A/N: The words used to pour from my fingers, now it's a bit more tricky. Maybe the quality will be better. Quality over quantity, eh?

Chapter 38: The favour

I stumble a little as I land from Albus' side-along. It's dark, but this appears to be a detached house in the middle of a muggle street. Alastor's home. I take a step away from Albus and Alastor arrives with a crack. There's a little cobble path leading to the front door and a low fence around the garden. I don't know what I thought Alastor's home would look like, maybe a converted WWII bunker? Definitely not a cosy little house in the middle of the London, although maybe it makes sense. He's 'settled down' from his career. Well, previous, career. Now he gets to teach at Hogwarts!

"I hope you've not invited me here for a cup of tea." I say to the one-eyed man. "I've got a warm bed waiting for me at school. Professor." He grunts, I think it was a laugh.

"We've work to do." He says, limping towards his front door.

"Which you still haven't explained to me." I point out to him. Neither of the old men had spoken much as we walked to the ward line of Hogwarts.

"In the early hours of the morning, Alastor's house was breached." Albus explains to me with a frown. "Nothing was taken, so this was no robbery. The charms surrounding the building would not have allowed a muggle thief to enter the property, which lead Alastor and I to the conclusion that the intent was to attack him." I look around as he talks.

"Why didn't it work?" I ask.

"Alastor was not home." Albus' eyes twinkle, which means there is more to it than he is saying.

"He was watching my flat." Albus doesn't answer. "What's he doing in there?" I nod my head towards the house.

"I believe if the 'alarm' is not disabled within a short time of arrival, the reactive wards will … makes our lives difficult." He explains. Al- Moody is a paranoid old bastard. I need to get used to calling him 'Professor Moody' too.

"That'd be fine if there were actually any wards left." I say, continuing at Albus' questioning look. "There's nothing here." I gesture to the fence. "Well there is something here, but nothing more than shattered magic. The wards are completely shattered, he won't have anything to disarm."

"Potter's right." Alastor limps towards us, leg clunking on the stone.

"And the favour is to figure out who did this? Even if they didn't steal anything or hurt you, they can still be charged with property damage."

"Whoever did this has more to their name than property damage. Now get on with it." He gives my shoulder a shove towards the fence.

"Alright, alright." I hit his shin with my walking stick. "Why do you want me to do this?" I ask him, pacing along his garden to try and lay my feet on something."

"To find to bastards that-"

"No, why do you want me to do this, Why not somebody else?" I ask again. He crosses his arms, leaving his own staff standing upright beside him.

"When we were at Rufus's house a few years ago, I watched you. I wondered why we had a schoolboy, a first year no less, on a crime scene. You looked relaxed pacing around the place, but your eyes – They saw more. You focussed on things halfway between yourself and the nearest object, the minute frowns and tightening of your pupils. You could hear Rufus." He explains gruffly.

"And I thought I was being subtle." I laugh. Nobody else could catch it because nobody else can see my eyes rotating in my skull from every angle and use the positions to calculate where I was looking. "I suppose we can skip the theatrics of sniffing it out then." I point to the fence. "There's a denser spot of magic lingering about 4 feet above the ground, this is likely where the person, or people, were standing when they fractured the wards. Judging by the time since the attack, what's left of the wards and how dense the puncture spot is, you had some pretty heavy wards sitting here. It's highly unlikely that a single person could have done this, or even a group. So they either performed a sacrifice ritual out of the street to summon enough power to brute force through like they did, or they've got some sort of tool. Both scenarios don't bode well."

"Will you be able to tell?" Albus asks. I nod and walk towards the fence.

"Fuck!" I shout as I step on one of the spots where the intruders had. I bring my walking stick over my head and start hitting the fence. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!"

"Harry. Harry!" Albus raises his voice slightly to be heard after I snap the walking stick.

"Peter Pettigrew is still in England." I straighten up and brush my hair out of my eyes. "And, if I'm not mistaken, Barty Crouch Junior isn't really dead." I hand Albus the splintered walking stick and climb over the fence.

"Impossible. I saw the body. He died there." Moody says through gritted teeth.

"And that's the conundrum." I agree. "Officially, Barty Crouch Jr was pronounced dead in 1982, but I can tell you with 100% certainty that Barty Crouch Jr was standing beside Peter Pettigrew on this spot at quarter past one this morning." I stand up and look over the whispers' shoulders. "They had a … tablet of some kind. Barty was apprehensive that it would work, but Peter assured him that it was specifically designed for the wards around your house." I climb back over the fence after the tablet is activated, following the whispers across the garden. "So how is it that Junior is still alive? Surely somebody would have noticed."

