A/N: The link in my profile leads to a detailed summary of past chapters, that should enable you to read the update without re-reading the entire story.
And here's a summary of the last chapter:
Harry confronted Lance Colman, who indeed let information slip to Chloe Greengrass, thus to Sao. After a short visit to a still-comatose Ron in St. Mungo's, Harry is attacked by a hired hand working for Narcissa Malfoy. As they fail to defeat one another, though, Harry and the mercenary strike a deal - she takes him, unharmed, to an unsuspecting Narcissa, in exchange for payment. There, Harry discovers Mrs Malfoy wants to exert revenge on him for killing Draco Malfoy; however, before he achieves anything, a sudden explosion destroys Malfoy manor, killing Narcissa Malfoy, the mercenary, and every inhabitant. Harry miraculously survives and is found by Tonks, sent with a company of Aurors to investigate the explosion. Tonks looks wary, as Harry has just been recognised as Hermione's aggressor - but he persuades her to listen to him before she takes any action against him.
Tonks sends Harry to wait for her in her home.
Chapter Nineteen - Tonks
Harry's feet hit the ground and he instinctively let go of Tonks's Portkey, which fell with a loud ringing of metal. The whirlwind of colours stabilised, for a second, into a room with greyish walls and a dark floor. Harry could not register the details of the furniture; his attention was drawn by something dark and very large that moved into his peripheral vision, and by the time he swung on his heel to face it, a spell was already rocketing towards his face.
Harry ducked. The jet of light hissed over his head and hit something behind him that rang like a gong. Before he had the time to think, before he even straightened up, his wand described a circle and a curse flew at the man facing him — a dark-robed, red-faced, bulky figure barricaded behind a sturdy oak table.
The man's eyes met his own and widened. Harry's wand froze halfway through a second spell.
A high-pitched wail pierced Harry's eardrums when his spell was deflected upwards. The entire room shook at the impact, and from the ceiling dropped bits of white plaster that shattered in powder on the tiled floor.
"Evening, Chief," Harry said through the dust rain.
His greeting came out a little more curtly than what he had intended. Getting constantly cursed from behind was starting to make him edgy.
Apparently, Robards was thinking along the same lines.
"What the devil was that, Potter?" he growled.
"You cursed me first," said Harry. He tried to brush the white dust off his robes, but they were still damp from his last stay in the Malfoys' tower and the plaster was turning to a white, liquid mud that stuck to the material. He stopped and tiredly looked at his stained hand. All of sudden, he was yearning for a shower and a bed.
Shower and bed. A pair of grey-green eyes came swimming to the surface of his mind. Tangled dark-blond hair spilt on the sheets, one pale, slender arm thrown across his waist. Harry's stomach twisted with longing. He found it hard to push the image away and concentrate again on the much less pleasant sight of a dust-covered Robards.
"'You cursed me first'," the Head Auror was saying, mimicking him. "Where the bloody hell are you coming from? And how did you get here?"
"Tonks gave me her Portkey home."
Harry looked round until he found the large, wrought-iron key that had brought him along. It had been thrown across the room by the blast of their fight and lay in a corner, next to a rusty oven.
"Accio Portkey." The key flew into Harry's hand, and he held it out towards the oak table Robards had been using as a shield.
"Wouldn't touch that if I were you," Robards said when Harry's fingers nearly came in contact with the table. "Might not be able to take your hand back."
Harry froze. "It's cursed?"
"No." Robards pulled a face. "It's disgustingly sticky. I think Tonks is cleaning it with honey or something. Probably just before she rubs the floor with jam and oil."
Puzzled, Harry took a closer look at the table. The powdered plaster that covered it was outlining fingerprints and large rings of liquids spilt there and never wiped off. He grimaced and pocketed the key, shooting a questioning look to Robards, who, in answer, made a broad gesture including the whole room.
Harry turned to study what apparently was Tonks's kitchen. The floor was made of tiles, which might have been earthenware many, many years ago — the stains and dust accumulated had turned their original colour into a greyish brown. Crumbs piled up in the narrow spaces between the tiles. The walls themselves bore multiple spots and finger marks, and over the old oven, they were black with soot. Brownish stains around the hotplates testified that food had been cooked, spilt and burnt there on a daily basis for years. Dirty dishes piled up in the sink.
"Edifying, huh?" Robards commented.
"Bloody hell," Harry murmured. Behind him, the fridge disappeared under dozens of papers held in place by a set of bright-coloured magnets. What little he could still see of it, however, was also grey with filth. There were bread crumbs on top of it.
"And you haven't seen the worst," Robards said. "I've been cleaning up this cesspit ever since I got here."
"You've been—"
"You should've seen the worktops. And the ceiling." He raised his head to consider the crackled ceiling and the apparent beams where Harry's spell had disintegrated the plaster. "Well, not that you can see much of it now, anyway," he said dismissively. "Thank you, by the way. I really needed some white dust on top of everything else."
"Sorry."
"I bloody well hope so."
