What Last Forever

Chapter 20

In Grimmulds place, somewhere in London, time unknown.

"I've had Hermione being in USA for some time now. She's been trying to find the Potter boy as you all know," Mad Eye Moody began to say in a loud voice. The order of Phoenix was gathered in the head quarter and Albus Dumbledore sat in a high chair with a grim sort of expression as he listened to Moody. Everyone was there accept for Remus and Severus who should be there shortly.

"She'll give her report soon. Snape and Lupin has also been there, a bit longer than Hermione," he continued. He was going to say something else but was cut off when the door opened and Snape came through with Lupin hot on his heels. Snape looked around briefly and sneered before he sat down in an empty chair, conveniently the only free chair left was next to his and Lupin took that one.

However, Snape didn't comment on that and many were surprised. They would never have thought Snape would be able to restrain himself when there was an opportunity to spit some spite at Lupin. Also, every one noticed, that Lupin seemed a bit changed but they couldn't put their finger on it.

"Hermione is just about to give us her report," Moody told the two newcomers. Snape snorted loudly.

"Don't you think it would be more right to let us start? We've been there longer than Granger and we know what happened in the beginning while she does not. Or would you really like to hear the story from the middle?" Snape said in a silky voice.

Moody narrowed his eyes. He had never liked Snape and never would. Once a death eater always a death eater, he thought. But he couldn't deny the point in what Snape was saying.

"Alright, give us your report first," he said grumpily and sat down heavily.

Snape and Lupin stood up and faced all the others. Snape spoke first.

"Me and Lupin went to USA where we last saw a trace of his magical area before it disappeared. We went to New York and met an old… friend of mine." he looked out over the crowd and dared them to ask him about this friend of his. No one said a word. Apparently satisfied Snape continued.

"We got help to corrupt on travelling agent for the government. So we managed to get the list over every new comer from England to USA on the day when we know Potter disappeared from his home. It wasn't many from England but we still got a several matches for Potter and we began to look them up." He stopped and looked at Lupin. Lupin cleared his throat and picked up where Snape left.

"We got a total of ten matches and five unsure one's. We decided to try to get the options down a bit so we began to search the age of all of them. We feared that Harry could somehow have gotten ageing potion but then we looked up on the wards on Privet Drive and discovered that he hadn't left his home to go further than to the park and we've always kept tabs on the owl traffic between him and other so we came to the conclusion that Harry didn't have any chance to change his appearances."

"What about charms or temporarily polyjuice?" Moody asked.

"The wards on Privet Drive would have told us if there had been any kind of magical activity. And I mean any kind. As there had been no such we knew he would have had to go as himself. The reason why we got so many matchings was because we had to change all kinds of travelling ways. Also we couldn't go out with exactly who we were looking for. We have the description of a male, quite short with black messy hair and a thin body, with green eyes. Even that was a dead give away but we didn't ´want to risk anything with giving out a name or the description of the scar. The other itself was a dead give away, especially since Lupin is known to be close to Potter," Snape said.

"We decided to look up the floo-systems first since it was likely that he had gotten his hands on floopower somewhere during school," Snape continued.

"Yes, but we soon realised that he couldn't have used a fireplace anywhere else than the one in Privet Drive and that one we knew hadn't been used so we soon dropped the search of the one who arrived by floo and we scratched them on the list," Lupin said. Snape nodded in agreement and everyone was hanging on to every word they spoke.

"We could then scratch five people. Next we looked up the one's from a magical train. They were either to old or to young for being Potter." Snape paused briefly for affect. "Two less," he spoke. "And then there was the buss WWW. That one was a hard feat. We were unsure of everyone there, because the three matchings left were all likely to be Potter, even the five unsure one's who also arrived by WWW. We knew that one of them were Potter so we decided to check all of them very carefully. I don't know how Potter managed it but he didn't have to show his ID to anyone. But we didn't know that until later. We had now 3 persons matching our description but had travelled by other names than Harry Potter and the five unsure one's were also travelling underneath other names than Harry Potter. That's when we thought that perhaps Potter was one of those five because maybe he had tried to change his appearance in muggle style. The thought of him having a false passport also crossed our minds. We decided to trace the three likely matchings's names."

Everyone stared at Snape with the acceptations for Lupin. Snape gave them all a light glare.

"We knew that Harry must have travelled alone because none of those matching were travelling to the same place as the other. The first one we followed was continuing his trip across the country but by muggle device this time. Me and Severus had to follow him and we spent an awful lot of time to track him down because he never seemed to stop anywhere. We were always one step behind and we had no clue as to where he'd was supposed to go next. This intruded our believes that it was Harry we were tracking because we knew that Harry would have no place to go. We were also concerned over the fact that if it wasn't Harry then we would perhaps have wasted too much time and let the others disappear out of our reach. So we decided to split up but before we came to that. Me and Severus bough ourselves a muggle device, a mobile phone, so we could talk to each other and always know where the other was," Lupin continued to say.

No one asked what a mobile phone was, not even Arthur Weasley. They were all to intrigued by their story.

Lupin and Snape looked at each other. It was dead silent in the kitchen. Snape took a breath and continued.

"I went after another person and let Lupin chase after the one we at the time thought was Potter. I soon found out that the one I took after was getting married to a muggle man. In other words he was gay, and he had gotten a secret identity a couple of years ago because he was getting stalked by some homophobes," Snape said.

