Disclaimer: JKR's. Not mine.
A/N: This was another disappointing chapter for me because while my characters grew, I had to put off the fun scene until next chapter. It's there, written, on my computer, but it's going to have to be in chapter ten. Sorry about promising you all a fun chapter and not delivering.
Chapter Nine: Refurbishing a Pearl
Somehow, and Harry would probably never figure out how, Ron, Bill, the twins, Ginny, and Hermione managed to smuggle him into the Burrow, give Molly an acceptable excuse, and get Harry all the way up to Ron's bedroom without either Percy or the Weasley parents noticing. They may have Disillusioned him—he couldn't be sure, as everything had exploded into a mess inside his head with the departure of Dermot Raine from the pathway behind the Burrow. He moved along in a half-daze, pain making it hard to focus on anything in particular. Flashes of red hair, freckles, white skin, Hermione's bushy hair, hands pushing at him, pulling at him. It obviously took several of them to move him, a fact that would amuse him later.
Right now, however, he was too busy staring at a faded and curling Chudley Cannons poster as movement blurred around him in the shape of Hermione, who was bustling about, fetching strips of this or that, tapping him on the shoulder with her wand or her fingers. Slowly, the pain abated, dissolving into numbness as Hermione's spells began to take hold. As the agony lessened, Harry rediscovered the ability to focus his gaze, to garner ideas from the dizzied thoughts racing through his head, to pay attention to the world around him again.
Ron was seated on the cot that was permanently set up for when Harry came to visit the Burrow. Harry was jarred to realise that he was seated on Ron's own bed with Hermione fluttering around him, tutting under her breath. He craned his neck to get a look at her face and winced when that action sent spurts of discomfort down the side of his neck and into his back. "What's going on?"
"You used Dermot Raine as a personalised punching bag, and it looks like he returned the favour." Ron's voice was quiet—not quite angry—and he was leaning forward, eyes downcast to look at his hands. He stood up to pace as Harry stared at him, not certain what his friend's next move was going to be. "You should have called for help and we might have ended this, but instead—"
"Instead you acted like two boys in a school yard," Hermione broke in crossly. "Honestly, Harry, he could have killed you, could have—"
"Let him try." Harry shrugged, and flinched. He then decided not to move; any way he moved, it would irrevocably end in pain of some type. His head ached and felt as though it weighed as much a heavy stone between his shoulders. "So many people have. I think I have nine lives."
He was expecting an explosion at this statement, but when it came from Ron, he was nearly floored. Hermione had opened her mouth, but it was Ron that began to swear at him. "You bloody prat!"
"Wh-what?"
"I've never thought you to be an idiot, Harry," Ron continued, ignoring the astounded looks on the faces of his wife and best friend. "Even that bit in our fifth and sixth years, I always knew it was just you working off stress. Or something. But this? This is—this is puerile!" Now Hermione closed her mouth with a snap, eyes widening at the vocabulary. "This is easily the lowest thing you've done! Have you no consideration? First, you storm off alone and drop off the face of the earth, and when we finally do find you, it's to see you whaling on Dermot Raine like a bloody psychopath?! You can't keep doing stuff like this! My sister is in tears downstairs because she's been so bloody worried about you all sodding day! What has got into you? What, did you take Wanker Lessons from Malfoy?!
"I know about you and Ginny, Harry."
Now Harry looked away; he and Ginny hadn't worked hard to keep their changing relationship under wraps, but the words were now out in the open. It was undeniable, and that stirred something unspoken inside. However, Ron wasn't done.
"You have her to look out for now. Not only as her bodyguard—which I am seriously reconsidering, by the way—but as her boyfriend. In case you haven't noticed, she has a stalker—"
"I noticed," Harry said coldly, lifting his head to glare at his best friend.
Ron looked about to say something else, but Hermione quickly stepped in between the two friends, her arms crossed. "Not right now," she said in a low undertone to her husband. "Your mother is expecting us downstairs for dinner now. Harry knows he's an idiot. Let it go for now."
Harry knew that he should feel grateful for Hermione's intervention, but he couldn't quite summon the emotion at the moment. "Yes. Go. Let me soak in the thousands of horrid things I've done today." His voice didn't quite reach the level of sarcasm he intended it to, and he sagged back against the wall.
