Enter the Dragon (Harry Potter/Shadowrun)

5.9 Therapy

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5.9.1 Residual heat

After his bath the previous evening, Harry had tried to clear his head with some newly necessary correspondence. It was just a couple of little things: one letter to Gringotts arranging a meeting with someone who could tell him what to expect when it came to paying the fines he fully expected to result from his massive cock-up at the DMLE, another apologizing to Amelia Bones for the same, and finally a second letter to Gringotts to hire an assay team to figure out just what was clogging up the Lair and more importantly what it could be used for. Of the three, he had only expected a quick response to the first.

As it turned out, he had gotten exactly the opposite. The DMLE’s response had arrived with the sun, a scrupulously polite invitation to meet in person “at his earliest convenience” that nonetheless read like a court summons. Harry wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, other than noting that it had pretty well pinned down his schedule for the second half of the day. That was a little awkward, because his casual request for a mineral assay seemed to have been taken with an urgency he had neither asked for nor expected.

“You know, I didn’t really expect you to come so quickly,” Harry remarked as he set down the last of the survey team on the Lair’s dark entrance ledge, the early morning sun still low enough to be blocked by the mountainside above. “I mean, I haven’t even gotten your confirmation letter yet!”

“We happened to be available,” the team leader, one Surveyor Hammerstone, explained quickly, looking more than a little nervous for some reason. “There’s no profit in time wasted.”

Harry slowly nodded. That was a common theme in goblin business attitudes. Still, something about the goblin’s manner seemed a little off, as if he was trying to convince himself as much as he was his audience. Still, Harry already had enough on his plate for the day so he set his curiosity aside.

“Alright, Hammerstone,” Harry nodded. “If you’ll come this way, I’ll show you the situation.”

And with that, he led the Surveyor and his team deeper into the Lair where they soon encountered their first corridor-filling drift of fine grey-white dust. As his team set about taking samples for assay, Hammerstone turned to his contractor and asked the obvious question.

“How much of this is there?”

“I’m not sure,” Harry gave it a bit of thought, “...but there’s a lot of it. I wasn’t exactly in the right frame of mind last night to take proper measurements.”

The goblin turned a greenish shade of khaki.

“I…” Hammerstone coughed and cleared his throat before continuing in a much less squeaky voice, “I see… and you mentioned in your letter that this came about due to losing your temper?”

“Yeah,” the dragon sighed. “I needed to vent, so I went and burned out a new room in the Lair. It’s at the far end of all this.”

Hammerstone swallowed heavily before squaring up his shoulders and addressing the situation professionally.

“From the geology in these parts, I would assume most of this will turn out to be silica fume… perhaps with a little more in common with fly ash than most of the commercially available product given the impurity of the source.”

“I figured,” the Potter heir nodded.

“Then why did you request the assay?”

“Mostly just in case,” he shrugged. “I know there are a lot of things that are perfectly normal when made conventionally but take on special properties when made with magic, and there aren’t a whole lot of fires more magical than dragon flame. I wanted to make certain there wasn’t something special about it before I started flogging it off on the commodities market.”

“Ah, that makes sense,” Hammerstone nodded. “In that case, we’ll probably want to check on that room as well. Even if the ash doesn’t turn up anything, the walls might. The magical exposure would have been a lot more long-lived there, and solidifying from a liquid rather than a vapor might have frozen any induced properties in rather than atomizing them.”

“I’ll take you there, then,” the dragon nodded and motioned for his visitors to follow.

Following obediently along, Hammerstone’s eyes grew wider with each great pile of ash the dragon forded through. By the time they neared the end, the goblin had given up on trying to estimate just how much of the stuff had been made. That would have to wait for a detailed survey. It was quickly becoming apparent that there were more urgent problems to deal with; chiefly the way the last dozen or so yards of corridor had felt like he was standing in front of a working oven, and that heat had only gotten more intense as they walked.

“Mister Potter,” he called out, prompting the dragon to look back over his shoulder, “how much farther is this room?”

“Maybe two or three more piles in, I think.”

“In that case, I am afraid we will have to beg off for now,” Hammerstone informed him. “This area is too hot for us to work safely, and I am afraid I did not anticipate the need for protective equipment for my team. Either we will need to wait for things to cool or send back to the main office for the proper equipment.”

The dragon nodded agreeably. “That makes sense. How long do you think?”

“If we wait for it to cool, probably a week or two,” Hammerstone guessed. “If it’s still this hot this far out, then the room itself is probably still glowing.”

“And the equipment?”

“We can probably get that here by this afternoon,” the goblin estimated. “The foundry gobs keep extras on hand.”

“Let’s go with that then,” a great scaly head nodded decisively. “I’d hate for you guys to have wasted a trip. Do you need me to let Gringotts know? I was planning to go by there this morning anyway.”

“I can handle that,” Hammerstone said quickly. “Just show us to a place we can wait, and I’ll get right on it.”

“Right,” Harry agreed, flickering into human form and then back in order to turn around in the dust-filled corridor. “Let me introduce you to Suze. She’ll be able to look after you while I’m out.”

5.9.2 Pomp and circumstance

Suze was not terribly bothered by the ‘accessories’ wizarding law made compulsory for her when visiting public areas like Diagon Alley, but neither was she particularly fond of them. Thus, when her Great Wyrm asked her to play hostess to the visiting goblins in his stead, she had quite happily agreed. Because of this, Harry found himself dressed in his business best and picking up his singular companion for his morning excursion. Predictably given the nature of said companion, this occurred in the library.

Guided by the occasional rustle of bound pages, he walked deeper into the neatly organized stacks of his personal book collection searching for the frizzy-haired girl herself. Her usual table was stacked high with reading material, but the girl herself was not there which was honestly not too unusual. His human damsel really liked books after all, and sometimes bringing that book back to the table so she could sit properly while she read it was just too much of a delay. Harry was therefore not too surprised to find Hermione sitting quietly on the floor deep among the shelves, her back against a bookcase and a large tome laid out across her knees, reading intently.

“Good morning, Hermione!” he greeted with a broad smile. “How are you?”

“Good morning, Harry,” she returned, not looking away from the text. “I am doing quite well, thanks.” She trailed off for a few seconds as she read through the rest of the page before looking up. “It’s good to be home.”

“It’s good to have you,” he agreed. “Hey, you said the Healers had cleared your parents for visitors, right?”

“Yes they did,” she nodded. “The day before you came back, in fact.”

“Well, I’ve got some business in London today, but would you like to swing by St. Mungo’s to visit on the way?”

“Of course!” Hermione smiled eagerly. “When?”

“You haven’t eaten yet?”

She shook her head in the negative.

“Then I figure we ought to be able to go pick up some breakfast in Hogsmeade and still make the beginning of visiting hours. I’ve never been there either, so it’ll be an adventure. After that, I need to go by the bank for something to prepare for another meeting this afternoon.”

“That sounds good. While you do that, I can stop by Fortescue’s for ice cream and see Su Li!” his human damsel enthused, standing up. “I didn’t get a chance to tell her you were back, and I’ll bet she’s worried. Should we leave now?”

“In a minute,” Harry assured her, digging into one of his pockets, “there’s one more thing to take care of first.”

With that, he withdrew a pouch of the soft-tanned deerskin than was so omnipresent in the Lair. Upending it sent a wide ribbon of mirror-polished argent pouring into his hand like quicksilver.

Hermione stilled, her warm brown eyes wide open.

“I told you I’d give you one of these,” Harry began, tossing aside the empty pouch, “but I had to leave before I could do a proper job of it. Fortunately, I had some spare time on the trip.”

“Harry, is that…”

“Yeah,” he confirmed, offering it to her. “I made it myself.”

Hermione gasped at the feel of the finely-worked silver as the flat chain draped over her fingers like liquid silk. It was a necklace, over an inch wide and short enough to ride high and visible on her throat. Embedded halfway along its length was a solid rectangular plate the full width of the chain upon which the Potter family crest was prominently engraved.

