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amand_rTitle: D For Defender 4/4
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 FOUR: WAIT, WHEN THE HELL DID WE BECOME THE JUSTICE LEAGUE?
You know, gang, when you're a superhero, you never know where the day will take you. You may find yourself halfway around the world in the shark-infested waters of true-to-life living. Or you may find yourself going down to the store for a lozenge. You can't know, can you? No. You gotta ride that wave, you gotta suck that lozenge. 'Cause if you don't, who will?
Ron loved painting his face whenever they went on a stakeout or sting. Harry had forgotten about that fact, and when Ron had met them in East Anglia, his clothes pitch black and his head covered with a black skullcap, Harry had almost laughed at his paint-streaked face.
"What?" Ron said, glancing from him to Severus, "I'm pale, all right?" He spread his hands and gave his sister the V when she whistled as she approached. The night had already fallen in East Anglia, and they gathered in a small copse of trees that brushed the property, perhaps fifty yards from the water mill.
Ginny clapped her hands once and squatted down in the tall grass of the field. Severus moved off into another cluster of grass, closer to one of the only trees in the area, presumably to further observe the guard that was making rounds of the mill.
"Well, people, let's hurry this up. I have a date with Bertram tomorrow night and I'd look to look refreshed and ready for sex."
Ron rolled his eyes and Harry laughed. Off in the distance, Severus snorted. Harry wouldn't have even known he was there if he hadn't watched him hide. "Meat pie man?" he asked. "Gin, you work fast."
Ginny flicked her ponytail has he squatted down next to her. "You should know."
Ron hunched down in the grass and blinked owl eyes through the raccoon mask of the face paint. Beside him, Ginny jostled back and forth from one heel to the other. Harry wanted to still her, but he knew she was just getting herself wound up for what was to come.
'"Mione says that she'd have loved to have been here, but she only trusts the kids with mum and dad right now, and they're still in Moscow."
Ginny rolled her eyes. "That third honeymoon is taking forever," she muttered.
Harry sighed. It was better that the kids were safe. He was suddenly glad for a second that he hadn't any, until he thought of James. What had Ginny done with their son? He felt a little guilty for not remembering right away.
There was a rustle and they turned to see Hermione tromping towards them, her little beaded purse of Holding in her hands, her black clothes tight against her body. She gave them all a glare and crouched down next to them, pulling her hair into a fierce tail that she rolled into a bun as she talked.
"Look, you were all in the first place I looked." She glared at Harry. "I can smell your after-shave." She glared at Ron. "You need to learn volume control and you—" She grabbed Ginny and forced the woman to stop rocking. "Fidget too much."
"And me, Ms. Weasley-Granger?" Severus said in a whisper from where he had been lurking and using the distance spell to see the warehouse guard detail. Hermione squealed and lost her balance, toppling backwards onto her rump.
Ginny pulled Hermione to her feet and she snorted. "You are fine," she grudgingly admitted.
"Where are the fruit of our loins?" Ron asked amusedly.
Hermione righted herself and opened her bag, rummaging around in it. Harry spared a thought, when she didn't answer immediately, that the children were in the bag, but then she smirked. "Oh, they're with Angelina. I hope that's alright with you, Gin."
Ginny waved her hands. "If he comes home from there with three nostrils again, I personally blame you."
Hermione grinned. "Done."
Severus moved back into their group and sighed. "If we're done with the child custody shuffle," he said, in a voice that reminded Harry of his years in the Potions room at Hogwarts. Later he would ask Severus how it felt to be storming the castle with four of the biggest pains in his arse to ever haunt his classroom. Ginny just smiled and Hermione rolled her eyes. Ron looked at Harry and made a loose wanking gesture with his hands. Harry would have been offended on Severus's behalf if he hadn't reached out and smacked Ron in the back of the head.
"I wager, based on what I've seen in the past three hours," Severus told them while resolutely not glancing over to Ron, who was rubbing the back of his skull and smiling. "That we have about ten minutes before that guard comes back. We should move now before we have to wait for another hour."
Hermione opened her purse. "Do we need a distraction? I have something for that—"
"We use this—" Severus pulled a small canister from his bag and turned it.
Harry frowned at it; it was round and metal and suspiciously familiar. "George and Fred were working on something that looked like that. What was it?"
Ginny shrugged. "Whistle Jammies?"
"Whistle Jimmy," Severus replied. "Though why they call it that I have no idea." He turned it in his hands, pointing at the pin in the top. "It should make quite the distraction, should we require one."
Harry took the Whistle Jimmy from Severus's hands. "Wait a minute, are you saying the twins made this for you?"
Hermione shook her head but didn't offer commentary. Instead she dug about in her purse and retrieved a small bag of what looked like Dungbombs. What, was everyone packing some sort of incendiary device? He looked at Ron and expected him to pull a grenade from his socks or something.
"Messieurs Weasley and Weasley have made several things for me in the past few months," Severus told them all, as if it was perfectly normal to have a smoke bomb the size of a niffler on one's person.
Harry checked his holster and supplies as he bantered. Ron passed him the face paint and he declined. Ginny took a swipe of the black and painted under her eyes, like she used to do in Quidditch games back at Hogwarts. "So the twins have been like, your Q?"
Severus pulled his cloak from his bag and Hermione and Ron cursed as the blackness of it spilled out onto the ground in front of him and began to uncurl and move of its own volition. Harry might have been more surprised if he hadn't seen the show already. Ginny's fingers twitched on her knees and Harry knew that she wanted to try it out. He grabbed one of her hands and shook his head.
"That has to be some sort of Muggle reference I don't know about," Severus told him, "so let's just declare that we are ready to move." He looked at them all, the cloth dangling from his hands. "I shall come from the roof. Miss Weasley and Mrs. Granger-Weasley will come from the far side." He gestured with one hand. "And Harry and Mr. Weasley will come in the other side entrance. If there was a sub level accessible from the outside, I would suggest using it, but I have yet to discern one."
Harry was going to protest, say something about how he was the one in charge and should be making the plans when he realised that he hadn't really thought of a plan anyway. He hadn't had much chance to work with Severus during the war, but he hadn't been a bad planner or team player, to hear Arthur talk about it.
Plus, that was pretty much what Harry would have said anyway. He spared a thought that they were becoming more alike, but dismissed it as sentimental—strategy did not follow love, only logic.
Harry waved his comm at Ginny, and she waved hers back. "We'll stay here. You message when you're in place. And you—" He pointed a finger at Severus, who was in the process of slipping the cowl of the cape over his head. "Wait for a signal. Stay out of sight until it's clear. I can't comm you, so I don't want to have to worry that you've beaten us to the punch."
Severus rolled his eyes under the cowl and stalked away through the tall grass, pausing to lurk behind the few available tree trunks. Harry glanced at the building again. "All right, then."
Ginny held the flat of her palm out and waggled it back and forth. "See you on the flip side."
Ron sighed. "I thought she'd be less strange as she got older." He glanced at Harry as they sat there and watched Ginny and Hermione stealthily creep their way across the grass. "Who's Bertram anyway?"
Harry searched the darkness for Severus, but he was long gone, disappearing into the blackness while Harry had been looking elsewhere. He wondered how Severus was planning on to get up onto the roof, and if he shouldn't have taught him Aeroscalare. On second thought, maybe the cape could levitate. Or Severus had his own spells for defying gravity.
"Don't worry. He has a lovely arse," Harry offered, mostly because he loved tweaking Ron's denial of his sister's sex life. Also, that was pretty much all he knew about Bertram the meat pie man. Aside from the meat pie business, which went to other filthy places that Harry didn't even want to think about. Not with the mother of his child.
Ron sat on his rear in the grass and cracked his knuckles. "You know, I'm glad you called me in and all, but why didn't you just call Colin and Suze?"
Harry watched the guard round the water mill. Oh joy, it was Roger Ketterer. Mister Ketterer looked about, then glanced at the windows of the mill, which then came alive with a swath of green. The lanterns that hung in the half-boarded windows shone like brilliant beams, and a low, droning noise issued from the mill.
"Because you're available. Susan is pregnant, and I don't want to take her somewhere she might be hurt."
Hermione would rip your face off for that," Ron replied, staring interestedly at the lights. "That's new."
Harry nodded. "It is." He pushed some of the grass out of his face and counted himself lucky that he wasn't allergic to ragweed. "And Hermione be damned. If something happened to Suze tonight, I would never forgive myself." He glanced at Ron. "And Colin, well."
Ron grinned. "I think Ginny and Colin should work together when Suze goes on leave. I'll come back early just to watch the maybe---woah!"
Harry was glad that he had been looking over at Ron, because the droning suddenly coalesced and crescendoed into a high-pitched screaming sound, and then the green lights grew bright and brighter until they were so bright it was hard to see, even with his closed eyes. He raised a hand to shield himself and hoped that everyone else was doing the same.
It couldn't have lasted longer than ten seconds, but what a loud bright ten seconds they were, Harry thought, shaking his head and grinding the heels of his palms into his eyes. Beside him Ron cursed and scrubbed his hands with his face. He looked over at Harry. "I think that merits a 'what the bloody hell was that?'"
