X-X

Chapter 5

X-X

"Harry?" Dedalus Diggle asked. "Harry, are you alright? You're not saying anything. Harry?"

Harry looked at the broken glass strewn everywhere on the street.

"What happened here? Looks like an unhappy dragon tumbled in and thrashed around."

No, it had been a wizard's fight. Harry had been in the center of it.

"That wall is still on fire. A dragon, here, by Merlin's grace. A dragon in Hogsmeade."

Dedalus Diggle could see, but couldn't get the right answer.

"It's going to take the whole building down to ashes."

Harry turned and noted that some wood was still on fire, just a little, but the flame was blue. What spells did that? Harry didn't know off hand. It didn't look like anything was turning to ashes.

The debris wasn't evidence of a dragon flying into Hogsmeade. It was a mess from the battle he'd just participated in with the wizards who'd kidnapped the former Minister for Magic, Cornelius Fudge, a useless, venal man.

"Mr. Diggle?" Harry asked, trying to calm him down.

"A dragon. We have to tell somebody. They have to catch it."

"There is no dragon. There's just some people who made off with Fudge."

"What kind of dragon was it? A big one, I reckon…"

That was exactly how Harry's day was going.

Walk down an alley and get pulled into trying to stop a kidnapping. It was enough to drive Harry crazy.

He ignored Diggle and though about everything that had happened in the last ten minutes.

He was angry that he failed, true, but not that angry with himself. Harry couldn't have won. They had numbers on their side and the advantage of a protected spot that was above street level. A protected spot to fire spells from. Harry could have done nothing, but feel useless for trying.

No, he was mad at himself because he was bumming around trying to solve a problem and then — smack — he was in a fight again. Harry was trying to fix his house, trying to run away from his relatives who had been installed in the Three Broomsticks, trying to play at being an adult. And, then, a battle.

Harry could have died, but without a secret resurrection thingie stuffed into the scar on his head. If he had died, he would have been permanently dead while trying to save a toerag named Fudge.

Not the best use of his efforts.

Harry felt stupid, useless, angry.

Then there was this Diggle freaking out about dragons.

For a moment, Harry almost wished he'd never come into this world of wizards and magic and idiocy.

But just for a moment.

On an average day, Harry loved magic. Just not today.

He thought about silencing Diggle. The man might not even notice it, though.

Harry needed a plan. He kicked one of the boards from Grimmauld Place. Their stubborn runes had kept Harry from being hit by a number of spells.

He wanted his home fixed fast. He'd try what Lovegood said, give it some blood, let it get used to Harry. Then he was done worrying about it, dragging wood everywhere.

If that didn't work… He wasn't going to get himself killed on an errand like this.

Harry Potter, Patron Saint of Lost Causes. That had been true for quite some time. He'd just expected bad things to flow his way.

His life should be different. He was free from prophecy. He was unburdened.

Except he wasn't.

Not even the final duel with Tom Riddle made Harry feel this way, melancholy and angry and wrathful. Harry had been willing to die to take Voldemort down. There was a good reason for that risk, a worthy purpose.

Now Harry was just an idiot with a wand and not enough knowledge of how to use it. Or when to use it.

He was unprepared while the rest of the world wasn't. He was too busy saying he was fine and trying to be fine. He wasn't figuring anything out. He wasn't getting off the luck wagon and onto the skill wagon.

That was how he often felt since the battle. A victim of luck, not skill.

He'd been back in his parents' world for seven years. He was a bit more famous and a bit more useless, thinking he was prepared when he wasn't. He wasn't a braggart and incompetent to Lockhart proportions, of course, but more than he'd like.

Almost nothing he'd done in years had been worth anything. He survived, of course, which was very good for him. Not because of anything he did, usually in spite of it. A bunch of luck, quirky chances that had broke his way for no apparent reason.

Harry felt like a fraud who had settled for fixing his house and tormenting the spirit of Dumbledore. Harry didn't have to be that person, blessed with alternating good and bad luck.

He could be more than that.

He would.

Then Diggle started moaning about the dragon again.

Harry really wanted to stun him.

Harry, another Harry, might have let his self-anger fade away. If Diggle hadn't been here. The fight got this self-evaluation started, but Diggle kept butting in. Whenever Harry tried to quash his anger for one or the other, well, he didn't have enough forgiveness to cover both at the same time.

