris Crockford, from somewhere in the misty past, so long ago he couldn't have told the day he'd met her, only that they'd once stood face to face. The image of a sherry-smelling old woman smoking a long pipe appeared before him, clutching his hand and looking at his forehead with what seemed sincere admiration, the lightning-shaped scar that had made him famous in the wizarding world...

Who could have known? Could that admiration really have been genuine? After all, the Nameless had been offering him the opportunity to join him, to be his disciple, for some time now, and he seemed to really mean it. Could it be that that encounter in the Leaky Cauldron - Harry remembered it clearly now, the first time he and Hagrid had been there - had been the Nameless' first attempt to get close to him? Harry remembered something else the masked wizard had once said to him in his cell in Nurmengard. He said that it was he who had spread the rumour about Harry, that he was a powerful dark wizard who would one day succeed Voldemort, a rumour that even Snape and Lucius Malfoy had heard.

As Harry was hit by the memories and his hypotheses, Prosper continued his monologue unperturbed.

'As you can see, with the exception of Nettle Acerby, we have women on our list, so we think the nameless sorcerer could be a dark mistress. She is very old, we believe she may be well over a hundred years old, perhaps more.'

How much longer will this hassle go on? - Harry asked himself. He knew that when the three wizards finally disappeared, the first thing he would do was to run upstairs to the Pensieve and the memory vials and find out everything he could about Doris Crockford.

'We don't know what to do with this information,' Rolf Scamander took over. 'We don't know what direction to take... Maybe... maybe we should start looking for horcruxes, or check whether the philosopher's stone has been remanufactured? We don't know what to expect from this person.'

Hermione shook her head and spread her arms wide in puzzlement.

'We don't know either, believe us! That is why we do nothing - because as much as it pains me to say it, we are helpless!'

Harry didn't like to think that they were helpless, but he had to admit that there was a lot of truth in her words.

'Our wits and our magic have never matched Dumbledore's,' he said, stating the sad reality.

'Harry and I almost failed Potions twice!' Ron added another. 'Not to mention History of Magic...'

Ginny added her two cents:

'When I was eleven, Voldemort possessed me and made me hunt Muggle-borns at school.'

Rolf covered his mouth, but he didn't know what to say to that.

'And I have proven countless times that I am too limited- and narrow-minded,' Hermione concluded. 'Dumbledore based his entire plan on the nebulous words of a half-wit Seer, which led to Voldemort's downfall seventeen years later. If I'd heard that prophecy, I probably would have taken Professor Trelawney to St. Mungo's.'

Rolf nodded.

'The prophecy... Yes, we've heard of it...'

'Not just the prophecy,' Hermione interjected. 'I didn't believe in the Wand of Destiny either. Or Harry's visions. If it had been up to my so-called 'legendary' wit, Rolf, Voldemort would still be alive and ruling.'

'And I wasn't a big hero either!' Ron said, his voice bitter. 'I failed Harry and Hermione in their hour of greatest need, and they nearly died in the process.'

Harry looked at his friend and was a little surprised. Ron was still so unforgiving of his own departure that he wanted to let as many people know as possible, as if he were trying to punish himself.

'We all make mistakes!' Michael Svetich responded loudly. 'Mr Weasley, we don't need heroes from a fairy tale, we need people who can help! And I'm quite sure you can!'

Harry has just had enough. If he didn't end the conversation here, they'd still be sitting here at dawn, muttering about how indispensable they were.

'Let's conclude this, Mr Svetich,' he asked as politely as possible, and none of his friends had any objections. Ginny had wanted their guests out of the house for some time, and Ron hadn't wanted to let them in at all.

'But Mr Potter, listen to me! We must go to Nurmengard and put an end to this! We must kill this nameless sorcerer, for there is no other way to stop him!'

Harry shook his head.

'I'm not killing anyone,' he said firmly, and for a moment his eyes met those of Kinkaku, sitting on the ceiling beam.

At the mentioning of a coarse assassination, the two girls felt they had heard enough of Svetich's plans.

'Please leave now...' Hermione showed them the door, and Ron raised his wand, which he had been waving in his hand for a while, as a sign.

Prosper Cipollo got up, but he did not want to leave.