Harry blinked at the mill, its green lights dim and innocuous again. The tree in the center of the courtyard waved in the breeze. Smoke rose from the tips of its dead branches.
"I think we should find out," he mumbled, scanning the roof for signs of Severus, but predictably finding none.
His comm lit up, and he glanced at the mobile: 'WTBHWTB???!!11'
Harry slid the keyboard out and felt Ron's breath tickle his neck as he texted back. 'in position?'
He waited for a full minute, glancing from the display to the mill with its lights fading, and Mister Ketterer standing in the courtyard by the dead tree, shaking one of its limbs.
Finally, 'READY. GO IN THREE.'
Harry smiled. Ginny always got to pick the timing. It wasn't a rule or anything, it was just what she did. He replied something to the effect of 'Roger' and tucked the phone away in a pocket where it wouldn't get banged about, leaned forward and did a pushup so that he could lie low and stretch his cramping legs, and looked at Ron. "In two."
Ron pulled his wand. "Just like old times."
"Which old times? Voldemort old times or Auror old times?"
"I was thinking of that stag night you threw me."
Harry grinned. "You were very brave, crashing into Hermione's bedroom like that."
"Yeah well," Ron admitted as they dropped their voices and began to creep through the grass to the entrance. "I like to think that was the Ogden's."
Harry snorted. "That wasn't Ogden's. That was butterbeer."
"On an empty stomach!" Ron hissed, and they cleared the grass. Harry took a second to consider that they were the worst operatives ever, but they'd fallen back into routine, and it felt rather nice to be able to do it with Ron, who was good at his back and anticipated his moves. They probably should have been a smidgen quieter, because Ketterer chose that moment to round the corner and he spotted them immediately. Harry hadn't anticipated that. It was just their luck that the one time he needed to piss or something was the exact moment that they were trying to infiltrate the mill.
Ketterer raised his wand, possibly to hex them, possibly to send off a warning, but before he could, something fell from the roof and hit him in the head. Harry froze, his wand drawn, Ron backpedaling beside him, and they watched Ketterer's body fall to the ground with a thud, followed by the inert Whistle Jimmy, which had apparently caught him squarely in the skull. Well, that was one way to distract and divert attention. Ron dashed forward to kick the man's wand away, and Harry peered up at the roof, which was completely normal-looking except for the minute curl of black cloth peeking over the edge of the thatching. Ron held his wand on the man until he could poke him experimentally with his boot.
Harry checked the mobile clock again. They were going to be late to break and enter if they didn't move soon. He and Ron dragged Ketterer's body into one of the shadows of the mill and left him there.
There had been no more noises or lights from the inside of the mill, though the incandescent lights still shone brightly inside, bathing the courtyard area in a yellow light. The dead tree cast a long shadow on the warehouse behind it, like black tendrils that held the building down. Harry wondered what was in those buildings, too, but all of the activity seemed to be coming from the mill, so that was where they were going to start.
Harry turned the knob on the door and leaned on it a bit, and he was rather surprised to find that it was not only unlocked, but also rather loose. One would have thought that secret hideouts should have been harder to break into, but there they were, stumbling into a small alcove that fed into a much larger room.
The mill was fairly unremarkable in and of itself, just as unremarkable as the outside with its boards and rotting planks. The green lanterns hanging from the ceiling in various places in the room made up the lone spots of colour. From the bottom of the lanterns hung thick ropy cord that twisted to the ground before coiling across the floor and gathering at the base of a stocky wooden chair in the centre of the main room.
All the equipment that has once been useful in…water milling? Harry guessed, was pushed to the walls of the room and left to gather dust or covered in filthy sheets. Harry and Ron crept across the raised platform of the doorway, and watched as the green lights pulsed in intensity a little, but nowhere near as strong as they had earlier.
"The first pass didn't work," said a man's voice, and Harry and Ron had to duck back into the shadows to be sure that they hadn't been seen. "We'll have to run it again."
Harry peered out of the dimness to look at the chair, and the figure strapped into it. It was a male, suspiciously familiar, but it was rather difficult to tell when the person was only in profile. He turned to Ron and raised his brows, and Ron just shrugged.
"One more time and the tissue will be ruined," said another voice, belonging to a man who approached the chair from the other side. Something about him also seemed familiar, but it was hard to tell. Harry tried to search his memory for all the faces he'd seen over the years and made no note of; not for the first time, he was glad that Kingsley wasn't his immediate superior anymore—if he had to write this up and he couldn't place the men he was about to hex into tomorrow, Shacklebolt would have had his arse on the carpet.
"Henders," Ron whispered, "Unspeakable." When Harry looked over at him, he shrugged. "Hit on Hermione at the Christmas Party three years ago and I had to punch him."
Harry laughed and turned back to the scene, where Henders was joined by another man, also probably an Unspeakable. "It's not like we don't have others. I keep telling you that," he told Henders.
"I still don't like the idea. It's…it feels wrong."
"If you're still having that problem, Handers, then let someone Obliviate you and ask for reassignment."
The man in the chair moaned. "He keeps doing that," Henders complained, nudging at the man with a hand. "I thought they said it didn't hurt."
"They said it probably didn't hurt," the other man replied. "And since when do you care? He killed three women with a saw blade."
Harry scanned the other side of the room. He could see the door that Ginny and Hermione would be using, and though he couldn't see a roof entrance, there had to be one, or Severus wouldn't have opted to enter that way. As he was staring, the door shuddered, and he saw Ginny peek into the room. He was about to wave, but he saw her raise her wand and cast an Expelliarmus. So much for letting him take point.
The two men in the room who weren't strapped to the chair turned; they drew their wands and fired in unison, falling backwards in opposite directions, rehearsed, practised, skilled. Harry hid behind a column and heard Ginny cast another curse from the other side of the room. Ron grinned.
"I was right," he said, his face jovial. "Us against the Ministry. Just like old times."
Oh ha ha.
Harry threw a few stunning spells out as cover, and Ron dove to his left. He lost sight of him when he went right and hid behind a few wooden barrels. A curse sizzled past his ear, and he cocked his head, listening for the sound of footsteps that would tell him where his attacker was. Oh, and if he could, he would take note of Ginny's location, too; it wouldn't do to hex his own team mates right now.
He heard someone call out 'Reducto', and of course it was Ginny. She loved that spell; it was her signature move. Bits of wooden barrel went flying, and some even caught in the wall and quivered. Ron yelled "Stupefy!" and there was a thump as a body hit the floor. A few more ...scuffles and curses, and someone else was down too.
"Clear!" Hermione shouted, and he peeled himself from the pillar, rather chagrined that he hadn't the chance to stun or incapacitate anyone. And where was Severus?
Ron and Hermione stood in front of the man in the chair while Ginny tied up Henders and the other man, whose name Harry had never learnt. When Harry joined the two of them they all stared at the chair.
"That's Thulciver McPhee," Hermione told them. "You know, the one who killed his wife and girlfriends a few years ago." She made a noise of disgust and stuck her wand in her holster, a leather belt that had been a gift from Harry years ago. Harry was pleased to see that she still used it at the right times. Hands-free was almost as important as armed, sometimes. "I was on the prosecution."
Ron lifted the McPhee's chin with one finger, and he blinked at them sleepily. "That's why we know him. We arrested him," Ron said dully.
Oh, right. Harry looked at McPhee and wondered if he was all right in the head.
McPhee closed his eyes. "Everything is so green."
Harry jolted and glanced at the green lanterns.
Ginny wandered over to one of the lanterns and yanked on the cord. It fell from the bottom of the lantern in a shower of sparks and the light went out. "What do you suppose they are for?" she said. "I can't imagine they're doing lobotomies with electricity.
"I think, Ginevra, that they're a signal," Severus said as he dropped down from the upper rafters. Ginny and Hermione jumped, and Harry glared as the other man made his way across the room, his cape dragging on the floor in places as if it were licking the grime of the wood. A far hem reached towards the lights and Severus had to grab it with his fist and fling it towards the ground. It was rather like trying to keep a helium balloon from flying away by dribbling it like a basketball.
"Bloody hell!" Ginny breathed. "Wear a bell!"
Severus smiled at her. "I am the night," he told her, his mouth quirked up in a grin. Harry holstered his wand and found himself crossing his arms; he was about to indulge in some admonishment that he could safely file under 'foreplay'.
"You were of precious little help," he groused.
Severus crossed his own arms. His cape wrapped around his waist and billowed like a skirt. "I was told to stay out of the way, since I had no Muggle communication device with which to help plan your…" he paused as he searched, most certainly, for most the irritating words. "Shocking entrance." He turned his head to glare at Ginny. "Expelliarmus? Really?"
Ginny flapped her hands like a bat. "Keep 'em guessing."
Hermione rolled her eyes. "As fun as it is to watch the 'heckle the former teacher' show, we just knocked out our only two leads, and this one here," she gestured to McPhee, "is going to be as helpful as a Blast-Ended Skrewt."