He didn't need to forgive.

He needed to improve.

He thought about how to handle Diggle and the Dursleys, sounded like a band name. Better than the Weird Sisters.

Had he been of his normal, semi-cowed state, Harry might have done the minimum to help them, avoid any problems. Compliant, gentle, pleasing.

Harry was almost eighteen. It was time to learn a very useful fact of life.

Politeness — along with respect and a whole bunch of other facets of life — was earned. Harry once knew that and had to relearn it. Years of politeness that had been beaten into him — literally beaten in — evaporated. Harry was left with the mischievous streak he had mostly given up by age eleven, if not thirteen.

Politeness would demand Harry agree to meet with his relatives, help them, listen to their grousing and complaining.

This was a different Harry. He hoped a permanently different Harry.

"Dragons…"

"There are no dragons, Mr. Diggle."

"We'd better do something about your relatives, Harry. If there's a dragon around. I don't know, do dragons eat muggles? I guess they must. Please help me with them. I've been helping to protect them for a year. I'm awfully tired of them. They're rather unpleasant folks, you know."

"They are."

"Alright. Let's get them squared away," Diggle said.

"No," Harry said, politely. What he meant was, Tip Dudley and Vernon and his aunt into the nearest stream. That's square enough.

It wasn't a word he'd used much in his life. At least not to any affect. "No" to the Triwizard Tournament got him precisely nothing. "No" to Vernon Dursley got him bloodied.

Now this idiot-wizard would have to respect the word "no."

"No?" Diggle asked, his eyes endlessly blinking.

"No."

"What am I going to do with them?" Diggle asked.

Yes, Harry Potter, Problem Solver. Find something disgusting you don't want to handle, give it to Harry. Not any more.

"Why did you bring my relatives to Hogsmeade?" Harry asked.

"They were pretty desperate to talk with you. So I brought them here."

"Again, why?"

"Well, they're awfully pushy. Kept asking about a lot of pounds. I think your uncle wants you to magic his excess weight off his frame. I didn't have the heart to tell him we don't have any spells for that."

"He wasn't asking about his weight. He was asking for money. Muggle money is called pounds and pence."

"Ah, you learn something every day."

Harry doubted that Diggle did.

The Dursleys were in Hogsmeade to shake down Harry. Of course. Why not?

"I'm not helping them. I'm not giving them any money. I've got a lot going on right now. Tell them to owl me."

Of course, they didn't own an owl. Harry didn't either since Hedwig's passing.

"But…"

"You agreed to help protect them. So get them out of Hogsmeade before they offend someone. They will. You can time it with a watch. My uncle and aunt can't help themselves."

"Oh, my."

Dedalus Diggle went off for his charges before they managed to talk themselves into a wizard's duel or something. A stunning spell was faster than anything Vernon or Dudley could manage with their fists.

Harry looked around the alley, thought about what he might do. Who did he report this to? It didn't seem like anyone else had.

When Harry was still trying to make sense of it all, the Aurors arrived.

Not to investigate, though.

They secured the scene.

Then a man in a garish, faintly ridiculous robe arrived. Kingsley, the Interim Minister of Magic.

"What a mess."

The understatement of the week.

X-X

Kingsley walked over the scene with Harry and listened to a recounting of the battle. He dispatched two Aurors up to the room where the wizards had holed up, where they'd rained down spells.

"Not a bad first report. If you were an Auror," Kingsley said.

"Which I'm not."

Kingsley nodded. "Are you wounded, Harry?"

"No."

"No injuries?"

"No."

"Why…"

"One moment, please." Kingsley bottled any further questions Harry might have had while he examined everything he could see. Then his Aurors began to return and report.

When Harry had Kingsley alone again he asked, "Does the Minister of Magic show up to crime scenes now?"

"My second today. So far."

"Oh?"

"A house burned down. Then a predecessor of mine got himself stuffed into an apartment where he didn't want to be."

A kidnapping and a fire.

"Was it Fudge's house?" Harry asked.

"No."

Kingsley knew whose house it was. He wasn't saying for a reason. Strange. Cagey even. Like Kingsley was playing Mad-Eye Moody but in a quieter key.

Why?

Harry had a brain, didn't use it much, but he had one. He decided to turn it on and direct it to this problem. A man as busy as Kingsley shows up, gets the story from Harry…

Was it just because of Harry's fame?

