In a silent agreement that already grated Harry's nerves, the two of them seemed to wait for him to start the conversation. He walked forward, looking around, noticing a potion station behind the elevator, and a blackboard full of paper articles and handwritten notes attached to it.

With a swish of his wand, that served more as a tool to gauge their reaction than anything else, he conjured himself a seat on the opposite side of them and sat down, comfortably leaning back and giving a satisfied sigh. To their credit, they didn't so much as flinch as he pulled his wand.

"Fancy seeing you here, Pansy." He nodded at Mrs Malfoy then. "Mrs Malfoy."

Pansy gathered some parchments from the table, smacked them against it to straighten them, and then used a sort of switching spell to hide them somewhere in favor of tea and milk. Just two cups, though. "Is that all?"

"No," Mrs Malfoy said. "Stay.

Harry grinned and tapped his wand against the table, conjuring another cup, red and golden, and poured himself one, and then offered to do the same for them.

"What can the Free Wand Society do for you, Mr Potter?"

"Harry, please," he said, and tried his tea. It was good. "I heard the name thrown around—what's the meaning behind it anyway—and thought to check it out."

"Check us out?" she asked with a hint of a smile and a raised brow. "It's a natural response to the changed world, Potter, one that seeks to act instead of reacting."

Good words, Harry reckoned, but Voldemort might have had good words as well, once upon a time. In his short time at the rook of the Society, he could already tell it went beyond just helping folk. "Check out to see if there's an opportunity for me here."

She tapped her forefinger twice against the table, pouting in thought. "There's an opportunity here for anybody wise enough to look for it. Are you wise enough?"

"Ask anyone and they'll say no, but I still have some faith in myself." He glanced back at the blackboard. Was it just the way they tracked their cases or something more sinister, a wider conspiracy that made ICW's worries justified? "So the way I hear it, I sign up here and I just become a wand for hire, right? I get to pick my own way to go about them, and get the percentage or whatever."

Mrs Malfoy nodded at Pansy who got a parchment from somewhere and pushed it towards Harry. "Basically. The contract between us is rather straightforward, but beside your chosen duties, there are internal ones as well."

"Such as?"

Her smile was all teeth. "It's for the members of the organization to know."

"You won't have me doing some PR bullshit?" he asked, hesitating. He skimmed the contract and she was right, it was pretty basic, normal terms regarding secrecy and everything, not so different from one he had signed with the ministry before becoming Auror.

"No special treatment, if that's what you're asking," she said. "We won't expect anything from you but the consistency in your work, and will and strength to stand against those who would unlawfully see us shut down."

Harry snorted. "I'm sort of an expert in that department. How do you specialize, then?"

"People here do what they want to. There's some testing so we get the feel of your skills in case someone needs a hand, and you happen to be the proficient one at the field problem is part of, but other than that, you're free to vanish our garbage out every morning if that's what you want to contribute."

As he pretended to mull it over, he didn't fail to catch Pansy's displeased face. He would have taken the job anyway, if only to see what was really going on here, but who knew, maybe he could grow to like it as well.

Behind him, he could hear the elevator rushing down, then up, and when the doors opened the old man from earlier stood there, face twisted in anger and urgency.

"They're here."

Mrs Malfoy glanced at Pansy, who quickly got up, muttering something that made the fireplace come into existence behind the desk. She threw some powder into it, said the address and vanished.

On the other side of the room, the old man had his wand out, and made intricate, swift moves with it, transfiguring the room so the whole part with potion station and the blackboard blended into walls.

"Tell you what, Potter," she said. "Remain by my side during this conversation, silent unless told otherwise, and we have a deal."

He nodded and got on her side of the desk. She conjured a sort of bench, a couple of steps behind her own chair, and then with another jab, made it look like it was always there, silver handles growing from the deep green fabric.

"If there's a spark of an actor within you, I'd be grateful if you go for distant boredom."

He sat down, mostly because he was curious where this whole thing was going, spread his arms, and dropped one leg over another, raising her brows at her.

"Who're we expecting?" he asked as she took his pose in with her lips twitching in dry humor. "Trouble?"

"We've received three letters from the undersecretary of the ICW," she said. "Each time, I told them I was too busy to travel to Russia, and if they want to talk, the address is rather straightforward."

While the old man took the same exit route as Pansy before him, and while Mrs Malfoy made the fireplace blur away, the elevator went down and up once again, and revealed a tall, thin, and balding man in a half a century out of fashion, muggle, three-piece suit. Harry reckoned all he missed was a top hat.

