The Alchemist's Cell
by SJR0301
Chapter Twenty-Three
It started out like any other morning for Minerva McGonagall. She rose early, as was her habit, and reviewed her lesson plans to be certain they were in order. She riffled through the pile of graded essays and sighed when she came to the one Potter had turned in. It was well below par even for his usual work. The answers were scribbled in far messier penmanship than normal and there were blotches where ink had dripped and he hadn't even bothered to blot them or to rewrite the essay neatly. She would just have to talk him, she resolved. She was setting up her classroom for the first class of the day when two bright red heads and one bushy brown one peeked in.
"Miss Granger, Mr. Weasley, Miss Weasley, what are you doing here? I'm quite sure that none of you are in my class this morning." But she was afraid she knew why they were there. It had to be something to do with Potter. The Weasley boy -and how tall he had gotten, she couldn't help noticing-strode over quickly. His face was pale under his bright hair and a worried frown drew his pleasant face into grim lines.
"It's Harry," he said. "He's gone. We noticed he didn't get up for breakfast this morning, and when I checked, he wasn't in his bed and his shoes are missing. And he left these on the bed." He handed her two sealed rolls of parchment, each addressed in the boy's distinctive spiky handwriting. One was addressed to "Professor Dumbledore," which was not particularly worrisome. The other, however, must be the reason for his friends' anxiety. It read, "My Last Will and Testament, Harry James Potter, To be opened only in the event of my death."
Minerva kept her face calm with cosniderable effort and said merely, "Come. Professor Dumbledore must know about this. And he'll want to talk to you all."
Minerva swept upstairs to Dumbledore's office, spoke the password, "Chocolate Frogs," and ran up the moving stairs as fast as her old bones could move. The door swung open of its own accord before she could knock. Dumbledore was there with Mad-eye Moody, his magic eye whizzing with alarm and curiosity.
"Professor McGonagall, Miss Granger, Mr. and Miss Weasley," Dumbledore said politely. The blue eyes surveyed them all in a lightning glance and he said, "What has Harry done now?"
She handed him the two parchments wordlessly, and again, the Weasley boy spoke for the others, "He's gone." He added, sounding scared and almost aggrieved, "He didn't even tell us! He didn't even take us with him!" That, almost, made her laugh, and after half a second, she decided it really ought to make her cry. But that wouldn't do.
Dumbledore opened the letter to him and scanned it quickly. His calm face turned grim, and the light in his blue eyes dimmed. He looked, as he had more often lately, as if age had begun to erode his great strength and power, and Minerva felt a wave of terror. If Dumbledore should fail now...it was not be thought.
"What does it say?" Hermione Granger said. "You have to tell us. Please, Professor."
Dumbledore did not answer immediately. He scanned the letter again more slowly and said, "Very well. Yes, I think you had better hear it. It may be you know something that we don't." Unusually, he coughed and cleared his throat, but then he read it calmly through.
"Dear Professor Dumbledore,
I'm very sorry because I know everybody's going to be upset with me, especially Ron and Hermione and Ginny, but I'm doing this because I believe it is right and necessary. I know it's breaking school rules and you'd very likely be right to expel me finally for doing so.
I'm going to try to help the old man I told you I'd been dreaming about. I know I'm supposed to be blocking these dreams out, and I have been trying. I have been practicing Occlumency and I do try every night to block everything out. But sometimes the dreams still come.
I dreamed again tonight and I woke up with my scar buzzing and I know this is not fake. I'm sure it's not, not like last year, because you see, I could also tell that Voldemort's happy. No, not happy, triumphant, because he's going to get something...something that's his deepest desire.
In the dream, the old man was in his dungeon and he was being forced to make something for Voldemort, and I finally realized who he is and what he's being forced to do, because of what I saw him doing with the fire and the stuff in the fire. I recognized it from class, you see. You know who the old man is, I suppose, since you told me not to worry about it and that you were taking care of it. I guess you couldn't find a way yet to break him out without getting him and lots of others killed. But I know if he isn't stopped now, it will be too late and Voldemort will have the one thing he needs to win forever, so I'm going to try to stop it.
I was going to tell you and get my friends to help me, but I realized that I'm the only one who can go in there and definitely have a chance, at least, of getting out. I'm the only one, according to the prophecy, that might be able to stand up to Voldemort and survive, so I'm not putting anybody else in danger. I'm not letting anybody else get hurt or killed like last year, if I've made a mistake. I hope I'll be back soon, and I'm very sorry for any trouble I'm causing.
Sincerely,
Harry Potter
P.S. I'm not mad at you anymore, and I hope you forgive me for disobeying you again.
P.P.S. The other thing is in case I mess up and don't come back."
"If he does get back," Ron Weasley said, "I just might have to kill him myself for doing this to us." Minerva looked at him in shock, until she saw the tears swimming in his eyes. The tall boy, who seemed all at once, no longer a boy, turned away and laid a hand on his girlfriend's shoulder and wrapped the other around his sister's.
The little Weasley girl pulled away from her brother and said quite fiercely, "Why aren't you going after him? Where is he? You know where he went..." and then faltering, "you do know, don't you?"
