Birdwatcher
A/N: There are three things I want to note before getting started. First, an alternate version of this story has been posted before. I took it down because I felt I could've expanded the story a bit, which I have. Instead of a one-shot, this now has multiple chapters. Two, I drew inspiration from The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War by Ben Macintyre. Third, for any of you unaware, birdwatcher, the title, is British slang for spy.
Chapter 1
Tuesday, 5 April 2005
At midday, Hermione went to the Wagamama on Bedford Street and quickly devoured a chicken katsu curry. Despite her ravenous eating habits, a group of men in trouser suits were throwing her appreciative glances several tables away. She ignored the tossers, leaving before one of them had the gall to approach her. Apparating to Charing Cross Road, she entered the Leaky Cauldron, unseen by the Muggles who scurried past the nondescript exterior like rats scurrying in the gutter.
The dark and shabby pub was cramped with patrons, a rarity for your average Tuesday, including a hag who had a large plate of raw liver in front of her. She cackled evilly, slipping the jelly-like texture down her throat. Hermione made a wide berth around the crone, doing the same with the brooding goblins that lingered in one of the shadowy recesses, the nearby candles looping their inky black eyes like an eclipse. The smoke puffing from their pipes closely resembled the smokestacks that preyed over Great Britain during the Industrial Revolution. Navigating the maze of wobbly furniture, she rolled her eyes when a group of young Aurors wolf-whistled at her. They looked fresh out of the Auror Training Programme with the spots they had on their faces.
"All right there, love?" the stockiest of them asked, much to the delight of the idiots around him. "Fancy a pint?"
"You've got a bloody cheek," she muttered quietly.
Out the back, she tapped the brick that was three up and two across from the dustbin with her wand, stepping through the archway that appeared. Diagon Alley was already rife with activity, a large number of children like a traffic jam inside Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes who were too young to attend Hogwarts yet. Business continued to boom for the joke shop. When Hermione passed by one of the windows, she saw a fireworks display malfunctioning in the hands of belligerent siblings, the chimney pots atop the building ejecting a rainbow of sparks into the air. Obliviator Headquarters might have to be called to modify the memories of the Muggles who witnessed another one of Fred and George's wild inventions. It wouldn't be the first time they had done so.
Adjacent to this was Gringotts Wizarding Bank, sharing a similar design to the Old War Office building on Horse Guards Avenue. Both were shaped like a trapezoid in order to maximise usage of London's burdensome real estate market, the former an ancient banking buttress and the latter used by the Ministry of Defense for Her Majesty's Government. She greeted Florean Fortescue, Madam Malkin, and Ollivander warmly with a wave of her hand, following the cobblestones that ran crazy and crooked through the zoo of dilapidated shops, their peeling faces a stark contrast to the tidier façades that populated much of Muggle London.
Gloomy skies stalled overhead, the grey clouds aggressive and forbidding above her. So far, the Smoke had been subjected to rainy conditions, the forecast calling for more of it the next couple of days. But Hermione was rather fond of the wet weather, evidenced by the brolly swinging from her hand. She found it romantic in its own curious way, the silhouette of the clock tower eerie in the early-morning mist from Westminster Bridge. It was chilling to hear Big Ben chime from behind the collecting brume every hour.
"What's the craic?" a voice asked.
Hermione momentarily faltered, letting out a breath when she turned to see a group of friends entering Quality Quidditch Supplies. The bell tinkering against the door reminded her of the relationship she had with Seamus Finnigan from several years ago. He asked her the very same thing when they ran into each other just outside of the Danny Mann Pub in Killarney, Ireland. Their whirlwind romance ended as they were touring the Ring of Kerry. Along the one hundred and seventy-nine kilometre journey, Hermione acknowledged that Seamus was far more invested than she was. He didn't deserve the empty promises that spilled out of her whenever they made love, the gluey puddles of semen on her thighs robbing her of coherent thought. She should've told him from the beginning their relationship was only temporary, not meant to last for longer than was necessary. She wanted someone who was more mature, someone who was more responsible. Seamus was neither of these things and the deep abyss of sleep told her so, haunting the outer rims of her subconscious until she ended their affair. Last she heard, Seamus and his current girlfriend were expecting their first child together.
Upon returning to London, Hermione was employed by the Department of Mysteries, operating under the codename Whitehall Six so that foreign governments on the Continent were ignorant of the confidential research conducted there. The Whitehall Six cognomen was a slight to the Cambridge Five debacle the Muggles had been unaware of. They were a ring of spies recruited during their education at the University of Cambridge that passed vital information from the United Kingdom to the Soviet Union during World War II, including over sixteen thousand documents in the early 1940s. The Ministry of Magic refused to believe this type of espionage was possible within the magical community, proving that Muggles were inferior to their own prowess.
Her remarkable achievements quickly spread until she was recruited by the Secret Intelligence Service, more commonly known as MI6. In the Ministry of Magic, MI6 stood for Ministry Intelligence, Section 6 instead of Military Intelligence, Section 6 as it was known to their Muggle counterparts. This was quite a feat given that MI6 was notorious for turning away many talented Muggle-Borns, though such claims were vehemently refuted. As an agent handler, her responsibilities included running operatives that held legal status and those that didn't. The difference between them was the former operated under diplomatic protection and, thus, could not be prosecuted for espionage. They could be declared persona non grata and expelled from the country they were posted to. The latter, also called NOCs for non-official cover, had no official status, traveling via false names and fake papers obtained from the cobbler, a master of forgery.