Glowering, Ron left. Hermione spared Harry a look crossed between sympathy and disappointment, and slipped out after him.
He wanted to stand and throw things, but when he looked down, it was to discover that Hermione had somehow wrangled his right arm into a sling fashioned from orange Chudley Cannons sheets. Besides, standing reminded him that Dermot had done quite a number on him—he imagined that his face, which hurt even through the numbing charms, was not quite straightened out fully, and his muscles occasionally twinged to remind him why hand-to-hand fighting was such a stupid idea.
But he'd been so close…
Close only mattered in Cheering Charms and first-year potions, he told himself, and moved his left shoulder to get more comfortable against the wall.
It was then that the reality of what had just occurred struck him: Dermot had spent over six hours in Ginny's company and Harry, the person who was supposed to protect her from just that, hadn't even caught a whiff of it until after she had arrived at the Burrow. In six hours, anything could have happened. A dizzying array of scenarios that chilled him deeper than the core of his soul flashed unbidden through Harry's mind, and he began to shiver. Dermot had fooled them again. First, he had masqueraded as Scotty Darrow to trick them into going to the Shrieking Shack. Now he had Polyjuiced himself to be Terrence Holicrest, Ginny's second bodyguard.
All of the sudden, Harry couldn't move fast enough. He stumbled down a few stairs and to the loo, dropping to his knees in front of the toilet. Perhaps it was partly the alcohol in his system, but it was mostly the fear and the knowledge that he had come so close to losing Ginny that made him empty out the contents of his stomach. Even when he was sure it was empty, he kept dry heaving, coughing and gasping.
The spell passed slowly, leeching him of all strength. He sagged against the edge of the bathtub and let his chin rest against his chest. Never had he been so close to tears and still so dry.
Above all, he felt foolish.
He didn't know how long he sat like that, head bowed, body slouched forward. Luckily, nobody seemed to have heard his earlier racket, for he was left alone in the loo for quite some time. He didn't know what they had told Molly and Arthur to buy a few minutes with Harry; didn't know what excuse they had given for his absence. He didn't care, either.
In the entire human scope of emotion, nothing has ever managed to come close to the all-encompassing bind of shame. Combined with worry, fear, and even a little relief, a seemingly combustible state can emerge, and it showed now in Harry Potter as he pushed his head into his left palm. Black tufts of hair sprouted between his fingers; his eyes remained squeezed closed in hopes of fighting something foreign: tears.
His tears weren't alone. Before too much longer, he heard a muffled whimpering sort of noise, emanating from directly across the hallway. He listened for a full minute before slowly making his way to his feet and across the hall. The door wasn't locked, and was even a bit ajar, amplifying the sound of somebody crying within. The shame nearly overwhelmed him as he hesitantly pushed the door open. Before his courage could fail, he stepped inside. "Ginny?"
She wasn't curled up on her bed as he had expected to be. Her head snapped up from her position at her desk, and she wheeled about so fast it nearly made him dizzy. What he saw made the guilt avalanche inside of him: her face was red, especially her nose, and her cheeks were slippery with the sign of many spent tears already. In the few seconds her guard was dropped, he saw a montage of unexplainable and raw emotion flicker across her eyes. Even as she turned away from him, her poker face was already sliding into place.
"What are you doing in here?" Her voice sounded an octave too low, and scratchy from the tears.
His feet had grown roots; he chose not to answer her question, and instead studied the tensed set in her shoulders. "How long have you been crying?"
"I dunno. Awhile?"
"Is it—is it because of me?"
This was apparently the wrong thing to ask, for her shoulders tightened up even farther, and the hand that he could see turned white as it grasped the edge of her desk. She waited for such a long moment that he began to panic and wonder if he should try to retract his question. "What is it, Harry? Do you want me to lie and say that everything here is Dermot's fault? That I'm crying because of him?"
Was there anything right to say in this situation? He didn't think so. "No…"
He was expecting to be yelled at, but all she did was rest her forehead on her hands. "Stop lurking."
"What?" Belatedly, he realised that he was still standing in the doorway, and moved away, towards the bed. The door swung shut behind him, making both of them jump. It took him a moment of consideration to sit down on the very edge of it, poised to stand up should he need to escape. "Do you want to talk about what happened today?"