Robards Summoned two wooden stools from a corner of Tonks's kitchen. They looked relatively clean, but the Head Auror still ran them through several cleaning and — from what Harry could catch — disinfecting charms before he finally declared himself satisfied. They sat, facing each other.
"I take it that you're not going to arrest me," Harry started.
Robards grunted. "No. And I'm probably the only Ministry official in that situation, as a matter of fact. You were officially identified as Granger's aggressor right after our meeting at Hogsmeade, this morning."
Harry nodded slowly; he remembered all too well the expression on Tonks's face when she had seen him.
"Inconvenient, but we were expecting it," Robards went on. "Unfortunately that's not all. Following your report, I appointed two Aurors for Chloe Greengrass's surveillance, under a false pretext. They were found poisoned less than an hour ago. The girl vanished."
Harry was speechless for several seconds.
"Hell," he breathed.
Robards bent down, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped together. There was a strain to his features that Harry had never seen before. With a twinge of uneasiness, he remembered what he'd once heard about Gawain Robards: that he hated above everything else losing some of his people. Rumours said that he had flirted with illegality on more than one occasion to avenge his Aurors.
As far as Harry knew, those were the first deaths in the Aurors' ranks since the end of Voldemort's reign. And he was the reason they had happened.
Harry suddenly wondered what his relations with Robards would be once it was all over.
Robards spoke to his joined hands. "There was another disappearance, as well. Although I'm not sure it's significant. Lancelot Colman."
"What?"
"When Brown and Ryan turned up dead, I had all my Aurors check in. Colman didn't reply. He's nowhere to be found."
Harry shook his head. "Wait, Chief, that's not possible. I talked to Colman a couple of hours ago. He's in my apartment."
"Was," corrected Robards. "It's one of the first places I checked. Your apartment was wrecked and Colman wasn't in it." The Head Auror frowned. "You'd talked to him about your mission?"
"No… Not really."
Harry pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to sort his ideas. A new feeling of dread was creeping up the back of his mind and infected his thoughts, making his plans petty, insignificant before the Aurors' deaths. More victims. He hadn't been prepared to that. He'd hoped, somehow, that the secrecy surrounding his mission and his newfound control over the Isiames would keep it from happening.
As for Lance…
"Well, he didn't suspect anything about the mission, at least," Harry said with difficulty. "I found out he had leaked information — involuntarily — to Chloe Greengrass. I lost my temper."
"Now that was a dumb thing to do," snapped Robards. "You entered your own apartment, wrecked it, and possibly wounded Colman in the process. You're really making it easy for the ninth-floor, aren't you?"
"It's not that simp — wait, easy for them to do what?"
Robards's face twisted into the same expression he had worn when considering Tonks's kitchen table. "I was told that the Department of Aurors wasn't qualified to lead an investigation about one of their own; in this case, you," he said. "But the Department of Mysteries apparently is. They're investigating your case, Potter. And who do you think they blamed for Greengrass's and Colman's disappearances? Or for the two Aurors' murder?"
Harry stared silently at his Head of Department. The room seemed to have shrunk over his head.
"Things are getting really ugly… Scrimgeour gave specific orders to arrest you on sight, which means he's officially stopped supporting you. He might still like you better than the Unspeakables, on a personal level, but he can't protect you anymore. I don't doubt he was pressured into ditching us."
"Us?"
Harry's hand tightened over his wand. Robards wasn't quite meeting his eyes; he was busy rummaging in his pockets, grumbling indistinctly as he did.
"Why 'us'? What's your position, sir?" Harry asked. His voice came out low and raucous.
Robards snorted. "It won't be the first time I don't follow Rufus's orders. In fact he was probably hoping I wouldn't." He finally extracted a rumpled cigar from an inside pocket and pointed it threateningly at Harry. "The ninth-floor is behind that. They're the reason two of my Aurors are dead, Potter. This only proves how close we got. I'm not going to drop the mission. And you aren't, either."
Harry shook his head slowly. "Even if you drop it, I won't," he muttered.
Robards grunted indistinctly, then used his wand to light his cigar.
"I decided to have Tonks join us," he said, through a cloud of exhaled smoke. "Not the best Auror we got, but I trust her and she likes you. She's not particularly impressed by Rufus, either, which speaks in her favour. We need to be more in this. Just the two of us against the Unspeakables isn't going to be enough."
"Is that why you're here, sir? To recruit Tonks?"
"Indeed. In fact, she had just invited me in when she had to leave and take care of an explosion in Suffolk. I would've been glad to never set foot in this… dustbin, but meeting her in the Ministry would have been too dangerous — the Unspeakables have spies all over the place. But I gather you've beaten me to the punch… Not a bad initiative, but I hope you haven't taken any risk. Enough deaths already."
Robards looked at him with raised eyebrows. Harry stared blankly back.
"You talked to Tonks," Robards elaborated. "Since you're here. Didn't you?"
