I completely apologize for the long wait. School actually started for me three weeks ago and every one of my teachers thought that it was a good idea to start piling on the work starting day one. I haven't had any access to the internet outside of school-related stuff until yesterday. In any event, updates will be pretty slow in the future, at least until whatever holiday breaks there are.

Hogsmeade

Artemis frowned as he was ejected from the fairy shuttle. The LEP had searched his pockets when he had been unconscious, and Foaly had conveniently forgotten to give him his cell phone back. It was all right, though, because he had backups, where all the incriminating evidence was stored (after all, it wouldn't do to lose everything just because of a main-use cell phone that could easily be dropped, stolen, or scanned). The only things Foaly would find on there were things that only someone as smart as Foaly could have a chance of finding. Artemis actually hoped Foaly would be successful into hacking his history and see just how imperfect his so-called top-of-the-line security system was.

But enough of that, now. The Gryffindors were back.

"Where were you, Artemis? You just disappeared from the Shrieking Shack!" Granger exclaimed. "We've been running around for hours, literally, trying to find you! It's already five in the afternoon!"

"I got a bit bored, so I went around for a little bit, looking for you two," Artemis said, lying smoothly through his teeth.

"For over eight hours?" Granger put her hands on her hips, looking skeptical.

"Evidently, as we were both looking for one another, both of us would constantly be moving and thus have a less likely chance of finding one another. Where did you look for me first?" Artemis asked casually, though there was a reason behind it – if Granger asked where he went in what order, and they did not see him there, it would warrant some inconvenient questioning. This way, Granger would be forced to answer and reveal that information so he could make up a story to go along with it.

"Well, we left the Shrieking Shack, and then we went to get some butterbeer…" said Granger, falling for the bait almost immediately.

"We stayed there until around half past twelve, when we went back to the Shrieking Shack," Weasley added. "Only you weren't there so we went to find you."

"Ah. I left the Shrieking Shack slightly before that. One can only meditate for so long, after all," Artemis commented.

"…I think we went to that little café after we peeked inside the Hog's Head…" Granger continued.

"How odd. I was in there, too. I did not see either of you," Artemis said. This might have been a simple statement, but psychologically it was extremely powerful. Had Granger pointed out that she had not "seen" him there before he had interrupted her, he would have been forced into a defensive position. However, as he had pointed out that fact, it would be more reasonable for them to accept that they really did happen to miss one another.

Within minutes, Artemis had convinced both of them that yes, it was logistically possible for two independent parties to wander around Hogsmeade for about four and a half hours without seeing one another.

Too easy.

Hogwarts

We might find out who they are soon. Artemis slipped the coded note into Draco's book and placed it back on the desk when he was not looking.

He went back to the dormitories and accessed his laptop.

"We managed to trace the goblin shuttle from chute 37 back to Paris. It leads straight underground to the Pont Louis-Phillipe. Artemis' eyes widened.

"That is exactly where the entrance to wizarding Paris is. Have you found any matches on your goblin prisoner?"

"We tried to match up his image to yours, to see the closest thing to a Mud Man we could find. It's just this guy – we'll send you an image."

A picture popped up. "Recognize him, Fowl?"

The man's eyes were dully blank, with the irises jagged and crooked. He had been mesmerized one too many times. His robes were overly extravagant, and his hair was golden, wavy, and excessively styled. He had an annoying grin on his face, and was standing in an arrogant pose, as if he did so every day. There were peacock quills tucked into his sleeve.

Oh, dear.

"Yes. Definitely yes."

Haven City

"You want us to fly in that?" Trouble wailed. "Are you kidding me? It could explode on us at any moment!"

"It'll take too much time to move it back out," Root growled. "Besides, we're in safe hands."

"Why, who's the pilot?"

"Captain Short."

Root noticed with amusement that Captain Kelp had no more real protests after that. The kid had always had an obvious crush on the Captain Short, even back in the days at the Academy (actually, everyone had a crush on the only girl in LEPRecon, anyway). Root was pretty thankful to have Captain Short here – she could always tone down a group of rowdy soldiers if his yelling didn't.

"Taxi for two fairies and a Mud giant, coming up," she said.

Butler, the boy's bodyguard, had not been too pleased when he learned what his charge had been up to – it was already hard enough having to leave him for a magical school for over half the year – and that school was where Artemis would have needed his help the most, too. Still, he agreed to do this much.

Artemis would follow them in an iris-cam and a radio system. "The fairies have to come, too. You need a spark of magic on the twelfth brick from the bottom, and a tap on every one surrounding it, starting with the one directly on the top and working clockwise. I don't think it can tell the difference between human magical energy and fairy magical energy."

