Chương 2257: 12
Chapter 12: Epilogue
Eight Years Later
The ring of the Floo woke Harry up late in the morning, an hour after he usually got up for work. He flailed around in the bed, his arms passing through empty space to come to a rest on an extra blanket, and he had all but settled back in to doze when the Floo ward sounded off again. Someone wanted to come through.
"I'm coming!" he yelled, knowing that nobody could hear him. He stumbled out of bed, into the bathroom, and out of the bathroom again with a comfortable bathrobe. There were advantages to sleeping in one's boxers, but those advantages did not extend to meeting unexpected guests in a timely fashion.
"What's up?" he asked, crouching down in front of the Floo in the living room of his flat. It was a cozy little place, very well-kept and within walking distance of the Ministry, smack in the middle of Diagon Alley's newest high-density housing space. Expansion charms made space very inexpensive, but there was something to be said for a home that was no bigger than it needed to be, especially when it was only temporary.
The head of Sirius Black stuck through the flames. Sirius, usually about as fond of mornings as Harry was, looked like he had already gone through a few late nights and early mornings himself. "You said you'd play the owl for these letters," Sirius told him. "Still willing?"
"Bet you're regretting inventing Wizarding spam mail now," Harry said, without an ounce of sympathy. The quickly-developed countermeasures to singing Howlers extolling the virtues of cheap enlargement potions had drastically cut down on the reliability of owl mail in general.
"It was your mum's idea, I only put it into practice," Sirius replied, pulling back from the fire to look at something on his side, then returning. "Nobody bothers sending howlers anymore, so I consider it a net gain. Look through these and pick out the ones you can deliver today without too much trouble. I'm stuck doing the rest."
Harry accepted the stack of fancy addressed envelopes and scattered them out on the rug without further ado. "I've got the day off," he said. "I can do all the ones for Hogwarts," that was easy, "and Neville, and if I do this one I can probably get out there for these," he trailed off, still sorting letters. It would be a busy day, but he could take at least half of these envelopes off of Sirius' hands. "Are these all of them?" he asked.
Sirius, who was waiting in the fire, shook his head. "Nah, but I got most of the fancy high-society ones going by verified Goblin Delivery. I'm not sending you to play courier with the snobs."
"I appreciate it." They would probably look down on him if he showed up at their manor doorstep with letters, no matter how fancy. "I can take these," he said, indicating the smaller of the two piles, though not by much.
"Nice. Busy day?" Sirius reached out for the rejected letters. "Not as busy as mine, but you know…"
"Big event next week, plenty to do at home," Harry said. "Yeah, I know. Try to sleep sometime before next Friday? Mum won't mind too much if some random, inconsequential detail is out of place."
"It must be perfect," Sirius intoned. "The sacrifice will accept no imperfections if the world-ending ritual is to be performed…"
"If you end the world, it will be because you tripped over someone else's ritual and set it off," Harry quipped.
"That burn is going to keep me up at night," Sirius complained. "Say hi to everyone for me, and make sure you read your invitation carefully!"
"Will do." Harry shut the Floo grate and went into the kitchen to fix himself something to eat. His first stop would require a visit to the international travel department and a long-distance portkey. Never a good idea to do all of that on an empty stomach.
The day-trip portkey deposited him deep in an unpopulated magical wildlife preserve in India, after a quick stopover in the Indian equivalent of the Ministry to confirm his identity, that yes, his translation charms were working, and no, he did not intend to stay more than a few hours. Border-crossing in the magical world was still refreshingly straightforward, though it helped that he was a known international traveler. Being in and out of Britain on a monthly basis with Luna had its perks.
He quickly found Neville's base camp, by merit of following the clearly laid-out magical signal flares. The forest was ominously dark and something slithered through the trees behind him, but he made it to a ring of tents without any kind of incident.
Neville was there, in the clearing in the middle of the tent ring, setting up something with a lot of moving parts that spewed water everywhere but on Neville himself. Three Indian wizards were working on similar contraptions on the edges of the camp.
"Harry!" Neville cast a spell at the device that cut off the water flow, then strode over to clap Harry on the shoulder. The years since Hogwarts had been good to him, and he towered over Harry, taller than he had been only two months ago. Unnaturally tall.
"Uh, Neville?" Harry had to look up to meet Neville's amused gaze. "Did you get stretched out or something?"
"Embiggening potion," Neville explained. "Some of the fauna around here… You've got to make like Hagrid and wrestle it to the ground, otherwise it will never recognize you as a threat and leave well enough alone. It's a good one, not like the cheap ones Sirius was hawking, so it'll wear off in a few months. What brings you to the camp? We're not set up for the Mirage Vine yet, so there's nothing to see."
Harry looked around the dense, magically-brimming forest. It was the sort of place Luna might take a month-long trip to just to look at all the animals, magical and mundane. "If this is your idea of normal, I guess not," he said. "Here, invitation to the thing. Can you make it?"
"Finally set a date?" Neville asked, pocketing the letter. "I'll make time. Is Susan going to be there?"
"Yeah, probably. Is that going to be an issue?" Harry asked.
"We parted on good terms," Neville dismissed. "Just didn't want to be surprised, is all. It'll be great to get back to Britain!" He clapped Harry on the shoulder again, sending Harry reeling. "Sorry. Still not used to being this size."
