Chapter 3:

Bad News in Disguise

Harry took his seat on the bleachers, third in line to bat as the French birds took the field. Dudley and Seamus were ahead of him and preparing their equipment.

Everybody came equipped with their own bats, helmets, pads, and—in the case of pitchers—balls. Regular baseball had regular versions of all of these things.

But magical baseball?

Enchanted bats could be used by anybody, unlike brooms, and were set to add jinx effects to the ball for any fielders catching it, dependent on the batter and the enchantments on the ball. It made for a lot of chaos and unpredictability. Helmets and pads were enchanted to protect, at least partially, against said jinxes. The balls themselves also usually packed a wallop, but today the pitcher was a full-blown Veela, or at least a half-breed, and she sent straight up fireballs down the plate.

Dudley was first to bat, and was consequently the first to strike out. That almost never happened to his tank of a cousin.

He retreated to the bleachers, red-faced and humbled.

"A fast ball, a curve ball, and an easy one straight down the plate," Dudley whined when he returned to his seat. "And I missed all of them. The honest pitch at the end really messed with my head."

"And the ball being on fire all three times had something to do with it, is it right?" Seamus goaded as he took to the plate.

Harry was next, so he tried to watch closely. This proved to be a mistake, as Seamus hit the very first great ball of fire. As always, the enchanted bat had the same effect when wielded by Seamus: fireworks. It turned the ball into fireworks. Combined with the flaming ball itself, the flash that resulted was blinding. Almost literally.

Harry had to turn away, and when he looked back it was to see five vibrantly colored fireworks, any of which could be the ball itself, flying into the outfield. Seamus ran as fast as he could. At first base, a French girl with curly blond hair caught a dud and was floored by the flash and bang it produced. At second, the others hit the ground, the catchers being not so adamant on getting flashbanged and burned.

Usually, Seamus' hits resulted in one firework. Harry didn't understand the enchantment, but its effects were somehow related to the hitter's personality. And that was all the Firebolt Company would say. So it was anybody's guess how it had reacted to Veela fire.

He made it all the way to third base before somebody picked up the burnt wreckage of a baseball to home plate. There, he stayed.

"New ball!" the umpire yelled out.

And a new ball was tossed to that silvery-blonde pitcher that none of them could stop staring at. It was totally the Veela magic, not how absurdly hot she was. Of that, Harry was sure.

Harry got up to go to bat when Dudley stopped him.

"Your watchers just showed up," he whispered conspiratorially.

Harry looked up, and sure enough, three birds of paradise were flying overhead like vultures. One red and gold, one blue and silver, one yellow and bronze. They had tried many times to identify what species they were, but no Muggle or magical aviary book described such birds, save for the first, which was clearly a phoenix. They were both quite sure that the others were magical birds crossed with tropical songbirds of some kind. They had assumed it was something to do with that Dumbledore asshole who wouldn't leave them alone, especially as he supposedly owned a phoenix, so they never reported it. Politically powerful man that he was, they knew it wouldn't amount to even an investigation.

He walked onto the pitch, keeping one eye on the birds as he readied to bat.

The first throw was almost a foul ball, but he got out of the way in time. He should have just let it hit him and gotten sent to first base. With Seamus on third, he would have made it home, and Piers could have carried them on from there now that he'd seen Dudley chicken out.

When he got back up, he noticed his watchers were gone. He scanned the bleachers looking for them, and got a first strike for his lack of attention.

"Strike!" the umpire yelled helpfully.

But Harry didn't care. What he was seeing at the far end of the pitch, just behind the bleachers, seemed more important than any baseball game.

All three birds were perched on a woman. One on each shoulder, and one on her head. She was beautiful, with raven black hair and impossibly pale skin. Being stared at by her hawk-like eyes was only half as disconcerting as being stared at by her companion.

There was a robot standing out there in the open. A man made of copper, with what looked like sneakoscopes for eyes, both pointed at him.

"Time to daydream, servivante boy!" the Veela pitcher yelled as she threw one right down the plate.

He came back to the game just in time to swing, and when his bat connected it shattered in an explosion of splinters and flame. Thank goodness for his glasses, or else he might have gotten some shrapnel in those already crappy eyes of his.

He blinked away his daze.

"Ground ball is good! Go!" the umpire behind him yelled.

He looked down to see the ball just a few feet in front of him, and up to see the troupe of cute, angry French babes sprinting towards him. And not with pleasant designs, based on their expressions.

