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Chapter 2
Harry, Fleur, and Sirius Floo'ed into the Ministry of Magic two days after the Minister for Magic herself had come to Grimmauld Place to tell them of the investigation into Voldemort. Harry was going to tell the Unspeakables everything he knew, Sirius was there acting as a responsible adult, and Fleur was there because her parents and sister had sent a message telling her they were coming over today as well. It was earlier than expected, but in fairness to them they had also expected their daughter to spend some time in France with them before they all came to the UK together. Unfortunately, Voldemort's attack on the students leaving Hogwarts had thrown all kinds of schedules out of the window.
As soon as Harry stepped out of the Floo he was caught by Sirius, who now knew that Harry was never going to not have trouble with any form of instantaneous magical travel, other than his own ability to Step. The small crowd of people stopped what they were doing to stare. Sighing, Harry walked up to the welcome desk and held out his wand to the guy behind the counter. Unfortunately for him, this guy seemed so awestruck that if Harry didn't know any better he would have suspected a basilisk-reflected gaze. So, he put his own wand on the device like he had seen before, and the magical device spat out a ticket. He returned his wand to its holster and stared at the ticket for a few seconds, and then he had to say, "Aren't you going to read that?"
"Oh ugh… right Mr. Potter, sorry one moment." He pulled off the ticket and read it. "Holly and phoenix tail feather, been in use almost five years?" He asked.
"That's correct." Harry waited for the man to ask what his business was at the Ministry today, but when he didn't, Harry said, "I have an appointment with someone from the Department of Mysteries, and I need to collect my future in-laws who are arriving later by international portkey." Again Harry waited, only for the man to just keep staring at him. For a brief moment he considered that if he had known that this was the reaction he would get for beheading Voldemort, he may have just cut his arms off and let him keep the body he had. It was a fleeting thought born out of frustration, and he felt guilty almost immediately for considering letting the bastard that had done that to Ginny be able to walk away.
A little disgusted with himself for thinking like that, Harry snapped at the welcome wizard. "Are you going to sort out my visitor's badge or not?" There wasn't any real heat to it, but the man jumped like Harry had just shouted orders at him like a drill sergeant. "Uh… yes right away sir." He tapped a few things with his wand and a gold badge popped out of a slot next to his desk. He handed it to Harry, who pinned it to the front of his robes.
He was still flustered when he had to handle Sirius and Fleur but at least this time he was actually doing his job. He had been caught in Fleur's allure as well, which was annoying, but he kept going through what he was supposed to do, nervously glancing at Harry as though he was afraid he would whip out his wand and behead him for looking at his woman the wrong way. Harry supposed that, along with becoming more famous for now having beaten Voldemort in not one but three duels and 'killed' him in two, now he was also seen as some type of deadly dueller. He didn't believe he deserved this reputation; after all, there was a great deal of luck involved in each of those incidents, but there was nothing he could really do about it. If he was lucky, this would all die down before school started again. Soon, Sirius and Fleur had their visitors' badges also pinned to the front of their robes and they started heading to the lifts.
"So where do we need to go first?" Fleur asked in French, giving Harry the opportunity to practise the language.
It took Harry a moment to translate the sentence in his head and another to translate his reply back into French. "Level nine. Then down a flight of stairs." There was a questioning tone to Harry's words, and Fleur nodded that he had gotten it right. Harry then switched back to English for the details. "There is apparently a corridor with only one door at the end of it and we just go there and knock. Someone will then take us where we need to be."
The lift down to level nine was silent, as the few people who were riding with them were also too awestruck to speak, and for the three of them it just felt awkward to talk while no one else was. They all got off at different levels and more people got on, but by the time they had reached level nine the three of them were the only ones in the lift.
Level nine seemed pretty much deserted, it was only the home of the Department of Mysteries, the courtrooms, and the Wizengamot chamber, and there were no trials today or a meeting of the Wizengamot. There were trials scheduled soon for the Death Eaters that were captured after Voldemort's failed attack, but there was administrative work to do until then. Also, this meeting had specifically been scheduled during a time when the Wizengamot was taking a day off, as Harry needed his magical guardian with him; unfortunately, he was still a little over a year away from claiming his adulthood in the wizarding world.
