Walking down for breakfast the next morning Harry was surprised when, as he passed Ginny's room the door suddenly opened and he was roughly dragged inside. The way she had grabbed him made him a little bit tense but she wasn't wearing the same face that she had been every other time.
For her part, seeing the wary look on his face she flashed a small smile in his direction before saying "Don't worry, I'm not going to pounce on you or something."
"Um, okay." Was all he could manage, looking closer in the darkened room he thought he actually recognized the old Ginny in her face. The way she had been before the war, the one he had eventually fallen in love with.
"I just wanted to thank you." She said as she stood back giving him a little bit of space.
"Welcome, what for?" He said.
"For what you did for me yesterday. I know you meant everything you said yesterday. It's just…" She paused trying to find the right words. "…frustrating, Hogwarts wasn't exactly a fun place to be. And after what happened to – what happened to Fred I guess it kind of pushed me over the edge. I guess I just needed – still need something to drown my feelings in." She started to step forward and Harry back almost against the door already began to tense again. She wrapped her arms around him and reaching a little up a bit planted a kiss on his cheek "But I think I can control it a bit better now."
The tension began rolling away from Harry in small tsunamis; giving her a small smile he said "Glad to hear it."
"Just promise me one thing." She said.
"Anything" He said as he wrapped her up in his arms.
"Just don't ever let me be like that in public, I'd have to threaten bat-bogey hexes on everyone to stop them from saying anything."
Harry couldn't help but laugh, planting a kiss on her forehead he said "It's a deal."
"Ginny! You'd better come down before Ron eats everything!" Came Hermione's muffled voice through the door. "I'm not kidding; he's gone through over half of what your mum has made."
"Oi! That's not fair!" Came an equally muffled voice.
Harry gave an amused snort as he imagined Ron eating everyone out of house and home and caused Ginny to utter a small giggle. "You reckon that threat it credible?" Harry asked.
"Most definitely." Ginny said, and Harry gave a small smile as he shuffled both of them forward and reaching behind him opened the door. As they walked down the stairs that he was wondering about two things, whether Ginny was finally on the mend and whether he would have to fight Ron to the death over the last of the food.
# # #
Kingsley gave an exhausted sigh, massaging the bridge of his nose he hoped to soothe the headache that was beginning to form like some kind of perfect storm in his mind. He was failing miserably, it didn't help that the cause of this particular headache was still seated in front of him and watching him as he slowly lost ground arguing with himself.
"Minister, are you alright?" Came the concerned voice of his new head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Joseph Gallagher.
"I'm fine Joe, thanks for asking." For a few minutes neither said a thing, with a defeated smile he looked his head of department in the eye and said "Tell me again, why do we need this project? I mean, we already have departments that handle all of these sorts of problems."
Lifting a finger Gallagher gave a knowing smile as he said "Ah, but that's the thing. These departments are all too specialized and you know it, a crack team of aurors would be overkill for a petty criminal and vice versa. You and I both know that things are too quite right now. The last time, the first time we thought he died, things had started to happen by now. Everyone saw the weakened state we were in and tried to take advantage of it." After letting this fact sink in he continued "Everything from loose Death Eaters to Goblins. You and I both know that this quite isn't going to last much longer, it's the calm before the storm, this task force is the best way to deal with everything that's about to get thrown at us."
"Alright alright, how many do you want to start?" Kingsley said, despite his headache the deep and reassuring quality of his voice was still present.
"About twenty should be enough to start." Gallagher said, leaning back in his chair and trying his best not to show the smug smile that was beginning to form on his face.
Kingsley decided to ignore the look and instead asked "When do you want to begin?"
With a victorious smile Gallagher said "Immediately."
# # #
Richard was leaning back in the chair, trying to find a position that was comfortable. The auror was still contemplating how he had gotten into this room; whoever had done it was definitely no friend of his, and knew how to tie knots, that was for certain. One minute he had been on his way home from the pub, the next thing he remembered was waking up in this room.
Looking around he silently hoped for there to be some change from the uniformly dank and bare concrete walls; unfortunately, just like every other time he had looked in the last few hours there was none. Swinging his head back around to the front he resumed his stare into the heavy metal door recessed into a small alcove in the wall.