'If you help us, you might die. But if you do nothing, the same will happen anyhow.'

His cold, matter-of-fact words rang in Harry's ears. Of course he was going to do something; he was about to dive into the Nameless' memories – and in the meantime he also hoped he had memorised all of the pseudonyms Prosper had mentioned...

Hermione, Ron and Ginny ushered the three wizards out; they went forward, leading the way with their wands raised, but not threatening Scamander, Cipollo and Svetich, who were backing away towards the door, step by step, trying to talk them out of it.

'We have to do something!'

'You cannot sit on your bottoms while the world is turned upside down!'

'Get out of here!' Ron barked at them, and as soon as Rolf Scamander's nose was a safe distance from the threshold, he slammed the door.

The shouting stopped, and after a minute of disappointed silence, three disapparition pops could be heard.

'They're gone,' Ginny informed her friends, pulling the curtains aside and peering out the window.

By the time she turned around, Harry was already running up the stairs, having been waiting for this since the mention of Doris Crockford's name.

'Follow me!' he called back to the others, who looked after him in surprise.

'Harry...?'

'Come on! I have to check something important!'

The tapping of feet signaled Ron, Ginny and Hermione were following him, but he had already kicked open the door to his room and was struggling on all fours to dig out the Pensieve and the bag of memory-phials.

'What are you doing, Harry?' Ginny's voice was now coming from inside the room.

When he finally found the magical bowl and the glassy clinking bag, he piled them on the bed and spilled the clashing vials on the blanket.

'Harry...'

'That Prosper mentioned someone when he was listing possible aliases of the Nameless... Someone I knew,' he explained, looking at the vials one by one, reading the year on them and the name that signified whoever the dark sorcerer was impersonating at the time. In the cupboard where he had once kept them, in the office of the Nurmengard Town Hall, were the little glittering vials, carefully grouped by name and year, which Harry had then hastily stuffed into a bag when he had escaped from the prison town with Malfoy and the Selwyn siblings, who were in the guise of his two friends.

'And who would that be?' Ron asked wonderingly.

Harry looked back at them; his three friends were standing on the doorstep.

'An old woman called Doris Crockford,' he told them. 'I met her the day Hagrid told me I was a wizard and took me to Diagon Alley. She was there in the Leaky Cauldron with Quirrel!'

This thought had just occurred to him - could it be possible that the Nameless was there at that very moment not by chance? Perhaps he had a meeting with Voldemort, or whoever later became the parasitic lord's host?

'Help me find it!'

'Doris... Doris... what is it?'

'Crockford!' said Harry, helping Hermione out. 'Look for a date in 1991!'

The four of them crouched down by the bed and started rummaging through the bottles.

'Put aside what you've already looked at, and separate those where the label's come off from the water,' said Harry, searching feverishly.

For a few minutes, all that could be heard was the shuffling of phials and the excited gasps, huffs and coughs, and the curious mew of Crookshanks, who had followed his masters upstairs and was now sitting on the bed, pawing at the sparkling bottles, until Ron interrupted him with a snappish gesture.

Harry grew more and more disappointed as the phials were running out, and only unfamiliar names appeared before him, no Doris, not even a Dora or Dolores.

'That's not it either... and neither is this... Wait!' suddenly Ron got up. 'Oh never mind, it says Boris, not Doris...'

'It's possible it's in one of the fuzzy-labeled vials,' Hermione pointed to the separate pile, which has grown quite substantially as each vial passed through one of their hands.

'And I think it's all bollocks!' Ron sighed, after putting the Boris bottle aside. 'Maybe those morons were looking in the wrong direction and they're not actually anywhere near the Nameless...'

Harry did not think so; he could only think how improbable and how great a coincidence it would be if an Italian Auror should know the very name of the old woman he had met in the Leaky Cauldron, and connect her to the Nameless, without her having any connection to the dark sorcerer.

'I'm not sure they're wrong,' Hermione continued. 'It's just possible that Doris Crockford was a Faceless, and not the Nameless himself. After all, Faceless' memories aren't in here, are they?'

'Look at that,' Ginny said before Harry could answer her. 'He mentioned that name!'

They all turned to Ginny, and saw a small bottle glistening in her hand, with a yellowed old sticker with the words on it:

'Fyrmia Siebenke, 1914,' Ron mumbled.

