Chapter Five

What?

1

Ginny Potter had fallen asleep on the couch, a book lay open against her chest where it had fallen not five minutes before.

It had become apparent by eleven-forty that Harry was working late, but she decided to wait up for him anyway. She didn't like it when he stayed in the office for this many hours in one day and she was never lax in reminding him of the fact, which was part of the reason she had wanted to stay awake. He always felt guilty for missing dinner.

Unbeknown by the red-haired woman, the head of Nymphadora Tonks appeared in the fireplace and looked about for any inhabitants of the living room.

"Ginny?" said Tonks's head when she spotted Harry's wife on the couch.

Ginny jerked awake and looked in the direction of the voice.

"Oh!" She got up to move closer to the fireplace. "Hello, Tonks. What's up?"

It wasn't a good sign when one of your husband's superiors showed up in the fireplace before he did.

"I was just wondering if Harry was around," Tonks replied casually.

Ginny knew that Tonks was concerned then, but she didn't want to worry Ginny if turned out there was nothing wrong.

"No," Ginny said darkly. "And I'm guessing you can't find him, because you wouldn't be here if you knew where he was."

"Don't jump to any conclusions just yet," Tonks said, frowning. "But we haven't seen him here since before lunch time."

"Have you asked Agape?"

"She's not here either. That's why Kingsley said I should see if he sneaked home early without telling anyone."

Ginny paused, trying not to overreact or work herself into a panic too quickly. There was no reason for that yet, but the flame of worry had been lit.

"Hang on a second," said Tonks, and Ginny could see her looking at someone to her left. "Say that again," she said to the person who had interrupted.

There was a muffled reply.

"What? Why would he be there?"

Another unintelligible reply.

"Is he alright?" Tonks had asked the question as quietly as possible, but she couldn't hide it from Ginny.

Ginny's heart skipped a beat and the worry flame grew a little higher.

There was no time to ask before Tonks nodded at the other person and turned back to tell her the situation. "They've found him," she said, the relief evident in her voice. "He's okay, but maybe you should meet me at St. Mungo's."

"If he was okay he wouldn't be at St. Mungos," Ginny pointed out. "Is he hurt?"

"They're just checking him over – standard procedure. Just meet me there."

Then she was gone, leaving Ginny staring into a Tonks-free fire. She let out the breath she hadn't realized she was holding and got up to get dressed again. She decided to leave her pajama top on to save time and just put on some real pants along with a jacket and shoes. Grabbing her purse as she concentrated on where she wanted to be, she turned in circle and was at St. Mungo's.

Tonks was in the waiting room already. Without a word, she lead Ginny down one of the halls. Her expression was that of frank concern, and though the flame was now a torch, Ginny resisted asking questions until they got to their destination.

They turned a corner and entered a more private room with only one bed. Harry was sitting on it, staring in utter boredom at a medi-wizard pointing a wand light into his eyes to check the pupils.

Ginny moved toward the bed until she was just in front of him. Her arms were crossed over her chest, her purse swinging from one elbow. He looked at her, waiting for it.

"You missed dinner," she said flatly.

He winced. "Sorry."

She stepped forward again and put her hands on either side of his face to kiss him. Relief had flooded her and the worry flame was receding.

Tonks had given them their moment, but now had to get things straight.

"Harry," she said, and she moved to Ginny's left to talk to him, "what happened?"

"A very bad stunning spell," Harry replied.

"Bad as in poor?"

"Bad as in horribly effective. It wasn't a standard spell. I didn't even recover from it on my own, someone found me and had to call the Ministry."

"Who?"

"Briana Squires."

"Where were you?" Ginny inquired.

"The Walnut Café in Diagon Alley," he said.

Tonks's brow furrowed. "Kingsley mentioned you were going to see a man there by the name of Squires and I knew a woman ran the place. So who was the casualty?"

"Casualty!" Ginny exclaimed, her face jerked back to Harry.

Harry sighed and she could see the fatigue in his eyes. "Creighton Squires," he said to Tonks, "was the man I was looking for. He was the one murdered. His daughter, Briana, runs the café. She was upset, but she didn't seem very surprised that they killed him."

"She didn't, huh?" Tonks said, her voice dropping to a grim, knowing tone. "That probably means she knows something we don't."

"That, and her father was in some dangerous business," said Harry.

"Wait," Ginny butted in. "Who killed him?"

Harry and Tonks answered her in unison but said two different things. Tonks said, "The Optimates," and Harry said, "The Blood Traitors."

Tonks's eyes widened and she stared at him.

"What?"

2

The next morning found Kyla Potter with turmoil of her own to deal with at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

"But, Professor Longbottom," second-year, Kyla begged after first period, "You can't blame us for that! We never even touched her stupid project!"