It was hard work. She logged extensive hours, often staying until the candles on her desk disappeared amidst a messy residue of wax around them. The problem was the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Magical Russian Federation, the SVR MRF, was expelling those that held legal status and NOCs from their borders because of some deeply displaced paranoia. It was like an echo of the Great Terror that took place during the 1930s. At the time, it was Joseph Stalin's paranoia to blame when he sent political opponents of the Soviet Union to Gulag prison camps for treason against the Communist Party. Blood was most certainly on his hands for the hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, of lives lost.
Surreptitiously, Hermione cast the Disillusionment Charm over herself, slipping down the alley between Magical Menagerie and Rosa Lee Teabag as a sparrow flew overhead. Though her gaze wanted to wander over her shoulder, she resisted such a temptation. It was the first rule when evading surveillance: don't look behind you for a possible tail. It was seldom a secret that Russia had their own agent handlers who were running those that held legal status and sleeper agents, known as illegals, or nelegal in Russian, within the United Kingdom, reporting to the SVR MRF. The only thing keeping the Ministry of Magic from declaring persona non grata was identifying who was a diplomat and who was a resident spy. They were faceless and unknown, the Russian Embassy, referred to as the rezidentura, in Kensington Palace Gardens shrouding them so that they were safely in the black.
But there was evidence the SVR MRF was conducting a more covert operation directly under the noses of British intelligence. A little over a month ago, a reticent communication channel provided Hermione with the first page of what was titled the British Family Planning Initiative. In order to obtain the rest of the document, she had to abide by a specific set of instructions echoing techniques used in the Cold War.
Hermione had to show her willingness to proceed, dropping by the visitor's entrance to the Ministry of Magic on March first. Across from the pub and shabby offices near Whitehall, she had to transfigure St Edward's Crown, embossed near the top of the telephone box, and replace it with the Tudor Crown that had been used before the Queen chose to replace it in 1953. Her contact was to acknowledge this by changing the pinafore dress worn by the female dummy outside of St Mungo's from green to brown three days later. And before March fifteenth, Hermione had to mark one of the bricks to the right of the dustbin behind Rosa Lee Teabag with a piece of chalk that would signify where the British Family Planning Initiative would be hidden for her to take.
This was called a dead drop site: a secret location where materials could be left for another party to retrieve. Because Tom Riddle, Chief, or C, of MI6, was incriminated with this particular manuscript, it was incredibly dangerous for Hermione to meet her contact in person even though she desperately wanted to. For the past three weeks, she dutifully monitored the bricks in question, expecting a swift delivery. She was a little disappointed when the opposite occurred.
Was this a dangle? A dangle involved an agent or intelligence officer who pretended to be interested in defecting to another intelligence agency, hoping he or she was recruited for the purpose of collecting intelligence or spreading disinformation like falsehoods and rumors. Perhaps it was a playback, or fake intelligence. Espionage was a delicate game, requiring patience, stamina, and timing in order to be successful. And relationships borne from espionage were dictated by deception and manipulation. A valuable intelligence officer tended to wait in the shadows, wand drawn in preparation for the dangerous and threatening arrangement that loomed in the darkness. Caution was a necessity. Pigs, or traitors, were executed in the Death Chamber of the Department of Mysteries, forced through the veil. At least it was a more courteous death than a KGB firing squad shooting bullets into the back of your head.
Behind Rosa Lee Teabag, Hermione immediately scoured the aggregation of bricks there. The one with lasting chalk residue was dislodged, a covert but noticeable shift upon careful consideration. She removed it and found the inside of it hollow, save for a roll of parchment magically folded into the smallest of squares. A confirmation receipt had to be given in the form of chewing gum fastened to the brick's exterior, of which she easily took care of.
Harry Potter, a counterintelligence officer for the Second Main Directorate, the MI6 branch intended to thwart SVR MRF intelligence penetration, expressed interest when Hermione sent him an anonymous letter about the British Family Planning Initiative. They were to meet this coming Saturday at Rules, before Apparating to the operation clandestine premises, or OCP, for further discussion.
It was no secret the state of the community closely resembled that of a spy state, MI6 all but encouraging its intelligence officers to spy on their family and friends. It was treasonous to oppose the authority of C, and Tom Riddle knew where such opposition existed. He had eyes and ears everywhere, from the pretentious manors of the Sacred Twenty-Eight in Wiltshire to the derelict slums of Knockturn Alley in London. Not long ago, Hermione read the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. When Dante passed the River Styx, he noticed high towers off in the distance, describing them as fiery red mosques. This was how Hermione felt as a Muggle-Born in the current state of affairs, like her activities pertaining to MI6 were being scrutinized from a high watchtower that arose just beyond the horizon. And Tom Riddle stood by the window, his spider-like fingers drumming on the sill.
A/N: I hope you enjoyed. Thanks for reading.