- Chapter Nine -
The Five Lords
The Ford Anglia flew steadily and calmly above the clouds, its monotonous whistle beginning to lull Harry to sleep after half an hour of smooth flight, and he leaned against the cold glass of the side window and agreed that of all the ways and means of flying he had tried, Mr Weasley's old car was the most comfortable. He was very fond of the broom, true, but after a few hours of constant broom-riding one's legs grew numb, and one felt the effects of it a good deal the next day, whenever one sat down... In the case of hippogriffs, the flapping wing was a constant nuisance to the legs, not to mention the tendency to slide forward on the animal's neck when it was diving. The situation was somewhat better with a thestral, but sitting on it without being able to see what was keeping you in the air made an otherwise pleasant and fast flight a very staggering experience. When one was being carried by a phoenix, one just seemed like a weightless trailer that the swan-sized bird can swing around as it pleases, and Sirius' flying motorbike is something he'd rather not think about.
Sirius...
It had been a very long time since he had thought of his ill-fated godfather, and for a moment he felt a pang of shame. What would he say if he knew what was troubling Harry? Harry could ask him what it feels like to have your own blood be the cause of your death...
No, he must not think of it like that, he reminded himself angrily. Surely Al hadn't done it on purpose, he hadn't meant to kill his father, he could see the terrible guilt that had been eating away at him ever since. He knew the feeling, he had seen it in his own reflection just enough times to know it immediately in Al. A tormenting emptiness, the irreplaceable absence of something he had torn out of himself and would give anything to get back...
'Are you feeling alright?'
Ron's voice pulled him out of his reverie. Ron was gripping the steering wheel, but looking at him, frowning.
'Why wouldn't I?' Harry asked, trying to keep a straight face.
'For a moment it was like... I know what you're like when you make that face,' Ront shrugged, turning back to stare at the black sky. 'But everything will be all right. We're going to win this time.'
'You think so, Weasley?'
Harry turned at the sound; Prosper came to himself, and again shot a scornful, contemptuous glance at everyone. Only his tired eyes and the bloodstains on his cheeks hinted at the encounter with the nundu.
'Ah, are you feeling better?' asked Ron with feigned cheerfulness. 'What a shame...'
'You blew our best chance,' the wizard growled, leaning forward to Harry, who was trying to get as far away from him as the side of the car would allow. 'Why did you save me?'
'What?' Harry looked at him, thinking he had misunderstood the question.
'You should have let it kill me! You should have let me...!'
'Prosper, calm down! You don't know what you're saying,' Svetich snapped, losing his temper. He was more angry than before when he tried to restrain the Auror, perhaps because Prosper was also more on the edge than ever.
'You think I don't know? Who was the one who found out what was going on behind the scenes? Who came to you? Whose plan was this whole operation?!' he raged incessantly, and when he got no answer, he leaned further forward between the two seats and got right into Harry's face, who drew his wand.
'Why do you think I rushed straight to the grave, you idiot?' Prosper continued, shouting. 'If the nundu had killed me, we'd have dealt with the wand, and with it all the bastards in Nurmengard!'
Ron looked ahead, but Harry saw the stunned incomprehension reflected in his face. He, too, thought it was a joke and that Prosper wasn't serious, but the fierce determination in his eyes made it all clear.
'Stop looking at me as if you don't understand what I'm talking about!' bellowed the Italian. 'I got it straight from your head, I know it's true!'
Harry froze; what had Prosper seen in his mind before Al had pushed him out? Was it possible he had caught something of the future, or had he just glimpsed at some stray thoughts?
'What is he talking about, Harry?' asked Neville. Beside him, Seamus and Dean didn't dare say a word, just watched Prosper huffing like a bull.
'Never mind...' whispered Harry.
'Of course, never mind! Wretched...'
They were still staring at each other, Harry with his wand out, Prosper with flaring nostrils and bulging veins on his forehead. Would this man have died to destroy Nurmengard? Harry realised that he had misjudged the Auror greatly. He still didn't like him one bit, but it was shocking to him that Prosper thought exactly the same as his own future son, Albus. The problem was that neither of them cared that they were sending thousands of people to their deaths by sacrificing themselves...
'Prosper, sit down now,' said Svetich at last, this time quietly asking the Italian in hopes he'll listen to kinder words.
Prosper wished Harry one last time, without a word, the most horrible torment, and then fell back into the seat, shoving Neville and Seamus roughly as they tried to move away from the Auror.
As time passed, and they moved steadily northeast, the night lightened - from pitch black to ink blue, then dark violet blue. Harry remembered what Hermione had told him in Nurmengard: it was always light this far north in the summer months. The further north you hike, the longer it is daylight in summer and dark at night in winter. On the island of Grindelwald, there was only a transitional period of a month or two in autumn and spring, when the sun rose in the morning and set at night, and for Harry this was almost as oppressive and stressful as the constant smell of blood or the freezing cold. It was the middle of the night now - half-past twelve when Harry glanced at his watch - but the horizon was already half-light.
They didn't talk much because of the depressed mood, caused mainly by Prosper's mere presence, but Seamus and Dean, who hadn't seen Harry and Ron since the Nurmengard prisoner release, were curious to know what had happened to them in the past few months. Harry realised that they'd done virtually nothing since then, keeping themselves busy with fictitious investigations and research into a cure for werewolf disease, and leaving Mr Weasley to deal with the more important matter of the Fourth Tower. The only excuse they could have given was that Mrs Weasley had vigorously forbidden them any private operations - including one like this - but the truth was that they wanted to enjoy peace and quiet. But that was impossible, Harry now realised, only Ginny and Hermione refused to accept it...
'While we are at questions and answers,' said Ron, after he had risen high enough for a fishing boat not to see them, 'can you tell us how your eyes have healed?'
In the rear-view mirror, he looked at Dean's face, who now lifted his head.
'Your brother didn't tell you?' the boy asked back, wondering.
'My brother?'
'Yes, George. He did the eyes for me. They're like Professor Moody's, only better! I didn't want to be Mad-Eye Thomas, so I asked your brother to somehow make them smaller. They're quite lifelike, aren't they?'
They were perfectly lifelike, Harry observed. George Weasley seems to be able to enter into the field of healing with the Wizard Wheezes, as quite a few wizards have lost parts of their bodies to some kind of curse gone wrong or a duel gone bad - including George's own ear, which he replaced with a lifelike extendable ear.
'And tell me,' Neville said hesitantly, 'can you also see through the walls and...'
'Clothes?' Dean finished instead, grinning. 'George Weasley made the eyes. Do I really need to reply?'
Harry, Ron, Seamus and Neville had a good laugh about it, and Harry was genuinely glad that the boy who had been injured during the prisoner release did not go blind for ever. To this day, he shudders at the sight of a wounded Dean with a bleeding face. He hoped that this time the break-in would not result in such injuries, or something worse...
