Two hours later, Larry was sitting on a chair in the corner of his office, listening as Don explained their initial results while a team of agents continued to swarm around his desk.
"Well, the locks haven't been tampered with on your desk drawer or your office door," Don said. "Are you sure that you locked the desk when you last left?"
"Yes," Larry insisted. "I've been racking my brain thinking about it, and I can definitely say that when it was here last night, I distinctly remember that the last thing I checked before I left was that that drawer was locked."
"All right," Don said slowly. "Because if the lock wasn't tampered with, and you're the only one who has a key to it…"
Larry lifted his head to look at him. "Look, I know that you sometimes think of me as the absent-minded professor who has his head in the clouds, but I can assure you that –"
"No, no, Larry, I believe you," Don said, giving him a reassuring look. "I know that this is too important for you to not have paid attention to it."
Larry nodded. "Besides, I'm not the only one who has a key."
"You're not?" Don replied, leaning forward slightly in his chair.
"Well," Larry said, "Charlie and Amita also have keys to my office, and Amita, as my research assistant, has a key to my desk."
"Okay." Don furrowed his brow for a moment, then said, "Charlie was with me last night at the office working on a different case. "Do you happen to know where Amita was?"
Larry stared at him in disbelief. "You can't be thinking that Amita or Charlie had something to do with this!"
"I'm just covering all the bases," Don said, spreading his hands wide.
Larry shook his head vigorously. "Don, I don't understand how you can suspect your own brother or Amita. I mean, she's completely trustworthy, and I don't know why you think she would do something like this."
Don briefly laid a hand on his arm. "I'm not saying she deliberately did anything, it's just that if she was in here last night after you, maybe she's the one who forgot to lock the desk drawer. That's all I'm saying."
"Oh. Okay."
"All right," said Don in a firmer tone of voice, "This is what we're going to do. I'm going to make sure that there's somebody watching outside this building, in case whoever was here comes back because they think they're going to find something else."
Larry shook his head. "That won't be necessary, Don. There's nothing else that could be of interest to whomever took those blueprints."
Don nodded. "I think we need to talk to the girl who was found in your office last night. Any clue where we can find her?"
Larry shrugged and let out a long breath of air. "She's in my thermodynamics seminar that starts in a half hour, so my guess is she's on campus. I'd try the cafeteria, the library, she could even be somewhere on the grounds."
Don got a brief physical description of her from Larry. "Okay, we'll see if we can find her. If nothing else, we can wait outside your class. How sure are you she'll show up today?"
"She never misses class," Larry said. "She asks a lot of questions, so I've come to notice her."
Don stood up. "Okay, Larry, we'll be in touch. In the meantime, just stay out of the way of the forensics team, okay?"
Larry nodded and gathered up a few things. "I'll go work in Charlie's office today so I'm out of their hair. You can call me if you need me."
"Sounds like a good idea," Don said. He beckoned to David and the two men headed down the hallway. Larry followed them out, and then turned towards the math department. He'd have to leave a message for Amita so that she knew where he was. She'd hate to think of her coming to his office and discovering it teeming with FBI agents.
--
Hermione sat at one of the large oak tables in the main common room trying to get a bit of homework done before her next class. It reminded her of Hogwarts, when they did all their homework in this manner. Ron lounged in a chair next to her, watching the telly. Ever since her attack, he had insisted on being by her side every moment, despite her protests.
"I don't understand this American football," Ron said. "It's just people crashing into one another. It's nothing like Quidditch. I wish they'd show Quidditch matches. We could watch Harry!"
Hermione was grateful they were the only two people in the room at present, but she still wished that Ron wouldn't discuss non-muggle things in public like this. She did admit that she missed watching Harry play as well. If it weren't for their weekly fireside chats with Ron's parents through their fireplace, they would have totally lost contact with the wizarding world.
"Perhaps you could do something helpful, instead of staring at that box," Hermione retorted.
"Such as?"
"Such as fetching me my Calculus textbook from my bag. Some of us are trying to work, you know."
"You really are bonkers, you know that?" Ron sighed. "You were in hospital. You don't have to do homework when you've just gotten out of hospital. Just recuperate."
"You know very well that I've nothing to recover from!"
Ron smiled at her slyly. "Yeah, but your teachers don't know that, do they?"
"Same old Ron," Hermione said, smile despite herself.
"Same old Hermione." He got up and sat next to her at the table. Hermione anticipated the feel of his lips on hers as he leaned towards her.
"Hermione Granger?" a loud, authoritative voice demanded. Ron pulled away before contact was made.
"Yes?" she said, looking at the two men in suits who her approaching her, one white skinned and one was black skinned.
"I'm Special Agent Eppes and this is Special Agent Sinclair of the FBI. We were wondering if we could ask you a few questions about what happened the other night in Dr. Fleinhardt's office?"
"What happened?" Hermione asked. "Nothing at all happened. I fainted. Why on earth would the FBI be involved?"
"My brother is Dr. Charlie Eppes of the math department," Eppes replied. "He was with Dr. Fleinhardt when he found you. He called us. There were some documents stolen from Dr. Fleinhardt's office last night, so we'd like to know what happened when you were there."
"Documents?" Ron snapped. "You think she stole something? Here." He tossed her backpack at the agents. Eppes caught it neatly. "Check her bag. You won't find anything."
