Harry Potter and the Fourth Tower

by The-Nameless90

With Dumbledore gone, Grindelwald's remaining followers are finally able to carry out their plans for "the greater good" and install a Nazi-Germany-like regime. But luckily, the Deathstick found a worthy successor who will oppose them. Based solely on the original 7 books, Harry's story is continued. Realistic, increasingly powerful Harry, no AU. BOOK 1/3.

5. Aurors

- Chapter Five -

Aurors

Harry's vision haunted him for the next few days, despite Mr Weasley's assurance that Draco Malfoy was alive and working as a clerk in the Ludicrous Patent Office. He did not bring himself to tell the others of his vision, sharing it only with Ginny, who, contrary to her brother's carelessness, took him seriously.

'Don't you find it strange?' he asked her one day while they were feeding the chickens in the yard.

'What?'

'That Malfoy is working,' Harry explained. 'And in such a shabby department. There aren't many bizarre inventions these days...'

'And where do you get that from?' Ginny looked at him surprised. 'What do we even call a 'bizarre invention'?'

That got Harry, he really didn't know what had made him say that, but as much as he thought about it, he found it all the stranger that Malfoy had become a clerk. Ginny's only explanation was that an ex-Death Eater could not be very picky from the jobs on offer. Harry was forced to agree, but even so, he couldn't help the unease the vision caused, and his old investigative side burst forth again, determined to find the solution to the mystery, which he sincerely hoped he had the means to do.

On a whim, in the middle of summer, a week before his nineteenth birthday, he apparated to Diagon Alley and spent the whole morning in antique markets and shops selling magical tools, until he found what he was looking for in one of the alleys: a broken Pensieve. As it turned out, these magical bowls were very rare and the toothless old salesman said Harry was lucky to have found one even in such a state – which was why he had asked a thousand and five hundred galleons for it. Harry paid the sum with a bitter taste in his mouth, took the broken bowl home, and with pointing his wand at it, repaired it.

'How did you do that?' Hermione frowned as the Pensieve assumed its perfectly intact form before her eyes.

'Reparo charm,' Harry muttered, raising one eyebrow mischievously. 'Never heard of it? Useful little spell...'

Ron and Ginny were laughing behind their backs.

'Ha-ha, very funny,' Hermione quipped. 'What I don't understand is why it worked on it. Reparo isn't supposed to work on objects with such complicated magical powers.'

She twirled the bowl in her hand, tapped it with her fingernails – reminding Harry of examining a melon.

'He also fixed the phoenix wand, remember?' Ron interjected, munching on chocolate frogs again until Ginny knocked them out of his hand. The contents of the bag scattered on the floor and Ron swore as he picked them up.

'That was different,' Hermione shook her head, 'He fixed that with the Elder Wand, that's why it worked. The salesman should have told you it couldn't be fixed...'

'But it can be fixed!' Harry took the bowl out of her hands, 'Besides, the old bastard would have been a fool to tell me when he could make such a deal. He's probably laughing his head off now that he's tricked me... But we'll see who gets the last laugh!'

'Don't get ahead of yourself,' Ginny said. 'Let's try and see if it works, shall we?'

But the Pensieve worked well, they poured some of their memories into it and immersed themselves. It turned out to be so much fun that they were late for lunch that day and even for dinner, as they were able to relive Lupin's first lesson alongside the Quidditch World Cup final, and Harry got to see himself from a third person perspective trying to get the golden egg from the Hungarian Horntail.

Later, he got the repaired Pensieve out of his cupboard again, and at night, when the others were asleep, Harry filled it with the memories of his vision. As he placed the wand to his forehead, he noticed that the memory was a little reluctant to part with it, and as he placed it in the bowl, he saw how thick and cumbersome it was, only very slowly willing to assume its usual half-fluid, half-gaseous form, in which the events he had experienced could be viewed. Harry had seen only one such memory before: the self-manipulated thoughts of Professor Slughorn.

Harry immersed in the memory and followed himself down the dark corridor, observing every detail. He stayed a bit behind of his in the darkness staggering himself, and again he could observe how faded the colours were. In fact, now that he looked again at the images of the vision, it seemed even more unreal to him: the walls, the details were blurred, vague and lifeless. He didn't know what to compare it to, his dreams of Voldemort were always razor sharp, for he was seeing through the eyes of the Dark Lord.

As he gazed, hands in his pockets, he lingered over the ornate tapestry that made the hallway look like a Gryffindor's clubroom. He followed himself to the stairs where the memory-Harry was descending, but he looked around first.

Above the staircase hung paintings, mostly blank canvases, from which its occupant seemed to have walked away. It reminded Harry of that awfully long night when Hogwarts' paintings had disappeared from their frames. The identity of each portrait was announced by a tiny gold plaque attached to the frame. Harry did not recognise any of the names.

Between two large paintings, a coat of arms hung on the wall, which immediately caught his attention. The curious coat of arms depicted a tall tower on an indigo blue background, dotted with stars and with light streaming through the windows. The top of the tower was high and pointed, reminding Harry of the Gryffindor tower, though it looked much smaller. He had to admit to himself that a coat-of-arms drawing was anything but an accurate representation, more artistic, or at worst arty.

He couldn't remember seeing this coat of arms anywhere else in the house, or indeed anywhere else in his life. It had no inscription, and he saw no other insignia on the walls, so he followed his alter ego downstairs.

