(A.N.) Hey, I'm on twitter and tumblr now. Come and say hello! There's links in my profile. :D


It was a day of missed meetings, on many levels.

Firstly, Harry left his cottage for work a little early that morning. If he'd spent longer in the shower, or cooked up a full English instead of just toast, then he would have been there when Ginny knocked on his front door, panicked and spooked by what had happened in her street that morning. But, alas, Harry had apparated only moments before.

Arriving at the Ministry of Magic, he made his way through the bustling Entrance Hall and towards the lifts, keeping an eye out in case he saw Hermione also heading up to her office. The lift took him to the second floor and the Auror office, where he was sat at his cubicle for barely five minutes before he was made aware of the location of someone he very much wanted to speak with. If he hadn't received this information, if he'd stayed at his cubicle and cleared the clutter from his desk like he'd planned, he would have seen Hermione arrive on the Auror floor with a message from Ginny. But, alas, Harry had whisked away and missed her.

Knockturn Alley was just plain not a nice place to be. It was a horribly narrow, twisting and turning parade of crumbling and unattractive buildings, infested with some of the most disreputable folk in the entire Wizarding world. Which is why, as a fully-fledged Auror now, Harry found himself there quite a bit.

On this occasion, this day of missed meetings, Harry ventured into Duggy Dungonan's barely legal enough to be open Eccentric Elixrs, a grubby potion emporium that (rumour had it) made any magical brew that a customer should ask for.

"Mr Dungonan?" Harry asked, stepping through the tall doorway and into the tiny shop.

From the counter wedged in between the bubbling potions on crudely constructed shelves, Duggy looked up with great scepticism. A heavily bearded fellow, with a great, tangled mane of hair, he had been on Knockturn Alley for enough years to know an Auror when he saw one.

"Aye?"

Harry smiled tightly, and approached the desk.

"I wonder if you can help me?"

"What you were aft'r?" said Duggy gruffly.

"The wherabout of a Mr Yeopald Twosons," said Harry, not smiling anymore. "But I've heard most people call him Yip the Yelper these days."

Duggy narrowed those crazy brown eyes of his.

"Can't help ya."

"Do you know him?"

"I said I can't help ya, laddy," Duggy repeated, with a hint of a growl this time. "Now be on ya way."

Harry huffed. "Look, taking you down to the Ministry is just a paperwork nightmare. But if it's the only way to get you to talk then..."

Duggy shrugged indignantly. "How comes I even hav'ta answer ya anyhow?"

"Okay, first of all – Flourish and Blotts, right down the road. Buy a dictionary. Secondly, I have three witnesses that say they saw you and Yip enjoying a drink in the Pixie's Wings Pub on Tuesday. So you must know him."

"Well, I don't," said Duggie stubbornly.

"I have witnesses that say otherwise."

Duggy fixed him with those crazy eyes again, squinting and suspicious. "Your lyin' to me."

Harry forced himself not to smirk. "Yeah? Why do you say that?"

"Because there was only two other people in the bar when we was there on Tuesday, so you couldn't have three wit..."

Harry quirked an eyeborw. Duggie trailed off. He rolled his eyes.

"Bollocks," he grunted.

Harry sent word to the Ministry, and within minutes, a team of six Aurors had apparated into Eccentric Elixirs. There, Harry set up a trap. He instructed Duggy to send an owl to Yip the Yelper asking him to meet him at his store as soon as possible. For his co-operation, Duggy was allowed to walk free; and walk he did, not wanting any part in a Auror sting operation. He did, after all, have a terrible reputation to uphold.

Harry's heart raced. This was the first time he'd been allowed to take the lead on such an important investigation. Those few moments - standing behind the counter at Eccentric Elixirs disguised in Duggy's large hooded coat, watching the clock steadily approaching Yip and Duggy's agreed meeting time – were an adrenaline rush like Harry had not had in years.

Eventually, the door to the shop creaked open, and in walked an awfully tall, awfully thin, awfully awful looking man. His thinning hair was once as yellow as his teeth, and his face was decorated with an assortment of scars. He stared at the hooded figure behind the counter with a pair of eyes so uncaring they didn't even bother to share the same colour pupils. Yip the Yelper had come as expected.

"What is so important?" he sneered, "that you have to call me down here in broad daylight. Knockturn Alley or no Knockturn Alley, it still isn't wise for me to be out and about like this, y'know?"

