Chapter 14: Ostendo Aima

Harry had half a mind to speak to Sirius. Then his thoughts drifted to the others, and realised that fresh in the minds of Marlene McKinnon and Fabian Prewett were his parents … there was no nostalgia clouding their judgment of them just yet. To them they were peers, and hopefully even friends of theirs.

And not even that… these miraculous people, existing in spite of nature, had a wealth of knowledge about things Harry couldn't even begin to name. How exactly was the Order of the Phoenix formed? Who had attended his parents' wedding? It was easy to forget these gaps in the timeline of his life when so much of his existence now concentrated on what he could manage to do in spite of the holes in common memory. He spent time on his children, his family, his job. He had wasted far too long in the aftermath of the war thinking backwards, and he did not want to repeat that dark time.

Polly Mortenstone—a small, mousey woman who had worked with Audrey for a time and now nested in the Minister's department—was suddenly in front of Harry. He had been staring at the cell corridor rather bleakly.

'Mr Potter,' she said breathlessly.

'Oh—hi, Polly.'

An eerie sound, that in some life could have been an awkward laugh, was pulled from her. 'The Minister wanted me to collect you. He said it's important—he, um, told me to say that, rather specifically actually—'

Harry sighed. 'It's all right, Polly. I'll come now. We'll walk together.' He tried to offer a winning smile, but Polly merely looked terrified.

After all but begging her to call him by his first name and finding no success, Harry opened the Minister for Magic's office door with a sigh. He had barely stepped foot on the rich olive-coloured carpeting before he jolted in surprise.

Biting her thumbnail and staring into the middle distance from a visitors' chair was Hermione. She sat stiffly in a pinstriped suit, though her hair was loose and looked as if she'd been scraping it back for hours.

'Oh,' Harry said.

'Harry!' said Hermione.

Kingsley raised his hand in greeting. 'Harry.'

Then, from the deep burgundy armchair on the right—'All right?'

'Ron?' Harry asked. He stared, bewildered. Ron was lounging and twirling his wand between his fingers like a baton, reclined and looking relaxed.

'I've… missed something here.' Harry stated to the room at large.

'I didn't ask you here,' Kingsley said, waving his hands as if to absolve himself entirely. 'Hermione did.'

'But Polly—'

'Well, I passed on the message.'

Harry glanced between Hermione and Ron with a crumpled brow. Hermione glared at her husband.

'I didn't want him to come,' she said, 'he bullied me into it—'

'Me! Bully you?!'

'He said he knew so he should be involved! Shoved Hugo through the floo to yours, thank god we knew Ginny was home, and just walked right though—'

'Kingsley doesn't mind, do you? Kingsley?'

'I gave up with you three sometime in the mid-nineties, let alone getting involved in your marital woes.' He did not look up from the newspaper he was reading.

Hermione would not be rebuffed. 'This is very unprofessional, Ron! You retired from the Ministry years ago, you run a joke shop now, honestly—'

'She's not wrong,' Harry said, looking at Ron apologetically. He shrugged and rolled his neck.

'This meeting is off the record anyway,' Kingsley interrupted the domestic argument developing in front of him and sending a questioning look to Hermione. 'And, personally, I'd like to find out why that is.'

'Hermione!' Ron gaped. 'Off the record! Naughty, naughty—'

'Oh, shut up. You sound too much like George.' Hermione huffed and dragged her unclenched hand through the hair around her face.

Harry sat gingerly in the chair next to Hermione, facing everyone but the snoring Ulick Gamp, who slumped against the left side of his frame. His spectacles were centimetres from sliding off his bulbous nose.

'What is it?' Harry asked Hermione. His heart quickened in his chest… was it possible that she had figured it out?

She looked intensely back at him. Her mouth opened and closed again. Uncharacteristically, Hermione had no idea where to begin.

'She's figured it out!' Ron's voice burst through the quiet.

'Ron!' Hermione hissed.

'So it's the lookalikes.' Kingsley sighed. He dropped his quill and closed his eyes briefly; but Harry wasn't focused on him. Hermione began speaking in a rush, in the same breathless way she always had.

'There's that potion, Harry—the one they used before, and I managed to get the end result going. They hadn't gotten very far with it, but I saw where they'd got in wrong quite easily, even from looking at the theory of it. They thought lacewings would be a good idea, really—but it needs a relative of theirs to do the last little bits of mixing, you know, just a couple of turns and then the incantation—but I think I really might have cracked it, but we need to test it but I just couldn't think and I've been up all hours trying to work it out and I'm not sure it's going to work at all, really, but I've got some and—'

'All right,' Kingsley said, staring. 'If you could tell me what this is about, I would be quite appreciative.'