"He is dead." Moody growls as we pass into his house.

"If you can somehow procure documentation for me to enter Azkaban, I'd take a look at his cell." I offer as I inspect the intruders in the kitchen. "It looks like something was either overlooked when he supposedly died, or he's come back from the dead. Either way, One of the most fanatical Death Eaters of the war walking free poses a big problem." I brush past the two old men and walk to the bottom of Moody's stairs. Peter and Barty had only spent 2 minutes up there before coming back down, not much to see. Albus hands my walking stick back, now in pristine condition. "I'll follow them back outside to wherever they apparated back from, see if they said anything particularly incriminating. Like the address to their secret hideout."

"It would be unlikely, but we may gain some knowledge." Albus nods, troubled by the apparent resurfacing of Barty and Peter. Alone, either might not be a huge issue, but together? Vive la Death Eaters. I open the front door and follow the twosome across the grass, climbing back over the fence as they did. My limp hasn't been too bad tonight, hopefully it should clear up in a couple of days, granted I continue to apply my healing charms.

"What are you thinking?" I ask Albus after we cross the road, Moody limps beside him. I'm sure that the three of us make quite a sight, if it wasn't so dark, that is.

"I believe you once told me you wished to never cross paths with a dementor." Albus says. "What changed?"

"I suppose I'm curious. What a dementor feels like, what they really look like. I've read that Azkaban was once so horrific that the investigators didn't even record what they saw. It stained them." I lead our odd trio into an alleyway not far from Moody's house. "They say curiosity killed the cat, my animagus is a wolf, so on that logic I'll be fine." I joke, stopping at the point that Peter and Barty did.

"In practice, I do not think it will hold true." Albus puts on his smile that he usually wears when humouring me.

"We'll see." I shrug, tapping my walking stick on the floor. "They didn't say anything, just used the portkey from this spot so they wouldn't be seen I think. Barty used a charm to screw with the magical signature of the portkey as well as his own, so couldn't be found via typical methods." I say, injecting an iota of smugness into my voice as I turn back to my companions with a sigh. "Well, that's all there is to it. Obviously my word won't hold up for anything with the DMLE, but I guess my use for tonight is done?" Albus nods.

"Thank you for you assistance, Harry. I dare say what we have learnt tonight will become important in the not too distant future. Is there anything else of note?" He asks.

"I don't think so." I shake my head, looking up and down the alleyway. "There were a couple of wizards walking down here the other night, just along the path we just took too, but they didn't say anything."

"Here?" Moody's eye spins in his head. "Too close to be a coincidence." He says, walking back out into the street. I follow him into the middle of the road.

"They might've just been walking." I offer.

"Describe them." He orders. I scoff.

"I'm not a miracle worker, all I know is that they walked by." I regret mentioning it now.

"Are there any traps? Anything that could be tripped?" He draws his wand and casts a few charms. I head over to the pavement to look for clues. I can see how Tonks gets tired of his company.

"No, Moody. There's just some old wards floating here, vague stuff." I continue to follow the two 'suspicious' persons slowly. "I was thinking of getting a snake, Albus." I say absently. "There's that old rule about parselmouths and being allowed a snake, regardless of current pets and familiars." I hear him sigh in exasperation.

"Then I cannot protest." I'm sure he's shaking his head. I've made it about 3 metres when Moody roughly grabs my shoulder and pulls me back.

"There." He flicks his wand on the pavement, pulling up a section of the tarmac. What is he even doing? I walk around him to see where he's looking. I wouldn't mind having a magical eye, he can see straight through clothes, although that ability isn't all it's cracked up to be. "Runes." He's right. Beneath the, now torn up, footpath lies old bricks from the previous path, a small set of runes are inscribed onto the bricks. I frown as I crouch down, running my fingers over the outside of the hole.

"It's been pulled up recently, only a couple of days ago. Those two wizards from the alley." The old man was right. I stroke the bricks. The old Victorian bricks, manufactured in London itself, lain in- "Err, sorry. It's an alarm, We've triggered it." I stand up abruptly, pulling my invisibility cloak from my pocket. Now that I've gotten two of the Peverell heirlooms, it's revealed more to me. Like it's rather potent resistance to spells.

"Who are they?" Moody is now on full alert, looking up and down the street, the false eye spinning madly.

"They wanted you to trigger it so they could kill you, simple really." I throw the cloak around my shoulders and set my foot back into the hole. "Short range, only spans London. You were right about things escalating." I joke, he growls are me. A sharp crack signals the arrival of the assassins, a moment later brings the killing curse sailing uselessly past us, then another crack as they vanish. What the hell just happened?