By the time he came downstairs, Malfoy was clutching the gleaming gold shield in his hand, gazing nervously around the room in the benign twilight. It all began in an instant, as the window burst open and shards of glass covered everything. Even now, looking at it in memory, and knowing that he could not be harmed, Harry shuddered at the terrifying explosion – it reminded him of the Battle of Hogwarts.

He watched himself rush out the room and fall in the mud, and saw the unknown figure that the memory-Harry had missed while he was running away, but had been standing there all the time. Harry now saw the hooded man lower his wand, with which he had been defending against Malfoy's curses as easily as if they were swatting flies. But before the events he had relived had reached the point where the stranger had removed his hood, everything was covered in a milky white mist, and the memory was over. Annoyed, Harry stepped out of the Pensieve, half expecting to catch a glimpse of the mysterious figure's face. If nothing else, his trip down memory lane proved that someone had erased his memory. He felt angry and hungry for revenge for this attack, even if it was only by a figure in his visions who might not be a real person.

The more he thought about it, the less he believed that the hooded man existed only in his imagination. It would suggest a very serious form of insanity if he imagined wizards attacking him with memory-erasing charms and the deaths of old classmates. He sincerely hoped he was not going insane...

He didn't share his concerns with Ginny, but he did share everything else, and that was a very special thing for Harry, because for the first time in their many years of knowing each other, something was his and Ginny's secret and not Ron and Hermione were his partners in the mystery.

The girl and her redheaded boyfriend were anyhow busy with other things these days, Harry reminded himself. Hermione had gotten into the old habit of being seen with a book in her hand almost every minute of the day; she had told him she had to be prepared and Harry had better follow her example. While Ron, if possible, would stay in the joke shop with his brother even longer than before, Harry was sure, in an effort to ease his growing guilt.

Although George was probably aware that his brother had been recruited to the Auror Headquarter, no one had yet told him that Ron was leaving the shop. Hermione kept persuading Ron to take the plunge and tell George the news. The boy put it off as long as he could, but finally, after dinner on the Friday of the week before they left for the Ministry, he told George the news that he could no longer help him in the joke shop. Harry and Ginny had just come downstairs with two laundry baskets in their arms, but stopped at the bottom of the stairs.

'I said it's okay. Really. And congratulations, buddy. You're gonna be an Auror!' George grinned at Ron from behind his sunglasses. 'Now I can rest easy knowing we've got tough guys like you looking out for us!' he laughed in his brother's face, then slung his elegant black velvet cape over his shoulders, said a quick goodbye to everyone, stepped out into the back yard and disapparated.

Ron stood there for a while, staring ahead of him, until he noticed Harry and Ginny.

'He took it better than I thought,' he muttered.

'The hell he did!' Ginny said over the clothes waiting to be washed. 'He doesn't want to be left alone.'

Ron looked towards them with the same rueful expression he had when he returned to Harry's during the Horcrux hunt.

'It's not your fault, I know,' his sister preceded him with unusual compassion before he could speak. Hermione glanced stealthily up from her copy of International Wizarding Law II.

'You'll take care of him, right?' Ron asked Ginny hopefully, as if only now he really understood why she had decided to work in the shop.

Ron didn't have much time for self-recrimination in the days to come, because he, Harry and Hermione had to be at the Ministry by eight o'clock every morning from Monday of the following week, as Mr Weasley had informed them.

Somehow, Harry was not too excited, and he was surprised, as he was about to spend the first day of his life at his future workplace. He had been to the Ministry several times before – though admittedly he had never been there completely voluntarily. Perhaps it was his previous bad experiences that made him feel a lack of excitement.

It was now mid-August as the summer had turned hotter and drier than ever. It was still early in the morning when the Weasley family members – Mr Weasley, Charlie, Percy – and now Harry, Ron and Hermione, too, stepped out into the garden after a quick breakfast and apparated.

The huge hall of the ministry, with its polished floors, dark wood panelling and peacock-blue ceilings, has been restored to its former glory in the past year. The formidable group of statues and the inscription "MAGIC IS MIGHT" were gone, replaced only by a solid fountain, without statues. Unchanged was the huge crowd of people coming and going through the fireplaces or, like Harry and the others, apparating into the atrium.

'Come on, don't get left behind!' Percy urged them, as if their lives depended on it. 'You have to be there by eight, it's not going to look good if you're late on the first day...

'Relax, Perce,' Charlie said, calmly, 'Who would dare tell them if they're a few minutes late?'

His brother did not like this careless attitude, and immediately launched into his "when I started at Mr Crouch's..." monologue, which he started to utter particularly often after the N.E.W.T. results came in. Harry, Ron and Hermione were only saved from a dull quarter of an hour by the swift intervention of Mr Weasley, who grabbed Percy by the shoulders and called him away from them on the grounds that he had to introduce him urgently to the President of the National Gobstone Club.

Meanwhile, the three recruits and Charlie arrived at the Security Guard Service, where a balding wizard in a turquoise robe was reading the August issue of The Quibbler. Harry recognised the man because he had knocked him out with a vicious slap on his last visit to the Ministry. But the wizard couldn't have held it against him, because at the time Harry was nearly seven feet tall and wore a beard.

Charlie paused for a moment, then thought, and turned to Hermione.

'You can do it yourselves, can't you?' he asked hopefully. 'Ask for a trainee pass and then meet me at the big gate, okay?'

Without waiting for an answer, he blended into the crowd.

'Great,' Ron grumbled, 'Let's do everything ourselves! It was definitely mum's idea...'

