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amand_rTitle: D For Defender 2/4
Author: Amand-r
Team: Snitch
Genre(s): Alive and Kicking (EWE)
Prompt(s): Green Lantern, Enemy At The Gate
Rating/Warnings/Kinks: NC-17 for sex (contains fisting), R for violence. Some canon deaths ignored. Also? Kinda cracky.
Word Count: 28,000+ some
Summary: There's a man stalking the Wizarding world. Or a bat. Maybe a Man-Bat. Severus is probably having an affair, Harry's tired all the time, oh, and those drunks out in East Anglia are complaining about the green lights. Again.
Author Notes/Disclaimers/Betas Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jadzialove for being the best sidekick beta evar, cleaning up parts 1-3. joanwilder, aka Alfred, hit all of it, especially part 4, with a batarang of spag (Thanks beth for a few quick saves!). All italicized bumper quotes from The Tick: The Animated Series.
PART TWO: NOTHING TO SEE HERE. MOVE ALONG.
You know, evil comes in many forms, be it a man-eating cow or Joseph Stalin. But you can't let the package hide the pudding. Evil is just plain bad. You don't cotton to it. You gotta smack it on the nose with the rolled up newspaper of goodness. Bad dog! Bad dog!
Harry sighed and kicked a few rocks as he walked through the field with Amos Frobisher. The man was in full 'I am not a wizard' wizard gear: dress, shiny mac, mismatched wellies, and a hat that screamed, 'Yes, I Muggle cosplay! Ask me how!' Sometimes, Harry wondered if the Ministry oughtn't to put out a pamphlet about how to dress in the Muggle world, and then he thought that if they did, then all the secondhand women's clothing shops in Britain might go out of business.
"So you say that the lights come from over there," Harry said as they tromped across the field and towards the abandoned water mill. It looked run down and ramshackle, as if no one had been in it for ages. Maybe some magical creature had somehow set up shop in it, and he would have to clear them out.
"And the screams," Frobisher said, crinkling his eyes at Harry. "Didn't you read the letters? Sent fifteen of them this month, we have."
Harry frowned and shrugged. "I'm sorry, I only read the last five, then. I don't know where the others went. Where did you send them?" He didn't really care, but it might have been relevant, and Harry had learnt that keeping people talking was one of the best ways to discover things unintentionally. Like if the man was distilling illegal firewhisky out here. If he was, Harry wanted to buy some.
Frobisher waved his hands, almost like a pinwheel. "Sent them to everyone. The Minister, the Undersecretary, your office. Found out last week that you lot own those buildings." 'You Lot' must have meant the Ministry. It was Harry's only card in placating Frobisher, actually, and he was going to play it.
"I just found that out myself," he told him, glaring at the mill and the barn structures beyond it. He really didn't want to have to investigate himself, but when he'd sent Colin out here by himself, he'd found nothing. And the lights were still bothering Frobisher and his family, and with the added bonus of screaming, well, Harry just didn’t want to do it himself.
Ginny had sent him a brief note that said: Snitch—YOUR SON hexed his fingers together, and I'll be at St. Mungo's for the morning. Have fun in East Anglia! B.
Funny how James was always his son when he did something stupid.
So here he was, entertaining Amos Frobisher, ploughing through a muddy field, with a cup of piss-poor Starbucks in his hand and wishing that he could just inject the caffeine right into his bloodstream with a needle. He thought about asking Severus to make him something for the fatigue, and then he thought about what could be causing it. Harry dropped that line of thinking, because they were all medical things that he didn't want to consider.
He looked at Frobisher and wondered if the man really had been drinking. The thing was, he didn't smell drunk, and he was eccentric, not crazy. Harry didn't like the idea of green lights as a matter of course; they were associated with too many things that never amounted to good, especially in the Wizarding world.
"Well, I don't know how you do things in London, Auror Potter, but here, we have manners. You respond to a letter you've received."
Harry sipped from his coffee and wondered how Starbucks could completely botch something so easy to make. It was as if they burnt the beans on purpose, because they had known that he was coming. "I assure you," he said absentmindedly, "that Auror Creevey paid close attention when he was out here. He simply didn't get a chance to witness what you describe. I promise that I'll go over and have a look in those buildings, and I apologise that I haven't gotten out here sooner. But I'm here now." He dumped the coffee out onto the grass and watched interestedly to see if it would kill it. He stowed the empty cup in his bag and wondered if 'Milda would yell at him for getting coffee on the State Secrets folders again. Oh well.
Frobisher grumbled under his breath. "Too busy with the bloody Man-Bat, you are," he said, and when Harry rolled his eyes, he added, "I hope Man-Bat comes out here and burns the whole lot down. Nothing but trouble for the past five months, with the lights and the screaming." When Harry glanced at him, Frobisher stabbed him in the chest with his finger. "I know you, Harry Potter. You have friends in high places, so you take care of this."
And with that, the man spun on his heel and stalked off in the direction from which they had come. Harry shook his head and watched him go, his women's coat flapping in the breeze of his gait. Wizards.
"Batman," he muttered, and then set off for the mill.
He was about twenty feet from the structure when someone stepped out of it, closing the door behind him as normal as you please, as if he came and went all the time. No matter that the thing looked about to fall down. Harry wondered if he was squatting in there. That might explain a great deal of things. Well, not actually, it didn't explain anything at all.
Harry waved his hand and shrugged his messenger bag. He had incendiaries in there and he didn't want to lose or jostle them. He raised one hand. "Hullo there! Nice day!"
The man said nothing. Harry tried to remember as much about him as possible: five nine, rail thin, maybe 170 pounds. Black hair, very short. Squinty eyes-- though it was sunny out and the Wizarding world seemed to have an unhealthy aversion to sunglasses. Harry pushed his further up his nose.
"Not allowed here," the man said, his voice gruff. The kind of gruff that raised Harry's hackles. He knew that tone. It was Department of Mysteries. He had often wondered if they taught that no-nonsense voice and attitude in some sort of orientation class upon joining the department. He wished he could get hold of that training himself; it might help him deal with his personal life. On second thought, Severus never responded well to threats. That was his version of foreplay.
"I'm Harry Potter," he said, shouldering his bag again and shoving his hands in his pockets. "I'm here from the Auror's office, just checking out some complaints." He looked over the man's shoulder at the building, with its partially boarded windows and curious green glass glinting in the sun. That would explain Frobisher's green lights. "They keep seeing lights over here at night, said something about screaming. I'm just here to make sure everything is okay."
He started forward but was stopped when the man stepped in front of him, into his personal space. Harry didn't blink. This man wasn't even remotely scary; Harry knew scary—he'd faced down Voldemort, died, come back to life. Hell, he'd been there when Ginny had gone into labour. "Really," he said, trying to be harmless but imposing, "I'll just have a look about, and then be on my way."
"Hold on hold on," the man said, raising his wand. "I said, no admittance."
Harry crossed his arms and tried to look intimidating. It was hard, he suspected, when he was wearing wellies under his robes. Wellies, that he had only just noticed, were not his usual black ones, but a blue pinstripe. Colin's nerd wellies. He hadn't even been paying attention when he'd tugged them on at the office.
"I don't know if I can just leave, unless I see some identification, Mister…?"
The man lowered his wand and shrugged, pulling a small card from his robes and handing it to Harry, who took it in two fingers and read the scrolling script:
Roger Ketterer
Department of Mysteries
Send all inquiries care of Level Nine
Mister Ketterer glanced behind him at the building, and if Harry didn't know better, he would have said the man was nervous. Maybe Harry didn't know better.
Harry tucked the card in his pocket and brushed his wand in its holster. It wasn't worth a showdown, really, and he could just go back to work and throttle some heads until he found out what he wanted to know, or—
"Look, I gather this is some sort of classified thing," he said, glancing about, trying to make it seem as if he was being conciliatory. "I get it. I really do. But those people over there—" He thumbed over his shoulder. "Think that you're doing some sort of secret government experiments that are likely to kill us all."
Roger smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Nonsense. Country wizards." He shrugged as if to say, 'What can you do?' The hairs on the back of Harry's neck itched suddenly with the weight of that smile, and he thought of Ginny. His eyes slid back to the mill, the green lights in the windows, and the three hangars beyond that. A lone tree in the middle of the grouping of buildings bent a little in the breeze. Its leaves were all dead. It was May.
Harry gestured to the tree. "It's dead. You all should do something about that."
"What?" Roger looked behind him for a second, eyes wide with worry, but when they settled on the tree, he visibly calmed. Harry was starting to think that Roger's Unspeakable training had only covered the first two bases: intimidate and shun, and had neglected the last one, poker face.
"Your tree," Harry said. "Could come down one day, damage the building." He smiled innocently. "The fragile, wooden building." Oh no, not threatening at all.
Roger shrugged. "We'll deal with it. Call on the neighbors." He returned Harry's smile wanly. "Send them a fruit basket."
Harry didn't think he'd ever want to get a fruit basket from the Department of Mysteries. Or Fred and George. Or Ginny. Actually, he didn't much care for fruit baskets. Too many apples. But he couldn't do anything standing here like an arse. On the other hand, his curiosity was officially piqued. This was loads better and more interesting than Man-Bat-Thing. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and took a few shuffling steps backwards.
"Well then, I'll leave you to it, Mister Ketterer. I mean, it's not as if you're storing bodies in there, are you?" Harry chuckled at the sentence, like he knew he was supposed to, but he watched Ketterer's eye twitch.
The Department of Mysteries needed better employees.
Harry spun on the spot and Apparated back to the Ministry, a whole new set of questions in his head.
***
There was a note waiting for him when he got back, and 'Milda waved from across the room, her mouth full of what looked like wiring cables. Harry wondered how she was actually able to do half of the 'Muggle tech improvements' that she did, and if any of them had been approved by the head office. Then he realised that he didn't care. He flipped open the note with one hand and pulled off his wellies with the other as he sat down, tossing the boots in the general direction of the bin in which they were supposed to live.
Come by at noon. Bring a curry.
Ron
ps: and samosas. Not the shite ones.