It was a… even her thoughts failed her as she tried to process the enormity of what she held in her hands.

“I know it’s traditionally supposed to be a torc, but historically the designs have varied a fair bit. The important bits as far as I can tell are that it is made of silver, bears that crest and the associated warnings, and sits high enough on the neck to be prominently visible. I figured a choker necklace would be fit to purpose and be more comfortable for you to wear” the young dragon-in-human-form rushed to explain when he grew discomfited by the extended silence. “I learned how to make the flat chain at the village we were staying at, but I only finished up the sigil yesterday when I got back to my workshop and had the reference material to confirm I got the wording right. Um… I had to guess at the size so it’ll probably be a little looser than it should be, but as long as you don’t wear a turtleneck or something it should be good enough for today.”

“Umm… what do you mean by ‘good enough for today’, Harry?” Hermione asked, finally able to rouse herself from her shocked silence.

“Well, I wanted to get that on you before you went out in public again,” he explained. “Aside from the whole reputation thing, I wanted to warn off anyone else who might be thinking about doing something stupid. I mean, I never imagined anyone would be foolish enough to go after you without checking the registry first, but obviously they were so…”

“Right, that makes sense,” the girl interrupted hurriedly. “Would…” she hesitated, “would you help me put it on?”

Smiling broadly, Harry did so while his damsel blushed at the feeling of his fingers brushing against her nape as he fastened the clasp. She was still lightly flushed and running on automatic, absently fingering her new adornment with a far-off look on her face when Harry took her by the hand and led her off to the Lair entrance.

5.9.3 Green fire and dodgy finance

Breakfast had passed uneventfully — Harry had only ordered two large breakfasts for himself, having eaten the bulk of his meal before the sun had even risen — and they had taken the floo straight to St. Mungo’s afterwards. That trend had then continued, ad nauseum.

“What is with all the floo connections?” Hermione asked as they followed the signs on the wall to yet another bank of fireplaces, each burning with an incandescent green bonfire. “And why are they all permanently active?”

The floo bank ahead of them would be the third such they had encountered since arriving at the hospital. One had taken them from the main lobby to the Spell Damage ward, which was purportedly on the fourth floor according to the signage; though Harry wasn’t certain that designation really meant anything when everyone seemed to floo everywhere. A second bank had awaited them, taking them from Spell Damage Receiving to the main desk of the Mind Magic unit, and they had walked straight over to a third roaring green fireplace there. As they did, the world dissolved into green flame once again only to reform into yet another lobby, this one proclaimed to be the Chatwyn Memorial Isolation Ward by a small sign on the reception desk. Right next to it sat another informing all who read it that someone had been alerted by their arrival and would be with them shortly.

“I suspect they’re active all the time to speed up movement through the hospital,” Harry ventured. “I mean, it’d be really awkward to have to stop all the time if you’re moving a patient in critical condition or something, not to mention the risk of getting floo powder somewhere you shouldn’t.”

“Fair, but why so many?” Hermione wondered. “We just went through an entire hospital without walking through a single doorway. It was floo travel all the way, and judging by the green glow from around the corner behind that desk, I suspect we’re going to see another bank with a fireplace leading to each room. That’s got to be expensive to run, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it would be,” Harry nodded. “If I wanted to set one of those up… call it an average connection length of fifty feet or so, twenty-four seven…” Harry closed his eyes as he worked through the math, “…it’d cost around about quarter million in floo powder per connection per year at current market price.”

“A quarter million pounds! But there must be hundreds of those connections!” Hermione went white. “How can they afford that?”

“Galleons, Hermione,” Harry corrected. “Not pounds sterling.”

“That’s even worse!”

“About fifty times worse, yeah,” Harry shrugged. “As for how they can afford it, that’d be House Malfoy.”

“Huh, that’s surprisingly generous of them.” Hermione mused. “With how Draco behaves, I never would have guessed. Well, I guess it goes to show…”

“Oh, they’re not being generous,” Harry cut her off with an amused snort. “It’s a money-laundering racket.”

The bushy-haired girl’s eyes went wide. “How on earth can they launder money by donating hundreds of millions of galleons to a hospital?”

“Actually, it's pretty straightforward: they’re not donating galleons; they’re donating floo powder,” Harry explained. “Floo powder is cheap stuff. The magical bits are mostly powdered ashwinder eggs with a few inexpensive stabilizers, and the rest is wood flour as filler. Any decent potions master can make it for a song, but since the Malfoys are the only legal supplier, they can set the official price to whatever they want. That lets them make their donations worth as much as they want them to be on paper, while keeping the actual investment of resources to a minimum. The Malfoys have been doing it for decades.”

“If it’s so cheap to make, why hasn’t anyone stepped in to compete?”

“The Malfoys have got a patent,” Harry said with a shrug.

“Harry, you said they’ve been doing this for decades,” Hermione began. “Even if they were mismanaging their patent that badly, they don’t get exclusive rights for that long.”

Harry shook his head, “It’s not a modern patent, Hermione; it’s one of the old ones. Brutus Malfoy got it in 1691, and House Malfoy has held onto it religiously ever since. I did some research to see whether bulk floo travel was a viable alternative to trains when I was developing my business plan for Hogs Haulage.”

The girl’s jaw dropped.

“You mean they have a grant of monopoly? In perpetuity? But that’s positively ar…” Hermione stopped herself with a sigh. “…archaic. Of course it’s archaic. This is wizarding Britain; I should have realized.”

Harry simply nodded. She really should have.

“Hey, wasn’t that the year before the Statute of Secrecy went into effect?” Hermione asked.

“The Statute played a big role in them getting it, actually.”

“Really? How so?”

“Well, the Statute went into effect in 1692, but it actually passed the Wizengamot in 1685,” he explained, craning his neck slightly to see if he could catch a glimpse of anyone coming from the hallway behind the desk. “They put a seven year grace period on it, a time to divest yourself of any remaining mixed enterprises — businesses and that sort of thing — without completely destroying your personal finances. Basically, open non-magical contact was not illegal yet, but everyone knew it would be soon.”

“That makes sense,” Hermione nodded. “It would be really hard to just stop one day.”

“Right,” Harry nodded. “So most people were pulling back from non-magical contact like they were intended to, but a few saw advantage to be had.”

“How would that be an advantage?” she frowned.

“It has to do with the Great Oath and how it interacted with the political situation at the time.”

“That’s the fealty oath Merlin instituted in Camelot, right?”

“Yeah,” Harry confirmed.

“But what does that have to do with the Statute? The Oath takes precedent, doesn’t it? That’s why we’re still subject to the Crown.”

“It does,” he agreed. “But that’s actually the issue. The Oath doesn’t make any distinction between magical or non-magical monarchs; that’s why royal decrees continue to hold weight in the magical world even though there hasn’t been a magical royal in more than a thousand years. The thing was, when the Statute went into effect, it cut off all official contact with the royal family: a decree not communicated is not a decree at all.”

Hermione’s brown eyes went wide. “But… doesn’t the Ministry still answer to the Prime Minister? Couldn’t he relay royal commands?”

Harry shook his head, “The Ministry maintains contact with the Prime Minister in order to service those few obligations that persist from previously issued royal commands, but the position of Prime Minister didn’t exist in Camelot. He has neither authority nor protection under the Oath. A few well-chosen compulsions here and there are more than enough to prevent the delivery of any new royal decrees issued by the throne.”

“No protections?” Hermione frowned. “Wouldn’t the king have explicitly given protections to his representative with the wizards?”

“He did… decreed it for all members of the parliament, as a matter of fact,” Harry nodded. “However, it was always ambiguous whether that decree applied to the specific members at the time or to all members regardless, and when the Parliament of England dissolved in 1707 and reconstituted as the Parliament of Great Britain, even that ambiguity became moot.”

His bushy-haired companion groaned.