McPhee smiled at her. "You have faerie hair."
Hermione smiled at him. "I think he's addled."
Severus glanced at the lanterns and the chair, at the room around him, as if he was reverse engineering the scenario to see where it led. Harry had seen him do it loads before, for things like, 'How do I make this complicated potion I have never made before and which is toxic and for which I do not have a recipe,' and other things like, 'Where did I last see my billfold? Was it in the kitchen? I shall retrace my steps.'
"They damaged Draco here," he said. "They did it with this chair, or something he needed to be in this chair for." He reached down and undid the leather restraints from McPhee's wrists, and as the man pulled his hands free, a series of tiny needles yanked out of his wrists.
McPhee squealed and rubbed his hands. "I'm telling!"
Severus pulled the man up and transferred him to the waiting arms of Ginny, who cast a sleeping spell and let the man fall with a thump. Severus was already following the trail of the wrist needles down into tubes that ran to the underside of the chair and then into small holes that had been drilled in the floor.
"There's another level," Ron told him, his eyes already sweeping the place for trapdoors and hidden staircases. Harry glanced at his own feet. Ginny started moving furniture and pulling the sheets from the equipment. Then Hermione cleared her throat and they all glanced to her and then followed her pointing finger to the far side of the room, where a staircase with a railing obviously pointed down.
Severus stood and swept past her on his way to the stairs. "Go to the head of the class, Ms. Granger-Weasley."
Harry watched her roll her eyes and follow him down the stairs, casting Lumos with her wand so that they had enough light to see by. That wasn't a half-bad idea. Harry cast Lumos and heard Ron and Ginny do the same. At this rate, they would be able to see quite well even if there wasn't an independent light source down there.
They descended the stairs to the sound of humming machinery, which was in and of itself a disturbingly out of place noise in the Wizarding world. Everyone here was fairly used to Muggle tech, enough that the drone didn't bother them like it did some wizards who were not on speaking terms with technology. Despite that, Harry hadn't been ready for it, and as Severus cast a Lumos spell and the lights began to flare up all around them, the noise only served to punctuate the alien-like ambience of the room.
It was lined on both sides with long vertical glass cylinders, some illuminated in green, others completely black. Inside the illuminated green cylinders bubbled a translucent liquid of some sort. It was actually hard to tell if the liquid was green or the glass that contained it. Harry slid one hand along the tank closest to him.
"They feed it up through the ceiling, and then into the veins, and then they do some sort of spell, or something, something that is killing that tree outside," he said, eyes following the tubing up through the ceiling.
"This has to be the biggest vat of Veritaserum I have ever seen," Severus said, one hand on the glass next to him on the opposite side of the room. "I can't imagine what they would be using it for."
Hermione tapped one of the darker cylinders. "This isn't Veritaserum," she said. "This is some sort of…something."
Severus joined her and they both peered at the glass. Harry suspected that they would have pressed their faces to it like children at the zoo if they had thought it would help to identify the contents.
"It's a Befuddlement Draught," said a voice behind them, and Hermione jolted. Severus turned and pulled his wand. Harry and the others only had to turn, since they were still armed.
Penelope Clearwater leaned against one of the canisters, clutching a series of cords in one hand and her wand in the other. She looked terrible, face pale and drawn, clothes hanging from her as if she hadn't been eating. Her hair was pulled back in a tail, but where it used to be a long full mane, it was stringy and frizzled. Her hand shook as she pointed the wand at them.
"A Befuddlement Draught," she repeated. "Mixed with a painkiller. For the spell. We need it for the spell."
"What spell?" Ron and Ginny asked at once, wands out. Ron glared at Ginny and she stuck her tongue out at him. Harry wished they'd keep their eyes on the crazy-looking lady with the weapon. And apparently a master plan.
"Drop the wands," said another voice, and then an expertly cast Expelliarmus shot out from the side, in between the canisters on Harry's left. Ron fell backwards, and Ginny tumbled to Harry's right, taking cover and also holding herself in reserve just as they had agreed. Ginny was the shadow-man, pulling back until she was needed.
Severus pivoted with his wand, but the Expelliarmus had hit him squarely, and he rubbed his hand with his other one while he looked for his dropped wand. Harry cast a Stupefy, but Percy Weasley took advantage of the situation to physically knock him down, the fall taking them into one of the glass canisters. Harry's head collided with the thick glass and for a second all he heard was a gong noise
By the time he'd managed to right himself, Hermione was unconscious, Ron was out of sight, probably forming a plan with Ginny, because Percy had an arm around Severus's shoulders and was pointing his wand to his throat. Harry shook his head to clear it and raised his wand.
Percy pressed the tip into Severus's neck. "I am quite determined to do him harm, should you proceed, Harry." He backed up against one of the tanks, pulling Severus with him and glancing about as if he was sure that he was about to be attacked from another side. Harry tried not to look at the movements in the shadows behind Percy.
He lowered his wand and let it fall from his hand. Severus rolled his eyes, and even from his captive position, it was a firm order; still topping from the bottom, that Severus Snape.
"I'm so sorry it has to be this way, Harry," Percy said softly. "I tried to throw you off. I assigned you the Man-Bat case, but I had no idea it would lead you all here." He gestured to the rows of tanks behind him, and Harry glanced away from him long enough to take another good look at the glass cylinders.
"Why, Percy?" he asked softly. It was a pointless move, really. He was quite sure that he already knew the answer. On the other hand, getting Percy to talk was a good way to distract him from the fact that he had a wand to Severus's neck, and that Ron was behind him.
Percy sighed. "The Dementors were leaving," he said. "Can you imagine what Azkaban would be like without Dementors? No one to keep those people in there."
Severus's eyes locked with Harry's, and he shook his head minutely. This was what they wanted, really, that big reveal, and Percy was going to give it to them. Harry remembered some of his first interrogation lessons with Shacklebolt, back before he became the Minister of Magic: Once they start talking, they don't want to stop. They want to tell you the story, Harry, no matter what it means for them, for what will happen to them. Just let them do it, because if they change their mind, you'll never get anything out of them.
Harry clenched his fists. In the corner, Penelope bound Hermione with an angry Incarcerous and abandoned her to stand by her husband.
"Lucius Malfoy broke out of Azkaban, and we knew that something had to be done," Penelope said, her voice full of contempt. She crossed her arms and peered at Severus. "If all the Dementors left, then who could keep the Wizarding world's criminals in their cells?"
Severus rolled his eyes again, and Harry rather hoped he wasn't about to berate the person who was mentally unstable, untied, and also armed. "I don't know, perhaps that would have been an issue for a governing body to decide. If only we had one." Harry cringed, but Severus crashed onwards. "We could form our own. Call it oh, say the Wizengamot."
Percy tapped Severus's neck with the wand. "The Wizengamot said nothing. They said, 'Oh, don't worry, Weasley, we'll take care of it when it becomes an issue.'" He shook his head. "But Lucius Malfoy broke out of Azkaban, and I knew that something had to be done."
Hermione groaned and Harry looked about for either Ron or Ginny. Alas, neither one in sight. He secretly hoped that Ginny was recording the whole thing on her mobile. That would have been useful later. If there was a later.
"So you, what?" Harry asked, his hands still in the air up by his ears. He was getting tired of doing his scarecrow routine. It was becoming clear that the Weasley siblings weren't going to make an appearance until brother dearest had spilled the entire story. He didn't blame them. "You decided that you'd build a prison here?"
Penelope sighed. "It was just supposed to change them a little. Reform them, make them useful members of society, you see." She glanced at Percy, as if she needed his permission or approval to continue and he nodded. "If we cannot hold them, then we need to put them somewhere. Isn't it better if they can't harm anyone anymore? They could even eventually be productive members of society."
Harry wasn't sure why he hadn't seen it sooner, as soon as Penelope had come out of the woodwork, as soon as he'd realised that it was the murderers, the rapists, the dengerous criminals.
"You can't reform them by mutilating their brains," he told Percy softly. "You're violating them."
Percy glanced at Penelope, and she nodded this time, as if he needed her permission. "What about their violations? Don't tell me that you're fine seeing Theodore Nott go free. What if it had been Bellatrix LeStrange? Don't tell me that you'd prefer that she have her rights, instead of paying for all the lives she's taken." Percy sneered and tugged on Severus's chest. "Because they can't be contained without the Dementors, Harry. I'll save us from them, and no one will ever have to worry about it again."
Harry was about to reply, but Severus's cape snagged Percy's arm and yanked, turning the other man's hold so that his own weight was being used against him, and suddenly Percy's arm twisted behind him. For a split second, Harry was sure that they had this all under control. Ron was still tousling with Penelope, and Harry reached out across the floor to snatch his wand back up, rolling around to fire a curse at Percy, if only Severus would get out of the way. The two men tussled over the wand in Percy's hand, and when Severus caught the other man in a poorly-executed face punch, Percy staggered backwards into one of the tanks, which cracked a little with his impact.
