A/N: I went back and removed the Disruption bit. It was superfluous and not relevant. Also made the animagus explanation a bit more clear.

Thanks to theimmortalhp, Seyllian, and Halt for their input/betwork.

Warning: darkish themes-ish

-xXx-

Chapter 3: Arisen II

Attempting the animagus transformation had felt… perilous, but coaxing his soul to open for a moment was a simple matter. Harry traced a finger down a frosty metal bar, faintly able to sense the tranquil wreathing of spells beneath his touch. The area Fleur had blasted seemed no weaker than the rest.

Unfortunately, his relatively newborn ability couldn't discern much else.

"You are wasting your time," Fleur said, fork gleaming as she absentmindedly drew the trident tip across the lush curve of her bottom lip. On the cot, ankles crossed in the air, her lounging position pinned the hem of her robes midway under her silken thighs, uncovering long, loping legs. Perfectly sculpted calves. Purple firelight suffused upon flawless skin, translating the blue of her eyes to a startling shade of violet, and hair like the currents of mercury running below First Emperor Qin's ancient and deadly mausoleum.

She speared a cut of meat from the plate in front of her.

He turned fully towards Fleur, the tips of his ears reddening. "What do you suggest doing, then? Seducing one of them into letting us go?"

"Why not?" she said. "You 'ave a certain charm about you. It would not be that difficult."

"You could do a better job of it, I imagine."

Fleur propped her chin on her fist, eyeing him with a feline laziness. "You enjoy stating ze obvious. However, Selwyn is too strong of mind. His wife hates me. And poor Marcus cannot even meet my gaze." Her gaze lowered, head tilting in mocking contemplation. "I did not fail to observe how taken Selwyn was with you. You could use that. For our sake," she purred.

Harry pinched the bridge of his nose, leaning his back against the bars. "You're not being serious."

"Why would I joke? This is a serious matter," Fleur said.

"Really."

She dropped her arm, teeth clenched. "Never ask me to do anything you would not do yourself."

"Who cares? Just spray around some veela hormones and—"

Fleur choked. "Excuse me?" In one smooth movement, she was off the bed and onto her feet, prowling towards him. She jabbed a finger in his face. "You! You know nothing of veela! I have had to sit here, for hours, listening to you pretend to know what you are doing! You are—"

"At least I'm trying!" Harry shot back. "You just sit there, cursing down every idea I have while not offering up anything in return. If you've got some master plan cooking in that head of yours, I'd like to hear it!"

Fleur looked at him as though he were a maggot. Rather coldly, she said, "You are smart for your age, but I am far more knowledgeable. Let a proper witch 'andle this."

Harry opened his mouth before audibly shutting it. All emotion left him.

"You're right. I apologize."

"Tch. How old are you? Fourteen? What can you possibly think of that I cannot?"

A momentary pause. "I'm going to complete my animagus form," he said.

She crossed her arms, dragging the silence longer. Her words were daggers. "If you cannot accomplish it, then I will finish what I started and melt through these bars."

'She wants to protect you,'

It came as an inexplicable feeling, familiar and warm, parting remarks as his soul tautened back to its normal state. As it did, looming shadows beared down thicker, more pressing. Harry pushed the sentiment to the side.

He snatched one of her hands, the palm shiny and dark brown. "You'll do this again?" She jerked her hand back, but it'd been too late. He'd already seen. To his shock, the web of veins extending from Fleur's wrist and into her sleeve, were burnt too. The fire had destroyed her from within. Pressingly, he also realized she had healed far too quickly for the single day that had passed.

"Of course I will!"

Fleur was right, he knew little of veela, but he wasn't so lacking on the general subject of magical beings. Wrongly, he had assumed Fleur's extensive slumbering was to rest off Altheia's hex.

"Regenerative sleep," Harry said. "That's what you've been doing."

She rolled her eyes. "You have figured me out."

Certain species had the ability to enter a prone state to accelerate healing time. For others, it went further—the legendary strength of vampires came from the years they spent sleeping in their caskets, building strength to use in a sudden burst. In werewolves, the human form was considered the prone state, which their curse used to multiply its fatal power within until released on the full moon.

If veela could perform a similar act…

Her strategy was unacceptable.

"Why didn't you let me know?"

"How does it concern you? How can you help me?" Fleur asked. "However, I suppose I must tell you every single detail, non? Otherwise you might ruin everything in your haste to do my job better than me."

That could have only been one thing. "Valentina."

"Yes!" she said. "I told you not to bother her, did I not? I told you she was not well, yet what did I notice you doing? Bothering her!"

"She was perfectly fine," Harry hissed. "And why do you get to decide all of this? You've had more schooling than me, but I'll bet I've had more practical experience. I did win the Triwizard Championship."