"You're right," said Harry, raising his head to smile at Yip. "It really isn't wise at all."

Yip blanched. His hand shot to his waist where his wand was, but another figure burst out from behind the shelves, wand already at hand.

"Expelliarmus!"

Yip's wand soared from his grasp. He let out a growl of frustration and ran for the door. Coming out onto Knockturn Alley, he found himself face to face with five large, surly looking Aurors and their wands.

Harry jumped over the counter and came to stand next to him.

"Hello, Yip!" he said brightly. "You know, I've been wanting to talk to you for the longest time."

"Potter," Yip spat. "You think you're so clever."

Harry laughed. "I can't even believe you've just said that. Could you be more cliché? Boys, take him away. Oh, look, now you've got me doing it!"

One of the Aurors conjured some ropes that tied Yip's hands behind his back, and together they led him away from Knockturn Alley, leaving only Harry and Davart, the Auror who had disarmed Yip.

"That went well," he said.

"Yeah," Harry agreed. "Perfectly." He frowned as soon as the words left his mouth.

"What?" asked Davart, seeing his expression change.

"Something's up," said Harry gravely. "This was too easy."

Davart sighed heavily. "I hate that there's a version of easy that only causes more trouble."

Harry turned to him. "We've been looking for this guy for weeks, thought we had him so many times only to miss him by minutes," he looked up at the front of Eccentric Elixirs, "and this is how we get him?"

Reluctantly, Davart's face turned troubled too, and he felt the need to repeat Yip the Yelper's parting words.

"You think you're so clever" he said.

Harry furrowed his brow. "Did he want us to catch him?"

"I'll go ahead," said Davart quickly, "tell them to put him in lockdown as soon as they get him in the Ministry."

"I'll finish up here and follow you."

It was a few minutes later, as Harry locked the door of Duggy's shop and found his mind rushing through every possible reason Yip the Yepler would allow himself to be caught, that he he remember Hermione's words to him the previous evening. Perhaps he was jumping to conclusions lately. Had he somehow fallen back into the his war-time mindset, looking over his shoulder every second and questioning everyone's motive? But, he reasoned, when it came to dangerously dark wizards like Yip the Yelper, wasn't that his duty as an Auror? To be suspicious, to consider every possible outcome?

He looked around. The sun had set while he was inside Eccentric Elixirs, and Knockturn Alley was now a deserted street covered in darkness. Harry walked the filthy cobbles, still arguing with himself, but looked up when he heard a muffled smashing noise from close by.

He came to a halt. The noise had come from the shop he was next to: Garlin's. But he was almost sure that Garlin's had been closed down months ago for selling werewolf hairs.

He walked to the window and peered inside. All he could really see where the shadows of bookshelves and glass cabinets. Nothing out of the ordinary. He was about to put it down to his imagination and carry on, when he saw it. In the back of the shop, the moonlight coming through the window glistened off a shattered glass chalice. He looked up, to the shelf where it had fallen from, and saw it glinting off something else too.

A head was peeking through the empty space on the shelf where the chalice had been. But most striking was the fact that it appeared to be a face made of metal.

Harry watched the head turn sharply and disappear. It knew it had been seen.

He rushed for the door, said a quick "Alohamora" and ran inside. With his wand held out in front of him, he looked sharply around the dark, dusty shop. He came to the shelf and the broken chalice, checked behind it and found nothing. He stared all around the shop, furiously moving aside the various cases and cabinets, but finding nothing.

A floorboard creaked behind him. He turned to the back of the shop. The moonlight shone against the far wall, and Harry froze solid at what he saw. A silhouette of a looming, towering figure was visible. There was a corner that led to the back area of the shop, and something was obviously hiding there. He could make out a strange bar on top of the shadow, stretching over the head to connect one ear to the other.

Harry aimed his wand.

"Who's there?" he demanded.

The shadow drew away instantly. Harry jumped over the shop décor in his way, scrambling towards the back of the shop. He burst around the corner, wand at the ready, but, alas, found nothing. Only a dead end, except for a window through which the guilty moonlight wafted.


Gaining access to the Auror offices of the Ministry of Magic is no easy feat. There are endless forms to fill out, background checks to be completed, and even then most people are denied. Ginny Weasley, however, was free to come and go as she pleased, as was any of the heroes of the Battle of Hogwarts.