Harry smiled. Ron's love of Muggle take-away was endearing, and also a bit of a pain in the arse. He would have to make a side trip to Muggle London, though that was really just an inconvenience. Harry was used to being inconvenienced by Ron, in the good way. Ron's "inconveniences" these days usually involved Muggle take-away and treacle tart.
He was at the house at noon sharp, and he didn't even bother ringing, just opened the backdoor and walked into the kitchen in time to see Rose dash past him, pink hair flying behind her, topless, wearing a pair of flip flops and a sparkly filmy skirt. Ron came close behind her, grabbing for her halfheartedly, and when she turned the corner and ran screaming mimi into the front of the house, he straightened, waved his hands dismissively and turned to Harry. His hair stood on end and his t-shirt read, 'Does this face look sane to you?'
"Hey," Ron exclaimed. "Is it noon already? It feels like I just got up. Is my hair wonky?" He reached up to ruffle his hair and then shrugged.
Harry set the bags down on the counter and leaned against it. Hugo darted out from behind a chair, smiled at Harry, and bolted off in the direction his sister had gone. "How did you ever convince Hermione that you were the one suited for this?" he asked.
Ron pulled two glasses from the cupboard. "I lost the coin toss." Over his shoulder he called, "Rosita! Rose! Lunch!"
Rose ran back into the room, skidded to a stop in front of them, accepted the half of a sandwich that Ron had produced from nowhere, mumbled something like, "ThankyouSOmuch," and ran out again. Two seconds after she left, Hugo rounded the corner, said, "ThankyouSOmuch" for no reason, and dashed off after his sister.
"Your daughter's hair is pink," Harry mused.
Ron looked at him distractedly while he dug about in the cupboards. "What? Oh yeah. She asked me to this morning." He shrugged. "What can I say? It was raining." Harry was sure that explained something, but he wasn't sure what. Instead of bothering to decipher the conversation any further, Harry accepted the plates from Ron and set them up at the kitchen table. From the lounge area he heard squealing and the telly playing something. Ron rolled his eyes.
"When I was little, we thought a telly was some sort of talking doll," he mumbled. "Not that I don't like Muggle tech, Harry, but still…" He shook his head and plunked down in a chair next to Harry, then called over his shoulder, "ONLY ONE EPISODE!" Harry smirked; apparently Ron was taking notes from the Molly Weasley school of parenting.
They opened the cartons and dug in, eating in silence for a few minutes before Ron summoned a pitcher of pumpkin juice, tossing his wand down on a stack of legal briefs on the table. Harry wondered if they ever actually ate from the table. It certainly wasn't cleared well enough to sit four. Molly must have had a fit every time she came round.
"So, tell me everything," Ron demanded, waving a fork and nearly stabbing Harry in the cheek. "Is my sister still making a mockery of our profession?"
Harry smiled and pulled the lid from his tikka mala. "Not quite. She's really good, you know. You complain too much. I might keep her if you decide to do this forever."
Ron flicked aloo palak at him. "Bite your tongue. This is fun and all, but she's just a place holder until I come back."
They heard giggling from the other room, and Ron glanced in its direction but didn't seem concerned. Harry tucked a serviette in his neck; the last thing he needed was to get sauce on his robes.
He'd always hoped that Ron would decide to come back after his leave of absence, but it was hard to see why he would on some days. Sometimes Harry wanted nothing more than to curl up on the settee and sleep. He suspected that this rarely happened with small children, but the siren call of home and sleep seemed to override practicality at this point.
"Well," he said, "I'm sure that she'll hang about while you get back into shape for work," he ribbed.
"Are you serious?" Ron asked, wiping his forehead. "I run five miles a day in the morning before 'Mione leaves for work." He shoveled the goat cheese into his mouth and spoke before he was done chewing. "I have to stay in shape. When Hugo's ready for Primary, I'm back to the grind."
Harry stabbed at his chicken. "I dunno. I guess I envy anyone who can stay home. Right now. I'm tired. It'd be nice to laze about—"
"Oi!" Ron grinned. "What, do you think I sit about all day and eat Chocolate Cauldrons? Listen to my stories on the radio?" He looked thoughtful. "Well, there is The Wicked and Wonderful at two…." He drifted off but came back to reality when Harry snorted. Ron stabbed his shoulder with his finger and scowled. "But that's only because it's naptime, and I listen to the radio when I do the dishes!"
Harry offered him the greasy bag of samosas. "Riiiiiiiiiiight."
Ron dug into the bag, whipped out a samosa and bit it in half, sighing. "Oh, yes." He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, he smiled and waved the remaining samosa. "These two have eaten nothing but spag bol for the past three nights. 'Mione keeps eating at the office." He stuffed the remaining half-samosa in his mouth and talked while he chewed, his hand rising in a shield. "Go on, what's going on?"
Harry picked at his food and told Ron about Frobisher and the lights. They conferred about the incompetence of young and incompletely trained Unspeakables. Harry had once considered becoming an Unspeakable, but it had become fairly obvious early in the interview process that they considered him too high profile to be useful. He didn't blame them; even the Auror office still used him as a press magnet and spokesman sometimes. He didn't mind. It was all part and parcel to being Harry Potter, and he'd made his peace with that.
As long as he didn't have to ever talk to Rita Skeeter again.
He told him about Fred and George and their story of the warehouse. Ron retold the story of Draco Malfoy's mental breakdown, and they shared a second of silence in which Harry wondered if fifteen years shouldn't have been enough to alleviate his dislike of Malfoy. Apparently not.
"And to top it all off, I think I'm becoming ill," he added, "and Severus is having an affair."
"Bollocks," Ron said. There was a shriek from the lounge, and he called out, "Daddy's allowed to say bad words!" Harry sensed that this was an ongoing argument.
Ron sat back and swilled his pumpkin juice. "It's not an affair, mate," he said finally, waving his hand. "You're tired. He's busy. You know he has all his creepy potions bullshite." He raised his eyebrows. Ron had never had any love for Severus, but he'd become civil, downright friendly, over the years. Harry suspected that Ron was satisfied as long as Harry was happy, and it was the best he could hope for. It was unfair to ask Ron to completely approve of a man who still took opportunities to insult him to this day.
He also had to concur. Severus did in fact have 'all his creepy potions bullshite'. Harry had long stopped asking about it. Some days he wondered, when Severus smelled off or came back from his rented lab space looking decidedly singed. It actually was better not to know, as Severus would tell him and then roll his eyes and mutter something about not asking about Harry's day.
That was all right, actually, not really discussing that kind of stuff; they'd gone years with sporadic updates on their professional lives. They just weren't that way. Severus didn't care about interoffice politics, or outer office politics, for that matter, as long as they weren't restricting his import and export lanes for ingredients. Harry found that descriptions of drams and draughts and slugs and fawn teeth (ground) was just as much of a sedative as it had ever been when he had been in school.
He picked idly at a piece of chicken. "D'you suppose Frobisher is onto something with this mill-warehouse thingy?" he asked suddenly, eager to change the subject. "I've a mind to go down to the ninth floor and ask what's going on out there."
Ron shrugged. "It couldn't hurt, actually. They like to keep us out of the loop, and then when we come in, everything's need to know until someone loses an eye. And then it's all 'Oh, sorry about the eye, we're mysterious, grar!'" Ron raised his hands into claws and made a face, then rolled his eyes. "Wankers."
"I'll send them a memo," Harry groaned. "Something official and scary. Make 'Milda work for her paycheque."
"Brilliant." Ron dug about for another samosa and grinned, giving Harry the look he used when he knew he was about to be an arse. "Say, this bat creature thing that's popping up everywhere—"
"Working on it," Harry grated out. If one more person asked him what he knew about the vandalism case, he was going to scream. That meant seven people at work this morning, Severus at home, and the 'bearista'. He had half expected the Muggle who handed him his take-away this afternoon to say, 'Say, about that mysterious bat-thing…'
Ron smiled. "I take a few years off and you get all the fun cases." Harry gave him the V, but he ignored it, shrugging cheerfully. "If you don't solve it, everyone will keep thinking it's you."
Harry glared at him then. "Who the hell thinks it's me? Have you been talking to Ginny?" He stabbed a piece of onion. "And don't say Witch Weekly."
Ron reached across the table and grabbed a paper from a stack, flipping it over and brushing what looked like porridge off the front. "Kids," he offered. "Can't live with them, can't sell them to the gypsies. Hermione told me I couldn't." He set the paper in front of Harry and pointed. "You've been outed. By the Quibbler."
Harry raised an eyebrow. "You get the Quibbler?"
The shrug was casual. "Luna gave us a lifetime subscription as a wedding present." Then he grinned. "So? Are you Man-Bat?"
The caption read, 'THE BOY WHO IS A BAT?' Harry looked at pictures of himself juxtaposed with the photo from last night and sighed. This was going to get out of control. He could feel it already. It felt itchy.
"What I like," Ron said, raising his eyebrows exponentially and smiling, "is the part where you're an unregistered bat Animagus. A battymagus." He grinned. "So many jokes, so little time."
***
The next day, Harry lay on the grass of Hermione and Ron's back garden with a glass of lemonade and Pimm's balanced on his stomach, watching them attempt to assemble The Most Complicated Playset Ever.
Hermione rapped Ron on the head with her manual. "Pay attention," she said, her brows drawn together. "This is important."
Ron flapped his hands and rolled his eyes. "This is a playset," he replied. "Not advanced Arithmancy." He waved a hand at a metal part. "Hand over that…thingy."
Harry watched Hermione glance out over the lawn filled with 'thingys.' He smirked when she rolled her eyes. "Where did you put the gratchet?"
"The what?" Ron asked, his eyes riveted to the two pieces of metal that he was attempting to shove into each other, as if it were obvious that they fit together. "I think we need to borrow Dad's soldering gun."
Harry grabbed his glass, rolled over, and left them there, arguing about what the hell a gratchet was anyway as he went in search of Severus.
Hermione had told them to stop by as she ran past him in the Atrium the night before, and Harry wasn't going to pass up a chance to lie in the sun with a cold beverage and watch his friends attempt to parent; over the years he had developed what he liked to think was a reasonable amount of schadenfreude, though it was all probably something he'd absorbed by osmosis from Severus.