"Zat contest, the one tampered with by your own teacher, ze Death Eater?" Fleur laughed. "Ha! You did not experience the same trials we true champions did. Merde. Did you even see a kappa in those waters? We each fought off a hoard—only to watch you swim by, uncontested. Did zat maze try to swallow you whole? I get to decide this because I am better." Fleur breathed through her teeth. "How many books have you read on violent accidental magic? Sufferers are force-fed calming draught and locked in isolation for weeks! You could have done her irreparable harm."

"Yet, we did question her, and you told me to do it," Harry said, taking a step forward, hot anger taking root once again. Noses nearly touching, Fleur pushed him back a short length. Cell bars pressed uncomfortably into his back.

"If I had not, you would have tried again when I was asleep. With my supervision, I could see ze signs of another incident."

This wasn't going anywhere. They could continue blaming each other in circles for eternity. Harry took a deep, calming breath.

"Will you help me finish my animagus transformation?" he asked softly.

Putting her hand on her hip, Fleur appraised him. Their bodies were still quite close. His anger softened. "Very well. I would have assisted without your offering. You said earlier your godfather would not let you transform without him because of ze danger? He is right. But you are lucky. I am capable enough."

Harry grinned with nothing but teeth. "No time like the present, then?"

Fleur made her way to the table and sat at the edge of it. "I was more interested in human transfiguration than becoming an animagus," she said. "But I am aware of all the theory. I have friends who have completed it. What animagus method did you use?"

"Exercitus."

"Not Burke?"

Harry didn't quite feel like explaining it to her. "No."

"How is your gramarie?"

He licked at his lips, which he realized were dry. "Great. I've been practicing it for two years."

"You cannot consider yourself 'great' after only two years. That skill requires a lifetime to perfect."

"Let me rephrase. It's not my gramarie that's stopping me."

"What then?"

"The ghost's soul doesn't want to merge," he said. "That's all I can figure out. And I can't explain why."

She drew her brows. "And it wanted to merge with you? Came to you on its own?"

"Yeah."

"Then it must be a problem with your gramarie."

"But it's not," Harry insisted. "My soul can open to the point where I can feel magic like a sixth sense. I can sense people like a sixth sense—what they're feeling, if they're lying to me—"

Fleur snorted. "Impossible. People with twenty let alone two years of practice do not gain such a level of competence."

"For my sake, pretend I'm not fibbing," he said. "Then what?"

She looked at him. It was a long, searching look, and their depths broadcasted resolute suspicion. "Then something is very, very wrong."

-xXx-

It was called legilimency, Fleur had said. She forbade him from practicing gramarie until she could diagnose what was wrong with him, which she would do via a mind reading art. Harry had read mentions of it in books from the restricted section, but just like gramarie, legilimency and its sister art, occlumency, required years of training, and he hadn't had enough time for it all.

He'd asked her, of course, how delving into his mind would let her know what mischief was happening in his soul. Giving her access to his thoughts was nothing he wanted, if he could help it. But she had made a compelling argument. The Law of Interconnectivity, of Mind—Body—Soul. If one was off, so too were the rest.

Harry turned the engraved chalice in his hand, watching as light glinted off its silver rim. Naturally his next inquiry had been a question of when they would start, fully expecting her to say "right now". It pissed him off, watching her go back into a regenerative sleep instead, tell him it would be "later". His proposal was shoddy, but he loathed that Fleur had already committed to burning herself to a crisp. If it came to that, he would stop her.

What was the point of having magic if he couldn't do anything useful without a wand?

Disgusted, Harry threw the cup to the side where it bounced with a high metallic clatter; it rolled, water splashing in its wake. It refused to refill positioned on its side.

"P-Please don't throw the tableware," said a high-strung voice. Harry saw Marcus there, peering through the bars. "They are antiques. My sister would be quite displeased to see—to see them battered."

"Your sister?" Harry asked. Whatever charms Selwyn had cast had been removed by Marcus, as Harry could now hear the dementor as well, groaning as if on its death bed.

Marcus nodded, eyes darting feverishly, the fat-pocket beneath his little round chin wobbling. His wiry, gold hair had been styled into an oddly feminine coiffe, and he wore dark purple robes with an infection of ruffles. He looked like an aubergine.

"How about we make a trade," Harry said mockingly, making no move to fetch the goblet. Marcus disgusted him. He was weak. A second Peter Pettigrew. "I won't damage your furniture if you unlock our cell. We'll both get what we want."

"I can't. You are meant for the Dark Lord."

"Does Voldemort even know you—"

Harry had never seen color drain from a man's face so fast. As if Harry had revealed himself to be a leper, Marcus swished the silence back into place. He then began jabbing the wand—Selwyn's wand—around in a sharper manner.

Moments later, Harry's skin parched, and his faint need to piss vanished. It was an unusually robust use of the cleaning spell. Harry's eyes sharply followed Marcus's hand as he restored the previously taken down protections. Harry had pegged Selwyn a control-freak, but he'd given Marcus his wand for what? Boring, routine maintenance?