"I'll be okay… once the bones knit," Harry told him. "What are you doing here, anyway? I don't recognize these things. Are they just magical sprinklers?"
"Glad you asked!" Neville grinned at him. "Fancy lending a wand?"
Harry had a few hours to kill before his portkey took him back to Britain, so he rolled up his sleeves and took out his wand, the Acacia and Unicorn wand Ollivander had matched him with after he lost his original wand to Voldemort. "What do I do?"
Later that day, after a soaking, return portkey trip, quick lunch, and change of robes, Harry apparated to Hogsmeade and walked the path from the village to the front gates. Hagrid was out and about, trimming the weeds around the gates. "Harry!" he boomed.
Harry smiled at the similarities between Neville and Hagrid, shoulder clap and all, and appreciated his own foresight for healing up the bruise from Neville's greeting before coming here. "Afternoon, Hagrid," he said. "I have some letters to deliver." He shuffled through the letters until he got to Hagrid's. All of Hogwarts' current teachers had one, given the nature of the event. Most of them had provided advice or an all-out consultation at one point or another, Hagrid included.
"Was wonderin' when these would come," Hagrid said, taking his invitation with exaggerated care. "Go on in, they'll know you're here. Mind the wards, they're a mite ticklish if you set 'em off now. Bill gave them a tweaking that hasn't come out quite right."
"That fills me with confidence," Harry said as he stepped through the gates. He felt what Hagrid meant immediately; when the half-Giant said ticklish, he really meant 'abominably itchy'. The wards, an invisible but tangible force, held him as if in a thick slime mold for a good five seconds, during which he had the uncontrollable urge to scratch absolutely everywhere. After, a Hogwarts elf popped up in front of him, not one step onto the grounds of Hogwarts. It caught him mid-scratch, thankfully on his nose and not somewhere more embarrassing.
"Master Harry is an animagus," the elf said brightly. "Is Master Harry registered?"
"What if I'm not?" Harry asked, intrigued. This was new.
"Is Master Harry registered…" The elf looked from side to side, then leaned in, with the effect of seeming to be whispering to his kneecaps. "On the 'unofficial' list for practicing students?"
That was new too. "No…" he said. "But I am registered with the Ministry, as it happens. I was just curious. Why the separate list?"
"There have been students caught by the wards who were not being an Animagus, but were trying to be," the elf explained. "No changing to spy or sneak, Hogwarts will know!"
"I understand." The elf popped away, and he was free to continue on to the castle. He wondered if the Weasley twins knew yet that their prized map, passed down to him in their last year, was serving as the base of Hogwarts' new security system these days. Probably not. They hadn't filled his home with fireworks in protest. Gone were the days of students sneaking around after curfew with impunity. Also gone were the days of an animagus infiltrating every nook and cranny of the castle without being noticed, whether they were evil or benign, so it was a tradeoff.
Once in the castle, he walked a meandering path aimed vaguely in the direction of the Great Hall, where he expected to find most of the people he had letters for. It wasn't a direct path, but the direct path he had originally intended to take didn't exist anymore, a blank wall where a corridor used to be. Five years since graduation was a long time for a castle like Hogwarts. Long enough that not everything was where he remembered.
The halls were empty, it being summer. The students had left or graduated only a few weeks ago, and the many moving paintings and portraits were mostly still, unstimulated by the boring, unchanging passages with no students to crowd them and cause chaos. He saw no one, and heard no one, until he eventually reached the Great Hall.
Inside the Great Hall, he found most of the castle's summer occupants. The staff table hosted a collection of familiar faces. Professor McGonagall was there, and Professor Sprout, and Professor Flitwick. Slughorn was there too, an amusing addition whom Harry didn't care much for on his own merits… But he was there because Snape had been fired in Harry's seventh year, so his presence was a welcome one.
Harry walked down the table, greeting his old Professors and giving them their invitations. He spared a wide smile for Professor Sprout, his old head of house, and deftly avoided being entrapped in Slughorn's ramblings. When he reached the end of the table, he forced himself to give just as polite and eager a greeting. "Headmaster Dumbledore," he said.
"Ah, Harry." Dumbledore was no less formidable for his advanced age. "How nice to see you again. What brings you here, is it only the invitations? We do still accept owls here at Hogwarts."
"Mum didn't want to chance someone not getting their invitation," he said. He could have avoided mentioning his mother, but with Dumbledore, every time she came up it was a test.
"Yes, Ms. Hebert…" He trailed off, but only for a second, barely noticeable. "I must admit, it is embarrassing to receive an invitation to an event from someone I still have yet to meet in person," he continued. "I will most certainly be there."
Harry nodded. The obliviation still held. Eight years and counting. The aftereffects had tapered off during his fifth year of Hogwarts, but the actual obliviation was as strong as ever. It might hold indefinitely at this rate, which was the expected outcome for the spell, but this was Dumbledore. Nobody had really planned for it to last more than a few months.
They would take their good luck where they could, though. Taylor kept her distance from the man, so as to not tempt fate. That he was invited to this was a surprise to Harry, but he supposed his mum knew what she was doing.
"I take it the rest of those letters are for my colleagues who aren't here today?" Dumbledore asked. "You'll find Professor Weasley in his classroom, but I'm afraid the rest are out on business in one way or another. I can deliver their invitations."
