Ch. 12: Alliance

Gilbert wasn't particularly surprised to find that the doors out of their private part of the castle wouldn't open in the morning. It meant that last night he and Break have, in fact, met a student somehow rendered completely invisible.

It was a worrying concept, if wizards could disappear entirely.

Last night, they got surprised by a number of regular Deatheaters and a huge snake reinforcing the contracted Deatheater. It must have meant that Voldemort was starting to get suspicious of his contracted Deatheaters disappearing every time he managed to create a new one. Or he was running out of manpower and wanted to protect the ones he had and it wasn't difficult to see that only the contracted ones were targeted.

They managed to dispose of most of the Deatheaters, who did not expect to be shot at or slashed at with a sword and thus were too surprised to offer much of a challenge. Gilbert didn't doubt that the next batch would be more careful, when he noticed one of the men disappearing. He shot at him, but wasn't sure if the bullet reached its target.

Just as he was recharging his gun to look for the Chain and the contractor, a huge snake shot out of the darkness and bit him, retreating as Break slashed at it.

They returned to Hogwarts immediately after getting rid of the Chain and its contractor, because he wasn't sure for how long he would have enough strength to summon Raven and they didn't want to resort to calling Eques out of Break's shadow. It seemed to have been a pointless worry because already on the way from the Forbidden Forest to their rooms, he started feeling better.

If it wasn't for the weird encounter in the corridor, he would have counted the night as mildly successful, but as things were, he only allowed himself a couple of hours of sleep and was the first one up, followed closely by Break.

'How's your leg?' the Hatter asked, getting out of his bedroom. It was amazing how the main room had nine doors and there surely was some magic happening with the rooms' dimensions to fit them around the main room like that. Since doors took most of the space of the walls, letting only enough space to jam in a kitchen niche, the only window was a glass roof, probably put there to let in some daylight. When there was daylight, of course, since now it was just a surface on which the rain drops pattered.

'Getting better,' he replied. 'If I need I can probably pretend that nothing has happened to it,' he added, taking a sip of the coffee. Break went to check the door towards the corridor and found it locked. The same was with the door leading to the Gryffindor dormitory.

'I've checked that already,' Gilbert commented, forcing his tone to be light and careless. 'It seems that we really met somebody in the corridor last night,' he added as Break poured himself coffee.

'How inconvenient,' the Hatter muttered. He sat down next to Gilbert and attacked the cookies viciously. 'They're good. You didn't wake up early enough to bake them, did you?'

'I baked them the previous morning, they keep well,' he replied, taking one as well, not feeling enough energy to busy himself with the breakfast. Reim would do it anyway and he was bound to wake up soon. 'Don't eat everything,' he scolded the other just as the door to Reim's room opened and the man went into the main area, stopping short when he saw Gilbert and Break.

'You've changed already,' he noted. It was true that usually they arrived just before breakfast and didn't even have time to get rid of the wet clothes.

'We've been back early last night,' Break replied with a pleasant smile. 'We'll fill you all in when the kids arrive,' he added and, without further questioning, Reim went to do the breakfast.

Soon the smell of food drew Alice out of her room. She didn't spare a second glance on the adults, but the others seemed surprised as they also joined the table and, when they all arrived, Break quickly summarised the happenings of last night. He was just telling them that the doors outside seemed to be locked when the one leading to the corridor opened, letting in the headmaster Dumbledore, accompanied by professors McGonagall, Snape and Kruspe.

'Good morning, headmaster,' Break said in a cheerful tone. 'To what do we owe the pleasure of seeing you on this fine morning?' he asked. The man ignored him and looked at the kids carefully.

'Children, please go to your classes, I need a private word with your bodyguards,' he said in a tone that he probably expected to be friendly and inviting. Gilbert fought a smirk: the man was in for a nasty surprise.

'Whatever you want to say to our bodyguards, you can say to us as well,' Elliot announced firmly, not making the slightest move to leave the table. Gilbert glanced at the determined expression on the four, young faces and then at the obvious surprise on the faces of Hogwarts' teachers.