He cursed himself as Marcus bumbled to the cell next to theirs, the prison's circular shape limiting Harry's view. Dismissing the Death Eater so lightly had been a mistake if he had access to such a resource. Then again, the man was basically a lost cause—too aware of his own fragility, slavish to a fault. No cracks for Harry to exploit. Marcus running off to tattle could only make their situation worse. Harry had no desire to see Selwyn in his day-to-day.

Metal scraped against stone. Small feet softly padded over, crouching close to Harry, Valentina's breath fanning his forehead—a concentrated form of the clinical odor that permeated everything.

"What is it?" he asked.

Above dark, fathomless eyes, her heavy brows scrunched, a tight expression taking hold of her face. Tasting through different words, it looked like. Deciding on a few, she asked, "What are you doing?", proceeding to sit primly across from him.

Harry hadn't thought he had done too badly, questioning her earlier, but he had minimal experience interacting with children. Let alone kids, as Fleur put it, as damaged as Valentina. Though, even if healers recommended isolation for these victims, Harry seriously doubted the dearth of social interaction pressed upon Valentina did any good. Hell, he'd go mad if quarantined for an entire month.

"Thinking," he said. "We're not going to be here long. Fleur and I will get you out."

"Out?" she asked. "How?"

Harry made a vague movement with his shoulders. "I'm an animagus. Sort of. Almost. That means I can… er… turn into an animal, or at least, I'll be able to once I finish the ritual."

"Animal?" Her eyes lit up.

"A mongoose," Harry said, a bit humored. "It's not very flashy, not like a dragon or polar bear or anything. It's like a small, slender cat."

She seemed to understand. "My papa is animagus," she said the word like she expected Harry to be proud of her for it. He offered her a kind smile—crinkles at the eyes and all. "He is una fenice."

"A phoenix?"

"The fire bird," she asserted, as properly as if she were McGonagall during a transfiguration lesson. "Papa is special. He said not to tell or people will want what he has."

Harry grinned darkly. "Phoenixes are quite interesting." Jealousy was a nice cover story. Likely, Vittorio Goretti didn't want it known he completed a banned variant of the animagus ritual. "The Headmaster of my school has one. Albus Dumbledore. Ever hear of him?"

"No." Crinkling her nose, Valentina glanced at him doubtfully. The expression was soon replaced with one of curiosity. "Is he animagus?"

He tilted his head. "Maybe. I never asked."

"My mama and papa had tutoring instead of school," she said. "Same with me. And Nikolaus and Cassia. And Kunchen."

"Who're they?" he asked.

Valentina pointed squarely towards the other cells. Plumbless shadows licked the walls and the firelight threw the features of the other prisoners into alien rendering. "That is Nikolaus," she said, gesturing to a gaunt boy slumped face-down over the side of his bed, blond hair falling around his head to sweep at the floor. "He is from Ukraine. His papa and my papa are friends. Then there is Cassia," she pointed to a girl in the same cell, a redhead perhaps even younger than Valentina, "She is halfblood and from Ireland. Her papa is also friends with my papa." Her finger swept to the other side of the dungeon, to a sleeping boy with light brown skin. "That's Kunchen—"

"Let me guess, his dad and your dad are friends?"

She grinned like she'd gotten one over him. "His mama and my papa are friends."

Harry tipped his head so it rested against the wall again. "They're all politicians, then?"

"Yes." Valentina stood up. "I will tell you about my friends, okay? Nikolaus is mean to me all the time, but he's mean to everybody so I don't hate him much. Once, he gave me flower he found for no reason, but I found out I was allergic to them and got sick but he never apologized. Cassia never speaks because she stutters. Her face turns red and Nikolaus always calls her bad names. Kunchen is really nice but he's too nice sometimes. Once, Nikolaus accidentally made Kunchen's tongue twelve meters long and Kunchen did not even get mad. Once, at the tutor's—"

After a while, Harry started to tune out her storytelling, not quite being able to muster up enough care to remember that Kunchen once ate a worm because his brother tricked him, or that Cassia's mother liked to shop with someone else's mother, and this and that, but Valentina didn't seem to notice. In fact, she seemed to relish having someone to talk at. As Harry made the appropriate 'hm's' and 'oh's' at the appropriate times, he noticed that her English seemed to get better with each minute. She was actually rather adept with English. Not having spoken to anyone for a month must've rusted some lingual gears.

"Mi scusi, signore," she said, her face abruptly very close to his. Harry nearly went cross-eyed. "Do you know what I said?"

"Er—Excuse me?" Harry tried.

"Excuse me, mister," she corrected. "I—"

Harry interrupted what was sure to be a verbal pop quiz of some sort. "By the way, thanks for earlier, Val."

"Per cosa? That means 'for what'."

"Well you didn't do it on purpose, but for tossing that table at Selwyn's wife. She would've probably kept hurting Fleur if you didn't stop her."

That was the difference between a child's magic and an adult's. Children had reactive, unstable magic that sought to protect more than it did anything else. At nearly fifteen, Harry doubted he could replicate her feat.