It was the opening Harry needed. He fired a curse off, a Diffindo, which burst open the cylinder behind Percy and Severus, and the contents spilled to the ground, the Veritaserum drenching Percy as it dumped on his head and body. Severus rolled out of the way expertly, and Harry spared a smile to know that he'd probably be relieved that he hadn't just been exposed to enough truth serum to keep him from lying for the rest of his life.
Ron had lost his battle with Penelope, probably because he was trying to subdue her gently (and because he was out of practice; Harry would rib him about it later), but that was short-lived as Penelope righted herself over Ron's unconscious body. Harry hit her with an Everte Statum that knocked her into one of the black cylinders and bounced her body, unconscious, onto the floor a few feet behind where Percy stood with his wand out, pointed at Harry, and Severus, who lay on the floor, panting.
"Don't—" Percy said, as if he was unsure of what to say. His eyes were glazing, and Harry wondered if there was more than Veritaserum in that tank. "Just don't, they'll run free, and we'll all suffer." He sighed, and his wand lowered a little, as if he had forgotten it was there. "They're the ones who should suffer."
"Oh Perce," Ginny said softly then, her hands empty in front of her as she walked towards him from her cover between the tanks; his hands shook as he trained the wand on her instead. "You can't be God."
"Ginny," Percy said, "you know how important this is."
"I know. Family gets a free pass," Ginny said brightly, and then swung her fist in a right hook that connected with Percy's jaw, right underneath, and his neck snapped backwards before his whole body seemed to sail through the air. He landed on Penelope, hit his head on the concrete of the floor, and lay still.
Ginny sat down on the floor and checked Ron's pulse. "I was going to say 'free pass….to gaol,' but it felt like overkill," she told him, as off-handedly as ever, as if she hadn't just found out that one of her brothers was running a mass lobotomy experiment, and had instead decked a complete stranger. Her eyes were suspiciously glassy, but he didn't want to acknowledge it. Harry waited for Severus to sit up before replying, his eyes glued to Percy's unconscious form sprawled over his wife's.
The lights on the tanks flickered as the power failed. "I don't know," he told her. "But less is more." If only that were true.
***
They got in finally at nine in the morning the following day. Harry stumbled into the bedroom and fell on the bed with a dull thump. A set of hands removed his boots, and then there was some scuffling, things being rearranged. Harry's ankles were grabbed and he was turned in a right angle so that he was lying on the bed normally, and then Harry's body rocked when Severus flopped down next to him.
He turned hie head and opened his eyes. They were quite difficult to focus, but he centered on Severus's face and smiled. "You're still here."
Severus blinked. "I suppose it's over," he said softly. "I shall have to learn to sleep with you again."
Harry yawned. "It's rather easy. Just close your eyes and…"
When Harry opened his eyes again, the sun was in a completely different place, and the bed was empty. Harry lifted his head, listening for sounds, and he was rewarded with the clink of dishes and the sound of running water.
"Kingsley called while you were asleep," Severus said over his shoulder when Harry stumbled into the kitchen. "I told him to piss off."
Harry grabbed Severus's arse and was rewarded with a glare and a mug. "I knew there was a reason I married you," he mumbled into the rim of the mug. He watched the dishes as Severus scrubbed them, running the rag over the plates in methodical circles.
"I think I'll dismantle the Panic Room," Severus said. "Something to do. And I owe the twins an order of Scream In A Bottle." He turned off the tap and set the last mug on the tea towel to dry.
Harry drained the mug and handed it to Severus, who scowled at it and then shrugged before washing it as well. "What?" Harry teased. "No more Man-Bat?"
"I think I've had my fill of intrigues for the rest of my life," Severus said, not looking at him but concentrating on the mug more than Harry thought was necessary. "And there's nothing mysterious when everyone knows that you are the Man-Bat." He smiled. "I was thinking of setting Cape free."
Harry shrugged. "Oh, I think we need a pet."
"I suppose it would be irresponsible to release it into the wild. It is rather unpredictable." He shuddered. "I'm sorry," he said, "I was just imagining if it had offspring with a wild animal.
Harry grinned. "W could make a real Batman."
Severus flicked water at him. "Don't tempt me."
Harry didn't say anything then, just stood there and watched Severus drain the sink and rinse out the dishcloth before folding it and placing it on the neck of the tap. He watched the fall of Severus's hair as it ran down his shoulders and back. His eyes slid along the arms peeking from the rolled shirtsleeves, down the finger and then back, up to the face, looking for Severus's face in the veil of hair. All he could see was his nose.
Severus glanced over finally, and raised an eyebrow. "What?"
"Nothing. I'm going to have to go in now," Harry said, then, realising that he would rather get all of paperwork out of the way while it was still fresh in his head. Some of his statements would be used in court, and Hermione had drilled into his head how important it was to have detailed reports to enter into evidence. "Paperwork, statements. You should come too."
Severus dried his hands on a towel. "All this work to stay out of the limelight, and tomorrow our faces are going to be plastered on the Daily Prophet."
Harry smirked and jumped up to sit on the edge of the counter. "Wear foundation. Those flashbulbs always wash you out."
"Here I was just thinking I'd punch you in the back right before they take the picture," Severus countered, smirking. "Make it look like you're pregnant." He pushed away from his rest against the counter by the sink and opened Harry's legs, settling them on either side of his waist.
Harry grinned. "I've looked worse." He wrapped his legs about Severus's waist and licked his way up the other man's neck. "Hrm," he murmured. "Does that mean we're heroes again? Did we save the world?"
Severus's hands pulled at his trousers, undoing the flies and reaching in to grab Harry's cock, his fingers playing on the length of it, thumb pulling the foreskin a little before skidding up to rub his slit with the flat of his palm. Harry sucked in a breath and waited.
"Oh, I don't know if we saved the world, but I'm sure we saved something," he murmured. "I will admit that I appreciate the fact that I won't have to drug you at night anymore." He pulled back and stared at Harry. "You were becoming a little boring."
Harry thrust his hips forward and bit his lip. "I knew it. I just knew it." He snorted. "I thought you were having an affair, with all the sex and the distraction."
There was a grunt and Severus shook his head, hair falling into his face as he ducked it, a smile playing on his face. "I have enough drama with one lover, Mister Potter. Two is inordinately too many."
"So I guess a fivesome with Fred and George and Angelina is out of the realm of possibility, then," Harry murmured, half smiling into Severus's mouth.
Severus laughed then. "Angelina maybe," he said softly. "If I ever bed a Weasley without the use of hallucinogens, I give you leave to euthanise me."
Harry was going to reply, but really, time was precious.
EPILOGUE:
Hermione opened the mailbox and retrieved the card inside, wondering who would send them Muggle post. She leant against the fence post and watched Rose almost kill herself falling off the playset before doing more than glance at it.
It was from New York City, the picture of the city from a century ago, and a boldface that read: GOTHAM.
The back of the card was Harry's unmistakable scrawl:
Ron! Hermione! Gin! Let's start a detective agency! We'll fight crime together! S. says he'll help. We need new location/business stratagem/contacts. We can rent an old hangar in East Anglia! When we get back from America, we'll----
The pen had obviously been dragged from the writer's hand, since the words devolved into a scribble and then a line that ran off the other end of the card. Hermione smiled. In the far corner of the card was a bit of small, neat and cramped printing: Sod off. Ps—I STILL AM the night, Ginevra.
Ron narrowly missed being kicked in the head by Hugo's swinging feet as he walked past them and met her at the fence, cup of coffee in hand for her. "Wuzzat? Postcard from your parents?"
Hermione handed the card off to him and accepted the coffee. "Not quite. I think we're all about to get drafted into something foolish." She smiled. "But fantastic."
Ron read the card, and his face grinned when he looked up. Behind him, their children chased each other, towels tied about their necks like capes. "Oh. Oh wizard."
***
Well, folks, there you have it. A day in the life of a superhero and his sidekick. It's a very long day, the tights are uncomfortable; a lot of working of villain motifs. Crime has a Bossa Nova beat. Leap before you look. Remember denouement. Other French words: inconvenient, nonessential... oh... I could go on and on... But time's a-wasting and evil's out there making hand-crafted mischief for the swap meet of villainy. And you can't strike a good deal with evil. No matter how much you haggle. We don't need to look for a bargain; goodness is cheap because it's free, and free is as cheap as it gets.
END
END NOTES:
1. AMAND-R WHAT THE SHIT IS THIS? I don't know! Not in the face! Not in the face!
2. I promised DJ fisting. If it sucked, you blame her.
3. This fic was written to so much techno, that sometime in the middle of its construction, the Chemical Brothers showed up and demanded that I add this credit or they'd sue. Then they laid down some block rocking beats.
4. Yeah, I plagiarised my games fic last year for the end. I guess I'll have to write myself a stern email and then take all my fics down. Can someone recommend a good e-lawyer?
Back to the 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 FOUR: WAIT, WHEN THE HELL DID WE BECOME THE JUSTICE LEAGUE?
You know, gang, when you're a superhero, you never know where the day will take you. You may find yourself halfway around the world in the shark-infested waters of true-to-life living. Or you may find yourself going down to the store for a lozenge. You can't know, can you? No. You gotta ride that wave, you gotta suck that lozenge. 'Cause if you don't, who will?