And speaking of the man…
Severus was lounging in one of the outside chairs by the patio doors, his teacup full and abandoned on the table next to him, a newspaper spread all over the surface. Harry glanced at it over his shoulder: he'd circled articles and blurbs from the crime blotter. Harry started to ask, but then he saw that Severus had also typo checked the Apothecary section, and boxed a few want ads for draft potions work.
"Should we help them?" he asked as he pulled a chair over and sat down next to Severus. The man glanced up before retrieving his teacup and sipping from it.
"You want to help assemble the deathtrap?"
Harry glanced back at Ron and Hermione, deeply embroiled in the search for the missing gratchet. "I admit that as much as I like watching them scramble, I fear I would do just as badly. Just because it's Muggle doesn't mean that I understand it."
"You must be joking," Severus said over the rim of his glass. "Even if I weren't feeling ill, what would ever make you think that I'd be willing to submit to such an idiotic exercise as assembling a playset for a child that isn't mine?" He paused. "My child. Horrifying."
Harry ruffled his hair a bit and he had the pride to look offended. "You just don't know what a gratchet is."
Severus snapped his paper and brought it in front of his face. "I'm busy."
Harry sat next to him on the bench and sipped from his glass, staring out over the lawn, where Hermione and Ron were still divining the secrets of Muggle assemblage instructions and Ginny was tumbling around in the grass with Rose and James. He couldn't help but feel a small measure of pride when he looked at his son, but really, he shared Severus's assessment of the concept. Ginny was a better parent than he could ever be, and he'd been more than willing to accommodate her when she'd asked him to lend her a proverbial hand in the situation, but James wasn't his. Not really. Not that way.
A glance at Severus told him that he was all right with that.
"So," Harry said conspiratorially, leaning in and resting his cheek on Severus's shoulder. "Should we beg off?"
Severus rolled the paper into a tube and drained his cup. "Finally," he muttered and rose, stalking off the lawn without a backward glance at Hermione or Ron. Harry shrugged at Hermione and she sighed. Ron just frowned at the instructional booklet and called, "Goodbye Snape," without looking up.
Harry grinned. Sometimes he loved Severus more than he thought was possible.
***
Later that night, Harry groaned when Severus ran his tongue up the underside of his cock.
It had started as a simple bedtime routine. He had fully intended on going to sleep as soon as he lay down, but Severus's hands had snaked their way up his sides and onto his chest, and he had responded without considering just how exhausted he really was.
Severus hummed around his cock, tugging his balls and squeezing. His other hand worked his own cock lackadaisically, waiting for a better time maybe. Sometimes it wasn't about them both, he once told Harry, sometimes it was about doing something.
Harry liked when the something Severus was doing was him.
The bed sheets twisted around Harry's feet when he rolled his ankles. Severus took him completely into his mouth and turned his head a bit, his teeth scraping Harry's foreskin. His hair whispered across Harry's stomach and thighs, and when he spread Harry's knees further apart and cradled Harry's ass in his hands, lifting him off the bed a few inches, Harry arched his back and came.
Short and sweet and ultimately, he thought as he rode Severus's lap minutes later, simple enough for everyday use, this fucking.
Fifteen minutes later, he was able to scrape his voice back together into something audibly useable. "One of these nights, you're going to tell me why we're having all this sex," Harry said, wiping his cock with the damp cloth before tossing it into the laundry bin, where it would probably moulder before he could launder it.
There was a tinkle of glass when Severus returned to the bed, shaking his head and smirking. "No doubt you feel I'm having a midlife crisis of some sort," he murmured. "Maybe I'm having an affair, like you intimated a few nights ago." His voice was tinted with something light, teasing, as teasing as he ever was. Harry liked to think that it was flavoured with cranberries.
Are you? he wanted to ask. But instead, "I'll be on stakeout tomorrow night."
Severus handed him the water glass and sipped from his own. "So you'll be out all night?"
Harry shrugged, draining the glass and setting it on the nightstand. He flopped back onto the bed. "Yeah," he began, but then yawned and decided not to say anything more. Usually he told Severus more about his schedule. He had never signed the Official Secrets Act, and it wasn't as if he was bound by anything. But if Ginny's plan to catch the Man-Bat (owled to him after they had left Ron and Hermione's and noticeably written on the back of a page of playset assemblage instructions) was going to work, then he needed to be as quiet as possible. Radio silence was easier if one did it all the time and not selectively; that was one thing he remembered from his three days of Unspeakable training.
"I shan't come home then," Severus said mildly. "I have a few things that I could start at the lab which require overnight supervision. This would be convenient."
Harry opened one of his eyes and watched Severus stare off into space, mind already elsewhere as he lounged against the pillows at the head of the bed. His hand clenched the water glass and convulsed once or twice in a squeezing motion.
He didn't have time before he drifted off, but if he had, Harry would have wondered whom Severus was thinking about.
***
Harry sat outside the abandoned airplane hangar that the Ministry owned in Macclesfield and used a magnifying spell on his eyes so that he wouldn't have to demand that Colin give over the binoculars. It was easy to see the hangar was not well staffed. Its materials were classified, so it was an attractive spot for the Man-Bat to show up, Ginny had argued. It was probably only a matter of time.
Colin tapped the comm in his hand, a small cell-like device Romilda had made them, and which ran on magic but sent text messages like a Muggle phone. Colin was texting someone with the small slide out QWERTY keyboard.
"I'm sending Susan a smiley. Susan likes smilies."
Harry smirked; if there was one person in the world who didn't like smilies, it was probably hormonal Susan. Or Severus. He wondered if Severus even knew what emoticons were. There were some things Severus was better off not knowing about; there were only so many precious things he could take before he dragged his black clothes from the closet and sat in the lounge with a glass of scotch, reading Camus.
"Let me know if Ginny texts you." He was ignoring his comm until he had to. The strap was bulky and he had already slightly broken it because he had sat on it when it was in his back pocket. Romilda said he was the worst tech abuser, and that was saying a great deal, seeing as how Ginny and Susan had grown up with no knowledge of Muggle tech. In fact, whenever 'Milda tried to explain how she was modifying their tech, Ginny grinned at Harry and said, 'It's like magic!'
He liked to think that he got Ginny. Their kid was lucky. And also doomed.
"She just did," Colin chirped. There was a pause. "El-oh-el."
Harry sighed. "Let me know if she texts anything important." His eyes tracked the lone guard around the hangar. If the Man-Bat was going to strike, he'd knock out the guard, probably. From this angle they could see the guard on the east side of the building. Ginny and Susan had the other corner, watching the north and west. Unless the Man-Bat Apparated into the building itself, which he couldn't do, unless he'd found a way around the Ministry's Anti-Apparition spells. If he had done that, then he was more dangerous than anyone had given him credit for.
Harry wondered when he had started referring to the Man-Bat as a 'he'. One glance at Ginny or Hermione would convince anyone that gender wasn't really a solid factor in determining craftiness or, apparently, the desire for wanton destruction.
Colin turned to him then. "She calls you 'Snitch', right?"
Harry nodded distractedly. "Our code names. We established them early on."
Colin smiled. "You never use her code name."
"Right." Harry looked away from the hangar then, at Colin, and the magnification spell gave him a very up close and personal view of Colin's nose hair. He cancelled the spell before he gave himself vertigo or tore a cornea. He was starting to formulate a plan, but it relied on Ginny being in the right place at the right time. Colin waited. "Oh, it, uh, it rhymes with mine and starts with B." He rolled his eyes. "Of course I don't use it."
Colin winked. "Susan chose mine." It was Puppylove. Harry was about to reply when their comms flared to life and he got the text from Ginny that read, 'WHAR R U? GOING IN 5 MIN. TAKE THE ROOF.' Of course, she had her own plan, one that she hadn't bothered to tell the other team, Harry and Colin. She and Susan were obviously the first team. When Harry had questioned her logic, she had smiled at him and said, 'Oh come on, boys versus girls. Like old times!' Harry hadn't the heart to remind her that they'd been out of school for fifteen years.
Harry stood and cracked his neck. "I take that back. I use it when it's appropriate."
That had been part of the plan, too. Ginny and Harry figured that they didn't want to clear their presence with the Ministry beforehand. No telling where The Man-Bat had ears. Bat ears. Harry snorted at the image.
No, no clearing their little stakeout with the Ministry. It had been a moment of clandestine agreement, really, in which they had both decided that the guard couldn’t be trusted with any information, not when Legilimency was such a useful skill, and not completely uncommon. At this point Harry just wanted to get in as quickly and unspoken as possible.
It occurred to Harry that if he was caught breaking into the Ministry building and the press discovered it, no matter what thread the Ministry spun afterwards, everyone would see this as confirmation that he was the Man-Bat. Harry said a silent prayer to a faceless deity and tried to trust Ginny's instincts.
He texted quickly as he left the relative safety of the tall grass. "GOT IT. C IN PLACE. 3 IN. 1 OUT. ROOF NOW."
He was almost to the blind spot that the guard would pass and be unaware of for about fifteen minutes, when he got another text, this one from Susan: "call him puppylove, s.'
Okay, so hormonal Susan had a sense of humor still. Misplaced, but still there.
Harry paused in a crouch in the field just at the edge of the grass that the Ministry really should have been looking after if they didn't want to aid and abet possible infiltrators. The guard was one of those tired sentries who sat at the doorway, and every twenty minutes did a round on the warehouse. Harry figured that he had about fifteen minutes, give or take, that he could use to scale the wall of the building; it was difficult to pinpoint the exact time, because he didn't know where the guard was in his route at any given moment, and he didn't pace himself, but rather walked with the gait of the unpredictable. Maybe that was why he was on duty here and not inside with the other three guards, at whose locations Harry could only guess.
Not for the first time, Harry wished that Romilda would hurry up with those infrared goggles. He wondered if he shouldn't ask the twins about them. It had occurred to him to introduce Romilda to Fred and George, but he was afraid that the resulting explosion was like to kill them all.
He saw a movement from the roof, a little flash of a pocket torch, and he knew that Ginny was already up on the roof, and she was monitoring the guard from there. Harry stuffed his comm in his pocket, patted himself down for loose articles, and pulled his wand. This took a little bit of effort, right here.
