Author's Notes: Once again, thank you to all the readers out there last week, who have boosted the total number of hits on this story to over 7,000 (okay, it was at 6,999 when I posted this chapter, so first person who reads this is hit #7,000). And a special thanks to all my reviewers.
ProfessorChris: Geoff may be a tough man, but he isn't a cruel man. And we'll get to the Pansy situation laster. Thanks for the support.
Pacificuser (from The Legend of Zelda: Land of My Dreams): Thanks for your support.
Okay, there were actually two references to Monty Python last week, both coming from the same sketch. The first was when Geoff guessed that his snowy owl, Merlin, was "pinin' for the fjords." The second was the Gryffindor password, "Invisible choir." Both of these come from the same, memorable Monty Python sketch. From the eigth episode of the series, they come from the "Dead Parrot Sketch," made famous by John Cleese and Michael Palin.
Well, now for a bit of a change of pace.
Chapter 15: The Army of the Living Dead
My Dearest Ginny,
I got your letter from Geoff and heard about what happened last Friday. I want to tell you, first of all, that I really miss you as well.
Harry was working on a reply to Ginny's letter when he saw Geoffrey and Gary approaching him from the staircase. He decided to put his letter aside for now, since he could tell that something big was going to be going down soon for the past few days.
"Harry, Voldemort has three Horcruxes left intact," Geoff began, "Today, we are going to reduce it to two."
Inside, Harry was both excited and worried at the same time. He was excited because once he found the Horcrux in question, he'd be that much closer to returning to some kind of a normal life. And he had Ginny waiting for him when it all was said and done. But he remembered the kind of security that Voldemort had put around the locket. The remaining Horcruxes were likely to be as well defended, if not better. And he wasn't looking forward to breaking those defenses. But he realized that he didn't really have a choice in the matter.
"Which Horcrux will it be?" Harry inquired as he stood up.
"We're going to stick close to home for this one," Geoff replied, "The orphanage that Voldemort grew up in is today's target."
"Harry, you and I will enter the orphanage, recover the Horcrux inside, and then get the bloody hell out of there," Gary informed as he and Harry began going over a plan of action. "That's the big picture. Here are the details."
--
Harry had apparated to a location near Vauxhall Road about two hours later. It was a back alley, and no one saw him appear. He also didn't look like Harry Potter now. Instead, he appeared to be a little bit shorter than he usually was and was dressed in the uniform of a Muggle building inspector, complete with an orange safety helmet for dealing with dangerous buildings. Geoff had given Harry a Polyjuice Potion with the local Muggle building inspector's hair in it. Geoff had also charmed the inspector into having a major headache today, meaning that he wouldn't show up with Harry in the same area and cause any trouble that the Ministry would almost certainly pick up on, which would lead to Voldemort learning what Harry was up to. Gary said that if everything went as planned, this operation would take no more than an hour. And he had an extra dose of the potion with him in case they did run into trouble. The goal was to make sure Harry was not seen out in the open as Harry Potter, and he soon saw why as he came out into the open, as there were several people wearing black robes with hoods.
They're looking for me, Harry realized, Just act like nothing is unusual and don't talk to them. He continued walking toward the orphanage, and finally found Gary waiting by his car, which was parked on the edge of the street, about a block away from the orphanage.
"Daniel, you made it," Harry called out, using the name Gary had given himself for this mission.
"Good to see you too, Mark," Gary called back, using the sick building inspector's name to refer to Harry, "Is the building near here?"
"Just a block away," Harry replied as he led the way to the orphanage.
Unlike his brother, who was a well-known figure among Death Eaters, Gary Gryffindor was practically unknown among their ranks. And it was this lack of a profile that allowed Gary to walk around without the need for a disguise, since he looked sufficiently different from his brother so that he would not be mistaken for him. And so he was walking around wearing a long, black trench coat without worrying about the few black hooded figures that were moving around the area.
Harry had a funny feeling that he knew who these hooded figures were. "The ones in the black robes and hoods," he remarked quietly to Gary as they walked across the street to the orphanage, "They're Death Eaters, aren't they?"