Ron loved painting his face whenever they went on a stakeout or sting. Harry had forgotten about that fact, and when Ron had met them in East Anglia, his clothes pitch black and his head covered with a black skullcap, Harry had almost laughed at his paint-streaked face.
"What?" Ron said, glancing from him to Severus, "I'm pale, all right?" He spread his hands and gave his sister the V when she whistled as she approached. The night had already fallen in East Anglia, and they gathered in a small copse of trees that brushed the property, perhaps fifty yards from the water mill.
Ginny clapped her hands once and squatted down in the tall grass of the field. Severus moved off into another cluster of grass, closer to one of the only trees in the area, presumably to further observe the guard that was making rounds of the mill.
"Well, people, let's hurry this up. I have a date with Bertram tomorrow night and I'd look to look refreshed and ready for sex."
Ron rolled his eyes and Harry laughed. Off in the distance, Severus snorted. Harry wouldn't have even known he was there if he hadn't watched him hide. "Meat pie man?" he asked. "Gin, you work fast."
Ginny flicked her ponytail has he squatted down next to her. "You should know."
Ron hunched down in the grass and blinked owl eyes through the raccoon mask of the face paint. Beside him, Ginny jostled back and forth from one heel to the other. Harry wanted to still her, but he knew she was just getting herself wound up for what was to come.
'"Mione says that she'd have loved to have been here, but she only trusts the kids with mum and dad right now, and they're still in Moscow."
Ginny rolled her eyes. "That third honeymoon is taking forever," she muttered.
Harry sighed. It was better that the kids were safe. He was suddenly glad for a second that he hadn't any, until he thought of James. What had Ginny done with their son? He felt a little guilty for not remembering right away.
There was a rustle and they turned to see Hermione tromping towards them, her little beaded purse of Holding in her hands, her black clothes tight against her body. She gave them all a glare and crouched down next to them, pulling her hair into a fierce tail that she rolled into a bun as she talked.
"Look, you were all in the first place I looked." She glared at Harry. "I can smell your after-shave." She glared at Ron. "You need to learn volume control and you—" She grabbed Ginny and forced the woman to stop rocking. "Fidget too much."
"And me, Ms. Weasley-Granger?" Severus said in a whisper from where he had been lurking and using the distance spell to see the warehouse guard detail. Hermione squealed and lost her balance, toppling backwards onto her rump.
Ginny pulled Hermione to her feet and she snorted. "You are fine," she grudgingly admitted.
"Where are the fruit of our loins?" Ron asked amusedly.
Hermione righted herself and opened her bag, rummaging around in it. Harry spared a thought, when she didn't answer immediately, that the children were in the bag, but then she smirked. "Oh, they're with Angelina. I hope that's alright with you, Gin."
Ginny waved her hands. "If he comes home from there with three nostrils again, I personally blame you."
Hermione grinned. "Done."
Severus moved back into their group and sighed. "If we're done with the child custody shuffle," he said, in a voice that reminded Harry of his years in the Potions room at Hogwarts. Later he would ask Severus how it felt to be storming the castle with four of the biggest pains in his arse to ever haunt his classroom. Ginny just smiled and Hermione rolled her eyes. Ron looked at Harry and made a loose wanking gesture with his hands. Harry would have been offended on Severus's behalf if he hadn't reached out and smacked Ron in the back of the head.
"I wager, based on what I've seen in the past three hours," Severus told them while resolutely not glancing over to Ron, who was rubbing the back of his skull and smiling. "That we have about ten minutes before that guard comes back. We should move now before we have to wait for another hour."
Hermione opened her purse. "Do we need a distraction? I have something for that—"
"We use this—" Severus pulled a small canister from his bag and turned it.
Harry frowned at it; it was round and metal and suspiciously familiar. "George and Fred were working on something that looked like that. What was it?"
Ginny shrugged. "Whistle Jammies?"
"Whistle Jimmy," Severus replied. "Though why they call it that I have no idea." He turned it in his hands, pointing at the pin in the top. "It should make quite the distraction, should we require one."
Harry took the Whistle Jimmy from Severus's hands. "Wait a minute, are you saying the twins made this for you?"
Hermione shook her head but didn't offer commentary. Instead she dug about in her purse and retrieved a small bag of what looked like Dungbombs. What, was everyone packing some sort of incendiary device? He looked at Ron and expected him to pull a grenade from his socks or something.
"Messieurs Weasley and Weasley have made several things for me in the past few months," Severus told them all, as if it was perfectly normal to have a smoke bomb the size of a niffler on one's person.
Harry checked his holster and supplies as he bantered. Ron passed him the face paint and he declined. Ginny took a swipe of the black and painted under her eyes, like she used to do in Quidditch games back at Hogwarts. "So the twins have been like, your Q?"
Severus pulled his cloak from his bag and Hermione and Ron cursed as the blackness of it spilled out onto the ground in front of him and began to uncurl and move of its own volition. Harry might have been more surprised if he hadn't seen the show already. Ginny's fingers twitched on her knees and Harry knew that she wanted to try it out. He grabbed one of her hands and shook his head.
"That has to be some sort of Muggle reference I don't know about," Severus told him, "so let's just declare that we are ready to move." He looked at them all, the cloth dangling from his hands. "I shall come from the roof. Miss Weasley and Mrs. Granger-Weasley will come from the far side." He gestured with one hand. "And Harry and Mr. Weasley will come in the other side entrance. If there was a sub level accessible from the outside, I would suggest using it, but I have yet to discern one."
Harry was going to protest, say something about how he was the one in charge and should be making the plans when he realised that he hadn't really thought of a plan anyway. He hadn't had much chance to work with Severus during the war, but he hadn't been a bad planner or team player, to hear Arthur talk about it.
Plus, that was pretty much what Harry would have said anyway. He spared a thought that they were becoming more alike, but dismissed it as sentimental—strategy did not follow love, only logic.
Harry waved his comm at Ginny, and she waved hers back. "We'll stay here. You message when you're in place. And you—" He pointed a finger at Severus, who was in the process of slipping the cowl of the cape over his head. "Wait for a signal. Stay out of sight until it's clear. I can't comm you, so I don't want to have to worry that you've beaten us to the punch."
Severus rolled his eyes under the cowl and stalked away through the tall grass, pausing to lurk behind the few available tree trunks. Harry glanced at the building again. "All right, then."
Ginny held the flat of her palm out and waggled it back and forth. "See you on the flip side."
Ron sighed. "I thought she'd be less strange as she got older." He glanced at Harry as they sat there and watched Ginny and Hermione stealthily creep their way across the grass. "Who's Bertram anyway?"
Harry searched the darkness for Severus, but he was long gone, disappearing into the blackness while Harry had been looking elsewhere. He wondered how Severus was planning on to get up onto the roof, and if he shouldn't have taught him Aeroscalare. On second thought, maybe the cape could levitate. Or Severus had his own spells for defying gravity.
"Don't worry. He has a lovely arse," Harry offered, mostly because he loved tweaking Ron's denial of his sister's sex life. Also, that was pretty much all he knew about Bertram the meat pie man. Aside from the meat pie business, which went to other filthy places that Harry didn't even want to think about. Not with the mother of his child.
Ron sat on his rear in the grass and cracked his knuckles. "You know, I'm glad you called me in and all, but why didn't you just call Colin and Suze?"
Harry watched the guard round the water mill. Oh joy, it was Roger Ketterer. Mister Ketterer looked about, then glanced at the windows of the mill, which then came alive with a swath of green. The lanterns that hung in the half-boarded windows shone like brilliant beams, and a low, droning noise issued from the mill.
"Because you're available. Susan is pregnant, and I don't want to take her somewhere she might be hurt."
Hermione would rip your face off for that," Ron replied, staring interestedly at the lights. "That's new."
Harry nodded. "It is." He pushed some of the grass out of his face and counted himself lucky that he wasn't allergic to ragweed. "And Hermione be damned. If something happened to Suze tonight, I would never forgive myself." He glanced at Ron. "And Colin, well."
Ron grinned. "I think Ginny and Colin should work together when Suze goes on leave. I'll come back early just to watch the maybe---woah!"
Harry was glad that he had been looking over at Ron, because the droning suddenly coalesced and crescendoed into a high-pitched screaming sound, and then the green lights grew bright and brighter until they were so bright it was hard to see, even with his closed eyes. He raised a hand to shield himself and hoped that everyone else was doing the same.
It couldn't have lasted longer than ten seconds, but what a loud bright ten seconds they were, Harry thought, shaking his head and grinding the heels of his palms into his eyes. Beside him Ron cursed and scrubbed his hands with his face. He looked over at Harry. "I think that merits a 'what the bloody hell was that?'"
Harry blinked at the mill, its green lights dim and innocuous again. The tree in the center of the courtyard waved in the breeze. Smoke rose from the tips of its dead branches.
"I think we should find out," he mumbled, scanning the roof for signs of Severus, but predictably finding none.
