4.11 Setting off
4.11.1 The start to a very long day
The village of Hogsmeade slept quietly, strung out along the east end of Loch Morar's southern shore and nestled snugly into the narrow strip of flattish land between the shores of the loch and the hills to the south. The early summer dawn was still some time off, and the streets were correspondingly rather quiet, save for one lone figure wearing the overalls of a Hogs Haulage fireman.
As Mac made his way through the darkened streets of Hogsmeade's western end, on the familiar route to the railway yards, the only sound to be heard was the scraping of the hard leather soles of his boots on the damp cobblestones, and even that seemed muted by the heavy fogbank which had rolled in off the loch.
Soon enough, he arrived at the yard, checked the board in the currently deserted dispatch office to confirm the locomotive assignment for the day, and made his way to the kennels. There the drake-dogs greeted him with their usual happy gyrations and enthusiastic gronking; the sociable critters were quite delighted to see him despite the ungodly hour. A few incidental fireballs later, Mac left the kennels, a freshly fed and watered Smaugey happily trotting at his heels.
As he crunched his way across the damp gravel towards the maintenance shed, Mac passed the looming hulks of the various rolling stock littering the network of tracks crossing the yard. The sun had finally risen high enough for the fog bank about them to begin to brighten, turning the world from lead to silver and lending an ethereal quality to the scene.
Mac felt the enchanting atmosphere rather fitting; there was a certain kind of magic in what he was about, after all.
The quiescent hulk of No. 45401 gradually swam into existence out of the silvery fog, and Mac smiled, the sight like the sudden arrival of an old friend. And an old friend she was, from a certain point of view. No. 45401 was the first of the 'new' batch of locomotives the company had acquired during the sixties, and he'd been working with her for over three decades now... nearly as long as he'd worked with Jim.
As he drew close, Mac began his usual pre-lighting up inspection, not that he expected to find anything amiss with No. 45401 fresh out of the maintenance shed. She'd been due for general repair, and for the miracle workers on the Hogs Haulage maintenance staff, that meant the old girl had left the their hands practically like new... clean, fit, and all-around better than the day she'd rolled out of the Scotswood Works over a half-century earlier.
Unfortunately, 'like new' also implied 'at room temperature'.
No. 45401 looked dead as she sat there on the tracks just inside the shed on 3 Road... dark and cold, silent and still. A cold steam locomotive was a dead, lifeless thing, and at over a hundred tons of cold water and steel, that condition took a lot of work to change, but change it would. It was a work of coal and steel, the water in the boiler and the fresh Highland air, scorched by fire from ol' Smaugey and given purpose by Mac himself.
Earth and water, air and fire, all four elements brought together and made to dance in concert. With them the fireman would breathe life into the Black Five, turning her from the lifeless hulk sitting before him into a living, breathing thing... hissing, spitting, groaning, moving.
Death into life; that was a magic far greater than anything they got up to over at Hogwarts!
However, like all great things, this one demanded sacrifice, in this case an offering of time. Magical as it might be, a cold start on a steam locomotive was a long, slow process, one which would have begun yesterday with a warming fire. Large boilers like the one at the heart of No. 45401 needed to heat up slowly lest the stress of differential heating burst a seam or crack a boiler wall. Once the boiler was hot enough to produce first steam, it could be circulated to equalize the temperature throughout, and things could proceed faster, but until then it was all too easy to ruin a boiler with a bit of impatience.
Initial inspection complete, Mac climbed the steps into the familiar confines of her cab. The rest, things like ensuring the bearings were properly oiled, he would handle while the locomotive was heating up. He opened the fire door, and the gentle warmth he felt radiating from the inky depths of the cavernous firebox told him that the maintenance staff had done their job right. Without that preheat, she'd never be ready in time for their late-morning departure, although even with it, the fire would still need to burn for a long time. It was best to get her going right away.
It was time to light her up.
Grabbing the well-worn handle of his rake, Mac knocked the remains of the warming fire through the grate and then threw a few shovel-loads of lump coal into the pitch-black void of the firebox, the soft rocks making a racket as they clattered on the steel grate in the predawn calm. At Mac's side, the scaly form of Smaugey practically vibrated with anticipation at the sound.
Lump coal took quite a bit of coaxing to set alight, and a non-magical crew would have needed to start with something easier to burn until the fire got hot enough to light it off. Fortunately for Mac, the drake dog at his side had no such difficulties. Smaugey's fire was more than hot enough to touch off a cold load of coal; the real trick was getting the excitable critters to stop before they melted the firebox.
"Alright there, Smaugey," Mac spoke his first words of the morning. "Give 'er a light."
With a happy 'gronk', the ever-eager drake-dog complied, letting loose with a gout of brilliant blue-white flame.
The coal was set ablaze in short order, and Mac gave his animal companion a well-received congratulatory pat on the head before shoveling in some fresh coal and working the rake to even out the fire. It was time to settle in for the long, slow process of bringing No. 45401 up to temperature.
The sun would be well above the eastern mountains and Jim would be showing up with breakfast by the time her steam gauge lifted off the pin.
4.11.2 Nostalgia
She was going to miss this, Abigail mused as she walked along the stone halls of Hogwarts.
The fresh Hogwarts alumnus was on her way to the Great Hall to break her fast for the last time as a Hogwarts student. Someday she might return — as a guest, as a parent... maybe even as a professor, she supposed — but however it happened, it would never again be quite the same.
She trailed a finger lazily along the cool stone of the castle wall as she went, taking the time to look about at the familiar environs with fresh eyes. It was amazing how the realization that she would soon be leaving for the last time seemed to change her surroundings. Things she had taken for granted suddenly became significant in a way they had never been before.