"Assume that everyone is," was all Gary replied with, "You will have to speak with the man standing in front of the door there. His name is Nathan."
"Mark" nodded as he arrived at the front of the orphanage and shook Nathan's hand. "Good afternoon, Nathan," Harry greeted.
"Good afternoon, Mark," Nathan replied as the handshake ended and looked at "Daniel," "You have someone who wants to look at the building here?"
"Yeah, this is Daniel," Harry affirmed as he gestured back to Gary, who was now shaking Nathan's hand, "He is a representative of a company that's interested in doing the demolition work on this property."
"I thought that contract was already wrapped up, but I suppose if you got the proper paperwork, you can show him around the place," Nathan mused.
Harry nodded as he pulled a yellow sheet of paper from his pocket and handed it to Nathan, who looked at it for a little more than a minute. Nodding his head, he handed it back to Harry. "Alright, everything appears to be in order here. Just be careful in there. This building is old," he warned.
"Right," Harry replied as he and Gary walked into the orphanage and had the door closed behind them. Harry looked around and saw that they were alone. This being the case, Harry pulled his wand out of another pocket in his clothing.
"Harry, put up a magic-hiding barrier over this building," Gary ordered, "Than a sound-blocking barrier. I want this operation to go undisturbed as much as possible."
Harry nodded, "Protego totalum," he said as he pointed his wand at the walls around him and turned a full circle, causing the spell on the entire building. He then repeated the process with the Muffliato spell, thus preventing any sounds from inside the building from going outside.
"Alright, we're hidden from detection, at least until we leave," Harry informed.
"Right, time to start looking for a Horcrux," Gary remarked as he reached into his coat and pulled out his M-16 assault rifle. It was the first time Harry had seen it since the locket Horcrux was destroyed, but now it had an M-203 grenade launcher attached underneath the barrel of the rifle. "Can you feel the presence of a Horcrux?" he inquired as he checked to see that both the rifle and the grenade launcher were loaded correctly.
Harry closed his eyes and tried to remember how he felt when the locket was within his sight. He remembered the foreboding feeling that came over him and then attempted to see if this place had a similar feeling. "It's here," Harry affirmed after about a minute, "But it's very faint."
"Lets try to get closer to it," Gary ordered as he followed Harry, "Try to follow the path that makes the presence stronger, Harry."
Harry nodded as he moved slowly into the building, the sense of foreboding he was looking for becoming stronger as he went along. As he passed a certain point on the ground floor, he realized that the feeling was starting to wane. He looked around, but there were no items around him.
"It must be on a different floor," Harry surmised.
"Lets move upstairs," Gary ordered as Harry led the way up the nearby staircase. Indeed, the feeling was stronger now. They climbed the stone stairs to the second landing. At this point, Harry no longer needed to search for where the Horcrux was.
"I've been here before," he explained to Gary, "Dumbledore brought me here through his memories. He recruited Tom Riddle to Hogwarts. Riddle's room was on this floor."
"Which one?" Gary inquired.
Harry went back through his memory of Dumbledore's first meeting with the man who would become Lord Voldemort. "It's the first door in a long corridor off the second landing," Harry remembered.
Gary immediately looked down the long corridor and found the first door. He aimed his rifle at the door, staring at it intently, almost as if expecting something terrible to attack himself and Harry from it. "I'll take the lead," he said as he moved to the door and tapped the door handle briefly. Satisfied that the door wasn't trapped, he gripped the doorknob tightly with his left hand. Slowly, he turned the doorknob until it would turn no further. At this point, he pushed the door open quickly and returned his left hand to supporting his gun. He took one step into the room and quickly scanned its interior, checking for threats inside. He was putting himself at risk for Harry's sake, and Harry couldn't help but be embarrassed that he always got some kind of preferential treatment.
"Clear," Gary announced after several seconds, "Anything in here look familiar, Harry?"
Harry walked into the room and he was suddenly back in a place he hadn't been comfortable with when Dumbledore was with him. Here it was, all over again. Ahead of him, Harry saw the iron bedstead, the gray blankets still there, though their color had dulled with time. He looked to his side and saw the old wardrobe, though now it seemed that the ravages of time were starting to take their toll. The hinges of the wardrobe were now very rusty and Harry doubted if he could simply swing the doors open. He figured he'd have to break them off entirely. "It hasn't changed at all," he remarked as he looked around at the room where such evil ambition was born so many years ago, "It's eerie."