His comm lit up, and he glanced at the mobile: 'WTBHWTB???!!11'
Harry slid the keyboard out and felt Ron's breath tickle his neck as he texted back. 'in position?'
He waited for a full minute, glancing from the display to the mill with its lights fading, and Mister Ketterer standing in the courtyard by the dead tree, shaking one of its limbs.
Finally, 'READY. GO IN THREE.'
Harry smiled. Ginny always got to pick the timing. It wasn't a rule or anything, it was just what she did. He replied something to the effect of 'Roger' and tucked the phone away in a pocket where it wouldn't get banged about, leaned forward and did a pushup so that he could lie low and stretch his cramping legs, and looked at Ron. "In two."
Ron pulled his wand. "Just like old times."
"Which old times? Voldemort old times or Auror old times?"
"I was thinking of that stag night you threw me."
Harry grinned. "You were very brave, crashing into Hermione's bedroom like that."
"Yeah well," Ron admitted as they dropped their voices and began to creep through the grass to the entrance. "I like to think that was the Ogden's."
Harry snorted. "That wasn't Ogden's. That was butterbeer."
"On an empty stomach!" Ron hissed, and they cleared the grass. Harry took a second to consider that they were the worst operatives ever, but they'd fallen back into routine, and it felt rather nice to be able to do it with Ron, who was good at his back and anticipated his moves. They probably should have been a smidgen quieter, because Ketterer chose that moment to round the corner and he spotted them immediately. Harry hadn't anticipated that. It was just their luck that the one time he needed to piss or something was the exact moment that they were trying to infiltrate the mill.
Ketterer raised his wand, possibly to hex them, possibly to send off a warning, but before he could, something fell from the roof and hit him in the head. Harry froze, his wand drawn, Ron backpedaling beside him, and they watched Ketterer's body fall to the ground with a thud, followed by the inert Whistle Jimmy, which had apparently caught him squarely in the skull. Well, that was one way to distract and divert attention. Ron dashed forward to kick the man's wand away, and Harry peered up at the roof, which was completely normal-looking except for the minute curl of black cloth peeking over the edge of the thatching. Ron held his wand on the man until he could poke him experimentally with his boot.
Harry checked the mobile clock again. They were going to be late to break and enter if they didn't move soon. He and Ron dragged Ketterer's body into one of the shadows of the mill and left him there.
There had been no more noises or lights from the inside of the mill, though the incandescent lights still shone brightly inside, bathing the courtyard area in a yellow light. The dead tree cast a long shadow on the warehouse behind it, like black tendrils that held the building down. Harry wondered what was in those buildings, too, but all of the activity seemed to be coming from the mill, so that was where they were going to start.
Harry turned the knob on the door and leaned on it a bit, and he was rather surprised to find that it was not only unlocked, but also rather loose. One would have thought that secret hideouts should have been harder to break into, but there they were, stumbling into a small alcove that fed into a much larger room.
The mill was fairly unremarkable in and of itself, just as unremarkable as the outside with its boards and rotting planks. The green lanterns hanging from the ceiling in various places in the room made up the lone spots of colour. From the bottom of the lanterns hung thick ropy cord that twisted to the ground before coiling across the floor and gathering at the base of a stocky wooden chair in the centre of the main room.
All the equipment that has once been useful in…water milling? Harry guessed, was pushed to the walls of the room and left to gather dust or covered in filthy sheets. Harry and Ron crept across the raised platform of the doorway, and watched as the green lights pulsed in intensity a little, but nowhere near as strong as they had earlier.
"The first pass didn't work," said a man's voice, and Harry and Ron had to duck back into the shadows to be sure that they hadn't been seen. "We'll have to run it again."
Harry peered out of the dimness to look at the chair, and the figure strapped into it. It was a male, suspiciously familiar, but it was rather difficult to tell when the person was only in profile. He turned to Ron and raised his brows, and Ron just shrugged.
"One more time and the tissue will be ruined," said another voice, belonging to a man who approached the chair from the other side. Something about him also seemed familiar, but it was hard to tell. Harry tried to search his memory for all the faces he'd seen over the years and made no note of; not for the first time, he was glad that Kingsley wasn't his immediate superior anymore—if he had to write this up and he couldn't place the men he was about to hex into tomorrow, Shacklebolt would have had his arse on the carpet.
"Henders," Ron whispered, "Unspeakable." When Harry looked over at him, he shrugged. "Hit on Hermione at the Christmas Party three years ago and I had to punch him."
Harry laughed and turned back to the scene, where Henders was joined by another man, also probably an Unspeakable. "It's not like we don't have others. I keep telling you that," he told Henders.
"I still don't like the idea. It's…it feels wrong."
"If you're still having that problem, Handers, then let someone Obliviate you and ask for reassignment."
The man in the chair moaned. "He keeps doing that," Henders complained, nudging at the man with a hand. "I thought they said it didn't hurt."
"They said it probably didn't hurt," the other man replied. "And since when do you care? He killed three women with a saw blade."
Harry scanned the other side of the room. He could see the door that Ginny and Hermione would be using, and though he couldn't see a roof entrance, there had to be one, or Severus wouldn't have opted to enter that way. As he was staring, the door shuddered, and he saw Ginny peek into the room. He was about to wave, but he saw her raise her wand and cast an Expelliarmus. So much for letting him take point.
The two men in the room who weren't strapped to the chair turned; they drew their wands and fired in unison, falling backwards in opposite directions, rehearsed, practised, skilled. Harry hid behind a column and heard Ginny cast another curse from the other side of the room. Ron grinned.
"I was right," he said, his face jovial. "Us against the Ministry. Just like old times."
Oh ha ha.
Harry threw a few stunning spells out as cover, and Ron dove to his left. He lost sight of him when he went right and hid behind a few wooden barrels. A curse sizzled past his ear, and he cocked his head, listening for the sound of footsteps that would tell him where his attacker was. Oh, and if he could, he would take note of Ginny's location, too; it wouldn't do to hex his own team mates right now.
He heard someone call out 'Reducto', and of course it was Ginny. She loved that spell; it was her signature move. Bits of wooden barrel went flying, and some even caught in the wall and quivered. Ron yelled "Stupefy!" and there was a thump as a body hit the floor. A few more ...scuffles and curses, and someone else was down too.
"Clear!" Hermione shouted, and he peeled himself from the pillar, rather chagrined that he hadn't the chance to stun or incapacitate anyone. And where was Severus?
Ron and Hermione stood in front of the man in the chair while Ginny tied up Henders and the other man, whose name Harry had never learnt. When Harry joined the two of them they all stared at the chair.
"That's Thulciver McPhee," Hermione told them. "You know, the one who killed his wife and girlfriends a few years ago." She made a noise of disgust and stuck her wand in her holster, a leather belt that had been a gift from Harry years ago. Harry was pleased to see that she still used it at the right times. Hands-free was almost as important as armed, sometimes. "I was on the prosecution."
Ron lifted the McPhee's chin with one finger, and he blinked at them sleepily. "That's why we know him. We arrested him," Ron said dully.
Oh, right. Harry looked at McPhee and wondered if he was all right in the head.
McPhee closed his eyes. "Everything is so green."
Harry jolted and glanced at the green lanterns.
Ginny wandered over to one of the lanterns and yanked on the cord. It fell from the bottom of the lantern in a shower of sparks and the light went out. "What do you suppose they are for?" she said. "I can't imagine they're doing lobotomies with electricity.
"I think, Ginevra, that they're a signal," Severus said as he dropped down from the upper rafters. Ginny and Hermione jumped, and Harry glared as the other man made his way across the room, his cape dragging on the floor in places as if it were licking the grime of the wood. A far hem reached towards the lights and Severus had to grab it with his fist and fling it towards the ground. It was rather like trying to keep a helium balloon from flying away by dribbling it like a basketball.
"Bloody hell!" Ginny breathed. "Wear a bell!"
Severus smiled at her. "I am the night," he told her, his mouth quirked up in a grin. Harry holstered his wand and found himself crossing his arms; he was about to indulge in some admonishment that he could safely file under 'foreplay'.
"You were of precious little help," he groused.
Severus crossed his own arms. His cape wrapped around his waist and billowed like a skirt. "I was told to stay out of the way, since I had no Muggle communication device with which to help plan your…" he paused as he searched, most certainly, for most the irritating words. "Shocking entrance." He turned his head to glare at Ginny. "Expelliarmus? Really?"
Ginny flapped her hands like a bat. "Keep 'em guessing."
Hermione rolled her eyes. "As fun as it is to watch the 'heckle the former teacher' show, we just knocked out our only two leads, and this one here," she gestured to McPhee, "is going to be as helpful as a Blast-Ended Skrewt."
McPhee smiled at her. "You have faerie hair."
Hermione smiled at him. "I think he's addled."
Severus glanced at the lanterns and the chair, at the room around him, as if he was reverse engineering the scenario to see where it led. Harry had seen him do it loads before, for things like, 'How do I make this complicated potion I have never made before and which is toxic and for which I do not have a recipe,' and other things like, 'Where did I last see my billfold? Was it in the kitchen? I shall retrace my steps.'