It was bittersweet.
Abigail had accomplished much in her time within these walls. She had done her time, learned what she needed to learn, and now she was eager to set aside those academic pursuits in favor of other, hopefully greater things. It was time to move on, and she was ready. However, among those accomplishments were the friendships she had built, and the greatest and closest of those would remain within these walls for quite some time yet.
Partings were difficult.
Still, she would keep in touch, and eventually her friends would graduate and rejoin her outside the ivory tower. In the meantime, there was great work to be done. She needed to get her career off the ground, and that career would start bright and early tomorrow morning in Hogsmeade, where she was due to be briefed on her new duties with Hogs Haulage. As far as first jobs went, it sounded like a pretty neat one; Harry had really come through for her there.
Her expression firmed at the thought, as did her step.
She had new responsibilities to handle, big and urgent ones, and there was no place in that for maudlin sentimentality. Abigail would approach this new part of her life just as she had everything else before and deal with it as it came.
For now, she was hungry, so she would make the best of this last meal in the Great Hall, and then she would enjoy her last ride on the Express with Harry before they parted company for a time. Then her friend would be off to handle his job across the Atlantic, and she would be off to handle her job on this end of things.
And handle it, she would!
Her friend was counting on her, and Abigail would not disappoint!
4.11.3 A railwayman's breakfast
The sun was clearly visible over the eastern mountains as Jim Coates walked the same path his fireman had traveled several hours before. While the path might have been the same, the difference in the yard around him was, appropriately, like night and day. Earlier, the Hogsmeade yard had been dark and still, now it was drenched in morning sunlight and abuzz with activity as the shunters prepared the daily train, and as rumor had it, that train was going to be a long one... much longer than usual for the Express run.
There'd be the usual seven-coach passenger set for the students, of course, but there were likely to be a great many more freight wagons than the usual three of four. A huge heavy equipment order had been shuffling about the yard for the last month until the owner had finally taken delivery yesterday, and the twenty flat wagons it had occupied would likely be tacked onto the train to get them out from underfoot.
It ought not be too heavy, considering more than half the freight wagons would be empty, but it would certainly be among the longest trains he'd driven since the company had changed the London run to a daily affair back in the seventies.
Jim paused in his walk across the yard to allow the Hogsmeade shunting locomotive, a century-old 0-4-0 saddle tank, to trundle by pushing yet another of those empty flat wagons to join the end of the growing rake.
Jim smiled at the sight, as he always did.
The proud old lady was a longstanding fixture of the company, having been in continuous service since her purchase back in 1894, new from Andrew Barclay Sons & Co. She'd originally been acquired for the purpose of building the Hogsmeade branch line itself, and with the completion of the line in 1901 she'd been turned over to shunting duty. There she had stayed ever since.
The Barclay had long been the darling of the maintenance staff on account of being the only locomotive in the Hogs Haulage stable to have been purchased new, directly from the manufacturer. She was their baby, and no one else had ever worked on her. Though Jim had to wonder whether she'd be replaced in that role now that the new prototype was nearly ready for her first commercial run... after all, the old Barclay might have been adopted into the company as an infant, but the new locomotive was actually born into it.
It was something to think about.
The Barclay rolled past, and Jim crossed the tracks she had been using with a skip in his step on his way to the locomotive he would be driving for the day, No. 45401. She sat on the tracks just outside 3 Road rumbling audibly, with the billowing column of black smoke pouring out of her chimney standing as proof of long hours his fireman had already put in getting her ready. Judging by the volume and speed of that smoke, she ought to be just starting to build pressure, which meant Mac had her right on schedule.
Good man, that. Reliable.
Jim appreciated that sort of reliability and made sure to reward it when he could. That was why he'd brought breakfast, as was his usual custom on those times when his fireman had to finish off a cold start. One of the privileges of rank was the ability to sleep in for such things — he'd worked his way up over the years, and he'd earned the right — but Jim had always figured if his fireman was good enough to drag himself out of his nice warm bed long before dawn to light the locomotive, then the least he could do would be to provide a good breakfast. It was a small price to pay for an extra four hours abed.
Such courtesies were the grease that kept the wheels of society turning.
When he drew even with the second of the locomotive's three pairs of driving wheels, its top several inches above his head, Jim judged himself close enough for Mac to hear him over the low rumbling roar of the blower and shouted a greeting.
"How's it going in there, Mac?"
The words prompted a bit of a clatter from inside the cab, and moments later, Mac poked his head out the door.
"Mornin' Jim!" the fireman greeted him cheerfully only to raise a coal smudged brow as he caught sight of what Jim was carrying. "Wotcher got there?"
In wordless answer, Jim brandished the satchel containing their breakfast with a broad grin of his own, causing his fireman's face to light up in a happy grin.
"Come on in then!" Mac called as he drew his head back inside the cab. Shortly thereafter, the dull roar died down when the blower shut off.
Covering the last few yards, Jim handed the satchel up to his grinning, coal-encrusted fireman, and used his now-free hand to help hoist himself up to the running plate.
"How's she comin' Mac?" he asked. "Anythin' to worry 'bout?"
"Nah, Jim, she looks t' be in top shape," his fireman answered, even as he retrieved his wand from the holster at the small of his back and cast a quick cleaning spell on the steel blade of his coal shovel. "Inspection went fine, an' I already checked tha mechanicals. Maintenance did a grand job on our ol' lady here."
"Good to hear!" Jim said with a nod as he set about unpacking his satchel of goodies.