Sure enough, it worked. Butler walked in, disguised in robes and a false wand, while the fairies followed, shielded. Root decided to let Captain Short and Captain Kelp go while he stayed behind to watch the shuttle – those two were always itching for action (and, out of respect for his best Captain, who wanted some time alone to 'strategize' – obviously, with Holly Short. Root found himself snickering – but to hell if he would ever admit that. He never laughed).

"Try to find this Gilderoy Lockhart."

"It should not be too difficult," Artemis said. "He's even more flamboyant than the French."

So this was where their ex-Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher had gone – escaping to a foreign country to flee the shame of his cowardly, fraudulent ways. He was probably laying low for the moment, and somehow was targeted because he was nice and easy to mesmerize. How he found out how to use Muggle batteries was a mystery – maybe he had a muggle parent of some sort.

Eventually, they traced him down to a tiny little apartment. Foaly switched Butler's iris-cam over to heat-sensitive. "You're good to go – he's alone. Trouble, Holly, see if you can disable whatever protections he's put up around his apartment. Once you're in there, take him down quick and see what he knows. Go!"

Holly shone a laser-scan over the door. "There's a few simple spells around here. Artemis, what should we do?"

Artemis studied the structure of the magic. Disabling a ward was simply like untying a large knot. He whispered instructions to Trouble and Holly. "That's an anti-apparition ward; we can leave that alone because we're not using that method of travel. The one around the door is the only one we need to get rid of, actually – go for what looks like the blue blob in the top left corner first, then go diagonally down to the bottom right, up and over again, like an X."

A rather electrical-sounding zap told him that they were successful. "You should be able to enter without triggering any alarms now. I can't see anything on the inside."

They did so.

Wizarding Paris

Butler looked around. This Lockhart fellow certainly spared no expenses.

He was sitting in an expensive armchair, holding a gun of some sort. Wizards didn't use guns…it had to be a fairy prototype.

"What in the world…" Trouble whispered. "How'd he get a Bouncer? That thing will just bounce a laser off the walls until everyone in here gets killed!"

"Butler, be careful," Artemis hissed into his ear. "He's been mesmerized, and I'm fairly certain that this guy is more dangerous controlled by an outside source."

"Are you a friend?" he asked, a dumb smile on his face.

Butler raised an eyebrow.

"If you are, stand still so I can take your picture," the silly man continued.

"How about you tell me about all of these batteries first?" Butler asked. Lockhart leapt to his feet, grinning from ear to ear.

"It is you! Say cheese!" He took aim, and fired.

Butler acted quickly. He seized the prototype watch that was among Foaly's "gifts" (they would have to be returned, though) and threw it around the Bouncer, generating a force field barely large enough to contain the gun and its deadly bouncing laser. The blast richocheted around the inside of the force field and created a small explosion, enough to knock everyone in the room off-balance, but the important thing was that it was contained.

Afterwards, Butler quickly overpowered Lockhart and knocked him to the ground. Butler pressed two fingers to the man's neck, to check his pulse, and they began questioning him.

"Are you Gilderoy Lockhart?"

"Yes. Order of Merlin, Third Class – " Butler quickly cut him off, not wanting to waste time listening to the idiot brag about his (probably now forsaken) titles.

"Have you ever sold Muggle batteries to a mysterious buyer?"

"No…" his pulse skyrocketed. That was a lie – he was the man they were looking for.

"Have you ever made deals with goblins?"

"At Gringotts, yes."

"How about outside of that?"

"No…" He was telling the truth.

"Thank Frond," Holly whispered. "Whoever talked to him was too smart to actually reveal themselves – they've probably been communicating through the mesmer this entire time."

"At least we know that our secret is safe," Trouble said.

"Especially from that buffoon," Artemis muttered through Butler's earpiece. "He wasted an entire year of my education."

"Don't complain, Fowl – I bet you're already ahead of everyone else anyway."

"The problem now is that there are other fairies who know about the wizards. We have to stop them."

"Got it, Mud Boy."

Butler stepped away from Lockhart. Once the French Ministry of Magic discovered him, he could explain to them all he wanted about the piles of counterfeit Muggle money and fake gold by himself.

Slytherin Dormitories

"Hey, Artemis, who are you talking to?" Blaise walked in. Artemis hastily closed his laptop and shoved it under his sheets.

"My butler," he said. "I was using a communicator book." It wasn't exactly a lie.

"Oh. Okay."

"Do you need something?"

"Nah, Granger just told me that she wanted to talk to you, that's all."

"Tell her I'll be with her in just a minute. I'm slightly occupied at the moment."

"What am I, a messenger?" Blaise complained. But he went back outside anyway. Artemis opened his laptop again.

Haven City

"Okay, what do we have so far?" Root asked the entire room. Artemis was still following them on his laptop. It wasn't as if anyone would see him – it was the weekend, after all. On the other side, the sheer amount of magic from Hogwarts contaminating the air would turn even the greatest hacker's efforts futile.