This didn't last for long before he found his eyes closing and his head resting on the back of the chair, he tried to ignore the glare of the single, uncovered light bulb hanging directly overhead as he began to drift off into the same almost sleep state that he had been in off and on for the last few hours when something happened.
Hearing a loud grating noise he started and jerking upright, he tried to see into the darkness caused by the poor lighting; which had difficulty illuminating the walls around him, let alone the recessed door. As his eyes refocused he met the gaze of someone using the sliding peephole in the door to stare at him. After a few moments the grate slide closed and after a few seconds the door opened and a man walked in.
Richard didn't bother trying to look past the man to figure out where he was, he was too distracted by the man himself. He was tall, and large, but in a lean way. He had shoulder length dark hair and a fair complexion, and his face gave away no emotion. The only feature that gave away anything was in fact his eyes. With a languid almost lupine grace the man slowly began to circle Richard, strategically using the darkness at the edge of the room to hide his face.
Richard couldn't stop staring at the man's eyes; he knew that if he did it would mean death, he didn't know how he knew this beyond pegging it on pure instinct: When faced with a predator make yourself as large as possible, don't break eye contact, never show your back and back away slowly. Mentally, Richard snorted at that, fat chance he could back away now. Or even move for that matter, the chair he was tied to was surprisingly heavy and probably bolted to the floor or something.
Eventually the auror couldn't take the silence any longer, he had seen these situations enough times to know what was going to happen but he asked anyway "So, what are you going to do to me?"
The man said nothing, he continued to stare unblinkingly into Richard's eyes as he circled. Desperate to break the silence Richard said "What do you even expect to do eh, you don't even have a wand." As far as Richard could tell, he was right. When he had woken up he was surprised to find that his wand was still in his pocket, unreachable, unusable but still in his pocket. The man wasn't brandishing one either, and he didn't appear to have any pockets on the clothes he wore. And there didn't seem to be one tucked into his belt.
The man came to a stop, but said nothing. Richard was waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the man to react at all. For the first time since he entered the room he felt safe to break eye contact with the man. He watched as he the man offered a hand in the direction of Richard palm facing upward. After a few seconds he saw motes of what looked like energized dust begin to appear. Moving into the palm of his hand they began to coalesce into a small sphere of bright yellow light.
His eyes wide Richard looked up from the demonstration and saw a smile on the man's face. In the back of his mind he felt a presence, like an oily shadow it slowly crawled its way through his consciousness snaking forward he felt more than heard the whispers it created. As dark and oily black as the shadow that spawned them he could barely hear them, but what they said was somehow still clear 'some of us don't need wands'. Richard shuddered as he watched the man close his fist, extinguishing the light and bathing the corners of the room in darkness again.
The man walked forward, now in better light Richard's eyes grew wide again as he saw just what was wrong with the man's eyes. Leaning forward, almost till they were nose to nose the man held a silent sneer on his face as their gaze met properly. Richard's hazel eyes meeting the amethyst colored irises of the man. Standing up straight again the man reached forward with a pair of fingers. On instinct Richard closed his eyes to protect them from harm; he felt the man press his fingers lightly against his eyelids and held them there for a moment.
As he felt the pressure lift from his eyes he tried to open them and found he couldn't. For a few moments nothing happened, cut off from his sight he tried to listen for something, some clue as to what was happening now. The first clue he had to something happening was when he heard a sizzling noise and was met by the sweet smell of burned flesh. After a few seconds the pain came, and he began writhing in pain and screaming as he felt the flesh begin to sear away and felt bones begin to crack in the heat. 'scream as much as you want, you won't be heard' came the shadow voice.
After a few seconds the pain began to subside, and in between taking huge gulps of air he managed to say "What… are… you… doing… to me?"
The oily voice spoke again and with obvious humor in its voice said 'you wouldn't believe me if I told you'.
Authors Note: Hey everyone, meet my latest creation. From my nightmares to yours! I also apologize for the relatively small size of this particular chapter but I didn't want to suddenly switch from what you have just read back to something relatively mundane in comparison. Let me know what you think.
P.S.-I apologize if anyone was scared away from reading this because of my awful writing in the last chapter but hopefully things are on the mend, I definitely don't intend on rushing things anymore.