Disclaimer: I own no part of Harry Potter or its associated canon nor, any other already copyrighted material.
(A/N): This is a sequel to my Seventh Year story 'Harry Potter and the Second War' so you'll probably want to read that one first as it lays out several background points for this tale. To my returning readers, thanks for waiting, hope you enjoy this one as well. Now, without further ado, Harry Potter and the Legacy Riddle.
Prologue
Breaking Statute
Nighttime in a city, especially one as large as New York, was a very special experience for those that could relax enough to enjoy it. Once you came to understand the shadows and shapes and move within them there was something of comfort to it. Those very shadows that could hold danger also seemed to shrink the city down just enough that the mind could contentedly come to grips with it. Sure there were eight million people within a space you could easily see from a sufficiently high building, but at street level, able to just see the block you were on and the one past it, it was almost a cozy neighborhood.
At times like this knowing there's an all night coffee shop nearby adds even more comfort. And so it was on a late night in mid may that a woman who had grown up only a few streets away found herself seeking some of that comfort from her youth at Joe's Joe with a steaming cup of strong black coffee. She had tried the big chains but that could hardly be called coffee for all the crap they put in it. She was seated at one of the small tables set right against the large front window with the cup in one hand and a folder full of papers spread out before her.
Her close cropped blond hair barely moved as she rubbed her eyes again and glanced up at the clock. Midnight was coming up soon but the caffeine would keep her awake as surely as the pounding in her head every time she looked at the papers in front of her. Six separate bundles held together by a paperclip each contained a small photograph, a summary sheet and a varying number of detailed reports. She had read them all, knew them nearly by heart and now was just getting more and more frustrated. It was like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle without knowing how many pieces there were, what its final shape was or even what the picture was on the front. Taking another sip of coffee she pushed away from the table a bit.
She had always prided herself as being good with details, something that served her well in her current professions. But all the details in the world weren't helping her here. Instead she mentally set the papers aside and let her eyes drift around the room. The shop was, as it had been since she entered, nearly empty. The lone barista had polished the same glasses three times already and was currently bent over what appeared to be a college textbook reading in a bored fashion.
Between them at one of the center tables sat an older balding man. He had glanced up briefly when she entered and had been the only other person there when she arrived. He had sunken eyes and the wrinkled skin of age. A grubby coat was wrapped around a well worn suit as he sat drinking his fourth cup of coffee in an hour. He also had papers slightly spread out on his small table and quickly covered their contents whenever the barista came near to offer him a refill, something she was obviously growing more and more unwilling to do.
Swiveling her eyes across the small shop she let them fall on the only other occupant of the room. He had arrived only a few minutes after she had and silently ordered something a quick glance had been unable to discern. Immediately afterward he had taken a seat in the very corner of the store, propped a foot up on another chair and pulled out a hardback book from his coat. The coat itself was a long duster style overcoat with several pockets inside and out large enough to hold the book at least. A matching wide brimmed hat hid much of his head from view. Occasionally however she could catch a glimpse of his face. It seemed to be early middle aged and hadn't changed expression in the time he had been here.
The strangest feature however was the fact he was wearing dark wrap around sunglasses despite the actuality it was the middle of the night. He hadn't seemed hampered by it though and had no problem navigating the shop or apparently reading his book. The only odd quirk, other than the glasses, was the fact his right hand seemed to move up towards his shoulder every few minutes of its own accord as if reaching for something. It quickly returned to its normal position on his raised leg a second after each movement. Despite those being the only odd things about him, she still got the sense there was something not quite right about him. It was almost as if he didn't quite belong in this world, his was perhaps a degree off to the side but he was doing a passable job of existing in this one.
Mentally keeping half an eye on him she returned her gaze to the papers on the table and tried one more to fit the pieces in where they belonged. In ten years with the Bureau it was by far the strangest case she had every heard of. It wasn't even officially her case. The Bureau had an officially unofficial team it sent to investigate cases this bizarre and she wasn't part of it. Her station chief however had known of her interest in strange happenings and gotten her a copy of the file as well as some time away from normal duty to see what she could make of it. So far it had been several wasted weeks of chasing ghosts.
So far half a dozen victims had been identified across the country. Each of them had suffered similar fates and each had been found with not a mark on their bodies. The creepy part, and what interested her, was that they were all alive. None had been killed but something that seemed equally horrific had taken place. It seemed each of the victims had been put into a kind of waking coma. Their eyes were open; they kept breathing and would respond to sufficiently loud stimuli, but, to quote an old phrase, "lights on, nobody home." It was as if their memories, thoughts; their very minds had been wiped out leaving them a hollow shell of a person.
