- Chapter Twelve -

The Head

Kingsley perfectly agreed with Hermione that they must take advantage of such an opportunity to explore Durmstrang and track down the blue-skinned man, which was why Harry must accept the invitation and attend the twenty-fifth of December. Harry wasn't the least bit keen on the idea, but he had to admit that he hadn't signed up to be an Auror to do whatever he felt like, so he obediently agreed to the task.

He had also reported to the Minister about Borgin and Pansy Parkinson's interlude, but Kingsley didn't think it was relevant – he was of the same opinion as Hermione had been: Pansy was just talking nonsense, and Skeeter's book was as far from the truth as a crumble-horned snorkack. Harry also showed him the seal on the Durmstrang letter, but Kingsley discouraged them ('There are several schools with a tower as a symbol!'). However, because of the marked schools he saw on the Peverell House map, he also felt it was essential to explore Durmstrang, so they ended up at the same conclusion.

The invitation was for two people for the Yule Ball, so Kingsley immediately suggested Hermione, but she declined, saying she was sure Harry and Ginny would like to go together. Harry was delighted that Hermione had brought it up – he himself would have considered it rude to object that he didn't want her.

'But why would you want to go with Ginny Weasley?' the minister asked in a slow, bass voice.

Harry gave a lazy half-smile as Kingsley connected the dots.

'Oh... I see,' he said, and he also smiled.

Ron coughed softly beside them.

'But in that case, she'll have to come to the ministry first to discuss the plan,' Kingsley continued, 'You're not there to have fun, but to find out everything you can about the blue-skinned man's possible target...'

'Marius,' said Ron, who had been silent all this time. 'Marius Prince is his real name.'

Hermione jumped in her chair as if pinched, and Kingsley stared at Ron, dumbfounded.

'What? Prince?' Harry groaned at the name.

'Why didn't you tell us before, Ron?' Hermione glared at him, gripping the arm of her chair with both hands, as if she was afraid of jumping up again.

'I was just about to report it,' Ron shrugged, nonchalantly, 'Dawlish and I spent about four hours at the registry this morning before we found him. Here it is...' he pulled a file from the wide pocket of his robes and handed it to Kingsley.

The Minister opened and scanned the first page. Ron continued his report.

'We searched for all sorcerers born after 1900 with the first name Marius. We found quite a few...' he trailed off. 'So we had to exclude some. We eliminated those who were too short or too tall, and foreigners too, because based on his language he must be British... I knew him as soon as I saw him in the photographs.'

Kingsley took out the small picture pinned to the data sheet and handed it to Hermione. Harry agreed with Ron that this was their guy. Although the wizard in the picture was not blue, but had a healthy suntan, and his elongated face was exceptionally handsome, with long straight raven-black hair, he gave a strikingly Snape-like impression, but was also very different. Harry was sure of it, that Marius was not an introverted, outcast boy like Severus Snape, but rather a young Sirius Black.

'His father's name is Octavius Prince, Pureblooded, born 22 June 1927.'

'He can't be that old!' frowned Harry. 'He hardly looks older than us.'

'That's beside the point,' Hermione smiled. 'There are plenty of potions to rejuvenate your features, aren't there Kingsley?'

The minister smiled and looked at Harry.

'How old do you think I am?' he asked. Harry shrugged.

'Forty, forty-five... fifty at the most', he replied.

'I'll be seventy next year,' Kingsley gave the correct answer after a pause for effect. No one but Harry was surprised.

Hermione cleared her throat as Harry recovered – they had more important things to discuss than who looked how old.

'You said his father was Octavius Prince?' she asked the minister.

'Yes, why?'

'Remember that pair of siblings on Remembrance Day?' Instead of Kingsley, Hermione addressed her words to the two boys. 'They were the Prince brothers. The younger one was called Octavius, and McGonagall said he was Snape's grandfather.'

Harry remembered it too. At first glance he had the bizarre thought that he was seeing Snape himself. He looked so much like him, with his hooked nose and greasy black hair, that it was only on the second look he realised he wasn't looking at the former Potions teacher.

'Then the blue-skinned man...' he summed it up, 'I mean Marius, must be Eileen Prince's brother! In other words, he's Snape's uncle.'

For a minute neither of them said a word. They had not spoken of Snape for ages. Although the story of the heroic Death Eater regularly appeared in the newspapers, and Rita Skeeter made a point of mentioning him in her book about the Golden Trio, they themselves somehow tried to forget him. It was as if on the Day of Remembrance they had said their final farewells to the obnoxious Potions teacher, the former Death Eater, Dumbledore's murderer and chief confidante, the ill-fated Hogwarts boy who was in love with Lily Evans until the end.

It was Kingsley who broke the silence.

'Okay, that's very interesting, but what's important for us is how we track him down,' he said, 'and how he became like this. He doesn't look very blue in the photo...'

