Chapter Four

Agape and the Inside Man

1

Agape was not as good as Harry when it came to tailing someone, but she was doing well so far. At least, she hoped she was. Maybe the foreign man wasn't very good at losing a pursuer – she would be very lucky if he hadn't seen her at all. She couldn't be sure, but he hadn't shown signs of recognizing her so far.

Then again, she had to assume he was reasonably talented since he got in and out of the Ministry, with Harry's chart, unnoticed. She hoped he wasn't merely toying with her, that he knew exactly who she was and was leading her somewhere she wouldn't like.

She watched him turn into an alley – fully lit by the late afternoon sun, but narrow – and she hesitated. It was necessary to wait a moment before following so he wouldn't discover her, but she also wasn't sure if this was a trick. With her wand readily clasped in her fist, Agape counted to fifteen before rounding the corner.

No one was there.

She looked around cautiously and walked further into the alley, silently cursing her luck. Whether it was a trick or he had simply Disapparated, she was screwed. She frowned as she took in the slim space: a single industrial sized dumpster was ahead to her right, a fire escape ladder in its extended position to her left, and a wall with tiny windows blocked the far end.

As she turned back toward the street, he came from above, jumping from the fire escape, and landed on his feet before her. Agape jerked back a pace but never made any sound of fear or surprise, to her great relief. He didn't have his wand out, so she counted that as a sign that he wouldn't attack her – at least not immediately.

"Guten tag," she said sarcastically. "Any more German for me?"

He grinned in a purely friendly (and handsome) way. "'Ow deed you know?" he asked through a thick French accent. "Was my German really zat bad?"

Agape had to keep herself from gaping at him. Now he's French?

"Your actions gave you away," Agape told him.

"So deed yours," he responded, still grinning. "You are not vairy good at tailing. Not an Auror I presume?"

"If you knew I was there, why did you allow me to follow you?" she asked in her most confident voice. "What do you plan on doing to me now that you have me? Going to hurt me?"

"Not unless you plan to 'urt me first."

Agape shook her head. "I'm not your enemy... yet."

"Zen why do you assume I am already yours?"

"You have something that belongs to us," Agape said, getting straight to the point.

"'Oo is 'us'?"

"The Auror Headquarters. You have a scroll from our department."

His grin broadened. "Oui. I must say, I was quite deesapointed when I deedn't see myself on ze leest."

"I want it back," she commanded, holding out her hand. When he didn't immediately oblige she added, "now," in a dangerous tone.

"Vairy well," he said mildly. "I 'ave no furzair use for it."

He held it out and she snatched it from his fingers, unfurling it to check the contents. It was the one.

As she did this, the man said, "You might tell Monsieur Pottair to pay closair attention in ze future. If I could take zis from 'is pocket, imagine 'ow easy it would be for an Opteemus."

"I'll be sure to mention it to him," Agape said, again being sarcastic as she rolled the parchment back up. She made to put it in her pocket, but thought better of it. He was right, it had already been taken that way once. So she put down her button-up shirt instead.

The man nodded, nearly laughing as he said, "Zat is a bettair idea."

As if she cared.

Suddenly Agape jumped and held her wand defensively as a shrill whistle rang out over her head. Her face jerked up in an attempt to see who had made the sound, but all she could see were the underbellies of the fire escapes connected to each floor above them.

"Oy, Pier! Get a move on, will you?" yelled a deep voice, its master still hidden. Judging by the direction of the sound, he was probably just inside one of the windows.

Agape quickly locked her eyes back on the man in front of her. He watched her for a moment. She knew what he was waiting for: he wanted to know if she had the authority – or rather, the ability – to arrest him.

The answer was no for both. She was not an Auror, like Harry, or a hit-wizard, like Garry Moore. She was only an assistant, even if she was very involved in helping to fight crime. Plus she couldn't just attack him right here. It was a Muggle populated area for one matter, but the more important thing was that she couldn't be sure how outnumbered she was. There was definitely one other man, but there could be many more hidden all around.

When she made no move, he started to turn away, but she stopped him.