"Tell me again why you were down this alley. This really isn't a spot a recent Hogwarts grad…"

"I didn't graduate," Harry said.

"Right. Explain it again."

So Harry did. Diggle and his relatives and his not wanting to talk to them.

"That man isn't an idiot. He's a lump of stone someone animated into motion," Kingsley said. "Bringing muggles, particularly those muggles, into a magical village."

"Check and see. I'm sure he got them out."

"I should hope so. I should have someone fine him anyway."

Kingsley looked at the pattern of glass, received yet more reports from his Aurors, and kept silent a bit longer.

He was really chewing something over.

There was a question he needed to ask about Fudge's kidnapping. Maybe about the house fire.

It was no secret that Fudge had set himself against Harry Potter. A show trial, a year of slandering in the public news, kind of sour any possibility of friendship. Harry and the former Minister weren't friendly.

So Kingsley was here because Harry — famous old Harry Potter, Boy-Who-Lived — was a suspect.

It amused Harry more than it angered him. He was over angry (for now).

Maybe Malfoy's house burned. Maybe the Lestrange pile, if there was such a thing. Fudge and Malfoy, they had once been very close.

Harry wasn't about to ask. Let Kingsley ask.

"If that's everything, I needed to finish my errands," Harry said.

"Uh, Harry. One more thing."

"Alright."

"Have you seen Dolores Umbridge…"

It all clicked together for Harry. Not Fudge and Malfoy or Fudge and the late Lestrange Manor. It was Fudge and Umbridge.

"Are you saying that Umbridge was another kidnapping victim?" Harry asked.

"Her house is burned. We don't know about her."

Harry nodded. He could hear the implied question. Did you do it? Part of him was sad he hadn't thought of it first. If there was anyone who deserved such a fate…

"I thought she was being questioned or stuffed into one of the camps she created."

"She had been questioned. She was demoted at the Ministry."

Kingsley could have started singing in falsetto and Harry would have been less surprised. "Demoted, not fired." Not imprisoned.

"It's complicated."

Harry didn't agree. "I guess maybe someone decided to uncomplicate it, Kingsley."

"Someone. Any ideas about this someone?"

"Ask the question."

"Are you involved, Harry?"

"No."

Kingsley actually looked relieved. Like he'd assumed that Harry was masterminding the whole thing. Given the way imaginations ran in the wizarding world, Harry wasn't shocked. By some children's books, Harry was supposedly taming dragons by the age of five and breaking up dark cultists at the age of seven. He'd heard rumors there was a forthcoming series of more adult fare that had Harry binding Veela colonies and starting up harems. For the discerning adult reader.

A bunch of crap. But for Kingsley to believe it…

Harry was Harry. Not Superman. He had had to work up a lot of anger just to tell his relatives he didn't want to see them.

Kidnapping Umbridge or torching her home or whatever happened — Harry wasn't even close to making that happen.

Why was she available to kidnap at all, Harry wondered.

"Why wasn't she in a cell? You let her go home to her own house every night. You know how many people she helped kill."

"Truth finding, reconciliation, won't be fast. I was born in South Africa even if I had to come to Scotland to receive my education. I know a few things about reconciliation, Harry."

X-X

Harry found he didn't care to listen to a lecture on forgiveness or some of the other pablum Dumbledore might have spooned out. Dumbledore might never have become Minister but one of his acolytes just might have.

"I told you what I know about this. Can you tell me what you know?" Harry asked.

"Oh, Cornelius Fudge."

"Right."

"Not so bright, the most hated politician in a few hundred years. The man should have gone into self-exile. Instead, he just ran his usual schedule."

That was beyond not-so-bright, Harry thought.

"What did he do?"

"He dressed to go out this morning, his wife told us. He never came back."

"When I saw him he was wearing a hood."

"That wasn't what his wife reported."

They kidnapped a man and hooded him, let him wake up. With magic, it wouldn't have been hard to keep Fudge stunned, make him invisible, move him even when he was incapacitated. Why did the kidnappers allow him to wake up, allow him to struggle? Were they trying to get noticed or something?

"Who took him?" Harry asked.

"That's the real reason I'm involved," Kingsley said. "I'm playing Head of the DMLE and Interim Minister at the same time. At least until I can be sure of anyone I slot in."