"Thanks, that saves me some time." He gave Dumbledore the letters for all of the Professors besides Bill, then used that remaining letter as an excuse to leave without any further pleasantries.
Dumbledore was mostly a good man, so long as his attention was pointed in the right directions, but Harry would never be all that comfortable around him. Once burned, twice shy.
Bill Weasley's Defense classroom was a lot like what Harry had always thought Binn's history class should have been, decked out in artifacts and trinkets from all over the world. Most of it was Egyptian in origin, sourced from his work as a cursebreaker there for Gringotts. According to school rumors at the time, Bill had originally signed on for a single year for the express purpose of finding the curse on the position, and teaching was a secondary, unwanted responsibility that came along with the opportunity. He brought his work for Gringotts with him, expecting to go back to it soon enough.
Nine years later, having found the curse and a new fascination for the school's mysteries, Bill Weasley was still here. Harry found him in his classroom with four student desks pulled together, serving as a large platform for a truly massive skull caked in dried mud.
"Where did you get that?" he asked, coming up alongside Bill to look at it.
"Bottom of the Black Lake, the squid led me to it," Bill explained. "What do you think it is?"
"I have no idea." He wanted to say it was a crocodile, based on the elongated snout, but they were in the wrong part of the world for those. "Letter for you, here. I'll leave it on your desk."
"Hey, Harry." Bill reached out to grab his arm. "Tell me something, since you're here. Do you know about Dumbledore's trinket collection?"
The question was serious, despite the flippant wording, and Harry answered seriously. "If you mean the things in his office, I've seen them but they're always changing and I think half don't really do anything," he said. "Do you mean that?"
"No." Bill shook his head. "I've been improving the wards. Dumbledore asked if I could make something to detect a 'certain class of dark object' based on some damaged artifacts. You know what I mean?"
"Cup, locket, tiara, ring?" he asked. "The collection he put together in my sixth and seventh years here? Yes, I know them." He'd even been invited along to retrieve some of them. He said no, obviously, and suggested Dumbledore take someone qualified to rob Voldemort blind, but Dumbledore insisted on showing him what they found. "Careful with them."
"He said you knew, but I had to check." Bill shuddered. "Black magic, those. You'd only find their like in the worst of the tombs back in Egypt, and journeymen like me weren't allowed near them."
"Nasty stuff." Harry also found it hilarious that Dumbledore still played his cards so close to the chest that he only showed Bill, his resident cursebreaker, such things nine years after Bill came to work at Hogwarts. At least this time they were broken curiosities, not active threats that Dumbledore was keeping under wraps. Bill probably wouldn't appreciate him pointing out how long it had taken Dumbledore to trust him. "Did you want to ask me something specific about them?"
"No, I only wanted to make sure what I've been told adds up," Bill explained. "Dumbledore is a great man, but he's averse to giving straight answers and incomplete information gets cursebreakers killed. Maybe I'll go to Ginny, this might be right up her alley." He frowned.
"She's brilliant," Harry said, always willing to speak well of his friends. "She can definitely tell you more." More than anyone else possibly could. He appreciated Dumbledore leaving the diary out of the collection he showed Bill. The last thing Ginny needed was a reason for her family to be wary of her. Sometimes keeping secrets worked out for everyone involved.
The Minister was busy. Then again, the Minister was always busy. Harry hadn't come straight from Hogwarts to see the Minister, he was here in the Ministry – on his day off, no less – to see the Minister's new Undersecretary.
"You'll need an appointment," the Undersecretary's secretary told him, entirely unamused by his presence. The fore-office leading to the Undersecretary's office was empty apart from him, Harry, and many stacks of parchment lining the walls. The door to the Undersecretary's office itself was firmly closed.
"I'm not here for a long meeting," Harry assured Ernie Macmillan. "How's the job going, by the way? I didn't know you were working here."
"I'm this close to a good position in the foreign relations department," Ernie admitted, holding his hands a few centimeters apart. "The next person to complain about the Minister being too busy to see them is going to get a hex to the face, but if I can hold out, it'll be worth it." The Hufflepuff looked right at home behind his desk, but Harry could hear his eagerness to be anywhere else.
"They promote secretaries to foreign ambassadors?" Harry asked, intrigued despite himself. He hadn't expected to see Ernie here. In the Ministry, yes, but this wasn't really the position one would think to find a scion of an old Pureblood family filling, even now. Things hadn't changed that much yet.
"New policy direct from Marchbanks," Ernie explained. "Everyone who wants to get an important position has to spend at least six months in a menial position, public-facing. It's a massive pain, but it did thin out my competition, so I can't complain."
"Swings and roundabouts, I suppose." Harry didn't have a letter for Ernie, but he could still extend an invitation. "You know the big thing Lord Black is doing, right?" he asked, referring to the person Ernie was more likely to have heard of. His mum wasn't a mystery in the wizarding world anymore, people knew of her, but she wasn't a public figure either.
Rita Skeeter was to thank for that, funnily enough. One tell-all interview with her, and 'Taylor Hebert, mother of Harry Hebert and secret witch' managed to somehow come across as the most boring, ordinary witch to ever adopt a child. Harry had no idea what dirt his mum had on Rita Skeeter, but it had to be legendary for her to get such a thing out of the journalist best known for putting out the killing blow article that ended Minister Fudge's career.