'Oh, grow up,' Hermione hissed between her teeth and with a half-smile she stepped up to the guard. She remembered their last encounter as well.

'Ehm... good morning! We start today at the ministry and I understand one needs to apply for trainee passes here.'

The bald man looked up from the magazine, gazed at them in amazement, then jumped up and hurriedly took action.

'Of course, certainly, Miss Granger,' he faltered, and in his haste he pulled a drawer completely out of its place, from which a pile of pins rolled out.

He picked up three pins, tapped them with his wand and handed them to the three good friends. Two of them were inscribed with the following text: Ministry of Magic - Apprentices - and the names of Harry and Ron. Hermione's was a little different: it had the crest of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures.

'Thank you,' Hermione muttered, and they would have moved on if the guard hadn't stopped them.

'Please, please, wait a moment!' he man stammered, his face flushed red. 'My... my son is a big fan of yours, and it's his birthday this week and... and he would love an autograph, please... If I could... I mean, if it's no problem, if...'

A twenty-four carat grin appeared on Ron's face.

'Certainly, of course!' he said cheerfully to his face, and he immediately plucked up courage and happily placed a photograph of Hogwarts in the setting sun in front of them.

'You don't know how happy he will be!' the wizard gloated, as also Harry and Hermione both reluctantly scribbled their signatures on the photo. 'He's going to Hogwarts next year. My wife and I are rooting for him to get into Gryffindor. We were Gryffindors too!' he added, his chest puffing out.

It took them about five minutes to break away from the guard, and a small queue was already forming behind them. Harry feared, among other things, that someone in the crowd would attack them with a similar request. Fortunately, this did not happen, and they were met at the big golden gate by Charlie, who burst out laughing.

'Very funny, Charlie!' hissed Hermione. Harry preferred not to say anything.

'You've just had a taste! Come on, you celebrities!' he said, still laughing, and soon they joined Mr Weasley and Percy and made their way to the lifts.

The lift stopped on every floor, and Harry only noticed during the boring wait when a monotone voice announced that they were in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Charlie and Hermione got out of the lift.

'Well, good luck boys,' she smiled at them, waving as the lift door closed again. Ron looked after her sadly, like a puppy left outside the shop by its owner.

Charlie had moved home from Romania permanently a year before, mostly at Percy's persuasion, due to a vacancy at the department; the head of the department – under the reign of Voldemort – had died an ugly death. Charlie was now the fourth Weasley to work at the Ministry, Percy having taken up the post as the head of the Department of International Magical Co-operation, and having left a floor earlier. Harry had not noticed his departure.

Mr Weasley succeeded Umbridge as the new Secretary to the Minister of Magic, alongside Kingsley. Umbridge was among the first to be convicted and imprisoned in Azkaban for crimes against Muggle-borns.

Bill left Gringotts after the war ended. His good relations with goblins, and the fact that he had hidden a hunted goblin in his house for a month, made him an ideal candidate for Goblin Liaison Office, whose leadership position was also vacant with the death of Dirk Cresswell, a Muggle-born.

People were coming and going as Harry the two remaining Weasleys reached the second floor, which housed both the Auror Headquarters and the Improper Use of Magic Office.

'Get out, boys,' said Mr Weasley, and they stepped out of the lift.

'You don't have to walk us, Dad, we know the way,' Ron said, but they didn't need to worry that on their first day at work their father would be leading them through the main hallway: at the head of the corridor was a man with cropped hair, a muscular, moody face, whom Harry had seen before.

'Hello Dawlish,' said their escort cheerfully, shaking hands with the Auror. 'How is your lovely wife?'

'She is well, thank you very much, Mr Weasley,' said the wizard in a deadpan voice. 'Mr Robards told me not long ago. I'll show your son and Mr Potter around the department.'

Mr Weasley continued to nod cheerfully at him, seemingly oblivious to the other's scowl. Harry and Ron wasted no time in saying hello, nor did Dawlish – Harry wondered if the Auror might vaguely remember that they weren't exactly on the same side in the war. Before Voldemort's appearance, Dawlish had followed Fudge and Umbridge's orders, and after them, he had followed Scrimgeour's orders to track Dumbledore – until the old wizard had got rid of him.

After Voldemort took over, Dawlish came under the Imperius Curse, until he was sent to Neville's grandmother. However, Dawlish proved to be a poor Auror for the umpteenth time: the old lady did quite a number on him. Ron seemed to remember this, for he grinned cheekily and mockingly as the Auror turned his back on them.

'Follow me,' he told them, and started down the corridor.

Mr Weasley shook his head but caught himself and said goodbye to the boys, strolling back to the lifts. As they trudged down the corridor, Dawlish recited his sonnet in a monotone:

'There is currently a shortage of Aurors, so you two will be assigned one instructor. Unfortunately, the shortage makes the department's work more difficult, we have to multi-task, so don't be surprised if you are soon assigned a task. I myself am working on a murder and a kidnapping case at the moment...' Dawlish reminded his audience of a sourpuss Hermione. Meanwhile, they passed an enchanted window that showed an overcast, grey sky. The Auror continued:

'The instructor's job will be to prepare you for your work as an Auror, during which you will learn stealth, concealment, tracking, camouflage, interrogation, the use of high potency potions as well as wand and wandless combat' he said wearily as if reading from a piece of paper.

They rounded a corner and through a thick oak door they entered a large room, which, according to the sign outside, was the Auror Headquarters.