'It must be some kind of spell gone wrong,' Hermione guessed, but Ron cut in.

'Just look at the time he went to Hogwarts!' Kingsley began to search wildly through the text, but the boy beat him to it. 'Between 1938 and 1944... same time as Voldemort. So he must have known him.'

Harry looked at the photograph again. He looked at the smiling young man, his haughty, proud features, his Pureblooded nobility recognisable from afar... He imagined a person who would fit in perfectly with Lord Voldemort's Hogwarts company.

'But he wasn't a Slytherin,' Kingsley added casually, 'He was a Ravenclaw.'

'Those are such idiots...' remarked Ron, and then groaned when Hermione elbowed him between the ribs in warning.

Kingsley gave him a fake smile.

'On behalf of the Ravenclaws, I object to that,' he murmured slowly.

Ron's ears went red in an instant, and Harry struggled to keep himself from laughing as he moved his gaze between Kingsley and his friend.

'What I meant was... those are such idiots who...' Ron tried to cut himself out of the situation, 'who... were at Hogwarts at the time. I was going to say that, but Hermione wouldn't let me finish. That's why it sounded like... like I was saying Ravenclaws were... idiots. But they're not... You know what I mean?'

The minister's smile grew wider, amused by the boy's embarrassment.

'I was admitted to Hogwarts in '41,' he gave him the coup de grace.

Ron was all red and preferred to say nothing.

'You've dug yourself in deep enough now,' Harry said with a laugh. Kingsley and Hermione finally also laughed out loud at that.

'Do you think Voldemort did something to him that made him hate him?' she speculated when they stopped laughing.

Harry was thinking feverishly. The fact that he had never heard of a curse that could turn a person into the monster Marius had become meant nothing, for he knew nothing of many spells.

'Yeah... maybe,' he shrugged.

His friend leaned back in his chair and began to sway lazily.

'I can understand why he hunts Death Eaters,' he said, 'and why he might hate Voldemort, but why is he interested in dark objects?'

'We've been through this, Ron,' said Hermione. 'To use them. It's pretty obvious, isn't it?'

Ron shook his head.

'Those things don't make you a dark lord!'

'No?' Harry raised his eyebrows meaningfully, thinking of the Deathly Hallows.

Ron pondered that for a moment, but said nothing against it.

'So you think he wants to be the next Voldemort?' he speculated further.

Kingsley folded his arms and leaned back in his chair, watching them in silence. Harry glanced at him with one eye. The minister refused to intervene, as if to let them unfold; Harry must have realised that he had judged him rashly when he accused him of insolently underestimating them.

'It looks like it,' Hermione said with a grimace. Harry averted his gaze from Kingsley.

'I think something is wrong here,' he said to his friends. 'Remember what he said to Belladonna Zabini before he killed her?'

Hermione looked at him expectantly, but Ron shook his head.

'I was unconscious at the time,' he reminded him.

'Oh, right...', Harry realized, and then continued. 'He accused Mrs Zabini of murdering all seven of her husbands. He was quite angry with her for that. It was like she was being punished for what she'd done. He didn't strike me as a dark lord.'

For a minute no one said anything, just chewed over what they had heard. Harry wasn't sure if that was sufficient reason to make such a statement, but he couldn't rely on anything other than his gut feeling about Marius. He could easily imagine the hooded stranger who haunted his dreams as a grand master of black magic, but Marius was something else.

He squirmed uncomfortably in his chair, thinking of how he had felt when they had toured the halls of Peverell House. When the blue-skinned man had kicked Florean Fortescue's body aside, when he'd told him to move aside because he might be cut by the broken glass. There was something of profound indifference in his voice, as well as a kind of strangely expressed respect for Harry and his friends. Of course, he dared not mention this to Ron or Hermione, for he was sure they would be scolded. How could Marius have any respect for them, when he nearly caused their deaths? But Harry saw it differently. In the last few weeks, he'd been getting the impression that Marius wouldn't have let them die.

'Whoever he is, we need to find him and catch him before more people get hurt,' Kingsley finally said, sighing heavily, 'We've contacted the schools and told them that this Marius character might turn up.'

Ron and Hermione nodded.

'And what did they say?' Harry asked, thinking of Durmstrang.

'What was to be expected: they thanked us for telling them, and that was that.'

Hermione sighed angrily.

'Did they not take the warning seriously?' she frowned disapprovingly.

Kingsley gave a half smile.

'They may have taken it seriously,' he said, with little conviction in his voice, 'but like the wise men of all wizarding schools, they are too proud to think that they might need help.'

For sure they could use some help, Harry thought. He doubted that Marius would be as difficult an opponent as Voldemort, but surprise, the power of intimidation, and the strange dementor were all on his side, and that was a big advantage. He had no way of knowing what the blue-skinned man's goals were, but he knew he had the means to achieve them.

Ron saw the situation differently.