"Everyone has heard," Ernie confirmed. "Is that why you're here? I can pass on an invitation. The Undersecretary is very busy today. No joke, he's been in here since before I came in this morning and he'll be here after I leave."
"If you can get me a day pass to Azkaban, I can leave the letter, along with a warning not to work too hard. His brothers might kidnap him for his day off again." Harry handed the invitation to Ernie. "Also, I don't have a fancy invitation for you, but feel free to come. It's not open to the general public, but I'll let Sirius know you're on the list." His mum would appreciate one more person attending who wasn't a massive snob. Ernie was a minor snob at worst.
"I might, I think what they're doing is bloody interesting. About time. Also, yes, I can get you to Azkaban." Ernie leaned down to retrieve something from a drawer under his desk. "Policy is anyone with a good reason to visit can go. The Aurors are on alert and we've got to start training them for more active guard duty some time. More visitors is an easy way to start with that, without having to go through the Wizengamot."
Harry waited, looking around the office, while Ernie filled out a piece of parchment. He hadn't been in the Ministry back when Fudge was still in office, but he thought he could tell the difference now that he was out and Marchbanks – an ancient witch who had been in charge of the education department – was in. She was good enough to run the country on a daily basis, of that there was no doubt, but everyone knew she would be stepping down soon. The lower levels of the Ministry were filled with people hoping for higher positions in the coming shuffle, young people.
The political side of things wasn't his cup of tea, not even close, but from what he heard from Sirius, things were going well. It wasn't a revolution, bloody or otherwise, but it was a definite changing of the guard. It helped that the old guard were suffering many minor and not so minor misfortunes as of late…
"Here you go." Ernie handed over a stamped, filled-out card. "Good for any day this week. Give the Aurors a little scare, if you could?"
"Maybe," Harry said, though he had no intention of doing that. They could get their training from someone paid to bait their wands into action. His plans for today would be totally derailed by any number of disfiguring or debilitating hexes. "Say hello to Percy for me." The Undersecretary might be a busy man, but he would find time for this event. Nobody would want to miss it.
Azkaban would always be a dreary, unfriendly place. Even on this sunny, otherwise pleasant afternoon, the dark fortress' angular walls and old, imposing stone construction sucked the light out of the sky, reducing the water around it to a gloomy twilight.
Harry checked in with the Auror guards, got his pass inspected, and noted that the security at Azkaban was tighter than that at the border in India. Unlike foreign countries, he almost never came here, and Azkaban had a strict no-emigration policy.
"I'm here to speak to the researchers," he told them. "Not a prisoner." Pettigrew and Barty Crouch Junior were both somewhere within these dark walls, but he had no interest in them.
The Auror checking him over frowned. "I'll take you to them," he said, "but be careful. The Dementors don't like them, or anyone associated with them."
"No surprise there." The guard laughed sourly at him, and they were off. The lower levels of Azkaban were the least gloomy, with the fewest Dementors and no prisoners at all, the short-term cells permanently empty as of a few years ago. Many of the cells now lacked bars, leaving the corridors lumpy, misshapen things with cell-shaped holes in the wall every few paces. It was bright outside, but the oil lamps secured on the walls burned only fitfully, and all natural light died more than a few paces from the originating window.
The Auror led him up a few levels, to near the center of Azkaban as a whole. As they ascended the last flight of stairs, the Auror's little chipmunk Patronus – unobtrusive and so small Harry had barely noticed it up until this point – ran ahead, disturbing a swirling wall of cloaks.
"Monsters," the Auror muttered, using his Patronus to clear out a path through the middle of a gathering of at least twenty Dementors. "Back to your posts! Go bother someone who deserves to deal with you!"
The Dementors leaned away as the Auror's tiny Patronus swiped at their faces, running on empty air. Harry had his wand ready to cast his own Patronus – a badger, much to the delight of anyone who wanted to make jokes about Hufflepuffs – if it became necessary. The cold, creeping dread of Dementors began to seep into him, dragging his thoughts down–
But they pulled away as he and the Auror passed by, unwilling to provoke the one wielding the Patronus, and then they were at a solid iron door set into the corridor with much paler stone flanking it, obviously a new construction set down in the middle of an otherwise empty corridor.
The Auror produced a key and opened the door, ushering Harry inside. The Dementors swarmed, attempting to shove their way in too, but the chipmunk Patronus blocked the way. The door swung shut, was relocked, and then a second door in front of Harry opened of its own accord.
"Come in, watch your step," Ginny called out. Harry ventured into her and Hermione's domain, taking in the sight of a place he had only heard described before today.
It was a retrofitted guard station from back when there were enough prisoners to warrant using more than a few floors of the prison at all times. The room was only twenty paces across, a square open space with low ceilings. Thick orange carpets covered the stone floor everywhere except for a narrow path leading through the room and to a massive, deadbolted iron door set into the opposite wall. There were no windows, and the walls were lined with alternating chalkboards and tapestries, the boards filled with Arithmantic and Runic formulae while the tapestries depicted varied nature scenes. In one corner a small table was piled high with food, with an abundance of chocolate taking center stage. In the opposite corner of the room a tall bookshelf was only half-filled with leatherbound journals and tied bundled of parchment. Books, spread-out parchment diagrams, and piles of iron chains littered the carpet everywhere else, producing a maze of clear and cluttered spaces for the unwary foot.
