It had been two weeks, and Harry was finally starting to adjust to his new life. Draco had left to return to Hogwarts last week, leaving himself and Delphini alone in the house with the various members of Voldemort's inner circle.
Despite being officially withdrawn from Hogwarts, Harry was still spending most of his time learning. Voldemort was insistent that he keep up with his education, so he joined Delphini in lessons taught by the various Death Eaters loitering about. If nothing else, they were definitely covering a lot of subjects not covered in Hogwarts. Tina and Rookwood were giving lessons about psychology and mind magic, which Harry barely knew existed before this year. Voldemort had taken it upon herself to further Harry's abilities with wandless and freeform magic, with the goal of him being able to Blink more reliably.
Despite what he would have expected, though, Voldemort wasn't the best teacher he had. That went to Barty, because Barty was… kind of good at everything? Aside from freeform magic, Harry hadn't seen Barty be unable to do or learn anything. Sure he might not be as good as the specialists around here, but he was certainly above average in everything Harry saw him do.
He felt like he was learning several times faster than he was at Hogwarts.
"That's to be expected." Voldemort said when he remarked on it. "One on one lessons will always result in faster learning, since they can be tailored to your strengths and move at whatever speed you're comfortable with."
"I guess that makes sense…" Harry replied.
Voldemort floated up in the air and gestured to the other side of the room. "Now, give it another go."
Harry closed his eyes and focused on the need to be on the other side of the room, trying to access the feeling without adrenaline and danger to motivate him. When he opened his eyes, the wall was much closer.
Voldemort applauded from behind him. "Brilliant. It will probably take more work to get it down reliably, but this is a great first step."
Harry paused and looked down at his hands in awe. If he was already capable of this in just a few weeks, where would he be in a few months?
It was with a great deal of apprehension that Tonks apparated to the grounds of Malfoy Manor. Voldemort had demanded her presence, which meant that Tonks had to tell her everything.
Not literally everything, of course. Dumbledore had given her a crash course in lying by omission, making sure that she never said anything strictly untrue while excluding certain key details. They'd also carefully gone over what should and shouldn't be said — Tonks couldn't afford to give Voldemort insufficient or bad info, or Voldemort might not reciprocate, but she couldn't give so much information that the Order would end up completely compromised.
Being a spy was complicated, and Tonks really wasn't sure she was up to it.
Thankfully, the Order didn't have much key intel to give away at the moment. Harry's… defection had thrown a huge spanner in the works, leaving most of them running around like headless chickens. Ironically, it would be safe to tell the truth about the Order's plans because they didn't have any.
Of course, that just put even more pressure on Tonks, since it meant that their ability to plot a new course of action was wholly dependent on her getting good intel.
Gods, what a fucking mess.
She knocked on the door and waited, jumping on her heels antsily. Thankfully, she didn't have to wait long, though she didn't recognise the person who answered the door.
He looked fairly young, certainly younger than most death eaters, though it was hard to say for sure. He had blonde hair that hung around his head in loose curls, and a face that felt just barely familiar, like she'd passed him in a crowd once. She… didn't know who this guy was, though. The Order had a fairly comprehensive list of known and suspected Death Eaters, but this guy didn't ring a bell.
"You're Tonks, right?" He asked. "The Order member Voldie took on as a pet project."
Tonks bristled at being called that, but kept her cool. "Yeah, that's me. I was told to report in, so…" she shrugged. "Yeah. Here I am."
The man nodded. "Cool, well, come on in, then. You can clean your shoes on the mat here. Or you could not clean them, if you'd rather. It pisses off Lucius but makes more work for the elves, so it's up to you to decide if it's worth it or not."
That was an… odd sense of priorities, giving more consideration to the workload of house elves than the feelings of their host. Of course, Tonks was pretty sure that no one actually liked Lucius Malfoy, he was just influential enough that no one wanted to end up on his bad side.
He tried to make small talk with her as they made their way through the manor, but she wasn't in the mood. There was too much weighing on her mind, and too much effort going into keeping her composure, for her to focus on any conversation.
"Not very talkative are you?" He remarked.
"I think you'd feel the same way if you were walking into a nest of vipers." She snapped back before she could stop herself.
He just laughed. "Oh, I like you. I suppose I should introduce myself properly. Name's Barty Crouch Junior."
Tonks didn't stop in her tracks, but she did slow down for a moment. "Junior? I thought you were dead."
"Rumours of my death were greatly exaggerated." He replied. "Besides, I bet you were under the impression that my father was still alive, on the run after entering Harry Potter into the Triwizard Tournament."
Tonks kept her expression schooled, but she was quickly re-evaluating a lot of information that she thought she knew. After word got out of Crouch Senior's mysterious disappearance following the Tournament, and Harry fingering him as Voldemort's inside man, he was the ideal fall man for the whole fiasco. Even Amelia took his betrayal at face value. But if it was actually Junior the whole time, then that meant that all the aurors looking for him were on a wild pixie chase, wasting valuable time and resources.
Tonks needed a way to let them know about this, but in a way that didn't finger her as the source. It wouldn't be much good if she blew her cover after the first meeting.
Of course, this was even assuming that the man in front of her was Barty Crouch Junior and not an imposter designed to test Tonks's loyalty, which was also a possibility. His face did look extremely similar to the pictures of him included in the briefings on Barty Sr. that were distributed after his supposed treachery, but that didn't rule out an imposter. Polyjuice didn't work on components from dead people, but human transfiguration was an option.
"Contemplative sort, aren't you?" He asked.
"You've given me a lot to think about." She said, keeping her voice as calm as she could manage. "Although I have no idea how you managed to break out of Azkaban."
"That was my old man's doing." Barty replied, his tone sour. "I suppose he thought he was doing me a favour by fulfilling my late mother's dying wish, but his treatment was barely a step up from Azkaban. Voldie herself sprung me from that personal hell eighteen months ago."
This was all very useful information, but Tonks was not the one who would be able to use it. She just wanted to get this all over with.
Barty stopped outside of a room. "Voldemort is in here. I'll be joining you later, but I need to wrap up the kids' lessons first. I've had to give Harry a remedial chemistry course before we can really go into partial transfigurations and some basic alchemy, but he's mostly caught up now."
Tonks raised an eyebrow at that. Partial transfigurations and even basic alchemy were both NEWT level concepts, and Harry hadn't even taken his OWLs yet. What sort of academic standards were they holding him to?
Still, she had no time to think about that. Barty quickly left her alone in the hallway, and Tonks wasn't keen to keep Voldemort waiting. She pushed open the massive, ornate doors and entered the meeting room. A long table filled the centre of the room, its surface covered underneath heaps of maps, diagrams, and blueprints. At the head of the table sat many of the most dangerous people in this part of the world.
Voldemort sat at the very end, her expression calculating as she looked over the papers in front of her. To her left stood Bellatrix, her aunt's expression warmer than Voldemort's frigid stare, but still fixed on the diagrams. Igor Karkaroff, the ex-head of Durmstrang, currently on "extended administrative leave", Antonin Dolohov, battlemage and Azkaban escapee, Lucius Malfoy, professional briber and general nuisance… Every single person at the table was, at best, considered a menace to society in one way or another.
Well, everyone except one. There was an androgynous person sitting to Voldemort's right, but Tonks didn't recognise them at a glance. Apparently, her gaze lingered a little too long, as they looked up at her, the experience of making eye contact giving her such an intense sense of vertigo that she instinctively put as much power into her occlumency as she could. She didn't think that there were any intrusions, but that experience was unlike anything she'd ever experienced before.