'Coffee?' Break asked in the heavy silence that fell.

'Cain, would you be so kind to check if there are no malevolent spells in this room?' the headmaster asked. The teacher replied that he already did and there were none, only the standard anti-surveillance ones. 'And on them? Do they have any evil magic upon them?' Dumbledore asked. Gilbert thought that the teacher's eyes gleamed in excitement and he wondered if Chains projected as "evil magic".

'There is nothing that I can detect,' the teacher said, his eyes lingering on Oz, much to Gilbert's displeasure. Next to the man Snape waved his wand and muttered something that sounded like "accio polyjuice potion", but nothing happened.

'I demand to know what is going on, headmaster,' Reim spoke up. 'Did the wizarding community-'

'What is going on is that those two have threatened a student and thus broke whatever agreements I might have had with the Four Great Dukedoms about your presence here,' Dumbledore didn't let Reim finish. At least he was not pretending to not know anything, Gilbert thought. 'Now you will explain yourselves immediately or I shall send you all to Azkaban.'

'You will not be sending us anywhere, old man,' Break replied, all pretence of friendliness gone from his face and his tone. 'You would do better by scolding that student of yours for wandering corridors where dangers can await. After all, isn't he your most precious weapon?'

Dumbledore looked shocked, which probably meant that Break correctly guessed the identity of the student: Harry "The Boy Who Lived" Potter. The teachers exchanged worried glances.

'That is rich coming from people who wanted to shot him on the spot,' Dumbledore said finally, making Gilbert roll his eyes.

'And you honestly believe I would have shot that brat?' he asked, not bothering to keep irritation out of his voice. 'Who the hell do you take me for?'

'A dangerous person,' McGonagall interjected, but Gilbert didn't bother looking at her. It was obvious that she would do anything Dumbledore asked so he only bothered with him.

'I took you for a bodyguard, now I want the truth,' Dumbledore said after a pointed glare at his deputy. 'Why have you come here? Where did you go last night?'

'Fine,' Break said with a sigh. 'But at least take a seat, I hate looking up like that and I have a feeling this will be a long discussion,' he added in a tone filled with suffering, as though the idea to talk with the teachers was painful. 'Don't worry, we will not attack you, there is no interest for us in doing that,' he prompted when none of the teachers moved.

Finally, Dumbledore waved his wand and a chair appeared behind him. As he sat down, the other three followed his example, taking seats somewhat behind the headmaster, on the opposite side of the table from the islanders. Once they were seated, Dumbledore repeated his questions.

'We are agents of an organisation that you might approximate to your Order of the Phoenix,' Break said simply. Gilbert glanced at him, wondering how much he was going to tell the teachers in order to get them out of the situation without a scratch. In any case, it was better if only one of them did the talking and Gilbert was perfectly content with glaring at the teachers in turns.

'How do you know about the Order?' McGonagall asked immediately, but Break only smiled and told her that Harry "the saviour" Potter had told that to Oz and the rest, among other things. 'What are you doing here? Why the farce with students?'

'We needed a foothold in your society and we needed a way to get information about your way of using magic,' Break replied calmly, devouring a cookie right afterwards. The teachers stared but didn't say anything for the moment, possibly too surprised by his behaviour. 'See, this matter of Voldemort has started bothering the Dukes and they want it resolved, so they sent us here to take care of the situation.'

'Sending two people to take down the Dark Lord? Isn't that a bit pretentious?' Snape asked incredulously. It didn't escape Gilbert's attention that he referred to Voldemort in the same way as the Deatheaters did. Could it be that he was one of them? It made perfect sense to try and insert a spy in the wizarding school. It would also make their work much trickier because now Voldemort would know exactly what they were. Well, as much as they were going to tell those teachers anyway.