"Pier, huh?" she said, thought she knew it wasn't his name. "I'll be sure to add you to the chart."

He chuckled appreciatively and disapparated. Agape could have sworn she heard another pop from the fire escape, and perhaps even from a window in the opposite building.

She came out of the alley gratefully unscathed. At the same time, however, she was disappointed in herself. Once again she found herself reevaluating her choice of becoming an assistant rather than just going all the way and actually taking on a career that set her face to face with the criminals. Having just done so, she felt familiarly unfulfilled by walking away. Despite her fear of putting herself in a deadly situation, she had a faint stirring inside her, like a predator that was being forced not to pursue it's prey.

She paused on the sidewalk and the other people walking kept moving without her, treating her like one of the lamp posts in their path. It suddenly occurred to her... the perfect solution to the sour feeling in her gut – her own personal way of sticking it to slippery criminals – was lying in wait on the edge of Hogsmeade.

2

With her long strides and brisk walk, Agape sliced her way down the streets of Hogsmeade. There was a family-owned book store there called Hawkins and Sons Hard to Find Books, where you could find almost any book as long as you couldn't find it anywhere else. A young man with no relation to the Hawkins worked there full time. He was as odd as the book store and had been there since his graduation in 2015, so he told Agape.

She flung open the door, with it's large window etched to exclaim the title of the store, and walked inside. The shelves were so packed together that even a house-elf would need to turn sideways to make it down certain rows. Agape got through the shelves and piles of musty old books and quickly reached the back.

Sure enough, sitting behind the counter was Remy Cole, nineteen and loving it. Perhaps "odd" wasn't quite the word to describe Remy – a more appropriate word was "uneven." The first thing everyone noticed about him was his severely crooked nose that leaned lazily to the left. The second thing might be his uneven teeth, if he smiled at you, which he almost always did. Last, but not the least noticeable, were his eyes. The right one was a clear blue, but the left one was blue green. Even if all of these things were put right, he still wouldn't be very handsome. But the only thing he cared about less than his face was his pot-belly.

Agape leaned over the counter and looked down at him. "Hello, Remy."

"Agape!" Remy exclaimed with too much enthusiasm. "You know I was just thinking I needed someone to liven up my day. What can I do for you?"

"The usual," she answered.

"One heart thumping snog in the back coming up," he said jokingly.

"Not that usual."

"Tonsil hockey on the desk?"

"Nope."

"Face sucking behind the Herbology selves?"

Agape grinned but shook her head.

"Oh, I see how it is," Remy said in a mock pout. "You're just here for information... again."

"You got it, Love."

So Remy led her through the back storage area and into a special room where all of the rarest, most valuable books were held. In this room, where dust hung in the air because it had nowhere else to go, was an enormous ledger. It used to belong to the Ministry and was used to keep track of all of the witches and wizards in the UK. It said who was born there, who immigrated, and who was just visiting. If they had ever set foot on Britain soil, they were in it. After the 1900's came around, the Ministry retired it and got a new system with files, thinking the ledger would stop updating itself. One could see by how thick it was now, that it certainly had not stopped updating. According to Remy, it ended up in the basement of some Ministry Official for many years. After the man died in the early 1950's, his Family auctioned some of his possessions and Mr. Hawkins bought it.

When Agape found out about it on one of her many visits to the shop – she liked strange books – she asked if she could use it as long as she kept it between Harry, herself, and who ever Mr. Hawkins trusted to take them to it. He agreed and gave them Remy.

Remy uncovered the ledger with a flourish, revealing how enormous it really was: it was as long as a three-drawer file cabinet, thicker than the height of a human head, and was propped up in its own stout podium-like stand.

"So are you looking for anyone in particular?" Remy inquired.

"Yes, but I don't know his name or how long he's been in Britain. He could be either German or French, or maybe even something completely different." She sighed. "It'll have to be a broad search."

"This'll be a long day, then?"

"Most likely."

"Righto," Remy exclaimed. "I'll make some coffee and we can have a snog break every hour or so..."