There were a lot of meetings for the Wizengamot scheduled over the next few days. Mostly the warlocks wanted to demand answers from Minister Bones about what she was doing to deal with the Voldemort problem. According to Tonks, who was now on the Minister's personnel security team, "Amelia is probably going to say 'operational security', 'you don't need to know', and 'I can't trust you lot to keep quiet' and then won't tell them anything." Considering the number of people on the Wizengamot that Harry suspected to either be Death Eaters themselves or had some in their immediate family, he was sure Bones was making the right call.
They quickly found the set of stairs that led down, and at the end of the dark stone corridor at the bottom they found only one large thick oak door with black iron beads and studs reinforcing it. Sirius knocked on the door, and after waiting for a short time it opened. "Welcome to the Department of Mysteries, do you have an appointment?" The person standing in the doorway was a witch, but that was all Harry could remember the second he looked away from her. While he was looking directly at her, he could see that she was approximately middle-aged, was of slightly below average height, blond hair cut in a shorter style, brown eyes and dimpled cheeks. However, when he turned to look at Fleur who was answering that they did have an appointment, he forgot all of that until he looked at the woman again. He could remember that she was there, and what she had said, but any form of identification except 'witch' was gone from his head. She was also vaguely familiar while he looked at her, like someone he had walked past a number of times maybe during his trips to Hogsmeade or something.
She told them to follow her, and they walked down a short corridor before it opened up into a round room that was about forty feet across. There were a number of doors in this room, and the Unspeakable started to say something when the room started spinning. "Shit, we have an intruder!" She instantly whipped out her wand and cast a revealing charm. An outline started to glow blue off to the one one side. The Unspeakable turned her wand on whoever it was but Harry was faster. Now aware they were being followed by an invisible person, his instincts at this point said cast first and ask questions and answer accusations later. Harry hit whoever it was with a stunner, a full body bind, and rope binding spell all in under four seconds, which was impressive considering he still had to verbalise each spell.
Seeing that the intruder was subdued, the Unspeakable gave Harry a nod of respect and then pulled a red sheet of parchment out of her robes. A few quick taps of her wand and some writing appeared on it, then folded itself into an origami bird. It flapped its wings a few times and then flew right through one of the many closed doors surrounding them, without the door opening to let it through.
"How did you know there was an intruder?" Sirius asked.
"The room spins when someone who hasn't been invited enters. It's so that intruders don't know where they are going, so that they get lost and give us more time to respond," the Unspeakable said. "There will be people here soon who will find out what he wanted here, and then they will decide what to do after that."
"Well, at least we can see who it is right now," Harry said as he walked over to the unconscious, petrified, and bound person. He went to cast a Finite Incantatem at the figure to end any disillusionment first, but he stopped when he realised that would end both the rope binding and the full body bind. Instead Harry hoped that it was an invisibility cloak and reached out to where he guessed the head was. He was in luck, and pulled back the cloak revealing a lot of short grey hair. The man had landed face down, so Harry rolled him over and winced at the state of the man's nose, when it had smashed into the floor it had shattered.
"I know this wizard," Harry said, surprised. "His name is Dedalus Diggle. He used to get really excited whenever he saw me. He is, or at least was, one of the biggest Boy-Who-Lived fans. I have no idea why he is sneaking in here though."
"The important question is, was he sneaking in here because there was an opportunity to get into the Department of Mysteries, or was he following Harry?" Fleur asked.
"That is a good question," The unspeakable nodded to Fleur. "Our people will need to investigate anyway. After all, it's possible that he or some other person is after classified information. If he was after any of you, rather than just using the opportunity your visit presented, then you will probably be informed as a matter of course. Especially as he would be handed over to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement at that point."
A few more robed people came through the door that the origami bird had flown through, though they actually opened the door rather than just going through it like the door wasn't there. Like the first Unspeakable, they seemed to have the same magic on them that made you forget all details about them as soon as you looked away. The newcomers spoke a few words with the Unspeakable who was showing them around and then got to work collecting Mr. Diggle.
