The Exchange
The statue of Richard Hooker stood lonely and abandoned in front of Exeter Cathedral, illuminated only by a few streetlights. Harry and Ron stood just as lonely in front of the cathedral under the invisibility cloak, wands drawn and eyes pointed at Flamel, who looked around suspiciously and then deposited two metal vials in the bowl at the feet of the statue, as the kidnapper had demanded. The alchimist looked around again and then disappeared with an unusually quiet bang. A few lonely passers-by who crossed the road at some distance did not even notice his disappearance.
"Five to twelve," Harry whispered after a quick glance at Fabian Prewett's watch on his left wrist. Ron just nodded.
"Why here?", he muttered a little later. "Why so public? And in the muggle world?"
"Because we have to be more inconspicuous here," Harry muttered back. "In Diagon Alley, we could curse him as soon as he apparated."
"Still," Ron said, scratching his forehead. "Here he is out in the open. As soon as he apparates, we have him."
"It won't be that easy," Harry grumbled.
The kidnapper had not shied away from killing a muggle who had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. It would certainly not be that easy to catch him.
"Twelve," Ron whispered, a little later, unnecessarily, as the bells of the cathedral rang – and then he cursed and stared with his open mouth at the statue and the bowl, which had disappeared without a trace.
"The bowl was a port key," Harry told Flamel a few minutes later, as they stood in his salon like utter fools. "The kidnapper is extremely careful."
"So that's why the elixir had to be placed in a metal container," the alchimist growled. "What are you going to do now?"
"Investigate," Harry sighed, suppressing a yawn with difficulty. Murder and kidnapping back and forth, he still desperately needed sleep.
"Then you'd better inverstigate quickly," Flamel grumbled, opening the door. "Who knows what he's going to do now!"
"We know what he's up to now," Ron growled as the door behind them slammed shut.
"Yes," Harry sighed. "Now that Flamel has fulfilled his demand, he will demand even more."
"He will not release them safely."
"We have to go to Ollivander tomorrow."
"What do you want to say to Savage?"
"Everything," Harry growled. "And Proudfoot too."
"Flamel-"
"They'll understand that we have to be discreet," Harry sighed. 'And I'm not so stupid as to think we can sort this out without help."
"I'm not that stupid," Ron muttered. "You are the one who always wants to deal with everything on his own."
"You sound like Hermione."
"Really? Thank you."
"Shut up."
"Do you think she's still waiting for us?"
"Rhetoric question?"
They disappeared with a loud bang.
Unsurprisingly, Hermione was actually waiting for them, upstairs in the salon, from where you could see the front door. On the table next to her was a collection of files and draft laws from the ministry, with which she had apparently sweetened the waiting time.
"The kidnappers will want the stone," she said, worried, after Harry and Ron finished their account of what happened that night. "They'll never settle for the elixir."
"We've been there," yawned Ron, who had left most of the speech to Harry and lay almost motionless on the sofa. "But if he continues to carry through the handovers like this, we can't do anything about it, I'm afraid."
"Do you have any great theory?", Harry asked wearily.
"Dozens," Hermione sighed. "It could be a fanatic who somehow wants to bring back Voldemort with the stone-"
"Now I can't sleep all night," Ron muttered and sat up.
"-or someone who is terminally ill and just wants to heal himself with the elixir-"
"Then he could have just written a nice letter to Flamel," Ron snorted.
"-or someone who is just after the wealth of the Flamels," Hermione concluded, collecting her files. "After all, you could make gold endlessly with the stone, or not?"
"I choose the terminally ill person, thank you very much", Harry muttered anxiously.
"The question remains how the hell he knows about the Flamels," Ron growled. "Do you think Proudfoot will allow us to use Veritaserum on Ollivander?"
"The country's most famous wand maker who was held hostage by Voldemort for two years?" asked Hermione, disenchanted. "This will never happen. I don't think Ollivander would betray the Flamels."
"Then we have less in our hands than Goyle after his NEWTs," Ron muttered. "Nothing."
"Goyle passed Herbology," Hermione muttered, stalking him with his foot. "Come, let's go to sleep. We have to go to work in three hours."
The two wished Harry a good night and disappeared while he thoughtfully stopped at the window.
Goyle had passed Herbology with hangings and strangles, and only because the examiners had turned both eyes elsewhere, but that Ron had mentioned him had given him an idea. Theodore Nott lived not far from the Flamels, he would surely have been only too happy to follow Voldemort after his last year in Hogwarts... And as far as Harry knew, as part of the investigation into Nott's father, the ministry had confiscated most of the family's assets and paid them to families affected by his crimes. How unlikely was it that Nott had somehow learned about the Flamels? Wizarding children, who could not yet control their powers, caused strange things in their surroundings. What if something inexplicable had happened during one of Mrs. Flamel's outings with her son, something that the muggles in the area were gossiping about? Nott may have heard of it. Harry stretched tiredly and extinguished the light with a snip of his magic wand. It was just a theory, but it certainly couldn't hurt to visit Nott the next day.