'You have a funny way of calling that guy,' Break noted, the hard edge of his voice telling Gilbert that he thought the same. 'Where did you pick it up?' he asked, leaning forward and propping his chin against his hand, smiling a smile that showed a tiny bit too many teeth at the Potions teacher, who recoiled. It was nice to know that Break had that effect on others, besides Gilbert, who took a couple of years to get used to Break's mannerisms and stop being completely freaked out by them.

'So you expect that two of your agents will do what the whole community couldn't?' the headmaster rephrased Snape's question before the latter had time to answer Break. There was a secret there, Gilbert sensed it. They would need to find out who exactly professor Snape was and whether he posed a risk to their mission.

'We kind of expected you to be doing something as well,' Gilbert muttered before he could stop himself, earning three unfriendly glares for his words. Kruspe only looked fascinated in a way one might be engrossed in an insect worth dissection. 'If we knew that we would have to take care of everything, we would have gone about the situation differently,' he added.

'Right, about last night,' Dumbledore changed the topic, as though he remembered what they were supposed to ask in the first place. 'Where were you?'

'In London,' Break answered promptly, looking as though the conversation was starting to bore him. The headmaster scowled slightly at his careless tone.

'What were you doing?'

'Getting rid of Deatheaters.'

'And?' the headmaster prompted, unsatisfied about Break's offhanded answer.

'And?' Break repeated. 'We got rid of them, if that's what you're asking. We don't leave a job unfinished, it's impolite,' he added in a tone one might use to lecture a naughty child.

'We know that you were fighting with some weird creature, what was it?' Dumbledore asked harshly, obviously not appreciating Break's patronising attitude. However, the question itself was more worrying than headmaster's sentiments: how could they possibly know about the Chain?

'Ah, so you don't know either?' Break asked back, mixing just the right amount of disappointment into his careless tone. He should have been an actor. 'We were hoping to be able to find our answers in your vast library,' he added. The headmaster looked convinced, but Gilbert noticed the tiniest of smirks on Kruspe's face and he didn't like it. That man seemed to know more than he was telling and why would he keep secrets from the headmaster? It was another mystery to unravel, now that they were implicating the wizarding society in their little hunt.

'How did you find the Deatheaters?' the headmaster asked, obviously satisfied with the previous answer. It went easier than Gilbert could have hoped for. Break sighed at the question, as though not appreciating it in the slightest.

'We go to London every night and spend the whole night trying to find them,' he said, letting irritation tint his tone this time, as one might have expected from a man who has wasted a lot of his time. 'Last night we got lucky and found some, but what we really would like is to know where Voldemort is, so that we can go and get rid of him,' he added.

'You and me both,' Dumbledore muttered, looking as though he regretted saying those words. 'But how can you call last night lucky if your partner got bitten by Voldemort's snake?' he asked, changing the topic and turning to look at Gilbert, who stiffened hearing the question. If the snake had really been as poisonous as it seemed he shouldn't be alive anymore and he really had hoped to not have to explain that.

'No harm done, so why not call last night lucky?' he asked back, keeping his tone light, despite the dark glare he sent at the headmaster for starting the topic. He had to assume that the Order had somehow observed the whole meeting in the alley and thus knew about the snake-bite. But if they had been there, he wished they had helped rather than watching from safe distance.

'What is a Baskerville?' the man asked without a second of hesitation, very nearly throwing Gilbert off balance. Thankfully, he managed to get his thoughts under control before he betrayed his distress. The existence of Baskervilles was one thing they absolutely didn't plan on sharing with the wizarding community.

He narrowed his eyes at the headmaster, realising that Potter had been listening to them and had followed them last night, rather than just being caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Well in that case, Gilbert hoped that he got a scare of his life for being an annoying brat.

'I suppose you can call it an, ah, honorary title,' he said, carefully keeping his voice free from irony, not wanting the silence to stretch too long after the headmaster's question. Of course, it was not the most convincing reply, especially after the pause, but it was, in a wicked way, quite truthful.

'And this "honorary title" kept you from dying of poisoning?' Snape sneered, not even pretending to believe him.