"Actually, I just told her enough to convince her not to arrest me," said Harry. "I said I needed to see you, and she sent me right here. She was supposed to come right back from Malfoy Manor, but—"
"Malfoy Manor?" Robards sharply interrupted him. "In Suffolk? Malfoy Manor is where the explosion took place?"
"Yes—"
"What were you doing there, Potter?"
"I hadn't planned to go there," said Harry. "After my visit to St. Mungo's, I was attacked by a hired wand who was working for Narcissa Malfoy…"
Harry trailed off as Robards' rough, seamed features seemed to dissolve into a dismayed expression.
"The Malfoys are involved?" he asked in a thin voice.
Harry shook his head. "No, I don't think so. Mrs Malfoy had nothing to do with the ninth-floor or their subject of investigation; she just hated me and wanted me dead."
"Sometimes I understand how that feels," Robards dryly said. "How did it end? Wait, she had nothing to do? Past tense?"
"Yes, sir. She's dead. Half the Manor got blown off and the rest was on fire; according to Tonks, a Sticky-Fire bomb was used."
"Merlin and Morgana. What a mess." Robards rose, agitated, and started to pace in Tonks's kitchen. "Who set the bomb?"
Harry gave a dismissal shrug. That point puzzled him as well. It could be that Narcissa Malfoy had had an enemy who had nothing to do with Harry at all. Or someone could have, somehow, heard of the deal she'd sealed with the mercenary, and hoped to kill Harry and her both… Except it would have been much easier and quieter to let Narcissa kill him then dispose of her, by poisoning her dinner or cursing her in the back in a dark alley…
Pacing back and forth behind his abandoned stool, Gawain Robards was puffing out smoke rings with a thoughtful expression on his face. The rings grew larger and larger as they neared Tonks's ruined ceiling, the smoke twisting so harmoniously that Harry suspected the cigars to be charmed, in some way. Somewhere in the background, a clock was ticking seconds off. The beat was irregular. Harry found he wasn't surprised; Tonks's house felt like a place with no room for order or tidiness.
A figure with a blue paint mark on one cheek, jam on her fingers and her hair covered with an old scarf stood quietly in the back of Harry's mind.
"When in doubt, blame the ninth-floor," Robards suddenly said; Harry's head jerked up as his train of thought was brutally pulled from a dangerous road. "Wouldn't surprise me if they had heard of Mrs Malfoy's intentions and wanted to get rid of her before she managed to get you killed. They seem pretty intent on getting you alive."
"… You think?" Harry showed him his forearm, where the burn marks were still visible despite Tonks's orange ointment. "I nearly got torn to bits and burnt alive in that explosion."
Robards snorted. "Even I wouldn't blame the ninth-floor for your talent at getting yourself into life-threatening situations, Potter."
"That's not what I meant," Harry said impatiently. "You're saying they knew that Mrs Malfoy wanted my head, and instead of waiting until they've learnt more or disposing of her quietly, they just blew her up?"
"Unexplained explosions happen all the time. Experimental potions and spells go wrong, people die; the Malfoys are known for playing around with legality, as well. It's not a bad plan, on the contrary."
Harry stubbornly shook his head. "No. You say they want me alive, yet they took the risk of wiping me off along with Malfoy. That doesn't sound like the ninth-floor; too sloppy. These people don't take risks."
Robards inhaled deeply, his brow furrowed, the tip of his cigar glowed red—then, to Harry's mild surprise, green.
"Good point," he muttered through a fresh torrent of smoke. "Two solutions: either they're a lot weaker than you suspect them to be, or they're getting desperate enough to make mistakes. Which amounts to the same, really. And think about it." Robards planted himself in front of Harry, his fists on his hips. "They allowed a village to be raided by werewolves, at the risk of sending McGonagall into a crusade. They appointed a good friend of yours to the case, at the risk of her betraying them or you finding her out. And now they're publicly involving themselves. They've been acting out of character for a long time in this business, don't you think?"
Harry opened his mouth to answer. A slight pop sounded just behind Robards.
It was immediately echoed by Harry's stool clattering against the floor as the two Aurors sprang to their feet and pointed their wands at a startled, newly-Apparated Tonks.
"Woah!" she said slowly, raising her empty hands in a surrendering gesture. "It's just me—"
"Oh, then, fine!" thundered Robards, so loudly that both Harry and Tonks recoiled a little. "If it's just you, I'm very likely not to blast your freaking head off right here and now! Identify yourself properly, Auror!"
Tonks gulped audibly. Her hair, Harry noticed, was now short, black, and stuck up at odd angles — a bit like his own; it contrasted rather brutally with her pale skin and tended to enhance the sharpness of her pointy chin. Her scarlet uniform was entirely blackened on one side, and she let off a strong stench of burning plastic. Her wand was tucked in her belt.
"Good," Robards growled after Tonks identified herself in a voice that was, in Harry's opinion, remarkably steady. He lowered his wand and Conjured a third stool from thin air. "Now sit down. There are a few things I need to explain to you and it's going to take a while."
"Uh. Sure, Chief." Tonks sat, casting a quick look around at her destroyed ceiling and at the white dust covering half of her floor and furniture. Her eyes went a little wide and her mouth fell open.