"I can only imagine," Gary replied, continuing to hold his rifle at the ready, "What was that meeting between Dumbledore and Voldemort like?"
Harry did not want to dwell on this topic, but didn't want to disappoint Gary. "You could already tell he was going down the wrong road," he answered, "His mother had just lost the will to live by the time he was born. He made another boy's rabbit hang himself once."
"You don't say," Gary replied, "That's not a good sign."
"And he just intimidated the other kids," Harry continued, "He talked about hurting them and even stole from them. He already had his magic powers under a good amount of control. Dumbledore said he was going to keep a good watch over him, but it obviously wasn't enough."
"I know I didn't see all that you saw," Gary began as he relaxed his arms and let his rifle drop to his side, "But from what you're telling me, I might just have killed the kid before he grew into a monster. If the Horcrux is in here, this is way too easy. Where are the traps? Where are the dark arts?"
"Are you complaining about that?" Harry inquired.
"No, I'm just saying it should be better defended than this," Gary clarified, "I'm not complaining about it, but this is just way too easy if a Horcrux is actually here. It is here, isn't it?"
Harry could feel that sense of foreboding, and this time it was a very strong feeling. "Yeah, it's here," Harry affirmed as he began moving around the room, "There aren't many hiding places here for it, though. Maybe it's hidden inside one of the walls."
"If that's the case, we may be here for a while," Gary commented.
As Harry moved farther into the room, he realized that the feeling he was getting from the Horcrux was actually getting fainter, not stronger. He turned around and walked slowly back to the entrance of the room and it got stronger again, but it started to fade once he walked past the wardrobe. Harry noticed this and walked up to the wardrobe itself. Indeed, the foreboding feeling he had was now stronger than ever.
"It must be in here," he called as he attempted to open the wardrobe doors.
"No, don't!" Gary warned as he pushed Harry away from the doors, "It must be trapped. I'll get it open."
"We may have to break the hinges off," Harry pointed out, "They're quite rusty."
"Nothing a good tug can't accomplish," Gary replied as he pulled a small length of rope from his coat pocket and tied one end around the handle of the right door of the wardrobe. He walked as far away and to the wardrobe's side as he could with the length of rope and waved Harry over to stand behind him. Once he did so, Gary took a deep breath and gave the rope a strong tug.
Indeed, the hinges were too rusty. Instead of opening, Gary ended up causing both hinges on the door to break apart and the door itself flew past Gary and hit the wall behind him. He glanced at the door as it flew by him, then quickly looked back at the wardrobe again.
"Nothing," he stated, perplexed by this turn of events, "Maybe the other door is trapped." He then repeated the entire process with the left door. And the exact same results ensued. The door of the wardrobe flew to the wall behind them, but nothing inside the wardrobe blew up. No creatures appeared, no alarms went off.
"Now I'm starting to agree with you," Harry commented as Gary walked in front of the now open wardrobe, "This is way too easy."
Gary waved the barrel of his rifle around inside the wardrobe, testing for any other traps, but found none. He shook his head as Harry walked over to him. "Something's wrong here," Gary said, "I don't like this."
Harry looked inside the wardrobe and found only one thing inside. It was a small cardboard box on the top shelf of the wardrobe. "That box," Harry remarked, "Riddle kept the items he took from the other children in it. They were his trophies. But Dumbledore made him return what he had taken."
"Looks like theft is a tough habit for him to break," Gary replied, his hands tight on his rifle, "You think the Horcrux is in that box?"
"It has to be," Harry realized as he pulled the box down from the shelf. He and Gary walked over to the bed and Harry placed the box down and opened its top. Inside, there was only one item. And both men realized what it was immediately.
"Hufflepuff's Cup," Harry whispered as he removed the small, gold cup with two finely wrought handles from the box and felt a wave of dread wash over him as he touched it, "This is it. He murdered Hepzibah Smith for this cup, and was able to place the blame on her House Elf. That was shortly after he left Hogwarts."