'Why did you want to come?'
The question had escaped Harry's lips before he could contain himself. He looked in the mirror at the faces of his three old roommates.
'Why did you?' asked Neville back. Ron growled.
'We were bored...' he replied airily, and glared at Harry.
'I'm here for revenge,' Dean said quietly, staring at his knees with his spare eyes. 'I would have been picked as a chaser for the Tutshill Tornados replacement team... but the injury had put that on the back burner. You can't play Quidditch with an artificial eye. That faceless who blinded me took my future.'
Harry froze. Ron, Neville and Seamus just nodded sympathetically, but none of them felt what Harry was feeling at the moment. Dean had his future taken away... Just like his and his unborn son's. Their lives would never be what they wanted them to be...
'What about you, Seamus?' Ron asked, looking back for a moment.
'I owe Dean for saving Parvati's life. He was protecting her when the curse hit him.'
'I told you not to come for that!' snapped Dean. 'You don't owe me anything, Parvati would have done the same for me!'
Seamus just nodded.
'My best friend saves my girlfriend's life... Give me a better reason to come!'
Harry waited for Neville to say something, but the boy was silent, staring into the night. Seamus nudged the boy's shoulder and he gave a hum.
'Neville?'
Still silent, he leaned his forehead against the damp window. Harry thought he wasn't going to say anything, but finally he did:
'I don't want it to go back to the way it was... To have a war. I'm sick of it,' he whispered, shrugging his shoulders, but Harry saw a strange anger in his eyes. 'We barely defeated the Deatheaters, now there are these Faceless. This will never end. Not as long as the Fourth Tower exists.'
'Mr Longbottom, what is this Fourth Tower that you are talking about?' Svetich asked unexpectedly.
Neville looked up suddenly, eyes wide with horror at what he might have said, but Harry wasn't worried; it meant nothing if Svetich knew their real name.
'The inner circle,' Ron explained, 'they call themselves the Fourth Tower.'
'You forgot to tell us this...' Rolf muttered, but no one paid him any attention. Harry cleared his throat.
'The Fourth Tower has a lot of Lords, Neville. We'll be lucky if we can catch the Nameless...'
'No!' said the boy in an unusually firm voice. 'No, Harry. We must not let someone take the place of the Nameless, as they did with Voldemort. Once we start, we can't stop until we fully succeed! The entire Fourth Tower must be destroyed.'
His words were met with silence, even the grim Prosper said nothing, but he was the only one who smiled faintly.
Harry didn't know what to say to that. Neville was undoubtedly right - if the Nameless failed, another lord or lady would soon take his place, and perhaps pick up where his predecessor had left off. But how many more enemies might they face? Harry felt at that moment that the ordeal before him was as endless as the sea over which they flew. Nowhere a safe shore, nowhere a beacon to guide them. No help, only the insurmountable obstacle.
'Are we far away?' asked Seamus, when they had been on the road for hours.
In the meantime, Dean and Neville were both asleep; Neville, snoring in his sleep, fell on Prosper's shoulder, and the Auror gave him a big shove. Neville, snoring, rolled over onto the other side - this time Dean - and slept on.
Ron shrugged.
'I have no idea how far it is.'
Seamus was not reassured, he leaned forward between the two front seats and stared into the driver's face, as Prosper had earlier into Harry's.
'And do you know if we are going in the right direction at all?' he growled. 'Or should we prepare ourselves for the possibility of ending up in Greenland?'
'Greenland is to the north-west,' said Rolf Scamander, who had been silent all this time. 'And we are heading north-east. Otherwise we know exactly where we're going...' He took a compass out of his pocket and held it up for the people in the back to see.
Seamus visibly calmed down and settled back in his seat.
'You've been to Nurmengard, haven't you?' he asked Rolf.
'Once or twice,' he answered tersely, without looking back.
'Why would anyone go there voluntarily?'
Rolf sighed heavily before answering, as if he was fed up with the questioning.
'My grandfather and I were here on a magical beast research expedition.'
'A friend of ours has also been on an expedition to the island before...' interjected Harry, thinking of Luna. Rolf nodded with a hum.
'So what creatures did you find?' came another question, this time from Ron, who blinked nervously.
Harry imagined that his friend's mind was now filled with images of all sorts of furry, eight-legged creatures. Of course he was anxious, he thought, Ron hadn't been outside the walls before, it was just that Harry always forgot that because of the Selwyns.
'There are many kinds of beasts in Nurmengard, and it is better not to meet any of them.' That was Rolf's answer, and his tone made it clear that he considered the conversation closed for the time being. The others had taken the hint, and from then on neither Seamus, nor Dean, nor the half-asleep mumbling Neville ("Are we there yet?") spoke to Rolf.
Harry watched the young man with the glasses out of the corner of his eye. Of the motley trio, he found him the most mysterious. Svetich was always matter-of-fact and plain-spoken, and Prosper, with his awful manners and looks, was just a wordly-wised, prejudiced Auror who couldn't stand dark sorcerers. But he didn't know what to expect from Rolf yet, he was always quiet, silent... It would be good to keep an eye on him, he decided to himself.
Svetich, sitting between him and Rolf, misunderstood his sideways glance and held out the bag of sunflower seeds with a questioning face. Harry, boredom beginning to bury him, nodded as the wizard scattered a handful of sunflower seeds into his palm.
'Thank you...'
The rest of the journey was then filled with quiet huffing, snoring, and - from Harry and Svetich - crunching and crackling.
The sky had brightened by the time they saw the barren shores of Nurmengard in the distance. Ron then pressed the invisibility button, and they made the last few kilometres unnoticed. From then on, however, the journey was eerily similar to riding on the back of a thestral - neither Harry nor any of his companions could see what was holding them in the air, the car, the seats, even their own bodies disappeared, and Harry thought to himself that this was his second body-less experience in two days, but he couldn't decide which was more unpleasant.
The two sleepers also woke up - Neville gave a huge shriek when startled by the invisible rushing in the air, which he suddenly couldn't explain.
'Well, that's more than bizarre...' Prosper's growling voice came from the back seat. 'I might throw up.'
'Would that also be invisible?' Seamus asked jokingly, and he and Dean laughed.
'Let's not try it, if we can,' Ron suggested, turning the vehicle along the shore towards the hills. 'We've just cleaned the car, I don't want you throwing up in it already. If anyone's sick, roll down the window.'
'I was only joking, carrot-head, no need to be scared,' Prosper growled unkindly.
They were already flying over the mainland, quite low, and the black city wall of Nurmengard loomed over the back of the smaller hills. Harry looked curiously at the landscape below, which he saw for the first time in daylight, and it was not as barren as he had imagined. In many places, grass and herbaceous thickets grew over the volcanic landscape, and here and there, from cracks in the ground, gases and smoke seeped up, lazily billowing.
