It looked like nothing but a pile of rocks from afar. But this was where Greyback's blood led, and when Harry got close, he discovered a gap around nine feet tall and roughly half as wide leading into the dark. He walked inside, the scent of moist earth flooding his nose.
Harry conjured light from the tip of his wand with a quick spell. He didn't need the element of surprise now. His prey was a wounded beast, and he only needed to finish the job.
Despite Greyback's disdain for wizards, magic had clearly been used to create his hideout. It was far deeper and held together much better than a cave like this should. Harry walked forward for the better part of a minute, trudging beneath the ground, until it widened into a much more cavernous space.
The roof rose and the walls separated. The cavern here was roughly one-third the size of the Great Hall, with a craggy ceiling that dripped water in places.
As soon as Harry appeared, the space filled with yapping and scraping. Cells had been constructed from bleached bone. Six werewolves scratched at the bars holding them in, but failed to slice their way through. They were smaller than the ones Harry had killed, many of them mangy with incomplete coats. Adolescents— or younger, knowing the way Greyback operated.
Harry's nose wrinkled. He missed the scent of moist dirt already, because here all that could be smelled were old kills. Bones had been piled in the corners, picked clean and cast aside. When a werewolf bit a wizard and left them alive, the wizard would become one of them. When they bit a Muggle, the Muggle died. No exceptions. Harry remembered the many missing person reports from the village. His grip on his wand tightened, and he approached Fenrir Greyback.
Britain's most fearsome werewolf was there, although he didn't look all that fierce now. One of his front paws was missing below the middle joint, and blood was flowing freely from his perforated legs. It was impressive that he made it back to his den at all. Harry could see his body trying to heal, the full moon accelerating the process to a superhuman rate, but it kept failing. His hand was beyond help, and glass was still stuck in his legs, forcing the wounds open. He snarled as Harry approached, but it came out as a whine.
Just as Harry raised his wand, he heard voices. He looked over his shoulder in time to spot another light coming from the entrance.
Harry cursed under his breath. That was Marlene's voice, and he thought he heard Dawlish as well. Why had they come into the cave? He quickly put out the light from his wand, thinking quickly.
"We'll be able to defend ourselves better down here," Dawlish said. "Force them to come at us one at a time. We can pick them off."
"Or we trap ourselves," Marlene growled.
"You want to go back up there and keep playing tag? Be my guest," Dawlish snapped.
He didn't get the chance to say any more. It was his wand that light was spilling from, and Harry pulled it from his unsuspecting grasp with a silent summoning charm.
The light went out as soon as it left Dawlish's hand. Plunged into the dark, no one could see anything… Except Harry, who tapped his glasses and whispered a night-vision enchantment. Blurry red shapes appeared where the others were standing. As soon as the group came into sight, Harry had memorized who was standing where. Now, it was time for the hard part.
A conjured rope appeared from the tip of his wand. He flicked his wrist forward almost like he was fishing, and it shot out into the dark, wrapping tightly around the torso of one of the red shapes. The rope tightened and reeled back into his wand, moving with so much force that the figure was yanked off their feet. A voice identical to Harry's cried out.
The shock of her sudden abduction made Tonks's concentration slip. By the time she was pulled against Harry's side, her appearance had reverted to her usual pink-haired punk look.
"What's with the darkness?" Marlene demanded.
Dawlish cursed. "Dropped my wand!"
"What are you, a Hogwarts student? I thought Aurors were supposed to be elite."
"Shut up," Dawlish snapped. "It has to be around my feet somewhere. Help me look."
"Shhhhh," Harry whispered to a startled Tonks. "Strike your coolest pose."
Before she could ask what he meant, Harry was gone.
He silenced his footsteps and the rustle of his robes, sprinting across the cave. He dropped Dawlish's wand in front of the man on his way past. As Sturgis cast a Lumos spell of his own, returning light to the room, Harry jumped, landing on his butt right where he'd yanked Tonks away from. Blinking as he realized how close that swap had been, he canceled the spells on himself and his glasses.
"You okay?" Marlene asked him, smirking slightly as she extended her hand. "I heard you yelp."
"Fine!" Harry said. "Totally fine. Just got a little… startled when it went dark. Slipped. That's all."
"Of course," Marlene said, still smirking.
As she helped him up, Sturgis said, "Merlin!"