"Alright. You still didn't answer my question."

Kingsley didn't even acknowledge he'd been caught out. He was a quick study at dissembling and at losing his shame for little things like lying.

"We only know that Fudge isn't the first. The question should be who took them?" Kingsley asked.

Multiple kidnappings? No wonder Kingsley wondered if Harry had been involved. If the right names were on the list, Harry would have been glad to be involved. Not that he would admit to it.

"Okay. Who all is missing?"

"He, she, or they got Fudge today. Perhaps also Dolores Umbridge. In the last week, we've recorded the disappearance of a dozen folks who worked at the Ministry. Games and Sports, Floo Regulation, Wizengamot Services. That doesn't count folks who don't have some connection to the Ministry. If there any, no one's made a single report. Probably don't trust the Aurors to do anything. Up until recently You-Know…Voldemort controlled them like they were his personal mastiffs. We're going to be rebuilding reputation there for decades."

At least that long, Harry agreed.

"Any guesses on who?" Harry asked.

"Former Death Eaters who got away. Muggleborns who got rounded up and remained unhappy at what happened to them. Werewolves because…who knows. There's one theory that some idiots are raising a dragon somewhere and need food to feed it. We don't have a lot of top shelf minds left in the Ministry."

Harry nodded, but he was still trying to work through one of the hypotheses. "Food?"

"Right."

"Food for dragons."

"It's a dumb idea, but that's what we have right now."

There was something in that tone of voice. Uh oh.

Harry kind of recognized it.

Like when Dumbledore was going to lay on a whopper.

"You sound awfully busy just to be talking to an ordinary citizen, Minister. Even if you just came to clear an ordinary citizen of any wrongdoing."

Kingsley had an honest face and a gracious smile which he then used.

Kingsley definitely wanted something. He had seen something similar from Fudge once — and from the late Scrimgeour more recently. Kingsley wanted Harry inside his Ministry now that he was sure that Harry wasn't a kidnapper or arsonist.

Pretty low standards these days.

Harry found himself interested in the offer he knew was coming.

Not because it was the polite thing to do. Fudge had tried to use Harry as had Scrimgeour. Dumbledore had been remarkably skilled at getting Harry to dance a particular tune.

Harry knew what the music sounded like.

Harry was willing to listen, to accept the possibility of being used because he needed to use Kingsley a bit. Harry still needed to do a lot of growing. But Harry couldn't, wouldn't, be tied down to the Ministry. Not one that had kept Umbridge on the books as long as they had. Who knew how many more of her virtual cousins were still polluting the ranks?

But Harry was willing to trade a favor for a favor. Not a Ministry favor, a Kingsley favor. Harry trusted Kingsley as much as any adult he knew.

"So, what would it take…," Kingsley started.

"No," Harry said.

"Harry, please hear me out."

"No."

No negotiation ever began until someone said no. Hadn't Vernon bellowed that more than once?

Saying 'no' to Vernon and meaning it — priceless. Doing the same to Kingsley was almost as much fun. Of course, he eventually needed to get to 'yes' with the man.

"No, no, no. No," Harry continued for now.

"Harry, please."

"I don't want to hear it."

He looked at Kingsley. The wizard was now appropriately spooked. Good.

"It'll just take a few weeks or months."

A few weeks or months… Right.

"Is it less crazy than anything Dumbledore ever dreamed up?" Harry asked.

"He was a great wizard, Harry." Kingsley was smiling again. He knew what was what.

"Maybe. He was also crazier than a bag of kneazles."

"True."

"Tell me," Harry said. "Before I go and get drunk at the Hogshead."

"I hear you worked there last night."

"True."

"It was in the papers. Harry interning at the grubby bar. You should see the mail we got. That boy should work at a nice establishment."

Uh oh. Kingsley actually had a plan. He'd been thinking about even before he arrived here.

"You're governing by opinion poll. I think that got at least one of your predecessors into big trouble."

"I take Fudge as a model of what not to do with my time in office," Kingsley said.

"Good."

"So what I'm suggesting isn't that you join the Ministry."

"I wouldn't. A place that kept Umbridge employed until she was kidnapped…"

Kingsley went stony at that. "There's a different time for that argument."

"Fine."