The sound of the dam breaking was nearly audible as Ginny lifted her hands and finally gave him more than a fleeting glance. "Talk about it? Harry, you put yourself in danger! Why didn't you just Apparate to the Burrow and let us know he was here?"
Again, this wasn't what he was expecting. "What—?"
"You! You always go off alone, thinking you can single-handedly stop everything—"
The leftover anger towards Dermot was slowly rising to the surface, no matter how hard he was struggling to tamp it down. "You're the same way!"
"I'm trying to change." She looked pained, older than twenty-two now. "The least you could do is the same. I'm not even talking about our stupid little fight today, Harry. The man you fought outside? He was a fully trained Hitwizard before he worked for the Tunnel."
"I was holding my own," Harry said stiffly.
"You were close to murdering him like a bloody animal! Had you slipped up even the slightest bit, he could have ripped you apart! Why didn't you just go get help? We were all here—we could have taken him down. Strength in numbers…" She trailed off, whether from weariness of from the look on his face, Harry didn't know. He wasn't looking at her anymore. Sometime in her diatribe, he had refocused his gaze on his knees, not willing to face her anymore. "Look, for some reason you're back and you're different than when I knew you in school. And I don't want to lose you."
"He could have killed you." It wasn't on topic, but the words wouldn't wait inside him anymore. "He could have done anything to you, taken you away, killed you. Horrible things. I…don't even want to think about some of the things he could have done to you." Now, he was shaking. He tucked his hand underneath his leg so she wouldn't notice, and refused to meet her eye. "How can you expect me to sit back and let that happen? I ran into him by accident—and then…I don't know. I just, I guess, I just lost it."
"Harry, look at me."
He didn't want to, but he slowly lifted his chin.
"I'm fine, which is more than I can say for you at the moment."
He had never liked being scrutinised, but Ginny's eyes were boring into him now, as though trying to see something that wasn't there. He didn't have the heart to tell her that what she was looking for—a respectable and noble man—would never be there, no matter how long she looked. Instead, he just leaned back against the wall and stared back without searching. "Make me a promise," she said, breaking the long silence.
"What promise?"
"That you won't do something like this again. That next time you'll get help."
He didn't know if it was in him to make a promise like that, but his head nodded woodenly anyway. Now that rationality was slowly setting in, it was the least he could do for her. If nothing else, it would alleviate some of the worry. "If I'm able to." It just wasn't worth it to add to her worry and mention that he had been unable to get help earlier. "Did somebody manage to retrieve my wand?"
"Ron has it." Ginny stood up and crossed to the bed, sitting almost gingerly beside him. "Said he nearly snapped it in half stepping on it."
"Must've dropped it during the fight."
They fell into a long silence then, broken only by the faint strains of a Weasley dinner downstairs. At first, Harry shifted a bit awkwardly, until he came to the realisation that there were nothing to be uncomfortable about during such a silence. Each of them had thoughts to process, things to deal with. It was a welcome break from the endless chattering of his previous girlfriends or the embarrassing pauses on dates with Cho back at Hogwarts. He allowed himself to relax into the quiet, and, taking his chances, draped his good arm across Ginny's shoulders. She in turn leaned against him.
For a long time, they sat like that, quiet with a thousand words between them.
Charlie Weasley paused at the entrance to Claw, Tooth, and Scale Dragon Home, and nearly winced at the sight of the burnt building. For one thing, it didn't smell too pleasant—whatever charms the wizards had used to put out the fire years before had left a lingering stench of burnt skin and, oddly enough, spinach. Next to him, Ron wrinkled his nose at the smell.
Bill, on Ron's other side, didn't seem to mind the odour too terribly much. He strode into the dilapidated building as though he didn't have a care in the world. Unlike many of the dragon homes Charlie had visited, this building was built from a type of hardwood, rather foolishly it seemed. The fire that had destroyed it had left a bare skeleton—patches of the walls all around them were missing, burned out, and charred bits of furniture remained about the large room, which looked as though it could easily house two or three Burrows, and maybe a Hutch. Some walls remained up and almost whole, revealing stalls where the dragons had slept.
"What a waste," Ron muttered, following Bill into the room. "Who on earth would own a non-fireproofed dragon home?"
"An idiot," Charlie said grimly.