“Anyway, quite a few wizards realized that particular wrinkle, and they started scrambling for quick influence to get what they wanted in place before the deadline set things in stone. Some tried to persuade the king; some decided his daughter would be more receptive. One thing led to another, and there was active rebellion, the king was deposed, and essentially everyone lost. Afterwards, James the Second was in no mood to help the wizards whose interference had led to him being deposed, and Mary the Second wasn’t the legitimate monarch according to the Oath.”

“Why not?” Hermione frowned. “Wasn’t she crowned before 1692?”

“She was, but she was installed by Parliament, and as far as the Oath is concerned Parliament doesn’t legally exist, much less have the authority to depose or install a monarch,” Harry shrugged. “For purposes of the Oath, she became Queen in 1701 when her father died in exile and she inherited the throne.”

“How does that lead to a floo powder monopoly?” the bushy-haired girl asked.

“Well, after all that happened, most everyone backed off, but Brutus Malfoy was an admittedly clever scoundrel. He realized that the situation had resulted in a loophole regarding the Oath and its application. The Oath specifically forbids magical harm to the ‘ruling’ monarch and requires obedience to the ‘rightful’ monarch. Most of the time, the distinction would be meaningless, but at the time James had been deposed. He was no longer the ruling monarch and thus was not shielded by the Oath; however he had not been properly replaced so he was still the rightful monarch, and his decrees held legal weight.”

“So, what happened?” Hermione breathed deeply, mentally preparing herself to be horrified once again.

“Brutus tracked James the Second down in Paris and spelled him to sign quite a collection of decrees, among them the letters patent granting a hereditary monopoly on floo powder.”

Hermione sighed, “What else did he manage to get?”

“Hmm?”

“You said he got a collection of decrees signed,” she clarified. “What else can we blame on that incident?”

“Funnily enough, not much,” unexpectedly, Harry grinned. “You see, clever he might have been, but Brutus liked to drink more than was healthy. After his big win, he went to the Leaky Cauldron and got roaring drunk, bragging about the success of his scheme to anyone who’d listen. A number of the more upright members of society ran to the wizengamot to raise the alarm. An emergency session was called, and by the end of the week a law had been passed to make such behavior explicitly illegal. Then aurors were dispatched to guard James the Second until his death, at which point the rightful and ruling monarch designations once more merged into the same person and the loophole in the Oath closed.”

“How does that change the situation?” Hermione asked, puzzled. “He had already done it, and you can’t make something retroactively illegal, not even the wizarding world is that corrupt.”

“Yeah, but that’s the best part,” he snickered. “You see, back at the Cauldron, while some of the people left with good intentions to fix the problem, a great deal more immediately popped over to France to try their own luck, and quite a few succeeded in time. Sadly for them though, they weren’t the most scholarly bunch nor the most well-coordinated, and most of them asked for monopolies over the exact same products Malfoy had bragged about.”

Hermione’s jaw dropped.

Harry chuckled. “None of the letters were dated, and without dates to determine order of precedence, the entire mess essentially invalidated itself. Floo powder was one of... I think seven or eight, products that slipped through the cracks, and it is the only one owned by the Malfoys.”

“That is so stupid!”

“Fortunate though,” Harry agreed brightly. “Just think how much worse it could have been!”

“I’d really rather not.”

“Fair enough,” he acknowledged. Then there was a faint brightening in the green glow behind the desk followed by the regular clack of a woman’s shoe on linoleum. “It looks like someone’s finally coming to meet us.”

5.9.4 Emotional reunion

Shaking her head in an attempt to put the tale of monumental corruption and stupidity out of her mind, Hermione turned to the newly-arrived woman.

“Welcome to the Chatwyn Memorial Isolation Ward,” the woman wearing the lime-green robes of a St. Mungo’s staff uniform greeted them with a warm smile. “How can I help you?”

“We’re here to visit my parents,” this time Hermione beat her companion to the punch. “Sharon and Tony Granger.”

A slight rustling of parchment followed from behind the counter, and then the woman nodded.

“You are their daughter, Hermione Granger, correct?”

The frizzy-haired girl nodded earnestly.

“And who is your friend?”

“Harry Potter.”

To the woman’s credit, the name rated little more than a raised eyebrow from as she looked down and another, more extensive rustling reached their ears. It continued for a long moment, during which the woman’s friendly smile morphed slowly into a concerned frown.

“Mr. Potter, I am afraid I do not see your name mentioned in the Granger case file,” she began, looking up to meet his eye. “May I ask when you first met Mister and Missus Granger?”

“He first met them on August 3^rd, 1991 in Diagon Alley,” Hermione rattled off before her friend could even open his mouth. “Why do you ask?”

“How familiar are you with the treatment protocols for memory restoration, Miss Granger?” the woman asked. “The mechanics of it, I mean.”

“I haven’t been able to find much on it,” the bushy-haired girl demurred. “Mostly, I just heard that I should wait until they remembered me before I visited, but that was framed as due to it being too distressing for me.”

“That is correct as far as it goes,” the green-clad woman allowed, “but there is another reason beyond your emotional distress to avoid contact at first, the same reason such procedures are conducted in here in the isolation ward in the first place.”

“What is it?”

“Well Miss Granger, memory restoration is the process of carefully and systematically going through the patient’s entire memory system and systematically checking for magical blocks and interference. The most reliable method, which is the system we use here, is to organize those memories by order of occurrence in time. Introducing a stimulus can trigger cascades of suppressed memories, which can be helpful to speed things along, but unless the roots of the cascade are already discovered, it can also cause important bits to be missed.”

“So…”

“So the Healers are confident that they have restored your parents’ memories up to the winter of 1986. As this is well after your birth, they are confident that a visit from you can only speed the process along at this point. Mr. Potter, however…”

“So you need me to stay out here?” Harry interjected, sounding a little glum. “I kinda wanted to be there for Hermione.”

“If you wouldn’t mind, Mr. Potter.”

Hermione turned a pleading look on her friend who withstood it for a moment before he sighed and looked away.

“Just…just make sure she’s okay, alright? She almost got kidnapped a few weeks back, and…”

“Of course, Mr. Potter,” the woman nodded understandingly. “We were informed of the situation as part of the Granger’s case. She will be safe in our care.”

Harry nodded and looked away.

“Thank you, Harry,” Hermione gave him a spontaneous hug. “I’ll be back before you know it!”

With that, she released him and turned to follow the woman who briefed her on what to expect as they walked. Hermione followed the explanation eagerly, but nothing really prepared her for the reality of the situation when they arrived.

“Hermione, is that you?”

The sound of her mother’s voice brought Hermione’s heart to her throat and all the turmoil she thought she had buried rushing back to the surface. The terror of that night, the horrifying tableau of her parents laid out on the floor across a scattering of broken glass and splintered wood, sickening suspicion that it was all her fault, and under it all the grotesque glint of light she had seen through the hole she had punched in the skull of the man she had… the man she had…

And then she was swept up in her mother’s arms, and all she could feel was relief.

“My little baby, you’ve gotten so tall!”

Hermione returned the hug with the desperate strength of a drowning woman, holding on as if that contact was the only thing that mattered in the world.

“Mum!”

Then the young girl felt her father’s hand resting — gentle, warm, and protective — on her shoulder, and the remaining tension melted out of her. She had come out the other end of hell, and now she had her parents back in her arms. It was almost as if none of it had actually happened, as if those horrible events were but a bad dream.

There was no reason for her to dwell on what had happened.

No reason at all.

5.9.5 Interlude

In the waiting room, a muted flash of green distracted Harry from the copy of the Prophet in his hands — a yellowed, brittle thing that had been sitting on the table waiting to be picked up from since 1958 according to the date on the front page — and caused him to look up. Shortly thereafter his human damsel appeared from around the corner, a broad if slightly damp smile on her face.

Standing quickly, he barely steadied before Hermione crashed into him in an exuberant hug.

“Worth it?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

She nodded firmly without letting go.

“Are we done here for now?” he asked after a short time simply enjoying the close contact.

The bushy-haired girl hummed an affirmative.