"If you're wondering what's happened to your kitchen, it's the result of my being fed up with Aurors suddenly appearing in my back," said Robards. "Although, if you ask me, it looks much better like that."
"Uh, yeah, it's not bad," Tonks distractedly approved.
Robards emitted a sound of sincere disgust. Harry snorted quietly, momentarily distracted from increasingly ominous thoughts. Tonks caught his eye for the first time; an uncomfortable expression went over her features and she looked away, turning to Robards instead. Harry's amusement evaporated.
"Chief?" said Tonks. "I got specific orders from Mr Scrimgeour—"
"You want to arrest Potter, Tonks? Is that it?" Robards brutally interrupted.
"I was ordered—"
Robards's cool glare froze the words in her mouth.
"You were told he was dangerous," he said, hammering the words through teeth that were still clenched around his cigar, "and yet, you sent him to your kitchen… Just because he told you 'I didn't do it'?"
"I, uh, assume I was right," said Tonks with a hint of a grin. "Since you're talking to him…"
The rest of her sentence was drowned in Robards's inarticulate below. Harry tactfully looked away as Tonks shrank on the spot, bravely squaring her shoulders against the formidable torrent of noise; he knew, from experience, that no one liked to be stared at when they were being verbally decapitated by Gawain Robards.
Inwardly wincing at the sheer volume of sound, he let his eyes wander around the room and thought about the perspective of having Tonks at his side. It was dangerous enough to hide his double game from Robards, who had no idea how close to the Isiames he actually was; was it reasonable to bring Tonks in the matter? Would he be able to fool her as well? Or would he have to come clean about the whole thing?
Truth be told, Robards seemed to have taken his decision; so there was little point wondering about whether or not it was reasonable. Besides, he had to be honest with himself: if she could trust him again, it would be a relief from what he'd experienced so far — being completely on his own.
The three of them, fighting a war against the Unspeakables, their impossibly far-reaching arms, and their full power unleashed to get to Harry…
Two Aurors killed, Chloe and Lance abducted — and if Robards's assumption was correct, Malfoy Manor dynamited; and the more Harry thought about it, the more Robards's reasoning made sense. It fit in the jigsaw. They weren't being subtle. They wanted to scare him, badly.
Hermione had warned him, he suddenly thought. She had been in charge with his case, she had spied on him, studied him like a strange specimen, betrayed his friendship in the most brutal way — and thus, she had given herself the means to control every action that the ninth-floor undertook. He had never denied that she had had good intentions, however twisted her decisions were; but it had never struck him that she had also been frightfully realistic.
Beating her had been like kicking a hornet nest. Hermione gone, the Department of Mysteries was no longer content with spying on him or studying him from afar: they tried to corner him, prevent him from acting, even if it meant having him thrown in Azkaban.
Harry blinked. Behind the window he had been absentmindedly staring at, two round amber eyes blinked back.
"Tonks?" he asked.
It took him a moment to realise Robards had stopped yelling and was now speaking normally. At his interruption, the Head Auror turned a weary face to him.
"Go ahead, Potter. It's not a complicated story to explain at all. You may interrupt me any time you wish."
"Sorry," Harry mechanically said. "Tonks, are you expecting mail?"
Tonks followed his gaze to the window where the owl was waiting, its feathers ruffled against the cold, a letter clamped in its beak.
"Not particularly," she said. "But let me get that, it might be Remus."
Harry and Robards watched her as she crossed the kitchen to the window, picked a greyish cloth that lay crumpled on the windowsill, and used it to open the window without touching the catch.
"Let me guess," said Robards in an almost sweet voice. "The window catch is sticky too?"
"Uh, yeah." Tonks opened the window wide for the owl, but it just gave a disgusted hoot, dropped the letter on her feet and flew off.
Instead of bending to retrieve the letter, Tonks kicked up with one foot, sending the small square of parchment flying three feet away. Robards shut his eyes so he wouldn't have to see more. Tonks reached for her wand, but Harry, foreseeing another catastrophe, raised his and Summoned the letter before she could utter a word.
"That's just as well," Tonks said with a shrug as he caught the parchment. "It's for you anyway."
"For you?" Robards repeated, suddenly alert. "Someone knows you're here, Potter?"
"I doubt it, sir," said Tonks. "There's no address, just his name on it."
Harry took one wary glance at his name, sprawled across the parchment in a left-handed writing, then turned the envelope over. There was no expeditor; the seal was blank and unremarkable.
Robards ripped the letter from his hand. "I'll get that for you, if you don't mind, Potter," he grumbled, taking out his wand and pointing it at the square of parchment.
Harry and Tonks watched, holding their breaths. But nothing happened when Robards broke the seal and extracted a single sheet of parchment from the envelope. The Head Auror looked at the letter. Then he shoved it back, without warning, in Harry's hand.
The parchment was blank when Harry looked at it. Then, under his very eyes, words appeared and started running from one side of the parchment to the other.