Exuberance left her. Valentina turned her head away, bangs shielding her face.

"What is it?" Harry asked as he shut his already half-opened soul. It had flowered by instinct, answering to the worry that he might have provoked Valentina.

The girl shuffled. "I did mean to," she said quietly, voice thick. "I got so upset. I hate Signora Selwyn. She took me from my home. I—I wished to hurt her."

Harry's words could've skated on thin ice. "You can do wandless magic?"

She nodded, and reached over to pluck the cup he had thrown earlier. "See?" The goblet levitated above her palm, rotating lazily on its axis. "I can… make things lift when I want them to."

The hairs on the back of Harry's neck raised. Very, very few people were so naturally gifted. One in a ten-thousand—one in a hundred-thousand. Perhaps even less.

"Come here," Harry said, ushering her closer to him. "Put your hand on the bars. Do you feel anything?"

She obeyed and frowned. "Cold?"

Nefarious rituals aimed at increasing magical power always involved the soul in some fashion. Oftentimes, freezing the soul in an open state. A side-effect of which was magical sensitivity. With Valentina's father proven to be rather unscrupulous himself, Harry had thought he might have done something to his own daughter. But Valentina's reaction said otherwise.

The girl was simply talented.

And she was currently looking at him for explanation. "I can feel the magic on them," Harry said. "It's not a special talent or anything, most people get to that point when they cast around enough magic to become in tune with it. Or if you're impatient like me, you can practice a… skill to help you do it."

Valentina seemed rather impressed with him. "Really?"

He nodded.

"Can you teach me?" At Harry's horrified look, she hurried, "If you teach me this, I can teach you how to lift things." Valentina shoved the goblet into his hand, ignoring his words of protest. "You said you feel magic."

Harry rested an arm over the other, cup dangling from his fingertips. Where was she going with this? "Right."

"Can you feel magic inside yourself?"

Gramarie didn't allow him to feel his own power. Only his soul and strong already cast magic. Inside himself—that sounded much more blood magic. His fingers clutched around the goblet. Why hadn't he thought of that? Combining the two disciplines?

The problem with the soul was it wasn't particularly sensitive. It was both finite and infinite. A metaphor and a fact. Dealing with the mongoose had been so frustrating because it was akin to navigating a pitch-black cavern with only his hands. He couldn't see the situation nor communicate with the mongoose.

Blood magic, however, could be the fix. Magic lived in the soul. Blood carried its imprint.

"Let's see," Harry said, adrenaline starting its familiar race. "Do me a favor and close your eyes, Val."

Crudely using his teeth, he nicked a bit of skin from his wrist and spat it out, pain flaring there. At the spot, blood came to a fat bead and ran down his arm. Harry smeared his fingers in it.

He closed his eyes and opened his soul. No one could smell iron in such a small quantity of blood, yet the stench of it built in the air, omnipresent and alive. And there was something else, the hint of velvet evening. Eagerly, he put a finger in his mouth, and the warm taste exploded on his tongue, sparkling diamonds enveloping all his senses. Awareness left his mind.

Stone and iron were replaced with a blindingly bright labyrinth of arteries and veins, soul-light glittering and refracting from each blood cell. Warmth. Familiarity. His body happily welcomed him as one of its own. Soon enough, he found his soul, for the first time actually seeing it. Harry couldn't describe it. It pulsed and shifted, went big and then small, but there was no doubt as to what it was.

The ghost-mongoose raved madly; Harry's own soul stuck to its limbs and low belly like ooze, dragging it back into its hearth. Harry was, for the first time, able to properly understand it. The creature wasn't upset. It was terrified.

There was a small blackened spot on his soul. A blemish. Unsettled, Harry focused on it. Fear, so much fear, and anger and desperation. Sick, malicious, cold. Greed. I come first. My enemies deserve death. Only I can live forever. The area surged, spider webs of corruption flashing in the beautiful white, dimming it. The mongoose screamed as it was pulled, as if on a leash, into his soul.

Harry shut down his soul and opened his eyes to reality. Sweat slicked his back, seeped through his shirt. His hands trembled, covered in blood. Arms were slick to the elbows in crimson. There was a cut, jagged and red-black, deep across his wrist.

Fingers unsteady, he tore a strip of cloth from his shirt and wrapped it tightly around his wrist. Spots of blood soaked through, but the makeshift tourniquet seemed to hold.

He'd dabbled in blood magic, but this had never happened to him before.

Valentina, he noticed, had her head turned away, hands over her eyes.

"How long has it been?" he asked, pep in his voice, as he washed off the blood with water from the goblet.

She sighed heavily. "A long time."

From his perspective, the experience hadn't been more than a minute. "How much time, do you think?"

"Half an hour."

Once he quit looking like a midwife right after a birth, he said, "You can open your eyes now."