The domain of any serious magical researcher was already inherently a strange place, but Ginny and Hermione had turned that up to eleven in their recent study of Dementors. Harry understood why it was this way, he already felt less unnaturally depressed, but that made the combination of a homely living room and academia no less jarring.
Hermione was nowhere to be seen, but Ginny was busy reshelving books. "Harry, what brings you to this miserable rock?" she asked, brushing her hair out of her face.
"You and Hermione, what else?" There was nothing in Azkaban he cared about, save for them.
"We do have a home back in non-Dementor-infested London," Ginny reminded him.
"I'll be busy tonight, and I thought now would be a good time to see this place." He waved her and Hermione's invitations about and set them on the food table, next to a cheese platter. "What are you doing today?"
"Testing a few theories," Ginny said, carefully picking her way through the mess to meet him at the table. "In basic terms, Hermione is torching a Dementor with a magical blowtorch and measuring how much the surrounding cell heats up. We know how much heat the torch puts out. We can tell how much is going into the air around it, the stone of the cell walls, and the chains. Subtract the latter from the former, and what do you get?"
"Hang on, it's been a few years…" He mimed counting on his fingers. "How much the Dementor heats up?"
"No!" Ginny exclaimed. She took her letter and opened it. Elsewhere in the room, the Auror who had brought Harry in was staring at one one of the rune-filled chalkboards, thoughtfully tracing the runes outlined there with one finger.
"No?" Harry asked, as it didn't seem she was going to explain.
"No, that's not how it works for them," Ginny confirmed, putting the letter down. "We'll definitely be there for the opening night. Your mum will have to put up security to stop Hermione from showing up ten hours early. You would think the Dementor would heat up, wouldn't you? But if it did, we would just have to trap it in a strong enough heat source to destroy it. Anything that takes in heat can take in too much heat."
"Right?" He was following, mostly. This stuff, the conceptual overview, that was easy. It was all of the rigorous magical theory underpinning it that made his head spin. He was more of a practical wizard.
"Come see." Ginny led him across the room to the other bolted door. "My break is over, or close enough," she added, slamming the heavy bolt back. "Two coming in!" she yelled.
"You're clear to enter!" Hermione yelled back.
Beyond the door was a small, bare room the size of a broom closet, with one wall charmed transparent to show another room of the same size on the other side. Hermione was in the closer room, watching a pulse of magical light emanating from her wand, while in the other a Dementor was wrapped in chains, trapped above a single jet of violet flame. It was uncomfortably warm in Hermione's side of the chamber.
"No readings yet," Hermione reported. "If it's absorbing any heat at all, it's at magnitudes too small for our monitoring spell. The Dementor's temperature hasn't changed at all. Hello, Harry," she said after, only then noticing his presence.
"As expected," Ginny said, likely for Harry's benefit. "Did you try the phoenix ash additive yet?"
"I was waiting for you." Hermione flicked her wand, throwing off the monitoring spell. It impacted the clear wall in a burst of light and stuck there. She pressed a quick kiss to Ginny's forehead as she shuffled around to make room for them both. "From three?"
They both counted down, and the flame turned a pure, flickering white when they hit zero. The Dementor, which up until that moment had been hanging mostly still in its ridiculous cocoon of chains, started to struggle against its bonds. The flame didn't appear to be doing anything to it, the frayed cloak wasn't burning or moldering away, but something about the flame made it very unhappy.
"That's promising," Hermione said as they watched. Her monitor spell was glowing faintly blue around the edges. "There's a heat discrepancy. Harry, do you feel any change in your mood? We're too acclimatized to make objective assessments."
"No, I don't think so," he said, after a moment's thought. "It's hard to tell."
"Not getting any data on whether the fight or flight response in the Dementor affects its output, then," Hermione said. "Something for another day. We're one step closer to figuring out how to destroy these things."
"Speaking of another day, Harry brought our invitations," Ginny told Hermione. "Come look."
"We need to run this until our Phoenix ash supply burns out," Hermione objected. "But thank you, Harry. I'll be there. You can stay and watch, if you like."
"No, I've other things to do." Including, but not limited to, delivering the last letter in his pocket. "You two stay safe." It worried him, seeing them so close to Dementors, even if the balance of power was firmly on their side. He stepped out of the monitoring box, back into the bright, well-lit main room.
"We wouldn't be here if we didn't have ten different security systems," Ginny told him. "Dementors can't even enter this room. We know how to keep them away, it's destroying them that's a puzzle."
"It's true, they set up the same wards on the guard stations," the Auror from before added. "Never been less dreary in there. If you're done here, I need to get back to my patrols."
"I won't keep you much longer." He looked to Ginny. "I would say good luck, but I know luck has nothing to do with this."
"Damn right it doesn't," Ginny agreed. "We'll be in Hogsmeade this weekend. Same time, same place."
"See you there." He was looking forward to it. He was also looking forward to not being anywhere near Azkaban, but everyone who set foot in the prison felt that way. Maybe it wouldn't always be such a viscerally depressing place. Hermione and Ginny were working on getting rid of the main cause. But as Wizarding Britain's most serious prison, he doubted it would ever be a pleasant place, either.
Thankfully, the rest of his day promised to be easy and enjoyable.