'He did mention that name!' Hermione remembered.

Ginny handed the vial to Harry, who twirled it thoughtfully between his fingers. Back when they had first come home from Nurmengard and he had looked into the Nameless' memories, he had lined up the vials chronologically and this particular vial had been at the front of the line.

'I think this is the oldest of the memories...' he said, tossing it in his hand absentmindedly. 'If no vials were lost in the river before this one, it could be the beginning of his story... the very beginning.'

Ginny agreed with him.

'A very old memory. Maybe that Svetich is right?'

Harry shrugged, while Hermione was already pulling the empty Pensieve in front of them.

'Let's have a look!'she suggested, and Harry pulled the stopper out of the glass and poured its half-gas, half-liquid contents into the stone bowl, where it swirled for a while, smoothing out the folds and ripples and taking the form of a sort of clear, reflective glassy surface.

'After you,' Harry and Ron let the girls go ahead, and after they dove into the memory, their feet fell softly on the grassy ground, after falling through a black, lightless, indeterminate space.

They saw a shabby hut in the woods, hiding among tall, dark, very old trees, as if it were part of nature; its walls were covered with weeds, and in one place the roof had collapsed under a branch that had fallen on it.

The windows of the cabin yawned darkly, but outside the building four men stood around a crackling bonfire that drew long, flickering shadows in the darkness. Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny instantly recognised the Nameless among them, wearing his usual glittering diamond mask, but this time instead of a red robe he wore a hooded, tattered cloak, which Harry had previously seen mostly on wizards and witches visiting the most seedy parts of Knockturn Alley. Next to him stood a terribly emaciated boy with spiky hair in obedient stillness, who could not have been more than thirteen or fourteen years old, and wore a similarly tattered robe. The other two present stood directly opposite them on the far side of the fire, the hoods of their grey robes pulled low over their faces, so that Harry could not even tell their gender.

'Do you hear that?' Ginny whispered anxiously, involuntarily taking Harry's hand.

The already oppressive atmosphere was made worse by the loud crying of a baby, coming from the dark house, and apparently not bothering the Nameless in the slightest.

The full moon was shining brightly in the sky, and at first it made Harry flinch - for a moment it crossed his mind that it was a danger to him, but then nothing happened, except it made his back prickle uncomfortably. Of course, he thought to himself. A full moon in a memory won't turn him...

'Where could we be?' Ron asked a little louder than his sister.

'Shh!' said Hermione, putting a finger to her lips, for then one of the figures waiting opposite the Nameless spoke.

'Have you finished the assignment?' he asked in a strong accent. 'I don't pay anything until I see the host.'

Harry, meanwhile, went around the bonfire and, standing beside the skinny boy, got a better view of the two hooded figures. He noticed that both witch and wizard wore very distinguished-looking clothes under their grey robes, which they pulled together as if they were at least an invisibility cloak to hide them from the world. Both of them looked nervous and impatient, anxious to get away from the Nameless as quickly as possible.

'Yes, the vessel is ready,' said the sorcerer, in a lazy, feminine voice, and then she looked at the boy standing next to her and waved. The boy immediately hurried off, running into the house, and Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny could only see the crackling bonfire and the silent figures waiting opposite each other for a while.

When the boy returned, he brought the bawling baby in his arms, wrapped in a very neglected and dirty rag, looking terribly dirty in the firelight, as if it had not even been cleaned since its birth.

Hermione watched with piteous sadness and Ron with open mouth as the Nameless took the baby from the boy, and then, ignoring the baby's obvious displeasure, handed it to the hooded man and his wife.

'Don't look it in the eye,' the Nameless warned the wizard. 'Kill it as soon as possible - if you don't, you could be in serious trouble. Do you understand me?'

The plaze wizard nodded. His wife's lips trembled with fear, and she did not even glance at the baby in his hands, who was now roaring even more.

'Drown it in water, preferably in a shallow stream,' continued the Nameless, in a calm voice, as if he were dictating a potion recipe.

Harry thought he had heard wrong; were they really talking about drowning a baby?

'Oh my God...' he heard Hermione's horrified whisper, and Ron gulped loudly. Ginny, who rarely allowed her tears to escape, now stood beside her brother with her hand over her mouth, her eyes glistening wetly.