"Dream on," Agape smirked wryly. "Before all that, maybe you can help me narrow the search. Can I search by appearance? The last few times I've come, I had names to look up, so I don't really know the other search options."

"You can search by anything, really," he told her. Opening the cover with a heavy thud, the minuscule labels that represented chapters, years, and other forms of search were revealed. Remy ran his finger down the list: Age; Ethnicity; Criminal Records; Color, eyes; Color, hair; Date of Birth; Date of Death; Date of Graduation; Immigration; and Nationality; just to name a few. The list went on for two more pages.

"You might want to look in the different nationalities first, if you think he's foreign," Remy suggested.

"He might not be, but let's just say French," Agape told him.

Remy pressed his wand tip to the title: Nationalities. The book came to life and flipped to a certain page with a new, less buxom list. Again Remy used his wand to tap the page, this time on the French label. A few pages shuffled by. "See," he said, "now you can go to subcategories, like Appearance, Immigration, or Criminal Records."

"Okay, lets try appearance," Agape said.

Another list came up: Age, Ethnicity, Eyes, Hair, Height, Sex, Weight. She couldn't use the age category because she would need to know how old he was when he came to England. So she went to Hair, black, and Height, about six-feet. She couldn't say what ethnicity he was, but he had an olive complexion. After all of this, her search had narrowed to just over two-thousand living dark-haired-six-foot French wizards, who had come to the UK. Knowing the year he had come would have helped

"This is going to be a long night, Remy. You may want to go ahead and put on that coffee."

Hours and two pots of coffee later, Agape finally found her man. "This is him!" she exclaimed.

Remy, dozing in a chair behind her, started awake and leaned forward to have a look over her shoulder. "That's him huh? No wonder you're looking for him: he's a pretty boy. Some vigilante he's making. No scars, or eye-patches even."

Agape ignored him, she was too busy reading the man's profile. His name was Roman B. Luciano and he was indeed from France, but he was born in Rome, Italy. He was twenty-eight-years-old and came to England ten years ago. He got into some trouble nine years ago and was helped by Augustus Schmitt (so this was Schmitt's inside man). He worked unofficially for the Ministry passing information, but last year he was arrested for the infiltration of Hogwarts and ended up escaping Azkaban in the mass break out that night. He was never tried, and thus, never convicted.

How do I find him? Agape asked herself. She looked up his last place of residence: just on the edge of London in an apartment building.

"Thank you, Remy," she blurted, closing the ledger. "I have to go."

"You're leaving me? I'm hurt," Remy said following her out of the room and out to the back desk. "We didn't even get a make-out break."

"Rain check!" Agape called over her shoulder as she rushed through the book shelves and reached the front door.

"Farewell, my Egyptian Queen of the Nile! Until we meet again!"

The door closed and Remy heard a familiar female voice say, "Exactly who is this Queen of the Nile?" He turned to see his girlfriend, a fizzy-haired redhead in a Hogwarts uniform, standing beside the desk.

"She's nothing to me! I swear! You're my one and only snuggly-wuggly-poo," he insisted to the grinning girl.

3

The shadow of the apartment building loomed over Agape. It was in a largely Muggle populated area, but had the typical Ministry camouflage of abandonment, with a little help from additional charms to make it anything but eye-catching. However, Agape saw it for what it was: adequate and nouveau chic, if not very grand. She stepped up to the front entrance. It was locked to all but those with a key, but the Ministry had given her a crash course in entering places like this with simple guarding spells. It had three separate charms – all were cracked and the door opened within twenty-five minutes.

Stepping over the threshold, it was easy to see this was originally an industrial building. It was more practical than beautiful, and probably less expensive without the mar of being called cheep.

Agape ascended the staircase to the second floor, where she knew she would find apartment 210. The black painted door bearing these numbers was at the end of the hall. This too was not very well protected. With only two slightly more challenging lock spells to get through, she was inside within minutes. She knew he wasn't there. No home was that quiet with no lights on at seven o'clock in the evening if its inhabitants are there. Agape proceeded to carefully search the flat.