Harry made it back to his flat with half an hour to spare, plenty of time. He had stopped off to get Muggle takeout, in lieu of actually cooking something, but that just meant he had time to change his robes – again – and clean up the flat. With food on the table, a few cleaning charms took care of the mundane chores, and he busied himself picking up the junk he wasn't willing to vanish.
Two left boots went into the closet, as his job was not kind on footwear and some finicky transfiguration could turn them into one good, matching set of boots later. The cups stacked up on the side table by the couch went into the sink, and since he had no idea what was in them that made them resistant to scouring charms, he left them there. The art supplies laid out on the desk in the bedroom lined up and fell into order with a flick of his wand, organized and nearly arranged by ascending color. Muggle pens and pencils, quills and colored inkpots, clean parchment, spelled parchment ready for the creation of moving pictures… The whole lot was easy to organize, and he could see the surface of the desk underneath when he was done.
The Floo flared, fire flaming up to disgorge a beautiful witch in Ministry Unspeakable robes. Her hair was fully silver, dyed to perfection, and her smile was as wide and entrancing as ever.
"The Pygmy Erumpents are doing well," Luna informed him, stripping her robes as she walked into the bedroom. "You missed Fawley throwing a fit about the requisition for more time-resistant glass. He doesn't like my project much."
Harry followed her into the bedroom, helpfully retrieving her robes as she dropped them. Carelessly scattering things about the flat was Luna's way of saying she was tired, without actually saying it. He had expected that. "I got take-out," he told her. "Fawley can go stuff himself." He was gone for one day… Being the closest equivalent to a mediator for the Unspeakables, while a job his friends had inadvertently trained him for throughout their Hogwarts career, was a never-ending struggle. An interesting struggle, with a score of different projects going on at any one time, all there for him to lend a hand with, but a struggle nonetheless.
Luna pulled on a much thinner, more comfortable set of robes. "Did you have a good day traipsing all over the world?" she asked, pulling him in for a brief kiss. Her fingers found his hand and she clasped it.
Harry relaxed into the kiss, but Luna broke it just as suddenly, moving away to drop something from her pocket on their bed. "Yes, and it's looking like everyone can come," he said.
"None would miss it, not even the ones who would rather it never happened," Luna said sagely. "I hope Taylor has adequately prepared. Did she ask us?"
"Ask us what?" He went out into the dining room to serve out their food. His engagement ring flared weakly over the entire bag, so he hit it with a strong warming charm. That fixed the problem, thankfully. Food poisoning was the last thing he needed.
"To help her with the fight," Luna said. The door to the bathroom slammed shut. Harry spent the next few minutes wondering what fight Luna could possibly be talking about.
"Is this something I'm out of the loop on?" he asked once she came out into the kitchen. "I don't remember mum planning a fight for next week."
"Have you looked at your letter yet?" Luna asked. "Where is mine? I think I know what will be on it."
Harry handed hers over, then took her by the shoulders and gently guided her to the table. He suspected she had skipped lunch, and he didn't think she had made breakfast for herself, either. Working on her life's passion as a job made her… radiant was the best word for it, in his opinion, but it did come with some downsides. Such as her getting so caught up in her thoughts that she forgot other important things.
"Luna Lovegood, you are invited to… Luna Lovegood." Luna took her wand out and wrapped the parchment of the invitation around it, and said her name a third time. "Luna Lovegood."
The parchment shimmered, and when she unwrapped it there were four extra lines of writing on the bottom.
Harry had totally forgotten to check his own invitation for hidden messages. Sirius was involved, the odds were good there would be one, especially with his cryptic hint on the subject. "What does it say?" he asked.
"We will finally be washing the unicorn off," Luna said with a sly smile, tucking the parchment away before he could read it. She sat down at the table.
Harry knew he had just been presented with a puzzle. Instead of taking out his own letter and cheating, he sat down and started eating, thinking hard. Unicorn, washing a unicorn, a message sent by Sirius or possibly his mum, and Luna had mentioned a fight they would be asked to watch or participate in.
He liked to think that three years of a magically-significant seven-year engagement to Luna Lovegood had taught him how to interpret her even when she was being intentionally cryptic, but it took him most of the meal to puzzle that one out. He felt quite slow when the answer finally came to him.
"It's been dirty for a long time, hasn't it?" he eventually asked. "Ignored, but still dirty if anyone thought to look."
"We finally have enough water to do the job without being kicked or impaled by the horn," Luna replied.
"And if we don't?" Harry asked, certain he knew what they were talking about now.
"Sirius can make them ignore it again, until we're ready to try once more."
This big event was going to be even bigger than he had thought. "How did you know about this before I did?" he asked.
"Taylor asked me to check the hall of prophecies last week," Luna explained. "There are no active prophecies naming her or him. Yours is still marked as completed. You were not left out of the loop, she plans to propose it to us this weekend. That's what's in the letter, a request that we meet in secret then."
Good. He didn't like the hall of prophecies. He had fulfilled his without any knowledge of it whatsoever, but partial knowledge had set Voldemort to murdering James and Lily Potter and self-fulfilling his end of the prophecy. Knowing of them never made a positive difference. In the long-running disagreement between Taylor and Sirius, he was firmly of Sirius' opinion. Divination was never practical, even when it was correct. Not in this world.