“Then let’s head out,” Harry proposed. “I’ve got a few minutes before the bank opens for the morning, but you wanted to go to Fortescue’s and meet up with Su Li, right?”

Hermione nodded, and they left.

5.9.6 Giving the right impression

Su Li sipped her morning tea at the cafe as she idly passed the time watched the European barbarians outside wearing very serious expressions as they scurried about on their European barbarian business. Just as idly she wondered what European barbarian business was occupying her usual breakfast companion. This was the second day in a row that Granger had not shown up to join her, and Su Li was beginning to wonder if something untoward had happened to the girl.

She was not really concerned about Granger, per se. The girl was spending her time at the headquarters of the local law enforcement offices: if she wasn’t safe there, then the situation was utterly hopeless. More Su Li was concerned that she might have missed something important… well, that and she was getting more than a little bored.

Barbarian she might be, but Granger did read a great deal and paid attention. As a result, she generally had a lot to contribute to a conversation. The tiny girl hadn’t realized how much she’d come to rely on her for companionship in the mornings recently. The copy of the Daily Prophet sitting on the table before her just didn’t compare, even beyond the way the written word usually fell short of a living conversational partner.

It was chock full of propaganda, but she had known it would be. It was a newspaper after all; why would anyone publish one of those if not to spread propaganda? The problem she had was that it was terribly written propaganda. The composition was atrocious: sprawling, logically inconsistent prose practically dripping with authorial bias even a child could spot which alternated between obsequious fawning and vicious verbal assaults depending on which name was mentioned in the sentence. They didn’t even bother to ensure their lies agreed with each other within the same article! The paper was so bad, reading it was almost worse than being bored. If one of the girls in the Publicity Office back home had released something so ill-conceived and poorly executed, she’d have been on her knees in the Golden Lily until such time as she was properly reminded that the Clan had standards, and her editor would have been right next to her!

Pathetic, slovenly westerners! Even their writing was bloated and ungainly.

A case in point was the front page article itself, an obvious puff piece designed to improve the publication’s image by bragging about the results of their latest subscriber sweepstakes. Such promotional events were designed to make it seem the company was ‘giving back to the community’, so Su Li imagined it had to have been a little embarrassing for the randomly chosen subscriber account to be one of the several hundred corporate subscriptions belonging Black Industries. ‘Giving back’ to the largest wizarding corporation in the world was not the sort of thing that induced warm and fuzzy feelings in the average man on the street. Obviously that was why they had buried the identity of the original winner on the fifth-page conclusion of the article. Instead the entirety of the front page segment and its accompanying picture had been devoted to telling the story of an unprecedented ‘second drawing’ which had not-at-all-deliberately been won by a poor family man desperately in need of money to arrange medical treatment for his sick daughter. The ruse was so obvious it made Su Li’s stomach turn.

And speaking of stomach-turning, she looked away as the wizarding picture in question rolled back around to the point where the family’s youngest son — Ron Weasley as she recalled from the report she had put together last year — pulled his pet rat out of his pocket to show it off to the camera. The boy kept a rat in his pocket! Who did that? Not for the first time, Su Li thanked her lucky stars that the slovenly boy’s genetics were as common as dirt. If he’d been the one chosen as her target… she shivered and pushed that line of thought away hard. Looking up and away from the picture and its disturbing associations, she caught sight of something much more welcome.

Granger had returned... and Potter was at her side.

Well, that explained where she’d been yesterday.

The petite girl stood quickly, setting aside her tea and going to the door where she was quickly intercepted by an enthusiastic hug from her erstwhile breakfast companion.

“Su! I’m so sorry I missed you yesterday, but… well Harry got back and things got a little hectic.”

“Think nothing of it,” Su Li waved off the apology before she noticed something and her eyes lit up. “Is that a torc, I see?”

She leaned in for a closer look, prompting the now red-faced Hermione vacillate momentarily between hiding her face in self-conscious embarrassment and preening at the attention before eventually settling on holding her chin up to keep the torc on display while blushing up a storm.

After a few moments’ examination, Su Li nodded, “It is very well done, my compliments.”

“Thanks!” Harry spoke up.

“You made it, Harry?” Su Li asked, turning to the boy. “I didn’t know you made jewelry.”

The last Potter nodded, “Just started with it earlier this year, and I had some spare time on the trip to learn some more and get that done.”

“Well, you did a good job,” the petite girl nodded firmly. “Speaking of your trip, how did it go?”

“The trip went well enough, aside from what happened to Hermione while I was gone,” he scowled. “That put a damper on things when I found out.”

“I can see how it would,” she nodded, stepping closer and reaching up to lay a comforting hand on his shoulder. “She’s fine now, though.”

He nodded.

“In any event, I’m glad to see you, Harry Potter,” she trailed the hand on his shoulder down his arm and then turned the movement into a brief but tight hug around his middle. “Welcome home.”

He wordlessly returned the hug.

As she broke the embrace, Su Li stepped back.

“Come in; you can join me at my table and we can catch up,” she gestured towards the table by the window.

Hermione immediately followed along, but Harry’s expression grew conflicted.

“Um, I don’t like the idea of taking up a table without ordering anything. Mr. Slackhammer always said that was really rude. Is it too early in the day for ice cream?”

“That sounds quite lovely, Harry,” Su Li agreed immediately despite it still being mid-morning by even the most generous of reckonings. “Just tell the clerk I would like my usual but in a cone rather than a dish. Hermione?”

The bushy-haired girl rattled off an order, and Harry made his way to the counter as the two girls settled down at the table, Hermione across the table from Su Li.

“So what have you been up to, Hermione,” the petite girl asked as she began shuffling some of her things around, moving a bag to clear one of the extra chairs for Harry, and incidentally moving the chair itself over quite close to hers. “Anything of note?”

Hermione took a deep breath.

“I went to see my parents this morning!”

Su Li didn’t have to fake her smile as she settled into the role of a sympathetic listener.

“That’s wonderful, Hermione! How were they?”

“Well, they were surprised to see how tall I was, which was kind of strange. Apparently, they’d only restored memories through…”

5.9.7 Spreading word

Even as he inspected the latest batch of clean dishes fresh from the enchanted dishwasher, Noah Green remained perceptive enough to raise an eyebrow at the unusual behavior from his morning regular; the girl was normally such a cool customer. Picking up a glass to clean a spot where the animated brushes hadn’t been quite thorough enough for his satisfaction, the ice-cream salesman’s raised eyebrow turned into a warm smile as his regular returned to her table trailing the bushy-haired girl who had been her frequent companion over the last week or so, and that smile broadened when she was trailed by yet another addition to the group, a younger boy this time.

It was always good to see that girl spend more time around people. She was far too cynical for her age; a bit more company would do her good, and judging by her body language, this new fellow was company she very much wanted to keep. That was perhaps not the best of circumstances given that torc she had just made a show of examining about the other girl’s neck; though given the way she seemed honestly happy for her friend and not at all disappointed, Noah figured he’d either misjudged something or his regular had an angle…

And given the way she smoothly redirected her probable crush while deftly rearranging things at the table, he figured it was probably the latter. He wasn’t quite sure what that angle was, nor was he going to speculate, but whatever it was, his regular had it in hand. She was a sharp one, that girl.

“What can I get for you?” Noah asked as said probable crush approached the counter.

“Su said she’d like her usual but in a cone,” the small boy began, “and Hermione wanted…”

He nodded as he listened to the child rattle off the other two orders. As he got to work filling them, the clerk carried the conversation.

“So, was that a torc I saw on the girl you came in with?”

The kid nodded.

“Yours?”

He nodded again, “Yeah, made it myself!”

“Really, that is quite impressive, Mister…” he finished on a probing note.

“Potter,” the boy finished for him.

“Potter?” the counter-attendant perked up. “As in Harry Potter? The Boy-Who-Lived?”

“That’s me,” the small boy nodded.

“Well, isn’t that something?” Noah remarked to himself. “So what prompted you to give out that torc, young man? You can’t be more than a first year…”

“Just finished second year actually,” he corrected. “I’ll be starting third in September.”