Harry waved his wand in a snappish movement, rocked on the balls of his feet and stepped one foot back as if he were about to start a race. "Aeroscalare," he whispered, and then was off in a blur, feet pounding the ground until he flicked his wand again, thirty feet from the hangar; without slowing down at all, he began to run up the invisible set of stairs he had created out of thin air, each step so fleeting under his foot that if he stopped or slowed they would disappear and he would fall to the ground. Not unlike running across water, really.
He almost stumbled on the last step and he fell onto the tin roof of the warehouse with a thud, but Ginny had already muffled the sound for him, and he didn't have to look sheepish about almost giving their presence away.
"Best spell ever," Ginny said as she pulled him up. "Susan is a fucking genius."
Harry had to concur. He shoved his wand back into his holster and peeked over the edge of the roof for their guard. Ginny faced Colin and flashed her mini-torch. There was a slight flicker of assent, and then she turned to Harry, hands on hips.
"I'd forgotten how much fun that is," she said cheerfully. "Come on, I found the skylight." She turned and whispered over her shoulder, "Really, all that security, and they can't lock a skylight or two."
Harry rather thought that was indicative of the Ministry in general sometimes. He smiled and took another second to look out over the area: nothing for quite a ways, actually. Far off lights of industry and homes, probably Muggle in the distance. The wind picked up and carded his hair, and he closed his eyes and tilted his chin; it smelled a little like rain.
"Oi! Batman!" Ginny hissed. "You'll scare him off."
Harry sighed and followed her into the skylight, clattering on the metal grating of the rafters and balancing precariously as they made their way across the girders to a corner where they wouldn't be spotted by either guards or the Man-Bat if he, she, it had the same idea to come in that way. Ginny braced her back against the outside wall of the hangar and glanced about. Harry settled with his legs hanging off to the side of the girder away from their guards and followed suit.
They waited for about thirty minutes, crouching in the upper levels of the hangar and watching the guards play cards and grumble about their girlfriends and wives and the state of the latest Quidditch match. Ginny turned to him and mimed a 'yak yak' gesture with her fingers, rolling her eyes.
Harry let his mind drift elsewhere. He was tired, and the Pepperup that he'd taken to stave off exhaustion was starting to wear off. Stakeouts were pains in the arse.
The hangar was fairly unremarkable. It had originally been built to house the small planes of World War II, Spitfires and Cessnas and the like, whatever they were. Obviously the Ministry had acquired it at some point, possibly through a purchase, though sometimes they obtained the deeds as 'gifts' from the Muggle government. This one was a document overflow, actually, one of the last ones. Most Wizarding world documents were shrunk and then boxed, filed and stored in the Ministry's vaults, but recent years had seen a massive increase in loose paperwork, and so some of the properties had been allotted for temporary storage. This place, with its boxes upon boxes of papers piled in stacks, was one such place. Ministry policy dictated that the area be secure, no matter what the documents contained. Hence the guard.
The three additional men inside were a surprise, though. They didn't seem particularly busy, actually, which was confusing. He had a hard time believing Undersecretary Weasley would be even remotely approving of paying three men time-and-a-half to sit about and play cards and whinge unless there was a good reason.
Harry found himself wondering about that instead of the real reason he was there. He thought to mention it to Ginny, when they watched the skylight open and a hand snaked down into view, opening so that something small and black could fall down into the hangar proper. Ginny and Harry followed its landing and then pulled their wands when the item in question began to release billows of smoke. The guards jumped up from their card game and pulled their wands, glancing about wildly. Harry was fairly sure that they hadn't seen the skylight open and the smoke bomb fall.
Ginny nudged him then, and the first curse fired off into the smoke as the guards tried to guess from where their attacker was coming. A Stupefy echoed in the room, and there was a thud as one of the guards was felled by friendly fire. Amateurs.
The smoke had spread out into the entire room, thick and dark, about six feet high and rising. Harry wondered if even a Bubble-Head charm would work. Sure, it would keep the smoke out of his eyes, but that wouldn't help much when he wouldn't be able to see three feet in front of him. Ginny tried a few wind spells, but they didn't seem to be doing much except pushing the stuff around.
It was then that the Man-Bat used the skylight, a long cloak pouring into the opening before him, its edges pointed and curling as if it was sentient and searching for things to cling to. One edge ran along the girder, tentacle-like, and curled about the metal strut. It was followed by the Man-Bat, landing on the catwalk and bending down over the railing to examine the smoke below.
"Woah, cape," Ginny whispered. "Memory cloth."
Harry blinked and tried to examine the cape closer. It was hard when it moved so quickly and surely. It had to be alive. Or something. Memory cloth was a myth, or at least it was supposed to be. In the Muggle world, Memory cloth was actually an electromaganetic theory. In the Wizarding world, Memory cloth was sentient material that had been banned in the fifties, if it had ever existed in the first place. Rumour had it that the enchanted cloth had been used in costumes and other places, until it had become a little too independent for its own good and occasionally rebelled against its wearer. Apparently, the Minister of Magic's wife at the time had had a disagreement with her evening gown about the placement of a corsage whilst at the opera, and the garment had abandoned her, taking off for the orchestra pit. Memory cloth had been banned relatively soon after, before most people had ever had time to process its existence in the first place.
But here it was, supporting its wearer, the Man-Bat, who dangled from the ceiling strut with one arm, then dropped to the ground, as if gravity didn't apply to him. Harry swore under his breath and Ginny whistled as they watched the Man-Bat land on the floor in a crouch, and then rise, cloak overly long and moving sedately, curling about his form. Harry cocked his head and felt a surge of jealousy; the cape was cracker.
The cape appeared to be connected to a mask on the Man-Bat's face, obscuring it from the nose up. Bah. Harry should have expected a mask. He was a little disappointed that there weren't any ears, as impractical as they might have been.
Ginny pulled her cell out and texted the release message to Colin and Susan, 'O_O', the agreed upon signal that it was time for them to move. The front door of the hangar had already burst in, and the outside guard called to his compatriots. So much for the Man-Bat knocking him out. Harry thought about how they were going to play this, but the Man-Bat's cape moved and he became invisible in the smoke. With Harry's luck, he probably had some sort of shielding charm that allowed him to see through the haze, maybe something with his mask.
Ginny took a few deep breaths and pointed to the far side of the warehouse, where Susan would be coming from. Harry nodded and sat back on his haunches. Someone needed to cover the skylight, and that was he until Colin made an appearance. With a wave of her wand and another Aeroscalare, Ginny was all but falling off the girder and tumbling into the mist in an almost controlled manner. Harry rolled his eyes and waited.
It was impossible to see anything, and he wasn't sure what the Man-Bat could remotely be interested in, but Harry intended to arrest the man here, put an end to the vandalism. The reality was that deep inside, he didn't actually care about the Man-Bat or the damage he was causing. He was a bit more distracted by the lights out in East Anglia, but bringing this case to a close might get him enough good grace from higher-ups to allow him to poke about in the Department of Mysteries, and that made it worth it.
Plus, setting things on fire was not on, no matter what the twins tried to tell him. There was a time and a place, and that place (and time) was not now.
There were a series of screams, and he heard Ginny shout a Stupefy. Something exploded and papers shot into the air like a fountain. One of the guards was hit with a curse and he flew up, over the smoke and back down, landing with a sick thud. Harry ground his teeth and waited.
Finally, Colin dropped into the skylight and onto the catwalk. As soon as Harry saw him, he made the 'wait here' signal and dropped down into the smoke, his own spells dampening his fall.
The ground level was almost literally swathed with night, and his eyes teared. He cast a Bubble-Head charm so that he could at least save his eyes, and waved his hands. A few wind spells simply succeeded on swirling the mess about. Harry was reminded of the Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder the twins sold; this was like that, but only a thousand times better.
Papers fluttered in the air about him. One of the guards lay on the floor at his feet, and he almost stumbled over the man's unconscious body. Harry followed the sounds of fighting to another area of the hangar, running into several crates and boxes along the way. Ginny's voice was loud as she shouted, and he wondered if she'd managed to corner the Man-Bat, or if she was yelling at the other guards or Susan, or just yelling so that he could find her. He did a Point Me, made it mobile, and followed it through the maze of boxes.
Ginny ran face-first into him, and they reeled a little with the shock of it. Her wand pulled up in the idle position as she grabbed his shoulder. "He's back that way, I think. These blokes are violent. One of them tried to hit me with a Cruciatus."
Harry understood her meaning. "Unspeakables?" he mumbled, close to her ear.
Ginny peered off into the darkness through both hers and his Bubble Heads and shrugged. "Too organised for anything else. Take the left, I'll take the right, and don't let them hit you."
Harry tried to focus on her words, but the smoke was clearing, as if it had sensed that it wasn't needed anymore, and he wondered if the Man-Bat was still even on the premises. He let his Bubble charm drop as Ginny dashed off to the left, disappearing behind a column of wooden document boxes. Somewhere in the opposite direction, there were a few shouts, and he wondered where Susan was. It was really a mistake for her to be down here, breathing in whatever smoke this was, not while she was pregnant. He kicked himself that he hadn't thought of that. He chanced at glance up at Colin, but he was too far from the skylight to see anything.
Something whispered around a tall stack of crates, and a few papers floated in the breeze of the departing smoke. Harry dashed forward, reaching out to grasp the Memory cloth before it disappeared around the corner. It was oily and slick in his grip, pulling away from his fingers when he closed them. Its owner tugged at the cloak, but Harry had managed to dislodge it minutely enough that the cowl slipped from Man-Bat's head. Harry raised his wand to cast a Stupefy; this had gone on long enough.
The Man-Bat whirled and tried to pull the mask back into place, but the damage was done. Harry lowered his wand and felt his jaw gaping open. The figure froze, shoulders a little hunched, breathing heavy. The papers fluttered from his hand.
"Severus?"
Severus's eyes widened, and he whirled away, dashing off to the right, through the open hangar door. Behind him, Harry heard Ginny yelling something about tentacles. Oh well, nothing for it. He turned heel and ran towards her voice.