'There's no shame in getting nauseous,' Neville muttered quietly, successfully pushing Prosper too far, who was already bellowing:
'For the last time, there is nothing wrong with my stomach! Anyone says I'm sick again, I swear I'll throw you out of the damn car!'
From then on, everyone was very careful not to mention seasickness and the like, and not a peep was uttered until the car's wheels touched the ground with a soft thump in the cover of four higher, sulphurously smelly hills.
Ron stopped the engine.
'Ladies and gentlemen, this is the captain speaking. We have arrived at Nurmengard, local time is two in the morning, thank you for choosing Weasley Airways!'
'Very funny...' Prosper grumbled, and jumped out of the car first, roughly pushing Neville, who was struggling with his seatbelt, aside.
'Hey!'
Harry sighed heavily as he got out and breathed in the fresh, cold northern air. Perhaps it would be best for everyone if he quickly stunned Prosper and left him in the trunk until they returned...
Harry was followed out by Svetich and Rolf, who immediately went up to Prosper, who was pacing up and down in a state of agitation, and engaged him in conversation. Harry hoped that Svetich would be able to talk some sense into the Auror, but he didn't hold out much hope.
'We are blessed with them, aren't we?' came Ron's voice.
He turned and looked at his friend over the roof of the car. Seamus was stretching his numb limbs, Neville was yawning loudly, and Dean, in a rather bizarre scene, had plucked one of his eyes out of its socket, wiped it, and with a smacking noise, put it back in its socket.
Ron grimaced in disgust.
'A picture-postcard sight...' he muttered under his breath.
The scenery was indeed; Harry had not expected to find beauty in the bleak, barren Nurmengard, but now he found himself, after the long journey, with his hands in his pockets, admiring the sharp mountain peaks and the cloudless blue sky. Where there were no clumps of grass or bushes, only the naked rock was everywhere, reminding Harry a little of the surface of the moon as he had seen it in pictures in astronomy class. It's a pity that in the distant future this place will be destroyed, he thought.
Svetich, Rolf and Prosper finished talking, and the leader of the three-man team trudged back to Harry, Ron and their three former classmates who had stayed at the car.
'I've talked to him about what happened, Prosper will behave,' whispered Svetich, so that only Harry and Ron could hear him. 'I can guarantee he will not cause you any trouble.'
He looked over doubting faces (Harry tried hard not to grin or grimace), then continued in a more raised voice.
'Then we'll do it according to the plan, okay? Mr Potter, Mr Weasley, you go ahead and get some hair so we can all get in. Did you bring your invisibility cloak?'
Harry patted his pocket in response.
'Perfect. The teams are as follows...' Svetich cleared his throat, but before he could elaborate, Seamus cut in:
'Are you the leader?'
Svetich blinked a few times in surprise.
'As far as I'm concerned, yes,' he replied deliberately. 'So then, I'll explain who will...'
'I think it's stupid,' Seamus interrupted again. 'Harry and Ron should be in charge. They've done this sort of thing before.'
Neither Ron nor Harry objected to the boy's suggestion, but the Hungarian wizard sighed impatiently.
'This is precisely why I invited Mr Potter and Mr Weasley. But we had already planned the course of the Nurmengard break-in thoroughly months ago and had taken all the risks into account, copied the latest plans from the rebuilds, brew the Polyjuice Potion, got the necessary clothes, papers, everything we need. If Mr Potter and Mr Weasley can come up with a better plan in five minutes than we did in two months, I'll be glad to hear it!'
Ron just laughed, and Seamus, not wanting to tease any further, held up his hands in surrender. Harry could see that neither Dean nor Neville looked too pleased, and it made him feel good to see how much their friends trusted them.
'Stick to the plan, Svetich,' said Ron, and the wizard took a deep breath.
'Then, please, refrain from further interjections...'
After everything was discussed and the tasks were assigned, Harry and Ron were the first to leave together. They scrambled to the top of the hill of which foot they landed, and were immediately confronted by the massive, impenetrable mass of the black Nurmengard city wall, carved as if from a single massive rock. Though the city was no longer a prison, Harry's stomach twitched uneasily at the sight. He and Ron glanced at each other, then with a great sigh they draped the cloak of invisibility over themselves and walked with cautious steps towards the great northern gate.
From the outside, the walls were completely unadorned, except for the statues of gloomy, bowed-headed figures on either side of the gate, holding the upper vault of the gateway slavishly over their shoulders.
Harry and Ron descended the steep hillside to the plain in front of the city walls, but they could only move very slowly on the loose, shifting stones, lest they roll or their cloak slip off.
'Careful!' hissed Ron in Harry's ear. 'If we slip, we'll be spotted for sure!'
He pointed to the top of the wall by Harry's ear; guards in elegant robes patrolled the top, just like the Faceless used to. But more likely, Harry thought, they were the same Faceless, just adapting to Nurmengard's new look, abandoning their metal masks.
From the outside, the city did not yet look much different, except that the stone bridge over the deep ravine in front of the wall was in place, and the great northern gate stood open as if to lure visitors. As they approached, they saw well-dressed sorcerers at the gate and a few aurors wearing the coat of arms of the ICW on their robes. Harry also noticed that on the front of the gate, where the triangular symbol of the Deathly Hallows had once been emblazoned ominously, was now also the crest of the International Confederation of Wizards.
'Svetich was right,' Ron whispered in Harry's ear. 'There really are more guards at the gates.'
'Well, they didn't have to be afraid of prisoners in the old days...'
Ron pulled him to his left by the elbow.
'Let's go this way, there's more cover here!'
They passed among large volcanic boulders, whose shadowy bases still had a few white patches of snow and ice, despite the summer sun. The ground, too, was frozen lava, interspersed with sharp, razor-sharp edges, only the hills and the path leading to the mystical arch more than a hundred kilometres away were smooth, as if the rough rock had been magically smoothed away. As Harry surveyed his surroundings, he didn't look at his feet, and stumbled, stepping into a dip that nearly pulled the cloak off the two of them.
'Look out!' snapped Ron, quickly catching his arm before he fell in.
'Thanks... What the hell is this?' Harry frowned.
There was a circular hole in the ground in front of him, barely half a metre in diameter, filled with water. His foot had accidentally slipped on the edge of it, but luckily he had not wet his shoes, which he was particularly happy about.
'Maybe a duct or a siphon or something,' Ron guessed. 'Hermione would know better...'
'There are more!' Harry pointed around.
Everywhere, on both sides of the road, the ground was full of identical holes full of water like Emmental cheese. Harry had never seen such natural formations, nor did he remember noticing them on his last visit. Though it was true, he reminded himself, that there had been half a metre of snow on the ground, and they had travelled strictly on the road up to the hills, which Malfoy had melted out of the ice for them.
