Chapter 3

In a small half-wizarding village in the north of Scotland, a middle-aged man sat in his cellar. He was working vigorously over a cauldron that was emitted bursts of grey vapor that smelled of rotting flesh. Every few minutes, he would reach over to his ingredient table, grab one of the many items laid out, and toss it unceremoniously into the cauldron.

After adding a half cup of powdered bicorn horn, he stood straight to check the progress out of a large grimoire on the desk nearby.

"The potion should have turned a very light shade of grey and have attained the consistency of milk…" he murmured as he wandered back to the cauldron. It looked right, but then, it had looked right the last two times he had tried to brew it. For the life of him, he could not determine what was going wrong. The next step was to bring the potion to a boil and stir counterclockwise eight times exactly. That was where it always seemed to go wrong, even though it seemed to be ready for it.

Gritting his teeth, he turned up the heat on the cauldron and waited. Once it was boiling, he eased the stirring stick into the potion and began stirring. After the eighth stir, he carefully pulled the stick out and set it back on the table. He switched off the fire under the cauldron and sat back. This was the farthest he had ever gotten on the potion without it exploding. His gaze strayed to the ingredient shelf.

A large black orb similar to a seer's crystal ball was perched on the center of the shelf in the midst of several rare and dangerous potion ingredients. The man smiled a bit grimly. Things were coming along perfectly, if he could only manage to properly brew this potion…

Speaking of this potion, he turned back to it resignedly as it released a putrid cloud of smoke. He had barely enough time to dive behind his desk before the cauldron gave an almighty shriek and split, sending the contents to splatter all over the cellar.

With a sigh, he stood and surveyed the scene before him. Biting his lip in frustration, he turned to the cabinet behind the desk, removed another set of the ingredients, and placed them on the worktable. He then pulled yet another cauldron from the stack he had assembled in the far corner of the room. He reset the work area and, with a last glance at the orb on the shelf, began again.

Harry had returned to the Auror office and worked on his paperwork. Thankfully, no more attacks were reported, and he was able to catch up on the majority of it. He dropped it on Arthur's desk with an apologetic look before going to check the log book to see who was out doing follow-ups.

Very few officers were actually out. Most were either attempting to work on their own paperwork in their cubicles or had been sent home to get whatever sleep they could before the next alarm. Besides the issue with the shadow, there had been problems with the security at Azkaban as well as an unfortunate misunderstanding between three Druids and a vampire which Harry was still tired enough to consider the beginning of a bad pub joke.

Harry was pulled from his exhausted musings by the shuffling of robes from behind him.

"Mr. Potter," said the Minister for Magic. Harry inclined his head slightly and shook the other man's hand. "It doesn't look as though the department is any better off than my office. I was rather hoping part of the Ministry wouldn't already be exhausted over this shadow."

"We're running out of leads," Harry told him, "Arthur's got us all on shortened shifts to make sure we're rotating and still getting some sleep. It's only going so far towards helping us move along, though. For the most part, we're just running over the same things we've been looking at since the first attack."

Shackelbolt bowed his head momentarily, "So we have nothing to offer the public in the way of reassurance. What would you recommend telling the press at this time? Arthur has asked that you handle the releases for the department. He seems to think you are more familiar with the beasts at the Daily Prophet."

Harry gave a short laugh as he met Shackelbolt's eyes, "I think most everyone sends the press to me when they can get away with it. It's a defensive tactic. Generally, they forget the real reason they're interviewing me and manage to get off on some tangent of my life."

"I can see how that might be considered an asset," Shackelbolt gave him a faint smile, "Do you have anything to offer the press?"

"Not really," Harry frowned, "But I do know exactly what this creature looks like now. I snapped a picture of it in my pensieve. It should be finished developing any time now. I'll pass that on to Dennis Creevey at the Prophet." The minister gave him a nod and turned to go back down the corridor to the lifts. He stopped and stuck his head in Arthur's door for just a moment before continuing on.

Harry glanced up at the clock on the wall and sighed. Ginny would be getting home soon with Lily, and he had promised he would be home for dinner for the first time in two weeks. If he was going to keep that promise, he was going to have to quickly clear up his desk and hope that another call didn't come in.