"They damaged Draco here," he said. "They did it with this chair, or something he needed to be in this chair for." He reached down and undid the leather restraints from McPhee's wrists, and as the man pulled his hands free, a series of tiny needles yanked out of his wrists.
McPhee squealed and rubbed his hands. "I'm telling!"
Severus pulled the man up and transferred him to the waiting arms of Ginny, who cast a sleeping spell and let the man fall with a thump. Severus was already following the trail of the wrist needles down into tubes that ran to the underside of the chair and then into small holes that had been drilled in the floor.
"There's another level," Ron told him, his eyes already sweeping the place for trapdoors and hidden staircases. Harry glanced at his own feet. Ginny started moving furniture and pulling the sheets from the equipment. Then Hermione cleared her throat and they all glanced to her and then followed her pointing finger to the far side of the room, where a staircase with a railing obviously pointed down.
Severus stood and swept past her on his way to the stairs. "Go to the head of the class, Ms. Granger-Weasley."
Harry watched her roll her eyes and follow him down the stairs, casting Lumos with her wand so that they had enough light to see by. That wasn't a half-bad idea. Harry cast Lumos and heard Ron and Ginny do the same. At this rate, they would be able to see quite well even if there wasn't an independent light source down there.
They descended the stairs to the sound of humming machinery, which was in and of itself a disturbingly out of place noise in the Wizarding world. Everyone here was fairly used to Muggle tech, enough that the drone didn't bother them like it did some wizards who were not on speaking terms with technology. Despite that, Harry hadn't been ready for it, and as Severus cast a Lumos spell and the lights began to flare up all around them, the noise only served to punctuate the alien-like ambience of the room.
It was lined on both sides with long vertical glass cylinders, some illuminated in green, others completely black. Inside the illuminated green cylinders bubbled a translucent liquid of some sort. It was actually hard to tell if the liquid was green or the glass that contained it. Harry slid one hand along the tank closest to him.
"They feed it up through the ceiling, and then into the veins, and then they do some sort of spell, or something, something that is killing that tree outside," he said, eyes following the tubing up through the ceiling.
"This has to be the biggest vat of Veritaserum I have ever seen," Severus said, one hand on the glass next to him on the opposite side of the room. "I can't imagine what they would be using it for."
Hermione tapped one of the darker cylinders. "This isn't Veritaserum," she said. "This is some sort of…something."
Severus joined her and they both peered at the glass. Harry suspected that they would have pressed their faces to it like children at the zoo if they had thought it would help to identify the contents.
"It's a Befuddlement Draught," said a voice behind them, and Hermione jolted. Severus turned and pulled his wand. Harry and the others only had to turn, since they were still armed.
Penelope Clearwater leaned against one of the canisters, clutching a series of cords in one hand and her wand in the other. She looked terrible, face pale and drawn, clothes hanging from her as if she hadn't been eating. Her hair was pulled back in a tail, but where it used to be a long full mane, it was stringy and frizzled. Her hand shook as she pointed the wand at them.
"A Befuddlement Draught," she repeated. "Mixed with a painkiller. For the spell. We need it for the spell."
"What spell?" Ron and Ginny asked at once, wands out. Ron glared at Ginny and she stuck her tongue out at him. Harry wished they'd keep their eyes on the crazy-looking lady with the weapon. And apparently a master plan.
"Drop the wands," said another voice, and then an expertly cast Expelliarmus shot out from the side, in between the canisters on Harry's left. Ron fell backwards, and Ginny tumbled to Harry's right, taking cover and also holding herself in reserve just as they had agreed. Ginny was the shadow-man, pulling back until she was needed.
Severus pivoted with his wand, but the Expelliarmus had hit him squarely, and he rubbed his hand with his other one while he looked for his dropped wand. Harry cast a Stupefy, but Percy Weasley took advantage of the situation to physically knock him down, the fall taking them into one of the glass canisters. Harry's head collided with the thick glass and for a second all he heard was a gong noise
By the time he'd managed to right himself, Hermione was unconscious, Ron was out of sight, probably forming a plan with Ginny, because Percy had an arm around Severus's shoulders and was pointing his wand to his throat. Harry shook his head to clear it and raised his wand.
Percy pressed the tip into Severus's neck. "I am quite determined to do him harm, should you proceed, Harry." He backed up against one of the tanks, pulling Severus with him and glancing about as if he was sure that he was about to be attacked from another side. Harry tried not to look at the movements in the shadows behind Percy.
He lowered his wand and let it fall from his hand. Severus rolled his eyes, and even from his captive position, it was a firm order; still topping from the bottom, that Severus Snape.
"I'm so sorry it has to be this way, Harry," Percy said softly. "I tried to throw you off. I assigned you the Man-Bat case, but I had no idea it would lead you all here." He gestured to the rows of tanks behind him, and Harry glanced away from him long enough to take another good look at the glass cylinders.
"Why, Percy?" he asked softly. It was a pointless move, really. He was quite sure that he already knew the answer. On the other hand, getting Percy to talk was a good way to distract him from the fact that he had a wand to Severus's neck, and that Ron was behind him.
Percy sighed. "The Dementors were leaving," he said. "Can you imagine what Azkaban would be like without Dementors? No one to keep those people in there."
Severus's eyes locked with Harry's, and he shook his head minutely. This was what they wanted, really, that big reveal, and Percy was going to give it to them. Harry remembered some of his first interrogation lessons with Shacklebolt, back before he became the Minister of Magic: Once they start talking, they don't want to stop. They want to tell you the story, Harry, no matter what it means for them, for what will happen to them. Just let them do it, because if they change their mind, you'll never get anything out of them.
Harry clenched his fists. In the corner, Penelope bound Hermione with an angry Incarcerous and abandoned her to stand by her husband.
"Lucius Malfoy broke out of Azkaban, and we knew that something had to be done," Penelope said, her voice full of contempt. She crossed her arms and peered at Severus. "If all the Dementors left, then who could keep the Wizarding world's criminals in their cells?"
Severus rolled his eyes again, and Harry rather hoped he wasn't about to berate the person who was mentally unstable, untied, and also armed. "I don't know, perhaps that would have been an issue for a governing body to decide. If only we had one." Harry cringed, but Severus crashed onwards. "We could form our own. Call it oh, say the Wizengamot."
Percy tapped Severus's neck with the wand. "The Wizengamot said nothing. They said, 'Oh, don't worry, Weasley, we'll take care of it when it becomes an issue.'" He shook his head. "But Lucius Malfoy broke out of Azkaban, and I knew that something had to be done."
Hermione groaned and Harry looked about for either Ron or Ginny. Alas, neither one in sight. He secretly hoped that Ginny was recording the whole thing on her mobile. That would have been useful later. If there was a later.
"So you, what?" Harry asked, his hands still in the air up by his ears. He was getting tired of doing his scarecrow routine. It was becoming clear that the Weasley siblings weren't going to make an appearance until brother dearest had spilled the entire story. He didn't blame them. "You decided that you'd build a prison here?"
Penelope sighed. "It was just supposed to change them a little. Reform them, make them useful members of society, you see." She glanced at Percy, as if she needed his permission or approval to continue and he nodded. "If we cannot hold them, then we need to put them somewhere. Isn't it better if they can't harm anyone anymore? They could even eventually be productive members of society."
Harry wasn't sure why he hadn't seen it sooner, as soon as Penelope had come out of the woodwork, as soon as he'd realised that it was the murderers, the rapists, the dengerous criminals.
"You can't reform them by mutilating their brains," he told Percy softly. "You're violating them."
Percy glanced at Penelope, and she nodded this time, as if he needed her permission. "What about their violations? Don't tell me that you're fine seeing Theodore Nott go free. What if it had been Bellatrix LeStrange? Don't tell me that you'd prefer that she have her rights, instead of paying for all the lives she's taken." Percy sneered and tugged on Severus's chest. "Because they can't be contained without the Dementors, Harry. I'll save us from them, and no one will ever have to worry about it again."
Harry was about to reply, but Severus's cape snagged Percy's arm and yanked, turning the other man's hold so that his own weight was being used against him, and suddenly Percy's arm twisted behind him. For a split second, Harry was sure that they had this all under control. Ron was still tousling with Penelope, and Harry reached out across the floor to snatch his wand back up, rolling around to fire a curse at Percy, if only Severus would get out of the way. The two men tussled over the wand in Percy's hand, and when Severus caught the other man in a poorly-executed face punch, Percy staggered backwards into one of the tanks, which cracked a little with his impact.
It was the opening Harry needed. He fired a curse off, a Diffindo, which burst open the cylinder behind Percy and Severus, and the contents spilled to the ground, the Veritaserum drenching Percy as it dumped on his head and body. Severus rolled out of the way expertly, and Harry spared a smile to know that he'd probably be relieved that he hadn't just been exposed to enough truth serum to keep him from lying for the rest of his life.
