The pale yellow sun was already setting when Kingsley apparated them to Dorset. As always, he did it with a barely audible pop, one hand resting lightly on Bill's shoulder, and the other carrying two full paper cups. Not even a drop got spilled. Perhaps it was Kingsley's precise nature, but flawless apparition came easily to him ever since they had first learned to do it.
Bill took his coffee and looked at the whipped cream monstrosity in the second cup in horror.
"What?" Kingsley said defensively. "I'm not drinking plain bitter swill for the dubious reward of turning into an Auror cliché."
"You disgust me." Bill adjusted the strap of his trusty backpack, slightly worse for wear after the encounter with an angry sepopard, a creature with a body of a lion and a snake-like head on an extremely long and bendy neck. Perhaps, if he wasn't so busy hiding from it in a sycamore—sepopards couldn't climb trees, but with their anatomy, they didn't really need to—he should have snapped a photo to send it to Phoebe Greengrass. Gryffindor-Slytherin relationships were doomed to fail, she had told Bill when he had been foolish enough to suggest a Hogsmeade date instead of their clandestine meetings. Well, Phoebe, here was living proof that they weren't always. What would you say to that?
It was probably a good thing that he didn't; she'd only take that as proof that Bill was still hung up on her.
Sipping his espresso, he wondered absently if Harry could talk to a sepopard, and what a sepopard had to say about life in general. The one Bill had encountered didn't strike him as a potential conversationalist, but then it had been trying to literally strike him at the time.
They hiked to the beach; the area was too open to apparate right to the spot. Bill fell slightly behind, watching Kingsley's broad back in a Muggle suit. The one and only time Bill had seen him in anything Muggle was on the New Year's Eve before their N.E.W.T.s when they had sneaked out to Edinburgh, a horrid neon bomber that turned into a tweed jacket at midnight. Thankfully, everyone was too busy cheering and singing Auld Lang Syne to notice, even the Muggle girl Kingsley was kissing as the clock struck twelve. Never before had he been tempted to commit some Muggle-baiting, but there he was, replaying various cases Dad had shared over the years in his mind. Watching them had hurt more than Phoebe's careless rejection, because Kingsley wasn't an egotistic, status-obsessed bitch, and would have been kind if he had ever known.
Today, the effortlessness with which Kingsley wore Muggle clothes spoke of practice. It came with an unexpected sting. Being in different houses hadn't weakened their friendship, and nor had Bill's misplaced seventh-year crush. But now, after all the excitement of his apprenticeship, Bill found he didn't know what was going on in the life of his friend anymore.
A section of the beach was cordoned off, and Kingsley flashed a badge to a bored Muggle policeman in a car as they went inside. So this was where it had happened. Bill could taste the salt of the sea in the air, with a zing of magic to it, sharp and slightly rotten on his tongue. Promising trouble.
"See there?" Kingsley pointed to a cliff that shimmered into existence.
Bill forced his eyes to focus on it. "Masterful concealment. And whatever's inside, it's nasty enough to act as a repellent in its own right. No wonder the beach was deserted during the attack."
Kingsley retrieved a shrunken broom from his pocket and returned it to its normal size with a tap of his wand. Together, they circled around the cliff, not bothering with disillusionment; the magic surrounding it was more than enough.
Bill cast revealing spells, first general, and then more and more esoteric ones. After a charm in Portuguese Bill picked up from a half-goblin from Gringotts' Rio de Janeiro branch, the broom lurched and nose-dived. Kingsley cursed and cast a cushioning charm on the rocky ground, but the tumble was still far from smooth.
"Worst landing ever," Kingsley grumbled.
"Worse than Hagrid's manure pile?" Bill asked wryly. Kingsley was a true Ravenclaw, steadfast in his quest for knowledge and truth. And if it sometimes led him to some unexpected places, well, that was the nature of the quest.
"You swore to never mention that again. And yes, nothing was bruised that day except for my pride." Kingsley dug a sharp-looking pebble from under him and tossed.
When they got back on their feet, the surface of the cliff, smooth a minute ago, sported a stone door with no handle or keyhole.
"Bingo," Bill said. He pushed at it, predictably to no avail. An extended diagnostics spell followed.
"I suppose casting Alohomora won't do anything." Kingsley tried it anyway. "What does it want?"
"Hm?" Bill asked, frowning at the parchment. In a multi-language shorthand familiar to every Curse-Breaker ever employed by Gringotts, it showed readings that were almost impossible. "Oh, a blood sacrifice, of course. Very blunt and unimaginative. Whoever is capable of this sort of magic can do better."
"So, does it want us to prick a finger?"
"Basically, yes."
"And do we do that? I don't want to do that."
Bill snorted. "Only if you're ready to kick it within the next twenty-four hours. As soon as a drop of your blood hits that stone, your life is forfeit."
"Right. No bleeding on the door. Got it." Kingsley chewed his lip. "So how do we get in?"