Harry—
I couldn't go to Hogwarts until Rosmerta let me have a break, I hope this doesn't reach you too late. I followed your instructions to the letter and here's what I learnt:
Headmaster Pallas's sword was in fact his father's, who participated to the Great Battle of Hogwarts (whatever that is). Pallas said it was a sword crafted for defensive purposes, meant to be wielded by a guardian and not a conqueror. It apparently was the reason why he was chosen to become Headmaster after the last Founder died, because the sword gave him the ability to defend the school against hostile forces. Then he became rather confused… He said he couldn't guard the school against something he didn't know, so he decided to make acquaintance with his foes and prepared what he called his 'fateful expedition.' He took the sword with him. Apparently that's when he died and the sword was never found again.
I was unable to learn more because when I asked who those foes were, he started screaming about a third kind that would destroy everything if we let them, and every other portrait went insane and started screaming as well. Dumbledore told me to go.
That's it. I hope you can make some sense out of it, and eventually tell me what's going on—it sounds like something I'd like to hear.
See you soon, I hope,
Romilda Vane.
"Interesting."
Harry lifted his eyes back to Robards. "What's interesting?"
"The letter may only be read by you. That means you gave a reference number to whoever wrote it," Robards replied conversationally. "I find it interesting you should recruit an informant without consulting me first."
"With all due respect," said Harry, folding the letter and sliding it in a back pocket, "if I had to consult you every time I took a decision…"
"Maybe you wouldn't have sent Granger to the hospital," Robards finished.
Harry threw at him an incredulous look — was it just an impression, or had Robards decided to remind him of everything that had gone wrong since the beginning of his mission? The Head Auror looked coolly back, seemingly forgetting he himself had shown satisfaction at Hermione's defeat.
However, Harry's annoyance dissolved as he felt Tonks's gaze pressing against the side of his face. Hermione was the reason why she couldn't trust him. And Robards had to know that.
"Maybe not," he conceded. "Maybe she'd still be behind her desk, spying on me and slowing us down." And letting werewolves into Hogsmeade, he mentally added; that last argument would probably cause Tonks to rally his side in the blink of an eye. But something — an odd sense of loyalty — prevented him from wording it. "More likely, I'd be down in a ninth-floor cell," he went on. "As their next project, between the Archway Room and the Gearwheel Well."
"Gearwheel Well?"
Harry turned to Tonks. "A room full of gearwheels in the Department of Mysteries. Hermione was studying some forces trapped there, partly mastered by huge brass wheels. Rumour says Alphonse Martin, the Head Unspeakable, brought them from France."
"What's the connection with you… or Hermione?" asked Tonks, frowning.
"Well," said Harry, hooking his foot around the leg of his stool and dragging it back to him, "that's where it gets a little complicated."
"A little complicated. Hah."
"Cheer up, it's not as bad as it sounds," Harry said, distractedly seizing Tonks's elbow as she stumbled over a rock dissimulated under a thick layer of snow. "And you get to go back to Hogwarts, don't you?"
He glanced at the faraway castle, sitting atop a hill dominating the frozen lake, silhouetted in black against the blinding white of the sky and snow-covered landscape; it was a Friday, and the school would be buzzing with activity — and with the promises of a Hogsmeade weekend. Chances were they would see none of it, though, as McGonagall had offered them rooms in the guest aisle. Neither Harry nor Tonks had ever set foot there as students.
"Small consolation," Tonks sighed. "And knowing you, I bet it's even worse than it sounds. Why didn't you talk to Robards about the letter you got?"
"We talked about it while you were busy getting your things in order. It's a lead I found yesterday… A magical sword is — I think — linked to the Third Kind, the creatures Robards was telling you about. It went missing some twenty-five years ago, and I'm trying to track it down. We follow the sword lead, Robards keeps up the watch on the Unspeakables. McGonagall's office will be our HQ, and that's where we'll all meet up."
"A sword."
"Yes."
"How… medieval."
Harry snorted. "Wanna hear more medieval? It's a hunch I got from a millennium-old Hogwarts book, a dream, and a portrait."
"I've heard weirder," said Tonks with a nod. "But not often. How did it go missing?"
"Well, that's where I get personally involved. I know my father owned it at one point."
"Yeah?" Tonks threw at him a sharp glance. "Is that why you get all hot and bothered about that sword? Because, based on what you're telling me, it's interesting, sure — but not likely to tell us why these creatures are suddenly sprouting from the ground and messing with us."
"Trouble is, they're not really messing with us. They're messing with me," said Harry dryly. "It's me they're interested in. Robards suspected it after the whole werewolf incident, I confirmed it after I made contact with the Third Kind, and from the way they keep trying to stop me, the ninth-floor knows it too. So anything that is linked both to me and to them is useful in this investigation."
"So the case about weird-creepy-creatures turned into a case about one Harry Potter, Junior Auror. In other words, you got Robards to investigate about you." Tonks whistled softly. "Wow."