Dumbledore's face was altogether grim as he said, "I was hoping that you might. No, I don't know where he's gone."
"But ...but, Harry said he'd told you all about it," Hermione Granger said.
"It appears he's told me rather less then he might have," Dumbledore replied. "And I have only myself to blame," he added unusually bitterly.
Minerva broke the silence and said, "Well, think then, you three. What has he told you that would tell us if what he's seen is real? What do you know?"
"It might not be real," Hermione Granger said slowly. "Maybe Voldemort has tricked him again. Voldemort must know by now, maybe he even gets bits of Harry's feelings, too...he must know by now that Harry can't stand to let anybody else suffer or be hurt without trying to help."
"Yeah," Ron Weasley answered. "Only, if he has tricked Harry again, where has Harry gone? Where does he think he's going to?"
"I don't believe it!" the little Weasley girl said. "I don't. This is real, and Voldemort's going to try to kill him."
Minerva said gently, "I know you've got feelings for him, Miss Weasley, but..."
The girl turned on her furiously, "This isn't about my feelings." She swallowed and said coolly, "Read the letter again, where he talks about what Voldemort felt. Voldemort was triumphant, happy. And his scar hurt. I think it's real and Harry's right." She looked at Dumbledore again and said, "Professor, Harry thinks you know all about it. He said in the letter you were supposed to be taking care of it. You must know something."
"I'm sorry, Miss Weasely," Dumbledore answered, "I do not know any more than you. I'm afraid," he added, "I thought these dreams were another attempt by Voldemort to trap Harry. That's why I encouraged Harry to continue with the Occlumency lessons."
"But where has he gone, then?" Ron Weasley asked. "Not the Department of Mysteries again. It doesn't sound like that at all."
"Read the letter again, Albus," Minerva said. "He thinks you know all about it. There has to be something in that letter that will tell us what we need to know." Dumbledore read the letter again. His voice wasn't quite as calm as it had been the first time. Hermione Granger was muttering to herself,
"An old man, and a fire in a dungeon, and he was doing something with the fire, something to the "stuff" in the fire." the girl looked thoughtfully at Dumbledore, and said, "It sounds like you Professor Dumbledore. It sounds like you, in our...Friday class."
"That couldn't be Professor Dumbledore," Ron Weasley said. "Because obviously Harry says it's someone else."
"Yes," said Ginny Weasley, "but then, think! Who else could it be? What other old man do we know of who does magic with a fire? What other old man do we know of who does alchemy?"
Minerva felt a moment of sudden annoyance. Alchemy? What was Dumbledore doing? Teaching alchemy to students here? And he hadn't even told her. A glance at Dumbledore told her that he had seen her reaction and was in no mood to discuss the secret classes now.
"Come on, Hermione," Ron Weasley said, "You're the brilliant one here. Who can it be?"
"There's only one other old man Harry would have known about who was also an alchemist," Hermione replied, "but...he's dead, isn't he?"
"Nicholas Flamel?" the Weasley boy said. "Nicholas Flamel! It's got to be. And Harry thinks he's making another Stone for Voldemort. That's what it is. It's got to be." Minerva looked at Dumbledore and expected him to pooh-pooh the idea.
The last Stone had been destroyed. Flamel had no more Elixir to take. He must have died five years ago. She saw, however, a look in Dumbledore's eyes that she had never seen before and never expected to see. Fear.
"You are indeed quite a clever bunch," Dumbledore said, "About as clever as any who've ever been here."
"He's not alive, though, Professor, is he? Flamel, I mean?" Hermione's brown eyes were puzzled. "He would have been six hundred seventy years old. How could he live without the Elixir? Or is it just Voldemort knew that would be the best bait of all for Harry? He would have known that Harry would go to any lengths to stop him getting another Stone." Minerva cut them all off.
"Whether Flamel is alive or not, whether it's a trick or not, that must be where Harry's gone." She looked at Dumbledore and said just as Ginny Weasley had said, "Well, what are we waiting for?"
Dumbledore looked at her and answered, "We are not waiting. I am going and Alastor. The rest of you will remain here." He put up a hand to stop their angry protests. "You, Minerva, must watch the school. You others will stay here in case he returns. And you will not go and put Harry in more danger by showing up and distracting him, or getting yourselves hurt."
Dumbledore then said, "Fawkes, Harry needs help!" The scarlet phoenix sailed up from his perch and hovered, while Dumbledore seized the floating golden tail feathers and Moody took Dumbledore's hand. The phoenix pulled the two men off the floor and disappeared in a scarlet and gold flash.
Minerva paced the Headmaster's office impatiently. She had sent down to cancel her class and had been able to summon up the strength to send the three students back to their common room. The three of them were looking at her, and she could tell keeping them under her eye was the correct decision.
"Don't even think about sneaking off to go after him," she said sternly. Hermione eyed her right back. Goodness that girl reminded Minerva of herself when she was young!
"We weren't thinking of sneaking, actually," she answered. "We were thinking of persuading you to let us go and help."
