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Ch. 11: The spy game
October gave way to November, with rain pounding down on the ground, destroying the beautiful red and golden colours of autumn, melting them into grey.
Every night, Harry dreamt about the transparent balls, stacked neatly from floor to ceiling, in rows upon rows of shelves. Each night he walked among them, searching for the one. He yearned to touch that one and, with increasing clarity, he realised it was always the same one. He could see it. It had golden flecks inside and an inscription that he couldn't quite read under it. Every night, he tried to read it, every night he searched for answer in the dreams.
He didn't doubt anymore that Voldemort was somehow responsible for those dreams and the yearning was that of Voldemort's. The evil lord wanted something and he wanted it badly. Why was he showing this to Harry, however? Was it a mistake on his part or was it intentional? The lack of answers to those questions stopped Harry from mentioning this to anybody.
Besides, he was supposed to be working to get rid of those visions. Snape pointed that out every week on their sessions from hell, sneering at Harry's impotency in closing his mind off. No, Harry definitely didn't want to face Hermione's disappointment. Instead he tried to focus all his attention on the little spy game that he led, together with Ron, Hermione and the twins.
Every morning, Hermione worried over the black circles under Harry's eyes. He looked away and then changed the topic to whatever it was that he thought up they could do to spy on the exchange students. Extendable ears proved useless, probably because the islanders have put some spells on their private room, soundproofing them efficiently. Trying to overhear conversations inconspicuously didn't work either, because they never discussed anything of interest in public.
Every evening, Harry left the dinner a bit earlier than everybody else. He went to the corridor when a new door had appeared that year: the door to the private dormitory of the islanders. Feeling rotten to spy on his friends like that, he hid under the Invisibility Cloak by that door, trying to follow the exchange students into their dormitory, as they went there after the dinner. They went there every day, leaving their books and then going to the Gryffindor common room a couple of minutes later.
He had yet to succeed, because their private door seemed to close too fast for somebody to be following the students unnoticed. Cursing his bad luck, he went to find a calm place and hid the cloak away, going to the common room and pretending to have gone to the library, if the exchange students happened to arrive in the common room before him.
Every night, Harry couldn't sleep the night through.
Leaning against the window, Harry sighed. Outside the wind howled and heavy raindrops pattered against the glass of the window in an incessant pattern. Inside, regular breaths and occasional snores filled the air and Harry was incredibly jealous for those who were able to rest. Maybe he should talk with somebody?
Tonight's dream has not been about the transparent balls, regretfully. Tonight he has been looking through the snake's eyes at something he couldn't quite explain, a creature unlike anything he had seen. It looked like a crossover between a rag doll and a card, although it was easily towering over the buildings surrounding the alley. It was barely fitting in the space it had available. It had a round head with huge eyes and random stitches, a flat body and two huge arms.
It took Harry a while to realise that the thing was fighting with two Muggles. The Muggles shot at the creature and hacked at it with a sword and it roared and fought back, trying to swipe them into the buildings or squash them. Harry couldn't see their faces, because they were facing the creature. The one with a gun had a black coat and black hair and seemed to be limping. The other one had white hair and white coat and wielded a sword with such fervour that, even not knowing much about white arms, Harry was impressed.
Another man, standing to the side, laughed, getting the attention of the two Muggles. The one with the gun aimed at him, but the creature's hand blocked the bullets. The man shouted something and aimed at the creature again, but the snake focused on the white-haired Muggle. In a split of a second, he was next to the laughing man and beheaded him in one, clean cut. The abysmal creature howled and terrible anger flooded Harry's mind: Voldemort's anger.
Harry woke up, gasping for air, scared and confused. Why would Voldemort watch Muggle fights? Then again, that creature hardly was Muggle, unless it was some video projection or something along those lines. However Harry turned that situation in his head, he couldn't make any sense of it and he gave up, in the end, and simply looked out through the window.
It was still night and he could only see what was lit up by the torches around the castle walls, which was not much. If he leaned really close to the window he saw a part of one of the inner courtyards, bathed in flickering, orange light even on this stormy night.
He blinked. Was that a shadow in the corner? He looked closer and realised that it was not a shadow, or rather, it was: a shadow of two figures, walking along the wall, one leaning against the other. Images from his dream flitted through his head and his breathing hitched. Could that have been those two men? It was impossible to tell at this distance.
He took the decision in a split of a second. Making sure that he knew where the two people would enter the castle, he grabbed his cloak and ran out of the dormitory, down the stairs faster than ever and out of the common room. Once outside, he wrapped the cloak around himself and rushed towards the courtyard entrance, hoping that the two people would be as slow as they seemed to be from the window.
He flattened himself against the closest wall when he heard footsteps: Lupin and Tonks on their usual patrol of the school corridors. They passed by him, talking about something, not noticing the two huddled figures that Harry could see at the entrance of the courtyard.
He went up closer to them, because it was too dark to see their faces and the flickering light didn't help. As Lupin's and Tonks' footsteps faded away, the figures moved soundlessly, entering the castle. One of them, clearly a man, had white hair and, Harry shuddered, red eyes. Well, one red eye was visible. He wore a white coat, now rather dirty and somewhat torn.