This whole time he'd thought he must have the worst soul on the planet if the ghost that had agreed to merge with him backed out as soon as the bonding started.

But now it was exceedingly clear.

Lord Voldemort had his mark on him. The lightning bolt scar, the shared blood. The two of them were bizarrely intertwined. Harry was sure he got glimpses of the man in his dreams. Mundane activities like chatting at the dinner table, lipless mouth speaking silent words, or if Harry was lucky, torturing, and all the Dark Lord's glee that accompanied it.

And the strange fury from the grocer's? Voldemort's. It made sense now. But what could he do about it? Dumbledore knew all about the ritual Voldemort had performed on Harry—surely the Headmaster realized the sinister effects it would bring? Why didn't the man warn him?

Valentina prodded his tourniquet. "Are you okay?"

"Perfectly," he said, voice a rasp. "I—I felt my magic. You're a great teacher."

She beamed at him. "Thank you, Signor! Let's practice lifting now."

Harry returned the smile, albeit strained. "Actually, that took a lot out of me. Why don't we try some other time?" Her face fell. "Tomorrow?" he offered.

"No, I want to do it now," she said. Harry's face remained stoic—she compromised. "How about, you watch me lift things? You can learn from that."

"Fair enough."

Valentina ran up to fetch a rather large yellowed tome from the bookshelf. Returning, she dropped the book on the ground, dust billowing forth. Harry narrowed his eyes and waved off the particles. Valentina inelegantly tore pages from the book. Harry moved to catch her wrist but stopped, seeing the title: On the Importance of Purity. Not all books were equally sacrosanct.

"See this?" She carefully folded the page in half, running her nail along the edge. "We are making paper cranes. We can lift them! First you fold in half, like how I am doing, and then you unfold and then fold this way..."

If someone had asked what he'd be doing now about an hour ago, origami wouldn't be very high on the list. It was strangely calming, and his fingers slowly regained their deftness. Rough grain beneath his finger, he was about to fold the sheet when he caught the title.

The Spider's Dome: Green Glass Effect

-xXx-

"You said you looked through all zese books on our first day." Fleur said as she sorted through the rest of the tomes on the bookshelf. Each new title seemed to set her sneer deeper. "Nothing was mentioned of… their running theme."

Harry peered at her over On The Importance of Purity. "What, divination? These books don't exactly advertise it very well."

Fleur hm'd. "See this one?" She held a thin book with python-skin covers up for view. "A fairytale of ze oracle Cassandra, second edition. It's incredibly rare."

"Gourmet meals appear on our plates twice a day," Harry said dryly. "That's what they feed us, their prisoners. Our blankets are made from real animal fur. Not to mention the Selwyns own a dungeon. Is it any surprise they're beyond wealthy and out of touch?"

She waved him off. "This one belongs in a museum." Taking care, she opened the book, eyes slowly devouring the prose word by word.

Harry returned to deciphering the middle english the entire thing his book was written in. Surely he'd missed bits, but the gist was clear enough. Once he finished, the next chapter title stating something about houseflies, he shut the tome and pushed it away.

Fleur perked at the noise. "Finished?"

In an attempt to build good-will between them, Harry had previously conveyed his theory about how his compact mirror and the Green Glass Effect were connected. She was skeptical, demanding he read fully into it before posing the idea to her. He regretted asking her at all, but if he wanted Fleur to share her thoughts with him, then he needed to as well. No more secrets.

Except his wrist. She didn't need to know about that. He hardly imagined she'd be happy to hear he had gone against her orders to stop using gramarie. In fairness, Fleur hadn't asked about his wound either.

Harry nodded, resting his clasped hands on his bent knee. "The Spider's Dome is a scrying charm. It turns any mirror in a specified area into a window its caster can spy from."

Fleur's eyes were back on her book, and she didn't look up. "So what do you think? The Selwyns are spying on us from your mirror?"

"Well, no, it's closed," Harry said. "But see, two-way mirrors have got a load of scrying spells on them. They conflict with the Dome. The book says that's why the glass turned green. It's a side-effect." The idea that the Selwyns were using the Dome seemed plausible—the book did belong to the Selwyns after all."

Harry continued. "We can't break the Dome. It's about as strong as a fidelius charm. But the book says my mirror is like a weak spot. If we can get through, we can reach my friend Theodore Nott and get him to send a letter to Dumbledore."

She shut her book, slipping it back into the bookshelf. "I am more concerned about this Spider Dome. It is another obstacle for our escape. If they are watching our every move…"

"Weren't you the one saying we could somersault out of here?"

Fleur didn't look very impressed with him. "Oui, I said that. However, good strategists plan for ze worst case, not ze best."

Harry brought out the mirror.

"Give me that," Fleur said, holding her hands open. They were visibly more healed than the last Harry had seen them. "I can do it."

With gentle ease, he tossed over the compact. She caught it. In honesty, he had been preparing to unwrap the tourniquet and spill blood over the mirror, hoping something happened. Fleur would likely have more finesse about it.