"Well, you're not," Minerva answered. "Professor Dumbledore will not appreciate that at all. And if you want to prove yourselves as adults and mature enough to be in the Order, you will have to learn to take orders, and to wait. That is much more difficult, you know, than going out and jumping into the action." She waved her wand impatiently and four cups of tea appeared along with plates of tea sandwiches.
"Go on," she said. But none of them could eat a bite. After perhaps a quarter of an hour, Dumbledore and Moody reappeared with Fawkes in a flash. She stared at Dumbledore, and felt the beginnings of grief stir.
"The house is on fire," Dumbledore said. "No one can possibly be alive in there. And there are Muggle firemen all over."
~~***~~
Fay was carrying a tray of sandwiches and Edgar had a tray of cups with hot tea and coffee, all from the commissary downstairs.
"Let's see if he's started crying yet," Fay said cynically. "You don't believe that little story of his do you? Trying to get in an empty house and it going on fire?"
Edgar said thoughtfully, "I don't know, Fay. He certainly is way too young, don't you think, to be involved in this ganglord's crew. All the rest of them are hardened criminals. I wonder how he can have got mixed up with them."
"It's a good question," she replied. "I suppose all criminals have to start somewhere. Except, he sounds a bit too public school to be your average street kid." Edgar paused at the door to his office and listened. No sound emerged and he worried briefly whether the kid had collapsed again and thought perhaps he ought to have a medic check him. He balanced the tray in one hand and opened his office door. For one instant, he thought the kid had escaped
Edgar almost dropped his tray. The kid was sitting behind his desk and all his folders were open. He was so absorbed in reading them that he hadn't even noticed them come in. Edgar thought, how curious, a sixteen year old kid, and he looks as though he belongs there. The round glasses had slid down his straight nose and his black hair was rumpled up, as though he'd been running his hands through it. He'd possessed himself of one of Edgar's pens and a notepad and was taking notes. Edgar gave a slight cough and the kid looked up at him distractedly.
He was sheet white and he said, "You've got almost everything here. You know almost all of it, don't you? Even things we didn't know, or they didn't tell me about." He ran his hand through his hair again and said, "But I don't get what he's doing with all of this. And what have these killings got to do with the other part? Unless it's just his usual, killling for the fun of it. Or because they were just there, in the way."
"Who is he?" Fay asked. The kid looked at her and at Edgar, at first with surprise, and then the green eyes narrowed like a cat's with his prey in sight.
"Ask Mr. Bones here, why don't you. He knows." The kid turned to Edgar and said, "I couldn't think why your name sounded familiar, but I should have known immediately. Except you're supposed to be dead, aren't you? Voldemort killed Edgar Bones a long time ago. Before I was born, even." Fay was looking at him, her mouth open in astonishment, but he ignored that.
Carefully, he laid the tray down on the one unoccupied corner of his desk, and he said, "So it is You Know Who who's behind this. I was afraid of that." He stared, chills sweeping down his spine and said, "You're awfully brave, to speak his name. And what were you doing in that house then? Are you working for him?" Emotion swept through him, ancient grief and guilt and rage, "Talk!" he roared.
"Edgar?" Fay said, "What the hell is going on?"
The boy looked again from Edgar to Fay and said, "I'm not saying anything more until he explains himself. I want to know what you're doing here, working for the Muggle police. Does Fudge know about it? Does Dumbledore?"
"Muggle?" asked Fay, "that's a new one, isn't it? You knew about this all along, didn't you, Edgar? I want an explanation, now." Edgar sank down in the chair, as if he were the suspect and the kid were the detective.
"The Edgar Bones you're talking about was my father," he answered. "You Know Who murdered him seveteen years ago."
The boy's eyes held his own, brilliant, like emeralds. "I see," he said slowly. "But I thought all of his family were killed with him. That's what Hagrid told me, ages ago. And Moody, mentioned it, too." Edgar felt chilled, and unbalanced, as though he stood on the tip of glacier and it was about to melt underneath him, leaving him without any footing to escape from a fall into an abyss.
"My father," he said, quietly, "was a great man. He was working against HIM, with Dumbledore. I was home from school. It was just a week after I finished my sixth year, and I had gone outside in the yard to fool around, like boys do."
The boy nodded, as if he knew exactly and said, "Go on."
"I was in this part of the garden at the back that was full of trees and bushes, and I could see into the house through the porch, but they couldn't have seen me from inside. There was a loud noise, a thump. They had blow in the front door, and he came in with several of his followers, all hooded and masked. They killed them all in seconds and when they left, before I could get in, or go after them, they brought the house down, left it in flames. I haven't seen a house go down like that since then. Not until I saw the house on fire this morning. I could see it, you know, the green light mixed in with the flames."
"Edgar?" Fay said, "Why didn't you ever tell me this? Why did you never tell anyone?"
"I never told anyone," he answered. "I ran and ran, and eventually I ended up in London. I thought he'd come after me and finish me off, if he knew that I'd survived." He looked up at them and the guilt he'd repressed all those years came out, "Not very brave, was it, running away like that."
"Being brave doesn't mean you have to be stupid," the boy replied. "He'd probably come after you again if he knew you were alive. He doesn't like loose ends, Voldemort, and he can't bear having failed at anything."