None of them wanted to do it. Not Harry, who avoided Kingsley's eye by staring at a loose thread in his trouser; not Hermione, who took several quick and shallow breaths; not Ron, who scratched his long nose and shuffled his feet.

But, of them all, Harry was burdened with the most responsibility, given he was leading the entire investigation. After so many years, it still occasionally twinged at him to consider he was doing legitimate sleuthing now. And with that, came letting the adults know.

'Has anyone ever told you about the Map?'

'The Map?'

Harry talked and Kingsley listened with an inscrutable look. He reclined on his chair, his arms crossed loosely on his chest, head tilted just so.

He couldn't help it—Harry kept glancing at Ron and Hermione's faces as he had always done. Some part of him was trying to gauge the direction this would take… whether he would be carted off to the long-stay ward at Saint Mungo's.

Explaining it all brought a strange perspective. Mere days ago, life was simple. And then there was Sirius, his wand, Fabian and Marlene, Hogwarts, Dumbledore, Scrimgeour, the Room of Requirement. Upended world views left and right, hour by hour.

When Harry had stopped speaking, and Hermione had stopped adding footnotes, Kingsley did not move and inch. He stared into the middle distance with a frown.

'The Map,' he said, having only just learnt of its existence, 'how do you know it never lies? How can you be sure? James and Sirius were brilliant wizards, even as teenagers, but to create something so… infallible, like that…'

'It showed us Peter Pettigrew, when he was still Scabbers,' Ron piped up. 'Though, to be honest, Kingsley, they knew things only they would know. What did Dumbledore say, Harry?'

'He knew the shape Snape's Patronus took.'

Kingsley narrowed his eyes. 'And that's privileged information, is it?'

'Yes,' Hermione said sharply.

'This…' Kingsley hung his head as his arms were thrown up in frustration. 'How can I believe you? How could I possibly believe this? I trust you, of course I do—' he had perhaps spotted the affronted expression Hermione wore, '—but the dead? The ones we mourn every year? How can I?'

'We have proof!' Harry said loudly, only to immediately regret it when Kingsley raised a brow. 'We've got a chance; a second chance, that nobody has ever had before. We have to take it.'

'How are you proving this, then?'

Harry looked to Hermione. She shuffled. She explained in halting speech, meeting nobody's eye as she went on. When she mentioned the trials of the war, Kingsley moved uncomfortably. As soon as she mentioned blood, he gave a full-bodied jolt.

'Merlin,' he hissed and they all sat still, barely breathing.

'This is completely unprecedented!' Hermione said more shrilly than she meant to, if her immediately sheepish look after was anything to go by. 'It might be unorthodox, Kingsley, but this is all we've got. What if more people come back, and we have nothing to ask them that proves the truth? If they have no family left? Do they rot in a cell for the rest of their lives?'

'This isn't a solution, Hermione,' Kingsley said angrily. 'We need consent for Truth Serum, let alone taking their blood! I don't care if you have a resurrected Bellatrix Lestrange in there, you need their permission, Death Eater or Merlin himself!'

It was a stand-off. Harry stared at Kingsley, who eyeballed him back. Hermione looked at Kingsley. Ron, meanwhile—

'Have you tried asking?' He said.

'What?' Asked Harry dumbly.

'Well if you have to ask their permission, you might as well see if they do agree before you start panicking about it. If they say no… can't you just go from there? Keep them locked up until they do agree?'

'Well…' Harry exchanged a look with Ron. Even Kingsley looked at him, suddenly appraising.

'I'm not so sure we could lock them up until they agree.' Kingsley scratched his nose absently. 'I can't even believe I'm considering this. You've all gone mad.'

'We can't just walk in and ask them, Ron,' said Hermione. 'We've got to find their relatives first.'

Harry and Ron seemed to come to the same realisation at the same moment. They looked at each other with wide eyes. Harry thought of Percy murmuring about his uncle in shock.

'Fabian Prewett,' Harry pointed at Ron, 'it's his uncle in there. Molly's brother. Will that be enough?'

Hermione, looking a little shellshocked at the realisation, nodded. She had a very nervous look to her eye.

Fabian's head shot up instantly as he rocketed to the corner of the cell when they shuffled in. He eyed them each—Harry warily, Ron suspiciously, Hermione receiving no more than a customary glance. It was Kingsley that he settled on, squinting and frowning.

'Why do you look like that?' He stared at him.

Harry recalled that they were likely peers; perhaps at Hogwarts around the same time, or fighting in the Order together. Kingsley had known Harry's parents, after all, and Fabian had thought Harry was James.

'We need to ask your permission for something.' Kingsley said. He was softly spoken, gentle, as if he were speaking to a child or trying to talk someone down from a ledge.

'I wouldn't have thought my permission would mean much around here.'

'Things are different now. Very different.'