'Let's move on!' Ron suggested, and Harry could tell by the loud and rapid breathing that he was nervous.
No wonder, he was nervous himself; the Faceless sentries were only a few yards away, and the sinister gate loomed over them. Harry could now make out the shape of the coat of arms of the ICW: a sword stuck in stone with stars around it and the three letters above.
Ahead of them was a chasm, like a moat, running the length of the city walls, a rather primitive defence, Harry thought. The only road was the narrow stone bridge that led directly to the northern entrance. Through the open gateway they had a good view of the city, and were amazed at what they saw: Nurmengard was much changed, the rubbish piled up in the sides of the houses was gone, the ruined walls had been repaired, the statues had been renovated and well-dressed wizards and witches walked the streets.
Harry and Ron sneaked even closer to the Faceless or Aurors - whoever they were, they had to be careful not to expose themselves, as that could have disastrous results...
'Stop!' suddenly Ron hissed, grabbing Harry's arm, but the sudden movement almost made them both fall.
'What is it?!' snapped Harry nervously, and quickly checked to see if any of their limbs were hanging out from under the folds of the cloak.
'What if they have a tracker thingy? Don't you remember how we almost blew it at Hogsmeade?' explained Ron, as they carefully stepped away from the guards. They didn't seem to notice anything.
'You mean when we tried to get into Hogwarts?' frowned Harry. The memories of the night of the Battle of Hogwarts slowly came back, when, despite the cloak of invisibility, the alarm horn had sounded in the village's main street.
'Exactly! If there's one here, we're in big trouble...'
Yes, Harry was sure that Ron was right, and in his mind he thanked his friend for his unusually keen wit, for he would have walked under the gate with complete calm, avoiding the guards by a wide margin. Had the alarm been sounded then, the Faceless would have had no difficulty catching them. Perhaps he relies too much on the Deathly Hallows? - he thought.
'Do you have any ideas?' asked Ron.
After brief hesitation, Harry nodded. He had little idea how he could neutralise the effects of a spell he wasn't sure existed, or even where the line was drawn as to how far they could go. But he was absolutely certain that a simple transfiguration spell could solve his problem.
'I have a plan, but I need some time...'
'We have all the time we need,' Ron muttered, but Harry's attention was elsewhere.
He picked up an ordinary piece of stone and, holding it in the palm of his hand, pointed his wand at it.
'Transformus muris!' he whispered softly, and the small stone turned into a small mouse.
'What are you doing?' Ron looked at him, but Harry cast the next spell:
'Reducio!' The mouse shrank, shrinking to the size of Harry's fingertip.
He performed the shrinking spell three more times until the mouse was the size of a grain of sand – almost imperceptible to the eye. Harry then, ignoring Ron's repeated questions, let the mouse go, and it immediately started running towards the gate...
As expected, the alarm went off: a loud horn sound filled the air, which could certainly be heard throughout the city. The guards jumped as if bitten by a flea and immediately drew their wands.
'Oh damn, we blew it,' Ron growled, and was about to pull his friend back to get away, but Harry stopped him.
'We didn't blow it, that's exactly what I wanted!' he replied, still not taking his eyes off the gate and the Faceless.
The wizards were casting revealing spells everywhere, the softly patting breeze was sweeping across the bridge and the square in front of the gate, but Harry and Ron were standing further away... Soon, reinforcements arrived, more Aurors began to scan the area and Harry and Ron could hear their puzzled voices as they shouted orders and asked questions in German. Finally, when they found no one, they stopped the alarm horn.
'What was that good for?' asked Ron, a little upset.
'This one for nothing,' Harry replied with a grin, 'but keep looking...'
He flicked his wand again, silently instructing the dust-sized mouse to walk through the gate again. The alarm horn sounded again, and the guards scrambled again, searching for the intruder, now cursing loudly and shooting red stun curses in all directions.
'This is crazy...' whispered Ron, shaking his head in amazement.
Harry looked at his friend; he could see that Ron worked it out.
He repeated the mouse trick three more times, and the last time the guards fired only here and there a revealing spell. Most of the wizards and witches gathered were testing the spell protecting the gate, and they themselves happened to sound the alarm horn once.
'Now!' whispered Harry, when he saw the time had come, and he and Ron started for the entrance.
They stumbled across the bridge over the chasm – below, needle-sharp rocks were ominously pointing upwards – and then slipped away behind the guards. The alarm horn again sounded like it was about to deafen Harry and the others, but the guards were no longer concerned that someone might be entering the city - they just charmed the gates and loudly berated the heavens or the spell's creator.
'That was brilliant!' enthused Ron quietly, once they were in the city and off the open street as quickly as possible. 'We did it! We got in!'
'Now we just have to figure out how to get the hairs and return them to Svetich...'
'Whatever, let's just catch someone,' said Ron, a little too enthusiastic due to the previous successful operation.
Harry snorted.
'Of course!' he said. 'And if we run into someone stronger than us? Some Faceless, or even the Nameless? Here he could be anyone, we don't know what he looks like.'
Ron calmed down a little and nodded in agreement.
'You are right.'
People were passing by the alley where they had taken refuge. All of them were chatting merrily, laughing, hurrying somewhere, perhaps to one of the main buildings of the ICW - Harry stared at them with a darkened expression. How will they know who is a Faceless and who is not? What even happens when one takes hair from a person who has been transformed by the Polyjuice Potion to use it for another one? Who will they turn into then? He would not have given much if he had known the answers to these questions, but Svetich did not seem to care about such trivialities. Their only job was to get hairs and make their original owner disappear.
Ron nudged Harry's shoulder.
'Let's follow them!' he pointed to a group of four people marching away.
Harry looked at Ron questioningly, who shrugged. They can't stand in the alley until doomsday, he thought, nodding.
They followed the wizards down the street like shadows, and in the process, the new Nurmengard revealed itself to them. Everything was shining with purity, the statues, the walls, the rhombus-shaped cobblestones - from which careful hands had removed the mark of the Deathly Hallows. Harry wondered at this; he knew that the Fourth Tower was obsessed with the Hallows because of Grindelwald's dark legacy, and that the Nameless in particular coveted them above all others. But perhaps, he thought, the sign of the Hallows was out of the question to convincingly play the role of the International Confederation of Wizards in public...
Many buildings have already been occupied by the offices of the ICW. On the gables of the buildings were Latin inscriptions announcing which headquarters had been moved there, but Harry didn't understand much of them. Other buildings had been converted into inns for the politicians staying in town.
The streets were not only filled with people, but also with magical vehicles, mostly on the main avenue that criss-crossed the circular city. On one occasion, Harry and Ron had to jump out of the way of an enchanted Ford T-Model, whose owner, an American wizard, was in a hurry to get somewhere. Others rode flying bicycles - Harry thought of them as couriers, for none of them wore the elegant robes of most, and carried large bags loaded with rolls of parchment on their shoulders. They passed under the roof line of the houses, and from this they guessed that the anti-flight bubble charm still existed.