***
Back to master post
Author: Amand-r
Team: Snitch
Genre(s): Alive and Kicking (EWE)
Prompt(s): Green Lantern, Enemy At The Gate
Rating/Warnings/Kinks: NC-17 for sex (contains fisting), R for violence. Some canon deaths ignored. Also? Kinda cracky.
Word Count: 28,000+ some
Summary: There's a man stalking the Wizarding world. Or a bat. Maybe a Man-Bat. Severus is probably having an affair, Harry's tired all the time, oh, and those drunks out in East Anglia are complaining about the green lights. Again.
Author Notes/Disclaimers/Betas Thanks to
jadzialove for being the best joanwilder, aka Alfred, hit all of it, especially part 4, with a batarang of spag (Thanks beth for a few quick saves!). All italicized bumper quotes from The Tick: The Animated Series. PART TWO: NOTHING TO SEE HERE. MOVE ALONG.
You know, evil comes in many forms, be it a man-eating cow or Joseph Stalin. But you can't let the package hide the pudding. Evil is just plain bad. You don't cotton to it. You gotta smack it on the nose with the rolled up newspaper of goodness. Bad dog! Bad dog!
Harry sighed and kicked a few rocks as he walked through the field with Amos Frobisher. The man was in full 'I am not a wizard' wizard gear: dress, shiny mac, mismatched wellies, and a hat that screamed, 'Yes, I Muggle cosplay! Ask me how!' Sometimes, Harry wondered if the Ministry oughtn't to put out a pamphlet about how to dress in the Muggle world, and then he thought that if they did, then all the secondhand women's clothing shops in Britain might go out of business.
"So you say that the lights come from over there," Harry said as they tromped across the field and towards the abandoned water mill. It looked run down and ramshackle, as if no one had been in it for ages. Maybe some magical creature had somehow set up shop in it, and he would have to clear them out.
"And the screams," Frobisher said, crinkling his eyes at Harry. "Didn't you read the letters? Sent fifteen of them this month, we have."
Harry frowned and shrugged. "I'm sorry, I only read the last five, then. I don't know where the others went. Where did you send them?" He didn't really care, but it might have been relevant, and Harry had learnt that keeping people talking was one of the best ways to discover things unintentionally. Like if the man was distilling illegal firewhisky out here. If he was, Harry wanted to buy some.
Frobisher waved his hands, almost like a pinwheel. "Sent them to everyone. The Minister, the Undersecretary, your office. Found out last week that you lot own those buildings." 'You Lot' must have meant the Ministry. It was Harry's only card in placating Frobisher, actually, and he was going to play it.
"I just found that out myself," he told him, glaring at the mill and the barn structures beyond it. He really didn't want to have to investigate himself, but when he'd sent Colin out here by himself, he'd found nothing. And the lights were still bothering Frobisher and his family, and with the added bonus of screaming, well, Harry just didn’t want to do it himself.
Ginny had sent him a brief note that said: Snitch—YOUR SON hexed his fingers together, and I'll be at St. Mungo's for the morning. Have fun in East Anglia! B.
Funny how James was always his son when he did something stupid.
So here he was, entertaining Amos Frobisher, ploughing through a muddy field, with a cup of piss-poor Starbucks in his hand and wishing that he could just inject the caffeine right into his bloodstream with a needle. He thought about asking Severus to make him something for the fatigue, and then he thought about what could be causing it. Harry dropped that line of thinking, because they were all medical things that he didn't want to consider.
He looked at Frobisher and wondered if the man really had been drinking. The thing was, he didn't smell drunk, and he was eccentric, not crazy. Harry didn't like the idea of green lights as a matter of course; they were associated with too many things that never amounted to good, especially in the Wizarding world.
"Well, I don't know how you do things in London, Auror Potter, but here, we have manners. You respond to a letter you've received."
Harry sipped from his coffee and wondered how Starbucks could completely botch something so easy to make. It was as if they burnt the beans on purpose, because they had known that he was coming. "I assure you," he said absentmindedly, "that Auror Creevey paid close attention when he was out here. He simply didn't get a chance to witness what you describe. I promise that I'll go over and have a look in those buildings, and I apologise that I haven't gotten out here sooner. But I'm here now." He dumped the coffee out onto the grass and watched interestedly to see if it would kill it. He stowed the empty cup in his bag and wondered if 'Milda would yell at him for getting coffee on the State Secrets folders again. Oh well.
Frobisher grumbled under his breath. "Too busy with the bloody Man-Bat, you are," he said, and when Harry rolled his eyes, he added, "I hope Man-Bat comes out here and burns the whole lot down. Nothing but trouble for the past five months, with the lights and the screaming." When Harry glanced at him, Frobisher stabbed him in the chest with his finger. "I know you, Harry Potter. You have friends in high places, so you take care of this."
And with that, the man spun on his heel and stalked off in the direction from which they had come. Harry shook his head and watched him go, his women's coat flapping in the breeze of his gait. Wizards.
"Batman," he muttered, and then set off for the mill.
He was about twenty feet from the structure when someone stepped out of it, closing the door behind him as normal as you please, as if he came and went all the time. No matter that the thing looked about to fall down. Harry wondered if he was squatting in there. That might explain a great deal of things. Well, not actually, it didn't explain anything at all.
Harry waved his hand and shrugged his messenger bag. He had incendiaries in there and he didn't want to lose or jostle them. He raised one hand. "Hullo there! Nice day!"
The man said nothing. Harry tried to remember as much about him as possible: five nine, rail thin, maybe 170 pounds. Black hair, very short. Squinty eyes-- though it was sunny out and the Wizarding world seemed to have an unhealthy aversion to sunglasses. Harry pushed his further up his nose.
"Not allowed here," the man said, his voice gruff. The kind of gruff that raised Harry's hackles. He knew that tone. It was Department of Mysteries. He had often wondered if they taught that no-nonsense voice and attitude in some sort of orientation class upon joining the department. He wished he could get hold of that training himself; it might help him deal with his personal life. On second thought, Severus never responded well to threats. That was his version of foreplay.
"I'm Harry Potter," he said, shouldering his bag again and shoving his hands in his pockets. "I'm here from the Auror's office, just checking out some complaints." He looked over the man's shoulder at the building, with its partially boarded windows and curious green glass glinting in the sun. That would explain Frobisher's green lights. "They keep seeing lights over here at night, said something about screaming. I'm just here to make sure everything is okay."
He started forward but was stopped when the man stepped in front of him, into his personal space. Harry didn't blink. This man wasn't even remotely scary; Harry knew scary—he'd faced down Voldemort, died, come back to life. Hell, he'd been there when Ginny had gone into labour. "Really," he said, trying to be harmless but imposing, "I'll just have a look about, and then be on my way."
"Hold on hold on," the man said, raising his wand. "I said, no admittance."
Harry crossed his arms and tried to look intimidating. It was hard, he suspected, when he was wearing wellies under his robes. Wellies, that he had only just noticed, were not his usual black ones, but a blue pinstripe. Colin's nerd wellies. He hadn't even been paying attention when he'd tugged them on at the office.
"I don't know if I can just leave, unless I see some identification, Mister…?"
The man lowered his wand and shrugged, pulling a small card from his robes and handing it to Harry, who took it in two fingers and read the scrolling script:
Department of Mysteries
Send all inquiries care of Level Nine
Mister Ketterer glanced behind him at the building, and if Harry didn't know better, he would have said the man was nervous. Maybe Harry didn't know better.
Harry tucked the card in his pocket and brushed his wand in its holster. It wasn't worth a showdown, really, and he could just go back to work and throttle some heads until he found out what he wanted to know, or—
"Look, I gather this is some sort of classified thing," he said, glancing about, trying to make it seem as if he was being conciliatory. "I get it. I really do. But those people over there—" He thumbed over his shoulder. "Think that you're doing some sort of secret government experiments that are likely to kill us all."
Roger smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Nonsense. Country wizards." He shrugged as if to say, 'What can you do?' The hairs on the back of Harry's neck itched suddenly with the weight of that smile, and he thought of Ginny. His eyes slid back to the mill, the green lights in the windows, and the three hangars beyond that. A lone tree in the middle of the grouping of buildings bent a little in the breeze. Its leaves were all dead. It was May.
Harry gestured to the tree. "It's dead. You all should do something about that."
"What?" Roger looked behind him for a second, eyes wide with worry, but when they settled on the tree, he visibly calmed. Harry was starting to think that Roger's Unspeakable training had only covered the first two bases: intimidate and shun, and had neglected the last one, poker face.
"Your tree," Harry said. "Could come down one day, damage the building." He smiled innocently. "The fragile, wooden building." Oh no, not threatening at all.
Roger shrugged. "We'll deal with it. Call on the neighbors." He returned Harry's smile wanly. "Send them a fruit basket."
Harry didn't think he'd ever want to get a fruit basket from the Department of Mysteries. Or Fred and George. Or Ginny. Actually, he didn't much care for fruit baskets. Too many apples. But he couldn't do anything standing here like an arse. On the other hand, his curiosity was officially piqued. This was loads better and more interesting than Man-Bat-Thing. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and took a few shuffling steps backwards.
"Well then, I'll leave you to it, Mister Ketterer. I mean, it's not as if you're storing bodies in there, are you?" Harry chuckled at the sentence, like he knew he was supposed to, but he watched Ketterer's eye twitch.
The Department of Mysteries needed better employees.
Harry spun on the spot and Apparated back to the Ministry, a whole new set of questions in his head.
***
There was a note waiting for him when he got back, and 'Milda waved from across the room, her mouth full of what looked like wiring cables. Harry wondered how she was actually able to do half of the 'Muggle tech improvements' that she did, and if any of them had been approved by the head office. Then he realised that he didn't care. He flipped open the note with one hand and pulled off his wellies with the other as he sat down, tossing the boots in the general direction of the bin in which they were supposed to live.
Come by at noon. Bring a curry.
Ron
ps: and samosas. Not the shite ones.