She had met with one of these victims and the memory of it still creeped her out. That look of nothing behind blank eyes had been worse than looking into the glazed eyes of death. She had never exactly got used to that but some sort of acceptance eventually came. This though was just unnatural. And that was why the unofficial team had been called. Medical examination could find nothing physically wrong with the body but the mind emitted almost none of the energy waves consistent with a human. More than one neurologist had been spooked off the investigation, several vowing never to think about it again. Whatever was going on was beyond the boundaries of science to explain.
Speaking with the families had been a similarly trying experience. They were more reticent than usual to talk about themselves and their lives. She had multiple times run into walls where they had simply kicked her out of the house when she became overly interested in some small detail. Didn't they understand she was trying to help? Letting out a long sigh she glanced once more over the case profiles that had been included. Despite hours of attempts there was no pattern she could pick out between them. The victims were men, women, young, old and lived all across the country. She couldn't even find any evidence they had known each other. And it was exactly that maddening facet of the case that had driven her to a coffee shop in her old neighborhood fifty miles out of the way in the middle of the night.
Wiping her eyes once more she tried to take another sip of the stiff brew but found the cup empty. Glancing up she realized the barista was either too interested in her textbook or too set on not looking at the man in the center of the room to raise her eyes away from the page. Collecting the files back into the folder she decided to rise silently and get the coffee her self. Striding slowly across the floor she passed the balding man just as he turned toward her with several papers in his hand. She failed to dodge in time and several of the sheets were knocked loose to fall to the floor. She immediately moved to grab them.
"I'm terribly sorry sir. Let me-" She reached down toward the closest sheet.
"NO!" Moving more quickly than she would have thought his old frame was able he pushed her to the side and scrambled to the floor to collect the sheets himself, quickly stuffing them into a nearby folder. Taking several moments to collect herself she stumbled to the counter and set down her cup. As the barista reached for the nearby coffee pot she noticed one of the papers had slipped away near her feet. Picking it up, she held it out as a peace offering.
"Sir, I'm very sorry-" Again his much too fast hands stabbed out and grabbed the sheet, ripping part of it off in her hand and causing her to stumble. As her arms flailed to regain balance his eyes seemed to see something within her coat and immediately grew wide.
"YOU! How did you find me?! No matter. You'll never live to tell any one!" A split second later as she managed to regain her balance a small stick seemed to appear in his hand. She stared at it dumbly, not understanding what was going on. In ten years at the Bureau and five on the force before that, she had had a lot of things pointed at her threateningly from guns to knives to one lunatic with a cut off plastic bottle. But never before had she confronted a simple stick. Why it looked as if it would break should she flick it with her finger. Reflex kicked in a heart beat later and her hand raced for her jacket to the pistol she always carried. The man was now pointing the stick straight at her chest while holding the folder in his other hand as his lips moved again. "Avada Keda-"
"Expelliarmus!" Something blue cut across her vision and forced the man to jump backward away from her. A moment later a brown blur appeared from the side of her field of view and collided with the man sending him reeling backward. He reached the glass windows and smashed through to roll out onto the sidewalk. The brown blur followed a second later as a loud cracking sound came from out side. A voice came from the now stationary brown shape that matched the strange word that had apparently saved her. Though saved her from what she didn't know. "Come back here you son of a bitch!"
With a yell of disgust the brown shape turned and stepped back through the window. As it reached the light, the shape resolved into the man that had been sitting in the far corner of the shop just a few moments earlier. A stunned moment later she realized he too was holding a wooden stick, lighter colored than the other man's. A flick of the stick later the shattered bits of the window flew back into place and reformed into an undamaged pane of glass. He physically picked up the few pieces of knocked over furniture and grabbed the files waiting on the table she had been sitting at.
Finally the dark lenses fell to her and he stopped. She realized after a second that it was because her reflexes had done their job and leveled her pistol at him. He stared at it a long moment before speaking. "You gonna shoot me?" Her grip tightened as she tried to regain some composure.
"FBI, Freeze!" The man seemed unfazed by this pronouncement and continued staring at her. "Take your hat off!" After a moment's hesitation and a shrug his free hand set the files aside, slowly rose and removed the hat to reveal a head of short brown hair. "Glasses too!" He hesitated again.
"Look, I really don't have time for-"
"Now!" He shrugged again.