"So, wha's on th' menu this mornin', Jim?" Mac asked eagerly as he opened the fire door, revealing the crackling flames within. He laid his now-clean shovel across the floor of the cab, the gleaming steel of the shovel blade halfway inside the firebox where he left it to heat.
"The usual, Mac," Jim answered, "egg an' bacon, bit o' bread for toast... everythin' ya' need for a proper fry-up."
Mac made an approving sort of noise.
"The Missus sent along some biscuits, too," Jim added, drawing a separately wrapped packet from his pocket.
"Biscuits, ya' say?" Mac perked up, eyes lighting with anticipation. "Your wife's recipe? Tha oat ones?"
"Fresh baked just yesterday," Jim confirmed with a nod. "Tol' me ta' tell you it was a thank you for getting' up so early an' savin' me the trouble even with a little baby in the house."
Irene, Mac's wife, had given birth to their fourth child in early January, their third son. Now six months old, little Dave McDonald was quite a handful.
"'s no trouble," Mac averred. There was a loud hiss as first a pat of butter and then a few rashers of bacon hit the hot blade of his shovel. "Little Davey got me up all on 'is own anyway 'bout the right time."
"Regular alarm spell, he is, right?" Jim said with an affable laugh, remembering the long-ago days when his children were that age.
Even as he laughed, though, Jim reached down to pull Smaugey away from the fire door with a practiced heave, having felt the drake-dog drawing a deep breath. "Careful there, little fella. You'll get yours soon enough, but you give that a blast and it's not gonna taste good when you get it."
"Aye, an' glad we are fer it, too!" Mac nodded emphatically, ignoring the byplay. The he sighed, "'e's likely t' be our last; the missus don' think we're goin' t' be able t' 'ave another. 'nother five years 'til Davey's old enough ter be safe 'round a little 'un 'imself, an' by then Irene figgers she'll be too old."
"'s been that long already?" Jim marveled. "Why, seems like jus' yesterday when you two started steppin' out together, but I suppose time does fly." He shook his head. "Though, ya' sure wouldn't know it by lookin' at the pair of ya'! When me and the missus covered for ya with your little ones a coupla' weeks back, could'a sworn you two looked jus' like you did back then!"
"'s been near thirty years, Jim," Mac replied simply.
He judged the bacon far enough along and reached for the eggs. Soon the sizzling redoubled as freshly cracked eggs hit rendered pig fat.
"How's the rest o' the family been, Mac?" Jim asked, making conversation as they waited.
"Oh, been getting' 'long fine, they 'ave!" his fireman answered. "Evan's doin' well on 'is lessons, an' Colleen's growin' like a weed!"
"An' how's Mikey?" Jim asked, absently patting Smaugey's scaly head.
"Mikey... well, he ain't too 'appy wit' 'is work," the fireman said. "Don' like the people there too much, an'..." he trailed off for a moment. "Ah, food's done!"
The pair ate, sparing a rasher or two for the drake-dog; all the while, the fire continued to burn.
"Anythin' I can do fer the lad?" Jim asked, resuming the earlier conversation even as he unwrapped the oat biscuits his wife had sent along as an extra treat. "Looks like there'll be plenty to do 'round the yards, if he's lookin' fer new work."
"Tol' 'im 'at m'self," Mac shook his head, absently accepting a biscuit from his long-time friend and coworker. "Said 'e gave 'em 'is word, an' 'e's gonna keep it, e'en if they are gits."
"Good man, that," Jim gave a sage nod. "How long?"
"Year end," his fireman answered.
Jim nodded again, chewing his biscuit as thought the situation over.
There wasn't much that could be done, really. The boy had given his word, and that was that. He'd just have to tough it out until the end of the year. Jim could lay some groundwork for the lad, though. Mikey had already talked with the young Mr. Potter back at the picnic, but it'd be better for things to start lower down... less resentment that way.
As far as it went, Mr. Potter was well-liked, but favoritism from on-high still stank to high heaven no matter who was involved. Best for little Mikey's recommendation to come from the ranks and then get a friendly nudge from the higher-ups, rather than coming down the chain unsolicited.
"I'll talk t' some of the fellas 'round the office," the driver promised his old friend. "See if we can't have somethin' lined up an' ready when 'e gets loose."
Mac's eyes lit up and he clapped Jim on the shoulder in thanks.
"Thank ya, Jim!" he managed after he finished chewing. "Tha's mighty kind o' ya."
The older man nodded. It was just a shame there was nothing else to be done. He reached down for another biscuit, only to pause and look at the baked treat with fresh eyes. Perhaps there was something he could do for the poor lad; he'd have to remember to tell the missus about it when he got home.
It might not actually help in any practical manner, but Jim had yet to see a day that couldn't be brightened by a good homemade biscuit!
Looking out the window, he saw the old Barclay chuff by, pushing yet another of the empty flat wagons to the back of the rake. How many more of those were left? Sticking his head out the window, Jim waved the guard over from where he had been keeping a careful eye on the assembly process, noting down each vehicle's details in his well-worn pocket-sized notebook.
"Mornin', Jim," he greeted easily as he jogged up. "We've got a fair old train today, wot?"
"Too right that," Jim agreed. "An' it looks like it's gettin' longer. How many more o' those left to go, Ivor?"
"Should be tha las' one there," he replied, pulling a small notebook out of his pocket to consult his notes. "Seven coaches, two vans from Ogden's an' one from Sparky's at sixteen-ton each, an' them twenty flat wagons, empty. Jus' gotta get this last one over and then coupled up, put on the tail lamp, and then it'll be time for the continuity test and final inspection."
"Thirty wagons... well, I'll be," Jim shook his head. That was nearly three times the usual length, and even mostly empty more than double the weight, of their usual rake on the Express run. It was something to keep in mind, but it was still well within the old girl's capabilities. "Thanks, Ivor."