"That's enough, Miss Potter," Professor Neville Longbottom, head of Gryffindor House, said patiently. "You and Mr. Vaughn, will be serving a detention with me later. After dinner you two will come back to my office and I'll give you your tasks for tomorrow night."

"But," Kyla began to protest again.

She was stopped by the professor's raised hand signaling silence. "Please, Miss Potter," he said. "I know this isn't all your fault but retribution must be had to keep the peace. It's only one detention, not really that bad. Now, hurry up and go to your next class before you're late."

Professor Longbottom turned, walked into his office, and closed the door behind him.

Kyla crossed her arms and rounded on her friend, Trevor Vaughn. "Thanks for the help, Trevor!"

He gave her an incredulous look and threw his hands to the ceiling. "What did you want me to do? Start screaming at him about how Winifred Hathaway is a giant b-"

Kyla's growl-like sigh overruled his last word. "She wrote the stupid thing at breakfast before class!" she yelled vehemently. "Obviously it wasn't that long. We couldn't have burned off two and a half feet from an essay that was only six inches long to begin with!"

"I wonder what our detention will be."

"Probably scooping Hippogriff dung again," Kyla groaned.

"Yeah," Trevor agreed, "it's either that or polishing trophies. None of the Professors here have any new ideas."

"Well, we'd better 'hurry up and go to class', like Longbottom ordered."

"Since when does he give orders?"

They continued talking about Longbottom's increased gumption on their way to potions class. Once there they headed for the Hufflepuff populated side of the room, where the other two of their group sat waiting for their professor to enter.

Despite coming from a family of nothing but Gryffindors, Kyla had ended up in Hufflepuff. It was no sweat off her back, she just took it in stride, and her mom and dad took it relatively well. She had three close friends in her house, all of them a little weird, like her. They were sort of like a club of misfits.

They all met through their most talkative friend, Patricia Warren. She was short and excitable with shoulder length blond hair that flipped in on one side and out on the other. Kyla could sympathize with her because her own hair had similar quirks: it too was shoulder length, only black and perpetually messy (the Potter family legacy efficiently passed down). Kyla was smaller than Tricia even, and probably the scrawniest girl in their year. She also had more freckles than all of third year combined.

Trevor was on the skinnier side as well. Average height for a boy his age, he was lean and freakishly flexible. He was taciturn in front of anyone other than his three friends and easily looked over with his dull rust-colored hair and an unremarkable visage.

Lamont Maynard Brillhart III, or "Monty", was the exact opposite. He was very large both vertically and horizontally for his age and had short cut brunet hair and clear blue eyes. While Trevor was eternally quiet, Monty was infinitely sad and/or afraid of something.

"Ohmigosh! What did he say?" asked the excitable Tricia. "He didn't really blame you, did he?" Monty opened his mouth to say something, but couldn't get a word in edgewise over the blond girl. "You have detention don't you? What do you have to do? Trophies again?"

"Okay, Trish," Kyla said, sitting, "you only have fifteen questions left, then Twenty Questions is over."

"Well then, answer me quicker and I won't ask so many in a row."

"We have detention, but we don't know what it'll be until we see him after dinner. Quick enough?"

"Your dad was in the paper this morning," Monty finally got to say.

"What else is new?"

"He was found on a Murder scene," Monty whispered.

"What?"

3

"Alright, Miss Squires. Please tell me everything that happened last night," Harry said, trying to ignore the headache that lingered after the unique stunning spell he received the night before. It felt like having a bad hangover without the alcohol.

He was sitting in the interrogation half of the Viewing Box in the Ministry of Magic. Across from him, with puffy eyes and a tear stained wrinkled face, sat Briana Squires, daughter of the murdered old man. Harry could hardly imagine her as anyone's daughter at this point in her life. She was easily in her eighties and her straight hair probably hadn't been cut in about that many years. It was braided into a long silver whip, so long that it went down her shoulder to her lap and was wound about her right hand several times like a bandage.

Harry had been taken down by a punk, had a migraine the size of Great Briton, hadn't been able to sleep since being stunned, was now involved in a murder case, and to top it all off he couldn't find Agape anywhere. Even with all of these things weighing down his shoulders, he knew that Briana Squires was presently having a much harder time, and he was empathetic. In a split second she'd lost her father and only companion for many years now. He wanted to help her, but unfortunately that meant inconveniencing her with loads of questions instead of letting her pause in her grief to get a hold on her new fatherless world.

"I know this is very difficult, Miss Squires," Harry tried again, having gotten no answer out of her the first time. "I'm sure you have many things to think about, and plans to settle-"

"My siblings are planning the funeral so I wouldn't have to," she interrupted. "They want me to help you find the murderers as soon as possible... and I'm going to help you as best I can."