"Tonks." Voldemort said, looking up from the table for the first time since she'd arrived. "I believe you know almost everyone here, but I'll give you introductions just in case."
Tonks managed to tear her gaze away from the vertigo-inducing person, but they never left her attention, always paying attention to them at the edge of her vision.
Eventually, Voldemort made her way to them, though. "And lastly, this is Rookwood, ex-unspeakable and all-around oddity."
"Nice to meet you." Tonks said, desperately trying to hide her growing panic. That was Rookwood!? The fucking capital-G Ghost!?
During a bout of extreme drunkenness, Moody had mentioned Rookwood. Apparently, after the whole "working for the Dark Lady" business came to light, the Unspeakables ran into problems trying to check their documentation on Rookwood. Namely, no one knew anything about them, who they were, or where they had come from. There were no records, no qualifications, not even a name. It was like Rookwood had just been conjured out of thin air.
Moody had spent years periodically trying to track down their history, but everything came up blank. He'd compared the little known information about Rookwood to people who had vanished from the public eye, but each time Moody had felt like he was getting close, the trail turned hot, and not in his favour. Some of the suspects had fled the country and turned up later elsewhere, others had simply tried to vanish but turned up under Moody's detective work, and a few had even been murdered. Moody accidentally solved quite a few cold cases that way, actually, but he never got any closer to discovering who Rookwood actually is.
It was no secret that Rookwood was a master of conceptual manipulation, but to completely erase someone's entire history from everyone who'd known them before a certain point was beyond unheard of. By all accounts, Tonks was eye to eye with someone who simply did not exist.
"Pleasure to meet you, too." They replied with casualness belying their oddity. Tonks tried not to pay too much attention, but it was hard not to when being in the same room as a fucking anomaly.
"Now that the pleasantries are out of the way, I believe you have a lot to tell us, Tonks."
"Right." Tonks took a deep breath. "I'll tell you everything I know, but I'm afraid that there's not much to tell at the moment. The Order is in a state of chaos right now, since all of-" Don't say our. "-their plans hinged on either Harry or information that was obsolete and outdated."
Voldemort smirked. "Goodness, bad intel? I wonder where the Order could have possibly gotten that?"
Tonks gave her a small glare. "You knew, didn't you? That Snape was more loyal to the Order than to you?"
She shrugged. "I suspected, at the very least. That said, Snape was a poor excuse for a spy by the time I resurrected. He's far too volatile, and constantly tainting everything he observes with his own judgements and preconceptions. Even if Snape was loyal to me, he was of no use to me as a spy." Voldemort grinned. "Not at all like you. You're so much more interesting."
Tonks blinked and Voldemort was gone from where she was sitting. She felt hands grab her arms from behind and a voice whisper into her ear.
"And you are so much more corruptible than Severus ever was. I cannot wait to see what we can make of you once you turn properly. You'll make the perfect complement to our fallen Chosen One, won't you?"
Tonks blinked again and Voldemort was back in her chair. If not for the expressions on Bellatrix and Rookwood's faces, she might think she imagined the whole thing.
"Speaking of Severus, do you know what's become of him? He didn't turn up in Ministry custody after I framed him for all those crimes, so I wasn't sure if he's been hiding with the Order or been on the run."
Tonks scoffed. "Well, I suppose you could say he's hiding with us, from a certain point of view. He's being held in the dungeons of Sirius's childhood home."
"The one under fidelius?" Bellatrix asked.
"Yeah, though I'm surprised you know that."
"The fidelius is less comprehensive than people realise." Rookwood said. "Especially when hiding locations. While it will prevent people from being able to locate or recall the exact position of an area under fidelius, it does not prevent the recall of memories that took place in the location. As such, Bellatrix is easily able to deduce that the house is under fidelius because she is able to recall many details and events that took place within, what with the house having belonged to her family, but she is not able to recall where it is. It is not a huge leap in logic to make, especially not when the Order is known to use the fidelius to hide safehouses."
"I can't fault you for that logic." Tonks replied. "There aren't any plans to do anything with Snape right now — he's seen as too much of a liability after he pulled his wand on Dumbledore in front of the entire order."
Voldemort looked like she was trying to hold back a laugh. "Well, that's amusing, at least. I know you said that there wasn't much to tell, but I am going to request that you tell us anyway."
Tonks took a deep breath and began reciting all of the points that Dumbledore had told her to. A decent chunk of the information was useless mundane stuff, but it was important that she be seen holding nothing back. It wasn't like knowing that Molly was emotionally devastated by Harry's betrayal would help Voldemort work against them, anyways.
Eventually, Tonks made her way through everything she'd been told to relay, and waited in silence while everyone looked at her. The silence in the room was deafening, and Tonks was starting to get retroactive performance anxiety when the door creaked open behind her.
"Sorry about the delay!" Barty said as he slipped in. "Harry was asking about chemical properties and it turned into a whole lecture about energy states and electron clouds and how that determines the stable states of cations and anions and such."
Voldemort sighed. "You're supposed to be teaching him basic chemistry, Barty, not university level stuff."
"I know, I know, but I sometimes feel that dumbing things down too much can reduce comprehension, you know? Besides, he did ask me, and it's not like I didn't know the answer to his question. Are you saying that I should have lied to your ward when asked a basic chemistry question?"
Voldemort's sigh turned into a groan. "I am not having this discussion with you right now. We still need to figure out our plan of attack for next Friday."
"Plan of attack?" Tonks asked. That was valuable intel.
"We'll be attacking the ancestral family home of a light-aligned family next Friday." Her gaze turned to Tonks. "And that, my dear, is where you come in. Your job is to shut down or intercept any emergency calls that the DMLE receives from the Ogden estate."
"You're leaving me as the only one responsible for intercepting any law enforcement response? I'm kind of surprised."
Voldemort gave her a serious look. "This is your chance to earn our trust. If you manage this, then we'll see about keeping you in the loop properly."
"Should I tell the Order anything about this?"
Barty scoffed. "And risk letting them crash our party early? No, keep them out of the loop."
"Tell them at the last minute if you must, but Barty's right." Voldemort said. "The Ogden family must die, and early interference from the Order could throw that off. The last thing we need is for them to whisk any survivors off to a fidelius for their own safety. That said… it would help if they showed up later. Late enough that they couldn't stop us, of course, but I've been dying for a proper fight, and Dumbledore's the only one who stands a chance against me."
Tonks paused to process that. If she wanted to earn the trust of the group that she was supposed to be infiltrating, then she had to consign an innocent family to death. It was… not a pleasant thought. It wasn't like her hand would be personally dirtied by the act, but it still left a bad taste in her mouth.
If Snape had to do this constantly, then no wonder he was so sour.
Tonks sighed. "I'll see what I can do. Managing emergency calls isn't something usually dealt with by the auror division, so I'm not entirely familiar with the system."
Rookwood piped up from their corner. "The emergency call system is a modification to one of the standard Ministry surveillance systems. In this case, it monitors the wards around registered homes and buildings for sudden and large changes, and sends an alert if it registers any such changes. You simply need to gain access to the room and destroy the monitoring system for the Ogden manor, which should be a crystalline icosahedron with the registry number 2713."
"And how do you know all of this?" Tonks asked.
They shrugged. "The funny thing about learning to go unseen in a surveillance state is that you learn a lot about counter-surveillance."