'In the end, we don't know if that's really the case,' he said. 'It could easily be that on his first try they make shashlik out of him and his Viking buddy.'

Hermione was in a teasing mood and interrupted.

'I thought there was no spell that could kill a dementor,' she said. 'Then how do you think they would make 'shashlik' out of him?'

Kingsley rose from his chair, quickly ending the argument before it began.

'It is not our job to argue about this!' he warned them. 'Here's what you do: Harry, you write the answer to Durmstrang so they can send you the portkey, and then you and Ron can continue to exercise. This is important! Hermione, you can go back to the Magical Creature Regulatory, leave the rest to us...'

'Actually, I have to go to the tenth floor, because the trial of Rita Skeeter starts in fifteen minutes,' she chattered.

'Still not giving up?' Ron snapped at her as she lifted her robe off the hanger.

Hermione only answered with a look, but that was enough. It was exactly the way she acted when she was trying to figure out how Skeeter was listening in on their conversations.

'All right,' nodded Kingsley, and before he let them go, he handed Harry the Daily Prophet for the day. 'Have a look, it'll interest you!'

Harry glanced at the front page and saw immediately what the Minister meant. A large part of the page was taken up by a lengthy article about the Triwizard Tournament. He gave a resigned groan, but not before they were out of earshot of Kingsley. He made no secret of his hatred for the whole Tournament, which had once made his life a living hell.

They said goodbye to Hermione in the lift and wished her good luck. They disembarked at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and she continued on her way to the meeting rooms on level ten.

This was another day of feverish practice, and they never saw their instructor for more than a few minutes. Harry could only speculate as to how Dawlish and Proudfoot were trying to track down Marius Prince, the blue-skinned man. He and Ron had duelled in the training room, and apart from them, only one or two Aurors had dropped in for an hour now and then, who Harry knew only by sight.

All the time he was thinking about what he had heard in the minister's office. Marius knew Voldemort. Could he be one of Voldemort's early victims? Could he have done this to him, to Snape's uncle? He remembered the photo, taken when Marius was young. He had a lively and charming face. How could someone become such a monster? He understood Voldemort, for he knew him well from his childhood, and he could see that from the very beginning there was an inexplicable tendency in him that would eventually make him the most dangerous man in the world...

'Ouch!' he suddenly yelped as he fell to the ground from one of Ron's stronger curses. His friend was there in an instant to help him up.

'Are you OK? Did you hurt yourself?' he asked worriedly when he saw Harry's arm covered with tentacle-like growths.

'No, I was just... elsewhere in thought,' Harry muttered, and dispersed the tentacles.

The pair practising next to them looked curiously in their direction, which he found extremely irritating.

'Wow, the famous Harry Potter was knocked out, big news!' he thought to himself.

They finished the exercise for the day and after a quick clean up, they went back to their booth.

'It's nearly three o'clock,' Ron announced, glancing at his watch. Hermione should be finished by now... How long does a trial like this take?'

Harry, who had some experience in the courtroom, just shrugged and picked up the paper.

'It varies,' he said to Ron, and laid the Prophet out on the table. 'Sometimes they finish in an hour, but sometimes it takes longer.'

'Well, if they let Skeeter get away with it, Hermione won't be out of there until Christmas...' Ron muttered.

The Daily Prophet had all articles related to the Tournament on its main page. Harry was aware of why: the tragedy of the last tournament had made more people want to know more about it. It was as if everyone expected some long-dead black sorcerer to come back to life and cause another bloodbath...

First task a great success

We have previously reported on the results of the first task of the Triwizard Tournament, which took place on 26 November. As you know, it is now known that the young talent of Beauxbatons, Eloise Auteuil leads with 32 points, followed in a tie by Durmstrang's Ivan Dragomir and Hogwarts's Dennis Creevy with 29 points.

'Wow, Dennis is the champion?' Harry looked up from the newspaper.

'Hm?' asked Ron.

'Nothing...'

The three champions performed in exemplary fashion in the first task, which, according to tradition, involved matching wits with a certain magical beast. In the last Tournament, the champions had to steal a golden egg from an adult dragon, and this time they had to put three African Erumpents each into a cage. The judges scored the champions on how much damage they did to the animals, whether they suffered any injuries and how quickly they completed the task.

During the test, the Durmstrang champion must have misunderstood something, because he did not put the animals in the pens, but set them against each other, which resulted in two Erumpents blowing each other up with their horns. The audience, however, received this with such an ovation that the jury did not deduct score from Ivan Dragomir.

The task, organised by Hogwarts, was a huge success with the audience, who all thought it was a great opening to an exciting and spectacular show. The previous Triwizard Tournament came under a lot of criticism for the fact that the second and third tasks had almost no excitement for the large crowd, only the champions could get excited, hidden from view. We asked director Minerva McGonagall what she thought of the previous Tournament: "It's a strange question, because what kind of opinion could I have about a tournament that we all know the outcome of and the forces at work behind it?" she replied. "But if we look only at the task themselves, one can indeed get the impression that the spectators were strangely left out of the second and third tasks."