He didn't notice it earlier, but Mrs Malfoy had vanished the chair he was sitting on, and the man frowned as he realized there was nothing to sit on. He was a politer sort than Harry, though, and took his standing position with pride and without taking his wand out.

"Thank you for having me, after such a short notice," he said with a thick accent. "May I provide a seat for myself?" He waited for her nod and conjured a simplistic, wooden chair.

Harry didn't take it as a testament to his skill, as it wasn't the first time he had seen that particular ploy to make your enemies feel more at ease.

He looked at Harry, his eyes shifting towards his fading scar, and then frowned, recognition clear on his middle aged face. "I come on behalf of the Minister, Belyakov, and the Great Leader of the ICW." Harry thought it was an interesting order to put his titles in. "As a continuation of our correspondence."

"Very well," she said. "Then we can skip introductions and go straight to the point, if there's one."

He gave her a sour smile at that, and grabbed into his suitcase. The stack he gave to her were photos, and Harry had to resist the urge to lean forward to see better. Harry doubted she showed much on her face as she went through them, but this man must've got something from her stance as his eyes flashed victorious.

"I see you recognize the people from the photos. Good, that will make this easier."

"Make what easier?" Her tone grew colder.

"The areas these individuals were caught in are restricted by the local authorities, and your men disregarded that. In exchange for deportation instead of imprisonment, they all pointed their fingers at you," he said, the smile not so sour anymore. "They gave us specifics of…their mission."

She gave him the photos back. "It's a muggle forest, even Minister Belyakov can't restrict access to it."

"The Great Leader Belyakov can, and did, for very good reasons."

"What reasons?"

The smiling bastard just split his grin wider, none of it reaching his eyes. "Reasons sealed under his very authority. So far we approached the problem assuming you were unaware of the fact, but now that you know, we will no longer show the same leniency."

If there ever was a conversation killer this was it, and Mrs Malfoy happened to agree.

"In fact," he said, standing up, and dusting his spotless suit. "It would be for the best if your organization would avoid Russia completely." He waited for a moment, and when it became clear that neither Harry nor Mrs Malfoy were about to say anything, he gave a polite bow. "Mister. Madam."

They watched him leave in silence, and once he was gone, she gave a barely audible sigh, before turning to him.

"Could've gone better, eh?" he asked with a grin. "What were you looking for there in the first place?"

"Answers." She did not share his good humor. Her pale face was blank, but Harry could see a spark of doubt in her eyes, a sort of curtain of determination and tiredness that he usually connected with Kingsley. Strong woman, this.

"Did I at least accomplish what you hoped for?"

"No," she said. "I hoped he would've thought you part of the ministry still. The ministry means politics, and that would mean more time for us, but the bastard was atop of things from the second he entered. You start Monday at nine."

Of all people, Harry would be first to admit he was completely clueless when it came to politics, and as equally as useless when it came to getting more time, but if there was something he had enough practice in, it was being dismissed, and there were no double meanings to her words.

"Later, then," he said, but she wasn't looking at him any more, nor listening to him. She had her eyes closed, breathed slowly, lowly, as if she was counting them.

As Harry mulled everything he had learned that day, he found himself aimlessly squandering through the village of Hogsmeade, and somehow managed to find himself in the Hog's Head, old Aberforth's face dropping when he caught the sight of him.

He claimed one of the high stools at the bar, and Abe slipped him one without needing to be told so, and Harry nodded his thanks, giving it a slow sip, and giving the room a look, just out of practice. It was mostly empty, except for the few shady characters Abe usually entertained.

As the old Dumbledore kept them coming, he thought about what he had learned. Outside of giving himself for the examination to the DOM, he'd done all he could to confirm there was nothing wrong with him, but being honest, he knew there wouldn't be anything.

It was the feeling this whole thing gave him that made him keep looking into things, and hey, it was something to do so there was that. The trouble was once that the thought it wasn't him sank him, the rest of it made no sense. What did he have in common with a random place at Kent? Absolutely nothing. What was the connection between the random muggle forest across Europe with the place he was about to start working at? Clearly something.

He dropped another shot down his throat and it made him all sorts of the right kind of warm, and there was the beginning of that golden feeling, just between sober and drunk that he always aimed at, and always failed to maintain.

"Alright, Potter?" Abe said, his old, wrinkled face sagged but blue piercing eyes knowing as ever. He was Dumbledore after all, and it made Harry feel guilty without a particular reason.