“Has it been that long already?” the clerk marveled as he finished the last of the desserts and handed them over.

The now named Harry Potter just shrugged. “I guess? How much do I owe you?”

Money exchanged hands, and the young boy walked off with his prize. Noah, on the other hand felt as if he had come away with his own. The Boy-Who-Lived had gone and gotten betrothed! That bit of gossip would be paying for his beer at the pub for the next week.

5.9.8 Frozen treats

As Harry returned with his sweet bounty, he was met by a brilliantly-smiling Su Li who helpfully relieved him of her portion, her slender fingers brushing against his in the process in a way that drew an inordinate amount of his attention. He shot their hands a puzzled look which then transferred to her face. Su Li’s only response was for her smile to turn decidedly mysterious as she turned away to sit down.

Answers not forthcoming, Harry once more set it aside in favor of delivering the rest of the food. Hermione accepted her dish with a quick mumble of thanks, barely breaking the stream of conversation as she happily chattered on about her visit to her parents and everything she had learned. That done, Harry sat down in the obvious chair next to Su and proceeded to demolish his ice-cream with his usual gusto, happy just to be near his friends and listen in on their conversation.

As he ate, though he became more and more aware of the way Su Li kept brushing against him, a hip here, and arm there. Harry had no idea why the incidental touches seemed to be so effective at drawing his attention, but he couldn’t deny that they were. Was it the irregular timing? Something else she was doing?

Curious, he paused in his devouring to look at his friend, attempting to discern anything unusual about her behavior. Moments later her cone tipped slightly to one side sending a thin drip of melted cream dribbling over her fingers. Quickly Su leaned down to lick her fingers clean. As she finished, she looked over at him, catching his eye with hers and deliberately licked her way up the side of the cone and ice cream all the way to the tip then swallowing. For some reason, that made him even more confused and even a little uncomfortable, but his questioning look was met once again with that mysterious smile and a turn away to continue her conversation with Hermione.

Huh.

Su Li obviously knew something about what was going on there, but she just as obviously wasn’t going to volunteer anything. In fact, she seemed to be enjoying not telling him. For a moment, the young dragon considered just asking outright, only to immediately think better of it. He’d already charged headlong into something once recently. He was not going to repeat that mistake so soon. Instead, he settled in to listen.

“…you’re betrothed,” Su Li was saying. “Are you ready for the responsibilities that come with that?”

“Responsibilities?” his damsel asked, sounding puzzled.

“Well, of course there are responsibilities! You’re in line to be the wife of a very public figure, you know?” the petite girl huffed. “Did you expect it to be all fun and games from here on?”

“Well…”

Su Li sighed. “You won’t have to do much just yet, mostly just be prepared to handle the press and other people with an idea to pitch coming to you as a way to get Harry’s ear. Later on, you’ll be expected to handle Harry’s social calendar, picking which events he should attend to get the most political benefit, that sort of thing.”

Hermione gasped, sounding more than a little horrified.

“Oh, don’t worry,” their mutual friend rushed to reassure her. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out. I just wanted to warn you about what to expect. Being the wife of such a powerful man can be quite the burden for one woman to bear all on her own, and with all the high society stuff on top of that? Well, I thought you could use a little forewarning.”

“How? I mean, how do I even start?”

“Well, first you come to me,” Su Li assured her, reaching out to grasp her wrist reassuringly. “I’ll be happy to help you.”

“Thank you!”

“What are friends for?” the small girl smiled. “Just remember, a burden shared is a burden halved. You remember that too, Harry!” She turned to face him, “If you ever think Hermione’s getting overwhelmed, you come to me, and I’ll be sure to pick up the slack. No matter what!”

The young dragon nodded again, smiling uncertainly at the offer. On the surface, it was a friendly gesture, but he could tell there was a subtext under there too, no less friendly, but something mysterious on the same order as those smiles earlier. Still, he had already decided not to ask about those for now, so instead, he finished off the last of his ice-cream and looked up for something to distract him.

He found a clock.

“I appreciate the offer Su,” he accepted graciously as he stood up. “I’ve got a couple errands I need to run though…”

“Oh, let me see you off!”

Su Li hurriedly stood, finishing off her ice-cream cone in two large slurps, taking the entire mass of cream into her mouth to suck off first the outer half, and then after hurriedly gulping that down repeating the action to get the rest. Setting the cone down on a napkin she stepped over to give him a firm hug before she groaned in pain and buried her face in his chest while clinging to him tightly.

“What’s wrong?” Harry asked, his arms coming up automatically to cradle her moaning form.

“Head…” was all she got out before it dissolved into a hiss of pain.

“Huh?”

“She ate her ice-cream too fast, Harry,” Hermione came to the rescue.

“What does that have to do with this?” he gestured to the girl burrowing into his chest.

“If you eat cold things to quickly, that can happen,” his human damsel explained patiently.

“Really?” Harry cocked his head. “Huh.”

“Does that not happen to you?” Hermione asked curiously.

“Not that I’ve ever noticed,” he responded absently. “I guess…”

He was interrupted by Su Li finally stirring.

“Sorry about that,” she apologized. “I just wanted to make sure I said goodbye.”

“No problem,” the young dragon nodded. “I’m just glad you’re okay. Hermione, will you be okay to stay here with Su?”

“I’ll be fine,” the bushy-haired girl waved him off.

“Okay, if anything happens, head for Gringott’s. I’ll be going there first, and then I’ll be in the Alley for a quick errand.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she shooed him off. “So, what possessed you to…”

As his damsel resumed her conversation with their mutual friend, Harry set off. He really did have some errands to run, and he had an appointment to get to later. Hopefully the bank wouldn’t take too long. He’d tried to get an appointment, but… well, it hadn’t really worked out.

5.9.9 Magical Menagerie

As it turned out, Harry’s concerns about not having an appointment had been unnecessary. Ministry fines, in the event that he was assessed any, could be paid through a standard bank note, and the teller on duty had been able to provide him with a book of such quite promptly. Harry was in and out of the bank in just a few short minutes with a small leather folio tucked neatly into his coat pocket, its Gringotts’ green dye still fresh enough for him to smell.

That was quite fortunate, as it left him time to handle his other errand. His damsel had recently been through quite the troubling ordeal, and Harry had done some reading on ways he might help her recover. Most of the suggested methods were either already being handled or were beyond his ability to influence, but there was one he thought he could address.

Passing under a red sign marked with a carving of a rat riding on the back of a cat, he ducked into a storefront he had never had the occasion to visit before: Magical Menagerie. The primary pet shop in Diagon Alley was a cramped place, a single poorly-lit room stacked floor to ceiling with pet carriers and display cages along every wall. There were all sorts of animals available, ranging from the usual cats and dogs to bats and snails and a dizzying variety of toads. There was even a sizable fire-crab on display by the window alongside a cage holding what appeared to be a large silk stovepipe hat. It truly was a menagerie, though there was one common through-line for them all: the moment his foot had hit the sanded plank floor, every last one of them had frozen in place in sheer, unadulterated terror.

Harry heaved a much put-upon sigh.

“WELCOME TO MAG…” the clerk began in a voice pitched to carry over the usual racket from the animals only to catch himself and continue in a more normal tone. “That is, welcome to Magical Menagerie, Europe’s premier source for magical pets and magical pet accessories. How can we help you today?”

“Hi, I’m looking for a gift for a friend,” Harry began. “She’s had a rough time of it recently, and I’ve heard pets can help with that sometimes.”

“They can indeed, my friend,” the clerk agreed heartily gesturing to one corner of the shop. “Perhaps a kitten for the young lady?”

Harry looked over in that direction, only for the entire collection of cute little balls of fuzz to suddenly keel over at the attention.

“What the…?” the clerk stood and hurried over to the display only to sigh in relief when he saw they were still breathing. “Unconscious, good. What could have…?”

“Ah, sorry about that,” Harry apologized. “That was probably my fault. Animals tend to do that around me, I’ve noticed. I scare them.”

