Monday morning 10am. Harry's just settled down to breakfast with the Daily Prophet when his fireplace suddenly bursts into life and Dawlish's enlarged head appears in the flames, causing Harry to nearly choke on his toast.

"Morning to you too, John," Harry says, putting down his toast and crouching by the fire so he and Dawlish are eye to eye.

Dawlish cuts to the chase. "Harry there's been another disappearance. I just heard from Law Enforcement- they're not sure how seriously to take it since it's been less than forty eight hours since the person was last seen, but I think it might be worth investigating now while the trail's at least lukewarm."

Harry frowns. "Who reported them missing?"

"The parents. According to them their son left Friday night to stay with a friend for the weekend, said he'd be home for dinner on Sunday. But he wasn't home by Sunday night so they Flooed the friend to see what had happened and the friend admitted he never stayed over at all. Nothing out of the ordinary for a teenager, right? But the parents press for information, and it turns out the plan all along was for him to spend Friday night in London and return early - by Saturday night. Now why would he lie to his friend?"

"Why London? Where in London did he stay on Friday night?"

"The friend doesn't know. He doesn't know anything about the missing boy's plans in London. We don't have very much to go on for now, but I'm thinking we should get in contact with as many of his other friends as we can and see if they know anything about it."

"Definitely," Harry agrees, getting to his feet. "Meet you at the office in half an hour?"

"I'll see you there. The parents will be joining us too." Dawlish disappears with a pop.

At the Auror Office, Harry is confronted by a visibly distraught woman and her husband. They clutch at each other for comfort and stare about them with terror, like it's the Auror Office and not London that's taken their son away.

"This is Mr and Mrs Newton, Harry," says Dawlish, appearing out of nowhere, and Mrs Newton begins to wail loudly.

"Did I do something?" Harry asks, alarmed.

"You didn't," says Mrs Newton through violent sobs, "It's just that if you of all people have to be pulled into the case then something very bad must have happened to my son. But it is very nice to meet you, Mr Potter." She tries to smile through her tears.

"Likewise, Mrs Newton," Harry says awkwardly, "And we don't know something bad's happened for sure. I went missing occasionally when I was a teenager. We just want to be extra careful and make sure this isn't related to-"

"Now," Dawlish cuts in, brandishing a photograph at the Newtons, "This is your son, you say? We shall arrange with the Prophet to have the picture printed so anyone with information can let us know."

Harry glances at the picture and does a double take. The boy from the club is grinning toothily at him in two dimensions. The boy with the flying neon dragon tattoo. Seventeen year old Enoch.

"I know where he was in London," Harry says. Dawlish and the Newtons stare at him. "At least I know where he was till one am on Saturday morning. I saw him at Pot of Gold. He was with friends-"

Dawlish interrupts. "Pot of Gold?"

Harry flushes, but gets on with the explanation. "It's a gay wizarding club in Soho. I went with Ginny and her friends," he adds hastily when Dawlish raises an eyebrow.

"What was my son doing at a gay wizarding club in Soho?" demands Mr Newton, outraged. It's the first time Harry has heard him speak, and the way the man practically purples with rage reminds him unpleasantly of his uncle Vernon. "Are you sure it was him you saw, Mr Potter?" Mr Newton continues angrily. "My son is only fifteen and has never, I repeat never, expressed interest in men."

"Fifteen you say?" Harry remarks, feeling rather faint. "He said he was seventeen. Is his name Enoch, Mr Newton? Does he have a neon rainbow dragon tattoo on his chest?"

"It's not a bloody rainbow tattoo," splutters Mr Newton, "It just changes colours."

"Sounds like a rainbow tattoo to me," puts in Dawlish unhelpfully. "Who were his friends, Harry?"

Harry shakes his head. "I don't know, he was the only one I spoke to, but Ginny and her friends might remember."