The group of four (three burly men and one thin man) turned into a small side street and Harry and Ron followed them. Around this area, there were no office buildings, only inns, one or two restaurants and a coffee place tucked in between the houses - Harry and Ron couldn't help but marvel at how quickly they had built up everything the ICW needed.
'Where do you think they're going?' whispered Ron, but Harry shrugged.
He had barely done so, and the small group stopped in front of a building that was being used as a small boarding house, and they went in, walking briskly.
Harry and Ron followed invisibly, pretending that a gust of wind had blown the front door open - it had: Ron's wand gave a violent little puff of air at the boy's command, and they both entered. The porter, sitting in the hall, rose quickly to close the door, lest the north gale winds blow it out again, but the party had by then gone up the stairs to the upper floor, only a small purple card being shown as identification. They were followed silently...
On the first floor, a room was opened, and Ron quickly peeked through the closing door to see if there were any others.
'They are the only ones in there. Going to be alright, no?' he frowned. 'If we get these, we'll only need two more from somewhere.'
'Alright, let's do it then,' Harry nodded, and they both held their wands at the ready.
Ron stuck his hand out from under his cloak, after looking around carefully to make sure no other guest would notice them, and knocked three times on the door. Soon it opened, revealing the hairy, bearded face of the tallest member of the party - only to stare stiffly ahead of him a moment later.
Harry's Imperius curse worked, he turned and went back into the room, holding the door open long enough for them to get in.
'Imperio... Imperio...'Harry took control of the other two large guys in the room, who looked like twins, and sat them down in the corner next to their big partner. They all sat there like dummies, but the man who opened the door's head twitched slightly, as if trying to fight the curse that shackled his mind.
'Where is the fourth?' hissed Ron nervously.
The thin man was nowhere to be seen, but another door opened from the room; Harry was growing restless. He smelled something strange, but he couldn't quite determine what is was.
'Let's check the bathroom,' he suggested quietly.
Slowly they began to walk towards the door, listening for any sign of the fourth wizard's voice...
The moment Harry's hand touched the handle of the bathroom door, a spell sounded behind them and a fiery beam of light shot across the room.
'Incendio!'
Ron was alert; he pushed Harry away, who fell, dragging the invisibility cloak with him, but he himself was not fast enough. The scorching curse hit Ron on the back of the hand and smashed through the palm of his hand, splattering blood on the white door. The boy collapsed, howling in pain, and lay sprawled on the ground.
'RON!' cried Harry, terrified, but his friend was pointing in panic at something with his hand still intact behind his back.
'Look out!'
Harry spun - and what he saw rooted his feet to the ground.
From the back of the first wizard who fell victim of the Imperius, whose head was now twitching incessantly and saliva gushing from his mouth, another skeletally thin man's torso grew half out, like another branch of a tree of flesh. The grotesque apparition twisted backwards like rubber, its face set in a frighteningly wide grin, its eyes bulging madly.
A second's hesitation at the sight of the shocking phenomenon was enough for the creature to attack again. He swung his wand, and the spell lashed across the room like a fiery whip.
'Take this!' he squealed in a shrill voice, and laughed like a hyena.
Harry threw himself on his stomach, but the whip still hit his shoulder. With eyes clouded with pain, he looked up to see the gaunt figure slowly crawling out of the back of the blankly staring large man, accompanied by a disgusting smacking sound. He didn't hesitate any longer, lying on his stomach, Harry pointed his wand at him:
'Stupefy!'
The rubber-like man was quick, and with a wave of his flexible arm, he deflected the spell, which slammed into the wall. Harry was getting more and more nervous; if there was someone in the next room, they must have heard the bang.
The horrendous figure now freed his legs and stood on top of a chest of drawers - his host's body fell forward lifeless.
'I saw your heels when that car almost hit you! He-he-he...' he giggled maniacally. 'It was a baaaad idea to come here, Potter!'
'Take him out, Harry!' Ron whimpered, desperately trying to crawl away from the fight, clutching his injured hand, which was dripping blood, and trying to reach his wand that had slipped across the room.
'Take meeee out?' shrilled the creature, and now his body began to merge with the walls of the room, until only his nightmarish face and wand-holding hand were sticking out.
'Stupefy!'
The second curse did not reach its target either, the spell only hit the wall and bounced off it ineffectively. What kind of dark magic is this? – Harry looked at this in shock. He couldn't understand how anyone could be able to fuse with anything they touched.
'You can't take me out just like thaaaaat...'
'Sectumsempra!' shouted Harry, slashing diagonally across the wall with the curse, right where the creature's chest merged with it.
'He-he-he-he... Don't tickle me, little boy...'
The spell had only slashed the wall, and it seemed as if the enemy had separated his body parts - his head and wand-wielding arm crept up the wall until he was looking down from the ceiling at his terrified victims, his other arm suddenly reaching out from behind them from the bathroom wall, his long, slimy fingers wrapped around Harry's neck.
'Now you dieeee!' he bellowed, and then he stuck out his huge, metre-long tongue, which wrapped itself around Harry's wand-wielding hand like a tentacle of an octopus before Harry could free himself from the grip of the nightmare's hand.
'HARRY!' cried Ron in horror, but the creature just laughed at him.
His wand was pointed at Harry, the end of which glowed green - Harry knew he didn't stand a chance, not even the Deathstick could ward off the killing curse...
Ron finally reached for his wand and gave it a good whack, shouting an incantation: 'INSECTO CORPUS!'
Everywhere, on every square centimetre of the whole room, thousands of bugs appeared and soon started to burrow into the walls, quickly tearing the wallpaper and plaster with their big mandibles...
The wall-melted enemy screamed in an eerily shrill voice. His arm instantly released Harry, his tongue untangling from his wrist, who in tern fell face-first to the floor beside Ron, watching petrified as the bugs swarmed all around.
'Noooo... Help me...!'
The nightmare finally gave up, first retracting all its limbs and then falling out of the ceiling, landing with cracking bones next to Harry and Ron. Ron crawled away from it in horror, and Harry quickly fired a stunning curse at it, causing the painfully writhing body to fall silent and go limp. They both gasped violently and looked at their defeated opponents. It was a minute before Harry managed to groan out a sentence:
'Well done, Ron...'
Ron made a strange little sound, halfway between a cough and a pained groan.
'Hermione taught me that one...' he shrugged, huffing loudly from exhaustion. 'What the Merlin's wrath was that thing?'
'I think a human... He possessed the other's body when they came into the room.'