"Right then, follow me." Their guide said, and she quickly counted three doors to the left of the one that had just opened and led them through it. After yet another corridor they found themselves in a large room. There were a few Unspeakable here seated at desks working away. All the desks were facing the centre of the room where a large tank sat. It was filled with a green liquid and had white lumps about the size of an adult wizard's fist. It was only as they walked through the room and got closer to the tank that the three of them realised that the white lumps were actually brains. They were all understandably a little disturbed by this, and Fleur asked if they were really brains.
"Yes, one of our projects is to understand the relationship between thoughts, memories, emotion, and magic. Don't worry though, those aren't human, or any other magical being that has high intelligence. They are from specially bred magical pigs," she explained. It was just enough information for what they were seeing to be less disturbing and still kept nearly everything they were doing in the room secret.
They walked through into another room that had a few more Unspeakables inside, but this time they were obviously waiting for them rather than working on some other project. In the middle of the room was what looked like a raised pond. The pond was wide enough that seven people could comfortably stand on the rim without crowding around or jostling any of the others, and as the rim was two feet wide they wouldn't have any trouble standing there either.
Rather than walls made of bricks, this pond seemed to have been carved out of one single piece of dark stone that had white veins of some type of crystal running all throughout it. It was also covered in runes, and Harry was sure it would take him a month just to map out all the Runes and probably years to understand all their interactions. The pond was filled not with water but what Harry could only call a really dense silvery gas. It was heavy enough that it flowed and rippled like water. It reminded Harry of the dry ice effects he had seen on TV, only somehow thicker and silvery in colour.
"Ah, Warlocks Potter and Black, welcome. And this must be Mademoiselle Delacour. You weren't really supposed to bring more than a guardian but I think we can overlook it. After all, today is about you providing information to us, not us providing you with anything that you may need to keep classified. I'm Unspeakable Bob, it's a pleasure to meet you." And he shook all of their hands.
"I thought Unspeakables didn't give out their names?" Questioned Sirius confused.
"We don't, not really. Only the boss knows who we all are. However, when we came to work here we chose a common name to use while on the clock. Names like Tom, Bob, Sam, Anne, Jane, and Kim. It makes working together easier. For example, if I have to consult a few times with someone who works on a different project, it's much easier for me to remember working with Unspeakable Joe than it is to do so without a name. Plus, how else are you going to get the tea orders to the right person? After all, not-remembering-faces wards work on us as well as for us." Unspeakable Bob explained. "Unspeakable Jane, you can return to your regular duties now." She just nodded and left.
"Now some of you may know what this is," He said, indicating the pond, "but I'll explain it anyway. This is a pensieve, it's actually a rather large and specialised one but at its core it's a pensieve. What we are going to do today is experience your memories of every time you met He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. With a normal pensieve you just extract the memory and place it in the font, and then whoever sticks their wand in the memory will see it as an observer," Unspeakable Bob explained.
"This pensieve is different, however. With this one, the person showing the memories sits in the font and chooses what memories they want to share, then everyone who is holding their wand in the font will experience the memories in first person. Now, if Warlock Potter permits it, you are allowed to witness the memories as well, however I warn you that it can be a distressing experience. It is a full sensory immersion of all five senses. You will see what the donor saw, hear what they heard, smell what they smell, and most importantly feel what they felt. You are also unable to do anything that the donor didn't do. If Harry plunged his hand into fire and got burned and you knew it was coming, you wouldn't be able to stop yourself from doing the same thing. Considering the subject matter, I would give serious consideration to not participating." He was extremely serious as he spoke.
Fleur said straight away that she would participate. It may not have been the most sane move, but it was easy to see that she did it out of love and loyalty to Harry. It was also practical; now that she was living in Britain it was only a matter of time until the Death Eaters and Voldemort came after her for being Harry's girlfriend. This would help her know her enemy. Sirius however hesitated. Harry didn't blame him, Sirius had spent so long in Azkaban that his psyche wasn't as robust as most people. While he was making great strides in becoming a fully functioning wizard again, it was always going to be much easier to break than it was for a regular person. Actually experiencing Harry's memories of Lily and James dying, or his godson being attacked by a basilisk, was just too much.
Sirius was obviously just about to say that he would do it anyway when Harry stepped in. "I think these memories are too much for you, Sirius. I appreciate that you want to be supportive, I really do, but I'm not going to give you permission to experience them."