"Yep." Harry halted as they came to a fork. Behind them was the way they had walked from the Earth Gate into Hogsmeade valley. The road on the left slithered downhill to the Hogwarts gate, and on the right, it led steadily to the first houses of Hogsmeade village.
"An investigation all about me," he sighed. "And just when it becomes about me, more people get killed. Fancy that."
Tongs rubbed her nose vigorously. It had gone upturned, and a little longer, when she lowered her hand. "Well, I have to say," she commented, "Aurors have got killed for stupider causes. At least you've got cool hair."
Harry's surprised laughter rang high in the air, and the mountains let the echo of it bounce off their flanks until it died off, long after the two Aurors had started on the road leading to the Hogwarts castle.
Being back to Hogwarts lifted Harry's spirits, even now, while the horizon was darker than it had ever appeared. Tonks apparently felt the same way; her demeanour radically changed, turning into a bright kind of determination, all traces of suspicion and uncharacteristic seriousness having evaporated. There was something about the castle that made them feel protected against foreign attacks. They no longer looked over their shoulder or jumped at every noise, wand jumping from their belt to their fighting hand. The nausea and fever that had taken hold of Harry since he'd left the Isiame city had, too, receded.
Harry had not felt so perfectly safe in years. He was beyond the Unspeakables' reach, and also — and he was taken aback by the intense relief he felt at that thought — beyond the Isiames'. Here, he was just Harry Potter.
It made it easier to think.
The evening found them having dinner in Professor McGonagall's quarters. The castle was humming with the students' chattering as they filled out of the Great Hall. Small groups of black pointy hats could be seen through the window, dotting the snow-covered courtyard, hurrying back inside the castle at Filch's angry, wheezy-voiced calls.
And Harry waited for the castle to quieten, so he could go looking for a lost sword — in a place where dozens of generations of Hogwarts students had hidden things.
"Harry," said Tonks, a sudden note of eagerness in her voice. "You should see this."
She thrust at him a few parchments coming from a heavy bundle bewitched to look like garish magazines, freshly delivered by Robards' owl. The Head Auror was emptying his home and office of all documents related to their investigation, before he even had to face the Unspeakables' growing suspicions — and possible searches.
The sheets were still coiling at the ends from being tightly scrolled, and some of them were yellowed with age. Harry smoothed them down and squinted his eyes, in an effort to decipher the words scripted in fading ink.
Excitement made his heart pound at once.
"That's Alphonse Martin's medical record," he murmured.
"Yeah." Tonks's eyes glittered. "The Chief has been doing some heavy surveillance work on Martin, lately. Still, I'd like to know how on earth he got his hands on that. Any medical record is heavily protected, but the Head Unspeakable's? I wouldn't be surprised if the stuff was guarded by half a dozen dragons."
"There's not all of it," Harry noted, "and it looks like badly done copies of the original record. In French, too."
"Don't be such a killjoy. I know a little French."
"We don't need just 'a little'. We need someone who's fluent."
Tonks shook her head. "I know an Auror who's fluent, but he's recently sworn to hang your arse to his cubicle door, as his personal hunting trophy."
"No, thanks," Harry delicately said. "Fleur Weasley would be our best bet, but I don't like the idea of involving the Weasleys."
"Especially since Fleur's about to have a second baby—"
"Give me that," snapped Professor McGonagall, snatching the sheets from Harry's hands.
Harry started to protest but the Headmistress held up an imperious hand; the gesture had not lost any of its old authority, despite the fact that she was holding a round-bellied teapot and had almost knocked off Harry's glasses with its nose. He numbly took the teapot from her and watched, bewildered, as she adjusted her own glasses, cleared her throat and unfolded the French medical records in a dry motion of her hand.
"March 30th, 1979," she started, and her voice held that brisk, cutting, you'd-better-take-notes-now-for-I-will-not-repeat-myself tone, so vividly reminding Harry and Tonks of their school days that they both found themselves reaching for parchment and quill.
"Patient admitted at 2 a.m. at the Hôtel-Dieu Hospital, Magical Section, for multi-visceral failure consecutive to severe spell-inflicted injuries.
"Were noted:
"A forced Transfiguration of the right liver into ice, which was reversed after several hours of careful counter-spelling; there are severe lasting effects on liver function. The edge of the ice-liver was sharp enough to slice through the peritoneum and shred several inches of intestine. The subsequent peritonitis was successfully treated.
"Two vertebras Vanished, requiring an emergency operation to stabilise the patient's spine. A loss of superficial and deep sensitivity remains after the operation, affecting the entire body from mid-chest down. Mr Martin regained, however, his motivity and the control of his sphincters.
"Seven fragmented ribs on the right side of the ribcage, a collapsed right lung, and severe burns to the eyes; all of which were fixed with no difficulty."
Tonks let out a slow whistle, and Professor McGonagall stopped reading. Her face had gone a shade paler.
"That's an awesome way to use Transfiguration in duels," Tonks breathed.