The guard gave a nod and jogged off to give the formation one final once-over, and Jim pulled his head back in.
"How's the boiler, Mac?" he asked, turning to his fireman. "She good t' go?"
"Aye, Jim," the man replied after checking the gauges and listening carefully to the sound of the fire. "She's good 'n ready."
"Looks like that's the last wagon," the driver said. "We'll be up soon."
It was time to get back to work.
4.11.4 All aboard!
No. 45401 shuddered and hissed as she rolled to a stop at the Hogsmeade passenger platform. It was time to board, and on the whole, her passengers were eager to do so.
For most, summer holiday awaited, a time away from homework and responsibilities. Others had new horizons to explore and new possibilities to investigate.
Whatever their reasons, the passenger coaches quickly filled, and twenty minutes after she had come to a stop, the guard blew his whistle and raised a green flag signaling right away.
A single short whistle blast issued forth, No. 45401's fire door was closed, and shortly thereafter her driver opened the regulator. Then, huffing and hissing, the great iron horse pulled out of the station, off on her journey, carrying the future of wizarding Britain to its next destination.
4.11.5 Until we meet again
Harry let out an explosive sigh and bounced to his feet as the Express had pulled to a stop at the hidden platform at King's Cross. It had been an emotional trip, and he was... while not exactly eager to get on with things, at least eager to not be on the train any longer.
After the intense personal drama that had marked the week after the end-of-year testing, the remainder of the term had passed all too quickly, and with its passing had come the great parting of ways.
For Harry, it was the first time he'd had to face a real goodbye... at least the first time he could remember. Abigail had left for a few months during the previous summer, but he'd been unconscious when she had left. Hermione had been with him nearly continuously since he had befriended her, and Su Li had become his friend so recently that this was the first opportunity for such a goodbye to have occurred.
The young dragon found it to be a thoroughly unpleasant affair; though at least he could console himself with the fact that Suze would still be nearby.
"I'm going to miss you guys!" he said as his companions stood up as well.
"I'll miss you too, Harry!" Abigail took the opportunity to pull him into a tight hug.
She also took the opportunity to glare at Su Li over his shoulder, while the petite girl contented herself with quietly smiling back at her from across the cabin. Predictably, Abigail scowled in return. Working agreement or not, there was no love lost there.
"You've got your emergency portkeys, right?" the young dragon asked as she released him.
He had distributed the Gringotts emergency portkeys to all three girls during the trip.
"I do," Abigail reached up to tap her neck where the tiny gold pin was pinned to the inside of her blouse's collar.
There was a round of nodding from the other two girls, though Hermione's was rather anemic.
The frizzy-haired girl had been silent and withdrawn for the whole trip. She had her upcoming registration on her mind, and after taking the time to research what it meant in full, she was having trouble thinking of much else. Hermione remained mute as she and Su Li gathered their luggage, and the quartet made their way onto the hidden platform.
Abigail filled in the conversational gap admirably as she busied herself with saying goodbye.
"Harry, you stay safe on your trip," she said, giving the boy another hug. "I expect you to have lots of good stories to tell when I see you next. I'll be heading off to my job, so it might be a while."
"Hermione, you stay safe too!" That prompted another hug, which got a weak smile from the bushy-haired girl.
"Miss Li…" she trailed off before turning away with a perfunctory nod. There was nothing to be said.
With that the older girl grabbed Harry for one final hug and then made for the floo station.
"Until next year, Harry," Su Li said with a shallow curtsey before she too walked off.
"Well, Hermione," the young dragon said to his damsel, "I guess this is it."
"Right!" Hermione agreed with somewhat forced decisiveness. "Mum and Dad are out on the nonmagical platform. We'll meet up with them and get going."
And so, they did.
4.11.6 Misgivings
The Granger family and its currently human-shaped plus-one exited the Underground at Embankment Station, passed a couple of colorful street vendors, and turned to walk under the shop-lined underpass of Embankment Place on the way to Whitehall.
All around them, the mood among the shoppers and tourists was quite festive, out and about for their entertainment and the joy of it all. Harry was much the same, looking about in wide-eyed wonder at the new place and interesting sights. Even Hermione had started to recover some of her good cheer, largely because her parents were back by her side.
Said parents, however, were not nearly so jolly.
Tony Granger hadn't had nearly enough time to come to terms with the full implications of their current errand. When Hermione had sent a note beforehand about an errand at the Ministry, she had implied that it was a minor affair that could be taken care of in passing on the way to taking her friend to the airport. Neither he nor his wife had had any idea what that 'minor affair' entailed until Harry had taken the time to explain, an explanation which had taken place while they were riding the Underground from King's Cross...
...all of about five minutes earlier.
The boy had made a very convincing case for it, though without that long-ago conversation with that Snape fellow to provide context, Tony doubted he would have been nearly so ready to take the boy at his word. With the memory, he could accept the necessity... barely.
To be honest, even after more than a year, the true implications of what that man had told him had never really settled in for Tony. Now that those implications had him willingly — if grudgingly — sending his thirteen-year-old daughter off to sign away her future, they were finally starting to settle in properly.
Right now, they felt rather like a millstone around his neck, and the shock had left him more than a little numb.
"Are you sure you don't want us to go with you, Hermione?" Tony asked his daughter for the third time in as many minutes. "I don't really like sending you off on your own in downtown London, especially not to do something so important."
His little girl's bushy head of hair rustled as she again shook her head in the negative. "Honestly Daddy, we're only going to be going a few blocks. And Harry will be there with me the whole time even if something did happen; you don't have to worry."