Harry smiled. Ron's love of Muggle take-away was endearing, and also a bit of a pain in the arse. He would have to make a side trip to Muggle London, though that was really just an inconvenience. Harry was used to being inconvenienced by Ron, in the good way. Ron's "inconveniences" these days usually involved Muggle take-away and treacle tart.
He was at the house at noon sharp, and he didn't even bother ringing, just opened the backdoor and walked into the kitchen in time to see Rose dash past him, pink hair flying behind her, topless, wearing a pair of flip flops and a sparkly filmy skirt. Ron came close behind her, grabbing for her halfheartedly, and when she turned the corner and ran screaming mimi into the front of the house, he straightened, waved his hands dismissively and turned to Harry. His hair stood on end and his t-shirt read, 'Does this face look sane to you?'
"Hey," Ron exclaimed. "Is it noon already? It feels like I just got up. Is my hair wonky?" He reached up to ruffle his hair and then shrugged.
Harry set the bags down on the counter and leaned against it. Hugo darted out from behind a chair, smiled at Harry, and bolted off in the direction his sister had gone. "How did you ever convince Hermione that you were the one suited for this?" he asked.
Ron pulled two glasses from the cupboard. "I lost the coin toss." Over his shoulder he called, "Rosita! Rose! Lunch!"
Rose ran back into the room, skidded to a stop in front of them, accepted the half of a sandwich that Ron had produced from nowhere, mumbled something like, "ThankyouSOmuch," and ran out again. Two seconds after she left, Hugo rounded the corner, said, "ThankyouSOmuch" for no reason, and dashed off after his sister.
"Your daughter's hair is pink," Harry mused.
Ron looked at him distractedly while he dug about in the cupboards. "What? Oh yeah. She asked me to this morning." He shrugged. "What can I say? It was raining." Harry was sure that explained something, but he wasn't sure what. Instead of bothering to decipher the conversation any further, Harry accepted the plates from Ron and set them up at the kitchen table. From the lounge area he heard squealing and the telly playing something. Ron rolled his eyes.
"When I was little, we thought a telly was some sort of talking doll," he mumbled. "Not that I don't like Muggle tech, Harry, but still…" He shook his head and plunked down in a chair next to Harry, then called over his shoulder, "ONLY ONE EPISODE!" Harry smirked; apparently Ron was taking notes from the Molly Weasley school of parenting.
They opened the cartons and dug in, eating in silence for a few minutes before Ron summoned a pitcher of pumpkin juice, tossing his wand down on a stack of legal briefs on the table. Harry wondered if they ever actually ate from the table. It certainly wasn't cleared well enough to sit four. Molly must have had a fit every time she came round.
"So, tell me everything," Ron demanded, waving a fork and nearly stabbing Harry in the cheek. "Is my sister still making a mockery of our profession?"
Harry smiled and pulled the lid from his tikka mala. "Not quite. She's really good, you know. You complain too much. I might keep her if you decide to do this forever."
Ron flicked aloo palak at him. "Bite your tongue. This is fun and all, but she's just a place holder until I come back."
They heard giggling from the other room, and Ron glanced in its direction but didn't seem concerned. Harry tucked a serviette in his neck; the last thing he needed was to get sauce on his robes.
He'd always hoped that Ron would decide to come back after his leave of absence, but it was hard to see why he would on some days. Sometimes Harry wanted nothing more than to curl up on the settee and sleep. He suspected that this rarely happened with small children, but the siren call of home and sleep seemed to override practicality at this point.
"Well," he said, "I'm sure that she'll hang about while you get back into shape for work," he ribbed.
"Are you serious?" Ron asked, wiping his forehead. "I run five miles a day in the morning before 'Mione leaves for work." He shoveled the goat cheese into his mouth and spoke before he was done chewing. "I have to stay in shape. When Hugo's ready for Primary, I'm back to the grind."
Harry stabbed at his chicken. "I dunno. I guess I envy anyone who can stay home. Right now. I'm tired. It'd be nice to laze about—"
"Oi!" Ron grinned. "What, do you think I sit about all day and eat Chocolate Cauldrons? Listen to my stories on the radio?" He looked thoughtful. "Well, there is The Wicked and Wonderful at two…." He drifted off but came back to reality when Harry snorted. Ron stabbed his shoulder with his finger and scowled. "But that's only because it's naptime, and I listen to the radio when I do the dishes!"
Harry offered him the greasy bag of samosas. "Riiiiiiiiiiight."
Ron dug into the bag, whipped out a samosa and bit it in half, sighing. "Oh, yes." He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, he smiled and waved the remaining samosa. "These two have eaten nothing but spag bol for the past three nights. 'Mione keeps eating at the office." He stuffed the remaining half-samosa in his mouth and talked while he chewed, his hand rising in a shield. "Go on, what's going on?"
Harry picked at his food and told Ron about Frobisher and the lights. They conferred about the incompetence of young and incompletely trained Unspeakables. Harry had once considered becoming an Unspeakable, but it had become fairly obvious early in the interview process that they considered him too high profile to be useful. He didn't blame them; even the Auror office still used him as a press magnet and spokesman sometimes. He didn't mind. It was all part and parcel to being Harry Potter, and he'd made his peace with that.
As long as he didn't have to ever talk to Rita Skeeter again.
He told him about Fred and George and their story of the warehouse. Ron retold the story of Draco Malfoy's mental breakdown, and they shared a second of silence in which Harry wondered if fifteen years shouldn't have been enough to alleviate his dislike of Malfoy. Apparently not.
"And to top it all off, I think I'm becoming ill," he added, "and Severus is having an affair."
"Bollocks," Ron said. There was a shriek from the lounge, and he called out, "Daddy's allowed to say bad words!" Harry sensed that this was an ongoing argument.
Ron sat back and swilled his pumpkin juice. "It's not an affair, mate," he said finally, waving his hand. "You're tired. He's busy. You know he has all his creepy potions bullshite." He raised his eyebrows. Ron had never had any love for Severus, but he'd become civil, downright friendly, over the years. Harry suspected that Ron was satisfied as long as Harry was happy, and it was the best he could hope for. It was unfair to ask Ron to completely approve of a man who still took opportunities to insult him to this day.
He also had to concur. Severus did in fact have 'all his creepy potions bullshite'. Harry had long stopped asking about it. Some days he wondered, when Severus smelled off or came back from his rented lab space looking decidedly singed. It actually was better not to know, as Severus would tell him and then roll his eyes and mutter something about not asking about Harry's day.
That was all right, actually, not really discussing that kind of stuff; they'd gone years with sporadic updates on their professional lives. They just weren't that way. Severus didn't care about interoffice politics, or outer office politics, for that matter, as long as they weren't restricting his import and export lanes for ingredients. Harry found that descriptions of drams and draughts and slugs and fawn teeth (ground) was just as much of a sedative as it had ever been when he had been in school.
He picked idly at a piece of chicken. "D'you suppose Frobisher is onto something with this mill-warehouse thingy?" he asked suddenly, eager to change the subject. "I've a mind to go down to the ninth floor and ask what's going on out there."
Ron shrugged. "It couldn't hurt, actually. They like to keep us out of the loop, and then when we come in, everything's need to know until someone loses an eye. And then it's all 'Oh, sorry about the eye, we're mysterious, grar!'" Ron raised his hands into claws and made a face, then rolled his eyes. "Wankers."
"I'll send them a memo," Harry groaned. "Something official and scary. Make 'Milda work for her paycheque."
"Brilliant." Ron dug about for another samosa and grinned, giving Harry the look he used when he knew he was about to be an arse. "Say, this bat creature thing that's popping up everywhere—"
"Working on it," Harry grated out. If one more person asked him what he knew about the vandalism case, he was going to scream. That meant seven people at work this morning, Severus at home, and the 'bearista'. He had half expected the Muggle who handed him his take-away this afternoon to say, 'Say, about that mysterious bat-thing…'
Ron smiled. "I take a few years off and you get all the fun cases." Harry gave him the V, but he ignored it, shrugging cheerfully. "If you don't solve it, everyone will keep thinking it's you."
Harry glared at him then. "Who the hell thinks it's me? Have you been talking to Ginny?" He stabbed a piece of onion. "And don't say Witch Weekly."
Ron reached across the table and grabbed a paper from a stack, flipping it over and brushing what looked like porridge off the front. "Kids," he offered. "Can't live with them, can't sell them to the gypsies. Hermione told me I couldn't." He set the paper in front of Harry and pointed. "You've been outed. By the Quibbler."
Harry raised an eyebrow. "You get the Quibbler?"
The shrug was casual. "Luna gave us a lifetime subscription as a wedding present." Then he grinned. "So? Are you Man-Bat?"
The caption read, 'THE BOY WHO IS A BAT?' Harry looked at pictures of himself juxtaposed with the photo from last night and sighed. This was going to get out of control. He could feel it already. It felt itchy.
"What I like," Ron said, raising his eyebrows exponentially and smiling, "is the part where you're an unregistered bat Animagus. A battymagus." He grinned. "So many jokes, so little time."
***
The next day, Harry lay on the grass of Hermione and Ron's back garden with a glass of lemonade and Pimm's balanced on his stomach, watching them attempt to assemble The Most Complicated Playset Ever.
Hermione rapped Ron on the head with her manual. "Pay attention," she said, her brows drawn together. "This is important."
Ron flapped his hands and rolled his eyes. "This is a playset," he replied. "Not advanced Arithmancy." He waved a hand at a metal part. "Hand over that…thingy."
Harry watched Hermione glance out over the lawn filled with 'thingys.' He smirked when she rolled her eyes. "Where did you put the gratchet?"
"The what?" Ron asked, his eyes riveted to the two pieces of metal that he was attempting to shove into each other, as if it were obvious that they fit together. "I think we need to borrow Dad's soldering gun."
Harry grabbed his glass, rolled over, and left them there, arguing about what the hell a gratchet was anyway as he went in search of Severus.
Hermione had told them to stop by as she ran past him in the Atrium the night before, and Harry wasn't going to pass up a chance to lie in the sun with a cold beverage and watch his friends attempt to parent; over the years he had developed what he liked to think was a reasonable amount of schadenfreude, though it was all probably something he'd absorbed by osmosis from Severus.