Ron looked at him with a horrified expression, but couldn't get a word out. He clutched his wounded palm, from which the blood was beginning to soak his shoes. Harry took his hand without a word and began to heal it. The Wand of Destiny quickly healed the round hole, while Ron looked at the stunned figure the whole time, with an expression as if he couldn't comprehend that such a thing could even exist.
'Human? How can this thing be human...?'
'Faceless,' Harry replied, when the wound was completely healed. 'I remember him... He was there when we were locked up in Nurmengard. I remember his voice... He laughed at us the same way.'
When they had gotten over what had happened, and waited a few minutes to see if there was any shouting or rushing of footsteps, they set about cleaning up the mess. Ron took Hermione's old charmed beaded bag with him, in which all four of their victims disappeared one by one, after taking a strand of hair from each of the three large men - none of them wanted to touch the thin dark sorcerer.
'We need to tidy up the room as well...' muttered Ron, and Harry performed the Reparo charm again. The remains of the bugs were gone, the wallpaper and plaster had been repaired, and the room looked exactly as it had before they came in.
When they had done all that, they sighed and looked at each other. Harry's heart was still racing like an express train. It was only when they finally left the house and were back on the cool, windswept street that he calmed down a little.
'Three more to go. But now let's be more careful who we pick on, okay?' whispered Harry.
Ron snorted.
'Who could have known?' he retorted. 'Was it written on his forehead that he was a wall-merging, giggling hyena?'
They soon spotted two men in an alleyway, talking in the shadows of buildings. One was a turbaned Indian wizard, the other, standing opposite them, was a brown-skinned man wearing strange glasses.
'How about these?' nodded Harry towards them. Ron shrugged.
'They do not seem dangerous...'
'How would you assume that?' Harry asked.
'The one with the turban can barely stand on his feet, and the other one looks like an idiot from a mile away,' Ron replied with a sharp insight.
Meanwhile, the two men started walking, not towards them, but inwards, towards the cluster of houses. Harry and Ron hurried after them, but were suddenly stopped by another speeding car - the Volkswagen Beatle really did look like a large, armoured insect with two antennae dangling from the top.
'They've made so many enchanted cars in two days, since the law allowed it?' asked Harry cynically.
By the time they had crossed the road and entered the alley, the turbaned and bespectacled figure were already gone.
'Damn it!' growled Ron.
'Relax, there will be others...'
As they were waiting in the small street, they suddenly noticed a loud noise coming from behind the back door of one of the houses.
'I told you we're short-handed for this, boss!' someone said with a strong Australian accent. 'We won't finish with the renovations in time. There are three of us for the whole job, including you, and we can't even use house elves!'
Harry and Ron were listening with their ears pressed to the door – there was no need to take out their extendable ears, the people inside were shouting so loudly that every word was clearly audible without them.
'Enough of your whining! We have to get the truth walls ready for tomorrow or we are srewed. Now it's time to get started, I want at least the ground floor finished by the time the minister gets back...'
'If he ever gets back,' came the teasing reply from a third man. 'I haven't seen him for days, boss... He really could send some support for the job, because we won't make it...'
'Shut up and get to work!' the loud-voiced foreman shouted, and all that could be heard after that was the murmur of quiet words and the sound of spells and charms.
Harry and Ron grinned at each other under the cloak of invisibility, and drew their wands...
Half an hour later they returned to their companions waiting at the flying car. The alarm bell at the north gate had not gone off, the Faceless had deactivated it, and now two dozen guards guarded the entrance. When they reached the hills, Harry and Ron could see Prosper was on his usual rampage from a distance, and as soon as they had taken off their cloaks, he started at them:
'What the hell took you so long?' he grumbled.
'We are oh so sorry, but we had to deal with a psychotic parasite!' retorted Ron angrily, and then he shoved the vial of hairs into the Auror's hand.
Neville and Seamus looked nervously at Harry and Ron's wounds and tattered clothes.
'Did something happen?'
'We took care of it, it's all right,' Harry said, but that didn't reassure them. Rolf stepped closer.
'If you have exposed yourselves to the enemy, we need to know. We cannot walk into a set-up trap!'
'Calm down, Harry said it's alright,' Seamus cut him off, and the boy scowled at him, but didn't budge:
'How did you "take care of it"?' he asked Harry and Ron, as Ron opened the beaded handbag. Inside were seven stunned men; Ron now took it and put it in the trunk in place of the bags, from which long, ornate, size-changing robes were pulled out.
Svetich, Prosper, Rolf, and Neville began to dress, while Dean portioned out the potion of Polyjuice Potion and threw a strand of hair into each. Soon, a muddled mix of different smells and odours filled their noses as the brews were transformed...
When all six had changed shape, Harry led them one by one into the city under the cloak of invisibility. This took a long time, as they had to sneak quietly through the gate and through the streets to the dark alley where the meeting point was. The last to enter was Svetich, who looked increasingly nervous.
'What's the matter, Michael?' asked Harry quietly, when they were on the main street. 'Are you nervous because of Prosper?'
The man looked at him.
'Because of Prosper? No!'
'Keep your voice down!'
'Sorry...'
Harry watched him suspiciously as he took the Hungarian by the arm and led him away from the avenue.
'Have you ever been involved in this kind of operation?' he asked with a wry smile.
Svetich shook his head. Harry sighed heavily, and in his mind he was beginning to agree with Hermione and Ginny that perhaps he should have thought more carefully about returning to Nurmengard.
When they arrived at the meeting place - the back wall of a house under renovation - Svetich looked around carefully, then slipped out from under the cloak of invisibility and looked at the impatiently waiting transformed group. Neville had the image of the noisy foreman and fidgeted and shifted slightly uncomfortably due to his tall stature; Dean and Seamus became the pudgy twins (Dean had to put his glass eyes in his pocket, because as he transformed, real ones grew in their place), Prosper became the big man who fell victim to the grotesque dark sorcerer, while Rolf and Svetich became the two construction and renovation wizards their boss yelled at.
'You all know yours tasks, don't you?' the Hungarian wizard asked them, and they all nodded in turn. 'I'll be with Prosper, and we'll search the central part of the city, because that's where the Nameless is most likely to show up. Mr Thomas, Mr Finnigan, you take the south sector. – (Dean and Seamus nodded in unison) – Mr Longbottom and Rolf, you patrol the area around the north gate to secure our escape route.
When Neville and Rolf nodded, Svetich turned to Harry.
'Mr Potter, you stay here. Don't go anywhere so we can notify you if anything happens...'
'No,' said Harry to Svetich, much to his surprise. 'There are other ways to keep in touch...'
From his pocket he took out a few enchanted coins, which he and Ron had collected earlier, and gave them out from under the cloak. Each curiously took a coin from the palm of his hand, and only Neville, Seamus and Dean's eyes lit up in wonder.
'I don't need one, Harry!' said Neville with a smile. 'Here's my own!'
Harry grinned and took the coin back, then addressed Svetich again.