Ron had lost his battle with Penelope, probably because he was trying to subdue her gently (and because he was out of practice; Harry would rib him about it later), but that was short-lived as Penelope righted herself over Ron's unconscious body. Harry hit her with an Everte Statum that knocked her into one of the black cylinders and bounced her body, unconscious, onto the floor a few feet behind where Percy stood with his wand out, pointed at Harry, and Severus, who lay on the floor, panting.
"Don't—" Percy said, as if he was unsure of what to say. His eyes were glazing, and Harry wondered if there was more than Veritaserum in that tank. "Just don't, they'll run free, and we'll all suffer." He sighed, and his wand lowered a little, as if he had forgotten it was there. "They're the ones who should suffer."
"Oh Perce," Ginny said softly then, her hands empty in front of her as she walked towards him from her cover between the tanks; his hands shook as he trained the wand on her instead. "You can't be God."
"Ginny," Percy said, "you know how important this is."
"I know. Family gets a free pass," Ginny said brightly, and then swung her fist in a right hook that connected with Percy's jaw, right underneath, and his neck snapped backwards before his whole body seemed to sail through the air. He landed on Penelope, hit his head on the concrete of the floor, and lay still.
Ginny sat down on the floor and checked Ron's pulse. "I was going to say 'free pass….to gaol,' but it felt like overkill," she told him, as off-handedly as ever, as if she hadn't just found out that one of her brothers was running a mass lobotomy experiment, and had instead decked a complete stranger. Her eyes were suspiciously glassy, but he didn't want to acknowledge it. Harry waited for Severus to sit up before replying, his eyes glued to Percy's unconscious form sprawled over his wife's.
The lights on the tanks flickered as the power failed. "I don't know," he told her. "But less is more." If only that were true.
***
They got in finally at nine in the morning the following day. Harry stumbled into the bedroom and fell on the bed with a dull thump. A set of hands removed his boots, and then there was some scuffling, things being rearranged. Harry's ankles were grabbed and he was turned in a right angle so that he was lying on the bed normally, and then Harry's body rocked when Severus flopped down next to him.
He turned hie head and opened his eyes. They were quite difficult to focus, but he centered on Severus's face and smiled. "You're still here."
Severus blinked. "I suppose it's over," he said softly. "I shall have to learn to sleep with you again."
Harry yawned. "It's rather easy. Just close your eyes and…"
When Harry opened his eyes again, the sun was in a completely different place, and the bed was empty. Harry lifted his head, listening for sounds, and he was rewarded with the clink of dishes and the sound of running water.
"Kingsley called while you were asleep," Severus said over his shoulder when Harry stumbled into the kitchen. "I told him to piss off."
Harry grabbed Severus's arse and was rewarded with a glare and a mug. "I knew there was a reason I married you," he mumbled into the rim of the mug. He watched the dishes as Severus scrubbed them, running the rag over the plates in methodical circles.
"I think I'll dismantle the Panic Room," Severus said. "Something to do. And I owe the twins an order of Scream In A Bottle." He turned off the tap and set the last mug on the tea towel to dry.
Harry drained the mug and handed it to Severus, who scowled at it and then shrugged before washing it as well. "What?" Harry teased. "No more Man-Bat?"
"I think I've had my fill of intrigues for the rest of my life," Severus said, not looking at him but concentrating on the mug more than Harry thought was necessary. "And there's nothing mysterious when everyone knows that you are the Man-Bat." He smiled. "I was thinking of setting Cape free."
Harry shrugged. "Oh, I think we need a pet."
"I suppose it would be irresponsible to release it into the wild. It is rather unpredictable." He shuddered. "I'm sorry," he said, "I was just imagining if it had offspring with a wild animal.
Harry grinned. "W could make a real Batman."
Severus flicked water at him. "Don't tempt me."
Harry didn't say anything then, just stood there and watched Severus drain the sink and rinse out the dishcloth before folding it and placing it on the neck of the tap. He watched the fall of Severus's hair as it ran down his shoulders and back. His eyes slid along the arms peeking from the rolled shirtsleeves, down the finger and then back, up to the face, looking for Severus's face in the veil of hair. All he could see was his nose.
Severus glanced over finally, and raised an eyebrow. "What?"
"Nothing. I'm going to have to go in now," Harry said, then, realising that he would rather get all of paperwork out of the way while it was still fresh in his head. Some of his statements would be used in court, and Hermione had drilled into his head how important it was to have detailed reports to enter into evidence. "Paperwork, statements. You should come too."
Severus dried his hands on a towel. "All this work to stay out of the limelight, and tomorrow our faces are going to be plastered on the Daily Prophet."
Harry smirked and jumped up to sit on the edge of the counter. "Wear foundation. Those flashbulbs always wash you out."
"Here I was just thinking I'd punch you in the back right before they take the picture," Severus countered, smirking. "Make it look like you're pregnant." He pushed away from his rest against the counter by the sink and opened Harry's legs, settling them on either side of his waist.
Harry grinned. "I've looked worse." He wrapped his legs about Severus's waist and licked his way up the other man's neck. "Hrm," he murmured. "Does that mean we're heroes again? Did we save the world?"
Severus's hands pulled at his trousers, undoing the flies and reaching in to grab Harry's cock, his fingers playing on the length of it, thumb pulling the foreskin a little before skidding up to rub his slit with the flat of his palm. Harry sucked in a breath and waited.
"Oh, I don't know if we saved the world, but I'm sure we saved something," he murmured. "I will admit that I appreciate the fact that I won't have to drug you at night anymore." He pulled back and stared at Harry. "You were becoming a little boring."
Harry thrust his hips forward and bit his lip. "I knew it. I just knew it." He snorted. "I thought you were having an affair, with all the sex and the distraction."
There was a grunt and Severus shook his head, hair falling into his face as he ducked it, a smile playing on his face. "I have enough drama with one lover, Mister Potter. Two is inordinately too many."
"So I guess a fivesome with Fred and George and Angelina is out of the realm of possibility, then," Harry murmured, half smiling into Severus's mouth.
Severus laughed then. "Angelina maybe," he said softly. "If I ever bed a Weasley without the use of hallucinogens, I give you leave to euthanise me."
Harry was going to reply, but really, time was precious.
EPILOGUE:
Hermione opened the mailbox and retrieved the card inside, wondering who would send them Muggle post. She leant against the fence post and watched Rose almost kill herself falling off the playset before doing more than glance at it.
It was from New York City, the picture of the city from a century ago, and a boldface that read: GOTHAM.
The back of the card was Harry's unmistakable scrawl:
Ron! Hermione! Gin! Let's start a detective agency! We'll fight crime together! S. says he'll help. We need new location/business stratagem/contacts. We can rent an old hangar in East Anglia! When we get back from America, we'll----
The pen had obviously been dragged from the writer's hand, since the words devolved into a scribble and then a line that ran off the other end of the card. Hermione smiled. In the far corner of the card was a bit of small, neat and cramped printing: Sod off. Ps—I STILL AM the night, Ginevra.
Ron narrowly missed being kicked in the head by Hugo's swinging feet as he walked past them and met her at the fence, cup of coffee in hand for her. "Wuzzat? Postcard from your parents?"
Hermione handed the card off to him and accepted the coffee. "Not quite. I think we're all about to get drafted into something foolish." She smiled. "But fantastic."
Ron read the card, and his face grinned when he looked up. Behind him, their children chased each other, towels tied about their necks like capes. "Oh. Oh wizard."
***
Well, folks, there you have it. A day in the life of a superhero and his sidekick. It's a very long day, the tights are uncomfortable; a lot of working of villain motifs. Crime has a Bossa Nova beat. Leap before you look. Remember denouement. Other French words: inconvenient, nonessential... oh... I could go on and on... But time's a-wasting and evil's out there making hand-crafted mischief for the swap meet of villainy. And you can't strike a good deal with evil. No matter how much you haggle. We don't need to look for a bargain; goodness is cheap because it's free, and free is as cheap as it gets.
END
END NOTES:
1. AMAND-R WHAT THE SHIT IS THIS? I don't know! Not in the face! Not in the face!
2. I promised DJ fisting. If it sucked, you blame her.
3. This fic was written to so much techno, that sometime in the middle of its construction, the Chemical Brothers showed up and demanded that I add this credit or they'd sue. Then they laid down some block rocking beats.
4. Yeah, I plagiarised my games fic last year for the end. I guess I'll have to write myself a stern email and then take all my fics down. Can someone recommend a good e-lawyer?
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![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-01-08 04:03 am (UTC)Oh, that happens.
NERD Wellies. Shite samosas.
*Adds to slang lexicon*
"I was going to say 'free pass….to gaol,' but it felt like overkill,"
And BAM, VAN DAMME.
I felt much pity for lobotomised Draco. That's so... very wrong.
"Not. One. Murderer. Not. One. Death Eater."
"If I ever bed a Weasley without the use of hallucinogens, I give you leave to euthanise me."
I love your Snape voice.
Who starts a novel with fisting? AWESOME PEOPLE, that's who.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-08 04:21 am (UTC)