So Rookwood had eyes in the DMLE as well. That actually gave Tonks pause, as she really took in the people around her and what it meant. The Order had some competent fighters, but it didn't take much to realise that they were completely outclassed by Voldemort's closest followers. Dumbledore and Voldemort were evenly matched, more or less, but she didn't think anyone besides maybe Moody stood a chance against the others. Even with Tonks feeding the Order intel, she could only be so optimistic about their odds.
And this time, she'd have to feed them bad intel. Or at least, give bad intel to everyone besides Dumbledore. Surely he'd understand the need not to fully act in this case, not when her loyalty still needed to be proved.
"Alright. What time should I tell the Order that the raid is happening?" Tonks didn't like the idea of playing into Voldemort's thirst for violence, but the Order showing up late was better than the Order not showing up at all.
"Ten pm." She replied. "By the time the Order gets there, all of the Ogdens will either be dead or on my side. I'm willing to bet it'll be the former."
Tonks took a deep, steadying breath. "Alright, Ten pm. I'll try to make sure they don't show up any earlier than that."
Voldemort just grinned.
Harry and Delphini were working on some written work Barty had assigned them, in some attempt to improve their muggle mathematics so they could learn how to translate them into arithmancy. It was going… less than well.
"Gods, I hate maths so much." Delphini muttered as she stared down at the page. "I think even muggle schools only teach this at university level. I have no idea why Barty is teaching it to us this early."
"Hmmmmm…" Harry muttered in reply. He was decent at maths — it was one of his better areas in primary school, but even he was finding his mind bent by this. He supposed part of the issue was that they weren't trying to get an answer out of the equation, or at least not a number. They instead had to translate the equation into a different equation using a series of rules, and Harry was thrown by the fact that he wasn't searching for a specific number. Even in algebra, they were at least searching for whatever value "x" was.
Thankfully, he was saved from having to finish the last few increasingly difficult problems when Barty poked his head into the room. "Voldie wants to see you two about something."
Grateful for any break from trying to solve this damn calculus, Harry and Delphini both followed right after him.
"Any idea what this is about?" Delphini asked.
"Yes, but I think she should do the explaining." Barty said.
That struck Harry as odd, but he figured he'd be getting an answer soon enough. Eventually, they made their way to Voldemort's "throne room", where she was sitting atop the ostentatious black throne.
"I could see myself getting one of those when I'm older, actually." Delphini said to him. "It's very… goth. I respect that."
Harry laughed. "What would you even do with it? Any plans to become an evil despot or something?"
"Gods no. It would just be fun to posture menacingly from atop it, you know?"
Harry did not know, but Voldemort started addressing them, ending that line of conversation.
"I've called you here because I have a mission for the two of you. A mission that only you can do."
Delphini swiftly turned around and started walking to the door. "I'm out. I'm not getting involved in your damned civil war."
Voldemort continued unabated. "I need the two of you to break into Hogwarts."
Delphini turned around again with equal swiftness and stood beside Harry once more. "I'm listening."
"There are three things I need from Hogwarts, one of which only you can retrieve," She pointed at Harry, "And one of which only you can retrieve." She said, pointing at Delphini.
"Why us?" Harry asked. "I mean, surely the Death Eaters are more qualified than we are."
"Because you two can get past the wards undetected." Voldemort explained. "Harry, you were withdrawn from Hogwarts, but you were not expelled, meaning you should still be keyed into the wards. And Delphini, you were born in Britain but have never set foot in the school before, meaning that you'll be given a one-time exception as if you were a 'new, unsorted student'."
"If we're the only ones who can do it quietly, then why not take a loud approach?" Delphini asked. "I'm sure it would be more than easy for you."
"Partially because attacking the school, even if I do so without harming any students, would be extremely bad optics. Additionally, I am going to be busy while you two are doing this. My job here is to get as much of the faculty away from the school as possible. Every evening, two teachers patrol the school to check for students who are out of bounds. Friday patrols are usually handled by Snape, who is currently indisposed, and McGonagall, who is a member of the Order and will thus be drawn away when I launch an attack. Likewise, Dumbledore will also be drawn away when I do this, meaning that the two of you should only have to deal with Peeves and Filch, both of whom should be easily disposed of with magic."
Harry paused to take that in. "What do you need us to grab?"
"This first object is this." Voldemort held up her hand, conjuring an illusion of a tiara wrought in silver with a brilliant sapphire in its centre. "This is the lost diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw, in which I have stored a piece of my soul. While it is probably safe for the two of you to handle, I would like to request that you only handle it with dragonhide gloves, and that you store it in a magically insulated container until I can get ahold of it." She grabbed a brown briefcase from beside her throne and slid it over to them. "That should be well insulated enough. The dragonhide gloves are inside."
Harry opened the briefcase, and inside was a circular indentation which he supposed would fit the diadem, and indeed, two pairs of black dragonhide gloves.
Voldemort continued as they closed the briefcase. "The diadem can be found in a hidden room on the seventh floor, across from the tapestry with the dancing trolls. Pace in front of the wall three times while asking it for the room where things are hidden. It should be on top of a bust four rows back and three rows left. Please don't touch anything else in there, as I cannot guarantee that anything in there is safe, especially not if I've been able to hide a cursed object there for decades."
Wasn't that the same room Tina had told him about? Harry couldn't recall her exact words, but he remembered her saying that that room could become whatever you wanted it to be.
"The second object is one that only you can retrieve, Harry. You are able to Blink, and thus, you should be able to gain access to Dumbledore's office even without the password. Inside of the top drawer of his desk is a plain black notebook with a large hole piercing through it.. If I know the man as well as I think I do, then the desk drawer will be warded. Luckily, Fawkes still remembers me, even if Dumbledore doesn't. Ask Fawkes for help, and he should be able to bypass the wards and let you retrieve the notebook."
Harry winced as soon as Voldemort mentioned the notebook. "Ah, right, that."
Voldemort sighed. "You're not in trouble for destroying it, Harry. I was in a very bad mental state when I made the diary, and I was… much more temperamental as a teenager than I am now. She was impulsive and foolish and it was her own mistakes and arrogance that got her killed in your own defence"
He nodded, letting out a breath. "Okay, what else?"
She looked to Delphini. "I will be filling you in on your retrieval goal later, in private. For now, I want to run over security. Harry, you should bring your invisibility cloak, and I would like to request that, when the two of you split up to accomplish your separate goals, you give it to Delphini. Given your ability to Blink and additional years of schooling, I would feel more comfortable knowing that Delphini has some sort of added security. I've also created the two of these for you."
Voldemort snapped her fingers, and someone entered the room. Someone whom Harry had hoped to never see again.
"You!" He shouted at Pettigrew. "What the hell are you doing here!?"
Harry pulled out his wand and started marching towards the man who had betrayed his parents, but Voldemort stepped between them.
"Harry…" She said softly. "I am not going to demand that you give this man the same sort of forgiveness that you gave me, nor am I going to ask that you like him. What I am going to ask, though, is that you at least tolerate his presence for the next few months. You don't have to spend time with him if you don't want to, but Peter has made many valuable contributions to my movement, and I will be very disappointed if you kill him."
Harry glared past Voldemort at Pettigrew before crossing his arms and sighing. "Fine. Just make sure he stays well out of my way."
Voldemort nodded and moved back to her throne, gesturing at Peter to continue.
"These are, ah, headset communication mirrors." He stammered. "They're based on a design made by James and Sirius, but improved slightly to keep your hands free."
Harry was surprised that it actually did look like a headset. He grabbed his and put it on, noticing that it didn't obstruct his hearing at all, despite covering his ears.
"Tap the 'microphone' mirror to connect to each other." Peter explained. "They can only connect to each other, but it means you'll be able to stay in constant contact so long as you both wear them."