Dawlish had discovered his wand with the help of Sturgis' spell, recasting his own Lumos. Together, their wands brightened the room enough to see it from wall to wall. In the middle of the room, Nymphadora Tonks stood above the gravely wounded body of Fenrir Greyback. No one but Harry noticed that she looked as shocked as the rest of them.
"Trainee Tonks! Report!" Dawlish said urgently.
"Er, um, scary werewolf, Sir!" Tonks said. Her eyes darted over Greyback's injuries. "Not so nearly as scary now, though?"
Dawlish came forward. "By the founders!" he said when he got close. "That's Greyback!"
"You're pulling my chain!" Marlene said as she followed him. "Here? And she took him down on a full moon?"
"That's… right!" Tonks said. "I stopped him. It was definitely me!"
She looked at Harry briefly, silently asking, Am I doing a good job?
Harry gave her his most covert nod, trying to keep himself from smiling.
"Good work, Trainee Tonks," Dawlish said. He paused, still a bit stunned. "This one will be in the Prophet for sure!"
"Shouldn't you care more about stopping a criminal than getting credit for it?" Marlene sniped.
"Don't put words in my mouth," Dawlish said. "I've cleaned up more dangerous criminals than you can imagine."
"Foooools…"
The guttural moan was even more unpleasant than the last time Harry heard Greyback speak. The pool of blood around him was only getting larger. If Harry had to wager, he'd bet that they were listening to the werewolf's final words.
"Sure," Dawlish chuckled with dark humor. "We're the fools… But we aren't the ones who underestimated Ministry Aurors."
Marlene gave him a look and shouldered past him.
"Your pack hasn't been active this blatantly in decades," she said urgently. "Why now?"
Harry saw the anger in Greyback's animalistic eyes turn to satisfaction.
"You… Know…Answer…" Greyback rasped. "He is… Back. The… Dark Lord—"
Greyback's final words were cut short in a wet burble. A metal spear had appeared in front of Dawlish, stabbing into Greyback's neck. The monstrous wolf gasped and choked, then fell back.
"You absolute fucker!" Marlene grabbed Dawlish's robes by the collar, screaming in his face. "Greyback was talking! He was going to spill everything!"
"Get your hands off a Ministry Auror before you regret it," Dawlish said, glaring down his nose and the spitfire woman.
Marlene's response was to cock her leg back and boot him in the shin. Dawlish bellowed with pain, hopping on one foot.
"That's it!" he said. "It was already suspicious enough that you three were here! We're taking you in!"
"Oh, yeah, that'll fix everything!" Marlene said. "Take it out on us that you interrupted a confession—"
Harry and Sturgis grabbed her arms before she could make things even worse. It seemed like a duel was liable to break out, and as satisfying as it would be to see Marlene lay Dawlish out, that was far from the best thing for their situation.
"Calm down," Harry whispered to her.
"How can we let that incompetent prick off the hook—"
Marlene had twisted toward Harry, but when she saw the look in his eyes, his warning finally settled in. He understood her. This was just not the time to be acting out.
Even if Dawlish wasn't the most stellar Auror to ever serve the office, he wasn't the kind of man to panic and lash out for no reason. He'd heard the exact same things they had— including Greyback's mention of the Dark Lord.
Harry stared at the man's weatherbeaten face as he finished hobbling from Marlene's kick. There was a coldness in those eyes that appeared when the first werewolf came into sight, and it still hadn't gone away. He'd been doing his job then, and he was doing his job now. Dawlish had orders to suppress Voldemort's return; Harry was sure of it. He just didn't know how far the man was willing to go to follow through on them.
For now, he decided it would be best to go along with things. Amelia Bones was still the Head of the DMLE. Harry trusted her to be fair if nothing else.
He still watched, very carefully, what Dawlish was doing with his wand. When it became clear the man wasn't looking to do things the off-the-books way, Harry reluctantly relaxed, hoping the other two would do the same.
"I'll cuff these two," Dawlish said. "Trainee Tonks, you get the third."
He nodded his head in Harry's direction. Tonks showed off her metamorphmagus abilities by turning as white as chalk.
"Can we switch, sir?" she asked.
"Merlin, you just took down Fenrir Greyback!" Dawlish said. "I think you can handle one random wizard!"
Tonks looked torn. On one hand, she didn't want to upset Harry by admitting that it wasn't her who got Greyback at all. On the other hand, she was worried that if she did what her boss said, she'd upset Harry even more. He gave her a reassuring smile and held out his arms. Gulping audibly, Tonks crept forward and bound his hands with conjured rope. She did it so loosely that it almost slid straight off.