Tony's expression soured, prompting his wife to squeeze his hand in a combination of comfort and warning.
"The entrance wouldn't even open if you were too close, anyway," Hermione continued, oblivious to her father's discomfort. "The secrecy wards wouldn't allow it. Professor Snape is going to meet us inside, too. We won't be on our own for long."
"I know that, sweetie," he would never have considered allowing it otherwise, "but I'm your father, and it's my job to worry."
"Don't worry, love, I'm sure Harry will take good care of our daughter," she shot the boy in question a significant glance, "won't he?"
"Of course, Mrs. Granger," Harry said earnestly, "I mean, that's sort of what this whole thing is about, innit?"
"Yes… yes, it is," Tony agreed grudgingly.
"There's the entrance!" Hermione spoke, pointing to an unassuming telephone box tucked into a cranny on the building at No. 3 Whitehall Place, just behind the support for a skybridge connecting it to the building across the way. "Come on, Harry, we need to get going if we want to finish in time to get you to Stansted for your flight!"
"Hermione!" her mother held onto her daughter's shoulder until she was sure she had her attention. "You and Harry meet us back at the Gardens when you're done."
As his little girl walked off to inextricably bind her future to that of the boy beside her, Tony Granger watched them go, an unreadable expression on his face.
"Sharon," he asked after a moment, "are we doing the right thing, letting Hermione do this?"
His wife's only answer was to squeeze his hand with her own.
4.11.7 Posting banns
Oblivious to her parents' misgivings, Hermione and her sometimes draconic friend crammed themselves into the telephone box that disguised the visitor's entrance of the British Ministry of Magic, and Hermione used her wand to carefully tap out the entry code on the phone's keypad.
As she tapped the final two, corresponding to the 'c' in 'magic', the device triggered, blacking out the windows as the interior of the telephone box dropped like a stone, somehow managing to bring them to a safe, if terrifying, stop moments later and several dozen meters below ground level. The phone and the wall to which it was attached then swung out of the way, revealing the visitors' lobby, in which stood a very grumpy-looking Severus Snape.
"Hi, Mr. Snape!" Harry greeted the man cheerfully, utterly unphased by the abrupt trip. Hermione barely managed to nod in greeting as she attempted to recover from the sudden bout of vertigo.
"It is about time you two showed up," the man greeted his students with his usual good cheer. "Come! Due to your insistence on riding the train, we have no time to waste."
The trio set off to the Family Registry Office, passing a bewildering array of offices, conference rooms, and lounges along the way.
Harry, in his usual manner, smiled broadly at everyone he saw, though he got little in the way of response from most. The one exception was a redheaded man seated in one of the lounges just outside their destination. He looked up from the cup of coffee he was nursing and answered in kind.
With Snape's expert assistance, Harry and his damsel managed to get in and out in just a few minutes. The relevant paperwork was remarkably easy to fill out.
On the way out, they brushed past the man from earlier, now no longer smiling, who was walking past the door in the opposite direction. Harry's head snapped to the side as the man drew even with Hermione, a frown forming as he looked intently at his damsel's leg.
"What is it, Harry?" she asked, noticing his sudden movement.
Harry's currently human brow furrowed further in concentration before he spoke, "I thought I saw something move by your leg, but I can't see anything different."
"Really? I don't feel anything," she craned her neck to look down and moved her leg this way and that, examining it herself. "I can't see anything, either. Maybe it was just my skirt?"
"Huh, I guess…" he trailed off before dismissing the issue with a grunt.
They had a train to catch.
4.11.8 Fallen heroes
"Did you catch that, Control?" the redheaded man whispered into a small communication device hidden in his collar. He waited for a long moment before he repeated, "Control?"
Several floors away, in a darkened room half full of complicated looking equipment which framed a very detailed three-dimensional image of the redheaded man and his environs, two men stood in shocked silence next to a table full of half-empty coffee mugs.
"Control, do you hear me?" the redhead's voice issued from one of the supporting pieces of equipment.
"Control?"
"We hear you, Weasley," one of the men, Auror Sergeant First Class Kingsley Shacklebolt, finally managed to respond.
The room fell silent again for one long moment before he finally managed to sum up his opinion of the events he had just witnessed in the form of a heartfelt and highly uncharacteristic "Shit."
"Yeah," his partner, Auror Sergeant First Class Rupert Hayes, immediately agreed, "there goes another one…"
"Damnit!" he slammed his hand down on the table hard enough to rattle the mugs. "I'd thought the Boy-Who-Lived would be better than this!"
"What's all the racket?" their boss, Amelia Bones, asked, sticking her head into the room.
"You're not going to like it, Chief," Shack warned her.
"I don't need to like it, just tell me what's happening."
"The Potter boy was just past, along with a suspected Death Eater and some poor bloody muggle-born girl he's somehow talked into registering herself as his servant," Shack reported.
"Shit," Amelia said shortly, unknowingly echoing her subordinate's earlier reaction. "No signs of mental tampering, I suppose? No signs of Imperius?"
"Nothing we could detect," Shack confirmed.
"As usual…"
"You are going to like this though, Chief," the redhead's voice issued from the mission comm equipment once more.
"What do you have for me, Weasley?"
The now named plainclothes agent, Auror Second Class Matt Weasley, a cousin to the better-known branch of the House, smiled broadly enough to be visible on the surveillance display. "I tagged her with a cavalry marker!"
His fellow Aurors and the Chief gave him a round of startled looks. A cavalry marker was Department of Magical Law Enforcement slang for a tiny pellet of bioalchemically-safe metal, enchanted with a carefully masked tracking charm and made to record and transmit spell use on the bearer. It was usually implanted into the forearms of undercover DMLE officers, and it was that use which had given the device its name. When an undercover operation went south, that little implant would do an excellent job of calling in the cavalry.