Harry tapped the mirror, which was hanging in the lower right of his field of vision, and noticed that he could not only talk directly with Delphini through the headset, he could also see her through her own mirror. The perspective was a little wonky, of course, but it was still impressive.
"I would like the two of you to stay in contact whenever possible." Voldemort explained. "Moreover, I want at least one of you keeping an eye on the Marauder's Map whenever possible. I am not willing to gamble either of your safety on this, so if anything goes wrong, abort. If you run into a teacher or a prefect, abort. If you cannot reach each other, abort and let me know. I'll attack the school as a plan B if necessary, optics be damned. Is that clear?"
Harry and Delphini both nodded.
"Good. Now, Harry, could you please retrieve your map and invisibility cloak while I fill Delphini in on her own objective?"
Harry nodded and walked out of the room, watching through the corner of his vision as Delphini tapped the mirror to close the communication.
He didn't understand why he was being kept in the dark about this one aspect of the plan, especially given that he was probably more in the loop on things than Delphini was. Still, he doubted it mattered that much, as he was sure to find out himself once she actually grabbed whatever it was.
"Voldemort will be attacking the Ogden's residence at ten o'clock this evening." Dumbledore told the Order.
Tonks fidgeted slightly in her seat. She knew that Dumbledore had to lie to the rest of the Order for the sake of maintaining her cover, but she still couldn't stop the small part of her brain impotently screaming that it wasn't true.
"Our goal," Dumbledore continued, "Is to engage them shortly after the attack, evacuating anyone in the household, and holding off the Death Eaters until the Ministry arrives."
"How long is that likely to take?" Sirius asked. "Minutes? Hours?"
Tonks spoke up. "Hours, most likely. Rookwood has spies in the DMLE, and they plan on cutting any communications from the Ogdens. I can't interfere with any of them without blowing my cover." She lied, because it was easier to say that than it was to say "I am sentencing the family to death by destroying the communications myself".
"Right." Sirius said. "Anything else we should know?"
"Yes, actually." Tonks said. "All this time, it turns out we've been chasing the wrong Barty Crouch. The one helping Voldemort is Barty Crouch Junior."
That caused quite a stir, so Tonks waited for things to quiet down before continuing.
"I don't know the details, but the person I saw looked like Barty Crouch Junior and called himself Barty Crouch Junior. If what he said is true, his father sprung him from Azkaban and kept him imprisoned in his own house. Dumbledore's been looking into it but hasn't discovered anything positive so far. Now obviously, I can't just tell the Ministry that they've been chasing the wrong Barty Crouch without them wondering how I came about that information, so I would like to request that everyone keep an eye on the Death Eaters and try to unmask them. If Barty Junior is there and one of you recognises him, then we can have the Ministry redirect their search efforts without my name being involved."
"Seems like a bit of a long shot, lass." Moody said from the back of the room, his chair pressed against the wall. "Unmasking an opponent in combat is never easy, and we don't even know that your man will be there."
"I'm well aware of that," Tonks said defensively, "But if the Ministry really is wasting their resources trying to track down a dead man, then that means they'll be even less prepared for Voldemort. Every little bit counts." She paused. "Besides, can't you just use your eye to look at their faces?"
Moody scoffed. "I was wondering how long it would take you to realise that…"
Dumbledore cleared his throat to gain everyone's attention. "Given that Miss Tonks is still trying to worm her way into Voldemort's trust, it is imperative that no one outside this room know that we are prepared for this. As such, I am requesting that if any of you have plans tonight, that you not cancel them or make alternative arrangements. If anyone is nearby around ten, make a show of rushing out once you get the news of the attack, understood?"
Everyone else nodded. Tonks just remained tense. This was not a fun job. Was this how Dumbledore felt all of the time? Was this how Snape felt? She couldn't begin to imagine what this feeling would do to a person if it was constant. Just having these feelings on a daily basis was already wearing her down…
Harry, Delphini, and Barty were all waiting inside of the secret passage that led to Honeydukes. Barty had apparated them right inside the tunnel, and they sat there waiting for Voldemort to give the signal to go inside. Delphini had pulled out a deck of cards and begun to play a game of solitaire, while Barty was reading a book and keeping an occasional eye on the tunnel. Harry couldn't bring himself to do anything else, though. The knowledge that he'd be sneaking into Hogwarts, not as a student but as an actual intruder, was leaving him antsy and making it hard to focus on anything else.
Delphini tsked beside him, muttering about a lack of moves as she gathered her cards. "How much longer are we going to have to wait, anyways?" She asked Barty.
Barty just shrugged, looking down at a pebble in his hand. "Not too much longer hopefully. We just need to wait for the Order to arrive, then you two can get going."
Tonks had spent her entire shift keeping a tight lid on her emotions, taking extreme care not to give anything away. She couldn't afford to act suspicious, so she made sure she engaged in small talk with her coworkers, but the sense of intense panic deep down wouldn't go away. She couldn't stop herself from wondering what would happen if she got caught, or someone noticed her going into the surveillance room, but she couldn't afford to let those thoughts get the better of her. She'd committed herself to this course of action, and she had to stick with it.
When eight o'clock rolled around, Tonks got up to take her scheduled break, but she walked right past the break room into the office where law enforcement security worked. As an auror, Tonks outranked everyone there, so no one questioned her presence as she made her way to the monitoring room.
There was one security officer inside the room, but Tonks was prepared for that possibility. Two days ago, Tonks had volunteered to take a memo to the head of MLE security, but she'd "misplaced" it until earlier this afternoon. She shoved the memo at the officer.
"Give this to your boss. Bones wants him to file a report pronto."
The officer jumped and ran out of the room, memo in hand, leaving Tonks alone. She quietly crept down the long room, looking at the numbered crystals on each shelf. It didn't take her long to find the one she was looking for.
"Two seven one three…" She muttered. Tonks held out her hand, knowing that casting a charm with her wand could be traced back to her. Breaking the crystal outright would also be suspicious, so she took a subtler route and began wandlessly heating it.
If she could get the temperature high enough, then the crystalline structure would warp, eventually rendering it useless. She just had to do this as quickly as possible. She felt out the magic of the device, waiting for it to disperse as it was damaged. It had just begun to glow from the temperature it was hitting when it finally gave up completely, at which point Tonks hit it with a cooling charm. Unfortunately, rapidly cooling it when it was so hot caused a giant hairline fracture to form.
"Shit…" She muttered. Hopefully that would register as natural damage and not deliberate sabotage. She cast some light repairing charms to hide the most visible parts of the damage, but she couldn't afford to stick around much longer. Tonks left the security department and settled down in the break room, trying once again to control herself as much as possible.
She made herself a cup of tea and sipped at it, hoping it would settle her nerves, but nothing could shake the fear that this would be traced back to her.
Gods, why did she have to volunteer herself for this?
Voldemort grinned in delight at the inferno in front of her, admiring the beauty of the crimson hellfire as it devoured the remains of the Ogdens and their manor. She was only broken from her reverie by the sounds of apparition behind her. She turned around to greet the arrivals.
"Dumbledore!" She said cheerfully. "I was wondering when you'd get here."
She glanced at the crowd of Order members behind him, noting with great glee that McGonagall was indeed there. Seeing that the mission was good to go, she reached into her pocket and crushed the pebble she'd enchanted with the protean charm. Now she just had to keep them busy for a while.
Dumbledore looked quite angry, which she supposed made sense, but she could never quite shake the discomfort that the look gave her. Dumbledore didn't have to tell her off often, but she was, as he had once said, a troublesome child.