"So, what ...? You're father was a villain, then? He had a falling out with this Lord of Death, this Voldemort?" Fay asked. Her blue eyes were dark with anger, and she looked as dangerous as she had the day she'd shot a fleeing rapist-murderer two months ago.
" 'Course he wasn't a villain," the kid answered. "Edgar Bones was an auror, a policeman, working against Voldemort for the Ministry." He turned to Edgar and said, "That's right, isn't it?"
"Working for the Ministry?" Fay asked. "What department are you talking about? MI-6 or something?"
"She doesn't know, does she?" the kid asked Edgar.
"I told you," Edgar answered, "no one knows."
"Know what?" Fay hissed.
Edgar met the boy's green eyes and the boy had a funny look on his face, almost a grin. "She's really, really mad at you, isn't she? Are you any good at memory spells?"
"Memory spells? What the devil are you talking about?" Fay shouted. "What is this crap? Now you're back to this magic nonsense!" She moved toward the desk and leaned over it toward him and the boy and said very softly, silkily, "I want an explanation now, or I am going to have you both thrown in the lock-up."
The boy frowned then and stammered, "But...but I thought you knew everything about it, about Voldemort. It's all in the files. You've got almost everything right here." Even Edgar was taken aback.
"I don't know about everything. It was really just a guess that it was You Know Who-and would you, by the way, please stop saying his name! So what's there that's evidence?"
He looked at the boy expectantly, and the faint tug of familiarity pulled again. The boy ran his hand through his already messy hair and answered, "I thought you knew. You've got the whole file on the Riddles. You've got the maid's testimony. She saw the whole thing."
Fay stared at the boy and said, "Hang on. You're saying this ganglord is the same one who's killed Nancy Bell and Margaret Miller and the Riddles? How do you work that out? How do you know?
"He told me so himself," the boy answered. The green eyes dilated wide, as if he were seeing something horrible, and he shivered visibly.
"Voldemort," he continued "is Tom Marvolo Riddle, the son of Tom Riddle who Tom Riddle disowned. He murdered his father and grandparents right after he left school. It's an anagram, Voldemort." The boy took the notepad and wrote TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE, I AM LORD VOLDEMORT.
"He likes those sort of things, puzzles, riddles, you see. He hated his father so he didn't want to be known by his father's name. And you can see, even the other thing is another nickname. Lord of Death - Lord Voldemort. Mort is death in Latin."
Edgar stared at the boy and felt something very close to despair run through him. How on earth, he wondered, were they to stop him? The network of crime and murder he'd created was incredibly vast. A fusing of a number of criminal organizations, now backed by the terror of dark magic. Perhaps because she really didn't understand the danger, Fay had focused back on the boy.
"And what exactly is a schoolboy like you doing involved in all this?" she asked. "What were you doing at that house? And why would this monster criminal confide anything in a kid like you?"
Edgar stared at the boy as well. He wanted answers himself. The boy didn't respond. He wrapped his arms around himself and stared back, his expression a mixture of defiance, and exhaustion, and regret, and perhaps fear. It had finally sunk in, Edgar thought, just how much trouble he was in. He'd had enough years of police experience to know this was the moment. "Talk!" he added. "Why were you at that house?"
The boy stared back at him and opened his mouth to speak, but only a faint croak came out. The last rays of the setting sun fell on his face, casting shadows in the hollows beneath the cheekbones and exposing, in harsh relief, his extreme pallor; and turning the long thin hands --hands, that clasped around him, seemed his only support-- almost transparent. The emerald eyes had lost their focus and he sagged in the chair and would have fallen but for the metal-buttoned arms that propped him up.
"Damn," Edgar said, "we've pushed him too far." He moved around the desk to check the boy's pulse, which ran far too fast, and saw that the kid was hovering on the edge of consciousness.
"You don't think it's a bit dramatic, a bit convenient," Fay said dryly, "to keep us from getting the answers we want about what he's got to hide?"
She stared down at the boy and Edgar and said, "But then, you've got quite a bit to hide yourself, Edgar, haven't you?"
Edgar stared back at her and said, "I'm not hiding anything from you Fay. Not anymore."
"Well, that's nice, Edgar," she answered coldly, "but I'm not sure I'll ever forgive you for lying to me like that."
The boy's green eyes had fluttered back open and he said huskily, "You shouldn't hold it against him, ma'am, really. He'd have been in dreadful trouble if he told you. They'd have snapped his wand and all. And Voldemort would have come after him when he found out."
"Snapped his wand?" Fay exclaimed. "What do you mean, snap his wand? This is a joke, isn't it? Come on, Edgar," she said, "please don't tell me you belong to some weirdo cult that worships the devil and goes about waving sticks thinking they can do magic."
Edgar could feel himself flush with embarassment and fury, but the kid answered first. "Just because you're a wizard doesn't mean you worship the devil or you're a weirdo," he said angrily. "I celebrate Christmas and all just like anybody else."
"But you do magic, you wave your wand and what? The Christmas tree gets decorated just like that!" Fay retorted.
Edgar found himself speechless, and not a little alarmed by the snap of anger in the boy's eyes. The kid reached under his sweater and brought his wand out in a flash and Edgar realized now why the kid had been so cool -- he had been armed the whole time.