A strange mix of anger and relief flashed over Sirius's face. It was a tense moment as he warred within himself on how to react, but luckily relief won out and he pulled Harry into a hug and said, "Thanks pup."
The next few hours passed, and in that time Harry had to change into special robes, climb into the tank, and share memories. He shared everything in chronological order, first starting with that night in Godric's Hollow, then meeting Quirrell in the leaky Cauldron, a typical lesson with Quirrell, the broom incident, the encounter in the forest, and the fight for the philosopher's stone. It was weird to watch the reactions of the Unspeakables. They were people, and they reacted to the different memories about how you would expect. Yet when he looked away, he could only remember that an Unspeakable had, for example, cried at the memory of Harry's parents. It was like he had read it in a book with no face or mannerisms to pair with it.
After they got through the first year having viewed each memory three times, they took a break. The Unspeakables all pulled out writing utensils and parchment and started writing out everything they had noticed about Voldemort. They would apparently debate the points later, but first they wanted their impressions without everyone's opinions swaying them. Fleur, however, pulled Harry into her arms and hugged the life out of him. It was one thing being told that Harry remembered his mother's death. It was quite another to see the memory from Harry's point of view.
After that it was second year and the memories of the diary and the basilisk, the former of which caused quite a stir among the Unspeakables. After the first viewing, a couple of them ran out and quickly returned with two more Unspeakables. Apparently the new ones worked in a different sub-department and would be particularly relevant to the memories of the diary. What was most disturbing about that was that the new unspeakables, codenamed Kim and Kate, were from a group that researched matters related to death and the nature of souls.
They watched the memories of the second year at Hogwarts another three times, and Kim and Kate got really excited about something but quickly wrote down their personal observations before rushing to hold their conversations behind silencing wards, so Harry, Fleur, and Sirius didn't have any opportunity to learn what had them so excited. One of the things that excited one of the other researchers though that was talked about openly was that Voldemort's real name was revealed, as well as the fact that Voldemort was himself only a half-blood.
Fleur was more concerned about discovering exactly what Harry had been through during his fight with the basilisk. Feeling the panic, the determination, and then acceptance of the fact that he was about to die before he realised that Fawkes was saving him affected her greatly, and she had needed quite a few minutes of cuddles and reassurance after that.
There wasn't anything to show them about Voldemort for his third year. While LeStrange and the dementors had been plenty dangerous enough, they weren't Voldemort and he was the focus of the investigation. Harry did decide to include the vision he had of Voldemort attacking the Crouch's home. Voldemort may not have actually done much that night, being in the body he had at that point couldn't do much, but it was still Voldemort and he didn't want to risk that the Unspeakables could learn something that they would otherwise miss. Of course, after that was Harry being kidnapped, Voldemort's restoration, and the first big duel with Voldemort in front of everyone.
Like with the diary, the restoration had the Unspeakables all worked up. Immediately they again wrote everything down before putting up wards to prevent listening in. This time a Ministry house elf came around and took everyone's lunch order. It was only simple sandwiches, a piece of fruit, and a cup of tea or coffee, but they had been there long enough that they were all thankful for the meal.
As they ate, Fleur cuddled in as close as she could to Harry. Despite the fact that they had used the mirrors to talk very often over the last school year, Fleur had missed them and had a harder time of it than Harry and Hermione had. The British teens had of course had each other to comfort and reassure them. Fleur had been on her own, cut off and touch starved. Luckily this year she would be a lot closer, a quick Step from Harry and he and Hermione could join her for an hour at the Hogsmeade house. And that was on top of the Hogsmeade weekends. It wasn't the full time living together that the three of them wanted, but it was a definite improvement.
After lunch it was Harry's latest year and the fight with Voldemort. The scene of what had happened after Ginny had died had gotten Unspeakables Kate and Kim incredibly worked up again. Kim even said something about "all or nothing" and this being evidence for a theory of hers before the silencing wards went up, earning her a glare from a few of her colleagues.