"And take his wand!" Dawlish said. "Do I have to tell you everything?"
Tonks pulled Harry's wand away with two fingers, doing so rapidly as if afraid it would bite. Marlene and Sturgis also had their wands taken and their hands bound. The Anti-Apparition Jinx was brought down quickly now that Fenrir Greyback, the one who cast it, was dead. Harry briefly reconsidered the possibility of taking Dawlish down here. But if he did that, he'd need to memory charm him, and then he'd have to do the same to Tonks, which left a bad taste in his mouth. For now, he'd place his faith in Amelia Bones.
Besides, he had a feeling that the two of them had a lot to talk about. Wise or not, experience had taught him that getting mixed up in serious crimes was the fastest way to an audience with the Head of the DMLE.
Tonks touched his arm while Dawlish grabbed his friends, Apparating them to the Ministry.
O-O-O
Harry had seen the holding cells on Level Two of the Ministry hundreds going on thousands of times. It was a first being on this side of the bars, though.
It became clear very quickly that the department didn't know what to do with them. Dawlish justified their detainment by calling them suspicious, but only suspicion of serious dark magic allowed Aurors to make an arrest without proof. Harry could hear him arguing his case with a group of Aurors just outside the bars, but most — some that Harry had even worked with in the future — clearly didn't think much of it. It didn't help that Tonks kept insisting that this was all a misunderstanding. When Dawlish moved on to citing Marlene's kick, it didn't help his case. Then why bring in the other two, was the clear sentiment among his coworkers.
All arguments stopped when a woman with a long mane of red hair swept into the room.
"I've been filled in on my way here," Amelia Bones said, walking past her Aurors with barely a glance. She stopped in front of the bars. "Leave for now."
All the Aurors but Dawlish filed away. Working the night shift could get boring, but Harry knew from experience that when your boss told you that you weren't needed, it was best you clear out right then.
"I believe I said to leave," Amelia said.
Dawlish flinched.
"They're my responsibility, Ma'am," he said. "I can't leave this case—"
"You can if I tell you to. But all I'm asking is that you leave the room… for now. Do so."
Amelia didn't turn around, so she couldn't see Dawlish's reaction, but Harry could. His lips formed a flat line. He hesitated, holding his hands down by his sides. Finally, he snapped a quick salute. "Yes Ma'am," he muttered, leaving the room with his head down.
Amelia waited until the door shut behind him. "You again."
"Hullo!" Harry said, offering her an upbeat wave.
Her nose wrinkled. "Awfully cheerful for a man who's just been arrested."
"You have nothing to keep me on," Harry said. "I've done nothing wrong. I believe in our great justice system to get to the truth of the case."
"You ought to be more cautious. The world is full of mistakes."
"I don't think the illustrious head of this department should talk that way."
"Who would know injustice better than the one who's charged with battling it?"
"The one's perpetrating it, I wager."
"And if they're one and same?" Amelia asked.
Harry beamed. "Well, then we'd have a real problem!"
Sturgis and Marlene had taken to looking back and forth between them. Now, while Harry and Amelia paused to size each other up, Marlene leaned over.
"Does Septima know you're fucking the Head of the DMLE?" she asked.
Harry gave her a tired look. "Marlene, this is the third time we've met. We aren't like that."
"Bullshit," Marlene snorted. She looked between him and the blush that had crept onto Amelia's cheeks. "Oh, I get it! You haven't done that yet."
Amelia slashed her wand and the cell door opened.
"You," she said tersely to Harry. "Out. We'll continue this talk elsewhere."
Harry stood up. Their wands hadn't been returned, but their hands had been untied when they reached the Ministry. "I'll be back soon guys," he promised the other two as he left the cell.
While Amelia led him away, he could just hear Marlene turn to Sturgis. "Fifteen sickles says their clothes are off within ten minutes."
Mercifully, the door closed before his fellow Order member's mouth could land him in hotter water with the woman capable of carting them all straight to Azkaban.
Amelia led him away from the cells to an area he knew even better. They slipped into a room for interviews… or interrogations, depending on who you asked. It had dark blue walls, along with a table and chairs hewn from wood.