So none of the Aurors paid much attention when they spotted her sitting at Harry's desk. But she noticed them. She had seen them dragging a tall, pale gentlemen through the floor and towards a room behind a heavy, iron door. Then she saw them, every Auror on duty, hang around outside this door and whisper mysteriously with each other.

But then the Auror she was waiting for arrived, and she forgot all about this.

"Hey," she said, standing up to greet Harry when she saw him striding towards her.

"Hi," he replied. "Problem?"

Ginny laughed weakly. "Err... Not sure. Something really weird happened last night, and then again this morning. And when you put them together they make something really, realy weird." She stopped before getting in specifics, because for the first time she had really looked at him. He looked shaken. His gaze was switching between here, the heavy iron door the Aurors were outside of, and various random points around the room. "Are you okay?"

"Hmm?" said Harry distractedly. "Oh, yeah. Fine. Honestly. Fine."

Ginny studied him. "Are you lying?"

"Totally," he nodded in apology. "I think I can rival your tale of weirdness. But I can't talk now. There's a dark wizard waiting to speak with me."

"Well, that'll be new for you," Ginny quipped.

Harry grinned despite himself. "I'll come round to the flat later?"

Ginny shook her head. "You can't. The Police are only letting residents past the tape." This finally gave her Harry's full attention, as he frowned deeply at her. "Like I said, weird story. Just give me a shout when you're done here."

They exchanged a quick kiss and she left, and Harry tried to calm the tide of speculative thoughts running through riot in his mind. He had to focus on the job at at hand.

"What's he said?" he asked, making his way over to the Aurors.

"Nothing," said Davart wearily. "He's waiting for you."

Harry sighed. "Great," he said.

Davart opened the big, iron door and went inside. Before following, Harry turned to one of the Aurors.

"Reynolds," he said. "Garlin's has been closed for months, right?"

Reynolds seemed taken aback by the question, but nodded confidently. "Yeah. He's in court next month, might even end up going to Azkaban."

"And no one's taken over the shop? No one's been inside it since he was arrested?"

"Not that I know of." Reynolds saw Harry's uncertain expression, and added, "I can check up on it, if you want?"

"If you wouldn't mind," Harry asked.

Reynolds nodded again and walked off to his cubicle. Harry turned back to the doorway, and stepped inside.

Yip the Yelper sat restlessly in his seat. Though it served the same purpose as what muggles referred to as an interrogation room, the Window Chamber was much more feared. The walls were pitch black, as was the floor. The table in front of the subject was bare. There were absolutely no windows of a physical nature. The Window Chamber was so named because of the only defining feature of the room. Floating above the table, just for the subject to see, was a glimpse at Azkaban at that current moment. Though the wispy little orb, the subject was treated to a prime view Wizard Prison, as rain thundered down upon it. A window into their next destination, unless they were willing to co-operate.

"Yip," said Harry, coming to sit next to Davart across from their guest. "We meet again."

Yip didn't answer. Close to him now, and under the glare of the image ofAzkaban, Harry saw him to be very pale. Much more so than earlier. His eyes were watery. His hands were shaking. Harry knew Azkaban was still a very feared place, that's why it's image hovered in this room for all the Ministry's adversaries to see. But from all he'd learned in their investigations, he did not peg Yip the Yelper as such a soft case.

"I know we only made your acquaintance today," said Davart, "but it really feels like we know you already."

Davart flicked his wand and, below the ghost of Azkaban, a piece of parchment appeared out of thin air, also floating before Yip. Writing began to inscribe the parchment, while Davart read aloud.

"Yeopold Twosons, aka Yip the Yelper. Wanted for the questioning regarding the heist at Gavroche's Quality Wand Makers in the south of France, previously thought to have unbreachable security enchantments in place. Also wanted in connection with the scandal at the Irish Quidditch League Cup final, where a bewitched quaffle somehow came to be the official game ball in what is suspected as a match fixing scheme. Furthermore, the Covent of the Serenely Silent Witches in Prague have photographic evidence of Twoson's somehow apparating and disapparating into their sacred garden and cutting the leaves of their fabled and pricless weeping lillies."

Yip's rap sheet hung before him damningly, but he did not blink. In fact, he wasn't even paying it the slightest bit of attention. He just stared between Harry and Davart, chest rising and falling rapidly. His shaking hands were getting worse, and his mouth was clamped shut, as though if he open it he might be sick.