'It was those two again,' the white-haired man said. 'Can you walk?' he asked the other. Harry could see that the other figure was only upright because of the arm flung around the shoulders of the white-haired man. All he could see from the person was a black coat and black hair.
'Barely,' the person, sounding also male, whispered. 'It seems the snake was poisonous,' he added with audible effort. Harry stared, nonplussed. Has that man been bitten by Nagini? If so, shouldn't he be dead? After all, Harry had seen in his dreams how fast Nagini's venom worked.
'You should be grateful to be a Baskerville then,' the white-haired man muttered. 'Let's get back before those two make a full turn. I don't think we can hide well enough in this state. Besides, we're dripping, they could hear us,' he added, not sounding overly concerned, but Harry could see worry in his expression.
'They're not that careful,' the black-haired man replied through painful gasps, as he half-limped, half-slid, dragged by the other. Harry could now see that the leg of his trousers was ripped viciously, the bloody mess of a leg visible beneath in the flickering light.
Profiting from the fact that they kept to the wall, Harry walked alongside them, taking care to not make a sound as his bare feet touched the ground. He already had a pretty good idea of who the two were and he was thrilled to finally get his hands on some secrets.
However, to his disappointment, the men didn't talk. Whether it was to save energy or to keep as quiet as possible, after their initial exchange, neither said a word. For the longest time, the only things Harry could hear were pained gasps and laboured breathing. Somehow they managed to make almost no sound with their footsteps and Harry wondered if there was a spell to do that.
Suddenly, they stopped. Harry, busy thinking about footstep-muffling spells, took another step before realising that they were not walking and the white-haired man glared straight at him. A chill went down Harry's spine and he repeated "he cannot see me" in his head, just to not spring away from that intense gaze.
'What-' the black-haired man whispered, cut short by a hushing sound from the other. He straightened himself up a bit.
'Raven,' the white-haired man, who must have been Hatter, whispered, his gaze never leaving Harry. 'Could you please tell me if there is somebody in the corridor with us?' he asked, surprising Harry. If he didn't see anybody, why did he ask Raven to look? Could Raven see through the Invisibility Cloak? The black-haired man slowly raised his head and looked at his partner, before following his gaze with a frown. Golden eyes looked right past Harry.
'I don't see anybody,' he said slowly, quietly. Harry would have breathed a sigh of relief if he wasn't so terrified of the red-eyed gaze.
'I smell somebody,' Hatter said and Harry's heart raced. It didn't help when Raven took out a gun and aimed it exactly where the other one was looking, which happened to be right at Harry's head. With surreal clarity, Harry noticed that Raven's hand was not shaking in the slightest. His heart thudded so loudly in his chest that he was sure they could hear it.
'No, it's not one of them,' Hatter assured his partner, hesitating a bit over the last word. 'But I have smelled that already before. It is one of the students perhaps?'
'Awfully late to be taking a stroll,' Raven growled. Was it Harry's imagination or was he standing more securely on his feet? He couldn't possibly be already recovering from the snake bite. 'Shall I try?' he asked. Harry didn't need clarification to know what he meant by the question. He was paralysed with fear.
'You cannot run in this state, so we better not make too much noise,' Hatter replied calmly, as though that was his only concern in the situation. With another chill running down his spine, Harry realised that those two were indeed extremely dangerous. Bodyguards or not, they were just as well cold-blooded killers.
'I will be able to run,' Raven replied confidently and cocked the gun. The sound echoed in the dark corridor and it snapped Harry out of his panic. He didn't wait to see if Raven would really fire inside the castle. He ran for his life, not caring if they heard him.
He ran as though the hounds of hell were behind him and, in his haste, he crashed a couple of times on the corners, almost losing the cloak. Finally, his legs entangled with the cloak's tissue and he fell with a loud thud and a muffled shout, barely managing to break the fall with his hands and preserve his face.
Panting, he stayed frozen but no footsteps followed him. He moved to sit up, brushing his hands and froze when the most dreaded sound echoed in the corridor: footsteps. He was about to jump up and wrap himself in the cloak properly, a difficult task when his hands were shaking like crazy, but a familiar figure emerged from behind the corner and he sighed in relief.
'Harry?' Remus Lupin asked, his tone a mixture of surprise and worry. 'Harry, are you alright? You look like you saw a ghost.'
Harry found that he couldn't quite talk. He barely remembered to breathe as the reality of the situation crashed against him and he started shaking violently. Staring down the barrel of a gun appeared to be a worse experience than he had ever imagined and it didn't help that it happened at Hogwarts: the only place where Harry had ever felt safe.
'Harry?' Tonks asked worriedly when he didn't reply to Lupin's question. Harry looked up at her and breathed in deeply, trying to calm himself down. When Lupin kneeled in front of him, he all but threw his arms around the man, clutching him tightly, squeezing his eyes shut, deep breathing forgotten.
'You're all shaking, Harry, what is wrong?' Lupin asked, wrapping his arms around Harry firmly but gently.