The mirror's lid clicked open. She was doing nothing in particular he could see, but suddenly, a crack spread across the glass, color dissipating. He sighed in relief. Without a word, she threw it back at him—he snatched it one-handedly from the air.

"Thanks," he said. He put a finger to the glass. "Theodore Nott!"

Nothing happened. For a moment. Then appeared a stoic, feminine face, long gold curls sweeping down her shoulders. She eyed him blankly and then vanished.

"...We may be getting a visitor soon," Harry said to the silence, deadly calm.

Fleur sighed and got up. "Do you think zey will bring cherry pastries along with them? I long for one." She fell, face-up, on her cot. "I suggest you play dead as I am."

As the words left her mouth, there was a hint of light before bang—Isidore Selwyn strode down the dungeon steps with the lavish of an emperor, a shiny green apple in hand. The air about him was an oddly pleased one. A cat that caught the canary.

Selwyn conjured a wooden chair in front of their cell and sat, pulling one leg to angle over the other. "Give it to me."

Harry obeyed, grimacing.

The man opened it and closed it a few times, click-click-click echoing in the dungeon. "Who gave this to you?"

"A friend."

"It's no wonder I missed it," Selwyn said, inspecting it. "This is quite impressive. The anti-detection charm is something else, like. Hm. It's also to turn my fingers blue, since I'm touching it and I'm not you. Whoever made this has a thing for privacy charms."

Selwyn dropped the mirror into his pocket, exchanging it for a small dagger. He slid it over the apple, easily cutting a sliver from it, and nicked it from the blade with his teeth. "Harry, I really don't know too much about you, do I? In fairness, the only thing you know about me is my name. It's not terribly fair to you."

"I don't want to know about you."

The man grinned. "Muggles have a term for what you're doing: reverse-psychology. See? Even a prejudiced bastard like me can learn a trick or two." Selwyn leaned in closer. "Since I'm terrifically bored, I'll indulge you. I was an only child. Everything I wanted, I was given. Nothing was denied to me. But even knowing this, I never asked for anything—no broomsticks, no singing teddy bears. I don't care much for material things, you see. But my upbringing is why I am the way I am."

Selwyn sliced off another bit of apple and fed himself. "The Sorting Hat put me in Ravenclaw. My parents hoped for Slytherin; I didn't care so much. But even with my aloof personality, I still wanted the usual—" Selwyn made a circling gesture with the dagger. "—friends, good grades, a girl to like me, things like that."

"Seems like it worked out for you," Harry said.

"Come seventh year, and I've been crowned Head Boy by the teachers. Flitwick has me twice a week for one-on-one dueling practice. Rabastan Lestrange, a scamp in the year below me, impregnates a fifth year girl and asks me to be his son's godfather. And there's a new young, beautiful Divination teacher this year. Mind you, I only took Divination so I could catch up on sleep without children bothering me about Gobstone competition times or wondering if I could buy their detentions from certain ornery professors. But there in that Divination class, I fell madly in love. Married her the next year."

"A nice happy ending."

"Indeed." Selwyn's gaze traveled to Fleur, who was pretending to be asleep, and dropped his voice to the merest whisper. "We're two of a kind, aren't we? You and me? A taste for older women. I was thinking, since you're about to die and all, that I'd do you a favor and freeze up that bird for you. It's not as good if they aren't fighting, but she'd probably kick your teeth in, no offense. It's the least I can do."

Harry didn't answer.

Selwyn chuckled. "No? I don't blame you. Girl's probably not a virgin anyway. They keep losing it younger and younger these days. Society tells men not to be revolted by it, but it's a natural reaction."

Harry knew his face was white as sheet. There was nothing he wanted more than for Selwyn return to where he'd come from. But the man kept talking as his attention moved from Fleur to the walls.

"There used to be mirrors in each cell so we could ensure our friends weren't misbehaving. But Aly didn't like having to look at your miserable faces all the time." He gestured the dagger down at the mess of sprawling leather and paper on the ground. "Enjoying those books? The wife's a bit of a hoarder. I gave you children the rubbish ones of her collection. Books keep the mind sharp."

Rising from his seat, the chair disappearing with a pop, Selwyn casually tossed the rectangular apple core over his shoulder, where it rolled until about the middle of the dungeon.

"I'm going to the Ministry now. Are you curious why?"

Selwyn was clearly waiting for answer. "No," Harry replied.

The man grinned, casual and easy. "I'm going off to formally request the unfreezing of the family vaults."

"I've been laboring under the impression you were an upstanding citizen," Harry said, forcing himself to be punchy. His voice instead came quiet and without inflection.

"Earlier, I said I was only child. But I do have a cousin called Leander. Except, he's a Death Eater locked in Azkaban. The Ministry's been getting a bit too big for their britches lately, negotiating with Gringotts to allow them access to the vaults of convicted Death Eaters so to have the funds to repair the damage the Dark Lord dealt upon our world. Shame the negotiations fell through."