The kid pointed it at both of them and said, "I'd give you a demonstration, but I'm sure I'd get in even more trouble."
Fay stared at him and said, "Oh, come now, you want me to believe all this nonsense. You think I'm going to buy a word of any of this fantasy about evil wizards, and not see the smallest bit of evidence that it really exists." She glared at them both and added, "Go on. Show me, or else I'll just have to slap you, young man, in the lock up, and suggest to the Superintendent that Inspector Bones, here, needs some psych help."
Edgar winced, not least at the rancor in her voice when she called him Inspector again. The kid looked at him and said, "So what do you think? You think this qualifies as an exception to the Statute of Secrecy."
Edgar stared at him in fascination. The long, elegant fingers trembled slightly on the end of the wand, and he could see that the kid had no intention of allowing himself to be stuck in a Muggle jail. He also wondered how the kid could even possibly do anything at all, when he was clearly at the end of his resources and on the verge of total collapse.
"You could argue it's life-threatening," Edgar said after a moment. "If she locks you up and reports me, then You Know who'll have free rein to kill again."
"Well, do you have yours?" the kid asked, "Because at least you can't get in trouble for being under-age and doing magic out of school, like me."
Edgar shook his head, but the thought he ought to have been carrying it around the minute he even suspected there were wizards involved in this.
The kid cursed and then said sheepishly, "Sorry, it's just I got in trouble only last year for doing a Patronus Charm in a muggle neighborhood and I almost got expelled."
Edgar looked at him in surprise. "You can do the Patronus Charm? That's very difficult. Most adults have trouble with that one. And why in a Muggle neighborhood?"
"Because of the dementors, of course," the boy replied exasperatedly. "But that's another story." The kid shivered again a little, but Edgar could see the young face tense with determination. "So, what do you want to see?" the kid asked, almost flippantly.
Edgar felt peculiarly like laughing. The expression on Fay's face was so simultaneously annoyed and curious and satisfied, like a cat about to pounce on the prey that had nearly escaped. The fleeting hilarity fled, however, as Edgar noted the coninued tremors in the boy's hands and his ashen complexion.
"Put up your wand," he said sharply. "Sergeant Kray can have her curiosity satisfied later. For the moment, we need to know what happened in that house, and you, son, look like you're about to drop. So why don't you have a sip of tea and a sandwich and then you can tell us what's important to our investigation."
Fay looked as though she would spit with fury, but Edgar didn't care. He wanted that wand put away, because, he thought, if you pushed a sixteen year old too far, the result might not be pleasant, particularly not if the kid could really pull off spells as difficult as the Patronus Charm. The kid lowered his wand, but didn't put it away and seized a cup of now cold tea in his left hand. His hand shook as he brought the cup to his mouth, and he drank the tea in two gulps. He didn't look at them, but reached for a sandwich and ate it hungrily, and another and a third in quick succession. He flushed faintly, perhaps with embarassment.
Seeing that some of the color had returned to the kid's face, and hearing the faint tap, tap of Fay's impatient foot making a rhythm on the floor, Edgar decided it was time to take charge once more.
He stood up and said directly to the boy, "Now that you've had something to eat, you will please get up from my chair and return over here." He added for Fay's benefit as much as the boy's, "I am still the inspector in charge here, and this is my office and those are my files."
The boy gawped at him a moment and then stalked defiantly around the desk to sink back into the guest chair. Edgar took his own, feeling much more in control. He carefully ordered the files as they had been before, and noted with interest the notes the boy had made. He had grouped the murders of the Riddles with those of the mysterious ones the Task Force was investigating. And the rest of them were left to the side in another chain. He had actually made a chronological chart and had added in several additional deaths. Between the Riddles and the new ones, he'd added in The Prewetts, The MacKinnons, and The Bones with a date of about seventeen years ago. And that, Edgar thought, was dead on. He had also added in one more set that Edgar had not known about. There were listed James and Lily Potter, with a date fifteen and half years before. And Sirius Black, less than one year before. Edgar stared at the boy and shut out sympathy and pity.
"You've added things here to my notes. So let's start with that. James and Lily Potter, died October 21st, fifteen years ago. Tell me about that."
The boy shook his head and the faint color he'd regained washed back out of his face. "You must be the only wizard in the world who doesn't know who I am."
Before he could reply, Fay cut in, her patience altogether lost. "Enough of this wizard crap. Who are you and why were you in the house that was serving as headquarters to a ganglord?"
The boy clenched his hands on the chair's arms. One was still clutching his wand, and a couple of golden red sparks flew out, testifying to the boy's distress. "Who I am is Harry James Potter. James and Lily Potter," he said, "were my parents, and Voldemort, your ganglord, murdered them when I was a year old. He murdered them the same way he murdered the Riddles and Frank Bryce and Inspector Bones' parents. He murdered them the same way he or one of his Death Eaters probably murdered Nancy Bell and Margaret Miller. And the reason I was in that house is when he, Voldemort, killed my parents, he tried to kill me and failed." The boy shivered and pointing to the jagged scar on his forehead added, "You see this scar, that's what I got when Voldemort tried to kill me and failed. In the wizard community, which you don't want to hear about, I'm known as The Boy Who Lived."