'I've noticed.' Fabian scowled. 'When I came in for my interview the other week I certainly wasn't tackled and arrested.'

'We're not at war anymore, Fabian. Look, I'm not sure how to explain this to you, but—'

'What, did you think I wouldn't notice the paper's date is fifty-odd years into the future?'

Harry's brain fuzzed for a second. He was unsure how Fabian had gotten a hold of a newspaper to begin with, and thought it was probably Rupert that had offered it to him. He considered, briefly, having a stern word… but hadn't the heart, when considering how much easier it had made this interaction.

Ron coughed. Fabian's narrowed eyes turned to him rather than Kingsley. 'Do I know you from somewhere?' He asked.

Ron shrugged. 'Sort of. We're related.' Fabian's eyebrows rose high on his forehead. 'Look… if you want to get out of here soon you've got to help us out a bit.'

'What do you mean?'

'We need your blood. Just a drop, for a potion that proves you are who you say you are.'

'Just a drop!' Hissed Fabian. As he stood suddenly, Harry couldn't help gripping his wand in his pocket.

'I know it's a big ask,' Kingsley said as Fabian scoffed, 'but it's all we've got at the moment.'

'I don't even know who you are! How do I know you're Kingsley? And how exactly are we related, if that's even the truth?' Fabian rounded on Harry and Hermione. 'Why d'you look so much like James Potter? Don't even get me started on who you are or why you're here—'

'Watch it,' said Ron, 'that's my wife.'

'I'm sorry, but how exactly does that make any difference to me?'

Kingsley let out a large, long groan. 'Merlin's balls,' he said as he walked quickly over to Fabian and whispered into his ear for a minute. Though Fabian jerked away when Kingsley first encroached on him, he quickly began to lean closer, eyes growing rounder in tandem.

Looking much more insecure, Kingsley retreated and shook his head at Harry, Ron and Hermione's enquiring looks. He crossed his arms and returned to staring at Fabian, who seemed to stare back at him in wonderment. Harry was certain, then, that Kingsley had just confirmed his identity without doubt. Quickly, Harry decided he would like to find out what shenanigans had just recounted to Fabian in the near future.

'All right, fine.' Said Fabian eventually, looking weary.

Hermione began groping around in her pocket and already had a tiny silver stirrer in her other hand. 'Really? I—'

'Just do it before I change my mind,' Fabian snapped, glaring at the wall and sticking his hand out into the air obstinately. From the corner of his eye Harry saw Kingsley wave his wand and mutter a charm; he assumed it was taking note of consent to procedure as he himself had often done during interrogations. But if the suspect agreed to Truth Serum in the first place, they were likely innocent, which took something of the thrill out of things.

Harry saw Ron move uneasily out of the corner of his eye when Hermione carefully squeezed a drop of blood from Fabian's fingertip.

The phial was an unextraordinary size, yet smaller than Harry had imagined considering its worth. The potion was a sludgy green, the colour of dark bogies, and was about as appealing to look at as Polyjuice Potion. He hoped it was at least a little nicer to drink.

'Now, I'll pop this in here—' Hermione said, gesturing to the ooze of blood on Fabian's forefinger and the phial, '—and then Ron will have to stir it and say the incantation. I've got it written down.'

Carefully and with an air of great stress and importance, Hermione scooped the blood from Fabian's finger with the very edge of the phial's lip. It was underwhelming—the blood slid down the inside of the glass pressed by the weight of the eyes upon it. Nothing happened when it met the potion.

Without word or preamble, Hermione handed everything to her husband. She watched him intensely as she told him the appropriate motions; two counter-clockwise, then clockwise for twenty-eight seconds, then counter-clockwise for another two stirs. Harry heard the tinkling of silver as Ron's hands began to shake a little.

Harry peered over at the scrap of parchment Hermione had given Ron. Ostendo Aima. He immediately thought of all the times over the years Hermione had berated Ron for his spell pronunciation. From the look on Ron's face, he was thinking of the same thing.

But he must have said it correctly, for his wand emitted bright silver sparks, the potion glowed a lurid yellow, and Hermione gasped.

'What does that mean?' Harry asked reverently.

Hermione looked at him and then Fabian. 'It means… well. A match.'

Stillness. Harry knew that the potion would have to be scrutinised and picked apart to ensure the result was the true result, that it was infallible… but it was a victory and a large one. It was hard to think of such formalities and processes when he was being proven right.

Fabian looked at them with an unreadable expression. Harry couldn't blame him.

'Well,' Ron breathed. 'I'm your nephew.'

Fabian looked closely at him and narrowed his eyes. 'Billy…?'

'Oh no,' Ron laughed, 'there's been quite a few more of us since then. Your Christmases are about to get expensive.'

AN: Really hope you enjoyed this. Also, please do let me know what you'd like to see/read about next from this story! x