"I won't keep you long," Harry promised. "Please, tell me what you remember."

She nodded and began: "I went to visit my sister, Christabel, in Wick. Father was in his study all day I suppose, because that's the last place I left him and that's where we found him." She paused and looked at Harry, both shared a moment of familiarity about viewing the corpse slumped back in his chair. "I couldn't stay with Christabel very long because I had to get back to take care of him: he was blind from cataracts and had a very hard time getting around. I thought it strange when I came home and didn't hear any music. His hearing had always been good and he loved to play music all day long. So I went upstairs and found you unconscious in the hall right outside the study door. Needless to say, I was a bit surprised to find Harry Potter in my house, and I knew something must be wrong if you of all people were out cold on the floor. So I rushed into Father's study and found him... in his chair... well, you know. Then I called the Ministry and tried to wake you while I waited for them to come. Someone must have pulled a nasty piece of work on you, dear. I'm very good at rousing the stunned but you wouldn't even flutter an eyelash."

"Yes, it was an unusual hex that we're still looking into," he told her as his temples throbbed with every heartbeat. "You didn't seem very surprised that someone had killed your father. Why is that, if I might ask?"

Briana sighed wearily. "My father knew many things, Mr. Potter. He was a hundred-and-seventy-three-years-old. It's easier just to assume he knew everything by now."

Harry gawked at her momentarily. That explains her age, he thought.

"He knew many people," she continued, "and had many secrets that certain folks wouldn't want to let out."

"What kind of secrets? Do you know of any for example?"

"He had loads of visitors in and out of the Café all the time, that is until we were terrorized by the Optimates." She used their proper name instead of 'Neo Death Eaters'. "He knew a lot about them. But he never would tell me."

"Did he know about the Blood Traitors?"

She looked up at him and slowly tilted her head to the side, as if analyzing him in a knew light. Just by looking at her carefully blank expression, Harry could tell she was about to lie. "He knew of them, yes. But I guess we'll never know how much he knew about them because he never told me anything."

Then and there, he knew he'd get nothing more from her about the Blood Traitors. He moved on:

"I hear your father was a good friend of Albus Dumbledore's."

"Oh, yes, he was," she said, her expression back to normal. "They were roommates at Hogwarts and colleagues during the fight against Grindelwald. He and my mother, his second wife, where there to lend assistance whenever Dumbledore needed during Voldemort's first uprising. He wasn't as much help in the second round because he'd lost his sight, but he helped in passing information. He was the Keeper of many a secret. We thought his days of fighting evil were over, but I suppose he knew evil wouldn't stop the war just for him – he ended up involved in these new messes too. He said that Dumbledore didn't stop until death, and he didn't intend to either."

Miss Squires cooperated fully during the rest of the interrogation and was very polite, even in her distress. Harry was infinitely grateful for someone who almost consistently told him the truth, or at least if she didn't it wasn't because she didn't want to. He couldn't refuse her request that he stop in for a few moments at the funeral. She thanked him earnestly, saying that her father would have wanted greatly to meet him.

"I can't believe someone in Dumbledore's year outlived him," Tonks said incredulously as she and Harry took a break in his office afterward. The currently red-haired forty-four-year-old was flipping through files about the Squires and their café as Harry downed a potion from St. Mungo's for his migraine. "Briana is Creighton's youngest child and she's ninety-eight."

"I was guessing eighty-five or so," Harry admitted miserably. He didn't feel much like small talk at the moment. "When did you say you last saw Agape?"

"Crocker saw her leaving around lunch time yesterday."

"Has anyone gone by her house?"

"I went myself this morning," Tonks admitted. "No one was home. Even her cat had been outside all night."

"I feel sick."

"It's hard to tell whether it's the rough stun or anxiety," she said, frowning. "We still haven't figured that blasted spell out. More like a hex than a spell isn't it? We need to know about one that powerful."

"It must be new," Harry said.

"Why don't you go home for today. I'll handle things around here."

"Can't. I've got to find Agape, Tonks. You know I do. Besides, Ginny would throttle me if I came home without even looking for her myself."

"Fine. Then start looking. Either way you have the day off from the office. I'll be out to help you as soon as I possibly can." She rose from the chair across from Harry's desk and moved for the door. She was halfway through it when she stopped and whipped back around to face Harry with a look of recollection.

"I can't believe I almost forgot," she said, "Crocker saw something else yesterday. You mentioned that a black-haired civilian with dark clothes took your chart."

"Yes," he said, immediately sitting up.

"Crocker said Agape got into the lift with a man of the same description."

"What!"