Amelia put herself in one of the chairs. Harry sat in the other. They looked at each other for a long time. Harry amused himself by spotting similarities and differences between Amelia and her niece, Susan. They were both attractive, but where Susan's face had puffy cheeks and crinkles around her eyes from smiling, Amelia's features were hawkish. Her blue eyes were piercing, but they made her no less attractive. Amelia was also lankier than her shorter, curvy niece. She was no less gifted when it came to her figure, though. Merely taller.
"These rooms are used to take statements from criminals and witnesses alike," Amelia said. "No words escape this room. None. It's the perfect place for admissions. Or sharing secrets."
"Sounds scary," Harry noted.
"What are you?" Amelia asked bluntly.
"Harry Potter," Harry said bluntly. "You asked me that before."
To Harry's shock, not only did the stoic Madame Bones groan, she also leaned back so far that her chair tilted off the ground, balancing on its back two legs.
Amelia stared at the ceiling, looking like a bored student whittling away class time.
"You showed up from nowhere," she said. "Everywhere you go, danger follows. Or are you following the danger?"
"A bit of both," Harry said.
"You solve all the problems you find yourself in."
"Dark wizards had me cornered in Diagon until the Aurors arrived," Harry pointed out. "Tonight it was an Auror trainee who saved the day."
"The thing is," Amelia said, "you're still perfectly fine. You haven't gotten hurt once. One time can be considered luck. Twice could be luck. Three times could still be luck… But I work in Law Enforcement, Mr. Potter, and we don't get the luxury of believing in coincidences. Which means that you're hiding something. For reasons I barely understand, you seem to care about my wellbeing, almost like you have a vested interest in my survival. You're also relaxed in my presence. Infuriating though I may find that from time to time, I can't ignore it." She put her weight forward, settling her chair back onto four legs with a solid clack! "I'm giving you a chance. It's only the two of us here. So give me something so that I don't have to consider you an enemy."
"You have moles in your department," Harry said.
He didn't expect Amelia to snort. "Let me clarify: tell me something I don't know already."
Harry wasn't sure if he was surprised or not. Before going forward, he assessed things in his mind. What he was tempted to tell her would surely anger Augusta Longbottom if she ever learned of it, and even Dumbledore would probably object. But Harry wasn't a boy anymore. He was a man who trusted his own judgements, and they were telling him that the candid approach was the way to go.
"I'm a member of the Order of the Phoenix," Harry said.
Amelia cursed. "You don't do things by halves, do you? I should be arresting you on the spot."
"I'm sure that's the order Fudge has given," Harry said pleasantly. "But it's just the two of us, right? I've given you something, Amelia Bones. Make of it what you will."
He could see the conflict in her expression as she weighed her next move. It wasn't an accident that he'd used her name instead of her title. In the past, she rebuked him for doing that, but in this situation it had a larger implication. He wasn't talking to Madame Bones, the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement; he was telling Amelia Bones, the woman behind the title.
"What were you doing in that forest?" she asked eventually.
"Looking for a missing ministry wizard," Harry said. "He filed a complaint, then disappeared into thin air before it could be investigated. Mightily suspicious, but the case was immediately dropped."
From the way Amelia's jaw moved, he could tell she was grinding her teeth.
"What really happened to Fenrir Greyback?"
"I killed him," Harry said. "Same with his pack."
"Bullshit."
"That's the second time someone's said that to me today." Harry's voice was amused. "They were wrong both times."
"Not even Dumbledore could kill that many werewolves on a full moon!" Amelia said.
"Oh, he could," Harry said. "He could probably do it a dozen different ways, too. He just doesn't. Because he's kind."
"But you aren't?"
"I like to think I'm kind. It just has limits. I'm not as patient as Dumbledore is."
"Nor as humble, apparently. The last time a wizard compared himself to Albus Dumbledore, it was while casting the first Dark Mark with a masked army at his back."
"You can check, you know," Harry said. "The bodies of the wolves are still out there, scattered through the forest. Just make sure you can trust whoever you send to look. I'd rather not let that leak to whoever Dawlish is taking orders from."
Amelia's features tightened. "You don't believe he's loyal to me?"
"You admitted he wasn't, right?" Harry shrugged. "If I had to guess… I assume it's Fudge."
For all his faults, Dawlish was an old-fashioned Auror. He wouldn't have gone over to the Death Eaters. He might've worked for the post-Scrimgeour Ministry, but they had to bathe him in so many Confundus Charms to pull it off that he never fully recovered after the war. The grizzled man clearly had no love for Greyback, so it had to be someone at the Ministry pulling the strings. Especially seeing how touchy Dawlish got as soon as the Dark Lord was brought up.