It is true that five years ago, the first task organised by Hogwarts was the only one to excite the audience, while the water task, an interesting idea by Durmstrang, and the much more spectacular Beauxbatons labyrinth task were kept out of sight.

According to Ursula Ulatov, Deputy Director of the Durmstrang Academy, the new Triwizard Tournament promises more elaborate and spectacular rounds, which of course cannot be announced in advance, lest the news reach the ears of the champions, who must prepare without knowing what they are up against. What we do know is that the second test, organised by Beauxbatons, will take place on 25 February.

Director Maude Moloh also complained in a public interview with a German magical newspaper that some of the invited guests did not show up for the first round, some of whom did not even reply to the invitations sent out. "We sent a cordial invitation to, among others, the winner of the last Tournament, Harry James Potter, who eventually did not contact us," Mr Moloh told the briefing. He added, however, that he sincerely hoped the Yule Ball would be graced by the presence of the invited guests, who were sent invitations despite their earlier absence.

Harry wondered: after Durmstrang's vehement objection to them hosting the Tournament, why did the director take it as an insult that he hadn't come to the first rehearsal? Harry sensed something was wrong with the school. Pansy Parkinson and Borgin's quarrel, the tower seal on the invitation, the failed Hogwarts building project all pointed to Durmstrang as some bright, flashing signpost.

He set the paper aside to pull out one of the still-stacked files he had to study, but this time he searched purposefully for those that had something to do with the Borgin & Burkes shop. Ron, meanwhile, asked for the Prophet because he was curious about the latest results of the British Quidditch League, but then Hermione dropped in.

'Hello.'

At first glance, Harry could tell that she was extremely upset and angry, and the reason for this was revealed almost immediately when she gave a five-minute rant, interspersed with expletives, about the outcome of the trial.

'That wench had the audacity to say that I was making an unjust accusation,' she shouted, 'when I said that she was using illegal means to get information out of people!'

'And what was the final decision?' Harry asked the only thing he cared about in all the fuss, and which Hermione hadn't yet got to in all the rage.

'No decision!' she spat the words as if it were Rita Skeeter sitting in front of her, not Harry. 'Skeeter was questioned, I protested, and it was adjourned. All I managed to get was that her new book would not be in the shops until the case was closed.'

'That's something...' Harry noted.

Hermione snapped out of it and stamped her foot, as several people peered over the screen at them.

'No! It equals zero! I'll destroy that woman if it's the last thing I do!' she fumed.

Ron grabbed her by the waist and sat her gently on his lap.

'Calm down!' he whispered in her ear to calm her down. 'Skeeter is talking nonsense anyway. Her new book is full of nonsense. Nobody takes her seriously anymore.'

Hermione looked at him resignedly, but finally stopped shouting, much to Harry's delight.

'You think so?' she asked. 'Don't you think they're going to make a fuss of every little crumb she throws at us? What will people think if... if things come out... that are...' Hermione searched for words, 'that are private!'

Ron grinned lazily at him.

'What private matters should we be ashamed of?' he asked, as even the thought of it was ridiculous. 'We are the "big heroes", we don't have to be ashamed of anything!'

Harry coughed softly, but preferred to say nothing. Hermione raised an eyebrow.

'Nothing? What about the time we broke into Gringotts bank and on the way out who knows how many innocent people were injured by the dragon?' she whispered so that only the two of them could hear her. 'Or the time you abandoned us while searching for the horcruxes?'

Ron made a face like Hermione had slapped him. Harry stopped aimlessly flipping through the files and sighed briefly. Another touchy subject that hadn't been discussed between them for a long time...

Hermione's face already showed that she wanted to take back the last sentence.

'I'm sorry,' she muttered, embarrassed. 'I didn't want to...'

'It's okay,' Ron said quickly, staring at the table.

For a long time no one said anything, Hermione sat on Ron's lap, staring silently at the boy browsing the newspaper, and Harry tried to concentrate on the recently closed case at hand, concerning a business relationship between a Hepzibah Smith and Borgin & Burkes. Harry put the file back in its place and sighed heavily. All the cases involving the names Borgin & Burkes were merely about the circumstances of the alleged sale of cursed items, Hepzibah's murder being the most serious of them, but nowhere was there any mention of Durmstrang or any tower.

He decided it was time to look at the matter from another angle, especially as Hermione had begun to stroke Ron's hair in a deep thought, something Harry did not want to witness. He got up from his chair and put on his travelling cloak. Hermione immediately noticed what he was doing.

'Where are you going?'

'Just going for a walk. I'm going to clear my head,' Harry replied evasively, and he was gone. Lately, he'd gotten used to disappearing quickly, leaving no opportunity for her to hold him back with something or to reach into his head with her Legilimency.