They try Flooing Ginny and her Harpie friends. Ginny only remembers a Felix and a Jeremy, neither of whom Mr and Mrs Newton have heard of. Harry suggests checking the Hogwarts records but Ginny shakes her head. "Those two seemed too old for Hogwarts. Felix had me on his shoulders, for Merlin's sake. There were a couple of boys who seemed about Enoch's age, but I didn't catch their names. You could extract my memories if you want a picture."

Next they pay a visit to the Pot of Gold management, but this proves to be of little help. The bartenders seem to remember Enoch and his friends vaguely but claim they didn't draw much attention to themselves throughout the night. The bouncers might have seen the group leave together, but who knows where to. It's clear they've hit a wall.

"I'm very sorry," Dawlish says to Mr and Mrs Newton, who seem to have transitioned from weeping and apoplectic rage to numb shock. They no longer clutch at each other but stand mutely on the pavement outside the Pot of Gold as traffic roars by. Dawlish delivers the standard we'll-get-back-to-you-if-we-find-any-leads address which elicits no response, then everyone shakes hands and parts ways. Dawlish watches the Newtons go, then he turns to Harry, looking completely drained.

"Pub?"


As with the missing people before him, no part of Enoch ever shows up. Harry doesn't understand it. There have been forty (reported) cases of complete and utter vanishing in France in just over three months, a frightening statistic considering only missing wizards were included in the tally, and since the first notable disappearance in England about a fortnight ago there have been four in England. Four colourful pins on Harry's map of England, and red is for fifteen year old Enoch. How could so many different kidnappers - because there's no way one person has kidnapped forty four people in three months all over two countries - share the same modus operandi? Are they all part of the same gang? And what do they want with their victims? Do they kill them? And then what? Eat them?


Another weekend afternoon, and Harry is sprawled on the grass around his old house, watching Ginny chase Albus and James around the garden. For once, she's not trying to get them to bathe; they're just playing tag. When the boys are caught and tickled, Ginny comes over and sits with Harry, panting slightly.

"I'm getting old," she complains, rubbing her knees like they ache.

"Foot massage?" Harry offers, and Ginny plops her feet into Harry's lap gratefully.

"How did you like clubbing last week?" she asks, laying back in the grass while Harry kneads the muscles in her feet. Her red hair spills everywhere like a forest fire. "Oh yeah, has the boy -Enoch? is that his name?- have you found him?"

"We haven't and I never want to go clubbing again," Harry says.

Ginny laughs. "We're probably too old for that anyway. Clubbing is not how you meet people when you're thirty, or actually, when you're out of your teens. Laura - oh you know her, Harry, she went clubbing with us - she found this new dating service that sounds quite promising."

Alarm bells start ringing in Harry's head, warning him to smoothly change the topic before it's too late, but Ginny's too quick for him.

"We should give it a go," she says enthusiastically. "Oh come on, I don't want to do it alone."

Harry buries his face despairingly in Ginny's feet. "Okay, suppose I tried it out," he tries to argue, "How many people do you think would ask me out just because I'm Harry Potter?"

"Ah," Ginny says, grinning like she's in possession of a wonderful secret, "Here's the beauty of it. You go under a pseudonym, like Gryffindor's Heir or The Seeker or something. There's complete anonymity, no name, no picture. Come on, Harry, be a sport."

Once again, Harry becomes an unwilling participant in Ginny's matchmaking schemes. Ginny is Foxy Lady and Harry is forced into the role of The Seeker IV, because The Seeker I through III are already taken and he won't let Ginny name him Emerald Eyes. Next, they have to write profiles about themselves and submit them. Everything Ginny suggests Harry write about himself makes him cringe, and everything he wants to say about himself (which is that he likes Quidditch and his family and wouldn't mind going for a drink sometime) she vetoes as being too prosaic, so in the end he looks away while she writes his profile for him. "What now?" he asks when she seals the profiles she's written for them in separate envelopes. "We mail these out, and we wait," Ginny says, rubbing her hands.