Amelia sighed. "It's not Fudge. Not directly, anyway."
"Umbridge?"
"Fuck no!" Amelia said. "If he listened to that glorified secretary, I'd have found a way to throw him out ages ago, consequences be damned."
It was good to see even the straight-laced Amelia Bones could lose her cool when it came to Umbridge. It made Harry not feel so bad about all those detentions he earned as a teen.
"Then… Scrimgeour?"
Amelia's silence told him everything he needed to know.
Harry released a low whistle. "No wonder this is such a mess," he said.
Everyone who had worked in the DMLE knew about the messiest part of the hierarchy. On paper, the department head was the most powerful person in the office. In practice, it got a bit blurrier when the Head Auror came into the picture.
Aurors were a tight-knit, elite group with stringent requirements and a low turnover rate. They were also absolutely crucial to running the department. The Head Auror was their direct superior, and it was always someone promoted from among their ranks. It had been Ron in Harry's time. In this time, it was Rufus Scrimgeour, the man who would later be thrust into power during the Ministry's darkest hour. While the head of the department had the power to fire a Head Auror, it had never been done in the history of the Ministry of Magic, just for how much of a mess it would create. Aurors hated having someone butt into their affairs, even when that person was their boss's boss, and they were liable to make their displeasure heard.
"The Minister has declared that Voldemort could not have returned," Amelia said. "Neville Longbottom and Albus Dumbledore are liars. They do lack proof. I proposed that Ministry officials should do their jobs the way they swore to, and if evidence should turn up as a result, we give it due consideration."
"Fudge disagreed."
"The Minister indeed holds a different opinion," Amelia said. "The Ministry is to find incontrovertible evidence that Dumbledore is orchestrating a scheme to capture his office. We are to look for such evidence, invent it if we fail to find it, and actively suppress anything to the contrary. It would be a tragedy if we were to be misled."
The venom that leaked into her voice made Harry blink. It occurred to him that Amelia Bones still didn't believe Neville with all her heart, she was just willing to hear him out. What left her livid was the bastardization of justice. Harry recalled their talk back at the cell and the bitterness that tinged her words then.
"Scrimgeour is a good soldier." Amelia's voice had calmed down. "When he receives an order, he follows it through to the best of his ability."
Harry nodded to show he understood. And he did. Within the Auror force, there was a rift. Some, he presumed, were willing to follow the example set by Amelia herself. Others were listening to their Head Auror, and the Minister above him. That was complicated, but it was preferable to Fudge having them completely under his thumb. Harry was reminded again how tantamount it was to keep the woman across from him alive and healthy.
He was tempted to ask about Aurors using Unforgivables and who was behind that. But the only time he'd seen it was during his initial escape from the Ministry, and the Daily Prophet never printed anything about it. Any sloppy questions were liable to make him a suspect for something he really couldn't afford to be implicated in.
"So… am I going to be arrested?" Harry asked.
Amelia looked at him carefully. "I get the feeling that if I did, you would just escape. I don't like that feeling. It offends me."
But you're the one who said it, Harry thought. He was wise enough not to say this out loud.
Amelia stood up. She approached the door, so Harry did the same. Before reaching it however, Amelia spun without warning, pinning him in place with her eyes.
"When we step out of that door, I no longer know that you're a member of the Order of the Phoenix," she said. "As far as I'm aware, there's no such thing. It's a relic of the last war that's long defunct. That's how it still is. That's how it will stay. Do you understand?"
"Crystal clear," Harry swore.
To his shock, Amelia actually treated him to a warm smile.
"Good," she said. "My niece would never forgive me if I shipped her favorite new professor in ages to Azkaban."
"Susan likes my class that much?" Harry asked, a little shocked.
"A third of her last letter was talking about it. That's the most she's spoken about any class in the last five years. I'm thankful that she is taking a deeper interest in her studies, but frankly, I wish she picked a subject with brighter prospects than Muggle Studies."
"Hey," Harry said, "do you remember how you said that if you arrested me, you thought I would just escape? And how that offended you?"
"Yes?" Amelia said.
"That's how I feel right now."
Harry was treated to another kind of smile he'd never seen from her. Instead of being warm, this one was purely vindictive.
"Good." Amelia said. "You deserve a taste of your own medicine."