Bill was almost the other side of the room, in a small alcove that looked a bit like it had once been an office. "Not all of it was lost," he observed. "Looks like they fireproofed some of the cabinets." A mumbled spell and a wave of his wand had the drawers to a couple of taupe filing cabinets flying open. Bill wasted no time in rifling through the paperwork inside. "Doesn't look like much—a lease to the land…hm…looks like some old credit vouchers that were never cashed, a couple of pedigrees for the dragons that were once housed here…oh, look, a client list." Bill paid particular attention to this as he flicked through the pages of the voluminous list. "Hmm…went to Hogwarts with this fellow—nice chap. Wouldn't expect him to own a dragon."
"Bag all of that up," Ron called. He was pawing through a pile of debris, picking up fire-blackened objects and then tossing them to the side. "I'll ask Neville to look it over."
Shrugging, Bill began dumping the paperwork into the plastic bags they'd brought with them.
"Say," Charlie asked conversationally as he investigated the stalls, pounding on the remaining walls to see how sturdy they were, "isn't this Harry and Ginny's assignment? I mean, for some reason this place is connected to the Nottingham Typhoon, and that's been their case from day one, hasn't it?"
"They're busy," was Ron's reply. "Other situations came up."
Charlie didn't think he liked the significant look that passed between Bill and Ron at this statement. It was unsettling not to be part of something that Bill knew about, although Charlie knew it was because he preferred to work for the Tunnel from a distance. In his opinion, Ron was crazy to pick up such a task as running a secretive organisation—especially because Charlie had trouble seeing him older than fifteen or sixteen. Even for mid-twenties, Ron was proving to be more responsible than a lot of his older brothers. It took some adjusting to, but Ron was never still long enough for that to happen.
"They're dating, right?" he continued, not sure when he fell so far out of the loop.
"For a couple of weeks now, although they haven't exactly been generous with the knowledge," Bill filled him in. "Probably smart—Mum would throw a royal fit at the fact that they're living together."
"They're living together?"
"They're flatmates. Neville's there, too." Ron didn't look very troubled about it; he was actually more interested in something that he'd found in the pile. "Hey, check this out."
Charlie looked up from where he was examining a few crisped scales. Shrugging, he slipped those into his pocket and worked his way through the mess to Ron. His younger brother was holding was looked to be some kind of clip, bright silver against the dark brown of the whole building. "Isn't that a Muggle money clip?" Bill asked just as Charlie remembered that Arthur had one in his shed. "Like the one Dad has?"
Ron turned it over in his hand. "Looks like it. No decoration on it. Bill, can you get anything?"
No longer very interested, Charlie wandered off to start investigating again. Although the issue that Ginny was now dating an international Quidditch star was lodged firmly into the back of his mind, he was too entranced by this building. Apart from the folly of not using enough fireproofing charms, the designer had been rather brilliant in setting up the dragon home. He'd seen the large outdoor pens on the way in, ideal for raising young dragons, and these stalls were the perfect size for a full-grown dragon. The place looked like it could house five or six without breaking a sweat, and maybe ten if one didn't mind tight spaces.
"What's the deal with this place?" he asked, wandering back to Ron and Bill. "Does anybody lay claim to it?"
"Nah, we have the lease, and nobody wants the place." Bill was inspecting the floor around the space that Ron had found the money clip. "This clip was placed here after the building burned down. See? There'd be a clean spot on the floor where you found it, but all that's there is a bit of smudged dust."
"It could have fallen from somewhere else," Ron suggested.
"Could have, but probably didn't." Bill took the money clip back and prodded it with his wand. A brief bubble of bright green light flared around the object. "That, and it's enchanted."
"Oh, Dad would have a field day with this one. Somebody enchanting Muggle money clips?"
Bill was frowning at the silver clip in his hand, which had returned to its normal state. "Let me try something." From his pocket, he withdrew a Knut, and slid it carefully between the squeezed end of the clip. A light from inside the clip flashed blue, and the Knut disappeared. "Ah. I had suspected as much."
"What?" Ron and Charlie asked at the same time.
Bill sighed and dropped the clip into one of the plastic bags. "It's a transport device. I haven't seen one this elaborate in awhile, but the basis of it is simple—you set up a transport charm between two devices, and when you put something like money in one of them, it magically transfers it to the other thing. Sort of like a portkey."