Harry's blood went cold. "Mockridge. That was you."

Selwyn flashed his teeth. "Now, now. That poor man died naturally. A stroke in his sleep. Goes to show you shouldn't work so hard in your nineties."

Then he left.

-xXx-

Hurrying inside, Theodore Nott slammed the cherry-red phone booth door closed and leaned against it. Idle chatter, metal transportation boxes charging down the street, and the sound of shoes dimmed. Muggles roamed everywhere. He'd never seen so many in his life!

It was all Harry's fault, him and his uncontrollable hormones. One pretty girl, a half-creature who he barely knew and the whole plan gets thrown out the window. What was Theodore supposed to do? Keep the damn thing? Harry probably thought he burnt it like he promised, but no, after Harry had gotten taken, Theodore secreted it away. When the idiotic Gryffindor came back, Theodore would retrieve the diary, wave it front of his face, and then burn it. Nothing was worth the trouble the diary had made for him already, but making Harry as miserable as he could would be close enough.

Still, it had been nearly two days since Harry went missing. The bastard was harder to kill than a cockroach, and he despised the Ministry, but Theodore wouldn't have Potter's blood on his hands.

After a few moments, Theodore's heavy panting slowed. Almost as if out-of-body, he picked up the shiny black contraption and dialed the string of numbers. Unsure of how to hold it, he tried a few different positions before settling on horizontal.

"This is the Ministry. How can we help you?"

"Yes, I'm here to visit my sister, Miranda Nott. She's forgotten her lunch at home and she has quite a few dietary restr—"

"Of course," the chipper voice said. There was a pause. Nott thought he heard an airy whirring sound. "And what was your name again?"

"Charles Nott."

The machine made a metallic gurgle before a slot opened, a white circular pin sliding forth. Theodore pulled it from the lip. It read: Visitor, and he stuck it on his chest, mindful of snagging the material of his robes.

If his mind wasn't so preoccupied, he would've been offended at the bland title they'd given him.

"Of course. Mr. Nott, please remain absolutely still while keeping your arms to your sides. Have a wonderful day!"

There was an ominous groan and a click.

Then, he fell, cursing Potter all the while.

When he opened his eyes, it was to a part of the Ministry he'd never seen before. It was beyond ugly, no sense of architecture to it. Just a large box.

"Your wand, Mr. Nott."

Theodore emitted an exasperated sigh before handing over a dark brown length of wood with a bend near the top. Charles Nott, his second cousin, was about his age but he never went to Hogwarts. His overbearing parents insisted on homeschooling him, just as they'd done with Miranda. Earlier, when Theodore fed his cousin a bit of his plan, the boy been so excited to be involved in something taboo that he handed his wand over right then and there.

Nothing much had been done much to change Theodore's appearance. Just some strawberry-blonde dye and a set of green-eye glamours he'd picked up at the shop near his home. He already resembled Charles more than he liked to admit.

The man weighing his wand took all of three seconds before handing it back with a flourish. "Unicorn hair and walnut. Rare combination."

"So they say," Theodore drawled, hoping the man didn't ask for him to perform a spell. He could barely force the wand to make a bit of light.

"Charles?" Miranda's excited voice carried down the hall. She wasn't a very good actress. No one was that happy to see a member of their own family. "You've finally come!"

Theodore handed her the bag. "Your lunch." When she gave the wandweigher a nervous glance, Theodore hardened his gaze, hoping she'd behave.

"Thank you so much, brother. Why, you must be hungry yourself. Shall we go to The Cafe?" They began walking.

"Oh? Where is that?" he asked.

"Seventh Floor," she said. "Just Law Enforcement. You should be lucky we're not going to Magical Experiments. They're playing with a kind of goo-bomb. The floor is covered in it!"

"That's very unfortunate for them."

Miranda's eyes lit up. "No, you see—"

Theodore was rather glad now that Miranda and Charles had never gone to Hogwarts. They would've never survived in Slytherin, not with this level of atrocious naivety. Didn't she understand that he didn't care at all?

Miranda chattered loudly in his ear as they found the Cafe. The DMLE was one of the grander levels of the Ministry, wrought in a consistent, baroque style. The one flaw was the amount of witches and wizards skittering around, dropping papers and getting hit in the head with lavender paper airplanes.

The sandwich he ordered tasted like sawdust in his mouth. Circe and her sons, how he hated people. And the Ministry. And regular, pedestrian food. Tomatoes were one of the most flavorful fruits out there. How had someone managed to make the slices in his dish taste like wet paper?

"My lunch break is over, Charles," Miranda said, daintily wiping her mouth with a napkin. "I'll be off."

"Good riddance," he muttered as she left.

Finding a moment where everyone seemed to be paying attention to something else, Theodore slipped into the Auror Department. The secretary's desk was right near the front, and the wizard manning it looked up from a stack of lavender papers. At Theodore's approach, the man removed his glasses.