'You have to fill certain requirements to get it,' he replied, forcing his tone to sound casual, as though he was talking about something unimportant. Again, it was true, even if the requirements were hardly depending on the person. He looked the teacher up and down. 'I don't think you have to worry about it though, so we can leave it as it is,' he added, aiming to annoy the Potions teacher.

It worked, because the man jumped out of his chair, sneering abuse in Gilbert's face, before the headmaster managed to grab his arm and tell him to calm down. Snape fell back onto his chair, glaring daggers at Gilbert, who already regretted his words. He should have known better than to annoy somebody who was potentially dangerous, it was counterproductive.

'I will decide when we leave things as they are,' the headmaster said firmly, turning to glower at Gilbert once Snape was nicely subdued. 'If you think that I will let cold-blooded murderers get away without a good reason, then you are very wrong. You better convince me that I should now send you two to Azkaban, where you belong, and then inform the Dukes about your treatment of their children.'

'Inform the Dukes about their treatment of us?' Leo asked with a mocking laugh, before anybody else had time to speak. It was amazing that the kids had stayed quiet as long as they did, Gilbert thought, unsurprised that Leo spoke up. 'What exactly do you mean by that, old man?' he asked, shocking the teachers of Hogwarts.

'Or do you perhaps think that we were somehow tricked into this situation? That we would not have noticed our bodyguards being gone night after night?' Elliot picked up his friend's track of thought.

So much for not implicating the kids in this mess, Gilbert thought, fully expecting that to have been Break's idea in the beginning. If Dumbledore thought them victims, they would stay in touch with Harry Potter and know more about the society, but if Dumbledore thought they were part of the plot, he would most likely expel them from the school. Still, their vote of confidence did feel nice.

'See, they're actually very annoying brats,' Break noted with a lazy smile, before Oz and Alice had time to add their thoughts on the matter. He sat back in his chair comfortably, looking at the teachers with his unseeing eye. At least they didn't seem to realise that small weakness of theirs, Gilbert thought.

'Watch your mouth, Hatter,' Elliot growled.

'This brings as to another question that we have for you,' the headmaster spoke up while Break and Elliot glared at each other. 'What are your real names?' he asked, obviously getting his mind back on track. He seemed to have gotten over the surprise of getting a glimpse of the kids' true nature.

'I'm Peter Pan and this is Wendy,' Break replied promptly, grinning. Oz snorted and tried to, unsuccessfully, cover it with a cough. Gilbert looked at Break threateningly, but the man continued. 'Isn't Wendy cute?'

'I am going to kill you,' Gilbert growled.

'Hatter, Raven,' Reim sighed, reminding them that they had audience and it was not time for one of their arguments. Break smiled at him innocently, while Gilbert took a deep breath to calm himself.

'This interrogation is over now,' Reim announced firmly, turning to Dumbledore. Everybody looked at him and he continued before the headmaster had the time to protest. 'We have told you everything and have gotten nothing back, even though we've been helping you with your cause. You might not agree with our methods, but I dare say your situation is drastic enough that you have no choice in the matter of allies.'

'Allies?' Dumbledore repeated with disbelief.

'Indeed,' Break laughed, focusing the weary attention of the teachers on himself again. 'Let us work together with your precious little Order and we shall remove Voldemort from the equation, permanently,' he promised with his best, seducing smile.

'You have that kind of power?' Dumbledore asked him very seriously and Gilbert could see that he was tempted by the idea. Snape looked distrustful and hopeful at the same time, while Kruspe's eyes were literally glowing at the promise. Even McGonagall, who has been doing nothing but glaring at them with open animosity, was so interested that she forgot she was supposed to hate them for some reason. Just what the hell was Break planning to do?

'Raven has the power to send him to the deepest pits of hell,' Break replied calmly. It took all of Gilbert's willpower to not react to the statement. Where the hell did the idea of not teaching the wizarding community about the power of the Chains go? He wanted to scream that into Break's face, but all eyes were now on him so he resigned himself to a murderous glare that he knew the Hatter would not see.

He was going to kill that man one day.