"Why would you put a transport device in a place like this?" Ron wanted to know, craning his neck to look around the crumbling building.
"To hide your true intentions from the public, which means that it's probably not a good thing." Bill tied off the plastic bag and handed it to Ron. "It sounds to me like somebody's getting blackmailed."
Charlie figured that this probably wasn't a good time to ask if they'd let him have the lease to the dragon home.
"Fred, I promise you, I can go to the loo by myself." Ginny was quickly nearing the end of her rope, and it didn't look like the source of her frustration was interested in budging any time soon. "You can guard the door if you like, and they have Apparation boundaries put up around this area of the stadium so fans can't sneak in. Really, it's all right."
Fred shook his head. "Let me just call Angie. Look, Harry got us these mobile phones the other day—I can call her and she can Floo in, and then you won't be alone—"
"No, Fred. It's just the loo."
But she was too late. Fred already had the mobile phone out and was pressing buttons on it, receiving the occasional beep for his troubles. Triumphantly, he pressed "Talk" and lifted it to his ear. "Angie?—Harry? What are you doing with Angie's phone? What? I didn't call you…" He lowered the phone and looked at the viewscreen in confusion. "Okay, er, apparently I did—"
Ginny rolled her eyes and snatched the phone away from her older brother. "Harry?"
"Ginny?" His voice broke up on the phone, as though wind was attacking him. Glancing at her wristwatch, she realised that this was probably the case. The Typhoon still had twenty more minutes of practice left, and Harry was probably in the air. "What's going on? Anything wrong?"
"My git of a brother won't let me go to the loo alone since you gave out those silly orders!"
She thought she heard muffled laughter, but Harry's voice was relatively normal when he replied. "Maybe he should try one of those Polyjuice treats he and George have been working on?"
"No! That will turn him purple, and I draw the line at walking around with a purple bodyguard!"
"All right, all right. Let me talk to him—oh, wait, before you do that, I have a question. Would you mind if we invited Luna, Ron, and Hermione over for dinner tonight? It's your night to cook, so I figured I'd ask."
"Sure. When?"
"Seven good? Oh, gotta go. Dave's giving me a death look." Without another word, Harry hung up on her. Ginny shrugged and then stared at the dead phone in her hand
Things, Ginny pondered, had been rather stiff for nearly a week now, since the Dermot Scare had jolted all of them out of their comfort zones and deleted any trust in mankind that had been left. Ginny had become rather quiet in that time, and Harry was noticeably tenser than he had been before. It was affecting every part of their lives—Tara called daily, no matter the phone bill, Ron and Hermione kept finding excuses to drop in (had Ginny noticed a plethora of dirty looks between Ron and Harry? She couldn't be sure), and even Luna and Neville were walking on eggshells around the pair, as though they were set to explode. Only the twins treated them as if nothing at all had happened. They jumped at the opportunity to act as Ginny's bodyguards, often walking around the hallways of the stadium shouting, "Team Co-ordinator coming through! Important person passing—yes, more important than you, Red Sweater. Hey, what are you looking at? Mind your own business, Blue Pullover!"
It was becoming quite annoying, but Ginny still appreciated the effort.
Except for right now. She rolled her eyes at Fred and then walked into the loo, still holding the phone so that he wouldn't try to call Angie. To her surprise, he followed her in. "Fred!"
"Always wanted to see what one of these looked like inside."
"It looks like a loo! Go away!"
But Fred was in his element, studying the floral wallpaper with his eyes a couple of centimetres away from it. "Cushy place," he decided. Ginny just gave up and went into one of the stalls. When she came out, it was to find Fred poking experimentally at the magical hand-drying device. "Yours leaves a smell on your hands when it's done," he told her, gesturing at the device.
"Great," Ginny deadpanned. "Now you're going to smell like a girl all day."
The thought of this clearly insulted her brother, for he began wiping his hands on his pants to get rid of the odour. For a minute, Ginny just watched with one eyebrow raised, before shaking her head and leaving her brother with his futile attempts to rid himself of the smell in the loo. He caught up to her just as she reached her office, and spent a good quarter of an hour standing near her as she delegated tasks to various parts of her magical planner (charmed to hold as many dates as possible inside).
"Do you have to hover like that?" she demanded waspishly, throwing her quill down and pushing her fingers into her forehead.
"I don't see much else to do."