'Are you sure of this?' asked the man, whose voice now sounded very hoarse. He didn't look at the baby either, in fact he held it away from him as if it were something contagious.

The Nameless sighed a long sigh, as if he was tired and would prefer it if the two left.

'What I'm sure of is that you'll have to pay now, Mr Alvian. Namely exactly fourteen thousand galleons. I need not warn you what will happen if you cannot pay?'

The wizard flinched, as if stung, and turned into a gentle pussycat.

'Of course... of course... your money... I'm handing it over...'

He handed his terrified wife the incessantly bawling baby, and from the hiding-place of his robe he took a heavy leather bag, swollen with coins, and handed it to the Nameless. The Nameless immediately pushed it on to the skinny boy, who opened it and began counting out the money.

'You can leave now. Remember: drown it in a fast-moving stream.'

The wizard and the witch nodded rapidly, and after she had silenced the infant with a shamefacedly muttered Silencio spell, they turned their backs in haste to leave.

However, after a few steps they noticed a tall figure emerging from the trees, watching them. As he stood comfortably leaning against one of the trees, he seemed to have been watching them for some time, only now showing himself.

'Who are you?!' cried the nervous Mr Alvian, and drew his wand, but the stranger was quicker than he was: in a flash he disarmed him, and with slow steps he walked out of the darkness of the tall pine trees.

His red silk robes rustled coolly on the undergrowth, and the soft thudding of his dragon-skin boots could be heard clearly over the crackling of the fire. The shadows crept back from him gradually as he approached, and soon the firelight glinted off a triangular gold medallion that hung around his neck, then fell on long locks of blond hair, and finally it drew a face with a sneer and twinkling, sly eyes.

'Wow...' came out of Ron's mouth when he saw the newcomer. Not only he, but Ginny, Hermione and Harry recognised him immediately, having had the opportunity to see his photo a few times before, and he hadn't changed much from before, except for a blonde moustache growing over his mouth.

'Calm yourself, Mr Alvian,' said the Nameless from behind, 'Herr Grindelwald has not travelled all this way for you...'

'But no!' confirmed Gellert Grindelwald, and walked up to them as if joining them for a night picnic. 'You can leave now.'

The wizard and his wife didn't have to be told twice, they disapparated from the field with the crying baby in their arms after the man picked up his wand, leaving only the masked man waiting by the fire, the smiling Grindelwald, and the gaping boy.

The Nameless beckoned, and then, understanding the wordless command perfectly, the skinny kid ran into the house, slamming the creaking door behind him.

'To what do I owe the visit of such a celebrity in my humble forest abode?' she asked with a sigh.

'I think we should sit down first,' suggested Grindelwald, in a very similar manner to Michael Svetich.

The Nameless made no protest, conjured up a rocking chair with her wand and settled down on it. Grindelwald had conjured himself a very elegant soft armchair with gilded carvings, but he had spread himself in it in such a careless manner that he threw his legs over one armrest and leaned his elbows on the other. It was just as Harry had seen it in the pictures, and once remembered it from Gregorovich's memory: there was a wildness about him that was almost a mockery of rules and formalities.

Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny watched them from a few feet away as Grindelwald began to explain the reason for his visit.

'I am working to create a society to which I intend to invite the most knowledgeable and powerful dark sorcerers from around the world. That's why I have come to you as well,' he beckoned towards the Nameless with one hand. 'I have heard of your work... You are renowned far and wide for what you do, what you are capable of doing with human nature, and I confess I would be honoured if you would join us.'

So that's how it started, Harry thought. Grindelwald had come to him, inviting him, as if it were a club or a student circle. However, he noticed, the Nameless didn't seem too keen just yet:

'Fine words, Herr Grindelwald. But tell me, what would I gain by joining your... company?'

Grindelwald did not blink, expecting this question to follow.

'The Circle of the Fourth Tower would support your activities, contribute to your research to push the boundaries of True Magic, and help you to put your knowledge to far more useful and lofty uses than ridding a Pureblood clown's son of insanity...'

'Ah, so you investigated my client?' the Nameless raised his head.