Harry ran to first base as Seamus made it to home before the pitcher managed to run up and pick up the second ruined ball. She made to throw it to second, only to see Harry raising his hands in surrender. There was a certain level of courtesy in baseball. Mostly just to not waste everybody's time.

He wasn't going to second. She could be assured of that.

Harry looked into the stands in search of his watchers, only to find the woman, the robot, and all three birds gone. So, not Dumbledore? One of his people maybe?
He turned back towards home plate to see Piers Polkiss entering the field and taking up his bat. The French Veela reeled back to pitch, and stopped just before letting loose another fireball when the umpire pushed past Piers, waving his hands in a timeout motion.

"Game is cancelled!" he yelled.

"Ze fuk?" Harry heard the first-basewoman next to him cuss in FrEnglish.

The pitcher sprouted feathers in readily apparent rage. This confirmed his suspicion that she was at least half Veela.

"You cannot cancel ze game! It just started!" she complained loud enough for the umpire to hear.

Harry, along with Piers and the many passionate young ladies on the pitch, all voiced similar sentiments of disapproval. As they did so, Harry's own teammates poured out onto the field. Strangely, instead of the rage he expected, they were cheering.

"Dude! You're not gonna believe it!" Anthony Goldstein yelled, as many hands grasped him. "You gotta get to the radio."

And so, his teammates dragged him, bemused and grumpy at the interrupted game, past the fence and to a van where a wizarding wireless was sat playing. A crowd had already formed there, among them a familiar bushy-haired classmate.

"Harry! It's so wonderful!" Hermione exclaimed before pouncing on him with her trademark bone-breaking hugs.

The pain from the broken bones was alleviated by the kiss she promptly planted on his lips.

"You said you wouldn't be able to make it to this game?" he asked his girlfriend, belying how pleased he was to see her for the first time in weeks.

"I said I might not. It was not a definitive statement, Harry," she said in her usual joking condescension.

Great! Was it time for an English lesson on dangling participles again?

But then he heard the words of the radio.

"We have reporters on the scene and... yes, it is confirmed, Carlotta Pinkstone is in ICW custody and Aurors are currently escorting her into Nurmengard Prison for questioning. And now, reporter Martin Bell of the BBC who is on the scene."

And suddenly, his delight at having his girlfriend in his arms was replaced by so many more emotions. Namely disbelief, and more pleasure.

"Thank you, Daily Prophet," said Martin Bell, who seemed nonchalant about not knowing the name of the witch he was talking to. "I am here in the Austrian Alps where the terrorist known as Carlotta Pinkstone is literally being dragged in chains into the wizarding castle prison Nurmengard, famous for previously housing the Dark Lord Grindelwald, their version of Hitler."

That wasn't quite accurate, or at all really. He was more like their version of Ilse Koch crossed with Nelson Mandela, but that was neither here nor there.

"The prison has remained empty since his death, but British intelligence and Aurors are being called onto the scene for interrogation. It will not be televised or recorded, but we can only hope the British citizens will be un-marred by magic in their supervision and participation of events so as to report on it properly later," Martin Bell explained.

Harry didn't appreciate the emphasis that the Muggle reporter put on the word "citizens" as if to insinuate non-Muggles weren't deserving of the moniker. Near as Harry had heard, the legal debate on that distinction was still ongoing.

"Wait. What does zis mean for us?" one of the French girls, a brunette with a slightly Spanish bend to her accent, asked.

"Party?" Seamus asked, shrugging.

They all shared glances.

"We shall get ze vine," said the Veela.

Wizarding Austria:

"Auror Interrogator Severus Snape, on deck," said a British officer.

His peers all stood at attention as he entered the room, flanked by his companions. Kingsley Shacklebolt and Alastor Moody continued on nonchalantly, unbothered by the respect these men gave.

Snape, for his part, was uncomfortable and suspicious over the deference these Muggle soldiers were giving him.

He looked at them, and they looked away.

Ah, so they were briefed on legilimency. Which meant they knew a lot of things about his abilities that just weren't so. The age-old saying of "it is better to be uninformed than misinformed" rang true as always. The latter of which they were.

"Right this way, gentleman," said an Austrian wizard who could have very well been Albus' senior.

They walked through several vault doors that were so heavily enchanted that he could actually feel the magic from them, despite not being a sensory-type wizard himself. Each had a different locking mechanism, ranging from fingerprint scanners, to code entry, to retinal scanners. Even by his standards, it seemed like a bit much.
"The prisoner is through here," said the officer who had led them this far.