"Well, either way, quit it! It's annoying!"
Fred dropped into the one chair her office would allow. "I'm bored."
"Well, work on Ron and Hermione's wedding or something!"
"Actually…" Fred pulled the mobile phone from his pocket and flipped it open, keying in a sequence after a minute of thought. Ginny shook her head and went back to her work, sighing at the thought of the load that was waiting for her on getting Angelina's bridesmaids in one room at the same time. She would just have to have several international Quidditch stars as bridesmaids, and getting them in one place was rapidly becoming a hassle. She was tempted to dump the whole matter in Alicia Spinnet-Wood's lap, as was traditional for the Matron of Honour, but the other woman was juggling five months of pregnancy and her husband's Quidditch career.
Not that Ginny wasn't juggling things herself.
"Did you hear the latest?" Fred wanted to know as he came back into the office and plopped down in the chair (it gave a pained groan). "Charlie's taken the lease on the dragon home that burned down awhile back. Says he's going to rebuild it, and fireproof it, of course."
"Great." Ginny wasn't up to providing her usual magnanimous energy to such a project yet. "He's going to want help, isn't he?"
"A few of his dragon raising buddies are getting into the deal, but we'll probably have to help sooner or later." Fred shrugged cheerfully and picked up one of the bridal magazines from Ginny's desk to begin flicking through it. He wrinkled his nose at one of the pages. "Wow, this one is downright hideous. What are blokes supposed to see in these dresses, anyway?"
"The woman they're about to marry, usually."
A twinge was starting in his neck, and Harry wasn't quite sure his right shoulder would ever bend correctly again. He rubbed at his neck with his left hand as he reached for his overshirt. Next to him, Bear and Frank were muted in their exhaustion. Only Tad seemed to be the least cheerful, and he was humming under his breath. Harry rolled his eyes when he caught strains of Strangers In The Night in his team-mate's notes.
"We didn't go too hard on you, did we, Harry?" Stacy Harrows wanted to know, leaning around the barrier between the lockers.
"Americans don't play proper Quidditch," he grumbled, and tugged the shirt over his head. "Seekers should seek the Snitch, not play Quaffle-bait."
"You wouldn't be Quaffle-bait if you caught it the first time. You know that, right?" Tracy appeared next to her twin and leaned her chin on Stacy's shoulder, both of them grinning identically at Harry and the other Typhoon men. "Stacy has a date tonight, but does anybody want to come over for drinks?"
Because Bear was between Harry and the twins, Harry was able to see three very different reactions to this offer. The instant the words left Tracy's mouth, Stacy looked sharply to the right, Bear turned abruptly to look back into his locker, and Tracy slapped a hand over her mouth and then looked horrified, between Bear and Stacy.
Harry wondered what was going on between those three, raised his eyebrows, and reached into his locker to grab his jacket. "I can't," he said, shrugging into that. "I'm planning to stay in with Amy tonight. Catch up a bit."
"You and Amy having troubles, mate?" Tad wanted to know as he stuffed his wallet into the pocket of his jeans. Like Harry, he was wearing Muggle clothing, but most of the rest of the team was pulling on robes.
"It's minor stuff," Harry lied. "It'll pass."
He was supposed to meet Ginny and Fred in her office and relieve Fred of his bodyguard duties. They would be heading back to the Hutch to work on the two cases for a bit. Since the Dermot Scare, the two had been working steadily on the plans for the American Quidditch Open, which was a mere four weeks from now. It was now forming up to be a formidable plan, with several back-ups and decoys in place. Ron, Hermione, the Darrows, and hopefully Neville and Luna would be accompanying them to America to help trap Dermot for good. That in itself took some co-ordinating, but the work at least kept Ginny busy and saved her from thinking too much.
"See you tomorrow, then," Frank said, clouting Harry on the shoulder on his way out of the locker room. "Bear, you dropping by tonight to look at those game plans?"
"Er, no. I've got other plans. Maybe tomorrow?" Bear was still staring into his locker.
Harry gave him a puzzled look, but decided it wasn't any of his business. Shrugging to himself, he bid the team adieu and headed into the office complex of the stadium.
"Oi, Harry!"