Eppes unzipped the backpack and began rummaging through the contents. Hermione was glad she was using a regular non-magical bag instead of the Extend-A-Bag Ron had bought her which stayed the same size and weight no matter how much was put in it."
"What's this?" Eppes asked, pulling out Hermione's wand. He turned it around in his hand, admiring it and then handing it to Sincliar for examination.
"It's a good luck charm," Hermione piped up. "Everyone carries them in England."
"I've never heard of them," Sinclair said. "What are they called?"
"Good Luck Sticks," replied Ron. "See, here's mine." He held his own wand up for inspection.
"You don't mind if we keep these, do you? Just to take a closer look?" Eppes said, reaching for Ron's wand.
"Of course not," Ron replied casually, even though Hermione knew he'd rather part with his right arm.
Eppes slipped the wands into evidence bags and casually tossed the backpack back onto the table. "Okay, well, let's just start at the beginning, okay? Now, Ron, your last name?"
"Weasley."
"Okay, and your address back in England?"
Ron quickly rattled off Hermione's parents' home knowing that The Burrow wouldn't be part of the muggles' system.
"That's for both of us," Hermione interjected. "We were living with my parents."
"Okay," Sinclair said, scribbling in his pad, "and you're here on a student visa?" Hermione nodded and fished the document from her bag. "And you?" he asked Ron.
"Oh, I'm just visiting for a few weeks. No visa or anything."
Eppes scowled. "Your voice was on the answering machine."
Hermione was trying to look calm but her heart was pounding. No one was supposed to be looking this closely at Ron. "Right," she answered. "Well, there's no law against that, is there? It's for security. I just feel safer if people think I'm living with a man."
"So," Sinclair continued, "no work visa? What do you do back in England?"
"Actually," Ron answered quite sternly, "I'm in law enforcement."
Hermione wanted to elbow Ron in the stomach. Couldn't he have just said he was between jobs?
"Scotland Yard or...?" asked Eppes.
"Nothing like that. I'm an auror. Ever hear of it?" Ron retorted. Hermione was close to panic. How could he even mention magical things?
"No," Eppes said.
"Well, it's a bit like what you do. Only far more dangerous." Ron was being smug now. Sinclair raised his eyebrows at Ron, unimpressed.
"Okay, that's fine," Eppes said. "Let's get back to the night in question." He turned his attention back to Hermione. "Just take us through what happened."
Hermione crossed her legs. "Okay, well, I was working late in the main library, finishing my fluid dynamics homework. I went to Dr. Fleinhardt's office a little before 4 AM to put it on his desk."
"Was it locked?" Sinclair asked.
"His office? No. Obviously not or I wouldn't have gotten in. Anyway, I went in and right away everything kind of went black. Next thing I remember was waking up in the hospital and being able to see and hear but not move. But it all seemed to wear off, and now here we all are."
"And, his desk, was that locked?" Sinclair pressed.
Hermione shrugged. "I've no idea. I've got no business in Dr. Fleinhardt's desk, have I?"
"So, you were alone in the office the entire time and you didn't see anyone?" Sinclair reiterated.
"As far as I know. I wasn't fully conscious the entire time. So I'm afraid I don't really know at all."
Eppes and Sinclair exchanged glances. "Okay, I think we have what we need for now," Sinclair said, pocketing his notebook. "We'll be in touch, so don't go anywhere for the next few days."
Hermione and Ron nodded and watched the agents leave. "That went well," Ron said, happily.
"No, Ron," Hermione replied. "That went dreadfully."
--
Don sat in his cubicle and took a swig of FBI coffee. He winced at the familiar bitter, too-strong taste. When Meagan had started, she had insisted on bringing in her special mocha hazelnut coffee which had been excellent, but Don has missed the feeling of his stomach lining being eaten away.
"Hey, David said, peeking over the wall, "I've got some stuff on those two English kids."
"Yeah," Don said, leaning back in his chair.
"Yeah. First of all, there's no Ron Weasley registered at that address in London. In fact, there's no Ron Weasley, period. No birth certificate, no nothing. No airline has any record of a Ron Weasley or Hermione Granger flying here from England in the past six months."
"So how'd they get here?" Don wondered out loud.
"It gets better. I looked up the word "auror" in the dictionary, and it's defined as a mythological slayer of dark witches and wizards. I'm thinking maybe it's code for something."
Don scrubbed his hand across his chin. "That it?"
David snorted. "On, no, there's more. I did some checking into "good luck sticks" and there's no reference to them anywhere on the internet. So I had them analyzed by the lab. Mainly, they're wood, but they appear to have "unknown substances" inside them." He laid the lab report in front of Don. "They don't appear to be toxic or harmful, but the labs not taking any chances, they're treating them like HAZMAT."
"Okay," Don said, not sure what any of this meant.
"We lifted fingerprints from the sticks. In addition to the doorknob, Miss Granger also left a nice partial index finger on the lamp. Nothing on the desk door handles, though. Just Larry and Amita's prints there."
"So, Miss Granger isn't being entirely forthcoming, is she?" Don said, taking another sip of coffee.
"What do you think of this Weasley fellow?"
Don rubbed his forehead and said the word that had been swimming around since David started this debriefing. "Terrorist."