"Is it a Horcrux?" Gary asked intently.
"Yes, it is," Harry replied immediately as he gave the item to Gary to hide while they left the house. Harry then checked his wristwatch for the time. "We've got 13 minutes until the Polyjuice Potion wears off," he informed Gary.
"Plenty of time," Gary assured.
Suddenly, a dark vortex appeared in front of the door that was the only way out of the room. Harry saw it first. "What the bloody hell is that?" he asked loudly.
Gary looked back and immediately pushed Harry into the far corner of the room upon seeing the vortex. "Damn! I knew it was too easy!" he shouted as he aimed his rifle at the vortex, "It's a portal! Something's coming through!"
Just seconds later, a creature that Harry recognized as a river troll appeared from the portal. The beast was tall enough to nearly break through the ceiling. He was carrying a wooden club that was smaller than those that Harry had seen other trolls carrying, but would probably serve him better in this cramped space. He roared as he saw the two thieves and turned toward them.
"Mother of God!" Gary shouted as he aimed a little higher than normal and moved his right hand forward to the trigger on the grenade launcher. Knowing that if the troll were too close to that the grenade explosion would probably kill both of them instead of the troll, Gary pulled the trigger immediately.
The launcher gave a loud dum sound as it launched the explosive round from its chamber. The M-203 grenade launcher was accurate to a point target out to 492 feet, so Gary had no problem hitting a troll from about 12 feet away. However, if this were a Muggle weapon, the grenade's blast radius would probably kill Gary, and perhaps Harry as well, from that close of a range. However, one of the magical enhancements that Gary was able to do to the grenade rounds he had was that their blast radii were greatly reduced so that it was safe to firm them as close as ten feet away without worry. The grenade struck the troll only a fraction of a second after it was fired and hit him square in the chest. The explosion was deafening to everyone inside the room and caused the troll to back up into the wall behind him in order to recover from the blast.
"Harry! Keep him from moving toward us!" Gary shouted as he moved the slide on the launcher forward, automatically ejecting the spent 40mm round.
Harry moved in front of Gary and saw that the troll was beginning to recover from this first blast and was getting ready to move toward them again. "Expulso!" he shouted as he pointed at the troll with his wand. A red trail went out from the tip of his wand and struck the troll in his left shoulder. A small explosion erupted from that part of the troll's body, but all it did was stop the troll's forward movement for a half-second. River trolls were extremely tough creatures to kill.
"Expulso!" Harry yelled again. This explosion hit the troll on his right hip, but was smaller than the first one, and it only stopped the troll for a brief moment.
But as Harry heard another loud dum, he knew that was all he needed to do. Gary's second grenade hit the troll in the upper chest. The explosion forced the troll back against the wall again, but did not seem to damage it at all.
"Damn! I missed!" Gary howled as he ejected the second round from the launcher, "Aim for the head!"
Harry complied. "Expulso!" he yelled as he aimed his wand at the head of the troll, who was now starting to move toward the two again. This explosion was the smallest yet; it had no more force than five firecrackers going off at once. However, Harry saw what Gary meant by saying aim at the head. It was the only unarmored portion of the troll's body. The explosion hit the troll near his left eye, which caused him to reel slightly from the blow. However, Harry knew that he couldn't fire another exploding spell at the troll; the law of diminishing returns had taken full effect by this point and Harry knew it.
As Harry searched his mind for another spell that would slow down the troll, Gary relieved him of the search with his third grenade. This time, the grenade struck the troll right in the head, which disappeared in a cloud of skin, bone, blood, and brain with the grenade's explosion. The troll's headless body took one last step, then fell forward and stopped moving.
Both Harry and Gary were breathing heavily as the stood where they were for a few more seconds. Finally, Gary stood up straight and began loading another grenade round into his launcher. "That was still too easy," he remarked as the third grenade round dropped to the floor and he reached into his coat for a fourth.
"Will you please stop saying that?" Harry pleaded as he stood up and brushed off his clothes, "It's like you want more things like that to happen to us."