Ron's voice in the corridor made him turn with both eyebrows raised. The redheaded man was heading toward him at a near-sprint, his long legs eating the distance away in long bounds. "Glad I caught you," he said as he caught up to Harry. He was dressed in Muggle clothing also, probably fresh from a visit to London. His T-shirt was bright orange and showed the Chudley Cannons logo with pride. "What was that idiotic dragon of Hagrid's named?"
"Norbert. As I seem to recall, he was a Norwegian Ridgeback, probably the only one that ever owned his own stuffed bear. Which he promptly burnt to a crisp and ate."
"Ah, the memories. Bloody beast bit my hand. Hurt for weeks." Ron shook the offended object absently and then stuck his hands in his pockets, mimicking Harry's walk. "Is Ginny with one of the twins?"
He already knew the answer, but Harry figured Ron just needed verbal reassurance that his sister was okay. After all, things had been cut rather close on his watch lately, and Harry wasn't sure Ron had forgiven him yet. Hermione had advised him to wait it out, so wait Harry would. "With Fred. He won't even let her go into the loo alone. Say, what are you doing here?"
"I have news."
"Oh? Good news or bad news?"
"Good, hopefully. Some kind of lead on the Typhoon case."
They entered the office complex together and made a sharp right to head into Ginny's office. Her door was open and Fred's legs were sticking out, for he had taken advantage of the little space that was left and was sprawled out rather unprofessionally on the floor, hands cushioning his head. Ginny was perched over her ever-present planner at the desk.
"A surprise visit, Ron? To what do we owe the pleasure?" Fred asked from the floor, making Ginny jump and send a startled look Ron and Harry's way.
"I came to herd everybody to headquarters. Bill's got something to show everybody."
"Bill does? As in Bill, our older brother?" Fred raised a sceptical eyebrow. "I didn't know he was involved in the Typhoon case."
"He's been involved for awhile." Ron shrugged.
"Since when?"
Since it looked like Fred was being ornery on purpose, Harry used the few seconds of Ron's distraction to lean in close to Ginny and ask, "Everything okay?"
She gave him a perverse look in reply, and he wanted to sigh. Things between them still weren't back to the equilibrium he had enjoyed before. "Everything's fine. You just startled me." Seeing his dubious look, she rolled her eyes. "That's all it is, Harry. Relax."
He didn't want to, but it didn't look like he had a choice.
--- break ---
Hermione was waiting at the Tunnel headquarters with Fred, Ron, and Ginny when Harry tumbled out of the grate, remarkably covered in more soot than everybody else, and absolutely loathing the Floo Network. However, he stood up and brushed irritably at the shoulders of his jacket.
"Good of you to make it, mate," Fred said through his smirk, while Ginny bit her lips, looking as though she was torn between asking if he was okay and giggling at his state of disarray.
"Got out at the wrong grate," Harry muttered, annoyed that he still hadn't quite got the hang of it all down yet. This sort of thing happened to him at least once a month, and usually when he was direly late. He looked around the basement headquarters. Ron and Hermione had all of the lights on for once, and several of the monitors posted along the walls were active with movement, making the place seem scattered and almost frantic. "Anyway, so what's all this secrecy about?"
"One minute." Ron was standing over at the Glass Table, a mapping device that Fred and George had invented. Harry remembered the last time they had used it and glanced at Ginny. To his surprise, she had one hand on her side, right where the violent scar across her ribcage lay. "George and Bill are coming, too. Have to wait for them."
The grate coughed in warning as Harry wandered over to the Glass Table and placed feather-light fingers against the edge, hoping not to upset Ron's plans. The redhead was so busy in his concentration that he didn't even notice as first George, and then Bill exploded from the grate, both of them landing expertly on their feet and prompting another scowl from Harry.
"What's up with your clothes, mate?" George wanted to know as he wandered over to Harry and Ron. "Get in a fight with a soot beast?"
"Har har," Harry muttered. Ginny, who had just joined them, gave him a bolstering half-smile and rubbed his shoulder on her way to go stand by Hermione. "So—Ron, what's all this about?"
Instead of answering, Ron shoved a hand into his pocket and dropped a plastic baggy containing something silver on the table in front of Harry. It sent a ripple through his calculations on the table, but Ron didn't seem to mind. Raising his eyebrows, Harry picked up the bag and opened it. "What's this? A—a money clip?" He wasn't certain he was seeing things right, but Ron nodded tersely.