'We can keep in touch with them, so Ron and I can help with the search. Invisibly, we can get into places you can't.'
Svetich sighed visibly and shook his head.
'I would still ask you to stay here, Mr Potter. With your invisibility you will be able to help us effectively escape when we leave the city.'
Harry tisked in displeasure, but he didn't feel like arguing with the wizard any further. He knew that both Prosper and Svetich were incredibly stubborn in their own ways. It was just that while the former was aggressive and pushy, Svetich was just firm and uncompromising.
'Believe me, Mr Potter, I know what I'm doing! Promise me you'll stay here, in this place, and you won't move from this spot,' he insisted. 'If for no other reason, think of what you promised your girlfriend waiting for you at home.'
Harry hated to be persuaded by such things of some totally incomprehensible and stupid order that was absolutely unnecessary. Svetich must have taken his pouting silence as acquiescence, for he turned from where he suspected Harry was and gave the order to the others:
'Let's move out, folks!'
'Good luck,' Harry called after his friends, and waited until they had all left the street, each of them in groups of two.
Then, as soon as they were out of earshot, he turned and headed for the gate with hurried steps.
No, he will not wait here for the entire time! If he wants to change the future, he can't leave it to Rolf Scamander or Prosper Cipollo, because there is much more at stake for him now than capturing a dark sorcerer and exposing the great conspiracy. His life and the life of his son were at stake, which would not have allowed him to wait at a wall even if Albus Dumbledore himself had ordered him to. And Svetich was no Dumbledore, for all his determination to play the big leader - his little brigade of three was such a pathetic attempt at the Order of the Phoenix that it was basically incomparable.
Harry fumed as he walked back to Ron (he'd walked through the gate as if he'd just stepped out of an unlocked garden gate), and soon they were sneaking back together under the invisibility cloak.
'Svetich is a fool if he thinks we're going to sit back and watch Prosper go on a rampage!' said Ron, wholeheartedly.
'You took the words right out of my mouth...'
They left the flying car, with the seven unconscious men in the boot, and headed for the depths of the city in search of their doppelgangers.
Nurmengard changed even more as they approached the centre. The crowds became thicker and thicker, and there were more and more office buildings. As far as Harry could tell, they passed the International Magical Sports and Games Headquarters, one of the largest buildings, and quickly rounded the International Auror Liaison Headquarters. In front of each building, country flags flew on large red poles. The biggest and most surprising change was the planting of trees - in some places, young, frost-tolerant shrubs were planted on both sides of the road, which in a few years would grow into large, leafy trees. It was a much more homely, peaceful and pleasant environment, not to mention the removal of the ever-present smell of blood that used to permeate the walls. It was a very effective disguise, Harry thought. No one would ever guess that this city, which has become the largest settlement of wizards in the world, is in fact the origin of the dark arts, the centre of the Fourth Tower's mastery, headed by the Nameless himself.
Harry and Ron finally reached the main square, where the central tower stood. Memories came rushing back to Harry, memories that had only happened to him here four short months ago, when he had finally found his two lost friends in the amber room.
Whether that room still exists? – he wondered. It was possible that the tower had been completely rebuilt so that no evidence of the real ministers would remain...
The crowds were getting bigger and bigger, and this was starting to bother both Ron and Harry a lot, as it was making it much more difficult to navigate with the invisibility cloak.
'Keep your eyes open for where they may have gone,' Ron hissed quietly as they marched out of the way of a group of Austrian wizards.
'There's quite a lot of people here, it'll be hard to spot them in a crowd like this...' muttered Harry.
Ron didn't argue; the two of them slowly made their way around the circular square and back into the narrower streets, where there were still a few buildings in need of renovation. Most of them were covered with screens bearing the coat of arms of the ICW and a sign indicating the public building they planned to open.
'They are building so much!' marveled Ron, almost appreciatively. 'Look! The butcher shop used to be here...'
Harry just growled in response. Indeed, the place was beginning to remind him more and more of the place he had once seen in his dream when Al had shown him the Fate Peeper. That Nurmengard was the centre of the wizarding world, the citadel of the Fourth Tower from which the whole world was controlled. So this is how it all begins... - he looked around the houses.
As he glanced around, he caught sight of a few wizards with their wands drawn.
He also stopped Ron carefully and silently pointed to the wizards, who were standing at the top of a flight of stairs, guarding the closed entrance to a building under renovation.
'What about them?' said Ron, almost soundlessly.
'Why are they guarding a house to be renovated?' asked Harry. Ron thought about it for a moment, then nodded.
'Let's have a closer look!' he suggested, and they set off across the square in front of the entrance to the building.
The place was very familiar to Harry, but he didn't know where to put it. He was sure that he had been in this part of the city during their captivity, for somewhere deep down in his soul he was seized with a very strong fear at the sight of the building - some old dread he could not explain. They bypassed the big building - there was no way to get in through the main entrance, the guards would not have allowed any distraction, they were too alert. Harry and Ron searched between the two partitioned walls for a way in that just wouldn't show up.
They had already been round the building twice, and all Harry had managed to do was to remember what this place had once been: the throne of Aegir Greyback, leader of the werewolves imprisoned in Nurmengard, who had been doomed by his involvement in the Nameless's game with Harry for the Wand of Destiny.
They stopped behind the throne room, and Harry sighed in disappointment.
'We'll never get in like this...' grumbled Ron. 'Forget it, let's find Prosper and Svetich!'
'Wait a minute,' Harry stopped him, noticing something as he looked up.
Above the screen, a large part of the roof had been dismantled, the tiles were missing, and the timbers were visible underneath. Ron followed his gaze, trying to look so as not to peek out from under the cloak.
'Do you think we can get up there?' he asked Harry in a doubtful tone. Harry just smiled and pointed his wand at the ground.
'Hold on to me tight!' he said to Ron, and concentrated all his energy on the spell: Wingardium Leviosa...
They began to rise, not just levitate, but almost fly through the air in a way that an ordinary levitation spell could not have.
'Whoa! Whoa!' Ron shuddered in fright when they were ten metres up.
'Keep your voice down!'
Harry guided the two of them through a gaping hole in the roof, and soon they were descending invisibly to the plank floor of the attic.
'The things you do these days...' wondered Ron. 'First that Reparo on the car, now this.'
'I just got lucky,' Harry lied in a whisper, and secretly thought how much better it would be if it wasn't just the power of the wand, but if he himself were so clever. But as Hermione had said, after the age of twenty-one, he couldn't hope to ever be as strong as Dumbledore, or even Severus Snape...
'Now be very careful! We don't know whose head we'll fall on if we trip.'
The roof was a rather rickety structure, and Harry feared that the first step he took would cause it to creak or crack - or worse, collapse - so he quickly made it imperturbable and cast a Muffliato charm on the decades-old structure. There were planks everywhere, so Harry and Ron couldn't see if there was anyone underneath or if the whole building was empty, and they'd trudged up here for nothing.