Harry finally felt the pleasant excitement that had kept Ron in a fever for weeks. It was as if a bubble had burst; as he entered the crowded, noisy room, he felt he finally had a purpose again, a job to do, and it gave him a pleasant shiver. His mouth curled into a smile as he followed Ron and Dawlish along the wall, where they could see into the rows of partitioned rooms, into the small offices where the Aurors sat and worked. Many stared at them, frozen as they swayed in their chairs, stuck in sentences as they dictated to an enchanted quill, or glanced up from a stout notepad.

'This will be your office,' Dawlish announced in a bored voice as they reached the end of the room, and the Auror led them into one of the cubicles separated by grey screens, 'You will start working here each morning, and meet your instructor here, who will brief you on the current assignment.'

In the cramped little room were two worn desks facing each other, two filing cabinets against the wall, a typewriter with a self-writing function and a stack of purple paper in a wall-mounted holder.

'Get to know the department and the Aurors. Your instructor will be arriving shortly,' Dawlish said, gesturing towards a separate office not far from them, where Auror High Commander Gawain Robards' name was on a blackboard.

Harry and Ron grimaced, then simultaneously sank down on the swivel chairs, put their feet on the table in sync and clasped their hands behind their necks.

'It's quite a nice place, don't you think?' Harry asked his friend. Ron shrugged.

'Not bad, but I hope Dawlish's office is on the other side of the room... or better yet, on the other side of the Earth.'

Harry laughed in agreement and nodded.

They spent the morning just with familiarizing themselves. They had a quick look around the office – all the drawers were empty, just waiting for them – and so they decided to have a look around the neighbours. As it turned out, it was in the cubicle next door that an old friend of Alastor Moody's, Gregor Proudfoot, was working, and he insisted on getting to know the boys better, and even having a drink to Mad-Eye.

'I must say, I'm very glad you boys chose this career,' he murmured, smiling from behind his neatly trimmed black beard. 'You'll both make fine Aurors,' even Mad-Eye said so... I just don't understand why the little girl didn't come with you. I thought it was impossible to separate the three of you.'

'She works for the Department of Magical Creature Regulation,' Harry answered the question.

'Then what on earth is she doing there?' snorted the old wizard. 'The MCR is full of idiots... She should be here with you, so the team would be complete!'

Ron's averted gaze indicated that he agreed with Proudfoot's point of view, but Harry didn't understand the disappointed look. Hermione works one floor below them, they can go down to her whenever they feel like it... although given Hermione's workaholism, that's not entirely true – Harry reminded himself.

'Do you happen to know who our instructor will be, Mr Proudfoot?' Harry interjected, to divert the conversation, but the old man didn't like the name.

'Gregor or Greg, what the hell, we're colleagues!' said the Auror in a fatherly tone.

'Won't Mr Savage be our tutor?' Ron said quickly. 'I heard from my father that he trains the recruits...'

However, Greg Proudfoot's response left them a little discouraged.

'No, no, Dawlish will be your instructor, old Savage is retiring next year.'

'Dawlish?!' Harry couldn't hide his disappointment.

The Auror was amused to see the expressions on the two boys' faces, then poured them some more from the flask.

'Robards announced it this morning,' he informed them, 'Savage, of course, has been saying for years that he was going to leave, but nobody took him seriously. He was always saying that... Whenever we were chasing a bloody vampire or some muggle bully, he'd always whine, 'I'm too old for this, I'm done, I'm done...' and then Mad-Eye told him off once, you know how he was... What's in his heart is in his mouth. Savage was silent for a while. And then the war came, and Mad-Eye was gone. It was a shock to everyone here...'

The two boys nodded sympathetically and drank again in memory of the famous Auror. Harry kept fretting about what kind of game fate was playing with him, sending Dawlish of all the hundreds of wizards working here after them. Ron's face showed that it was bothering him too, and when he couldn't stand it any longer, he asked:

'Tell us Greg, how is this Dawlish?'

'Dawlish... well, he's a strange one,' the old man scratched his head, 'He runs home to his wife right after work, he doesn't go out much, and we always invite him over for a beer with the colleagues, you know? So, I can't tell you what kind of teacher he's gonna be, you're his first students. But don't worry, Dawlish is not a stupid one, he's solved some tricky cases before the war...' he looked at his watch and slapped his forehead. 'Oh dear, I just remembered! There's an interrogation in Azkaban at noon... one of the Death Eaters has got a tongue...'

Harry and Ron looked at him with interest.

'There's nothing strange about that, they used to grasp at straws to cut down on the prison years' while he put away the flask and put on his travelling cloak.

Harry and Ron also emerged from the small cubicle, where they immediately bumped into Dawlish. The Auror was standing there like a novice librarian in a state of disarray, his wand waving a huge pile of papers in front of him, above which only his squinting eyes and his white hair showed.

'Mr Potter and Mr Weasley, I would like to have a few words with you again.'

'Hello, Dawlish!' said Proudfoot cheerfully, and then gave his younger colleague a friendly pat on the back. The pile of papers swayed dangerously.

'Good afternoon, Mr Proudfoot,' the Auror obligingly returned the greeting, and as he turned his back on Proudfoot, the old man tapped his own temple with his index finger and dashed off towards the oak door. Ron laughed into the palm of his hand.

Meanwhile, Dawlish slipped into Harry's cubicle and put the papers on the desk.

'There's been a change,' he announced with a nonchalant face, 'Mr Savage is retiring next year, so Chief Robards thought it wouldn't make sense to leave you in his hands. So they appointed me as your instructor.'