“Right, right. Not the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen,” the clerk nodded. “One of my coworkers used to make the parrots change color every time she hiccuped, something about an interaction between a bout of accidental magic from her son and her mascara, as I recall. I’m sure you’ll figure it out eventually. So, is that why everything went so quiet when you came in?”

The dragon-in-human-form nodded. “Maybe I will figure out how to fix it some day, but for now I’ve just got to put up with it. Anyway, my friend spends a lot of time with me, so as much as I’m sure she would have loved a kitten, I think she’s going to need something a little hardier.”

“Hardier, huh…?” the clerk nodded thoughtfully as he peered around the store, noting that even the fire-crab in the window, a creature that usually took no guff from anything, had retracted its snapping-turtle-like head and folded all eight of its segmented limbs in an effort to pretend to be just another rock. In fact, the only animal which seemed to be even mildly functional was…

“You know, I hesitate to suggest him, especially for a girl who’s had a rough time,” the clerk said slowly, “but there’s always…”

5.9.10 Cut-rate Greebo

It was good to be the king. The nameless cat, a grizzled orange half-kneazle, thought as he surveyed the shop from atop a stack of cages. He had struggled long and hard to establish his dominion, but he had prevailed. Now even the fiery turtle thing accepted his rule… or at least it no longer bothered to fight him.

The cat paused in its reflections to hiss at the servant-creature as it walked by, causing the lanky, awkward thing to grumble and move along. Feline eyes narrowed as they stared after it for a time before he huffed and turned away, satisfied that the provider of food had been cowed sufficiently to guarantee another meal would be forthcoming.

In any event, he ruled this place and he would not let it go, no matter what came.

No sooner had he finished that thought than he felt it approaching, and like every one of his subjects, he froze.

DANGER.

The cat was made of sterner stuff than his subjects, and instead of staying frozen he fled for higher ground, abandoning the middling height stack for one that nearly reached the ceiling. Once there, he crouched and waited. Soon enough, the door creaked open and revealed the dangerous thing.

It disguised itself well, pretending to be a young servant-creature, but the cat could see the truth. It was not a servant-creature at all, but something infinitely more dangerous and far more hungry. It was something the cat knew he could not fight. Defending his territory was all well and good, but not at the expense of his own life.

Why would he allow all those other creatures to exist if not to serve as a sacrificial shield to protect him, after all? What else was he supposed to do with them? Well, he thought as the dangerous thing began speaking with his servant-creature, he supposed if worse came to worst he might eat some of them soon. Apparently, his servant was too stupid to realize that the dangerous thing was not actually one of its own idiotic species, and it was carrying on as if nothing was amiss. He might soon be down one servant-creature, and with it his ready supply of food.

The cat gave a feline sigh. It would be a pain to train a replacement, but needs must. The cat had just about resigned himself to the necessity when something terrible happened. The tone of the servant-creature sounds changed, and suddenly his servant pointed out his own hiding place atop the stack of cages.

Treachery!

Then the dangerous thing caught sight of him and began to walk in his direction, and the cat knew it was all over. He knew there would be no running from that thing, not without a better head start, and so he prepared himself to meet his end with appropriate feline dignity: yowling, clawing, and biting in the desperate hope that he might either get away or failing that at least hit something vital and take his killer with him.

He was quite surprised when the thing stopped a few body-lengths away, and he was thoroughly shocked when it spoke.

5.9.11 Negotiations from a position of strength

“Why didn’t you run?” Harry asked conversationally.

He was answered by a spitting hiss.

“Wouldn’t work, huh?” he nodded. “Yeah, I can see that.”

A resigned chuff.

“What do you mean, ‘get it over with’?”

The cat gurgled.

“I’m not going to eat you,” Harry said flatly.

An interrogative meow.

“I’ve got a friend who’s been hard done by recently, and I read that keeping a cat or other pet can help people recover from that. How would you like the job?”

He was answered by an amused purr.

“Yeah, I gather you’re not the best for that sort of thing, but she lives with me, and the ‘cuddly’ ones look like they’d keel over if they were around me that much. You at least seem able to function.”

Another meow.

“No eating. You’re way too scrawny to be worth the effort.”

Hiss.

“What do you mean ‘how can I trust you on that’?”

The cat cocked its head.

“Lying? What do you mean… oh! That’s just so I can fit in the room. You’ll see when we get home, assuming you’re in?”

A furry head slowly bobbed.

“Right, welcome aboard! Come on and we’ll get things settled at the desk. Then I’ll take you to meet Hermione. You’ll like her!”

The still nameless cat jumped down to his shoulder and they proceeded to the counter where money was exchanged. As they finished, it made another mrrr.

Harry looked at him side-long, brow twitching with irritation. “Seriously? Don’t push your luck, fuzzball, or I might decide to do something unpleasant to you.”

An interrogative sound.

“Yeah, I promised not to eat you. That leaves a truly staggering number of possibilities still available.”

An apologetic mew.

“Too right, ‘you’ll be good’.”

Behind them, the terrified menagerie stared in a sort of primitive, animalistic awe as what had to be the god of cats left their presence riding on the shoulder of a dragon.

5.9.12 Christening

“Oh, he’s beautiful!” Hermione gushed as Harry returned to Fortescue’s and presented her new cat, immediately hugging the ugly orange thing to her chest as it gave a little coughing chuckle. “What’s his name?”

Harry shot the cat an incredulous look and then rolled his eyes before turning back to Hermione.

“Don’t know that he has one yet,” Harry shrugged. “What do you want to call him?”

Hermione hummed in lieu of an answer as she fell to playing with her new pet, pleased to the point of being almost oblivious to the world around her. Seeing Hermione occupied, Harry nodded and turned to Su Li.

“Thanks for looking out for Hermione while I was away,” he murmured quietly, unwilling to interrupt the goings on on his other side beside him. “I really appreciate it.”

“I am always happy to help you, Harry, no matter what,” the tiny girl reached over to lay a casual hand on his arm, smiling warmly. “And spending time with Hermione is a joy in any case. I mean, just look at how cute she is!”

Gesturing with her free hand to direct his attention to the other girl, Su Li took the opportunity to rise from her chair and sidle over next to Harry, sliding the hand already touching him delicately down the inside of his wrist to twine her fingers with his.

Oblivious to the goings on next to her, Hermione had set her new cat down on the table to examine him more closely and was now playing with his paws. The cat seemed to be tolerating the contact, though with frequent glances back at Harry.

Harry had to agree, it was a very cute scene. Though from his perspective, it was the constant half-hearted complaints from the cat that sold it.

The tiny girl stretched up on her toes in order to rest her chin on Harry’s shoulder, leaning her entire body against his arm to maintain her balance. As she watched the other girl from this new perspective, she hummed happily into his ear.

Harry shot her a curious glance at the sudden increase in contact, but when she did nothing further he shrugged and went along with it. She was his friend so there probably wasn’t anything wrong with it. It was quite a pleasant feeling, so he filed it away under the heading ‘hugs are great’ and carried on.

“You know, Hermione,” Su Li commented thoughtfully from her new perch, “you have quite the impressive kitty there. Have you come up with a name?”

“He does look regal doesn’t…” the bushy-haired girl trailed off as she looked up and saw Su Li all but hanging off her betrothed’s arm.

That didn’t seem quite right, but Hermione didn’t quite know how to address it. That sort of gesture seemed like the sort of thing another girl might do to be mean, but the complete lack of any malice or smugness on Su Li’s face threw her for a loop.

“Regal?” Harry asked, disbelief positively dripping from his voice, and with that Hermione’s train of thought was utterly derailed.

“He looks very distinguished, Harry!”

“He’s a cat,” he shrugged. “He’s not distinguished; he’s fluffy.”

“How about Fluffy? I mean, it’s appropriate; he really is fluffy,” Su Li suggested innocently. “And that sort of outward bow to his legs makes him look even wider and fluffier than he really is.”