"We search for the backdoor." Bill got a magilevel from his backpack and tossed it into the air. It sprouted tripod legs and hopped onto the ground like an overeager puppy. He looked into the lens and admired the fabric of the spells woven tightly and evenly into each other. If he didn't know that Regulus Black escaped this place, he would have to refer Kingsley to someone more knowledgeable than a Curse-Breaker just out of his apprenticeship. But no matter how immaculate the magic looked, it now had a tear, a breach from inside, and Bill was going to find it and exploit it to get through. "It's not going to be easy," he admitted. "Will take days or even longer."
"All this is a little too complicated for the hidey hole of an insane brain-eating murderer." Kingsley frowned.
Bill adjusted the instrument, zooming in on the iridescent threads tinged with darkness seeping from the inside of the rock. A magilevel couldn't show you what magic really looked like, but it gave the closest approximation a human eye could comprehend. And this magic? It was cast by a genius, or a madman. He had seen spells like that, old as sand, and these looked brand new in comparison. A suspicion of whose work it was sat heavily in his stomach. The timeline of Regulus Black's death was further proof.
"Complicated is an understatement. Warded better than most Gringotts vaults. But I don't think the owner checked in on it in a decade, give or take," Bill said meaningfully.
"What do you—Oh. Oh. You really think." Kingsley didn't finish the sentence, or even made it sound like a question.
"Yes," said Bill. "I really do."
"Bloody hell."
"That's probably what's inside." Black must have been among the defences of whatever was hidden here until he went rogue. Bill felt equal parts dread and curiosity.
He worked in silence for a while, Kingsley smoking next to him. Muggle cigarettes, another habit he must have picked up when Bill hadn't been looking.
"You know what's curious," Kingsley said musingly after taking another long drag.
"What."
"Earlier, when we talked. I didn't mention the beach being deserted."
Bill stiffened but didn't insult Kingsley's intelligence by asking what he had meant by that. "Just an educated guess."
"Is your guess somehow related to a horned serpent you had on your windowsill when I floo-called? I'm no snake expert, but it looked remarkably similar to the one I saw on a lab bust the other night. The one that McNair was tasked to deal with."
"Killing innocent animals is bad, actually."
"Don't deflect, William."
He weighed his options for a moment. Once Kingsley had a hunch, he was like a krup with a bone. Might as well say it now, spare him the worry. "I might know where Harry Potter is."
"You might." Kingsley crushed the stub under his heel and turned to face him fully.
"Alright, I do know where Harry Potter is." Bill unspooled himself from the magilevel.
"Do you really think Harry Potter might be dead?" Kingsley mocked.
Bill put up his hands in a defensive gesture. "Fine, I'll admit, that one wasn't cool. I didn't intend to keep it from you for much longer." He would have if Kingsley hadn't said anything. "I met him this morning in Hogsmeade. He's safe now."
"What about the attacker?"
"An Inferius."
"And how did this Inferius get from here to Hosmeade?"
"Rode the Knight Bus," he deadpanned.
Kingsley scoffed. "Very funny."
"Yes, actually," Bill said, because it sort of was.
"You're actually expecting me to believe that. The murderer is a waking corpse from You-Know-Who's secret cave."
Bill shrugged. It was the truth.
"Where is this Inferius, then? Don't tell me it then took a ferry across the Channel."
"He should've. It'd only be polite to make himself a problem for the French instead."
Kingsley made a frustrated noise that conveyed impatience and disappointment in perfect measure. It had never failed to make Bill feel chastised.
"He's been dealt with, but there might be more in here," Bill said.
"Dealt with how?"
"I don't think I should tell you, so you can maintain plausible deniability."
"Plausible deniability? Give me one good reason not to report this upstairs right now."
Why did his partner in crime have to grow up into a responsible Ministry official? Bill sighed. "That Inferius won't be eating anyone else, and Harry doesn't need that kind of attention right now."
"You can't be serious," Kingsley said incredulously.
"No one has to know. You told me yourself, they put a lid on your investigation."
"Not once they learn that I located Harry Potter. You need to bring him to the Ministry for interrogation, and then—"
"Out of the question," Bill said sharply.
"I don't know what your tomb-raiding around the world taught you, but here we have proper rules and procedures." Kingsley's voice was waspish. "I need to solve this case, and Harry needs protection, a stable environment and a placement in a good wizarding home."
"I'm not even going into that 'tomb-raiding' comment." How rich to call it that after asking for his professional help. Truly, though, it was 'rules and procedures', uttered so seriously, that took the proverbial cake. What did they put into the water fountains to make his friend talk and think like this? "But tell me this. Do you sincerely believe Harry will get all that with the Ministry? That they won't turn him into a Fudge media circus monkey instead?"
"You know you can't just kidnap a kid, even if he's a celebrity? Are you going to take him with you on your next adventure to live in a tent in the middle of the jungle?"
"No matter what you think of me, King, I'm not a reckless child-endangering idiot." Bill tugged at his earring in frustration. "I'll bring him to the Burrow. You know Mum and Dad, they'll treat him well. He's only got one year before Hogwarts, and he should spend it running around on a farm with kids his age instead of dealing with Ministry goons and soulless go-getters who would sell him to the highest bidder. He just watched his uncle get eaten, for Merlin's sake."
"Am I a goon or a soulless go-getter?"