'But my dear...' Grindelwald snorted. 'Don't pretend you don't know that I've been watching you for days! After all, my arrival didn't surprise you one bit...'

The Nameless did not protest, but remained silent, humming to herself as she considered the wizard's offer. The foursome waited with bated breath to see what would happen, though they knew well where this encounter would lead.

'So the Fourth Tower?' the masked woman finally spoke. 'The last time I heard of the ancient schools of magic, there were only three towers.'

Grindelwald shook his head.

'The Fourth Tower is much more than a school. As more and more people join us, we will slowly become the main axis of the dark arts – of True Magic. We will not stay in the shadows for long, the Circle is destined for much more.'

'Which would be?'

'Simply put? For world domination.'

The Nameless laughed at this, making no attempt to hide her opinion.

'Such modest goals...'

Grindelwald, however, was clearly not in a humorous mood, for his previously cheerful, jovial face had suddenly changed to a sombre, menacing, even frightening expression.

'I suggest you don't laugh at us!' he snapped aggressively. 'The Fourth Tower already has many more powerful dark sorcerers than you! Remember that!'

But the Nameless seemed unaffected by the threats.

'Enlighten me, Herr Grindelwald, why do you need me then?' she asked, still calm.

Grindelwald too quickly regained his composure and leaned back in his chair again, but this time he did not put his feet up on his armrest, and Harry noticed that he was pointing his wand loosely at the woman sitting opposite him, just like the Nameless did.

'Your knowledge of the dark arts is unique,' the blond wizard explained further. 'No one can handle human nature like you...'

'I think you overestimate my abilities,' said the Nameless, with a tone that almost made one feel the smile in her voice, as if she didn't mean what she had said.

'So let's put those abilities to the test!' Grindelwald said.

The fingers tightening on the Nameless' wand indicated that she had taken Grindelwald's words as a clear challenge, but the red-robed sorcerer flinched when he saw it.

'No, no, no, dear, I didn't mean it like that!' he shook his head, smiling. 'I have no intention of duelling with you just yet... The time for that will come as well! For now I was merely thinking of a simple assignment to show me your skill in this bumpy path of dark magic.'

After saying this, he snapped his fingers, but the sound was unnaturally loud and echoed far into the forest, causing a flock of birds to flee in alarm.

'Wow...' Ron gaped again at the small, but all the more effective magic.

After a long time, when the sound of the thunderous snap died away, two men apparated behind Grindelwald. The Nameless pulled herself up in her seat, dropping her wand in her lap, which still pointed directly at the sorcerer loitering opposite her.

The two figures came forward, and Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny could see one of them, a wizard also in red robes, pointing his wand at the other, who was floating unconscious in front of him.

'This is one of my servants,' Grindelwald pointed back with his thumb at the levitating man. 'He was cursed in a manner unknown to me, and has gone wild from time to time since. His magical eruptions are a problem, but I have no wish to kill him - he is too valuable.'

The Nameless nodded as she listened to Grindelwald, but said nothing. Finally the sorcerer simply asked:

'Can you cure him?'

'I don't cure,' the Nameless shook her head. 'While you were observing me, you must have figured out what I was doing...'

Grindelwald nodded grimly.

'Yes, I figured it out. But you didn't answer my question: will you take on this little assignment? Of course I'm willing to pay you handsomely for this service...'

In his outstretched hand, which he had snapped with earlier, appeared a few glittering gold coins, and in the firelight Harry could see that they were the same money that had spilled from the magically sealed stone chest in the upheaval following the Triwizard Tournament, each coin bearing the triangular symbol of the Deathly Hallows.

'I'll take it on,' the Nameless decided, 'but I can't start the magic for two weeks. On the New Moon. By the next full moon, your man will be "cured".'

Grindelwald slapped his palms together in satisfaction.

'Wonderful!' he concluded, rising from his chair, and promptly making it disappear. 'In that case, I shall see you on the night of the new moon. Auf Wiedersehen!'

He and his men disapparated; the Nameless continued to sit in the rocking chair, gazing at the flames of the fire through the diamonds embedded in her mask.

The memory then dissolved, ended, and the foursome felt the ground disappear beneath them, and they floated upwards in the same black space they had arrived in. In a moment or two, they found themselves outside, in the room, with the glass vials and Crookshanks on the bed.