The two boys thought it best not to say anything.

'Here's one...' Dawlish muttered, without looking at them, flipping through the folders he held in his hand. 'Here's a reported kidnapping,' he put a file in front of them and opened it. Meanwhile the others slipped out of his hands, covering the floor with sheets of paper. Without a word, he bent down and scrambled to pick them up.

'May we help, sir?' Ron asked, but without waiting for an answer, he flicked his wand as the papers fell back into their respective folders and lowered onto the table.

'Thank you,' Dawlish murmured. 'So, as I was saying, we have a case of child abduction, or, to put it correctly, disappearance. We can't rule out the possibility that it's simply gone rogue... I'd like to start with this case, just as a warm-up, just to see how to proceed in a case like this.'

He paused briefly and waited for Harry and Ron to nod.

'I would like to warn you,' he continued, 'that most of these cases are indeed simple but unfortunate run-offs. Nevertheless, as this would be the first case you'd be dealing with, I'd like you to investigate together and give me your observations,' Dawlish finally stopped his aimless packing of folders and looked up into Ron and Harry's faces. 'Shall we go?'

The two boys were a little surprised by this sudden task, but they quickly nodded and grabbed their coats excitedly. They hadn't expected to go out in the field on their first day, but they were pleasantly disappointed and hurried after Dawlish as he left the office. From then on, their instructor said not a word, and as they followed him down the corridor, down the lift to the atrium level, and through the thronging crowd to the departing fireplaces, they noticed that the Auror spoke to no one, greeted no one, just as no one greeted him in a friendly manner. Harry concluded to himself that Proudfoot had been right, Dawlish was not liked by many. The next time the Auror spoke was when he reached the fireplaces.

'We're using the Floo network,' he said. They've temporarily opened the fireplace for us because Mr Diggory and his wife are expecting us.

Harry grabbed the arm of Dawlish, who was about to step into the green flames.

'Mr Diggory? Amos Diggory?' wondered Harry, and Ron gaped like a fish.

'Are you sure you meant him?'

The Auror frowned.

'Mr Diggory reported his son missing last night, and asks the Auror Office to intervene in his search, as he suspects foul play.'

'But Cedric Diggory died four years ago!' Ron shouted with arms wide open.

Dawlish clearly didn't like his students' bickering now, but he kept his composure, his voice as low as before.

'The missing person is a thirteen-year-old boy named Ciaran Diggory,' they were told. 'If you don't mind, and if there are no further questions, we should go.'

With that, he entered the fire, stated his destination and disappeared. Harry and Ron stared at each other for a few moments, and then, impatient with the crowd behind them, they too entered the fireplace.

After two months, Harry found himself back in the living room of the Diggory house after the unpleasant swirling and choking smell of smoke had ceased. Mr Diggory was shaking hands with Dawlish and offering him a seat, and Harry was pleased to find that the man was sober this time. Mrs Diggory stood wringing her hands between the kitchen and the living room.

'Well,' said Mr Diggory, when he saw the new arrivals. 'Are these the new Aurors?' he turned to Dawlish, who blinked at him and started rummaging through the folders again.

'Good afternoon,' Harry and Ron greeted the man and his wife politely. A nod from Mr Diggory was the best they could get, but she offered them a seat. As she passed him, Harry saw that her eyes were swollen from crying so much – she was clutching a crumpled handkerchief in her hand.

When they were all seated, Dawlish was relentless:

'So, Mr Diggory, you reported your son missing at nine o'clock last night, is that correct?'

'My foster... my foster son,' corrected Mr Diggory in a slightly hoarse voice.

The Auror turned the pages of his notes again. Harry and Ron sat on the sofa in silence, listening.

'So your foster son...' he muttered, pulling a page from one of the files. 'Ciaran Arthur Diggory, the son of your brother, Angus Diggory.'

Mr Diggory wiped his sweaty brow and nodded.

'Yes, that's right,' he replied. 'Angus and his wife Recca died two years ago, when You-Know-Who came to power. Ciaran survived, thank God, and fled to us.'

Dawlish stared into his face over the sheet of paper in his hand.

'You didn't report it to the Ministry that you had taken the boy, did you?'

Mr Diggory and his wife looked at each other.

'No,' replied the woman. 'There was no one to report it to. Scrimgeour had just been killed by the Death Eaters. The ministry collapsed, you know what happened. We hid. We hid Ciaran because we were afraid they would try to kill him, too.'

'You know how the Death Eaters were,' Mr Diggory took over, 'They showed no mercy to anyone. Angus made them somehow angry with him, and that was his undoing. They would have killed his son if they'd found him.'

Dawlish nodded calmly. He scribbled a little in his notepad, and for a few moments the clink of a quill was the only sound in the room. The Diggory couple was so eager to be forthcoming that they might not even have dared to breathe without the Auror's permission. Harry watched them anxiously, his discomfort not helped by the summer sunshine streaming in through the window.

'When did the boy leave its home?' Dawlish spoke again. Mr Diggory answered the question at once:

'Yesterday before dawn. When we... when we woke up, he was gone... His bed, his closet was empty. He left no note. Nothing... nothing at all,' his voice trailed off, his wife sniffling softly behind him.

Harry felt again the pity he had felt on his last visit. Dawlish, however, did not look like the sort of person who could be moved to tears, perhaps he had seen too many of such cases, Harry thought.

'And the night before, did your son behave strangely? Did he say anything unusual?'