"I don't, trust me," Gary assured as he walked toward the door of the bedroom, "We got what we came for; lets get out of HERE!" The last word came out as a shout of panic and was accompanied by the sound of Gary's M-16 being fired.
Harry ran over to the door to see what had happened and didn't like what he saw. "Inferi!" he shouted as he saw at least a dozen of the reanimated corpses shambling toward him. Some were missing an arm and most had no head, but they seemed to be able to sense the presence of the living and seemed to barely notice the bullets that were cutting through multiple bodies, sending flesh and bone flying everywhere.
"The bullets aren't working!" Harry shouted at Gary.
"I can see that!" Gary replied, not bothering looking at Harry while he kept shooting, "But I only got two grenades left, and I have a feeling that there are more of these things downstairs waiting for us. Use some fire spells or something! We need to get through these things!"
Harry nodded as he moved out into the hallway and aimed his wand at the closest inferus. "Incendio!" he shouted as a red line shot out of his wand and hit the target, causing the body to immediately catch fire. The inferus took another few steps toward Gary, and then fell to the ground and stopped moving after a couple of spasms. But there were still more coming at them.
Harry let a second fire spell fly while Gary stopped shooting to reload his rifle, which had exhausted its first 30-round magazine. "We can't just stand here and kill them all," Gary pointed out as he finished loading the new magazine, "And we can't go out the front door, or else someone is going to see what's going on. There's no one at the back door, though. We'll get out that way." Gary then took the cup out of his coat and tossed it to Harry. "Just make sure you get out of here, Harry!" he shouted as he went back to shooting, "Get down the staircase and get out the back door!"
"Okay!" Harry shouted as he fired another spell at the inferi while Gary tore through another magazine. Once those 30 rounds were all used up, Gary ran forward into the closest inferus and gave it a huge hit with his right shoulder. The inferus went flying backward into two others behind it, knocking all three out of commission temporarily.
"GO!" Gary bellowed as he used the butt of his rifle to knock another inferus to the ground. Meanwhile, Harry ran past him and the remaining inferi and onto the staircase. As he was running down, however, he suddenly saw another large group of inferi, at least two dozen that Harry could see, waiting on the ground floor.
"Gary! We're trapped!" Harry called out as he aimed his wand at the group of inferi on the ground floor, "Flagratius!"
An orange jet flew out to a body in the middle of the group at the bottom of the stairs. This caused the inferi to start coming up toward Harry, but the Flagrante Curse cast on the inferus caused a small explosion to be emitted from it, causing about six or seven of the bodies to go up in flames immediately.
Gary moved down the stairs quickly to where Harry was standing. "Get down!" he ordered. Harry complied immediately and Gary fired a grenade into the middle of the group of inferi at the bottom of the staircase.
The explosion caused all the inferi within ten feet of it to go flying in all directions and caused some to lose multiple limbs. Harry didn't need to be told what to do at this point. He ran down the stairs in order to take advantage of the momentary lull in the enemy presence. Gary followed closely behind him, reloading the grenade launcher with his final round.
"Just keep moving ahead," Gary ordered, "Don't stop until you reach that back door! If something gets in your way, just shove it away from you."
"Right!" Harry shouted back as they reached the bottom of the stairs and turned toward the back of the orphanage. Harry had seen where the back door was when he was here in Dumbledore's memory, but he couldn't see it. The reason was that at least another three dozen inferi now stood between the two men and freedom. They began shuffling toward Harry slowly, while those who could were now recovering around them.
Gary quickly aimed and fired his last grenade ahead of him, scattering enough bodies for Harry to just make out the back door now. He starting running without being told to by Gary, but slowed down when he realized Gary wasn't running with him. He glanced back at the younger Gryffindor brother.
"What are you waiting for!?" Gary bellowed as he took aim at the inferi that were still standing, "Go! I'll get through once you make it through!"
Harry nodded quickly as he looked back toward the door. He started running again, but now the path that was clear was blocked by a lone inferus. Remembering what Gary had told him, Harry lowered his right shoulder and hit the animated corpse right in the chest, causing the body to fly back a few feet and fall on its back. The way clear, Harry reached the back door and waited.