It was set up simply, with a living room and kitchen combination and a single bedroom with a bath. It was mostly clean, with just a few scattered clothes on the bedroom floor. To say the least, the place was pretty barren. He didn't even have a desk of any type, so the easy place to look for information was nonexistent. Instead, she checked his closet. Nothing but foreign clothes – mainly Italian brands. She went to the next place that had storage space: the kitchen drawers. As she rummaged through them as quickly as possible, skipping ones with silverware, et cetera, she found one with nothing but paper inside.

She picked up different sheets and searched the righting. There was only one problem: they were all in Italian. Agape tried to remember some of her Latin to decipher base-words, but it just didn't work. She sighed in frustration and her shoulders slumped. Just when she thought she was a step closer, there was another obstacle to maneuver around. Perhaps she could take them with her and translate them later.

If she hadn't been thinking about pocketing the notes, she probably wouldn't have noticed the small tug at her robes pocket where she kept her wand. She spun around, expecting Mr. Luciano to be right behind her, but he was standing juxtaposed with the couch in the living room. He held her wand in his left hand and his own in his right.

"Shouldn't you be letting Potter do this?"he said flatly. She didn't realize it at first, but he had no trace of an accent other than English.

Agape noticed he was much less amused now than he had been earlier. "Bonjour, Roman Luciano. Or should I say Ciao bello?"

He stepped closer, but that didn't make his expression any easier to read. Despite his lack of visual anger, his demeanor was much more intimidating than it had ever been that afternoon.

"Saying nothing at all would probably be a better idea at the moment," he said in the same flat voice. Through his calm actions he managed to radiate fury. It was enough to make Agape back up a pace with every step he took toward her.

"I just wanted to gain a better picture of who you were, Mr. Luciano," she said boldly, but her fears were displayed with every step she took from him. They had now moved from the kitchen area back into the living room.

"Your picture of me must already be quite complete," he retorted. "But you came to the wrong place for more information. You never would have found anything here, even if I'd let you search all night."

Her back hit a barrier and she realized it was the front door. He wasn't that much taller than her, but it made a difference when he was standing so close to her. Agape's only defense was to keep talking.

"Why the attitude switch? Business go badly tonight?"

He leaned forward, and she could back up no further as his face stopped mere inches away from hers. When he spoke again, his voice betrayed his impatience. "If you had any idea what you were talking about about, you wouldn't say things like that."

"Give me my wand back," she demanded.

"Get out."

His hand turned the knob at her hip and she stumbled backward as her weight pushed the door open. In the hall she moved to the wall opposite his apartment, and he threw her wand at her feet before slamming the door. She snatched her wand up from the floor and bolted down the steps to exit the building.

As soon as her shoe touched the ground outside, she heard an owl shriek, then she was under attack. Six curses came from different directions and Agape hit the dirt to avoid them. From there, she shot stunning spells in every area she cold see a curse coming from. First shot, a hooded figure fell out of the shrubbery. Second shot, one plunged to the ground from a tree. Third shot, another across the street collapsed. A searing pain clawed its was up her arm and blood spattered her cheek when one of the curses rocketed by. Nonetheless, she managed to get another shot in, this one toward the sky, and a figure fell from one of the balconies.

After that there was no sound but the wind and her gasping breaths. She slowly and cautiously moved into a crouching position (skirt and all) to peer around at her attackers. She counted her four, but noticed that two more were laid out as well. She knew she hadn't done six spells.

"Nice aim," said the voice of Roman Luciano.

Whirling around to find him behind her for the second time that night, Agape held her wand out defensively this time.

"We have to go," he said.

"What?" She was totally confused now.

"We've got to go now," he insisted. "The Optimates send a very quick backup. Trust me, I know."

(Author's Note: Special thanks to Caitlin and my sister, lulgijak, for helping me through writer's block. I know I promised that Ginny would be in this chapter, but her part just didn't fit. She will be in the next chapter though, and so will her daughter! happy giggle! And don't worry, Harry's coming back too!)