"You asked for it." In a swift move he removed the glasses to reveal not eyes but the sunken black sockets where it looked as if his eyes had been gouged out. In the heartbeat of frozen terror his stick moved again. "Expelliarmus." The woman felt as if she had been lightly punched right in the chest as the gun was torn from her grip. It landed in his hand a moment later and he quickly stuffed it into a pocket having already replaced his glasses.
Grabbing the files again he stepped up quickly and shoved them into her now empty hands. "Hold these." Stooping he grabbed the fragment of paper she had torn off and glanced it over. She could only make out the top word as being 'Potter' before it rolled out of her line of sight. "Crap." Stuffing it into a pocket as well he pointed the stick again, this time at the barista. A second later her eyes got a glazed look and unfocused as if she was daydreaming. The stick disappeared into his coat and he took her arm in his now free hand. "Come on." She froze in place refusing to move. "Listen, you want to catch the guy that did that?" He pointed to the folder. She could only nod dumbly. "Then come along." She still refused to move.
"No. I want some answers! What just happened? What did you do to her? What's going-"
"Listen very carefully." The intensity of his voice coupled with the dark lenses over what she knew were hollow sockets rendered her speechless. "There are answers and I can give them to you in exchange for your help with this guy. But you have to come along right now. I really don't have the time to argue with you. Otherwise I'll just Obliviate your memory as well and then it won't matter." He took a few steps toward the door and turned back. "Coming?" After a moment's consideration she nodded. As she started toward him he reached out a hand and his hat flew across the room to it. Settling it back over his head, he pushed her out the door.
Once out into the night air he didn't slow down and continued a quick stride with a hand on her arm, his eyes looking around huntedly. Ducking into the first alley they came across he began cutting back and forth across several blocks until she wasn't even sure where they were. Ducking into a nearby subway entrance he paid both fares and pushed her aboard the first empty train car headed anywhere but here. Looking up and down the train he seemed satisfied that whatever he was looking for wasn't waiting for him. Settling into a seat he took a long breath. She sat across from him. A moment later his head rose.
"We have a few minutes. Your questions?" Here mind was reeling but she managed to form coherent sentences.
"What was all that?"
"Magic. It's real and there's a lot of it, but it's also very well hidden."
"How come I've never seen…?"
"Because there's an international restriction against letting non-magical people see it. The fact that I saved your life is the only thing that's going to keep me out of Azkaban tonight. A fact I need you to testify to, hence one of the reasons I was reticent to immediately wipe your memory."
"One of?"
"Yes. The other is that case file." His finger indicated the one she still had clutched to her stomach. "You see, we've been following the same man. I'd run out of magical leads and thought you might be able to come up with something so…I was following you. I thought maybe you could lead me to him." She blinked several times in rapid succession at the revelations.
"So…you're like some sort of magical cop?" His head shook slowly.
"No. We have those but I'm more of a…private investigator I guess. I have a particular affinity for tracking darkness. And yet I couldn't recognize it fifteen feet in front of me. Guess that's what a decade of semi retirement gets you." She gawked at him now. He didn't look anywhere near old enough to retire.
"Retirement?"
"Yeah. I'd had enough of magic for a while so I just sort of decided to fade into the muggle world. Until this case pulled me back in."
"M-muggle?"
"Non magical people." He pulled the scrap of paper out and glanced at it again. His voice was tinged with anger and…desperation as he spoke. "Oh Merlin." Stuffing it back into his pocket he glanced up to the location board before letting his head drop. Several moments passed in silence before she spoke again.
"You didn't pay for your coffee." His lens settled back on her with what should have been a quizzical expression.
"Lady, I just broke about sixteen wizarding laws and I'll be lucky not to have wand snapped and my ass thrown in jail. Skipping out on the check is quite literally the least of my problems." He let out another long breath and she could see him building his defense in his head. It was a look she remembered well from many people she had interviewed over the years.
"So that's why you ran away from their so quickly?" He could hear the slight accusation in her voice and his head rose to meet it.
"Partly. There are members of the Council that feel any violation of the Statute of Secrecy is an imprisonable if not death worthy offense. My best hope to save my life and your mind is to get to the council first and convince them that your help is valuable enough to preserve what you know."
"Valuable how?"
"Helping to solve this case. They've had no more luck than I have. I need to convince them your knowledge and contacts are worth the risk of knowing about us." A moment later she could hear him muttering to himself. "Ten years since I retired and my first fight since might cost me my wand. Perfect." After several minutes of silence and muttering too low for her to hear, she cleared her throat to get his attention.
"So…what's your name?" After a long moment during which she thought he wasn't going to answer he glanced over.
"Alex. Alex Keystone."
"Katherine Patinkin. Pleased to meet you. Thanks for saving my life." She extended a hand and after a moment's hesitation, he took it.