"We caught a goblin, who wasn't high up enough in the organization to know about the more important details. We've cut off their supplies, but we don't know how many they've smuggled in so far. And I'm still miffed about that Opal Koboi comment," Foaly said.

"Whatever, donkey boy. Okay. Captain Kelp, get out there, and take control of the field. See if we can't root out a few goblin gangs – I want no loose ends: who's organizing the B'wa Kell, and why?"

"Yessir."

"So, now that I've done my end of the bargain, what about the spies?" Artemis asked.

"It's a bit hard from here," Foaly complained. "But at least all of my sensors aren't just picking up huge, random, blue blobs anymore. Now, who was it that you wanted traced?"

"Draco Malfoy. I don't want to trace him; I want to find out who is tracing him – possibly what. His own father is actually spying on him to make sure he acts the 'right' way, and I need to know how. The possibilities are too great and I don't want his father to realize that we have realized what he is doing."

"All right," Foaly said. "Where do you want to start?"

"Let's do tracing spells first. First, scan him personally. Then, take at the look at the rest of the school," Artemis decided.

A few minutes passed, and Foaly was back on the line. "My signature sensors didn't pick up anything out of the ordinary on Mud Boy #2. He's completely clear, except for his own magic, so unless he is tracking himself, there's nothing magically spying on him, and nothing magically hiding whatever is magically spying on him. As for the school, there's nothing there either. It took me a while to pick apart all of the different wards, but I don't see anything out of the ordinary. I checked the time stamps, and all of those spells around the school were put there hundreds of years ago when the school was actually built. So unless his father is that old…"

"I understand," Artemis cut in quickly, before Foaly could waste any more time. "Anything else? Such as spells operating from a foreign system?"

Foaly hummed. "Your Pig-Snorts school – "

"Hogwarts."

"Yeah, whatever. Pig-warts is an extremely isolated system, so there's no way to operate something distantly without actual technology – something the wizards clearly lack."

Well, that was a relief. That meant the spies were actually physically accessible. Spells and wards would have been a pain to remove, especially if there were triggers that showed when a connection was cut. Replacing them with fake sensors and getting the timing perfectly was extremely difficult.

"In that case, we need to run up a list of Lucius Malfoy's contacts. Anyone inside of Hogwarts – teachers, students, staff, et cetera, is fair game, regardless of age, gender – "

"Elves, too?"

"Excuse me?"

"Apparently there's house elves in Hogwarts," Foaly said disgustedly.

"Possibly…Lucius Malfoy keeps a bunch of them as well."

"As slave labor? What kind of sick people are these?" Commander Root roared. As expected.

"They're rather queer little things. Nothing like our Haven fairies. There must have been some really wide genetic gap way back when," Foaly reported.

"Don't blame me. I didn't know that house-elves lived in Hogwarts. I thought that only upper-class, pureblood wizarding nobility used them," Artemis said defensively.

"Like you?"

"The Fowls are served by this family of people called the Butlers, in case you haven't noticed," Artemis retorted frostily. "And we actually pay them, too."

"Whatever. So what did you say you wanted me to search?" Foaly said impatiently, trying to get over the ridiculous banter and finish his work.

"Try to find any of the people inside of Hogwarts who have direct connections to Lucius Malfoy. That should narrow it down," Artemis tried. "It shouldn't be too hard – most wizards have no idea about how technology works and probably don't know how to cover their tracks each time a transaction is made."

Foaly began searching the databases. "Most of this is going to take awhile – I actually have to do manual searches because wizards don't have computing systems. Everything by magic – lucky bastards," he swore. Artemis ignored him.

"Well, the only teacher with direct connection to Lucius Malfoy is this Severus Snape guy," Foaly reported after a while.

"Keep going," Artemis said. It couldn't have been Professor Snape – could it? The man, while he blatantly favored Draco in front of the Gryffindors, secretly disapproved of the bad manners that his father had taught him. Professor Snape was smart enough to know that supporting Lucius Malfoy in any way meant even further fueling his extremist right-wing policies – especially if it involved helping Lucius disciplining his own offspring. Since Professor Snape had tried to use Legilimency on him before, he definitely knew Occlumency, too, so probing his mind would not work.

Anyway, Artemis had the tiniest suspicion that trying to Confound a teacher was not a very smart thing to do.

Just a tiny suspicion. Nothing major, really. He was only 99% confident that doing so would land him in Dumbledore's office with a snapped wand – given that Professor Snape didn't personally finish him off first, of course.

"Okay…how about this Marcus Flint kid? Apparently, he's accepting the help of a governmental benefactor – Lucius Malfoy, again – in receiving a spot on a professional Quid-whatever team once he's out of school."