He left the ministry building on the usual route, and apparated from the deserted alleyway straight into the middle of the Christmas shopping crowd on Diagon Alley. He walked down the dark, cold cobbled Knockturn Alley towards the largest building, Borgin & Burkes.

He was here only once, in his second year, and later he, Ron and Hermione were on the outside, spying on Draco Malfoy. Little did they know at the time that Malfoy, the rookie Death Eater, had come here to perfect his plan to murder Dumbledore with the help of a vanishing cabinet in which Harry himself once hid. Charactacus Burke's shop has always been a friend and helper to black wizards and Death Eaters, in exchange for loads of galleons of course. Presumably this blessed activity has not ceased with the death of Voldemort, as it hadn't a long time ago when Lucius Malfoy was was able to get rid of his banned poisons here.

Before he went in, Harry looked in the window and found that the only person inside was the greasy-haired, bent-backed, palm-crawling shopkeeper. Careful not to ring the front door bell, Harry entered.

'Hello, Borgin,' he greeted him in a whispering voice that was meant to be terrifying.

The shopkeeper spun around, startled, and dropped a wooden box, which opened and began to play a mournful tune. Borgin picked it up instantly and quickly slammed its top down.

'Playing with cursed objects, are we?' Harry grinned at him as the old man wiped the sweat from his brow.

'Who the hell are you?'

Harry walked closer. Borgin stepped back from him, but then he saw his face as his guest walked into the ray of light streaming through the window.

'Harry Potter?' He couldn't have been more surprised, and Harry was pleased to note the fright in his voice.

He was pleased to realise that he had recently become something of a Boggart in the eyes of the black sorcerers. He didn't try to fool himself: he really liked the idea.

'What are you doing here? I didn't do anything!' Borgin snorted with flared nostrils.

'Calm down, I don't want to arrest you or anything...' Harry was amused by Borgin's fear and went to the desk. 'Besides, I couldn't, I'm just a trainee at the ministry.'

The old man wasn't reassured, but Harry didn't expect him to transform into a handy salesman.

'You wouldn't have any reason to arrest me!' the shopkeeper huffed when he found his voice again. 'I don't deal with anything... like that!'

Harry was leaning lazily on the counter, and Borgin dared not take his eyes off him, nor his wand.

'I wonder where Draco Malfoy has disappeared to.'

'And why are you asking me?' the old man retorted in a hoarse voice, and snorted even more than before, his fingers gripping the wooden box, turning white.

'Let's see, why is that?' Harry was playing with him. 'Perhaps because a dozen witnesses saw you arguing about it with Pansy Parkinson outside the Valentinus Cafe, and hitting the poor girl.'

Borgin's face was pale now, and for a few moments he stared at Harry, stunned. Finally he pulled himself together and turned away from him, apparently to put the music box back on a cupboard shelf, but Harry was sure he was just trying to think of some sort of rescue answer.

'That girl wouldn't leave me alone,' said the old man. 'She chased me down the street, saying that I knew where her damned boyfriend had gone.'

'But you don't know,' Harry nodded with a smile.

'Of course I don't!' spat Borgin, finally turning back to his guest. 'And why are you grinning like a madman?! You should know that people like you are not welcome to be served in Knockturn Alley.'

Harry had pushed away from the counter, and now he turned away from Borgin, his eyes roving over the shelves once littered with black magic tools, the display cases now lying pitifully empty, the dusty cabinets with barely any merchandise.

'What could they possibly serve me during in Knockturn Alley?' he asked Borgin, without looking at him. 'There's nothing left! I wish I could say that the raids of the Ministry were so successful, but unfortunately, you were again faster than us...'

Borgin stood still, as if petrified.

'What are you talking about?' he asked, licking his lips in nervousness.

'Of the inner circle of course,' Harry replied. 'Of people selling and buying dark objects. Of Durmstrang, I suppose... Or do you prefer the Fourth Tower?'

He hoped it would do him some good to show his hand, and Borgin's expression was almost proof. At the mention of the last name, the spiky-haired old shopkeeper looked as if Harry had kicked him in the groin.

'I haven't the faintest idea what you are talking about,' he said in a trembling voice, his Adam's apple jumping up and down.

Harry was now face to face with him again, stopping his pacing of the sparse shelves.

'No?' he asked back, raising an eyebrow, 'Parkinson was pretty sure that you were the contact who would arrange the move for Voldi's ex-buddies in exchange for dark objects...'

He had deliberately chosen this mocking tone, and it had achieved its purpose: the blood drained from Borgin's face now completely, and Harry grinned even more wickedly.

'I told you that girl was out of her mind!' he whispered, his eyes flashing madly.

'Is that why you had to hit her?'

Borgin swallowed.

'Get out of my shop!' he finally shouted, after a long silence, and came forward from behind the counter to eject his unwanted customer.