***
Harry shivered and pointing to the jagged scar on his forehead added, "You see this scar, that's what I got when Voldemort tried to kill me and failed. In the wizard community, which you don't want to hear about, I'm known as The Boy Who Lived." The nickname seemed even more loathesome than usual. Harry thought, I must be out of my mind. How did I end up here being questioned about Voldemort by a wizard policeman at Scotland Yard. Inspector Bones was frankly gaping at him.
"You survived an attack by You know Who? He wasn't trying to kill you, then, was he?" Bones said. Harry shook his head again. It was so weird having to explain his history to another wizard. From the first time he had stepped foot in the wizard world, everyone had known he was.
"Yes, he was," Harry said. Bones stared at him in disbelief and the beautiful blond lady was again tapping her foot in annoyance.
"He used the curse? Avada Kedavra?" Bones whispered inscredulously. Harry nodded.
"Impossible!" Bones said. "That's not possible. Nobody survives that curse." He stared at Harry coldly and said, "Tell me another story. I'll believe you're a wizard all right. You've got the names right and you've got a real nice wand, but no one survives that curse. No one's ever survived it in the history of the world." Harry was so tired now, he could have simply dissolved right where he was. With a major effort, he forced himself to sit up and reply.
"I can't help it if you don't believe me. It's quite true. And if you want to know any more about me, why don't we go for a little visit to the Ministry of Magic and have a chat with your Aunt Amelia. Or ask your cousin Susan who's in my class at school."
"Aunt Amelia? You know her?" Bones asked. He started to say something further, but Sergeant Kray interrupted.
"There's a Ministry of Magic?" she said, "This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard." Harry snorted and the laugh took him quite by surprise.
"So, it is a joke," the Sergeant said. Her blue eyes reminded him of Professor McGonagall when she was about to take off lots of points, and the faint grin died from his face.
"Sorry," he muttered. "It's just you reminded me of my Uncle Vernon. He's always so outraged when he hears anything about wizards."
She pounced on that piece of information. "And what's his name, this uncle of yours? And where does he live?"
Harry looked at her in alarm. The only thing that could make matters worse would be to have Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia show up there and start to berate him, and then probably they'd throw him out of the house again forever. "You're not going to call him, are you?" he asked. "'Course, it won't matter if you do because he'll deny he knows me. He doesn't approve of wizards at all, you see. He and my Aunt Petunia, that's my Mum's sister, pretend magic doesn't exist at all."
The blue eyes narrowed, and the Sergeant said, "Well, good. I'd like to meet them. At least there'd be someone involved in this who had a grain of sense and some connection with reality."
"Forget about the uncle," Inspector Bones said sharply, "we can always contact him later. I want to know what you were doing in that house, and what you had to do with it burning down and if anybody else was in there."
Harry stared at him for a moment and he understood how the man before him had gotten where he was, wizard or no wizard. He had, when he chose, a natural auhority, very like Dumbledore, or even Snape, so that even if you didn't want to, you would listen and do as they said.
Harry looked out the window to give himself a moment more and saw that the sky was now totally dark. He shivered again because he was certain they were not going to believe him. It was even worse than trying to explain himself to the Wizengamot with Fudge at its head; at least Fudge, and every witch and wizard there had known who he was.
He looked at the detective's silver-gray eyes and began to talk. "I went to the house, you see, because I kept dreaming about the old man. He was being held a prisoner there by Voldemort. I told Dumbledore about the dreams and he said I wasn't to worry about it, that they were working on finding out who it was, and getting him out, if it was...real." Harry paused there and shook his head, mostly to himself. If Dumbledore hadn't believed the dreams were real, why would they?
"Anyway," he continued, "last night, or was it yesterday night? I had another dream about him and I knew who he was and what Voldemort was trying to make him do. And I knew he had to be stopped immediately. I was afraid no one would believe me and the chance of stopping him would be lost, so I snuck out of school and went there to try to get the old man away. And it was, really, just in time, honestly. Well, I messed up the thing the old man was making and then Voldemort, he attacked us. I ducked out of the way and his curse hit the fire and it sort of exploded. I think that's what made the house really burn. I helped the old man get out the back way, but then I got separated from him and I don't know what happened. And then you found me." Harry closed his eyes and hoped that would satisfy them, though he knew it would not.
He wondered what they would do if he just got up and tried to walk out. If he could get up and walk out. The two detectives exchanged glances and once again Harry was reminded of Ron and Hermione. He supposed they had been working as partners for some time and that was why the lady was so mad at Bones for not telling her about him being a wizard. He had an inkling they might be partners in more than one sense.
"And what was this "thing" the old man was making? Some kind of exotic drug that kills without any trace?" Sergeant Kray asked softly. Harry shook his head.
"So you just snuck out of school," Bones asked, "and somehow arrived in Devon? How did you get there? There are no trains running at this time of year. And who is the old man? And how, exactly, did you manage to escape HIM yet again?" Harry sighed. They weren't going to believe him. Not even the wizard.