He didn't mention that he had followed the guy to a muggle bar and gotten drunk together with him. That's when the guy had poured his guts out at him and the story had washed over him in a river of words. Lupin knew how it had happened because he had spoken to a very drunk Severus on the phone had Severus hadn't guarded his words like he usually did. Lupin didn't hold it against him through. He knew you had to make certain sacrifices to get anywhere.

"We were down to two. I checked the others while Lupin never seemed to get the guy he was after. Soon there was no one else left and I joined Lupin's side again," Snape said. Again Snape didn't mention that he had to get on a date with one of the guys he had checked up on to get any information.

"Finally we managed to get a hold on the guy. By then we was in Canada where he lived," Lupin told them. Immediately everyone looked disappointed because they knew that there was no one left of the one's who could be Harry.

"So he had also been an error. Now what to do?" Snape asked. Lupin told them what they had done.

"We began to question this guy in Canada if he had seen anyone alike Harry. This time be described the scar and decided to oblivate him afterwards. He had something very interested to tell us."

Snape nodded an crossed his arms.

"He told us he had sat beside a bloke just like the one we described on the buss ride over to USA. Apparently they had had a little small chat but Potter hadn't been very co-operative so the bloke got tired on trying to get him to talk. But the little Potter had told him had done enough damage already," Snape said and everyone perked up a bit.

"He was heading to LA. And he was going to get a job. This guy we had been chasing has also stepped of in LA and they had gone the same way until Potter went to a hotel and they went parted ways." Lupin looked thoughtful at that.

"By now we knew that Potter hadn't used his passport but instead he had managed to avoid the control and travel anyway," Snape said.

"And we went to this hotel to check up if Harry was still there. However, we went disappointed to find out that Harry had only stayed there for two days and after that he'd left without telling anyone where, or so we thought."

"Yes. We asked if anyone from the time when Potter had been there was still living in the hotel and perhaps they would know anything? We managed to get a few names even through it actually forbidden to give out such information. But we gave away some sob story about me," Snape with disgust. "Being Potter's father and had lost him on the airport," he said and rolled his eyes.

Lupin snorted quietly. He remembered how annoyed Snape had been when he had burst out with that story. Thank heavens Snape was a spy and wore a mask all the time or they would have been exposed. All due, he had have to stand Snape's rambling afterwards.

"Why didn't you pretend to be is father, Remus?" Ron said angrily. (Harry's closest friends were allowed to sit in on the meeting today.)

"Because," Snape said, and managed with only one word make Ron feel stupid. "I am the one who Potter resembles most with black hair and… Figure…" he said. Yes, he was tall but he was thinner than Lupin who was more broad shoulder built.

No one else said anything. They just nodded.

"One of the guests, an old lady, could tell us that he was going to look at an apartment." Lupin said. " We found an old paper and could find two adds that were fitting in on the description and we went and checked them up. The first apartment wasn't the right one and we hoped that the second one would be the one or else we would have to admit defeat," Lupin said.

"Potter wasn't in the second apartment. But a quite young girl lived there. She told us that she and Potter had looked at the apartment at the same time. She could also tell us that she had seen him enter a club downtown and we decided to check there. It was likely that someone else had seen him and maybe knew more about him," Snape said.

"We went to the club and spoke to a few persons before we met Spike and his friend Jamez," Lupin said hesitantly and trailed off.

" We were told that Jamez knew everyone and he'd probably knew Potter. However, Spike was being very protective and we got into a little argument… also they both denied the fact that Potter was in the club and claimed that he had gone somewhere else and would be gone for a while. We didn't trust the two of them so we decided to hand around until they let something slip. So we kept our eyes on them." Snape said and deliberately left out the point when Lupin had attacked Spike.

"We met them every day and we always asked Jamez if he had heard from Harry but he always said he hadn't. We still don't know whether that's true or not. It's quite impossible to say, he's not easy to read. Eventually Hermione came and started to work at the club to keep an eye on Jamez and Spike but at the very first meeting Jamez recognized Hermione. He said Harry had warned him about her. Later on a Monday evening Spike got a phone all. Jamez had been missing for a while so it was a relief when the call was from Jamez. But the news wasn't much better. Jamez had been accused for murder and was locked up in a police station. We went with Spike and got hold of a lawyer which was very much needed. After that we hurried off to the police station and met Jamez. Despite our efforts Jamez was convicted and sent of someplace where we've still not uncovered. But we probably will once we get back to USA after tonight… And I also must mention one thing… It's Hermione's belief that Jamez and Harry is the same person," Lupin said and everyone gasped. "However, Severus and I doesn't agree with that. We've talked to them much more than Hermione and we simply can't believe that Jamez is Harry. They're much too different for that… and due to certain circumstances we're quite sure on our thing," Lupin finished.

"What things?" Moody asked. Everyone else nodded.

"Eh… things he does, says. They're simply different persons…" Lupin said.

"There must be something else or you wouldn't be so sure, it's easy to act differently," Kingsely pointed out.

Lupin looked at Snape for help.

"I guess you'll just have to take our words for it," Snape said.

Everyone protested loudly and began to shout and no one could make out a word in the chaos.

"OH FOR GOD'S SAKE!" Hermione yelled irritated. "Jamez gave them a blowjob!" she shouted and everyone stared in the death silence and Lupin and Snape paled.

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