Harry decided to try the last option:

'Tell me, are you not afraid of Marius?'

'Who the hell is Marius?' Borgin grinned without the slightest sign of fear. 'Whatever, I don't even care. Get out of my shop, now! Out!'

Harry went out, annoyed. Borgin slammed the door behind him and put up the locked sign, then gave Harry one last scowl from behind the window and retreated to his residence behind the shop.

'Well, that didn't work...' Harry muttered to himself, and kicked a stone.

He looked towards the few pedestrians loitering in the alley as the stone bounced along the cobbled pavement. Harry was not in the least afraid of them, not filled with icy horror as he had been when he first came here, when he had barely taken a few steps before he bumped into an old hag. Then only Hagrid's intervention saved him from who knows what fate. It was very likely that it was the hag who had more to fear from him now.

He put the hood back on his head and started walking back towards Diagon Alley. Borgin and the inner circle were on his mind, he was so lost in thought that he forgot to apparate. He wasn't a fan of apparition anyway, he went everywhere on foot or on a broom whenever he could, but since he had finished his studies at Hogwarts he had come to realise that he couldn't get along without apparating.

He stopped in front of one of the mouldy shop windows. Behind the glass were shelves stacked to the rafters with bizarre instruments, masks, shrunken heads and bare skulls. Above the shop door hung a rusty iron sign with an illegible inscription.

'Looks like someone's looking for trouble,' Harry thought, reaching into his pocket for his wand and pushing through the shop door. Inside, he was greeted by an aged, haggard wizard with a stooped back, barely taller than a goblin, and white hairs hanging down on either side of his balding head.

'Good day!' Harry greeted the shopkeeper, who grimaced.

'Eh...' groaned the old man. 'Good day! What do you want?'

His squawking voice was almost deafening, like a crow's, and his face almost disappeared in a sea of wrinkles. His watery eyes were fixed on Harry.

'I wonder what all this stuff is in the window,' Harry waved towards the shelves, letting his wand go in his pocket; the old man was no threat to him.

'Eh... These?' the shopkeeper shrieked, and leaning on his cane, stumbled forward from behind the counter. 'Well, antiques! They're all different... What do you want, sir?'

Harry blinked at him, slightly surprised. The old man didn't seem to recognise him, or he wouldn't be offering his wares to him.

'Sir, are these cursed objects?' he asked him.

'You mean these?' the old wizard turned to the shelves. Harry rolled his eyes. He was obviously quite slow already.

'Yes, these,' he replied, somewhat impatiently.

'Cursed, yes...' the shopkeeper grumbled, and then picked up a skull. 'This is the skull of the seventh son of a seventh son, for example. Powdered, it goes into potions...'

Harry sighed and put his hands on his hips.

'Sir, are you aware that it is forbidden to sell such things?' he asked. 'These are forbidden magical items, do you understand what I'm saying?'

It was clear that the old man was finding it hard to grasp what he was hearing. It occurred to Harry that he might not have been aware that things had changed since Voldemort's downfall.

'Forbidden?' the old man muttered, looking up from the skull into Harry's face.

'Yes, forbidden,' said Harry impatiently. 'Have you not heard of the law restricting the trade and possession of cursed objects?'

'Law...' came another muttering.

Harry buried his face in his hands for a moment, then sighed deeply to calm himself. There was no point in shouting at the old man. He was probably just behind the times.

'Sir,' Harry struck a kinder tone, 'Do you know who the Minister for Magic is now?'

'The Minister?'

'Yes, the Minister.'

'Eh... well Cornelius Fudge, who else?'

What should he do now, Harry wondered. Arrest him here and now? The old wizard was guilty of a crime, he could be locked up for a couple of years for possessing such a stockpile. Harry shook his head. He probably wouldn't last a day in Azkaban, and he didn't think he really deserved it. Dawlish, of course, would come in with a team of Aurors and handcuffs and wands and turn the place upside down from cellar to attic, and the old man would be dragged down to the interrogation room to sit in handcuffs when he didn't even know who the Minister was.

The shopkeeper put the skull back in its place, between a bloodstained knife and a black head in a jar, and stumbled towards the counter. Harry stared absently at the heads, wondering what the right thing to do would be at this point. Surely Dumbledore would know immediately how to get the old man out of the trouble he had gotten himself into through his own ignorance. He had even bailed out Mundungus Fletcher once, knowing that the scoundrel could still be of use. Yes, Dumbledore helped anyone he saw a useful tool in, but he would rather help the old wizard only because he knew that in his case, the legal process was not the way to go.

But was he even sure? Sure he didn't deserve to go to prison? After all, he was supporting Voldemort's world, the world of the black sorcerers, even now... Would his stupidity and ignorance be an excuse for that? All those skulls and severed black heads...

The head...

'Sir,' said Harry, forgetting his previous inner debate, 'can you tell me what this is?'