"I suppose it was foolish to hope you'd lay low for longer than this." He said coldly.
Voldemort shrugged. "That would just be delaying the inevitable, wouldn't it? I mean, nothing can really stop me. Of course, I'm sure that you intend to try and do just that, don't you?"
He just maintained his glare at her.
She grinned. "Well, I certainly hope you try. Killing the Ogdens was fun and all, but they barely even fought back. I could really do with a challenge." She gestured at him. "Go on, make the first move. You know you don't stand a chance otherwise."
Dumbledore glared at her for a while longer, long enough that she wondered if he intended to fight her at all, but eventually he pulled out his wand and held it straight up in front of him.
Slowly, Dumbledore rotated the wand in a circle. "Tempore Acceleres."
A bright clock face appeared in the air where he spun his wand, and luminous gears slowly began to surround him in a sphere, each of them spinning faster and faster until they stopped and sank into his body.
Voldemort grinned. "Now we fight."
Streaks of hellfire leapt from the burning building to cloak her arm. She Blinked above Dumbledore's location and smashed at the ground with her fist, but in a blur of movement, Dumbledore was gone from that location, and she barely dodged the boulder flung at her from behind.
Voldemort felt positively manic. "You see this, old man? This is what it means to be alive. I haven't cut loose in years, and nothing feels as good as this rush."
She swept her wand upward, a blade of blazing darkness cutting through the ground as it barrelled towards him. Rather than dodge it, Dumbledore summoned a stream of luminous water which vapourised her spell when they collided.
"You must be truly twisted if you believe that there is nothing more to life than fighting." Dumbledore said solemnly as silvery liquid metal rose from the ground and encased his form.
Voldemort ignited her whole body in her hellfire cloak, letting the flames form an armour around her. "You once told me that anything worth doing is worth fighting for. And you know what? I believe you."
She Blinked right in front of him and swung her fist, the fire splashing harmlessly as the quicksilver around Dumbledore formed a shield in front of him.
He did tell her that, many years ago, when he left the school to go fight Grindelwald. And when he tried to send her away from Nurmengard the night before their final battle, she said those words back to him. She couldn't help but wonder how long it would take before he'd be able to remember.
Barty looked at the crushed pebble in his hand. "Alright, that's the signal. I'll wait here for you, and remember, abort at the first sign of trouble."
Harry put on his headset and tapped the mirror that connected it to Delphini's. He watched as Delphini pulled her headset out of the bag and put it on, though she seemed to have customised hers since last time.
"Cat ears?" Harry asked, looking at the triangular points she'd added to the headband.
Delphini shrugged. "I thought it would be cute. And I was right, it is cute, so yeah, cat ears."
Harry had to admit, it was cute, but he couldn't be distracted by that now. He handed her the Marauder's Map and pulled the invisibility cloak out of his pocket.
"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good." Delphini said, unlocking the map.
"And isn't that true." Harry said as he wrapped them both up in the cloak. "Ready?"
She nodded, bumping him in the head. "Oof, sorry. It's tight in here."
"It was easier when I was younger. We just have to stay close."
"Remember to silence yourselves!" Barty said as they crossed the wardline. "That would be the dumbest way to blow your cover."
Harry and Delphini both cast silencing charms on their feet and made their way to the end of the passage, where they had to climb up the slope to leave the statue.
"You know, I don't think we can climb up there like this." Delphini said.
Harry pulled the cloak off of them. "Yeah, I guess it was kind of dumb to walk the whole way under the cloak. Whatever, let's just climb up and get ready."
Harry boosted Delphini out of the statue and was about to climb out himself when he realised that there was a much easier way to do this. He closed his eyes and focused on the need to be in the corridor outside the statue and Blinked up there. Delphini jumped when he appeared but quickly controlled herself.
"Gods, don't startle me like that."
"Sorry…" He said sheepishly. "We should get going though." He quickly threw the cloak over them.
Delphini pulled out the map. "Okay, so, seventh floor… Do you have any idea where that tapestry is?"
"It's hard to forget a tapestry of dancing trolls, especially since they're wearing tutus."
Delphini snickered, but she quickly tried to quiet herself since they were trying to be stealthy and all.
"But yeah, I've been there before. I've been in that room, actually, or something like it. It can supposedly take on whatever form you want it to, though I didn't know things were hidden in there."
"Yeah, leave it to mum to figure out something like that…" She muttered. "Alright, we'll pick that up first, then."
They briefly passed by Peeves on the fourth floor, but it was an otherwise clear path to the seventh floor. They awkwardly opened the room from beneath the cloak, and once they were safely inside, removed it.
"I'm amazed that you were able to fit anyone else under there." Delphini remarked as she stretched her shoulders. "I mean, I'm sure you can fit someone else under there, but moving around with three people like that seems like such a pain."
"I'll admit that it's gotten a lot harder in recent years." Harry said. "I mean, three eleven year olds take up a lot less space than the two of us do."
Delphini looked around at the various piles of junk. The various piles did seem to have themes going, but it was hardly organised. There did seem to be a vague grid pattern going on, at least. "So, four rows back and three rows left, right? Let's go find that diadem."
Harry nearly lost his focus when they passed by a large pile of old, unused broomsticks, but Delphini kept dragging him until they made it to the junction Voldemort had described. Their eyes were immediately drawn to the bust on which the diadem was placed, although Harry couldn't help but feel that he was compelled to look at it. Delphini opened the briefcase and tossed a pair of dragonhide gloves at Harry.
"C'mon, let's grab it."
Harry pulled on his gloves and the two of them carefully lifted it off. "It feels both heavier and lighter than I expected. I wonder why?"
Delphini just shrugged. "I don't know — magic, probably." They carefully placed the diadem in the briefcase and shut the lid on it. Harry immediately felt a light tingling at the edge of his senses fade the moment the briefcase shut.
"Glad that's over. So now we should split up?"
Delphini shook her head. "Nah, I need you to show me to the Gryffindor common room and tell me the password to get in."
Harry raised an eyebrow. "What do you need in the Gryffindor common room?"
"Something in the girls' dorms." She said. "It's why mum needed me for this. You could Blink into the dorms, sure, but doing so would probably set off an alarm, since gender wards apparently cover the whole area they're in, not just the boundary."
"I'm kind of surprised there aren't more wards that do that." Harry said as he picked up the briefcase. "Is there a reason why?"
Delphini shrugged. "Energy, mostly. It takes a lot less paint to coat a jar than to fill it, you know? And filling an area as big as Hogwarts would take a lot of paint."
"So wards are just fancy paint now?"
She tossed the invisibility cloak at him in a huff. "That was how my Runes teacher at Durmstrang explained it. I thought it was a good analogy. But yeah, gender wards are also special because they aren't coded with specific people in mind. Like, the wards at Malfoy manor are coded to only people who've been specifically keyed into them and exclude anyone else. Gender wards just check a person's gender identity, which makes it a lot easier to protect a whole area."
"You know a lot about gender wards, huh?" Harry commented as he covered them in the cloak.
She laughed. "Oh, yeah, there was an incident with a girl two years above me in Durmstrang. Or rather, she's a girl now, but… It's a long story — I'll tell you when I get out of here, but suffice to say the whole school learned a lot about gender wards in the process."
"You'll have to tell me more about Durmstrang sometime." Harry said. "Sounds like you have some interesting stories to tell."
"Yeah, I guess I do. Now, which way to the Gryffindor dorms?"