The raw admiration in her voice caused Harry to turn to her and blink in surprise. He had never pinned Tonks as an admirer of battle-stories and recollections of ugly, spell-inflected injuries. She reddened slightly under his stare, before squaring her shoulders and scrunching up her face in a look of painful concentration. Her short hair sprouted out of her skull, reaching her shoulders and twisting around as it plaited itself in heavy dreadlocks. Harry had never seen that look on her.
"Well," said Tonks, looking pleased at her new hairdo, "it is. Technically, I mean. Sure, your spell-casting is slower — but it bypasses most common shields, and the counter-spells —"
"It is, indeed, a gruesome and effective way of killing someone," McGonagall said in frosty tones.
Tonks's face flushed a deeper red and she fell silent. The dreadlocks retracted and turned into short reddish ringlets, as though fleeing before the Headmistress's scathing gaze.
"We won't have to look very long for the culprit," Harry pointed out. "Very few people could do that kind of spellwork. Professor Dumbledore, Gawain Robards, you, I suppose —"
"No," McGonagall snapped. "My strengths in Transfiguration do not lie there. If I need to use Transfiguration in a fight, I'll animate statues, change a tree into a charging bull, a river into lava, or just Conjure a rock to throw at your face. Transfiguring and messing with organs, however? It's…"
The Headmistress sighed and looked down at the records.
"Gawain Robards could have done it," she admitted. "He was in my year, and one of the top students in Transfiguration. Besides, he has always had a ghastly taste for anything ugly and chaotic. But that is not his work."
"Yes, he would have told us a long time ago if —"
"No," McGonagall said again, and her voice shook a little. "It's not his work, because I recognise it. Two vertebras vanished and an icy liver — this is too neat, too precise for Gawain. I've seen this kind of injury only once before. This is James Potter's spellwork."
There was a leaden silence. The Headmasters' portraits seemed to be holding their breaths. Harry's heart beat slowly, and it seemed to him that pieces of a jigsaw were falling into place, following that dull, quiet tempo.
"My father was expelled from the Auror training programme with no explanation," he murmured, realisation dawning on him.
Tonks jumped up and rummaged through the scattered parchments, until she picked up another sheet that had come with Robards' owl. "That's the copy of his dismissal notice," she said excitedly. "Apprentice Potter, dismissed for disobeying direct orders. April first, 1979. It fits."
"He beat up Martin —"
"Tried to kill him," McGonagall corrected him through gritted teeth.
"— but I've often heard my mother was involved, somehow," Harry went on, barely noticing the interruption. "That it was in a duel for her honour or something."
"They don't mention it," said Tonks, scanning the dismissal notice. "They don't even say he was involved in a duel. Hey — Professor, there's another piece of the medical record, here… must've slipped when I gave it to Harry…"
McGonagall silently outstretched a hand, palm up, towards Tonks. Both Aurors ensconced themselves in their seats as the Headmistress once more readjusted her glasses, Tonks looking as though she was about to hear a piece from one of her favourite bands, while Harry felt a certain wariness. For better or for worse, the smooth image he had of his father had been severely damaged, and he suspected it would not be improved by further diggings into the past…
McGonagall unnecessarily cleared her throat a couple of times.
"However," she read, "while the wounds carried over by conventional magic were worrying, we were more concerned about several dozens of injuries of unknown nature found all over the patient's skin.
"There were fifty-seven of them, most of them linear, of varying size. The largest was one inch wide and twenty inches long, and it coiled around the wand arm, from wrist to shoulder. Green light filtered through the injured skin, pulsing in time with the patient's heart; it made us assume the wounds were caused by an unknown poison, carried along by the bloodstream. Apart from the green glow, their aspect was that of third-degree burns, and indeed, they kept deepening over the next few days, as third-degree burns sometimes do.
"We tried a broad-spectrum antidote, with no effect on the pulsatile glow or the wounds. Counter-spells made the green light stronger, which seemed to cause the patient considerable pain. In the end, we used an old magic-trapping device to counter the green glow. The device has been in hospital custody for a millennium — although we have no records of it being used for centuries — and, to our knowledge, it is the only one of its kind.
"It was, against all odds, efficient. The light and the pain dimmed and the patient's life was no longer in danger.
"The patient was dismissed on May the third. The device was left in his care, as he could not go two hours without it before the pain got unbearable again.
"A close follow-up was organised with Head Healer Mercier."
Professor McGonagall ruffled through the few remaining sheets. "The rest is just follow-up consultations," she said. "I'll write a translation if you need it. Apparently, the hospital lost track of him five years later."
Harry nodded, and kept silent as Tonks threw herself into a passionate analysis. Guessing at the nature of those green pulsatile wounds wasn't difficult. Martin had had a brush with an Isiame, just before or after he duelled James Potter…
Or maybe, that was how Lily was involved. The Isiame Knights had the duty and power to protect the Isiame people, had said Eunice, back at the Isiame city. Was Lily Potter defending Isiame territory, as she had been cursed to do when she had found Rosalyn's lost sword? And James Potter — the Wizard Knight — had jumped into the battle…
The Wizard Knight.