They were expensive work, especially as they had to be made by trusted DMLE personnel for self-evident security reasons, and they didn't last long once administered — the body's own magic would tend to break down the enchantments over the course of a week or so — but they were one of the DMLE's few advantages in the fight against the pureblood and 'novae pure' industrialists and their underground slave trade.
It was a trade that, despite supposedly having been stopped by Dumbledore's maneuverings on the Wizengamot some thirty years prior, everyone who was anyone knew was still going on. The appeal of cheap, hell, almost-free factory labor was just that strong, and as production-line manufacturing of enchanted goods spread, it was becoming more and more common.
Worse yet, once someone had been got by the group — dubbed the Syndicate by the investigation team for lack of anything else to call it — it became an absolute nightmare to prove that they weren't willing, the combination of memory charms and various other mental magics was just that hard to track, especially with the well-intentioned legal protections against unlawful search and seizure..
Half the time the poor bastards walked in the door of the DMLE offices under their own steam and were registered as bonded servants only hours before their servitude was illegally sold on the auction block.
"How?" Amelia finally asked.
By way of an answer, Matt slid a microdart projector out of his sleeve. The thing looked a bit like a muggle hypodermic syringe, and it was again usually used for undercover work, this time to surreptitiously fire tiny tracking darts into suspicious packages.
"Charmed it so she wouldn't notice and shot it into her leg when she walked past me, Chief," he explained. "That Potter kid is something else, though. He almost caught me despite the charm."
"Good work, Weasley," Amelia congratulated her subordinate. "Did you happen to catch the girl's name?"
"No, ma'am," he responded immediately, "but I can find out. It'll be posted in the logs here, and those are publicly accessible."
"You do that," without waiting for the man's acknowledgement, she turned to the other two aurors in the room. "Okay boys, I want that girl monitored 24-7; this could be our chance to roll up the damn Syndicate for good. Shack, Hayes, hand-pick the personnel monitoring her and make damn sure they're trustworthy. We know there are moles in this department, and if word gets back to those bastards, heads are going to roll, understood?"
There was a round of nodding; everyone in earshot was trustworthy, very competent, highly intelligent, got good hunches, and just generally good at their jobs... they had to be.
There were, after all, two kinds of auror: competent and dead.
Many people mistakenly assumed that the Ministry Auror Corps were the Wizarding police. In one respect, that assumption was correct, but not if one assumed that this meant they were beat coppers. The blue-overcoated Ministry Law Enforcement Patrol — known as LEPs in Department parlance, and simply 'The Police' by the average British wizard on the street — were the Wizarding equivalent of the friendly neighborhood 'Bobby'.
More educated guesses called them the Wizarding equivalent of a SWAT team or armed response unit. Again, that guess was still wrong; the Ministry Hit Wizards were the Wizarding equivalent of a SWAT team or armed response unit.
No, the aurors were something a cut above even that. They were Wizarding Britain's elite counter-terrorist task force; you didn't send an auror to an armed robbery; you sent a Hit Wizard. When someone's sending bomb threats, or a portkey point has been hijacked, when hostages have been taken, when people have been killed or worse, that's when you sent in the Aurors.
Hit Wizards were hand-picked from the ranks of the LEPs. Aurors were hand-picked from the ranks of the Hit Wizards. Sometimes, an LEP cadet was fast-tracked from DMLE Academy graduation to the Auror Corps for one reason or another: perhaps due to rare magical ability, perhaps due to raw talent, or occasionally due to connections. That last was highly unpopular among the majority of the corps, the ones who got there by being just that damned good at their job.
An auror had to be one part detective, one part police officer, and one part warrior. They were the best of Wizarding Britain's best. They weren't the Wizarding equivalent of a police armed response unit; they were the Wizarding analog of the Royal Marines.
They were also — due to the numbers involved, the unpopularity of such dangerous jobs among the well-heeled and pure-blooded, and recently the fruits of a certain Hogwarts professor's ongoing efforts to cull the applicant pool — mostly made up of wizards and witches who struggled to find better than a subsistence wage. Whether that was because they were muggle-born, half-blooded, or just plain old poor, they found themselves welcomed with open arms in the LEPs, and then they rose quickly — because they were quick, because they were clever, because they were lucky, because they were deadeye shots, because if you wanted their trust you damn well earned it, because they were always looking for an ulterior motive, and because they were just that damn good.
And, as soon as that cavalry marker went off, they would take great pleasure in demonstrating that prowess.
4.11.9 …and a bag of crisps
"It is about time you got here, you wretched reptile," Severus Snape said by way of greeting as Harry and the Grangers finally reached lobby of the charter terminal after nearly two hours of travel. "Everyone else is already aboard and have been for the past half-hour."
"Sorry, Mr. Snape," Harry apologized, "but Mr. Granger wanted to stop to get a snack."
For his part, Tony Granger was staring out the window. "Is that a Boeing 737?"
"It is, indeed," Snape nodded tersely. "The 77-33 model, to be precise."
"You chartered a private Boeing 737?" Hermione's father squeaked.
"Yes I did, and we are currently on the clock," Snape snapped impatiently. He turned to Harry, "Get on the plane, Mr. Potter! You have already been allowed more than adequate time to say goodbye to Miss Granger."
"How much does that cost?" Tony asked, dazed.
"Somewhat in excess of three hundred galleons per hour, Mr. Granger," the potions master told him irritably as he ushered the currently human-shaped dragon out the door onto the tarmac. "And you have already wasted half an hour of that getting your 'snack'. Now, we must be going, so I bid you good day!"