Gary finished off his current magazine and started running to Harry's position. He almost got through the inferi in his way when he was grabbed from behind, where he could not attack the corpse.
"Oh! Bloody hell!" Gary bellowed as he tried to wrench himself free of the inferus's grasp, but he knew it was no use. He was a dead man.
Harry knew that Gary would have ordered him to leave the house and to return to Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place without him. And Harry knew that Geoff would understand why he had lost his brother. But Harry wasn't going to do that. Too many people have already died for me, he reasoned to himself, I'm not letting Gary do the same.
Harry aimed carefully at the inferus who had grabbed Gary, which was now in Harry's field of vision. "Flagrante!" he shouted.
The jet of fire struck the inferus, but it spread quickly. Gary was able to throw the body off of his back, but his coat had caught fire. As he continued running toward the door, he tried to use his hands to pat the fires out of existence with little success, as the air rushing over them from his running fanned them. When he reached the door, he used the wall next to it to smother the fires before they could do any real damage.
"Come on, lets get out of here!" he commented to Harry.
"Put your gun away," Harry ordered. Gary was still holding his rifle in his right hand.
"Put your wand away," Gary retorted as he clipped his rifle to the inside of his coat, hiding it from view.
Harry slipped his wand into a pocket and checked his watch again. They were running out of time.
"Close the door behind us immediately once we exit the house," Gary said.
Harry opened the door and left the orphanage, breaking the spells that had been cast over it. Gary left as well, and then Harry shut the door behind them. As he did this, a police officer who was about as tall as Harry usually was saw him slam the door. Since this seemed a bit suspicious, the officer walked over to the two men.
"What's all this then?" the officer inquired.
Oh no, not this, Harry thought, We don't have time for this.
"Officer, I was just taking Daniel here through this building," Harry answered the officer's inquiry, "He represents a company interested in demolishing this orphanage."
"Do you have a work order for that?" the officer asked.
Harry sighed, feigning annoyance at being disrupted from his regular routine. "Of course I do," he replied as he reached into his pocket and pulled out the yellow sheet of paper from his pocket and gave it to the police officer. As he looked at it, Gary glanced at his pocket watch and grimaced. Their first hour was almost up.
The officer handed the paper back to Harry. "Seems to be in order," he concluded, "You just looked a bit suspicious leaving that building as you did. It thought you may have committed burglary."
Well, we just did, actually, Harry thought to himself with slight amusement.
"Sorry officer," Gary apologized, "But I thought for a moment there that the building was about to come down on top of us."
The policeman nodded as he glanced up at the orphanage. "This orphanage has been around for a long, long time, you know," he remarked, "As long as I've been alive, at least. It's sad, really, that we need such a place when parents start having children that they have no means to take care of."
Harry nodded in response. "Sure is depressing, officer," he agreed.
"Well, sorry to disturb you, gentlemen," the officer apologized, "Have a nice day, if you can." He glanced up to the cloudy sky. "It seems like it has been forever since I last saw the sun," he finished as he walked off.
"Drink it, now!" Gary whispered to Harry.
Harry was already two steps ahead of him. He had already uncorked the vial of Polyjuice Potion he was carrying around in his pocket and drank it in one quick gulp, then put the vial back in his pocket. The entire process took six seconds to complete and guaranteed that Harry's cover would not be blown.
"That was close," Harry remarked.
"We need to speak to the man at the front door again," Gary reminded.
Harry nodded as he and Gary walked around to the front of the orphanage. Nathan was surprised to see them outside the orphanage without using the front door again. "Mark, how did you get back outside?" he asked Harry.
"Used the back door," Harry replied.
Nathan nodded. "We need to get someone to watch that thing," he commented, "So, is your friend's company going to submit a bid?"
"We'll have to wait and see about that," Gary answered, "This is one of several possible projects our company is looking at right now. I'll give my analysis on this building to my supervisor."
"Excellent," Nathan replied, "Well, good day to you both."
"Likewise," Harry responded. He and Gary then walked away from the orphanage toward where Gary had parked his car earlier.
"What you did back there was reckless," Gary remarked, "You should have left me behind. Thanks."