"Hello. What can I do for you?"

Nott breathed out, the jitters of anticipation he'd been feeling in the phone booth nowhere to be found. Perhaps emotions could run dry.

Just then, a door behind the secretary opened, letting out a gust of laughter. A tall man still faced towards the office, his hand around the doorknob.

"Again, I appreciate the help, Dawlish," he said. "I'll see if I can't steal you a few Winter Gala tickets from Lucius."

A huff came from within the room. "Don't bother. With your donation, Robards might just go off and hold his own gala."

The man laughed again, and Theodore's stomach twisted, finally placing why he seemed so familiar. It was the same man that had kidnapped Potter in Knockturn Alley. Angling his face to mock-examine the secretary's stationary, he hoped to every god he could think of that the man didn't recognize him in turn.

Door closed, and the man turned, revealing his face, and Theodore's theory solidified. Purebloods, the right kind, at least, sort of mimicked each other in style. Same seamstresses, same beautifying potions. The man in Knockturn and this man had the exact same too-fluid way of movement indicative of Draught of the Mud Eel.

Potter was cursed and he had diseased Theodore with the same.

The secretary snapped his fingers in his face. "Son?"

That drew the man's attention. Eyes glanced down at Theodore's name tag.

"Good evening, Williams," Potter's kidnapper said to the secretary. He nodded his head at Theodore and walked up to him, just close enough to be too close for Theodore's comfort. "Charles Nott." He scrutinized his face. "I'm Isidore Selwyn. It's a pleasure to meet you, you look remarkably like your father."

"You know my father?"

Theodore's own father had been a Death Eater, nearly convicted, but Theodore's cousin, the father of Miranda and Charles, had chosen dealing antiques as his life path.

Selwyn, the man said his name was. Theodore recognized the surname as an old pureblood one, woven through history. A few Selwyns had even fought alongside the Dark Lord. However, he hadn't heard of an Isidore before.

"Sure. Magnus and I are old friends." Selwyn cocked his head a bit. "I am intrigued as to what you're doing alone in the Ministry. He is notoriously protective of his children."

Caught by fear, Theodore's ready-made excuse was a bit hard to pull out of his gullet. He gave Selwyn a hard smile, one Harry would've been proud of. "Just here for some information."

"Thinking of becoming an Auror?" Selwyn clapped his shoulder and barked out a laugh. "Now I get why you've sneaked out. The old man would never let you do anything so foolish." He addressed the secretary. "No offense meant, of course."

"Can't take offense at the truth, Selwyn."

"If only more people thought like you." Selwyn opened up his posture as though he were an angel bearing his wings. "Give your parents my regards, Char. But if you don't end up becoming an Auror, I'll be telling them about your little escapade. So you'd better make the grades and do it." A wink, then Selwyn brushed passed him.

Theodore adapted his iron-wrought plan at spellfire speed. Having the name of Potter's kidnapper had somehow made the situation worse. It was clear Selwyn was tangled within the Auror Department. Theodore knew donations went a long way in the Ministry. That was a fact. The Aurors would never take him seriously if he claimed their prized donor had Potter locked up somewhere or worse.

"My apologies," Theodore mumbled to the secretary, who quirked an unimpressed eyebrow. "Do you take anonymous tips?"

The wizard straightened in his chair and pulled a quill from his utensil rack. "We do."

Theodore swallowed. "About two days ago, I was in Knockturn Alley and saw two wizards fighting." The secretary nodded for him to continue. "It was between Harry Potter and another whom I could not make out well. Potter lost quickly and the man apparated away with him. It looked to me like a kidnapping."

For all that Theodore could say about the secretary who had snapped his fingers in his face, he was impressed the wizard's face hadn't so much as flickered at the mention of Potter.

"Do you remember anything about the man? Any distinguishing features?"

Theodore shook his head. "I barely saw him for a moment. He wore an invisibility cloak."

"I see," the man said, putting his quill down. "Oftentimes, the mind retains more than you may believe it to. Would you consent to a memory extraction?"

"No." Theodore said. "As I said before, I desire anonymity. I know that once you have the memory that my identity will be clear to anyone who looks at it."

"If you say so." A bored note entered his voice. "I'll see that this gets the attention it deserves."

The secretary didn't believe him. Fool. "I'm sure it will be obvious if Potter's been taken on not. My presence here is out of goodwill." Theodore glared at him. "This information is now your responsibility."

The man donned his glasses back on, reviewing the scant notes he had taken. He held them like a shield, a barrier between Theodore and him. "As I said, I'll see that this gets the attention it deserves."

Grabbing an eagle-feather quill, Theodore stabbed it through the middle of the papers, ink-stained tip perilously close to the man's face. "See that it does, four-eyes."

It was quite a while later when he realized his name tag never specified his name.

-xXx-

A/N: Thanks for all the reviews, guys :) To everyone taking finals right now—kill em.