Their agreement to have magical and mundane soldiers or police officers function codependently in all things proved useful in many things—more so for the Muggle side than for the wizard—but when it came to security, it proved such a hassle. And yet Severus couldn't complain, because for the life of him he couldn't determine if this way of doing things was more efficient or less.

He opened the last vault door with an actual gold key that Severus would have sworn was goblin-made, to reveal a regular interrogation room. The right wall held a double-sided mirror, behind which he could feel the presence of several powerful wizards and an equal number of Muggles. In the center was a steel table, handcuffed to which was the witch in question.

"She didn't put up a fight or struggle as we brought her in. She just went limp, allowing us to drag her," said the same officer.

Captured by Muggles without putting up a fight? This stank of a trap from every angle he could look at it.

"So... will you be reading her mind?" the Austrian officer asked in a whisper.

Snape gave him the most forlorn look he could manage without outright glaring.

"Reading minds is impossible. I..."

"Yeah, yeah, and Pentathol and all the rest aren't truth serums. Get in there and give us all some closure to why all this madness happened!" the officer ordered, as if he were Severus' superior.

Needless to say, Severus already liked the guy. He hoped the man would stay alive long enough for him to get to know him. His nametag dubbed him Officer Mosele.

Severus walked in and sat down opposite Pinkstone. Her expression was inscrutable. Her lack of hesitance to maintain eye contact with him meant she was either unaware of his nature as a legilimens interrogator, or lacked any fear of men with such abilities. He presumed the latter.

"Miss Pinkstone. Are you able to speak, and if so do you have anything to say for yourself before we begin?" he asked.

It was her previous behavior of not speaking at all that made him phrase his question as such. His particular choice of words must have amused her, because he

inscrutable expression changed into a knowing smile.

Then, she opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue. When she did so, his own calm exterior vanished. Her entire tongue was carved up and tattooed with runes. And not runes of any language, but what was very obviously gibberish. An invented runic language, which was easy to identify even for novices. Like the Voynich manuscript or the Devil's handwriting.

Its meaning was clear though. That was a seal. Her tongue and throat were sealed. And on close inspection, runes of a different but equally indecipherable script were carved into her eyeballs.

He didn't know of a single legilimens stupid or suicidal enough to try and peer into the mind behind those.

He turned to the two-sided window.

"We aren't getting anything out of her," he said to his superiors on the other side.

Albania, Unnamed Forest:

Xavier Rostrick floated through the densely packed trees, doing his best to ignore his cheerful, humming companion.

Dorcas was humming a terribly out-of-tune rendition of some German lullaby he vaguely recognized from his life before annihilating himself with antimagic in front of a cheering crowd. He couldn't pin a name to the song, but he was sure it ended with children dying horribly. All German children's stories, poems, and songs did so, so it was a safe bet.

The vampiress was dressed in all black, as if attending a wake, and carrying a parasol to match. He didn't see the point, as the trees were so tall and lush with leaves in the summer as to not permit a single ray of sunlight to the ground.

"We are certain he is here?" Xavier asked, internally bemoaning his status as a noncorporeal being.

Only he and Stroulgar were ever assigned as her partner for missions like this, as both were immune to vampirism and her... other abilities. In addition to being good counters to her. That everyone else in the organization saw the need to keep her in check as paramount amplified his own concern towards her.

"Cliodna confirmed it herself. Voldemort is hiding in this forest. Though even they had not ascertained the state he is in. Two of us should suffice against him," Dorcas said.

Pride cometh before the fall. It had been thirteen years since he vanished. There was no telling what he had picked up in that time, especially as incognito as he had so successfully become.

They spent the entire morning wandering through these long-forsaken woods. Humans had not walked here in centuries, and he suspected Fae bullshit was at hand in these parts. God he hated Fae.

Then, as if by design, they passed a final row of trees to enter a meadow, with clear rays of noon sunlight illuminating the center. There, standing at the center of the clearing, was a stag.

It was a sickly stag, covered in scales and with dark tree roots vining along its sides and into its skin, creating infected, moldy wounds.

It had a human face sticking out of its neck.

"Dorcas. Peeves. I have been expecting you," Voldemort greeted them.

Notes:

Thanks as always to my patrons whose continued support allows me to keep writing. And of course to readers like you, whose continued feedback keeps me motivated.

This chapter was edited by chatGPT.