"We need someone. Someone who has been invited into half the businesses in the country. Someone who could go and listen to what's happening at a criminal defense firm, then the Pride of Portree, then the third floor at St. Mungo's, then the publisher's office at the Daily Prophet."

"You're saying I've been invited to all of them?"

Harry wasn't really reading the letters he had received from strangers. But it sounded like someone in Kingsley's office was.

"Half a dozen charms masters have invited you for a conversation. Ollivander's three biggest competitors. A member of the notoriously secretive Necromancer's Guild. A famous few portrait painters have invited you as an artist's model. Magical theorists and creature keepers and a few independent curse breakers. Not everyone, but everyone who has deep connections in our society. This isn't one person doing these kidnappings. That takes a number of participants."

"I agree with your logic."

"So you'll do it?"

"I didn't say that."

"It's not dangerous."

"Of course it is."

"Fine. It shouldn't be dangerous, but your presence will…push things, I suppose. We just need a good place to start our investigation. Someone curious, someone smart who might give us that place. The criminal underworld, small as it is, is still basically smashed. These folks didn't do this for profit. They did it for ideology."

Harry didn't disagree, but Kingsley knew more than he was saying. So, Harry wanted to make him explain.

"What in the world would someone say in a public place?"

Kingsley apparently didn't like it when young wizards asked sensible questions. "It could be something you hear. It could be people you see palling around. Then, again, you're Harry Potter. Someone might just drop a hint to you. For approval. Like 'you know what that Fudge did to you, he's sorry now, I'm sure.'"

"I think a lot of people have that reaction. If that's all you want, you'll be questioning five hundred wizards by tomorrow." Harry shook his head. "You're looking for a tattle tale. I think you need a Percy Weasley or some other Headboy or Headgirl."

"We need someone with invitations. We need someone people might slip up in front of. We need an observer like you, Harry."

He didn't mean observer. The word Kingsley meant was spy. Recruit the most famous seventeen-year-old to be a spy. Kingsley was either a genius or completely fermented in the mind.

Harry had to work hard to keep a smile off his face. That sounded like it was the key to every locked door in the wizarding world. It sounded like his saying yes would come with a lot of little favors, little opportunities to rack up unusual learning opportunities.

"No," Harry said. No meaning 'maybe.' No meaning 'it's not yes, yet, but it could be.'

"Harry."

"I have to find Aberforth Dumbledore."

"Him. Why?"

"Follow up from last night. You know, the Prophet said I was working there."

"This conversation isn't over," Kingsley said.

Harry planned to draw it out. At least for better terms than Kingsley would ever willingly volunteer.

"Seems pretty stale to me," Harry said.

X-X

Aberforth was awake and repairing the Hogshead when Harry walked in. It looked slightly better than the alley where the battle took place. Not so much glass on the floor.

"Surprised you came back," the bartender said. "They weren't gentle with you last night."

"That was not gentle? What qualifies as rough?"

"You come back on a Saturday night. That usually devolves into rough."

Aberforth gave a toothy grin that made him look like the world's oldest child.

"I need some advice," Harry said.

"I thought I gave you some last night."

"Look at these. You ever study runes?"

"Of course."

"I wish I had," Harry said. He held up the boards he'd taken from Grimmauld Place, the ones that even acted as shields when Harry got into his firefight with the folks who kidnapped — or wizardnapped — Cornelius Fudge.

"Compared to my late brother, I'm a bit of a dunce. Compared to everyone else, I could be Minister of Magic," Aberforth said.

Aberforth took the boards and set them on his bartop. He started examining one.

Harry dug around for the pamphlets he'd gotten at Hogwarts.

Big mistake.

Aberforth saw them. "McGonagall's still handing those out?"

"Yeah."

"Worthless. Trying to get you to buy the full course, which is a little bit less than worthless. Just a little."

"Oh," Harry said.

"Costs enough so you could be in my pub every night for six months and still come out ahead. You're better off going to any used bookstore and finding a decent repair manual."

Harry decided he was still going to read them, but he might just take them less seriously.

"Mr. Lovegood…"

"Xenophilius?"

"Yes."

"Insane, but also not usually wrong. If you can read through some of archaic terms he uses."

"He said I should bleed on the runes and put them back into the house."

"Well, that does sound crazy." Aberforth ignored Harry and worked on the boards.