"Come." Moody shoves my shoulder, forcing me to limp beside him to where they just were, right in front of his house.

"Avada Kedavra!" The man shouts, the killing curse hurls from his wand.

"Shit, that's Dumbledore and Potter!" His accomplice takes a step back, still holding his wand up.

"Fuck." The first man curses. "The bounty's not worth it. C'mon." They disapparate.

"There's a bounty on you." I tell Moody, leaning on my walking stick tiredly. "They saw Albus and I, so they decided to make themselves scarce. Not worth the coin to attempt it." I slip my finger underneath my eye-patch to rub my eye, it serves me a blurry image before the patch covers it again.

"Only two?" Moody grumbles. "It was five last time."

"People have tried to kill you before?" I ask. "Assassinate I mean, I'm sure plenty've tried their hand at it before." He laughs gruffly, resting his hands on the head on his staff, just below the height of his chin. It's odd that I'm striking a similar pose but at waist height.

"Nobody stays in this game for as long as I have without making enemies." His eye spins and focuses on me. "Who were they?"

"Mark Cowl and Nicolas Scherzer. Not local. German accent maybe?" I explain, spinning my cane as I walk around the two frozen whispers. "I guess you can add a 'discharge of an unforgivable in a muggle area' to Mark Cowl's list of crimes."

"It'd never stick." Moody says as he watches me intently.

"That's the problem with what I can do I suppose." I seem to be asking Moody to keep a lot of secrets. He must be used to it now, seeing things that others don't. Damned eye. "Well, what's a little late night excursion without a murder attempt?" I grin, Albus seems less tense now.

"So, Crouch and Pettigrew." Moody repeats the names pensively. "I owe you one, Potter, but I'd prefer to not have it hanging over my head." He smirks. "Whad'ya want, lad? I'm sure you've already decided." I swear the man has a split personality. It'd explain a lot actually. Mental.

"Your wand. Just for a few seconds." I bite my lip, hoping he doesn't decline.

"Why?" His good eye narrows suspiciously.

"Honestly? Because you're left handed." He seems to have already figured out what most others wouldn't be able to, so I don't have to give him my faux-wandmaker speech. I still feel kinda bad about doing it to Bill. Moody looks over at Albus, who shrugs. I always love it when he shrugs, it's so 'un-Dumbledore'.

"Fine." Moody draws his wand, tapping the tip against his right palm, debating for the last time before holding it out to me. Aspen, unsurprisingly. 9 inches on the dot with a dragon heartstring. Purchased on August 14th1946 from Ollivander's. Decades of gritty Auror work and fighting. 17 spells landed on Voldemort in the war. The first left-handed wand I've encountered as none of the Elder Wand's users have been lefties. I quickly hand him back his wand, lest we be attacked again.

"Well, I guess we're done for tonight?" I ask, flexing my fingers.

"Indeed." Albus nods, seeming distracted. "I shall leave you in Alastor's capable hands, I have business to attend to in the Ministry." He smiles.

"Right." I laugh. How to do legally allow a fourteen year old into Azkaban? "And remember, Azkaban demands a larger payment for my services!" I call as he walks away.

"Goodnight, Harry." He waves, not turning back.

Just your everyday failed assassination. How often does this happen for the pair of them not to ever be phased? I sigh and grab onto Moody's arm.

I sneak through the castle under my cloak and, still sneaking for some reason, enter my bedroom. I drop the cloak onto the floor and discard my jacket.

"Yer back." Hedwig mumbles, rolling over under the duvet sleepily. "Anything exciting?"

"Cloak and dagger stuff. Only one unforgivable." I kick my jeans off and crawl into bed. "Peter's about. Hopefully they can catch the rat." I kiss her forehead. She snuggles against my chest.

"Maybe." She sighs contently against my tshirt. "Why do you sleep with a shirt on all the time? Always meant to ask."

"We can't all be as confident in our skins as you." I explain. She hums.

I don't think I would heal the scars even if it were possible.

"G'night." She tangles one of her legs with mine.

I think I'll enjoy having company in here this year.

"Night, Hedwig."

A/N: Haha! More wand stealin'.

The reasons for this chapter will become clear, or clearer, in the future. It wasn't just a random attack, and of course it will lead to investigation of Barty Jr.

*Inane mumbling about update speed*

Let me know what you think of the chapter; Thoughts, suggestions, love poems etc.

Enjoy!