'Well, we didn't learn much from that,' Ron concluded, somewhat disappointed.

'No,' Ginny agreed with him.

Hermione looked pale in the evening sunlight streaming through the window, and Harry suspected that she had not yet got over what she had seen.

'But you have to admit, it was pretty disgusting, whatever the Nameless' abilities...' she muttered in shock. 'Drowning a baby in a river? That's the cruelest thing I've ever heard of.'

Harry, however, had other things on his mind:

'You know what's weird? This memory is from 1914,' he pointed to the empty bottle. 'And from the way Grindelwald was talking to him, and from the way he sounded, he was already quite old. By now he might be two hundred years old...'

'Nobody lives that long!' Ron exclaimed.

'Except for Mr and Mrs Flamel,' Ginny corrected her brother. 'Could the Nameless be an alchemist? Is that what Grindelwald meant when he said that no one understands human nature like he does? Maybe he has a philosopher's stone and he cured that cursed servant with it...'

'Let's not get ahead of ourselves!' Hermione interjected, getting ahead of any pointless guessing. 'We know that he changes his appearance and often disguises himself as an old woman.'

Harry, however, did not agree with her.

'When he wears a mask, it's his real face underneath. What we haven't seen yet...' he said, thinking back to his time in the Nurmengard cell, when the Nameless appeared before him in his mask, with his real face and his real voice underneath.

Hermione also thought about what she had seen, closed her eyes and said nothing for a few moments.

'We are just wasting our time!' she sighed as she looked up again.

Ron, Harry and Ginny looked at her, puzzled.

'It's no use,' she explained. 'It's handy to know him, but I don't think we'll find his vulnerability that way. If - I'm going to pretend - he'd made horcruxes in his life, like Voldemort, he'd have hidden them more than anything, and he wouldn't have spoken to you as if he expected you to look at his memories.'

Harry still didn't understand anything, and waited to see where she was going with this.

'What do you mean?'

'You told me, Harry. You and Ginny and Aberforth told me how you fought the Nameless on top of the dungeon. And you said he was almost disappointed you didn't go through all his memories.'

Ginny was about to interrupt, but Hermione continued:

'But it could mean something else. He told you that he thought you would have a different attitude to his offer if you had looked at his memories. He's hoping that would get you on his side.'

'If he thinks that, he is a fool!' Harry shouted. Hermione nodded knowingly.

'But the Nameless has already proven to be no fool a number of times,' she said quietly. 'If he expects you to change your mind about him after the memories, chances are those memories were left for you when you dueled with the fake Nameless. He showed you the closet in advance where he keeps his memories, didn't he? Why would he do that? If he wanted to trap you with the memory of Ginny, it would have been enough to just pull the vial out of her robe pocket or directly from his head, but he took it out of a cupboard, revealing his "secrets" to you in spectacular fashion.'

Hermione finished, as if that explained everything, but it didn't make Harry any smarter, and as he looked at Ron, he saw that his friend didn't understand either.

'I still don't understand what you're trying to say...'

'Only that the memories are fake,' she said. 'Or that they include lies. Therefore they are not worth a damn.'

Ron and Ginny were silent, and Harry felt a foggy numbness somewhere in his brain. Could the Nameless have fooled him that much?

'Of course, knowing you, Harry, you're going to watch them all anyway,' Hermione smiled knowingly. 'And that's okay... Maybe we can still find something out. Maybe his fighting style, some of his spells... After all, Voldemort was conceited and arrogant, he didn't expect anyone else to find out his weaknesses. I only ask you not to get too carried away - you may be disappointed.'

She then left the room, leaving the others behind.

Harry was not the least bit pleased with her words, and he never understood better than now why Hermione had been given the unkind term "know-it-all" at Hogwarts: it wasn't that she always wanted to know better, but on top of that she was always right.

'Ron, come on!' shouted Hermione from the staircase, 'we have to tell your father about these so-called assassins...'

Ron gave Harry a wry grin, then rolled his eyes and followed his girlfriend.

Harry was just tossing the empty memory vial of the Nameless in his hand, still thinking about what the Italian Auror had told them: if their plan goes wrong, they will all die - but if they do nothing, won't it lead to the same sooner or later?