With weary slowness, the shopkeeper stumbled back to him when he had almost reached his counter and the rickety chair of comfort.

'Eh... What's that?' he squinted at the dried head hiding under the glass dome.

'Yes, that.'

'That's a Scaredy-head,' he whined.

Without thinking, Harry picked up the bottle and took a good look at the severed head. The resemblance was unmistakable, he thought. It was exactly like the evil visage hidden beneath the hood that he had seen in the Hog's Head and would never forget as long as he lived.

'No...' whispered Harry, almost petrified by the sight; his breath misted the cold glass. 'This is a dementor's head!'

'Of a dementor? Eh...!' the old man sniffed, annoyed. 'Don't be ridiculous young man! How could it be? You can't just cut off the head of a dementor!'

But Harry was sticking to his guns.

'I'm telling you, that's the head of a dementor!' he said stubbornly, shaking the glass container. 'Where did you get it? Who did you buy it from?'

The old man banged his crooked stick on the dusty floor and tried to take the bottle from Harry.

'None of your business where I got it!' the old man shrieked angrily. 'Give it back!'

'I could close your shop, you hear?' said Harry, changing his tone, and snatching the container from the old man's hand. 'Tell me where you got it from or I'm calling the Aurors!'

Harry had to step back quickly as the shopkeeper raised his walking stick threateningly.

'Who do you think you are, young man?' the old man crowed, waving his hand wildly in front of his guest. 'Like you could close my shop! I've had this shop for a hundred and twelve years! What makes you think you can threaten me?'

This will not work. It will be impossible to get an answer out of a man who has spent a hundred and twelve years selling discreetly cursed items to discreet customers. Even though he's gone senile, confidentiality has become ingrained over the decades.

He sighed and said the only option left:

'How much does it cost?'

The old wizard asked a high price for the wizened head, Harry wasn't even sure he had five hundred galleons. But finally he emerged into the cold street with an empty pocket and one more cursed object, as the first stars were already appearing in the sky. Wasting no time in walking, he apparated at once to the Burrow, and when he entered the warm sitting-room by the back door, with his cloaked glass case in his hand – for he wished to avoid curious glances at it while he was at Knockturn Alley – the first thing he saw was a waving tuft of red hair.

Ginny was helping her mother set the table for dinner, Mr Weasley was chatting with Ron and Hermione at the table, and Charlie was clearly trying to find an escape from one of Percy's more boring workplace stories, which he found in Harry.

'Finally you're here, we've been waiting for you!' he said loudly as he hurried towards him to pick up the heavy-looking parcel. Harry was sure Charlie was perfectly fine without him.

'Seriously though, where have you been so late?' Ron looked at his watch.

Harry greeted Ginny with a silent glance as he pushed away Charlie's unnecessary help and set his brand new acquisition on the table with a thump. Ron and Hermione moved back, and Ginny stepped curiously to their side.

'What have you brought?' she asked.

Harry responded by pulling the canvas off the case, and the black head now adorned the centre of the dinner table, drawing shocked looks from everyone.

'Well, that's fascinating!' Ginny wagged her head. 'Is that a Christmas present?'

'Why, don't you like it?' Harry joked.

'Wonderful,' she laughed, 'But a simple perfume would have been enough...'

Mr Weasley rose from his chair and walked around the wizened head.

'Harry...' he said quietly, 'Can you tell us what this is?'

'It's the head of a dementor,' Harry announced, and everyone looked at him. Hermione immediately put on a sceptical expression, along with Ron, but Ginny covered her mouth in a spectacularly stunned expression, as did Mrs Weasley.

'For Merlin's sake, what is this?!' exclaimed Percy, whose face then appeared between Ron and Charlie.

'Relax Perce, it's just Harry decapitating someone,' Charlie said, in a flippant tone.

Mr Weasley was still looking at the head, and now leaned closer to examine it more closely.

Ron also looked at the contents of the glass tank with interest.

'Harry, you know that a...'

'... that a dementor cannot be killed?' the boy finished instead, then shook his head. 'It's a dementor's head, Ron, believe me! I saw what the one that went on the rampage in the Hog's Head looked like, and it was exactly the same... except for that headband or whatever.'

Mr Weasley picked up the glass tank and turned it in his hand, examining its contents from every angle. The head bobbed from side to side inside.

'Where did you get this?' he asked Harry.

'I saw it in a shop at Knockturn Alley,' he replied immediately. 'The shopkeeper did not know that it was forbidden to sell cursed objects. He didn't even know who the Minister of Magic was. He was about two hundred years old, the old man, and he was completely senile.'

Mr Weasley nodded with a hum and put the head back on the table. Hermione was the only one who didn't think the scrawny head was worth staring at.

'And what exactly were you doing in Knockturn Alley?' she asked him in a questioning tone.