"CHRISTMAS!" is the first thing Ginny shouts at Harry when he apparates to see his children the following weekend. Harry's caught completely off guard and has no idea what she's talking about until she throws him a large package and waves another at his face. To Mr H. Potter from The Weekly Cupid reads the lavender writing on the front. "Oh," says Harry, remembering.

"Oh," Ginny mimics. "You could at least try to feign enthusiasm. I waited for you to get here so we could open ours together."

"Well shall we?" Harry asks, but Ginny's already tearing open her package.

The package is mostly so large because there's a directory as big as an encyclopedia inside. "It's self-updating," explains Ginny, "every time someone new joins the directory updates itself. And you can talk to it and ask it to help you find your type."

Harry thinks what a waste it is for such an impressive piece of magic to go into a book like this. He's never met a talking book before, only a biting book in Hagrid's class years and years ago. And he's definitely never met a self-searching book before - he'd have found out about the Philosopher's Stone and the Basilisk much, much sooner if all books had that property. Nevertheless he puts the directory aside and examines the rest of the package. There are three envelopes, each with a different name on the cover.

"Nope," Harry says, putting aside the envelope from Platform Sixty Nine and Three Quarters immediately.

"Oh give it here," Ginny says, reaching over and tearing the envelope open, but it doesn't take very long before she folds the letter and stuffs it back into the envelope, blushing crimson. "I must have forgotten to put your age on your profile," she says, seeming flustered, "He thought you were still at Hogwarts."

"The name Seeker III- or was it IV- probably contributed to that impression," Harry remarks, turning his attention to the next envelope. This next person seems promising. He writes that he loves the outdoors, isn't very good at Quidditch but he enjoys flying. He proposes a day trip to Cornwall, 'just to fly all day over the cliffs and the sea.' "

"That sounds lovely," says Ginny, reading over Harry's neck.

"Mmm, it looks like he's just visiting from Germany, though. Nah, it isn't worth it." Harry puts the letter aside.

The last letter is from Will O' the Whip, who'd like to spank Harry's behind till it's red.

"No thanks," Harry says politely, and tosses the letter aside.

"Oh Harry don't give up," Ginny pleads, "there's still a whole encyclopedia full of people."

"The only people I'd like to see are my children," Harry says, and cringes when he realizes how wrong that sounds.


Harry'll never admit this to Ginny or to anyone else, but late on Saturday night, when it's only minutes before morning, he takes the directory out and sets it on his bed. "Show me…" he's hesitant at first; it makes him feel stupid, talking to a book. But the book flaps its pages encouragingly, and Harry clears his throat and tries: "Show me a guy who…" No. Too stupid. He closes his eyes, thinking that this isn't working and he should just go to bed. But when he opens his eyes the book is still there, its pages open almost expectantly, and Harry wonders how he got so lonely that he's come to assign moods to an inanimate object. He tries to speak to the book again: "Show me a guy who… just wants to meet someone.

"For company.

"Maybe because he's a bit lonely.

"Because he's middle aged, maybe.

"...

"He's not a sex fiend. Or he can be, that's good at a certain stage I guess, but that's not all he's looking for.

"He likes Quidditch and his family.

Did you get that, book?"

The book is unresponsive. Harry thinks maybe he did it wrong. But then the pages begin to flap to and fro in a haphazard fashion, like there's a wind blowing in Harry's bedroom, and Harry watches, fascinated, wondering if he's broken the book, but it does come to rest eventually. The profile reads

The Silver Seeker.

Male, 34

I have two children from a previous marriage. Write to me if you're interested in good conversation, a game of Quidditch, or a quiet drink. Annoying personalities will receive no replies.

That's it. That's all The Silver Seeker has to say for himself. "How did you find him from what I said?" Harry asks the book. The book ruffles its pages like it's proud of itself.

"That was very impressive," Harry says, and takes out his quill.