"Planning on bringing the Dire Wings, then?" he asked. If there was to be a fight, Luna would want to be ready.
Luna smiled mysteriously. "I will bring something. What, though… Won't that be more fun as a surprise?"
"I'll charm the closet to hold any possible beast, then," he said dryly. "Just don't bring a bottle of accelerated time. You know the mess those make when they break, Mum would force us to clean it up as payback."
"Is someone still sore about last month?" Luna asked, setting her plate down on the counter, food untouched.
"A little?" he admitted. "It was very convenient, how you accidentally stepped into that patch of temporarily slowed time and couldn't help us clean all day." Glass charmed to accelerate the time between it and another piece of glass facing the other way was a ridiculously complicated mess-making material when it shattered. Thousands of pieces of still-enchanted glass, laid out randomly on a flat stone floor casting the effects between every other piece of glass and accelerating any caught in between… They ended up having to disenchant each shard of glass, one by one.
"It was an accident…" Luna turned to look at him, instead of the nature scene out the window. "But this isn't."
She leaned in to kiss him, and he met her halfway, absently discarding his plate on the counter next to hers. The food could wait.
"Can't you be nervous?" Sirius pleaded. "Please? Instead of… this?" This was a big day. One he and Taylor had worked toward for years. He was nervous, and he was just the guy funding the thing and a backup wand if it went to shit. This was Taylor's show, and yes she was multitasking like crazy, standing in the middle of the venue casting marking spells at the walls while simultaneously checking a hundred different things with her bugs, but she was cool, calm, and collected. It made him feel more frazzled by contrast.
"This is the victory lap," Taylor told him as she aimed her wand at the third floor balcony. "I was nervous during that ridiculous Wizengamot hearing. I was nervous when Nott set a small army of House Elves to stealing the books, and I couldn't be here to stop it myself. I was nervous when Dumbledore offered to donate his pensieve if we wanted it, out of the blue. I will not be nervous tonight, and I'm not nervous now. Is there a mimicry enchantment on the second floor banister?"
"Oh, sure," he grumbled as he went up to check the aforementioned banister. "Nothing to worry about tonight. Total victory. Not like half the old geezers who tried to stop this from happening will be in attendance. Not to mention the secret grand finale, that'll go over just fine." The stairs were nicely enchanted to only be four steps between landings no matter the vertical distance traveled, so he got to the banister in no time. A simple diagnostic charm revealed the enchantments on it, and sure enough, it was missing the subtle illusion enchantment that was meant to display an illusory wax candle atop it, like all of the other banisters.
"How did you even notice this was wrong?" he mumbled as he set about fixing it. The charms hadn't been activated yet, so there was no visible absence of an illusory candle to clue her in.
"I see everything," Taylor whispered in his ear.
"Gah!" he jumped, then remembered some of the other features of the building. "Ha, ha, ha. Scare the poor, sleep-deprived, long-suffering–"
"Long whining," her voice continued in a conversational tone.
"Long everything," he agreed. "I will accept that descriptor."
Taylor's laughter echoed around the building as he went up onto the third, highest floor and walked out to lean over the balcony and look down.
He really was tired, but tonight was the night. The end – and the beginning – of Taylor's 'empty nest project.' Or so he called it, when she wasn't around to scowl at him.
The building was big, a full four stories in size and larger on the inside. The center chamber was hexagonal, for warding reasons that went over his well-educated but not fanatically knowledgeable head, and only the ground floor was a proper floor. The first, second, and third floors consisted of balconies all around the hexagon, looking down. As of right now, that was all that was accessible, but there were five secondary sections of the building, one for each side of the hexagon except the front. Everything was made of heavily enchanted marble, and the ceiling was nigh-unbreakable sloped glass, giving the entire building an airy, open feel with filtered sunlight illuminating the interior.
Not everything was as it would be on a normal day, though. The walls were bare, lined with out-of-place wooden planks with nary a crack between them. The fake candles were part of a whole set of decorations, and down below he saw Taylor adjusting the exact dimensions of the circular tables being set up on the ground floor. All throughout the building, her bugs were undoubtedly working to check the special passageways and enchantments… somehow. A lot of the preparation was for this night, specifically. All of the base, everyday-use enchantments and wards had long since been set, giving the building the sort of magical ambiance one only got in heavily magical environments.
As magical buildings went, it was much more grand than, say, Madam Puddifoots. It was no Hogwarts, but nowhere but Hogwarts was. Neither was it like the Ministry, which was meant for a lot more foot traffic and hundreds of employees. Taylor had a bare handful of employees lined up to work here at present, all new Hogwarts graduates who happened to have relevant experience. There would be plenty of patrons, but not in the numbers somewhere like Hogwarts or the Ministry had to be designed for.
The open atmosphere, the architecture, and the purpose this building would serve starting tomorrow… There was nothing like it in Magical Britain. That was the point. Filling a big, obvious hole in the country, and stepping on as many Pureblood toes as necessary to do so.
Taylor waved her wand up at him, and a streak of blue light shot from her towards the third floor. He cast a Protego and blocked it. "Oy, can't a man sleep with his eyes open without getting marked up by spells?"
"You can Floo home if you're that tired," Taylor said, her voice a low, soothing presence just behind him, though he could see her down on the ground floor. "Really. I'll probably be busy tweaking and checking things until tonight. You can sleep all day."