"Don't twist my words. You've just complained about them on the floo."
Kingsley watched him coolly. "Not everyone in the Ministry is a self-serving prick, you know. Your own dad works there."
"Exactly. I know very well how it is." There was a reason Arthur Weasley shared a cramped windowless office with a bicentenarian and a disgraced ex-Unspeakable, and Walden McNair got paid handsomely to indulge his sadistic urges. Well, the latter, not anymore, although no thanks to any justice on the Ministry's part. "Harry deserves a normal childhood. Your grandmother would've wanted that too."
"Don't you dare bring Gran into—" He cut himself off and snatched his Auror badge out of his breast pocket. The copper was glowing angry red. "Damn full moon. Every wannabe dark wizard just can't resist coming a-crawling."
"Go," said Bill. When Kingsley looked torn, he made a face. "I'm not going to crack this today, and I won't disappear on my 'tomb-raiding adventures', as you've put it, at least until I do. You can trust me on that even if you don't seem to have a lot of trust in me these days."
"Harry Potter—"
"Harry Potter is not in any danger, unless he decides to eat that casserole from my fridge. Your superiors don't expect you to do anything about this case. So go catch some actual criminals."
"This isn't over, Bill." Kingsley's face was sour as he grabbed his broom.
Bill packed his magilevel and the seizable scroll of readings and hopped up behind him, because he didn't fancy a swim back, especially not in the cursed night sea. The ride was chilly. Kingsley had always been a voice of reason between them, and on occasion Bill missed his restraining influence in the field. But this time Kingsley was wrong, and he would see it soon enough. They couldn't let the Ministry sink its claws into Harry Potter.
Kingsley apparated straight away with a suspicious look and an ominous promise to talk soon, but Bill lingered for a while in the coastal town. Less than half a mile from the cliff and the deadly secrets it held, life teemed and boiled over into the electrically lit streets. A raucous group of young men stumbled out of the pub, laughing and talking loudly. He's been in enough places like this one over the last few years for the novelty of partying the night away to wear off, but the sounds settled something in him. Magic-free air washed away the tension from his body, one lungful at a time. He hadn't quite realised how oppressive the atmosphere at the cliff really was until he was out of it.
He got a pocket watch out of his jacket, a weighty old thing that belonged to Uncle Gideon. The dented metal felt cool and soothing in his hand. He held the watch for a moment before clicking it open, surprised to see a new dial on its face. A hand styled as H at the base pointed at a tiny moon symbol.
Splendid. It was Harry's bedtime, and Bill hadn't even fed him dinner yet. Some responsible adult he was. He hoped the boy had figured it out and helped himself to the newly-stocked pantry. His siblings would descend on it like overgrown locusts, but Harry seemed unsure about food, and was definitely unsure about him. Mum would cure him of that, of course, would build up his confidence with a side of healthy baby fat.
His eyes fell on a fish and chips stall. Maybe they both deserved a treat today.
Pounds still made him pause, but he refused to use Confundus as so many wizards would in Muggle shops (he might apply shrinking charms creatively when the total ran a little high, but that was beside the point. He hardly did it these days anyway). As he fumbled to pay for the food, he had a sudden, hair-raising feeling of being watched. But when he turned around, the street was empty but for an older gentleman in an eccentric purple suit and hat walking with his back to him. His white hair was longer than Bill's and gathered into a plait.
Deciding that his day had quite enough excitement even for his standards, Bill ducked into a secluded alley and apparated, and if he did it much louder than Kingsley, he only had a stray dog near a dumpster as a witness.
His doormat greeted him and Bill couldn't help but smile. He was looking forward to seeing the snotnosed brats at the Burrow tomorrow. Harry already knew the twins, and Bill hoped that he and Ron would become fast friends. There were so few kids Ronnie's age in Ottery St Catchpole for him to socialise with.
Harry was in the kitchenette, fully absorbed in levitating his toy car with a wand. It must have been Black's, even though Harry had all but suggested in his story that he had left it in the Shrieking Shack. Impressive, considering that he didn't even know the proper spell yet. He hissed something in parseltongue, and Slithers, who was coiled loosely on the barstool, her horn gleaming under the electric light, hissed back. Bill had seen that same look of wonder before, on the faces of Muggleborn kids when they had just started Hogwarts.
He cleared his throat, amused.
Harry jumped up and turned to Bill. His expression curdled into guilt. "I've just…" he started to say as the car that he was no longer concentrating on crashed on the kitchen counter, sending a glass of orange juice flying. His face lost all colour as he looked at the broken glass and the puddle spreading on the floor, and he clutched the wand to his chest like an injured hand.
"It's not a big deal," Bill assured him, raising his wand to vanish the mess, but it was clear that he wasn't listening.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Harry babbled. He made an abortive gesture with his wand hand. "I'm—" A bang cut off his words, and he vanished into thin air.
Bill stepped to where he had been standing a moment ago, hoping the boy had merely turned invisible. No such luck, of course.
"Well, fuck," Bill said, throwing the fish and chips onto the counter next to the car.
The snake raised her head and swayed, hissing urgently, but without Harry, Bill had no way of knowing what she was saying.