The old man thought desperately, but shook his head.

'No... nothing like that, no...'

'He hugged us,' said Mrs Diggory, in a suddenly firm voice. 'He never does that.'

'I see... Mr Diggory, has your foster son disappeared before,' asked Dawlish, 'even if such for a short period of time?'

They saw him look again for help to his wife, who was more composed at the moment.

'No, nothing like that,' she began, but then thought for a moment. 'Although... the last time we were on Diagon Alley, he ran off. We didn't know where he'd gone for an hour... You know, Amos and Ciaran...' she stopped here, and looked at her husband, her lips pursed as if afraid to say more.

'We had a fight,' Mr Diggory finished instead, in a rueful tone. 'We had a lot of arguments. Mainly about Hogwarts...'

'Why?' asked Dawlish in a machine voice that was as loud as a ministerial lift.

Amos Diggory tried to gather his thoughts, to choose his words, and the Auror waited patiently. Harry and Ron looked at each other, neither of them daring to interrupt or disturb the conversation, just listening in silence. Neither Dawlish nor the Diggories seemed to acknowledge their presence.

'We... my wife and I didn't want him to go to Hogwarts.'

'That's understandable,' nodded the Auror. "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named...'

'Yes, yes,' he said, 'But we didn't let him enroll last year either, and he's over thirteen...'

'We didn't want to let him go,' his wife continued, 'but he really wanted to go. And because of that... because of that we had a lot of arguments... Ciaran got angry. There were times before when he was reserved and introverted, but when he found out we wanted to educate him... just to keep him with us...' Mrs Diggory wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her robe.

'That's why I'm convinced that he didn't just run off, but he went off with someone," he said firmly again. Dawlish raised an eyebrow, the first sign that he was genuinely interested in Ciaran's case.

'I'm sure he ran away to another wizarding school. He couldn't have gone to... Hogwarts, we'd know about that,' the man looked at them with a miserable expression. 'He's gone somewhere else... where we can't go after him.' he muttered to himself with his head down, the end barely audible.

'Did the boy talk about any other schools?' the Auror asked. 'Beauxbatons or Durmstrang, perhaps?'

Mrs Diggory just shook her head. Her husband, however, lifted quickly his head.

'Nooo, that's not the kind of school he went to!' he said, with a glint of anger in his eyes. 'For those it's not enough to just show up in September!'

The Auror frowned.

'Are you referring to an illegal school, Mr Diggory?'

'Of course I am!' the man slapped his knee with sudden vehemence, 'It's all a plot by the inner circle, they're moving their members out of the country, they've given up on Hogwarts...'

Dawlish raised his hand.

'Are you talking about the secret inner circle of black sorcerers?'

Mr Diggory was disappointed: Dawlish made no attempt to hide his doubts.

'Yes, I am.'

'Is there such a thing?' Harry interjected at his first chance.

The others in the room all glanced at him, Dawlish in particular with a piercing glance, but Harry held his gaze, though he wondered to himself if it might have been better to stay quiet.

'Yes, it's an open secret,' replied Mr Diggory, ignoring the Auror's scowl. 'No Ministry of Magic denies its existence. They have members in every country... Perhaps fewer in ours these days. They are fleeing the new system.'

Harry had never heard of such a thing before, and he glanced at Ron – but his friend was not too surprised.

'And... and do you know its members?' Harry looked around at the faces.

'Some of them, yes, but most of them like to stay in the background,' Mr Diggory replied, obviously pleased that Harry took him at his word. 'Lucius Malfoy, for example, was known to be a member of the inner circle.'

'Where from?' Harry wondered.

'He was an influential member of the school's Board of Governors, and more than once tried to oust Albus Dumbledore.'

'But what does that prove?' Harry felt he was beginning to cross the line with Dawlish.

'That he wanted Hogwarts,' said Mr Diggory, digressing from the subject. 'The inner circle has always been after the wizarding schools. But, as I said, after the fall of You-Know-Who, they're getting out of here because they're afraid...'

Dawlish wanted to get back to the conversation, so he cleared his throat. Harry was reminded of Umbridge for a moment, and it made him like the Auror even less.

'Have you received any threatening letters since then?' the Auror tried to continue the questioning. 'Did they demand anything in return for Ciaran? Haas anyone asked you for anything that you have refused in the past?'

Mr Diggory was a little confused by the barrage of questions, and again he shook his head.

'No... we didn't get anything. I told you,' the man insisted. 'You need to look for an illegal school! That's the only option!'

Dawlish then folded up his notebook.

'Thank you, Mr Diggory,' he said, getting up from his armchair.

The Diggory's were visibly surprised, as they blinked confusedly at each other, and then at Harry and Ron for help, who followed Dawlish's example and jumped up themselves.

'Do you have a picture of Ciaran?' asked the Auror.

'Yes, of course...', Mrs Diggory answered hastily, and went to the chest of drawers laden with photographs. 'Is this all right?' she asked, pulling out a photograph of a grumpy boy nervously pushing a camera away from his frame.

Harry's mouth fell open a little. The boy looked strikingly like Cedric, only his expression was so different, nervous, anxious, almost angry.

Dawlish put the photograph away with the other documents, then put them in his bag and shook hands with Mr Diggory. Harry and Ron walked back towards the fireplace, while the Auror assured the couple that every effort would be made to find the boy. Harry, for his part, would not have been reassured by such an empty boilerplate, recited by Dawlish as if he were reading from a piece of paper, but the Diggories were visibly grateful.