And speaking of the man…
Severus was lounging in one of the outside chairs by the patio doors, his teacup full and abandoned on the table next to him, a newspaper spread all over the surface. Harry glanced at it over his shoulder: he'd circled articles and blurbs from the crime blotter. Harry started to ask, but then he saw that Severus had also typo checked the Apothecary section, and boxed a few want ads for draft potions work.
"Should we help them?" he asked as he pulled a chair over and sat down next to Severus. The man glanced up before retrieving his teacup and sipping from it.
"You want to help assemble the deathtrap?"
Harry glanced back at Ron and Hermione, deeply embroiled in the search for the missing gratchet. "I admit that as much as I like watching them scramble, I fear I would do just as badly. Just because it's Muggle doesn't mean that I understand it."
"You must be joking," Severus said over the rim of his glass. "Even if I weren't feeling ill, what would ever make you think that I'd be willing to submit to such an idiotic exercise as assembling a playset for a child that isn't mine?" He paused. "My child. Horrifying."
Harry ruffled his hair a bit and he had the pride to look offended. "You just don't know what a gratchet is."
Severus snapped his paper and brought it in front of his face. "I'm busy."
Harry sat next to him on the bench and sipped from his glass, staring out over the lawn, where Hermione and Ron were still divining the secrets of Muggle assemblage instructions and Ginny was tumbling around in the grass with Rose and James. He couldn't help but feel a small measure of pride when he looked at his son, but really, he shared Severus's assessment of the concept. Ginny was a better parent than he could ever be, and he'd been more than willing to accommodate her when she'd asked him to lend her a proverbial hand in the situation, but James wasn't his. Not really. Not that way.
A glance at Severus told him that he was all right with that.
"So," Harry said conspiratorially, leaning in and resting his cheek on Severus's shoulder. "Should we beg off?"
Severus rolled the paper into a tube and drained his cup. "Finally," he muttered and rose, stalking off the lawn without a backward glance at Hermione or Ron. Harry shrugged at Hermione and she sighed. Ron just frowned at the instructional booklet and called, "Goodbye Snape," without looking up.
Harry grinned. Sometimes he loved Severus more than he thought was possible.
***
Later that night, Harry groaned when Severus ran his tongue up the underside of his cock.
It had started as a simple bedtime routine. He had fully intended on going to sleep as soon as he lay down, but Severus's hands had snaked their way up his sides and onto his chest, and he had responded without considering just how exhausted he really was.
Severus hummed around his cock, tugging his balls and squeezing. His other hand worked his own cock lackadaisically, waiting for a better time maybe. Sometimes it wasn't about them both, he once told Harry, sometimes it was about doing something.
Harry liked when the something Severus was doing was him.
The bed sheets twisted around Harry's feet when he rolled his ankles. Severus took him completely into his mouth and turned his head a bit, his teeth scraping Harry's foreskin. His hair whispered across Harry's stomach and thighs, and when he spread Harry's knees further apart and cradled Harry's ass in his hands, lifting him off the bed a few inches, Harry arched his back and came.
Short and sweet and ultimately, he thought as he rode Severus's lap minutes later, simple enough for everyday use, this fucking.
Fifteen minutes later, he was able to scrape his voice back together into something audibly useable. "One of these nights, you're going to tell me why we're having all this sex," Harry said, wiping his cock with the damp cloth before tossing it into the laundry bin, where it would probably moulder before he could launder it.
There was a tinkle of glass when Severus returned to the bed, shaking his head and smirking. "No doubt you feel I'm having a midlife crisis of some sort," he murmured. "Maybe I'm having an affair, like you intimated a few nights ago." His voice was tinted with something light, teasing, as teasing as he ever was. Harry liked to think that it was flavoured with cranberries.
Are you? he wanted to ask. But instead, "I'll be on stakeout tomorrow night."
Severus handed him the water glass and sipped from his own. "So you'll be out all night?"
Harry shrugged, draining the glass and setting it on the nightstand. He flopped back onto the bed. "Yeah," he began, but then yawned and decided not to say anything more. Usually he told Severus more about his schedule. He had never signed the Official Secrets Act, and it wasn't as if he was bound by anything. But if Ginny's plan to catch the Man-Bat (owled to him after they had left Ron and Hermione's and noticeably written on the back of a page of playset assemblage instructions) was going to work, then he needed to be as quiet as possible. Radio silence was easier if one did it all the time and not selectively; that was one thing he remembered from his three days of Unspeakable training.
"I shan't come home then," Severus said mildly. "I have a few things that I could start at the lab which require overnight supervision. This would be convenient."
Harry opened one of his eyes and watched Severus stare off into space, mind already elsewhere as he lounged against the pillows at the head of the bed. His hand clenched the water glass and convulsed once or twice in a squeezing motion.
He didn't have time before he drifted off, but if he had, Harry would have wondered whom Severus was thinking about.
***
Harry sat outside the abandoned airplane hangar that the Ministry owned in Macclesfield and used a magnifying spell on his eyes so that he wouldn't have to demand that Colin give over the binoculars. It was easy to see the hangar was not well staffed. Its materials were classified, so it was an attractive spot for the Man-Bat to show up, Ginny had argued. It was probably only a matter of time.
Colin tapped the comm in his hand, a small cell-like device Romilda had made them, and which ran on magic but sent text messages like a Muggle phone. Colin was texting someone with the small slide out QWERTY keyboard.
"I'm sending Susan a smiley. Susan likes smilies."
Harry smirked; if there was one person in the world who didn't like smilies, it was probably hormonal Susan. Or Severus. He wondered if Severus even knew what emoticons were. There were some things Severus was better off not knowing about; there were only so many precious things he could take before he dragged his black clothes from the closet and sat in the lounge with a glass of scotch, reading Camus.
"Let me know if Ginny texts you." He was ignoring his comm until he had to. The strap was bulky and he had already slightly broken it because he had sat on it when it was in his back pocket. Romilda said he was the worst tech abuser, and that was saying a great deal, seeing as how Ginny and Susan had grown up with no knowledge of Muggle tech. In fact, whenever 'Milda tried to explain how she was modifying their tech, Ginny grinned at Harry and said, 'It's like magic!'
He liked to think that he got Ginny. Their kid was lucky. And also doomed.
"She just did," Colin chirped. There was a pause. "El-oh-el."
Harry sighed. "Let me know if she texts anything important." His eyes tracked the lone guard around the hangar. If the Man-Bat was going to strike, he'd knock out the guard, probably. From this angle they could see the guard on the east side of the building. Ginny and Susan had the other corner, watching the north and west. Unless the Man-Bat Apparated into the building itself, which he couldn't do, unless he'd found a way around the Ministry's Anti-Apparition spells. If he had done that, then he was more dangerous than anyone had given him credit for.
Harry wondered when he had started referring to the Man-Bat as a 'he'. One glance at Ginny or Hermione would convince anyone that gender wasn't really a solid factor in determining craftiness or, apparently, the desire for wanton destruction.
Colin turned to him then. "She calls you 'Snitch', right?"
Harry nodded distractedly. "Our code names. We established them early on."
Colin smiled. "You never use her code name."
"Right." Harry looked away from the hangar then, at Colin, and the magnification spell gave him a very up close and personal view of Colin's nose hair. He cancelled the spell before he gave himself vertigo or tore a cornea. He was starting to formulate a plan, but it relied on Ginny being in the right place at the right time. Colin waited. "Oh, it, uh, it rhymes with mine and starts with B." He rolled his eyes. "Of course I don't use it."
Colin winked. "Susan chose mine." It was Puppylove. Harry was about to reply when their comms flared to life and he got the text from Ginny that read, 'WHAR R U? GOING IN 5 MIN. TAKE THE ROOF.' Of course, she had her own plan, one that she hadn't bothered to tell the other team, Harry and Colin. She and Susan were obviously the first team. When Harry had questioned her logic, she had smiled at him and said, 'Oh come on, boys versus girls. Like old times!' Harry hadn't the heart to remind her that they'd been out of school for fifteen years.
Harry stood and cracked his neck. "I take that back. I use it when it's appropriate."
That had been part of the plan, too. Ginny and Harry figured that they didn't want to clear their presence with the Ministry beforehand. No telling where The Man-Bat had ears. Bat ears. Harry snorted at the image.
No, no clearing their little stakeout with the Ministry. It had been a moment of clandestine agreement, really, in which they had both decided that the guard couldn’t be trusted with any information, not when Legilimency was such a useful skill, and not completely uncommon. At this point Harry just wanted to get in as quickly and unspoken as possible.
It occurred to Harry that if he was caught breaking into the Ministry building and the press discovered it, no matter what thread the Ministry spun afterwards, everyone would see this as confirmation that he was the Man-Bat. Harry said a silent prayer to a faceless deity and tried to trust Ginny's instincts.
He texted quickly as he left the relative safety of the tall grass. "GOT IT. C IN PLACE. 3 IN. 1 OUT. ROOF NOW."
He was almost to the blind spot that the guard would pass and be unaware of for about fifteen minutes, when he got another text, this one from Susan: "call him puppylove, s.'
Okay, so hormonal Susan had a sense of humor still. Misplaced, but still there.
Harry paused in a crouch in the field just at the edge of the grass that the Ministry really should have been looking after if they didn't want to aid and abet possible infiltrators. The guard was one of those tired sentries who sat at the doorway, and every twenty minutes did a round on the warehouse. Harry figured that he had about fifteen minutes, give or take, that he could use to scale the wall of the building; it was difficult to pinpoint the exact time, because he didn't know where the guard was in his route at any given moment, and he didn't pace himself, but rather walked with the gait of the unpredictable. Maybe that was why he was on duty here and not inside with the other three guards, at whose locations Harry could only guess.
Not for the first time, Harry wished that Romilda would hurry up with those infrared goggles. He wondered if he shouldn't ask the twins about them. It had occurred to him to introduce Romilda to Fred and George, but he was afraid that the resulting explosion was like to kill them all.
He saw a movement from the roof, a little flash of a pocket torch, and he knew that Ginny was already up on the roof, and she was monitoring the guard from there. Harry stuffed his comm in his pocket, patted himself down for loose articles, and pulled his wand. This took a little bit of effort, right here.