Harry read one of the pamphlets that Aberforth had trashed. Harry found the proportion of useful-material to upselling-a-paid-course to be…ridiculous.

The two spells in the pamphlet for home repair were an upgraded version of the repairing spell, which Harry knew and had used, and a spell for shaking the dust out of drapes. Which was about step 139 of the 200 steps he needed to follow to put Grimmauld back together.

"Look at that."

"What?" Harry asked.

"All the time Albus spent in that pile and he never noticed. Blood wards."

"Blood wards," Harry said.

"Okay, that's an imprecise way of talking. Family wards with a blood component."

Harry shook his head. He had heard about blood wards, but knew almost nothing about them.

"Properly constructed blood wards."

"I still don't understand."

"You need a tutor, then. Go ahead, kid, use your blood on these boards. Put them back where you found them. Let it all cook for…maybe overnight. The runes should accept you and then they'll let your magic function on the house itself."

"Really?"

"Lovegood suggested it. I have to say he isn't wrong. In fact, I'd give odds on it. Care to wager a few galleons?"

"Erm, no."

"Alright."

It was that simple? Bleed on a couple of runes and then the house wouldn't misbehave? It sounded…impossible.

"Merlin."

"Not this week, kid."

Like it was an old joke. A millennium old.

"So that's one problem solved. Likely. What are you doing about the rest?" Aberforth asked.

"That's my problem, that house."

"I see. Your only problem? Getting accused of masterminding a kidnapping ring doesn't happen every day."

Harry definitely needed something else to add to the whole Boy-Who-Lived mystique. Criminal mastermind sounded catchy, right?

"How did you hear that?" Harry asked.

"Kingsley doesn't think there's much of a criminal underworld. I beg to differ."

Harry thought back to the crowd last night. Harry had probably served most of the wizarding world's criminal underworld.

"I hear you handled Diggle well. I've got barrel corks with more wit than he has."

"I'm not putting up with them again. No way."

"So you're going to take Kingsley's offer — after you extort some concessions."

"No."

"Of course you are. As one wizard who has been listening for a long, long time, I can tell you it's an important job. Listening. If you do it right, it's also a lot of fun. Why do you think I have this place? All my friends, plus all the scum, come here and I get to hear just about everything."

Aberforth the spy master. It sort of made sense, but it was also totally crazy.

"You know who is behind Fudge and Umbridge?" Harry asked.

"I'm pretty sure it's not the usual suspects. Not professionals, not ones who work for gold, at least. Could be political types. Could be hobbyists. Could be the opposite of Lucius Malfoy — rich, usually law-abiding folks, but tired of seeing the vicious get away with things. Unfortunately, they don't frequent my establishment. I'm more than a bit blind in that alley."

But Aberforth had the rest of them covered. Harry thought back to the prior evening, the smokiness of the room, the heaviness, the continual way the bar was mobbed. None of that was natural.

"You burned something in your fire."

"Wood."

"Beyond wood."

The old wizard took on a cagey look. "There's a few herbs I sometimes add in. Makes people a bit… If you'd been drinking, Harry, you never would have noticed."

"Good for business, I bet."

More than a bit dishonest.

"Excellent for business. Both of them. Selling drinks and collecting secrets."

"Right."

"I like you thinking, kid. I don't know if I care for you judging."

"It's nothing."

"It's what is," Aberforth said. "Let's talk about you on the street today. How'd you do?"

As if he'd seen and heard just about everything. The Eyes of Hogsmeade, right here.

"I survived."

"That's something. You happy about it?"

"No."

"You should be."

"Failure hurts."

Harry didn't emote much, but he almost broke down in that alley afterward.

"True, but fear makes you think. You ever experience fear when it was a total surprise?"

Harry thought of the third task of the Triwizard. That had been a definite surprise. What had he learned from it? Anything? Nothing.

"Yes, sir."

Aberforth didn't believe Harry. Harry didn't even believe Harry. "That's as it is. Fear teaches us, if we listen. The trouble is that fear passes and you'll stop the deep thinking. Don't."

"I've got it," Harry said. He was finally letting some of his irritation slip through.

"Spine, it's a nice thing to have running down your back."

"I've always had one."

"Maybe. Then, again, you've been led around by the nose for a long time, boy. Maybe got it pulled right out."

"No."