After that they were finally done, and Unspeakable Jane turned back up to lead them out. Harry was told that he would most likely be invited back soon to hear some of the conclusions that the Unspeakables had made, but that they needed the higher ups to decide what could be talked about and what was going to have to remain classified. Especially as they were sure that at least some of what they had learnt indicated that some very dark and dangerous magic had been used.
It was an hour before the Delacours were due to arrive in Britain, so the three of them decided to wait in the Ministry cafe. It was mostly just a place for the employees to indulge in the British tea addiction during their breaks, but it was somewhere to sit and wait without getting in someone's way. After they had killed an hour and a few cups of some rather mediocre tea, they made their way to the Department of Magical Transportation and the International Portkey sub-department.
They watched as the group from France arrived, and Fleur waved at her parents and sister. Gabrielle was carrying a cat carrier, which was when Harry remembered that Fleur had her own half-Kneazle. Gabrielle had looked after the cat while Fleur was participating in the Triwizard Tournament, but over the last year the two had rebonded and Fleur was meant to bring her when she moved. However, with everything that had happened due to the attack, Fleur had rushed to Britain early and had only brought the essentials with her. Now her family was bringing the rest.
The Delacours weren't the only ones who had arrived from France, but none of them recognised any of them despite the fact that Fleur's parents were chatting away amicably with two of them while they joined the end of a queue of witches and wizards who were being processed from the previous portkey that had arrived. Harry's guess was it was just a couple that the Delacours had started chatting to as they waited to relieve their boredom.
Eventually the Delacours' turn came, and the family moved over to a desk where a witch was waiting to go over the paperwork with them. It didn't matter if it was magical or mundane, governments liked to know who it was coming in and out of their countries, and to make sure there was an entire filing cabinet of paperwork that they wanted filled out despite the fact that it probably wouldn't ever be read again until they left the country.
Eventually the paperwork was done, and Gabrielle became a Fleur-seeking missile who quickly crashed into her sister and wrapped her in a hug. "Oh Fleur, I missed you," she said rapidly in French, which Harry was only just about able to follow.
"I was gone for three days!" Fleur insisted. Gabrielle had started Beauxbatons last September, so she had had her sister around for most of the year.
"I still missed you," The girl said as she squeezed her sister.
What surprised Harry was that once Gabrielle was finished with Fleur he got the same treatment. "'Arry! Fleur said you can understand French now?" She asked in French.
"A bit. I'm still learning. Just slow down when talking to me. If you talk too fast I won't catch it all," Harry said as he hugged the girl back.
"That's so amazing." She grinned as she released Harry.
Fleur's parents weren't long in following their daughter, Sebastian carrying the cat carrier that Gabrielle had left behind in her mad rush to tackle her sister. Fleur immediately did the French air kiss of the cheeks thing first with her mother, then with father. Sebastian also pulled Fleur into a hug as though he hadn't seen his daughter for weeks.
Harry would later learn that the Delacours hadn't had time to be together as a family before they had heard about the attack. Once Fleur had heard about it, her focus had entirely switched to worrying about Harry and Hermione. It had been her father to pull whatever strings he needed to at the French ministry to get her a ticket for the next portkey to Britain. That meant the Delacours were now catching up with not seeing their daughter properly since Christmas.
The couple that the Delacours had been talking to finished with their paperwork and came walking towards them. Harry expected that they just wanted to say goodbye to the people they had been chatting with, but when they came over the Delacours started to introduce them.
"Harry, Fleur. This is Nicolas and Perenelle. They wanted to meet you," Sebastian said, making the introduction.
Harry looked the couple up and down. They looked like they were in their late forties or early fifties, which by wizarding standards meant they were probably in their mid-to-late eighties. Both had grey hair and friendly smiles. Harry also had a feeling of something familiar in the back of his head like he should know who these two were. He reached out on reflex to shake hands, but considering they were French it was probably the wrong move; however, neither of them missed a beat and shook Harry's hand, and he was suddenly able to put together who these two were. "Wait, you two can't be that Nicolas and Perenelle, can you?" Harry was sure these two were the legendary alchemist and his wife, the ones Dumbledore had told him were now dead after having destroyed their philosopher's stone.
Nicolas just put a finger on his lips in a shushing gesture and quietly said, "Later Mr Potter. When fewer people can overhear us."
A/N
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