"Right. It's back in the grand staircase, so it should be pretty easy to find. …How would gender wards react to Rookwood, do you think?"
Delphini shrugged. "Knowing that fucker, they could probably just go wherever they damn well pleased. Ah shit, take a right here. Filch is coming this way."
It was a more circuitous route back to the main staircase that way, but they did manage to avoid any further interruptions.
"So it's around here?"
Harry gestured at the portrait on the next landing. "It's back there. The password is 'Alea Iacta Est'. The girls' dorm is on the right. The boys' dorm doesn't have gender wards, so you don't have to worry about accidentally tripping anything if you go in there." He slipped out of the cloak so Delphini could use it for herself.
"Glorious double standards." Delphini said as she pulled the cloak tighter. "Wow, this thing is comfy when you're not sharing it with another person."
Harry rolled his eyes. "I'm sure it is." He tapped his wand on top of his head, disillusioning himself. He shivered at the odd dripping sensation, but it thankfully passed once it covered his whole body. "I'm going to head to Dumbledore's office now, so make sure you keep an eye on the map and let me know if you see anything coming."
"Roger that."
Harry hadn't even made it to the fifth floor when he heard Delphini swearing.
"There are two people in the common room — sixth or seventh years by the look of it."
"Just keep the cloak on and you'll be fine." He muttered, trying not to gain the attention of any nearby portraits.
"I'm worried about exfiltration, not infiltration. I'll be fine for now but I might need your help later."
"Noted. How's the map look? Anyone near me?"
"Hm? No, you're fine. Looks like you have a straight shot to his office. I'm going to go radio silent for a bit while I sneak in. Go to Barty if you don't hear from me in, say, five minutes?"
Harry made it to the gargoyle that guarded the headmaster's office and focused on his intense need to be on the other side, opening his eyes to the rotating staircase. "Fine, five minutes, but I really hope you won't take that long." Voldemort had told them to stay in touch constantly, but he understood that it would probably help her focus on sneaking.
Harry Blinked past the door to the office proper, just in case opening it would send an alert. The room had typically felt warm and welcoming to Harry, but without anyone else there and with the lights off, the room felt just a bit… not eerie, but slightly unsettling. Regardless, Harry started to move towards the desk, only stopping when he heard chirping coming from his left.
Fawkes was obviously unfooled by the disillusionment, staring right at Harry's location.
"Hi, Fawkes." He whispered. "Um, I need your help with something. I need to get into Dumbledore's desk."
Fawkes made an accusatory noise at him.
"No, no!" Harry said defensively. "It's not for me. Voldemort needs something from it. It's um, the book. The book that you helped me destroy a few years ago.
The phoenix let out a skeptical trill.
"I mean it!" Harry all but begged. "You can keep an eye on me to make sure I don't take anything else, but I need that book." He paused. "Voldemort told me about what happened, with her and Dumbledore. You might be doubtful of her intentions after what she did, but she really does care about him. When she was telling me about what happened, she seemed… sad. I don't think I've ever seen her sad before. You don't want to see Dumbledore hurting like this either, do you? Surely you can figure out that Voldemort is the only one who will be able to set this right."
Fawkes gave him another look, then disappeared in a burst of flames. Harry saw him reappear on top of Dumbledore's desk and then let out a shriek so loud that Harry had to clutch his ears in pain. For a moment, Harry was worried that he'd done something to offend the phoenix, but then the screech stopped and the top drawer of the desk popped open.
Gingerly, Harry removed the punctured diary from the top drawer of the desk and closed it. "Thank you, Fawkes." He Blinked through the door and had just started making his way down the stairs when his headset activated again.
"Oof, okay, yeah, I'm going to need your help, Harry." Delphini grunted.
Delphini had to admit, Harry's invisibility cloak was really awesome. It was way better than any disillusionment she'd seen, and the way that the veil on the cloak's hood let her see her arms was really neat. She would have gotten so much use out of the cloak if she'd had it at Durmstrang.
Then again, maybe she'd be able to enrol at Hogwarts once this was over. She was sure that Harry could be persuaded to lend it to her on occasion.
She passed by the duo in front of the fireplace with no issues, then began making her way up the stairs. One… two… three… there, that should be the fourth year dormitory.
Delphini carefully crept inside, being careful not to wake anyone. She looked down at the map, checking carefully to make sure she was getting the right person. She double checked the map to check her position, then crept over to the bed. Thankfully, their curtains were already drawn, so she poked her wand through a gap and aimed at the person without.
"Stupefy."
The light from the stun bolt was mostly blocked by the curtains, and after making sure that no one had stirred from the noise, aimed her wand back at the unconscious body.
"Mobilicorpus."
Delphini made it as far as the bottom of the staircase before she ran into problems.
Namely, that there was still the duo in front of the fireplace.
She couldn't get the invisibility cloak to cover the levitated body and herself, since levitated bodies always lay flat by default. She briefly tried experimenting with adjusting the spell to hold the body upright, but after nearly cracking its head on the stone railing, she decided that this was not the right time to experiment. She tried disillusioning the body, but her disillusionment was nowhere near as good as Harry's and while it might work in the dark hallways, there was no way she'd be able to get through the brightly lit common room without drawing attention. As a last resort, Delphini tried carrying the body herself under the invisibility cloak, but she didn't have anywhere near Voldemort's level of upper body strength. Then again, she was ninety percent sure that her mum cheated somehow with magic, so it made sense that Delphini wouldn't inherit any of that.
Seeing that she had no way of managing this on her own, Delphini tapped the mirror on her headset and connected to Harry.
"Oof, okay, yeah, I'm going to need your help, Harry." She grunted as she slowly put the body down. "I have no way of carrying both her and myself out of here unseen."
"Okay, I'll be right- wait, her!? Delphini, are we kidnapping someone!?"
"Yeah, mum didn't think you'd approve, but it'll be fine! She just needs her for a ritual that won't harm her, and then she'll be let go. It's fine."
Harry grumbled to himself for a bit. "I'm not sure I trust Voldemort's definition of 'fine', but whatever. I'll be right over. By the way, it was probably good that you cut the comms, as getting Fawkes to 'help' me apparently involved him screeching as loudly as possible. I mean, it worked — I got the diary and everything — but man, that was loud."
Delphini let out a quiet giggle. "Yeah, alright. I'll see you in a few."
"No you won't — I'm invisible."
That got an eye roll out of her. "I'm sure it took you ages to think of that one."
"Alright, I'm at the grand staircase now. Just give me a moment to…"
The mirror in the corner of Delphini's vision went through a series of blurring transitions.
"Okay, I'm outside the common room now. 'Alea Iacta Est.' Who am I looking for?"
Delphini peered over the railing. "Two people sitting on the sofa in front of the fireplace. Looks like they're having an animated discussion about something, and I can tell that things are tense from their emotions. Need any help from me?"
"Looks like it's Fred and George, and no, I've got this."
Delphini watched as a stunner came from near the entrance, hitting the person on the left of the sofa. The other one stood up and tried to cast a stunner in Harry's direction, but he didn't seem to expect another stunner to hit him right in the back.
"I have to say, I'm starting to understand why Voldemort was so feared back in the day. Blinking is the most overpowered magic I've ever done."
"Yeah yeah, you and your fancy silent teleport. Now get up here and disillusion this girl so we can get going."
Delphini saw a blur appear right in front of her and jumped back.
"I told you not to do that!"
"Well we need to be going and I didn't want to walk up the stairs! Now let me… we're kidnapping Ginny Weasley?"