He jumped when the Sergeant said, "Well!?"
He shrugged. "I took a thestral to get there." He really didn't want to say who the old man was, but thought, maybe, just maybe, if Bones understood who the man was, he might understand all of it and let him go.
"You took a thestral?" Bones asked with disbelief. "Thestrals are invisible, and they're rather dangerous. And where would you get one anyway?"
Sergeant Kray was sputtering, "Invisible? What is a...a thestral anyway?"
Bones answered impatiently, "It's a nightflyer. A kind of a ghost horse. It's invisible and is very attracted to blood." He looked at Harry and said, "I'm waiting for you to tell me even one bit of story that sounds like the truth."
Harry was too tired even to be angry. "You've forgotten," he said quietly, "that people who have seen death can see thestrals. And the school has a bunch of them that Hagrid tamed and they pull the carriages to and from the station at Hogsmeade." He added more quietly, "I can see them...because two years ago I saw a classmate of mine, Cedric Diggory, murdered by Voldemort. And last year...Sirius...my godfather, I saw him die. His cousin Bellatrix killed him. She's death eater, you know."
***
Edgar felt again a terrible sense of dislocation. Here he was in his mundane office in Scotland Yard talking to a boy who was holding a wand and telling him he'd flown a thestral from Hogwarts to Devon. In front of Fay. He was talking to a boy who claimed to have been attacked by He Who Must Not Be Named and to have survived the Killing Curse. A boy who spoke the name as casually as anybody else's.
The boy, he saw, had gone beyond ordinary exhaustion. His face was now so pale it bordered on gray, and Edgar knew that with any other suspect he would have had to stop the questioning some time ago. Anything he said was already bound to be inadmissible as coercion, unless he testified voluntarily. And Edgar was quite certain that no wizard would testify voluntarily about wizarding matters in a Muggle court of law.
They ought to stop now. Except that there were lives on the line, and he had to get every bit of information he could from the boy. Every truthful bit of information possible before he clammed up totally. If the boy were just a little older and less naive of the ways of the police world, he would know that they couldn't have held him for very long anyway, when all they had was a faint suspiciion that he'd been in the burning house.
Fay, he saw, had forgot the flying invisible horse and was moved to pity now by the boy's bald statements about seeing a class mate and his godfather killed. If that much were true and the part about his parents...Edgar shut that thought out. But that was wrong, he thought. If his parents had been murdered by You Know Who, it was the primary event of the boy's life. Edgar knew that only too well. But he had to know the whole, before he could believe any of the parts of it.
"Who was the old man," he said abruptly. The boy opened his green eyes, and Edgar saw they were dilated wide again, and knew the boy had reached the end of his tether.
"Nicholas Flamel," he said hoarsely. "The house belonged to Nicholas Flamel. So you see why I had to stop it, don't you?"
"Nicholas Flamel?" Fay said. "Tell me another lie. He's a Frenchman who lived in the fourteenth century. I've seen his shop in Paris. It's a minor tourist attraction." Edgar thought for a moment. Trust Fay to know some odd fact like that.
He cudgeled his brain to think what the name meant in the wizard world, but the boy answered it for him. "It's right on the cards you get in chocolate frog packages. Nicholas Flamel is a friend of Albus Dumbledore's. He's an alchemist. He's the only known maker of the Philospher's Stone."
Fay laughed. "Excuse me? The Philospher's Stone? So this guy is after the stone that can turn metals into gold? He must have all the wealth he can get now, considering he's controlling virtually the entire drug trade in Britain now. And besides, that would make Flamel, how old?"
"Six hundred seventy, I think," the boy answered coolly. "He looks it, too."
Edgar said softly, "It's not the gold he cares about is it, Mr Potter?"
The boy shook his head. "No, not that the gold isn't useful. He can bribe the goblins with it and buy men for his army. No, what he really wants is the Elixir of Life. He wants to be immortal. He thinks he can be truly the Lord of Death if he has it. That's why I had to stop it, you see. If he got the stone, he would be unstoppable."
Edgar looked down at the boy's desperate face and saw that there was no lie there. "I believe you," he said. Fay choked, but the transparent relief on the boy's face was as telling as his desperation before.
"That's good," he said. "We have to get back to Dumbledore," he added. "I have to tell him about Flamel. He has to find Flamel. He got out, I think. But I don't know where he went. We have to keep Voldemort from getting a hold of him again." Fay stared at him in astonishment.
"Even if this is all true, who do you think you are? You're a sixteen-year-old child, not a police officer, or anything. What makes you think you have to stop anything?" The boy didn't answer. The green eyes had lost focus altogether, and the black head tipped to the side as the boy slid ungracefully out of the chair to the floor.
Edgar cursed as he jumped out of the chair to check the boy, but Fay got there first. "Damn," she said, "we pushed him way too hard, didn't we?" She checked his pulse and breathed a sigh of relief.
But that didn't make Edgar feel any better. "We haven't missed any other injuries, have we?" he asked anxiously.