"Harry, you're plenty strong, but your mind doesn't recognize it. I know you didn't have the best upbringing, everyone at least guesses at that. My brother's doing, no doubt. But you aren't that kid anymore."

"I don't talk about them, my relatives." He wouldn't even talk to them.

"You used to rebel against them, you used to have a bit of hope."

"I still do."

"Act like it," Aberforth said.

Harry had already had this conversation in his mind, but he could have used this advice a few months or a few years earlier.

"My brother."

"Right," Harry said.

"He puts the Bumblemore back into Dumbledore. That was our name, if you didn't know. Bumblemore. Up until our great grandfather."

"Really?" He couldn't keep the amusement out of his voice.

"You think Longbottom or Lovegood or Slughorn are any better? All crazy in the modern tongue. All of them old names."

"Bumblemore."

"Enough of that. You string Kingsley along, kid, but you take him up on this."

That was the plan, not that Harry would admit to it.

"You're a fan of Cornelius Fudge?" Harry asked. Why was Aberforth pushing?

"Not even Double Mint Fudge, no. But I don't like folks doing things I don't hear about at some point. Don't feel safe."

"Mad-Eye sounded like that, too."

"He was a good person when I knew him. More eccentric than most could stand."

"I might do it. Not because it's expected of me."

"Good. Why then?"

"Because I need to learn a lot more."

"That's a good attitude, kid. But you can't say that in public."

"No?"

"You say you're just trying to be helpful."

"Really?"

"Famous young man like you. You want any peace at all?"

"Yes."

"Then what people know about you, what they think you're doing, it has to make them feel secure. You're somewhere in public, a protector if ever needed. But, then, in the quiet, you need to actually protect them. You have that kind of conscience, kid. Learn for yourself, enjoy it for yourself, but let people think you're doing it for them."

Harry wondered about Aberforth's long life.

Had he, as a barkeeper, done more good for the wizard world than his more famous brother. Hogwarts and the Wizengamot versus the Hogshead. Harry didn't know.

"Alright. You let Kingsley send you to some places, but you set up your own, too. Don't be too dependent on him. Produce some of your own things."

"I guess I could ask Charlie Weasley."

Aberforth shook his head. "You wouldn't like central Europe, trust me. You don't have to go that far. I know a few guys in the trade. Let's start you off with something smaller, though. Dragons are pretty damned massive. Let's see. Maybe Montague Creatures in Lincolnshire. Gaius owes me more than a few favors. I'll tell him I'm trying to sweep up for the hash my brother did on your life. Has the benefit of being true. Let's see if I can get you there Monday."

"Good."

"Take some thick gloves you don't mind burning."

Then Aberforth kicked him out of the Hogshead and got back to his cleaning.

Harry didn't even have the time to wonder just what he'd need the gloves for.

X-X

Harry returned to Kingsley. "I thought about it."

"And?"

"Maybe we can help each other."

Kingsley smiled, led Harry away from the Aurors who might overhear, then they reopened the negotiations.

When they were done, Harry had a lot more than he'd thought possible and he still hadn't fully committed. He was going to take a few days and get some additional opinions from Order members. Or so he said. He'd just squeeze one or two more favors from Kingsley. Maybe a bit more training, maybe… Harry didn't know. He would find out, though.

He did get his house sorted. The first thing Harry got from Kingsley was a referral for someone who knew about magical buildings. Turns out the Ministry had a function for that.

Kingsley got Harry lined up to meet with a man that afternoon.

"I think we might just do some important work together," Harry said.

X-X

The evening edition of the Prophet was a recent addition to the usual morning paper, thinner than normal, but filled with notices requesting information on this or that missing person, this or that presumed criminal. The editor of the evening edition didn't know what to make of the day's competing reports — so he'd commissioned stories on all of them. There was a terrorist attack on Harry Potter, a kidnapping of a former Minister of Magic, a dragon attack upon Hogsmeade, and the burning of the home of a prominent, but disgraced, member of the Ministry. Also, Muggles had invaded Hogsmeade for the first time in three hundred seventeen years and were stunned, obliviated, and hauled away after consuming mass quantities of fire whiskey.

The Prophet needed more than one front page on an evening like this one.

So much for thoughtful intelligence gathering in the wizarding world.

Harry shook his head, bled on the boards, and shoved them back into place inside his home.

He'd just have to wait and see.

X-X