Harry leaned forward to look him in his eyes. There was, unquestionable, something just plain wrong about them. Firstly, Yip seemed to have heterochromia, with one of his eyes being brown while the other was blue. And aside from the dead stare coming out of them, Harry just could not shake the feeling that they were somehow familiar; impossible, as this was the first time he and Yip had ever met.

"Evidently, Yip," said Harry. "You have a talent for getting into places people shouldn't be able to get into. And this is especially worrying, seeing as we've heard from quite a few of our best sources that you have recently displayed a sudden and intense interest in Hogwarts."

He still expected a retort to come any second – Yip was said to have a notoriously quick-tongue. But he merely sat there, visibly rattled but entirely silent. Harry glanced to Davart, and they shared a strange look.

"Hogwarts," Davart pressed on, "is said to be impenetrable. Nothing gets in there that isn't supposed to. But that's also been said about most of the places you seem to hang around. So we're keen to know, how exactly are you planning on getting into the most secure building in Britain?"

"And more to the point," said Harry, fixing Yip with a stern gaze, "what's in there that you're so interested in?"

And still, Yip showed no signs of answering. His eyes, bigger and wider now, were still switching between the Aurors in front of him, snapping from Harry to Davart at an alarming pace. His breaths were audibly sharp and rapid, and finally words crawled up his throat and he spat them out.

"You think you're so clever."

Harry and Davart stared at him blankly. They shared another look of confusion.

"You've left quite a trail," said Davart, gesturing at the list of offences in front of him. "You don't have to be a genius to work it out."

A painful-looking smirk cut across Yip's face.

"You think you're so clever," he said again.

Harry was getting edgy now. Something here just wasn't right.

"We've established that," he said. "Now, we've got enough evidence to send you straight to Azkaban. How long you stay there is up to you. We know you were working for someone with this Hogwarts stuff. You're always working for a third party client. So you point us in their general direction, and one day you might see a different sky than the black one that never leaves that place." He pointed the image of the monstrous building in the rain.

Yip gazed at him in amused wonderment for a second. Then, quite suddenly, he burried his face in his hands and started taking deep, ragged breaths.

"You... think you're so... clever!"

"Yip," said Harry, worry creeping into his voice now. "Look at me."

Yip looked up, staring at Harry with those brown eyes and -

"Wait a second..." said Harry, gazing at Yip's eyes in horror.

"What?" said Davart.

"His eyes," said Harry. "They've changed colour."

Previously brown and blue, Yip the Yelper's pupils had somehow changed entirely to brown. And before they could even speculate as to how that had happened, other parts of him started to change too. His thinning hair was growing, changing from a faded blonde to a raven black. On his face, a beard grew out of nowhere, spiralling off his chin and down his chest. Wrinkles formed on his forehead until his face was suddenly thirty years older than it had been a minute ago.

And in the time it took to blink, there was an entirely different man sitting in front of Harry. He knew why Yip's eyes had looked so familiar – it was the same crazy stare he'd been subjected to earlier in the day.

"Duggy?!" said Harry in disbelief.

Duggy Dugonan stared at Harry helplessly.

"So clever," he croaked.

"You said you knew where he was!" said Davart jumping to his feet.

"I only knew he'd left so he wasn't part of the arrest," Harry replied. "How has this happened?"

"Polyjuice," said Duggy hoarsely. "Yip... was wise to the letter. He was waitin' for me when I left the shop and he... polyjuice poiton... he... so clever..."

"I don't understand," said Harry. "You let us arrest you? You came in asking for Duggy."

Duggy could only give an feeble shake of his head and sob the word, "Imperius."

Things got worse. Duggy started to cough and splutter, and then convulse.

"Harry," said Davart. "Polyjuice potion and the Imperius curse – they do not mix well!"

Duggy fell from his chair and collapsed to the floor. Davart shot out of the room calling for help, while Harry rushed to pick Duggy's head up from the concrete floor, horrified to see him frothing at the mouth.

"Duggy," he said, loudly and clearly. "Listen to me. Where did Yip go? Who is he working with?" Duggy coughed and heaved, unable to form any coherent speech. "Duggy, we're going to get you help, but you have got to tell me who he's in league with! Who is he trying to get into Hogwarts for?"

Duggy clenched his eyes closed and focused all his strength.

"Metal," he said. "They were made of metal."


End of Chapter Four.