For a job with a description as exciting as 'Dark Wizard Hunter', there was an incredible amount of paperwork in being an Auror. Ron had never liked paperwork, had actively dodged as much as possible in school to the point of relying on help to pass. But now at least he could see something noble in the endless stack of documents that seemed to pass over his desk every week. This had point and purpose, it was going somewhere, it meant something to people. There was a reason beyond learning the name of an obscure plant or an unheard of magical fact. This was worth doing Ron told himself.
Also, Hermione refused to help him.
In truth he couldn't blame her; it was his job after all. And so Ron continued one sheet to the next, dotting every I crossing every T and affixing his signature in the hundreds of places that it seemed to be required. Stacking the individual case files together he set the stack in the out bin for one of the many departmental clerks to collect and file away. The pair of file cabinets in the office corner held the active files he and his partner needed quick access to. Tapping his wand on several interdepartmental memos he watched as they folded themselves into airplanes and took to the air, heading out of the office door like a flock of bizarrely shaped birds. After making sure they got off okay he set down his wand and glanced around the office.
It was fair size for the Ministry. Large enough to work comfortably in but not big enough to be presumptuous. The door in the corner looked out over the many clerical and junior Auror desks that filled the center of the offices. Straight in front of the door along the wall was a comfortable sofa that he and his partner used to interview people or catch the occasional nap on. Ron has spent the night on it a couple times during important investigations. The file cabinets were just past it in the corner. Against the opposite wall from the couch was a pair of large desks back to back. Ron currently sat at the one facing the windows on the same wall as the door. For several years he had sat at the other desk but he didn't currently have a partner he felt comfortable with watching his back. That would be changing soon. Turning in the wooden swivel chair he glanced out across the fake vista in the charmed 'outside' window currently moving on into evening and smiled a little.
Life was good.
"Oh Ronald?" The sing song voice made him smile even wider. Turning back to his desk his eyes swept the picture frames there and found the one he sought. A little bigger than his hand it held what had to be the most beautiful face in the world. But this was no ordinary picture or even a magical one. This was a two way mirror that had been specially made for him by his incredibly attractive and monumentally talented wife. Who also happened to be in the frame and smiling wider herself.
"Why Hermione, what a pleasant surprise. Fancy seeing you here." She rolled her eyes at the comment, after all this time more endeared than annoyed at his jokes.
"Yes, fancy that. So, are you going to be home soon? Rose is telling more tales about Hogwarts to her brother and I'm not sure I can keep up correcting her much longer." Ron mocked surprise at the statement.
"Hermione Weasley not wanting to correct people? I never thought I'd see the day!"
"Oh ha, ha. Seriously." He smiled again and nodded.
"Yeah. Give me fifteen minutes to close up shop and I'll be right there."
"Okay. See you then. Love you."
"I love you too." Hermione turned and walked out of frame a moment later. Following her his eyes drifted over to the next frame which held a photograph of the recent family trip to Spain. It had been a heck of a two weeks during which Rose and Fred had had all sorts of fun pretending to be muggles during the world's largest tomato fight. They stood there, covered in splattered red pulp grinning like idiots. Even Hermione had managed to be relaxed enough to sling the squishy weapons. Speaking of muggles… The family was expected at her parents' house for the weekend. The kids would be staying with their grandparents for a few days. Hermione was going as far as impounding Rose's wand just to make sure she didn't try casting magic while they were there.
His eyes slid the other way to find a picture of his sister and her husband. This he stared at a little longer and made a mental note see if he could get a more recent picture of them. The one he had was just shortly after their wedding and they had changed much since then. Breaking out of his reverie a moment later he picked his wand and looked over the desk. With a tap ink bottles were stoppered, papers were organized and the desk calendar advanced itself a day. Standing up he pulled on his traveling overcloak from the cloak rack near the filing cabinets.
Moving his wand almost by rote he locked up both desks, magically sealed the filing cabinets and disillusioned the large bulletin board that hung over the desks. None of it would stop a determined attack. The point was merely to keep out overcurious clerks. Stowing his wand, a wave of his hand turned out the lights. The same hand traced the edge of the other desk as he passed it. It was now virtually empty as it had been for nearly two years. Soon though it would be full again. Full of his stuff. Once his partner returned they would both take over their old desks.
At the doorway he glanced back and could almost see the man sitting in his normal chair. A smile crossed his face. It would be good to have his partner, his best friend back. It would be good to have Harry back again.
(A/N): If you feel it is warranted feel free to review. I welcome any and all opinions.