"An enchanted money clip," Bill added helpfully, stepping away from the Floo grate. "We found it the other day at the Tail, Tooth, and Scale Dragon Home—which Charlie now owns and is requesting help on—buried under some rubble."
Harry got the feeling that he was the last to know about Charlie's plans involving the dragon home, but didn't let that bother him. "How do you know it's enchanted? And what's it enchanted to do? Bite your finger off?" The last thought made him particularly nervous, as the silver item lay open in his palm, too near his fingers for comfort.
"I tested a spell on it, it's a transport device, and no, it won't bite your fingers off." Bill snatched the clip from Harry's hand, laughing a bit, and shot a beam of golden light at it with his wand. It hovered in the air in the centre of the group. "This, everybody, is your classic blackmailing device. What you do is you set up a transport spell between identical objects—"
"Linear or reciprocal?" Hermione wanted to know.
"This one is linear, but I have seen other such devices that are reciprocal, although not usually for blackmailing purposes." Bill waved his wand at the clip and it began to spin in gentle, lazy circles so that they could all get a better look at the money clip. "For instance, you could place a great deal of money into this clip, and it would be transported to another clip somewhere out there."
"You found this at the dragon home?" Ginny asked as Harry puzzled this over in his head. "If so, why were they sending money to an account owned by the dragon home? That's where the money was going, right? To the vault in the name of the dragon home?"
"Sam Werner is the last unnamed owner of the dragon home," Ron told them now, looking up from his calculations on the table. Fred was standing over his shoulder, watching his hands move over the controls. "We figure that somebody within the group of suspects is blackmailing the others, and Sam Werner is acting as a go-between."
"Then the person blackmailing the others would have to be Teddy Gingham, wouldn't it?"
"The Quidditch King?" George demanded incredulously. "What does he have to do with any of this? I thought this was all about Draco Malfoy, Sam Werner, and the Davenports."
"Not exactly," Harry said now, grateful that he was able to contribute to the conversation. It was as though everybody was coming up with information on his case right over his head, and the feeling was a bit daunting. "Teddy Gingham was the person in charge of arranging the Nottingham Typhoon, making sure that the Davenports got their first pick. He's got first rights to everybody's contract, including mine. And you have to admit, they picked a good team to cover anything up with."
"Humble, isn't he?" Fred cracked to George.
"So you think Teddy Gingham is blackmailing everybody?" Hermione asked, tilting her head to the side and shifting a bit on her feet. She had her hands stuck into the back pockets of her jeans. "About their Death Eater connections?"
"What else?" Ron shrugged. "Anyway, we don't know that it's officially Teddy Gingham. That's why I've been working on this for the past few minutes." He gestured both hands at the table, and everybody crowded close together to get a better look at the Glass Table.
"Erm, Ron," Ginny said, looking up. "It's blank."
"Not for long. Ron and I came up with a plan." Bill held up a small piece of black plastic that was roughly the size of a standard Galleon. "This is your run-of-the-mill tracking device from Gringotts, used to make sure that nobody is dealing in dirty business, as we clearly have here. Ron and I have been tweaking its frequency all week to where it'll be picked up by the Glass Table. The plan is simple—we're going to send this tracking device through the money clip and the Glass Table will show us where it lands, and hopefully some coordinates. Harry, would you like to do the honours?"
Harry took the tracer that Bill held out to him and held it in his fist for a minute, studying it. It appeared to have Galleon markings on it, down to a year date (1492). Shrugging, he grabbed the money clip out of the air and delicately pushed the tracer through the end. It gave off a short burst of heat and flashed blue for the briefest of seconds, but the tracer disappeared as Harry assumed it was supposed to.
"Now, if I've set this right…" Ron trailed off as movement began to swirl in lazy, pink traces across the top of the Glass Table. Segments of the surface began to rise higher and higher, slowly reaching eye level of those watching. As they stared, the rising portion moulded itself once, twice, finally becoming a recognisable figure. Lines shifted, formed, melded into other lines. From the midst of the Glass Table rose something that could be nothing but a very formidable manor.
Ron stooped down to read the minuscule writing on the front gate of the manor, and sighed. "Figures," was all he said. "Everybody suit up. Let's go get him."
A/N, the Second: Anybody care to guess? Do you even have to?