Harry smiled. "I don't want anyone else to die for my sake," he explained, "I've already lost count of all those who have. My parents, Sirius, Dumbledore . . . no more."
"Excuse me," a cold voice asked from behind them after they had crossed the street, "May I have a word with you?"
The both of them turned and saw a man wearing a black robe. He was also wearing a black hood, which hid his face from view. Harry knew this man had to be a Death Eater.
"You wished to speak with us, sir?" Gary asked innocently.
The hooded man gazed at Gary for a moment. "I'm sorry, I mistook you for someone else," the man explained, "My mistake."
"That's quite alright," Gary assured, "It can happen to anyone."
"Yes," the man agreed, "Sorry to bother you." He then turned and walked away.
"He had to be a Death Eater," Harry commented quietly as they got back on their way again.
"He must have mistaken me for my brother," Gary concluded, "Probably wanted the glory of being the one who destroyed the infamous Geoffrey Godric Gryffindor. That fool, my brother would have killed him before he could have . . . oh, come on!"
Harry looked and saw that the same police officer from before was now writing a violation ticket for the car he was standing next to, which was Gary's car. "You can't be serious," he remarked with a smile, "Daniel, you illegally parked."
The officer glanced up at the voices. He smiled upon seeing them. "Gentlemen, good to meet you again," he greeted as he walked up to the two, "I am assuming this automobile belongs to at least one of you."
"I'm not illegally parked!" Gary claimed incredulously, "There's no sign here!"
"You're next to a fire hydrant," the officer pointed out.
Gary looked at the hydrant in question. "I haven't obstructed access to it!" he replied, "Look! You can walk between the cars here to get to it." He demonstrated as much.
"Daniel, I'm sorry, but you'll have to deal with this on your own," Harry remarked to Gary, "I need to get back to my office."
Harry walked away to the back alley where he had apparated to at the start of this mission. Once there, he apparated back to Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place.
--
About a half hour later, Gary entered Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place through the front door and walked downstairs into the dining room. Geoff and Harry, who was now wearing his regular wizard robes though he had yet to revert to his usual self, were waiting for him. Hufflepuff's cup was standing on the table in front of Harry.
"Geoff, be a good brother and loan me two Galleons, please?" Gary requested.
Geoff and Harry laughed. "Couldn't get out of that parking ticket, could you?" Geoff asked with a smile as he reached into his pocket and pulled out two gold coins. "Don't bother paying me back those ten pounds, Gary," he informed his brother as he tossed the coins to his brother, who snatched them out of the air.
"Well, now that you're back Gary, we can celebrate this successful mission properly," Geoff remarked as he stood up and pulled out three bottles of beer from behind a counter, "Your favorite kind of beer for a job well done. But first, Harry, please destroy that abominable Horcrux for us."
Harry nodded as he pulled out his wand and pointed it at the cup which had gotten Hepzibah Smith killed and her House Elf wrongly punished for Voldemort's actions. He took a deep breath before he finally said, "Avada Kedavra."
A flash of green light came out of the tip of Harry's wand and struck the cup. A chilling scream came from the cup, then was silenced. Once the scream ended, one of the handles of the cup fell off of it and clattered onto the table.
"Four down, two to go," Gary remarked as he walked over to his brother, "That was not fun, though."
"Harry told me everything," Geoff assured, "Let me put it this way, Gary. You won't have to go after the next Horcrux when we find it. Instead, you can resume your search for Greyback."
Gary game Geoff a small grin. "Sounds good to me," he replied as he took a beer out of his brother's hand, "Now, lets toast."
"Harry, come on and grab your drink," Geoff called.
"But I'm underage," Harry responded, though he got up and took another beer from Geoff's hand anyway.
"You just fought off a small army of the undead," Geoff argued, "You've earned it. Now, here's a toast to the fulfillment of the destruction of evil." He then raised his bottle into the air in front of him.
"Here," Harry and Gary said together as they did the same. Then all three drank to their success.
--
Author's Notes: I was going for a bit of Resident Evil and The House of the Dead in this chapter. I don't know if it came off well.
That's all until next week. Until then, read, review and enjoy.