"Quidditch," Artemis corrected. Yes, that could make sense. He took out a slip of parchment and wrote the name down. Then, he decided just to write Professor Snape's name down as well – not that it would do them any good, of course. It was just the principle of his nature, to never convict without proof of guilt, but never eliminate a potential suspect without proof of innocence. "Anyone else? I'm certain that Lucius Malfoy would have more than one spy running around; he's too clever to put all of his eggs into one basket."

"There's a Cormac McLaggen who's also asking for his help for the same reason." Artemis didn't know anyone of that name, but he supposed he would have to look anyway.

"House elf named Dobby and wife named Narcissa…they don't exactly leave their house, though…close friends, a Mr. Crabbe and a Mr. Goyle, both have children in school who are Draco Malfoy's age –"

"Those two goons are too stupid to even read and write properly. Lucius Malfoy wouldn't trust them with any spy work – they just act as imbecilic muscle – bodyguards, of sorts – for his son." Unless it was an act of incompetence to cover up their true intentions…As highly improbable as it was, it didn't hurt to be safe. After all, Quirrell was supposedly incompetent, too. That being said, he wrote their names down.

Foaly kept searching and humming to himself. Artemis was on the verge of turning off the speakers – Foaly listened to horrible music already and it didn't help that he was a terrible singer besides. For such a technical genius, he had and extremely poor grasp on symphonic composition. Riverbend music was repetitive and annoying – even more so when the occasional whinny or snort was added in.

"No house-elves…apparently, the Hogwarts house-elves are solely under the command of the school…"

"Lucius Malfoy probably wouldn't trust a 'lower being' to do the work anyway," Artemis muttered.

"But I do have a few more students. There's the daughter of his close friend, some Mr. Parkinson – I can't even pronounce his first name because wizards always have such long and unusual names. He also knows some other people who all have their kids in school…"

"Read off all of their last names. Lucius Malfoy has a lot of connections – I wouldn't be surprised if all of Slytherin House is on there."

"Pucey, Greengrass, Nott, Zabini, Bole, Chevalier, Derrick…" Artemis wrote all of them down.

Foaly reached the end of the list. "That's all I have. I did a full scan of the entire school attendance list."

"All right. Thank you, Foaly."

"I hope to never see you again, Mud Boy," Foaly snarked.

"I hope to never see you again, either, because I know that if I do, it will not be for anything good," Artemis retorted.

A/N: By the way, I completely forgot to mention this. My former beta actually stopped replying about halfway through King of Serpents: Summer of Ice, and I've been working solo until about Chapter 5 of this story.

That being said, big fat kudos (which are healthier than cookies) to JohnLocke94 right now for being an awesome beta. He has been a wonderful help editing this story, whether for spelling/grammar errors or plot continuity, and I really appreciate it.

Extra:

Ten Tips from Artemis Fowl II about Lying:

1. Keep them simple. Simple lies are easy for others to believe and easy for you to keep track of.

2. Make up an extremely outrageous or sarcastic story that is so poorly thrown together it is quite obviously a lie first. It will make your actual lie seem dull and believable by comparison. If applicable, pretend to break down and that you have been coerced into confessing the truth before stating your actual lie. Most people would not expect two lies in a row.

3. Treat the interrogation as more of a conversation. Get involved, interact, and question the other party as if you are genuinely confused. It will reinforce your innocence. It will also allow you to gain information about what the other party already knows.

4. Get your facts straight. Surreptitiously pull as many facts from your questioner as possible to have a foundation to build your own story on.

5. Be too dumb to fool. Do not react to any insinuations except for the painfully obvious, in which case one should react in a righteous but not overly dramatic way.

6. Manipulate your questioners' feelings so that they feel extremely guilty for even suspecting you in the first place. That includes provoking their sympathy or sense of pity. Act angry, sad, or hurt at any accusations. If there are other people present, uninvolved bystanders included, make them your allies, so that your questioners feel pressured to leave you alone. If you are a female or happen to look like one, try crying as well (but do not sob, because that is fake and annoying.)

7. Tell the complete truth about something totally off-topic. Make this topic closely related to the current situation while not truly answering any questions at all. It will make you seem genuinely helpful, as if you really want to provide as much information as possible. Simultaneously, you will also be confusing your interrogator as he or she is trying to return to his or her former train of thought, buying you more time to consolidate your own story.

8. Pay attention to yourself carefully when you converse with others under normal circumstances. Practice repeating these actions when you are trying to lie. It will help you eliminate some behavorial tics of a liar, such as too much or too little eye contact, odd voice patterns and pitches, nervousness, and the like.

9. You must control your own lies, not the other way around. People who lie too much too often tend to develop paranoia and overanalyze others. Remember that everyone lies, but most only do so out of necessity and few have the mental capability to properly scheme and compulsively lie.

10. Don't try to lie to me. You won't win.