“Bow?” Harry squinted at the cat. “Huh, I hadn’t noticed, but he is kind of bowlegged, isn’t he? Maybe you could call him Waddles?”

‘Waddles’ yowled a protest, and Harry smirked.

“Stop suggesting silly names, huh?” he addressed the cat. “After that comment earlier? In front of the ladies, no less? I told you not to push your luck, and you went and did it. Well, welcome to the first tier of that ‘something unpleasant’ I mentioned, Waddles.”

A hiss in response.

“Seriously, you’ve got a mouth like a drunken…” he smiled and turned to Hermione. “Hey, how about Boozer?”

Hermione shot him an unamused look as Su Li giggled in his ear.

“He is not going to be Waddles, and he is definitely not going to be Boozer!”

“What about Fluffy?” Su Li offered again.

“No, too common,” the bushy-haired girl shook her head. “He deserves better.”

“He’s pretty big for a cat, how about...”

“Crookshanks,” Hermione interrupted Harry firmly before he could unveil whatever new silliness he had come up with. “He will be named Crookshanks.”

“Appropriate,” Harry nodded. “Sounds like a pirate.”

“I was thinking of historical monarchs, actually…”

“Longshanks, you mean?” Harry arched a brow. “I suspect a goodly portion of Scotland might prefer my take.”

Hermione huffed and turned away, cuddling Crookshanks to her chest.

“Anyway, I’ve got an appointment to keep, so I need to get going,” Harry stood. “Hermione do you want to stay here with Su, or…”

“I think I want to head back home, if you don’t mind. It was wonderful seeing you, Su Li, but I’d like to get Crookshanks here to his new home before Harry’s insensitivity,” she shot the boy in question a dirty look, “chases him away.”

“You’re always welcome, both of you!” Su Li said with a warm smile. “Feel free to bring Harry along next time,” she gave Harry’s captured arm a final squeeze to emphasize the point before releasing him and stepping back.

“We can make a regular date of it!”

5.9.13 Restitution

As he stepped through the floo into the Ministry receiving area, Harry didn’t quite know what to think.

This visit was very different from his last. For one, Hermione was already safely back at the Lair: he had escorted her home beforehand, so that wasn’t hanging over his head this time. For another, he was arriving at the Ministry via the floo network rather than that ridiculous phone booth elevator thing he’d used the last two times.

According to what Mr. Dumbledore had told him, despite technically being the Ministry’s “Main Entrance” no one really used that thing now and hadn’t since the invention of the floo network. It was kept around and its concealment updated as times changed, but all official business went through the floo receiving area. That knowledge was perhaps the most valuable thing he had learned during his last debacle of a visit.

The most telling difference however, was the fact that his mind wasn’t buried under a seething mountain of rage. As it turned out, that sort of thing tended to color one’s perceptions. Who knew?

As it was early afternoon, the Night Desk was currently unattended, which meant he had to take the long way around the same receiving area he had entered before, this time through the public Ministry tunnels. With bright lighting and repaired furnishings, the room was almost unrecognizable.

A quick word with the receptionist — much more competent than the poor man he’d shanghaied into the job before, though that was understandable in hindsight — saw him shuffled off immediately to a small room containing a small conference table and a handful of chairs with a large mirror dominating one wall. He sat down in the chair across the table from the mirror and was joined shortly by a pair of familiar faces — Amelia Bones and that same poor sod he’d just been thinking about — who entered silently and sat down without a word.

Come to think of it, he probably owed that guy an apology even more than he did Amelia, didn’t he?

Seeing no reason to waste time. Harry nodded and without further ado, abruptly stood.

Chairs rattled as the two people across from him tensed at the sudden movement. Strangely there seemed to be a bit of an echo as he heard what seemed to be a few other chairs rattling in similar way if a bit more muffled a fraction of a second later.

Then Harry gave a shallow bow in Bones’ direction.

“I apologize for my behavior yesterday,” he said sincerely. “It was shamefully inappropriate and completely unwarranted. You saved my friend when I wasn’t there to do so and then kept her safe. I should have thanked you for that, not lost my temper.”

Then he turned to the other one and gave another shallow bow.

“You also were nothing but helpful to me, and in my anger I repaid you beyond poorly. Again, I apologize for my atrocious behavior.”

5.9.14 Reconciliation

“I apologize for my behavior yesterday,” the Potter heir said with the earnest air of a remorseful schoolboy. “It was shamefully inappropriate and completely unwarranted.”

Amelia’s jaw dropped.

What was this… this genuinely remorseful child? Where was the angry god descended to earth that she had seen yesterday? The difference was like night and day, it was as if this Harry Potter was an entirely different creature from the last, and that threw her off kilter. She had prepared for this meeting with a certain tone in mind, and this was not it. Luckily, the new paradigm was also one with which she was familiar, so it didn’t take long to adapt. She had spent the last dozen years raising a boisterous little girl in the form of her orphaned niece, after all, and Susan had given her plenty of opportunities to practice.

“You should be, Mr. Potter,” she said in her best ‘stern parent’ voice. “Do you know just how close you came to stepping over the line into something I wouldn’t be able to let slide? If you had injured anyone, it would have been almost impossible to keep this out of court.”

The boy hung his head.

“Not going to offer an excuse?”

He shook his head. “There were some extenuating circumstances, but I wouldn’t call them an excuse.”

Amelia pulled off her monocle, polished it, and gave him a long, hard look.

“I can respect that, Mr. Potter,” she nodded. “Are these extenuating circumstances likely to happen again?”

Harry’s face screwed up in thought.

“I can’t rightly say,” he admitted. “It’s the first time that sort of thing ever happened, and I’m not certain what caused it. I can say that I’ll try to avoid whatever it was in the future, and I think I ought to be able to avoid causing another incident like the last one even if I can’t manage that.”

Bones held his eyes for a long moment before slowly nodding.

“That’s another good answer,” she approved. “Don’t know that I would have trusted you if you’d outright denied the possibility, but that response I think I can trust.”

Harry nodded solemnly.

“Well then, since there were no injuries, and you’ve apologized for your mistakes, I suppose we can consider that business concluded,” she concluded. “Mr. Dumbledore has already seen fit to set the Department to rights after your… episode, so the property damage has already been handled.”

He perked up. “So does that mean we’re done?”

“Not quite,” Amelia shook her head and gestured to her still silent companion. “In light of our discussion at the time, I’ve decided to arrange a sit-down between you and the investigator currently working on Miss Granger’s case to see if picking your brain will grant him any new insights. I believe you have already met him.”

“Um…” Harry reached up to scrub uncomfortably at the back of his head in a remarkably boyish gesture. “I’m afraid I never actually caught your name at the time.”

“Junior Analyst Clyde Evans,” the junior analyst stood and introduced himself, holding out a hand which Harry immediately shook. “Nice to meet you when you’re not splintering the furniture and ripping up floors.”

Amelia gave an approving nod, at which Evans stood even straighter.

“Nice to meet you as well,” Harry replied. “And I apologize about that, I… well, I apologize.”

“Right,” Amelia stood up, drawing both males’ attention. “Evans, I’ll let you get started. Potter, while you are doing that, I have some other business to attend to. I’ll be back when you finish.”

Then Amelia stepped out and the metal door shut behind her.

5.9.15 Deliberations

A few seconds later, another metal door opened and Amelia stepped into a dark room where Emma Trussel and Jake Dubrovnik, her chiefs of Interrogations and Investigations respectively, already waited. One wall was dominated by a window which looked out onto a familiar room where the last Potter sat in animated conversation with one of her most promising young analysts.

“I was not expecting that, not after what I saw that morning,” she began without preamble.

“Like an entirely different person compared to what I saw in your memory, Chief,” Dubrovnik marveled. “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”

“Makes one wonder about those extenuating circumstances,” Trussel commented. “Must have been a doozy.”

They watched the lively discussion on the other side of the glass for a few moments before Amelia asked the question that was on all their minds.

“Can he be trusted?”

“His intentions, certainly,” the chief interrogator said with the certainty of long experience. “There is nothing of deception in him.”