Delphini pushed herself up and cast a dispelling charm on Harry so she could actually see him while they worked this out. "Yeah, something about an imprint on her soul."
"Ah." Harry pulled the stabbed diary out of his pocket and looked at it for a moment. "I really hope Voldemort isn't planning on… I don't know, resurrecting her adolescent self or something."
Delphini giggled. "Gods, can you imagine? We already have enough teenage angst between the two of us. Add her into the mix and we'd collapse into some sort of angst singularity."
Harry rolled his eyes and disillusioned Ginny's body, then pulled the cloak around the two of them. "Alright, let's get going. Do you want me to move her or…?"
"You do it. I'll keep my eyes on the map."
Harry nodded, bumping his head into hers.
"Ow! There really isn't enough space in here."
"We'll have to make do. Let's go. Mobilicorpus."
Delphini could see a faint shimmer in the air as he picked up the body, but it was a hell of a lot more impressive than her attempts.
She kept her eyes on the map, doing her best to check for anyone nearby, but the map usually only showed one floor at a time. Sometimes it showed multiple floors, but that only seemed to be because sometimes different floors were on the same floor, not that that made any sense. Also, why was ninety percent of the fourth floor only accessible by navigating through a labyrinth of corridors on the third floor and taking a staircase up? The grand staircase connected to every floor, including some that shouldn't exist if you looked at the building from the outside, but apparently the only part of the fourth floor that could be accessed from the grand staircase was the hospital wing, which of course didn't connect to the rest of the fourth floor. Why would anyone deliberately design architecture like this?
She was so distracted by this that she almost didn't notice the prefect patrol until it was too late.
"Shit, prefects coming this way! Quick, press against the wall or something!"
"Crap! Um…" Harry swept the two of them against the wall with practised ease, but he was a little more lost with Ginny. "Okay, I think she's…" He moved his wand to try and guide her and banged her into a suit of armour, making a loud ruckus. "Shit!"
"You fucking klutz!" Delphini swore.
"I'd like to see you do better at controlling an invisible, unconscious person!" He hissed back.
"Hello? Is anyone there?" A male voice shouted from down the corridor. Delphini didn't recognise it, but Harry seemed to by the way he tensed up.
"It had to be them, didn't it? Couldn't have been Malfoy or something…"
"Honestly, Ron!" A female voice chided. "They aren't just going to announce themselves! Homenum Revelio!"
Delphini was surprised that the cloak protected them from that, further cementing its coolness status in her head, but Ginny had no such protection.
"Take her and go." Harry whispered to her. "I'll try and stall them."
She wasn't sure that was a good idea, but he stepped out of the cloak before she could stop him.
"I don't suppose I could persuade the two of you to forget this, could I?"
Delphini ignored their shouts as he appeared and focused on moving the girl around. "Mobilicorpus."
It took her very little time to realise how mistaken she was to chide Harry about this. Manipulating an invisible body was hard, and it took her less than ten seconds to blow her cover by bumping the unconscious body into Ron's torso.
"Oof, what the hell?" He swore.
"Delphi!" Harry chided, turning in her general direction.
"I'm sorry!" She said, pulling down the hood. "But you were right, controlling an invisible body is really hard and you did an amazing job making it this far without incident and I'm sorry for doubting you."
"Who the hell are…" Ron paused, looking at her. "You're Voldemort's daughter!?"
Delphini waved awkwardly before realising that her arms were still invisible. "Um… hi."
"Harry, what in Merlin's name are you doing here and why is she here with you!?" The girl chided.
"Errands." Harry deadpanned.
"I… What do yo-… Errands!?"
Delphini decided to step in. "Well, mum needed us to grab a few things for her, since she'd be out doing her favourite hobby — which is arson, in case you were wondering — and figured that now would be as good a time as any since the Order was likely to be busy trying to stop her." She made her best pleading face. "You wouldn't stop a poor girl trying to do errands for her mother, would you?"
"I most certainly- wait, you said you were moving a body…" The girl's gaze shifted to the slight shimmer at Ron's feet. "Finite Incantatem."
The disillusionment on Ginny's body disappeared, leaving her plainly visible for all to see.
"Shit…" Harry muttered.
"You're kidnapping my sister!?" Ron shouted.
"Kidnapping is such a harsh word." Delphini said, trying her best to sound reassuring. "We just need to borrow her for a few hours or so, then we'll give her back, no harm done!"
"No harm-! The last time your mother did anything to my sister she nearly got her soul eaten!"
"That was what my mother was like as a teenager, and really, aren't we all embarrassing and impulsive as teenagers?"
Harry nodded, seemingly desperate to change the subject to anything else. "I'm sure one day we'll look back on our teenage years and laugh at all of the silly things we did."
"I should hope that you'd at least do that, given that you joined you-know-who of all people!" The girl yelled.
"You can just call her Voldemort, you know?" Harry said, still trying to change the subject. "She doesn't mind at all, even said as much over the summer."
Delphini could tell from the girl's rising anger that this wasn't going to be getting better anytime soon. Taking advantage of the fact that her arms were still invisible, she pulled out her wand and pointed it at the girl. "Stupefy."
"What the hell!?" Ron shouted at the same time that Harry yelled, "Delphi!"
"What was I supposed to do, huh? She was just getting angrier and angrier, and remember, I can feel emotions so I know better than you do in that regard, and we need to be going! Just grab Ginny and let's get out of here!"
"I am not letting you kidnap my sister!" Ron yelled.
"We're just borrowing her for a bit!" Delphini yelled. "You wouldn't have even noticed if you hadn't run into us!"
"I hardly think that that's-"
"Mister Weasley?" A squeaky voice said from behind them. "Is there a problem?"
Harry slapped his forehead and groaned. "Fuck this… Delphini, grab everything and run — I'll hold them off."
Delphini nodded and pulled the hood of the cloak over her head, cast a crappy disillusionment on Ginny's body, grabbed the map and briefcase, then levitated Ginny's body.
Ron seemed less than happy with this turn of events. "I won't let you-!"
"Stupefy." Harry said calmly, knocking Ron unconscious. Delphini tried to tune everything out as she focused on the map. They were already on the third floor, but the statue with the secret passage was a ways away. She kept a much closer eye on the map this time, not wanting any repeats of their earlier run in, but the hallways seemed clear now. Harry was Blinking around a lot, though. He must have been fighting… Filius Flitwick? Crap, wasn't he the ex-duelist charms teacher?
It took her a few minutes to get to the statue, but once she made it there, she quickly climbed on top and readied herself to enter the secret passage. Unfortunately, the secret passage was secret and thus she had no idea how to open it.
"Any time now, Delphi!" Harry's voice came through her headset.
"I'm working on it!" She yelled back as she tried to figure out what to do. There weren't any hidden buttons of switches that she could feel. "Oh, Fuckity Fucking Fuck." Desperate for answers, she pulled out the map and looked at it. There didn't seem to be any signs there, but… wait, was the dot that represented her saying something? There seemed to be a small line poking out of her dot, and it was saying…
She pointed her wand at the statue. "Dissendium."
Oh thank gods, it actually opened. Delphini dumped Ginny's body down the hole and slid down right after.
"Alright, I'm in the passage! Get out of there!"
"Roger tha- Ow, fuck!"
"Are you okay!?" She asked, really feeling the crash now that the adrenaline was starting to drain from her system.
"I'm fine — I'll just need Barty to fix me up. I've already disengaged and am on my way."
Delphini let out a sigh of relief, but jumped when Harry reappeared right in front of her.
"Sorry-" He started to apologise, but she was too tired to deal with that, so she just hugged him.