"Do you believe in coincidences?" he asked instead.

Abe took out an old, battered mop, and started polishing the bar the old muggle way, even though it was so dirty Harry couldn't tell how it helped the bar any without making it worse. Maybe it was just about doing something for Abe as well.

"You're a wizard, boy," he said, roughly, as if his voice wasn't used to so many words. "Every time you flick that piece of dead wood you make coincidences. I try not to believe in things."

"Why's that?"

"I'm a wizard, boy," he said, grinning a little, and it showed a couple of holes in his denture. "When our sort believes in something, it tends to happen. I'd rather avoid that."

"And so you polish the bar."

Abe raised his shoulder in sort of a shrug, not stopping his movements with the mop, not watching Harry at all, just going about his business in slow, but precise moves, methodically, until all of it was damp. Then he switched a wet mop for a dry one, and went about it again.

"Someone has to. I'm not giving you more, by the way."

Harry frowned, getting a strong urge of sudden, furious anger. It was gone before he could properly assess it, and probably for the better. "What sort of bartender are you?"

"Old," Abe said. "Alive. Doing what needs be done."

And Harry was just one of those things. Perhaps that was why he was here, instead of at home, answering to Ron's and Ernie's owls, or at Kent, seeing what was really going on. He gave another look at the shady characters that hid in half-shadows of Hog's Head. One had his nose running as he gently snorted, his nose just inches away from dipping into his dark red, half drunk glass. Another kept trying to reach for his drink and missing it. The third watched the second with an amused expression as he rocked his own glass back and forth.

"Regulars?" he asked.

Abe followed his gaze, his lips twitching. "Dropouts of the new ages. Now that the Aurors are poking their crooked noses into everything, the world grew too small for them. They're too young to give up yet, but too old to learn new tricks." He gave Harry a pointed look.

A thought or two, and he got it. But Harry wasn't, Abe's accusing look seemed to say. He dropped a handful of coins on the bar, and said, "Let them have a round on my account."

He grabbed for his glass that had some golden liquid still in it, running in small circles and so so attractive. He frowned at it, frowned at Abe, frowned at the door. He was not the sort to leave stuff unfinished. Maybe this one time, though. The glass weighed a ton as he slowly dropped it back to the bar, and his thoughts were still on it as he hurried out, back into the cold autumn night.

Ron's info on the Free Wand Society was a tad late, but Harry welcomed it all the same. Not the greatest writer, Ron, but he had a rare quality to pick up really important stuff while dropping off everything that didn't matter, and list it all out in a succinct manner. What's better, he knew what information Harry was after.

Reading through it once again, he laughed out loud as he noticed Ron drew a little, sad face over the bit where Mrs Malfoy's name as a leader of it was pointed out. The most of their gold seemed to come through the donations, but they weren't idle though, and they had an apothecary in the Knockturn alley, as well as the potion ordering service and brew-at-request hotline, for stuff people wanted to try but were too afraid it might blow into their faces.

"Thanks," he muttered as the hot soup appeared on his table. He gave it a try. It was heavy on garlic, heavy on mushrooms, just the way he liked it, and he made a loud sound of appreciation so he was sure Kreacher could hear it, and went back to the letter.

Not many big names within the organization, but Harry recognized an odd surname or two, and made note of it for later consideration, if it proved useful. Concerning the cases, Ron had pinpointed only the ones that had gotten them in trouble, and there were a number of them. So not just the Russians, then, for they seemed to be at odds with the German Ministry as well, and just a step away from being at odds with the British one as well, but Harry reckoned Kingsley knew what he was doing.

Ernie's letter came next, and Harry felt the hair on the back of his neck going rigid as soon as he realized what file he wanted from Harry. He should've expected it, really, with the way everything seemed to go back to that blasted incident in Kent.

So the DOM was interested in it as well, or at least Ernie made some connections the others missed. Either way, Harry knew where he would need to go, even if it made him sick in his stomach for no particular reason in particular.

It seemed he was about to attend a good, old, infamous Sunday lunch at Weasleys.

AN: Small ramble if you don't mind. I can see the chapters are a bit short, but I stop them when it feels natural so I hope you don't mind. About else, it may seem a bit heavy on exposition and I hope that will change shortly when we get to the thick of the things. Anyway, thanks for reading, and critique on gramma, consistency, and plot are welcomed, and I will take them into consideration, if not necessarily act on them.