Harry waved his wand in a snappish movement, rocked on the balls of his feet and stepped one foot back as if he were about to start a race. "Aeroscalare," he whispered, and then was off in a blur, feet pounding the ground until he flicked his wand again, thirty feet from the hangar; without slowing down at all, he began to run up the invisible set of stairs he had created out of thin air, each step so fleeting under his foot that if he stopped or slowed they would disappear and he would fall to the ground. Not unlike running across water, really.
He almost stumbled on the last step and he fell onto the tin roof of the warehouse with a thud, but Ginny had already muffled the sound for him, and he didn't have to look sheepish about almost giving their presence away.
"Best spell ever," Ginny said as she pulled him up. "Susan is a fucking genius."
Harry had to concur. He shoved his wand back into his holster and peeked over the edge of the roof for their guard. Ginny faced Colin and flashed her mini-torch. There was a slight flicker of assent, and then she turned to Harry, hands on hips.
"I'd forgotten how much fun that is," she said cheerfully. "Come on, I found the skylight." She turned and whispered over her shoulder, "Really, all that security, and they can't lock a skylight or two."
Harry rather thought that was indicative of the Ministry in general sometimes. He smiled and took another second to look out over the area: nothing for quite a ways, actually. Far off lights of industry and homes, probably Muggle in the distance. The wind picked up and carded his hair, and he closed his eyes and tilted his chin; it smelled a little like rain.
"Oi! Batman!" Ginny hissed. "You'll scare him off."
Harry sighed and followed her into the skylight, clattering on the metal grating of the rafters and balancing precariously as they made their way across the girders to a corner where they wouldn't be spotted by either guards or the Man-Bat if he, she, it had the same idea to come in that way. Ginny braced her back against the outside wall of the hangar and glanced about. Harry settled with his legs hanging off to the side of the girder away from their guards and followed suit.
They waited for about thirty minutes, crouching in the upper levels of the hangar and watching the guards play cards and grumble about their girlfriends and wives and the state of the latest Quidditch match. Ginny turned to him and mimed a 'yak yak' gesture with her fingers, rolling her eyes.
Harry let his mind drift elsewhere. He was tired, and the Pepperup that he'd taken to stave off exhaustion was starting to wear off. Stakeouts were pains in the arse.
The hangar was fairly unremarkable. It had originally been built to house the small planes of World War II, Spitfires and Cessnas and the like, whatever they were. Obviously the Ministry had acquired it at some point, possibly through a purchase, though sometimes they obtained the deeds as 'gifts' from the Muggle government. This one was a document overflow, actually, one of the last ones. Most Wizarding world documents were shrunk and then boxed, filed and stored in the Ministry's vaults, but recent years had seen a massive increase in loose paperwork, and so some of the properties had been allotted for temporary storage. This place, with its boxes upon boxes of papers piled in stacks, was one such place. Ministry policy dictated that the area be secure, no matter what the documents contained. Hence the guard.
The three additional men inside were a surprise, though. They didn't seem particularly busy, actually, which was confusing. He had a hard time believing Undersecretary Weasley would be even remotely approving of paying three men time-and-a-half to sit about and play cards and whinge unless there was a good reason.
Harry found himself wondering about that instead of the real reason he was there. He thought to mention it to Ginny, when they watched the skylight open and a hand snaked down into view, opening so that something small and black could fall down into the hangar proper. Ginny and Harry followed its landing and then pulled their wands when the item in question began to release billows of smoke. The guards jumped up from their card game and pulled their wands, glancing about wildly. Harry was fairly sure that they hadn't seen the skylight open and the smoke bomb fall.
Ginny nudged him then, and the first curse fired off into the smoke as the guards tried to guess from where their attacker was coming. A Stupefy echoed in the room, and there was a thud as one of the guards was felled by friendly fire. Amateurs.
The smoke had spread out into the entire room, thick and dark, about six feet high and rising. Harry wondered if even a Bubble-Head charm would work. Sure, it would keep the smoke out of his eyes, but that wouldn't help much when he wouldn't be able to see three feet in front of him. Ginny tried a few wind spells, but they didn't seem to be doing much except pushing the stuff around.
It was then that the Man-Bat used the skylight, a long cloak pouring into the opening before him, its edges pointed and curling as if it was sentient and searching for things to cling to. One edge ran along the girder, tentacle-like, and curled about the metal strut. It was followed by the Man-Bat, landing on the catwalk and bending down over the railing to examine the smoke below.
"Woah, cape," Ginny whispered. "Memory cloth."
Harry blinked and tried to examine the cape closer. It was hard when it moved so quickly and surely. It had to be alive. Or something. Memory cloth was a myth, or at least it was supposed to be. In the Muggle world, Memory cloth was actually an electromaganetic theory. In the Wizarding world, Memory cloth was sentient material that had been banned in the fifties, if it had ever existed in the first place. Rumour had it that the enchanted cloth had been used in costumes and other places, until it had become a little too independent for its own good and occasionally rebelled against its wearer. Apparently, the Minister of Magic's wife at the time had had a disagreement with her evening gown about the placement of a corsage whilst at the opera, and the garment had abandoned her, taking off for the orchestra pit. Memory cloth had been banned relatively soon after, before most people had ever had time to process its existence in the first place.
But here it was, supporting its wearer, the Man-Bat, who dangled from the ceiling strut with one arm, then dropped to the ground, as if gravity didn't apply to him. Harry swore under his breath and Ginny whistled as they watched the Man-Bat land on the floor in a crouch, and then rise, cloak overly long and moving sedately, curling about his form. Harry cocked his head and felt a surge of jealousy; the cape was cracker.
The cape appeared to be connected to a mask on the Man-Bat's face, obscuring it from the nose up. Bah. Harry should have expected a mask. He was a little disappointed that there weren't any ears, as impractical as they might have been.
Ginny pulled her cell out and texted the release message to Colin and Susan, 'O_O', the agreed upon signal that it was time for them to move. The front door of the hangar had already burst in, and the outside guard called to his compatriots. So much for the Man-Bat knocking him out. Harry thought about how they were going to play this, but the Man-Bat's cape moved and he became invisible in the smoke. With Harry's luck, he probably had some sort of shielding charm that allowed him to see through the haze, maybe something with his mask.
Ginny took a few deep breaths and pointed to the far side of the warehouse, where Susan would be coming from. Harry nodded and sat back on his haunches. Someone needed to cover the skylight, and that was he until Colin made an appearance. With a wave of her wand and another Aeroscalare, Ginny was all but falling off the girder and tumbling into the mist in an almost controlled manner. Harry rolled his eyes and waited.
It was impossible to see anything, and he wasn't sure what the Man-Bat could remotely be interested in, but Harry intended to arrest the man here, put an end to the vandalism. The reality was that deep inside, he didn't actually care about the Man-Bat or the damage he was causing. He was a bit more distracted by the lights out in East Anglia, but bringing this case to a close might get him enough good grace from higher-ups to allow him to poke about in the Department of Mysteries, and that made it worth it.
Plus, setting things on fire was not on, no matter what the twins tried to tell him. There was a time and a place, and that place (and time) was not now.
There were a series of screams, and he heard Ginny shout a Stupefy. Something exploded and papers shot into the air like a fountain. One of the guards was hit with a curse and he flew up, over the smoke and back down, landing with a sick thud. Harry ground his teeth and waited.
Finally, Colin dropped into the skylight and onto the catwalk. As soon as Harry saw him, he made the 'wait here' signal and dropped down into the smoke, his own spells dampening his fall.
The ground level was almost literally swathed with night, and his eyes teared. He cast a Bubble-Head charm so that he could at least save his eyes, and waved his hands. A few wind spells simply succeeded on swirling the mess about. Harry was reminded of the Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder the twins sold; this was like that, but only a thousand times better.
Papers fluttered in the air about him. One of the guards lay on the floor at his feet, and he almost stumbled over the man's unconscious body. Harry followed the sounds of fighting to another area of the hangar, running into several crates and boxes along the way. Ginny's voice was loud as she shouted, and he wondered if she'd managed to corner the Man-Bat, or if she was yelling at the other guards or Susan, or just yelling so that he could find her. He did a Point Me, made it mobile, and followed it through the maze of boxes.
Ginny ran face-first into him, and they reeled a little with the shock of it. Her wand pulled up in the idle position as she grabbed his shoulder. "He's back that way, I think. These blokes are violent. One of them tried to hit me with a Cruciatus."
Harry understood her meaning. "Unspeakables?" he mumbled, close to her ear.
Ginny peered off into the darkness through both hers and his Bubble Heads and shrugged. "Too organised for anything else. Take the left, I'll take the right, and don't let them hit you."
Harry tried to focus on her words, but the smoke was clearing, as if it had sensed that it wasn't needed anymore, and he wondered if the Man-Bat was still even on the premises. He let his Bubble charm drop as Ginny dashed off to the left, disappearing behind a column of wooden document boxes. Somewhere in the opposite direction, there were a few shouts, and he wondered where Susan was. It was really a mistake for her to be down here, breathing in whatever smoke this was, not while she was pregnant. He kicked himself that he hadn't thought of that. He chanced at glance up at Colin, but he was too far from the skylight to see anything.
Something whispered around a tall stack of crates, and a few papers floated in the breeze of the departing smoke. Harry dashed forward, reaching out to grasp the Memory cloth before it disappeared around the corner. It was oily and slick in his grip, pulling away from his fingers when he closed them. Its owner tugged at the cloak, but Harry had managed to dislodge it minutely enough that the cowl slipped from Man-Bat's head. Harry raised his wand to cast a Stupefy; this had gone on long enough.
The Man-Bat whirled and tried to pull the mask back into place, but the damage was done. Harry lowered his wand and felt his jaw gaping open. The figure froze, shoulders a little hunched, breathing heavy. The papers fluttered from his hand.
"Severus?"
Severus's eyes widened, and he whirled away, dashing off to the right, through the open hangar door. Behind him, Harry heard Ginny yelling something about tentacles. Oh well, nothing for it. He turned heel and ran towards her voice.
***
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