They also shook hands with Mr Diggory, but when Harry turned to the fireplace with the hoppy dust in his hand, he froze.

The beautifully carved stone mantelpiece of the fireplace had a tower carved on either side, surrounded by stars. He wasn't sure it was the same one he had seen in the Pensieve, but the resemblance was striking.

'Mr Diggory,' Harry turned to him, 'may I ask what this means? What does it stand for?'

'That...' the man stepped up beside him. 'You mean the tower? I have no idea. Just an ornament. Why?'

'Well, I was just...' began Harry, but then bit off the sentence when he noticed the wizard's expression. He could tell that he'd answered enough questions and expected the Aurors to be concerned with his son's disappearance, not looking at carvings.

Dawlish agreed with his point, clearly not liking another unnecessary question from Harry.

'I hope you were paying attention during the questioning of the witnesses,' he said later when they returned to the ministry. 'In such cases, the most important thing is what questions we ask and in what order, when we are tactful and when we are not.'

Harry didn't listen to a word of it, even though Dawlish had been talking to them for quite some time, giving them advice, so he couldn't tell if Ron was joking or serious when he remarked over dinner that night that Dawlish wasn't as bad a teacher as they thought. He just kept seeing the tower in front of him, trying to decide if he was seeing the same thing or something else.

'Poor old man,' said Ron, when they were alone in the office again; Dawlish had left them with a box of files on similar cases of missing children. 'He will never get his son back'

Harry glanced up from one of the files on the disappearance of a small wizard of Muggle origin.

'Why are you so sure?'

Ron threw aside the folder he was reading and leaned forward in his chair.

'You don't know what the inner circle is, do you?' he waited for his friend to shake his head, then quietly began, 'Black magic has always had its own inner circle at local level and internationally. According to Dad, it's a dark alliance of people who don't interfere in each other's business, but help each other out if they need to.'

'Why would they do that?' Harry asked.

'To preserve centuries of knowledge that means power, influence and, of course, lots of money,' Ron replied immediately. 'If they become more influential somewhere, as they were in Voldemort's time, they don't interfere, they let them do their work. But if something big happens, they step in and save what can be saved – mostly knowledge, books, dark stuff... Even after Voldemort's first downfall, families sold off their black magic stuff in droves, and it ended up abroad.'

'Has someone bought them up?' Harry frowned. Ron shrugged.

'Dad says it's more like someones, as in a lot of people,' he added, swaying lazily in his chair, 'and this buying frenzy isn't just about stuff – it's about people, too.'

Harry was a little taken aback.

'Are you saying that Ciaran is a black wizard?'

'Why not...? No, no, listen,' Ron said to his friend, when Harry laughed at the idea. 'His mother and father died. His foster parents spend all day mourning their dead son. And the lad goes rogue!' Ron slammed his fist on the table for effect. 'He's probably wandered into Knockturn Alley when he disappeared at Diagon Alley and bumped into someone who was shopping there... And bamm. He's gone.'

As much as Harry thought about it, he couldn't quite believe Ron's point of view, and he shared it with him.

'Ron, I don't think... I don't think a thirteen year old kid would turn to black magic after having his parents killed by the greatest dark wizard of the century.'

His friend put his hands up defensively.

'Okay, fine!' he said carelessly. 'It's Dawlish's problem to find the kid anyway. I say we leave him the hell alone.'

They didn't talk about it again that day, but Harry couldn't let it go. He couldn't really pay attention to the report about fourteen-year-old Gertrude's abduction, because he kept thinking about what Ron had told him.

No one has ever told him about any inner circle. A transnational alliance of black sorcerers that was an open secret... So why didn't the ministries do anything about it? All day long he had been preoccupied with this mystery, but only in his thoughts. He could not bring himself to look among the official papers, which certainly existed, if the Ministry did not conceal the existence of such an organisation. Yet from Ron's attitude, and from the words of Dawlish and Mr Diggory, it seemed that no one was really concerned. It was as if it was part of the normal way of the world, nobody cared about the inner circle, they talked about it as if it was something natural.

It was not natural for Harry. He didn't like the idea that there was a society out there that could produce more Voldemorts to the world, that condoned and even supported the existence of such monsters, and that would gather what was left after the fall of the Dark Lord.

Dawlish returned hours later and let them go early, handing them a half-metre roll of parchment with a list of books he recommended as a sort of homework assignment. Ron did not appreciate the idea.

When they got home and sat at the dinner table again, Ginny reminded Harry of their secret about the vision and the tower. As they glanced stealthily at each other while eating, as everyone told of their day, Harry decided to make sure he showed her what had happened in the Pensieve. He didn't really believe that this would make any progress in unraveling the mystery, but somehow he felt a little voice in a hidden corner of his mind telling him to involve her in the investigation.

'What do you want to show me?' Ginny asked him, after Harry had called her down to the living room in the middle of the night, careful not to wake the other occupants of the house.

'A coat of arms that I saw in that house, in my dream, and saw again today, at Diggory's house. The old man couldn't tell me what it was, he said it was just a decoration on the wall. I want you to look at it, see if you recognize it...'

Meanwhile, they had reached the dining room and Harry had put the Pensieve on the table.

'You know Hermione's the expert on that sort of thing,' Ginny said, 'And why don't you look it up in, I don't know, a book?'

Harry detected the slight mockery in her voice and smiled.