Harry expected her to jump at his throat sooner or later; Hermione always did that when he did something that hadn't been carefully discussed and planned beforehand.

'I went to Borgin & Burkes and asked the old man about Parkinson's.'

Ginny tore her gaze away from the dementor head and looked at Harry.

'And did you find out anything?' she asked excitedly.

'No, I'm afraid not,' the boy said. 'Borgin threw me out of his shop.'

Hermione frowned and Harry rolled his eyes. There would forever be an unbridgeable gap between them, the fact that while she was for caution and careful planning, he liked to dive in with his head first.

'I'll send this down to the Department of Mysteries tomorrow,' said Harry, to divert the conversation. 'See if they can find out what killed him.'

With that, he got Hermione to stop her annoying tutting and finally listen to him.

'Because if it is a dementor – and I think it is – it's pretty dead for a dementor. And if it is dead, it can only be dead because someone killed it. The question is, how?'

'I think it's pretty obvious,' Ron muttered, as he examined the wrinkled skin on the side of its neck with an expert eye.

Everyone ignored the comment.

'You can tell from the victim what curse or poison was used,' Harry continued. 'Sometimes you can even find out the perpetrator. It was even used to catch the suspect in a triple murder of goblins, because he had mixed his own hair into the poison. I read in one of Moody's files...'

He saw agreement in Mr Weasley's eyes, but the opposite in Hermione's.

'You of course don't believe me, do you?' Harry asked her.

She gave an awkward sigh.

'I believe you think it's a dementor's head,' she replied finally, 'but you must admit you don't have much to compare it to, except the one you saw in the Hog's Head without the hood.'

Harry almost agreed when an old memory came back to him: a rotting hand reaching for his throat, and a nightmarish face emerging from under the black hood.

'I saw the face of a dementor when I was in my third year,' he said, 'when you and I and Sirius nearly got caught on the lakeside.'

'I thought you didn't remember that,' Hermione remarked, but Harry didn't let himself get upset. He was too excited about this tiny clue, which held the promise of an amazing opportunity.

'No,' he admitted. 'But we can easily find out what they look like! All we need is the Pensieve...'

It slipped out of his mouth before he could contain it.

'I thought you got rid of that!' she cried reproachfully. 'I thought you'd found out at last that the object was cursed. Where did you go from work, then, if you hadn't been dealing with the Pensieve?'

Nobody wanted to interrupt, all the Weasleys were exchanging glances between them as if they were watching a tennis match.

'Well, err...'

Harry was in trouble. He hadn't given the small necklace to Ginny yet, though he hadn't forgotten about it, it was always there in the inside pocket of his robes, ready to give to her at the right moment. And since the conversation in the Minister's office that morning, he had formed the plan that the best time to do so would be at the Yule Ball at Durmstrang.

'I can't believe you lied to me about that damn bowl!' Hermione snapped.

Mr Weasley now saw the moment to intervene, which he had been trying to do for minutes, but one of them kept cutting him off.

'Calm down, everybody calm down!' he soothed them, raising his hand in a conciliatory gesture, though it was only Hermione who needed the reassurance.

Mr Weasley looked at him with a kindness that Harry thought would have made a rabid Hungarian horntail calm down.

'Hermione, I heard from Ron that you were worried about the Pensieve for some reason,' he said, 'but for once you were wrong. I had the Pensieve checked out by the Dangerous Objects Confiscation Unit, and they didn't find any hidden curse. I hope you won't be angry about this, Harry,' he turned to him suddenly.

Harry shrugged his shoulders and shook his head spectacularly; he didn't want to say that Mr Weasley had taken something without his permission, because he was living in his house, eating from his table, he was his superior and his daughter was his girlfriend. All of which adding up to quite a lot if he ever wanted to voice any disapproval.

'Are you sure?' asked Hermione, who could not have been more disappointed at the failure of her Pensieve theory. 'And is it working well? Because it was in two pieces...'

'It works perfectly,' Mr Weasley assured. 'Now, turning to this... dementor-like head... I think it's worth a try to see where it came from. Although I personally don't have much hope that it is indeed from a dementor, let's be sure.'

Harry's mouth turned into a wide smile, which didn't fade even when he met Hermione's disappointed and annoyed gaze. He knew what mood she was in, as he knew her so well. She took it as a personal insult if it turns out she was wrong about anything. Harry knew she'd forget all about it by tomorrow, but he couldn't expect a nice smile from her tonight – and neither could Ron. Judging by the look on his friend's face, he realised that too.

'Could this obscenity be removed from the table?' Mrs Weasley suddenly snapped, and everyone flinched. 'Or should this be the main course?'

Harry immediately jumped up from the chair to fetch the glass, and Ginny also reached for it to help. Their hands clasped as they looked at each other stealthily, though afterwards Harry had the odd feeling that he had caught a glimpse of Charlie rolling his eyes and exchanging looks with Mr Weasley.