It was the first time he thought of his father in those terms, in symmetry to his mother's condition; but he had the intuition he was right. By picking up Pallas's old sword — a sword crafted for defensive purposes, meant to be wielded by a guardian and not a conqueror — he had, too, picked up the task to defend wizards against Isiames.
The Wizard and the Isiame Knights, fighting the same enemy on the same night. The night after which neither of their swords was ever to be found. The enemy who was, now, back on the Isiames' track — and on Harry's.
Through the empty castle, shrouded with the silent stillness peculiar to winter nights, Harry and Tonks walked without speaking. Soon they reached, on the seventh floor, a portion of unremarkable corridor where an old tapestry of dancing trolls hung, facing a length of bare wall.
"You think it's in the Room of Requirement?" whispered Tonks, holding her wand aloft.
"I can't think of a better place to hide something in Hogwarts," Harry replied in the same prudently hushed tones — they had been heard by Peeves ten minutes before and had owed their salvation to a hidden staircase. The detour had slowed them down. "The sword vanished, and with it, a sword belonging to the other team — the Third Kind. So, either they've been taken by a third party, or their owners hid them away… and Hogwarts seems like the perfect place for that. It's where the swords have been found, and it's a kind of neutral place."
"But why hide them?"
Harry stared at the trolls in tutus that stood on tiptoes, faded and sour-faced, on the threadbare tapestry. He felt increasingly certain that Lily and James's swords had found a shelter in the cathedral-like room, among towers of dust and archways of cobwebs, with hundreds of dangerous or illegal treasures. And with that certainty came, once more, the sentiment that those swords were a key…
"That's why I'm trying to find out," he breathed.
Tonks, a frown on her face, directed her wand at both ends of the corridor and at the ceiling. "There's no one here apart from us," she said. "And I still think we don't need to be two for the search."
"Tonks, you haven't seen the size of that room."
"I will soon, if you tell me how to open it. I can search that room, Harry. You need to go back to the Third Kind's place — that's what the Chief wants, remember? One at the HQ, one on the Unspeakables' tail, and one on the Third Kind's? S'not like we have much time to spare, is it?"
Harry grimaced. There were now three of them facing the world — facing wizards led by the Unspeakables, and Isiames led by Sao the poisoner.
"Yes," Harry admitted. "Those were his orders. You keep the place and handle the communications, I go back undercover. I even have a grass to pin on Daphne Greengrass's clothes."
And I need to make sure Ron, Luna and Parletoo are being treated, as they promised, he thought, in addendum.
"Okay, then that's settled," Tonks said briskly. "Just tell me the phrase to get in, and I'll find your… sword." She grinned.
"Swords," Harry corrected her. "There are two of them. Both are wide-bladed, one is carved with pentagons and the other has a golden hilt with a big emerald set in it. The place you need the Room to become is a 'place to hide something'. If you need help looking through it, get Romilda Vane, from the Three Broomsticks. She's involved already. McGonagall and the Headmasters' portraits might think of other places to look."
"Wide blades, pentagons, emerald," Tonks recited. "And Romilda Vane. Got it. Now go back undercover, Auror."
"Yes Ma'am!" He ducked as she threw at him some purple sparks, although she missed him by several feet. "By the way," he suddenly called at Tonks, who had started pacing before the tapestry, "I never knew you liked messing with your opponents' organs!"
She turned to him, and the dark dreadlocks joyously sprang before her face again as she flashed him a smile.
"What did you think I had in common with Remus, Harry?" Her smile widened. "I like blood."
Harry snorted and turned on his heel.
Five corridors, three staircases, two passageways hiding behind tapestries and portraits — and he found himself outside, through the side door of the North Tower. There was no wind when he closed the castle door behind him. The night was clear, and the thick carpet of snow reflected a faint blue luminescence under the crescent moon. The Forbidden Forest extended pale, skeletal limbs bristling with bare twigs. A wolf howled. Hagrid's house sat, dark and squat, in the middle of its tiny garden. The lights were out. No one would see him.
Maybe the wolf's cry had influenced him. Maybe it was the quiet, or the moon. Maybe it was the way a breeze suddenly caught in his winter cloak, played with the hem, and zigzagged towards the Forbidden Forest in a playful invitation.
Harry shuddered, and Transformed.
A/N: How long has it been - three years, give or take a few weeks?
I have a bunch of very good and very boring excuses for that elephantine gap between my last update and this one. Let's just say I had to set aside writing, reading, Internet-browsing, personal life, sport, friends, and most family gatherings, due to university being invasive for the past two years and a half. So you see, it's not just you.
I couldn't practice my English for all that time, and it may have suffered from this long diet. I can't really tell. I lost my usual beta, so I can only hope my writing didn't turn to stale soup towards the end of the chapter (the beginning was written three years ago). Also, you can't go for years without thinking about your own story, without continuously reading it, editing it, improving it, and then hope you'll be able to pick it back up right away.
Ah well. I've done my best.
The next chapter is nearly done, and should be posted quickly enough.