'I've already looked in the book Natural Nobility, but I only found a couple of titles about the Blacks and Malfoys and Princes. And I don't want to say anything to Hermione. I don't want them to know I'm seeing things again. It started like this last time...'

Meanwhile, he poured the memory into the bowl, which he now kept in a small glass flask so that he wouldn't have to dig it out of his head every time.

'Well, yes. If Harry Potter's having nightmares, that's a pretty bad sign for the future of humanity...' Ginny giggled. 'And what you're saying is that you wouldn't have told me about it either if you hadn't kicked me out of bed in your sleep, right?'

Harry didn't say anything in reply.

'Are you ready?' he asked Ginny, who nodded firmly and immediately stuck her nose in the Pensieve and disappeared from the room. Harry didn't hesitate either, following right behind her.

'Does the house look familiar to you?' he said to her quietly as he landed beside her.

'No... it doesn't look familiar,' she whispered.

'Why are we whispering?' Harry asked just as quietly.

'I don't know,' she replied, looking at the fearfully stumbling memory of Harry in front of her.

When the memory-Harry sneaked down the stairs, they stopped behind him, and Harry turned to face his girlfriend with the coat of arms hanging on the wall.

'See this?'

'I do.'

'And?'

'I've never seen it before in my life.'

Harry gave a resigned sigh and took her arm to pull her out of the memory.

'I'd like to see it through if you don't mind?' stopped Ginny.

'Okay,' Harry agreed, and they went down the stairs into the living room.

They watched as the windows and door burst open, covering the room with broken glass. Ginny screamed out, and Harry followed himself out into the muddy courtyard, where he saw himself slip and fall before the strange figure once again. They saw the dead, rotten trees, the grey sky, and smelled the musty smell, the smell of death. Ginny stood beside Harry, holding his hand as they watched the hooded man. His face was still covered in shadow, even though they were looking straight at him. The symbol of the Deathly Hallows was clearly visible on the wind around his neck.

The hooded man looked down at Harry lying on the ground, then crouched down. Harry and Ginny, watching the scene, moved closer and crouched down to look under the hood. The moment came when the memory-Harry's breath caught in shock and the stranger pulled the hood off his head.

And then they saw his eyes, his features, his hair, which was like...

They both winced at the realization that struck them like a bolt of lightning – because they felt, they knew, they never doubted for a moment that this figure could be nothing but...

The hooded man looked up. He looked not at Harry, who was kneeling on the floor, covered in mud, nor at Malfoy, but at the people watching the memory, straight into their eyes.

'WHY DID YOU BRING HER WITH YOU?!' – the man snarled like an angry lion, pointing a long finger at Ginny. 'Why did you have to show her? Get out of here!'

Ginny clung to Harry's arm with fright.

'Look!'

Harry noticed it too: everything around them had stopped. The wind stopped blowing, the raindrops froze in the air, and Harry, the one kneeling in the mud, stiffened like a statue. They and the hooded boy were the only ones free to move, and he looked at them with fierce anger.

'You have no business here!' he yelled at the top of his voice. 'This is my world! What I do is my business! Stop chasing me! GET OUT OF HERE!'

Ginny cried out in terror and curled up on the floor. Harry put his arm around her defensively, and saw that instead of the frozen Malfoy frenzied in the exploded living room, he was now raising his wand at them.

'OBLIVIATE!' the spell rang out, and at that moment everything went black for Harry and Ginny.

They woke up lying on the living room floor. They were both panting heavily, their foreheads clammy, their hearts beating as fast as if they had run a marathon.

'My God...' cried Ginny, her voice trembling. Harry's head pounded, his eardrums rattled and he felt a little dizzy. Slowly he got up and helped Ginny to her feet.

'He saw us,' panted Harry. 'How is that possible?'

The girl sniffed a few times and looked at her trembling hands.

'No way,' she shook her head, 'This can't happen... No, it's absolutely impossible...'

'It just happened! Harry barked nervously. 'He saw us, in a memory, and cursed us!'

It then hit Harry: 'Ginny, do you remember his face? Tell me you remember his face! Who was he?'

But she just shook her head.

'I don't remember,' she sighed in a shaky voice. 'I don't know what he looked like...'

Again it felt as if the memories were simply falling out of his head. For help, he glanced at the Pensieve – it was empty, the silvery liquid seemed to have evaporated from it.

'It was like I knew him from somewhere,' Ginny said. 'When I saw his face... Somehow I knew I know him...'

Harry sat down opposite her at the table and looked at her. That was exactly how he felt. He couldn't imagine that such a thing was possible. Seven years ago, he wouldn't have been so surprised after he discovered that Riddle's memories, locked in a diary, had opened the Chamber of Secrets and nearly killed Ginny. But since then he had learned much about horcruxes and Pensieves, and knew that it was not possible for mere memories to act on their own, to curse people. Such things could not happen, there was no possible explanation.

And that was the most disturbing thing of all, the most frightening thing, the thing that gave him shivering and chills down his spine: that something was happening to him that he couldn't explain. If he can't find an answer, no one can help him. Somehow, he had the feeling that Dumbledore would know – yes, he would surely give him answers as to why he had this dream and how the stranger had contacted him. Or, even if he didn't know, he'd certainly have a clue or two... – he thought. And Dumbledore's guesses were usually right...

He couldn't smile now at this thought, the previous encounter with the hooded stranger was too traumatic. Ginny took a few deep breaths to calm herself and stopped shaking. Neither of them dared to attempt to see the vision again, fearing that the mysterious figure would not rely on memory erasure alone next time.