"I might just do that." Or, more likely, he would down a Pepper-Up and power through. Or both, with the Pepper-Up coming right before the secret main event… Yes, that would do nicely. "But what about you? You need to be in tip-top shape for tonight, and I'm sure you already double-checked everything." He moved to examine one of the many wooden barriers obscuring the walls, checking each enchantment with a cursory swipe of his wand and revealing charm. They were all there.
"Are you asking me to go to bed with you?" Taylor whispered.
"Now, now," he chided her, ignoring the shiver that ran down his spine at her tone. "What would all of those stuffy noble types think if we showed up tonight all mussed and sweaty? I must remain the perfect picture of an eligible bachelor for… some stupid reason." Probably because they couldn't stand to see someone having fun when they were stuck in their arranged marriages. "You should have heard the lecture Narcissa tried to give me about 'curtailing rumors before no woman in good standing would lower herself to marry you'. I tell you, I so regretted not meeting her in a Muggle truck stop for that, it would have made the whole thing so much more entertaining. Does she not remember my last two years at Hogwarts? That ship sailed, burnt, and sunk long ago."
"Why do you still talk to her?" Taylor asked.
"Can't tweak her nose about the Malfoys falling from grace if I never see her," he answered. "She still thinks someone cast an undetectable misfortune curse on Lucius."
"That would have been simpler than what you did." Her voice was still right next to him, though she was down on the ground floor.
"True. Less fun, though." And requiring at least one major sacrifice, so not an option anyway. "But let's not talk about the Malfoys. It's killing the mood." The 'don't worry about tonight' mood, but it was only a hop, skip and jump from flirting as a distraction to actual flirting, and then from there to the things that had the witches gossiping and the older wizards disapproving.
"The mood?" she whispered in his ear. It wasn't real, she wasn't actually right behind him–
He yelped when her real, very much there arms wrapped around him from behind. He had been ambushed!
"You must like being surprised, it happens so often these days," she told him.
He relaxed in her grip, shamelessly enjoying the close contact. "When it comes with being felt up by a beautiful woman, I can learn to roll with the punches. Also, this whole building is keyed to you. Not fair. I don't have a building helping me pull pranks."
"Make one," she suggested.
"I could, couldn't I?" His fingers traced the runes on her arms, mindlessly following the intricate patterns. A drop of blood from his hand could suborn either arm to his will, but she trusted him not to do that, even for a prank. That trust was hard won, easily lost, and then much harder to earn back, but he had earned it, in the end. It and more.
They weren't married, engaged, or officially together in any capacity, despite throwing out all sorts of signs that they were more than business partners and good friends. That bothered the prude old women and resentful old men he had made it his life's work to aggravate and inconvenience, and also neatly sidestepped some of the more problematic aspects of him being the only Black male left to continue the line. Magic involved in generations of ancestors focused on continuing their legacy at all costs was… difficult to work around, and in this case essential to avoid. Taylor was working on that, because she was working on everything magic that she didn't yet understand, but not urgently. They had all the time in the world.
Unofficially, out of sight of the public to keep those amusing rumors from being confirmed or denied, they were together and had been for going on three years. She was the woman for him, eldritch aura and quest to find immortality to satisfy the voice in her head included. What she saw in him was a lot less clear, but he figured some combination of his many qualities happened to outweigh his many flaws.
Thus, Taylor's arms around his waist, and his realistic appraisal of whether or not 'go to bed' was likely to include activities other than sleeping. Even though, if he was being honest with himself, it probably shouldn't on this particular day. He was dead tired, and nothing was worse than the mind being willing but the body deciding sleep was more appealing. Pepper-Up potion didn't work for everything. If it was just the preparation for the party he would have been fine, but add in the curveball Taylor had thrown into the mix at the last minute? He was all for seizing opportunities as they presented themselves, but three hours of sleep a night was taking its toll.
Elsewhere in the building, something crashed to the marble floor. He winced. "How about I bring Pepper-Up for two?" he proposed. "We can save the fun stuff for later."
"You're getting responsible in your old age," she told him.
"I'm not even fifty, thank you very much!" He was still young and virile! Wizards didn't age as fast, anyway. Everyone knew that. She was the one searching for a moral method of immortality at the behest of her Ravenclaw assistant, not him. "It'll serve you right if the only acceptable cure for aging makes you all saggy," he grumbled.
Another crash echoed through the building, and they both winced. "I don't know what that is," Taylor admitted. "Nothing is falling, physically."
"Probably a smudged rune in the auditory enchantments." He shrugged out of her grip, raised his wand, and turned to her. "First one to find it gets to pick the–"
"Position?" she interrupted.
"I was going to say the place we order food from when we break for lunch," he claimed, the picture of innocence. "And you say I haven't corrupted you!"
"The only way to beat an incorrigible flirt is to outdo them," she said. "Really, though. You're on."
She apparated away, reappearing with a pop on the third floor.
"Hey!" That wasn't fair! She was keyed into the wards, he wasn't, and her apparating wasn't even technically real apparition, she was being side-alonged by her Ravenclaw assistant. She didn't even have to do the spin!
He sprinted for the nearest maintenance hatch. He would win that prize, whichever of the two she was referring to. Then he would get the Pepper-Up potions.
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