“And his discretion?”

“That’s less clear,” she opined. “As he is now, probably, but there is the Incident to consider as well. That was anything but discreet.”

“Hmm…”

“There is also history to consider,” Jake reminded them. “Until the deep read on Granger, we had no idea of his nature, and he’d been like that for years, going out in public and attending school. That’s gotta count in his favor.”

Amelia nodded but said nothing. Settling in to watch intently, getting the measure of the last Potter. She would watch, she would consider, and only then would she judge.

5.9.16 Under the Table

“I can’t think of anything else sorry,” Harry said apologetically as the conversation with Clyde wrapped up without a decisive conclusion. “Does any of that help?”

Clyde sighed, “I can’t think of anything at the moment, but I’ll keep at it. Maybe something will occur to me later. For now, I think we’re done.”

With that, he shut his notebook and reassembled the case file. That done, he stood and walked over to knock briefly on the door. A dozen seconds later, the door opened.

“Any progress?” Bones asked immediately.

Evans gave a glum shake of his head.

She sighed, and then gestured to the folder in his arms.

“Temporary copy?”

The man nodded

“Give it here, then,” she ordered. “I’ll take responsibility for document security.”

The heavy folder exchanged hands and Clyde left.

With that Amelia sat down across from Harry, setting the folder on the table between them.

“I understand the conversation did not go well.”

“I just couldn’t think of anything new to tell him,” Harry slumped. “It’s really impressive that he’d already figured out that much. Sorry again.”

“Water under the bridge, Mr. Potter. Water under the bridge. I assume you are still planning to pursue the matter on your own? That is your right and duty, after all.”

“Yeah, though I’m not sure what to do, exactly,” he said uncertainly. “Still going to plug away at it, though.”

They sat in silence for a long moment before Amelia seemed to come to a decision.

“Say, Mr. Potter, I find myself thirsty for a coffee; would you care for one?”

“Sure?” shot her a puzzled look at the seeming non-sequitur.

“I suppose I will go take care of that then,” she nodded. “Just to be clear before I go: Mr. Potter, this stack of papers here, she indicated the folder on the table, is a copy of all the evidence that we have gathered so far on Miss Granger’s case as well as our investigators’ insights into said case. I am not permitted to allow you to look through it, and I wanted to make sure you were aware of that.”

“Right…”

“Now, this copy is a temporary one, destined to be destroyed shortly anyway,” Amelia continued, heedless of his confusion, “but the incinerator is off in another part of the building, and I don’t see any reason to take the time to run it over there before getting our coffee. If you’ve no objection, I’m tempted to just leave it here until I return.”

“That does, however leave you in the same room as the controlled documents,” she looked at him closely. “You seem trustworthy enough, Mr. Potter, so I don’t think that will be a problem, but I would be obliged to investigate should I encounter any reason to suspect you had read or copied that information. Can I trust that I will not find any?”

Green eyes narrowed, then he nodded slowly.

“Good, I’m glad I can trust you not to put me in that position. I’ll be back with our coffee in… oh, I guarantee it won’t be less than seven minutes. I know it’s slow, but between you, me, and my colleagues over there, she nodded to the mirror, we’ll probably go through a whole pot, anyway. Best just to brew a new one.”

5.9.17 Opportunities

As the door closed behind her, Harry’s breath caught as he put the hints together into a cohesive whole. It seemed Director Bones really was trying to help, even if she did have to go about it in circuitous ways. Now that he’d figured it out though, he wasn’t about to waste the opportunity she had so thoughtfully provided, nor was he going to make her regret providing it by getting caught.

Of course, that meant he’d have to be clever about it.

He shot a look at the case folder, estimating its size. Seven minutes would not be long enough to read through the evidence, even if he could find a way to keep the observers she had been so careful to point out from seeing, not that that would be easy anyway. He hadn’t studied much in the way of illusions yet, so the only options he really had involved blocking their view… a color charm on the glass or something similar. Much too obvious, they’d be forced to investigate.

What else could he use?

Amelia had mentioned that the materials would be destroyed immediately after the meeting which immediately made him think of the duplication curse. The curse left traces on the original, but unlike the original document which would presumably be audited from time to time, those traces would be destroyed shortly along with the temporary copy, long before any potential infosec audit was likely to take place.

Still, there was the issue of the observers. A suddenly appearing copy of the folder would be too suspicious for them to ignore, even if he did it wandlessly. He had to block their view in some way that did not immediately raise suspicions.

How could he…

As he shifted uncomfortably, he jacket shifted slightly and he caught a whiff of an out-of-place scent. Immediately, his eyes widened, and he turned away from the mirror to hide the smile that stretched across his face.

That would work.

5.9.18 Observations

“What’s he going to try, do you think?” Trussel asked.

“Not sure… he couldn’t have missed the hint, could he?”

“No, not possible,” the interrogator shook her head. “He’s too smart for that. It’s just a question of whether he can figure out how to take advantage in time.”

They watched.

“There, did you see the change in posture?” she spoke. “He figured something out.”

Then the Potter heir did exactly what they did not expect: he stood and reached directly for the folder, in plain sight of the mirror.

The two lurched to their feet, preparing to rush the room as their oaths demanded.

“What the bloody hell is that moron doing?” Dubrovnik hissed, ready to bolt for the door.

Then both stopped as the boy’s hand stopped short, and he turned to snarl at the window, whether because he had heard them, or because he had remembered their presence they would never know. Still he pulled back from the evidence he obviously sorely wanted and began pacing the room, his eyes always returning to the forbidden treasure before him.

Eventually, he stopped, and letting out a growl of frustration, he began pulling at his coat, taking it off.

Behind the mirror, his two watchers frowned in puzzlement until the coat was fully removed, and with a flourish, laid over the evidence itself and a good portion of the table besides, hiding the folder entirely from view. Fingers twitching a few more times in the direction of the coveted prize, he finally forced himself to turn away entirely, staring at the opposite corner of the room, away from both mirror and now-covered evidence folder.

“Hiding the temptation, I suppose?” Trussel mused. “Do you think he gave up?”

Neither of them saw the ghost of a satisfied smile that graced the young dragon’s face as he waited with his back to the mirror.

5.9.19 Departures

“Mr. Potter, coffee’s here,” Amelia announced herself, pushing the door open with her shoulder as she carried two steaming cups. Offering him one, she frowned. “May I ask why you decided to decorate the table with your jacket?”

Taking the cup from her, he quickly knocked back the entire near-boiling beverage in one long pull before answering, “I almost gave in and looked, but I managed to stop myself. After that, I figured covering it up would make it easier to ignore, and I was right.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” Amelia nodded. “I’d have hated to arrest you.”

“And I’d have hated to be arrested,” he agreed. “Thanks for the coffee, by the way.”

Amelia nodded.

“Is there anything else we needed to handle?” he asked. “If not, I think I need to get going.”

“No, I think that just about covers everything.”

“Right.”

With that, Harry stood and set about collecting his jacket. Picking it up revealed a small green leather folio sitting atop the now uncovered case file.

“Banking recently?” Amelia asked, recognizing the distinctive look of a Gringotts draft book.

“Sorry about that, must have fallen out of my pocket,” Harry apologized, reaching for the folio only for it to be handed to him. “Thanks.”

With that, he put on his jacket, said his goodbyes, and ducked out into the hallway. On his way to the exit, he took the time to slide the folio into his jacket pocket with a faint scrape of leather on leather as it slotted in next to the identical one already there.

Back in the repurposed interrogation room he had left, Amelia and her two subordinates were discussing what had happened.

“Did he miss it?” the Director asked.

“No, he was too happy when he left,” Trussel opined. “He had to have done it, but for the life of me I don’t know how.”

“Dubrovnik, did you see anything?”

“Nothing here, Chief,” Jake shook his head. “I’ll do what I can to check on that banking story, but even if he wasn’t there today, that’s not enough for reasonable suspicion. I think that solves the question of discretion.”