Tony swallowed heavily as the door swung closed behind the potions master and his charge, leaving the room feeling quite empty. His brow furrowed for a moment as he ran through a bit of mental math, then he nodded.
Wordlessly, he turned and began walking woodenly back the way they had come, in such a daze that he almost walked into another pedestrian. After an absent apology, which the man acknowledged with an affable tip of his broad-brimmed hat, Tony reached into his coat pocket to dig out the remains of his snack.
"Tony?" Sharon asked, reaching out to catch his shoulder.
"I'm going to go enjoy the rest of these crisps," he said in a numb sort of tone, staring into the bag with a dumbfounded expression on his face as if seeing the common snack food with new eyes.
Looking up, he noticed his wife's raised eyebrow, so he explained. "They apparently cost Mr. Snape there a bit more than half what we spend on of our yearly mortgage payment."
With that, Tony Granger carefully retrieved one of the salty, fried potato wafers and ate it, chewing deliberately and thoroughly before swallowing.
"I'd hate to let them go to waste."
4.11.10 Observer
A man tipped his hat to the obviously shaken father, his concerned wife, and their just barely teenaged daughter as he passed them on the sidewalk outside the charter terminal at Stansted Airport. He had forgone his usual face paint for the day in the interest of avoiding attention, though if one looked closely enough, it was still possible to pick out the ghostly image of the two elongated red diamonds which would normally have been painted over his eyes from the traces of pigment he hadn't quite been able to scrub off.
That was not to say he passed completely unremarked upon. Tall, whipcord-thin, and dressed like he had stepped off the set of an old Western film — complete with broad-brimmed hat, snakeskin boots, and an unseasonably long brown leather duster — the man garnered plenty of odd looks, even bare-faced. He nevertheless ignored them all with the ease of long practice in favor of fiddling with something he removed from an inner pocket of his coat.
The odd contraption appeared to be a simple torsion pendulum, little more than a thin disk with a tiny speck of rusty red set into one point near its rim. The whole assembly dangled from the end of a short hair-thin thread tied at its center of mass. Allowing the device to hang so it could rotate freely, that little speck of rust soon oscillated reliably about a line which, when carefully projected, tracked the movements of one aircraft in particular as it taxied towards takeoff.
"Well, that answers the question of where you are now," he muttered, intently watching the airliner as it queued for takeoff. "But where are you going, I wonder?"
Green eyes narrowed as they took careful note of the registration number emblazoned on the side of the aircraft.
"This is going to take some legwork."
4.11.11 Time to think
The trip home had so far been a quiet one. Hermione slept soundly seated between her parents, her head settled comfortably against her mother's shoulder. It had been a long and trying day, and the opportunity to rest on the two-hour-long trip back to Crawley was a welcome one.
The trip had also given her parents plenty of time to review the documents their daughter had signed that day. Their train ride was much less restful.
"God, I hate this," Tony Granger said for the fifth time in the last ten minutes as he once again finished rereading the servant contract in his hands. "How can this even happen in this day and age? We're in Britain, for God's sake, not some uncivilized third-world hellhole!"
"I don't know about that, love," his wife said quietly, gently stroking her sleeping daughter's hair. "From what you've told me of your conversation with that Snape fellow, I'm fairly certain that we are living in an 'uncivilized third-world hellhole'."
"Maybe we are," he allowed, "but did it have to get our daughter stuck in this!" He slapped the contract gently against his knee, being careful not to wake his daughter with the noise. "This bloody damned thing is a whitewashed slave contract. There are no limits on what that boy could make her do!"
"You've met Harry, love," Sharon chided him. "You know better than that."
"For now, sure," her husband scoffed. "He's too young for anything at the moment, but in a few years… I was a boy his age once, Sharon. Once puberty hits, his self-control is going to be shot to hell, and that contract will be a constant temptation."
"Tony Granger! Think about just what that boy actually is for a moment," she gave him a pointed look. "If he wanted to do something of that nature, he wouldn't need a bloody slip of paper to give him permission!" She shook her head, "Harry has given you every reason to trust him and not a single one not to, outside your own paranoid imagination. Give him a little trust."
Tony slowly nodded, forced to acknowledge the point.
"I'll tell you what, Tony," Sharon proposed. "Why don't you stop obsessively rereading that damned contract, and after we get back to Crawley, we can go out to eat and celebrate getting Hermione back for the summer, rather than worrying about things we can't change? At least try to look at the bright side of things."
"Alright," he said grudgingly. "I still hate this, though."
"Tony!"
4.11.12 Don't worry, I speak jive
"Wow!" the Great Wyrm of Hogwarts marveled as the airliner broke through a thick layer of dingy grey mist to reveal the blindingly bright sun-drenched cloudscape above. "I hardly ever fly this high!"
"Truly, it is remarkable," Suze agreed from her position at the next window over; it was the only place on the plane that she could fit, squeezed into the space at the head of the onboard conference table. "I look forward to seeing the stars from this vantage."
"That'd be pretty cool," Harry agreed. "If you want, I could take you flying up this high more often, myself..."
"Perhaps not quite yet, Mr. Potter," Severus Snape said from his place at the table. He was much calmer now that his three-hundred galleons per hour were being put to productive use, rather than being wasted on a bag of crisps. "One topic that arose in my discussions with Mr. Slackhammer was the efficacy of the nonmagical aerospace detection grids at discovering your presence."
"How did that come up, Mr. Snape?" the young dragon asked without turning, unable to tear his eyes away from the fantastic tableau on the other side of the window.