Then they heard the voices...
There were clearly people talking below, male voices, of which Harry could distinguish more than four. They listened for a while, silent, still, stiffened into a statue, afraid that a heartbeat might betray them, but still they could understand nothing of the voices.
Ron then tapped Harry on the shoulder. Harry looked at him; the boy was fishing a long extendable ear cord out of the inside pocket of his robes, which was a little awkward because of him covering under the invisibility cloak.
They knelt quietly, then lay prone on the boards, peering down through the half-inch gaps. Ron slipped the extendable ear cord into one of the holes and they could hear the conversation clearly below:
'I told you to be patient, Lord Quirinus...' a voice said. 'You will soon have him, and then you can have your revenge.'
Neither Harry nor Ron could see the speaker through the gap between the boards; they could see two other figures though - the same two wizards they had lost sight of in the street earlier. The strange man with the goggles stood a few feet away from his turbaned companion, his arms folded, grinning at the other, who was hunched over sickly. As he trembled, Harry found his features somehow immensely familiar.
The turbaned man now spoke in a hoarse, weak voice:
'We've helped you with your plan, now it's time for you to do the same, Nameless!'
At the words, Ron sniffled so hard that Harry instinctively clasped his hand over his friend's mouth, lest they should accidentally reveal themselves.
So the Nameless was right below them... Harry's heartbeat quickened.
'Don't threaten me...' came the quiet but more ominous warning from below. Harry and Ron still couldn't see the wizard, they could only guess from the sound where he might be standing.
'The destruction of Durmstrang is not your merit, Quirinus,' continued the Nameless in the same style, 'it is that of Lord Marius and Lord Cerberus, and they shall have their reward... Come closer!'
Harry and Ron were in a twisted posture, trying to get a better view of the events below; both were burning with curiosity to not only hear the Nameless's activities, but to see them for themselves, as if that would make them more real, more tangible, and not the distant, unattainable target it seemed to be at this moment. How could Prosper and Svetich think they were able to catch this man?
They could see two men in red cloaks walking with calm, measured steps across the throne room. Harry knew that one of them must be Marius, but he had long hoped that the blue-skinned man had not returned to the Nameless's service. It seemed that the wizard had indeed blackmailed him with the Claymore of Spirits and the Horcrux wand. But he even calls him "Lord"? What could have happened here? – mused Harry.
'So we get a reward, Nameless?' an old voice, perhaps Cerberus', crackled. 'Your last present was unfortunately of no good use.'
There was a short silence, then:
'What do you mean by that?'
'The corpse was inadequate. I got nowhere with it.'
A corpse? – frowned Harry. What corpse are they talking about?
'I couldn't squeeze a drop of magic out of it, so I brought the coffin back to you - I suppose you'd like it to rest in the grounds of Nurmengard again...'
Harry then realised: he remembered, he had seen it in the Pensieve, when the Nameless gave the Prince brothers a wooden box. A grateful Octavius then said that his brother Cerberus would be very pleased with the Nameless's gift.
'I'm sorry your experiment failed, Lord Cerberus,' said the Nameless, 'but perhaps with another corpse - one with more magic in it - you might succeed. I would suggest you to consider the remains of Voldemort.'
The old dark sorcerer was silent, and then another familiar voice spoke:
'Are you still afraid of Voldemort?' asked Marius in a low voice. 'If I didn't know you, I'd think you were still the loyal Death Eater you were, uncle...'
'I am not a Death Eater,' came the quiet reply.
'Then dig it up!' the blue-skinned man snapped wildly, making Harry and Ron flinch in fright. They would've loved to understand what the dark wizards were talking about downstairs.
'Calm down, Lord Marius...' said Nameless. Miguel snorted contemptuously.
'Lord Marius...' he said with a caustic sneer, 'burning down Durmstrang can now earn anyone that title? Anyone could have done it! I could have destroyed whole Durmstrang in a blink of an eye!'
'It is not just about destruction, Lord Miguel.'
Harry and Ron looked at each other in shock as they heard the addresses; all five men in the room were Dark Lords. They knew the danger this posed: it reduced their already slim chances of catching the Nameless to zero. How could they fight five opponents of Voldemort's power all at once?
'What we show to the outside world is important,' explained the Nameless. 'At this stage of the plan, the most important thing is appearance and acting, my friends...'
The door creaked open; someone came in through the main door, and went through the room with knocking boots, while no one spoke. Harry and Ron could see the lord called Miguel looking back in interest, but the man with the turban - the one called Quirinus - seemed to be getting worse, as he stumbled away, hunched over, but no one paid him any attention.
'Speaking of acting... Here's one of the greatest actors in the play!' came the words of the Nameless when the boot tapping stopped.
Harry and Ron were stretching again, but through the cracks they couldn't see who had come in.
'So, you're back...' the dark sorcerer acknowledged, and now he finally came closer, just under the gap in the ceiling. Harry saw him from above, and realised that he was once again in the image of Benedetto Modesto, the Supreme Mugwump of the ICW. 'You came earlier than you've signalled. I take it your mission was a success?'
There was no response, only a rattling, a crumpling sound - the stranger may have just nodded to the wizard.
'So Harry Potter is here in Nurmengard,' commented the Nameless with satisfaction, and the two watchers now really almost cried out in shock.
Harry could clearly see Ron's terrified face go pale under the cloak, and felt his own hand begin to tremble.
'Harry... P-potter?' asked Quirinus, stumbling back to the Nameless. 'Where is he? Take me to him! I demand that you take me to him!' he ended up shouting at the Nameless, and Harry, had he not been in a daze of astonishment, would have wondered how anyone dared speak to the dark wizard in such a tone.
The Nameless of course didn't tolerate the shouting; he was quick as lightning to draw his wand, and a sickening, booming force filled the air like a radio out of tune, and Quirinus winced in pain. Miguel laughed merrily at him in the background.
The Nameless stepped away from the writhing sick lord.
'If I succeed with Harry Potter, you will be greatly rewarded,' he said to the man who hadn't said a word until now. 'You always were my most excellent Faceless, but now you are seriously beginning to impress me...'
The Faceless laughed; it was a man's voice, but not the hyena-like chuckle of the sorcerer they had met in the room of the boarding house earlier.
'I've also brought you a present, Nameless,' the man said at last, and Harry closed his eyes for a moment in horror. Of course it was him... How could they be so stupid?
'What kind of present, Michael?'
Michael Svetich snapped his fingers, and a side door opened somewhere, and another Faceless in a metal mask levitated a paralysed, helpless body into the throne room, right under Harry.
'I brought you Benedetto's bodyguard. I understand Prosper Cipollo was a thorn in your side for a long time...'