"We should get moving, but… what happened back there?"
Harry sighed. "Well…"
"Hi, professor." Harry said with a wave, desperately hoping that Flitwick didn't see Delphini vanishing and that he wouldn't notice the unconscious bodies of Ron and Hermione behind him. "Lovely evening, isn't it? Well, it seems that you caught me being out after curfew, so I guess you'll have to just give me detention and send me back to my dorm."
Professor Flitwick did not seem impressed by this. "Mister Potter, the entire staff was notified of your withdrawal from the school on the first day of the term, which was a week ago. Dare I ask what explanation you have for being back inside the school and why you have rendered Miss Granger and Mister Weasley unconscious?"
"Errands." Harry deadpanned, hoping that the absurdity of the excuse would at least buy time.
Amazingly, Filtwick did actually stand there for several seconds, so Harry supposed it partially worked. "Errands, Mister Potter? Errands? I am very accustomed to poor excuses from students caught out of bounds, but that is quite possibly the most appalling-"
Harry Blinked behind Flitwick. "Stupefy."
Despite casting the spell at point blank range from behind, Flitwick jumped in the air with uncanny agility. "So that's how you want to play things? Fine. You're not a student here anymore, so I won't hold back."
Harry cursed himself internally. He should have tried to buy more time, but he was sure that that free shot was his best bet. Harry made a mental note that Blinking, while powerful, was not infallible, and that he would learn a lot from this experience if he made it out intact.
Flitwick let out an arcing barrage of spell bolts which Harry easily dodged with a Blink. He tried to hit Flitwick from behind with a fire whip but he dodged it just like how he dodged the stunner. Harry cast a few of the more extreme curses Voldemort had taught him, but he dodged them all the same way. Merlin, he was so small and so fast, it was no wonder he was a champion duelist. Harry tried a few more times to land a blow, but that window was quickly lost as Flitwick adapted.
Seeing that Harry could Blink out of the way of most attacks, Flitwick started casting homing spells instead. Harry would Blink out of their way and they'd just swerve to aim at his new position. He was doing his best to keep a shield up, but not all of these spells were stopped by shields, and he'd already had a few close calls when spells passed dangerously close to his body.
"Any time now, Delphi!" Harry yelled into his headset. He tried manipulating the flow of the spells so some of them would hit Flitwick when they swerved towards him, but the ex-duelist always seemed to know where all of his spells were.
"I'm working on it!" She yelled back. "Oh, Fuckity Fucking Fuck!"
Harry nearly lost his composure at that and barely dodged a spell that grazed his shirt. This was quickly getting out of control. None of the spell bolts were dissipating and Flitwick kept adding more to the mix. Harry tried conjuring obstacles to block them, but the mass of spells was simply too great and his conjured objects were completely dispelled before they could remove more than a few spells from the mix.
"Alright, I'm in the passage! Get out of there!" Delphini's voice came through, filling Harry with a palpable relief.
"Roger tha- Ow, fuck!" He winced as one of the spells hit him on his shoulder. It didn't render him unconscious, but it felt like he had a bad burn there.
"Are you okay!?" She asked wearily.
"I'm fine — I'll just need Barty to fix me up." He said as he Blinked out of the fight and several corridors over. "I've already disengaged and am on my way."
Blinking was feeling especially easy to him now, as he had never needed to be anywhere else more than he had in that moment.
Harry and Delphini were pretty sure that no one had followed them, but they still decided it would be best to hurry. The last thing either of them wanted was to risk another run-in with Flitwick.
They finally saw Barty after travelling down the passage for a while, and he just took a single look at the two of them, Delphini dishevelled and out of breath with only her head visible, and Harry with a large burn on his right shoulder, and sighed. "What went wrong?"
"We ran into Flitwick, and I had to buy us time." Harry said. "Speaking of which, we really should get out of here"
Barty groaned. "Oh, Voldie is not going to be happy about this." He hauled Ginny's disillusioned body over his shoulder and held out both of his hands. "Make sure you've got a firm grip on everything, because apparating three other people is tricky."
Harry placed a hand on the diary inside his pocket, and saw Delphini tighten her grip on the briefcase. Despite the suffocating feeling that apparition gave him, Harry let out a sigh of relief, glad that that was finally over.
Voldemort shaped the lightning within her body into a javelin, which she chucked at Dumbledore's position. He backstepped the hit in a blur of motion and waved his left arm, raising a storm of rocks from the earth beneath his feet. Voldemort pulled on her remaining hellfire and fashioned it into a large battleaxe, which she used to slice her way through the barrage of stone coming her way. When she'd cleaved through the last rock, she pulled all of the hellfire she had over her right arm and Blinked behind Dumbledore's position, putting all of the power she had into the blow. Dumbledore raised a wall of earth, but she easily punched through it and released her grip on the flames, letting them loose into an inferno shockwave that lit the nearby trees aflame.
Dumbledore dodged it, of course, but she expected that. He would expect her to have to recover from a blow like that for a second or two, so she Blinked to the left and spun around just as an enormous maw of water engulfed the position where she'd been standing. Voldemort let loose with a stream of lightning, which Dumbledore blocked by raising tendrils of metal from the ground.
The two of them stopped for a minute, each of them breathing deeply from the exertion. Voldemort was drenched in sweat, and she could feel that some of her hair had come loose from her ponytail. She hadn't had to work this hard to defeat an opponent in years. Voldemort pushed herself upright, preparing to re-enter the fray, when a silver mink appeared in front of her, locking eyes with her.
"Mission successful." Was all it said before disappearing.
Dumbledore's eyes widened as he realised what that meant, that this whole fight had been a diversion.
Voldemort turned to Death Eaters. "Full evac, now!"
"I cannot allow that." Dumbledore said, raising his wand to stop them.
"I suppose I should thank you for the experience." Voldemort said cockily, putting her hand on her hip. "I haven't been able to cut loose like this in years!" She Blinked next to him. "It's been fun catching up… dad."
Dumbledore clutched his head as the spell fought against his attempts to recall the memories awakened by that phrase. She felt bad about having to use the spell this way, but she also couldn't deny that it was convenient to have an easy way to incapacitate her strongest opponent when she needed to retreat.
Voldemort engaged in a series of apparitions and Blinkings to throw off any attempts to trace her, then reappeared back into her room at Malfoy Manor. She looked down at herself and sighed.
"I need a shower."
A/N (Tendra): I definitely think that the funniest part of this chapter is Harry and Delphini's blatant lies as they try to talk their way out of the confrontation with Ron and Hermione. I definitely think I need to have more Delphini POVs just because of how funny that scene was.
I got a cat ear headset for Christmas, and it is very fun, and very cute. I couldn't resist the urge to have Delphini mod hers the same way, especially given the "Catgirl Delphini" joke that spawned from Justin's dyslexia when editing chapter 8.
So, Dumbledore's time acceleration spell is something I've had planned for a long time, and it's the key thing that lets him go toe to toe with Voldemort's ability to Blink. It is light magic, though, which as I'm sure you recall, is toxic to anyone who hasn't carefully built up a resistance to it. Between that and the fact that it takes a lot of continuous magic to use the spell, it's extremely hard for anyone else to use.
Poor Tonks is very, very stressed by her current career path.
I will say that I am having a lot of fun with the oxymoron chapter titles. It's been a fun little puzzle to try and think of different ones that fit each new chapter.
Join us on the discord for updates on my fics and/or my mental health! 6YwQewK
E/N (Xgenje): ℰ𝓇𝓇𝒶𝓃𝒹𝓈!?