"I had suggested enlisting your assistance to provide transportation across the Confederacy, rather than arranging ground transport," the potions master explained. "It was explained to me that the muggle nations maintain sensor grids which are monitored quite assiduously, and that your size and metallic composition would make you stand out on them like the proverbial sore thumb."
"Oh, yeah! You mean their radar and stuff," Harry said. "I hadn't really thought about it, but I guess that makes sense. Huh. It's a good thing I've stuck to low altitude flying in the mountains, then. I must've been lost in the ground clutter, otherwise we'd have had all kinds of jet planes and stuff trying to find me."
Snape raised an eyebrow at that. "Am I to understand you know how such things work, Mr. Potter?"
"Sorta," he shrugged. "I get the basics of how radar works, 'cause jet planes are pretty cool, and that stealth fighter one is really weird looking, so I wanted to know why it was shaped like it was, and since it's all about not being seen by radar, I had to look into that a bit."
"Anyway, you got transmitters that send out radio waves, and those bounce off of stuff, and then a sensor picks up those bits that bounced and you can figure out what it bounced off of by how the signal looks, but I don't know the technical details yet, 'cause I haven't looked into it very much." The last Potter shrugged. "I know metal reflects radio really well, though, and so do lots of sharp corners, and round bits too, oddly enough, and my scales got lots of metal and lots of sharp bits and lots of round bits, so if I were to fly by an airport or something they'd probably think I was about the size of the whole terminal from the return."
"I see," the potions master nodded. "Mr. Slackhammer seemed to think that, while our current concealment spells would not work to prevent such detection, it might be possible to adapt them to do so. Do you think you might be able to manage such a thing?"
That question was interesting enough to finally pull Harry away from the entrancing vista outside; though the fact that they had climbed high enough for the clouds below to lose some of their previous fantastic detail might have contributed to his willingness to look away.
"Um, I guess... maybe?" green eyes narrowed as their owner considered the problem. "I know you can change something's shape to make it so the radio waves get bounced away from where they came from, but I don't know how I'd manage that, 'specially since I change shape all the time when I fly." He paused momentarily as another thought occurred. "I know the stealth planes have coatings on 'em that absorb the radio waves they use for radar, so that might work."
"A coating, you say?" the potions master asked, his professional interest piqued. "What sort of coatings do they use?"
"I dunno," Harry shrugged. "They're real secret. The Americans only admitted they had the things four years back, and all the stuff about how they work is still kept really quiet."
"Understandable," the dark man nodded slowly. "I wonder what sort of properties such a substance would require. What exactly are these 'radio waves' you speak of, Mr. Potter?"
"Um, well," the young dragon paused for a moment to marshal his thoughts. "You know how light acts like a wave?"
"Yes, I recall you saying as much in our earlier conversations on the topic," Severus acknowledged. "Am I to understand that radio waves are a form of light, then?"
"That's it!" Harry nodded enthusiastically. "Anyway, different colors of light have different wavelengths. You can see light between about four hundred nanometers and a bit less than eight hundred nanometers, but light can really be any wavelength. The radio waves they use for radar are a lot longer, like a ten million times longer, so you can't see them."
"So, one would need to make a material of a color that cannot be seen," Snape mused. "Remarkable."
"Perhaps you could alter a color charm to do the job," a new voice interjected itself as Filius Flitwick inserted himself into the conversation.
Snape nodded a brief welcome his colleague. "How would one handle the feedback? The color charm is directed by visualization, as I recall. How does one visualize an invisible color?"
"I haven't the foggiest idea," the diminutive half-goblin chirped happily, "but I am certain figuring it out will be great fun!"
"I seem to recall a runic implementation of a color charm that I came across at some point," Bathsheda Babbling volunteered, sounding eager to get in on the conversation. "It was horrendously impractical, as I recall — lots of memorization of which modification produced which color — but I had no idea of that light-wavelength business. Perhaps there is some pattern to the runes of which I was unaware."
"Ooh! Can I get a look at that?" Harry asked excitedly. "I was trying to do something like that before and I couldn't get the colors to work out right."
"I'll have to look it up when we get back to the castle, Mr. Potter," the rune mistress averred. "I'm afraid I do not have the material with me, but I would be quite pleased to assist when I do. Might I ask what you were working on?"
"Sure! I was looking at making this thing for a regard gift, you see…"
The conversation quickly grew to encompass the entire group from Hogwarts as increasingly esoteric and technically involved ideas flew thick and fast. The Hogwarts faculty held some of the finest magical minds in the whole of wizarding Europe, and it showed. Harry, who sported similar interests — as well as a near-eidetic memory, eclectic and wide-ranging reading habits, and a biological supercomputer in his skull completely filling a brainpan larger than most bathtubs — was having a grand time of it.
As he sat at the table, thirty-five thousand feet above the surface of the Atlantic, the young dragon could only smile. This was going to be a great trip!
4.11.13 Starry night
Off to the side and out of the conversational scrum, Suze watched on for nearly an hour, smiling gently at the brightly animated face of her dragon. Eventually, she turned back to the window before her, just in time to catch the slow setting of the sun, delayed by both their altitude and their westward travel.
She was hurtling across the heavens in a metal box too low-ceilinged for her to stand up properly, moving faster than she ever had before in her life and completely at the mercy of the strange contraption and the mysterious humans operating it, but despite that the centaur maiden felt content. As the sky darkened, the familiar patterns of the stars faded into view, their light gently illuminating the tops of the clouds marching by far below.
Her Great Wyrm was happy; she was at his side; and the sight before her was as beautiful as any she could have ever hoped to see.
As far as Suze was concerned, all was right with the world.