She checked his head and said, "There's a small cut here, where he must have hit himself, but it's nowhere near bad enough to cause a concussion or anything." She pulled up his sleeves and Edgar noted there were bruises on his arms that testified to some sort of fight and a shallow burn that must be from the fire. The boy had been lucky to escape that inferno with his life intact. There were a few bruises on his body, too, but nothing major.
"He's awfully thin, isn't he?" Fay remarked. "Do you think they actually feed him?"
Edgar thought nostalgically of the huge feats they had had at Hogwarts and said, "Oh, I'm sure they do. He's just having a serious growth spurt I would bet. I was a bit like that at that age myself. No matter how much I ate, I couldn't keep up with myself."
He looked at the boy again and said, "No, this is just exhaustion. He must have been up all night, was in some hell of a fight and then nearly drowned." He said in a fit of guilt, "We ought to be arrested ourselves for our interrogation methods."
"So what now?" she asked. "I guess we'd best call a medic and have him transferred." Edgar shook his head and lifted the boy to the chair.
"No," he said. "If what he's told us is true, and I think it is, we can't afford to leave him even in the lock up. He Who...our ganglord...Riddle... will kill him before the dawn arrives, like he did those others from the tavern raid."
"You're not going to Masters with this yet," Fay said.
"Why not?" Edgar asked, staring up at her from where he had knelt to retreive the boy's wand.
"You know you can't tell him the drug trade is being run by a pack of wizards yet. He just won't believe it. I heard it from the boy," Fay added, "and I don't really believe it."
Edgar thought and said, "It's too late tonight, and we have to stow the kid somewhere safe." She looked at him questioningly, and Edgar could tell she was relieved not have to face the Superintendent with this just yet.
"My flat," he said after a moment. Feeling like a monster, he woke the boy up and got him down the elevator and down into the car.
He stumbled blindly after Edgar without protest, but roused sufficiently on entering the flat to ask, "Where's my wand? I want my wand?"
Edgar nearly refused him, but some corner of his mind rebelled against that. Anybody who had You Know Who after him had a right to a weapon, he thought. The boy collapsed down on the couch where Edgar pointed him and fell asleep again immediately. But his glasses were still tipped on his nose and his wand was still clutched in his right hand.
***
Harry woke with the early morning sun warming his face. He was lying on a comfortable old sofa in front of which sat the usual entertainment center complete with TV, VCR and CD player. On either side of it were shelves of books. His head ached a bit, his clothes were stiff from having been in the seawater and he felt itchy all over, as he hadn't had a chance to wash since his near fatal swim.
He sat up and saw Sergeant Kray watching him from the adjoining room. She looked perfectly composed and her pin-striped suit was perfectly pressed. From her sleek blond hair to her elegant pumps, nothing was out of place. Aunt Petunia would approve of her if she didn't learn of her occupation.
"Is this your place?" Harry asked hoarsely. He couldn't really recall being brought there and was quite confused as to why they hadn't either let him go or kept him at the Yard.
"No," the Sergeant answered. “This is Edgar's flat. That's Inspector Bones to you."
Harry blinked and thought, well does that mean she believes in wizards now? She must have stopped being mad at Bones for the moment because she was calling him by his Christian name again.
The Inspector came in from the hallway, and he, too, was dressed and ready for work. He looked at Harry and said, "Good, you're awake. We've got a few more things to talk about this morning."
Harry could feel himself tense up. More questions. They must not believe him after all, he thought. He wanted nothing more than to be back at Hogwarts in clean clothes and be sitting at the table in the Great Hall with breakfast in front of him and classes to go to. Something of that must have shown on his face.
Bones looked at him and said, "But it can wait a few minutes. You can go ahead and use the bathroom to clean up."
Sergeant Kray said crisply, "You might want to lend him some clean clothes and a pair of shoes. Those things look like they ought to go in the trash." Harry's eyes widened a bit.
The last thing he'd ever expect was the loan of clothes from an arresting police officer. Sergeant Kray answered the thought, saying dryly, "We don't want anyone thinking we've been beating up on minors."
Harry looked at her and said even more dryly, almost sarcastically, "Yeah, well, I think I'd rather do battle with a dragon than go through another interrogation like that."
"Dragon?" Sergeant Kray said. She rolled her eyes and said, "Next you'll be telling me I should clap my hands and say, 'I do believe in fairies.'"
Harry tried to control the little bubble of laughter, so it came out more like a half-cough half-snort. He saw that Inspector Bones was suppressing a grin, too. His face was quite serious, but the corner of his mouth was twitching and there were little crinkles at the corners of his eyes.
The Sergeant, however, was perspicacious enough to see she was being laughed at and she added grumpily, "I suppose you can fly, too. And I don't see your cape. Or did you leave that behind when you went for that swim yesterday?"
"I haven't got a cape," Harry answered quite seriously. "And I'm afraid I did leave my shoes and jacket in a cranny in the rocks. I suppose I'll have to go and buy some new ones." He thought, doubtfully, that he wasn't likely to get another hand-me-down from Dudley anytime soon, so he'd just have to get some galleons changed into Muggle money. Or else take a trip to Madam Malkin's. But he didn't think anything there would be suitable for wearing in the Muggle world and he couldn't exactly go shoeless.
