Disclaimer: Chances are if you missed the disclaimer in the first chapter, you’re skimming this fic and probably missing more of the story than you think.
A/N: Thanks goes to Jbern for his help and advice with this chapter. The song is Renegade by Styx. Kick-ass song; go download it if you’ve never heard it.
Chapter Eight
A Symphony of Bones
The man crumpled to the ground, limp and unmoving.
Crouching in the shadows, Harry swiftly stripped the body of its weapons, the motions as natural as breathing. He recognized them now, the blue stripe on black fatigues. They were the Special Forces Unit, a highly militarized division of the Dept. of Mysteries’ Mission Operatives. He knew these people, knew their tactics, their habits, the way they moved; Harry had trained alongside them at the tender age of seventeen. Nobody had to teach him how to kill – these people just made sure he was good at it.
And they were after him. The irony of the situation was not lost on Harry. He’d just removed the necromancer as a serious concern and now his own government was out for retribution.
Fear was indeed a strange motivator.
Harry abandoned the body, tucking the stolen kerambit and matte black Colt M1911 away on his person. If these people operated the way the way he remembered them to, they would be tracking him be his magic – which meant they’d been looking for him, probably for some time now judging by how quickly they arrived at the first sign of magic in the area. Hell, he’d walked right into a trap like some wet-behind-the-ears rookie.
Harry’s teeth ground together in frustration as he jogged through Number 12’s backyard. The older couple that lived here were doing extensive renovations of the front garden, moving some of the larger saplings to the back. He had dually noted earlier in the day that they were also using a 20-20-20 high-nitrate fertilizer.
Adrenaline made it easy to rip the lock off the battered wooden shed containing the gardening supplies. Harry tossed two of the dirt-filled bags over his shoulder and took off for the Isuzu parked in the street in front of Number 12.
If they wanted to play that way, that was fine with him.
He could too.
Crevan, Blackwood’s second-in-command, knelt over the still-warm body half hidden by the shrubbery. A quick check of the man’s vitals confirmed his death. Well, fuck.
His earbud crackled with static. “Mobil Four and Seven engaged in physical combat in Northwest quadrant. Target still within area.”
“Sighting of target confirmed?”
“Negative, sir. Assailant unknown.”
Harry twisted the operative’s wand arm down with his right hand while ramming his left elbow repeatedly into the man’s solar plexus. Once, twice, three times. He turned, rolling the guy over his arm and hurled him into the agent behind him. The first black-op cracked his head against the side of the house, taking the second agent down with him.
Two short, echoing cracks of the Colt later, Harry melted back into the shadows moving steadily towards the right.
There were always nine men per team, leader included.
Within the span of seven minutes, three had been killed with no sight of a small thirteen-year-old boy.
Somewhere along the communications line, someone had fucked up monumentally and Crevan didn’t trust Shorner enough to know it wouldn’t be his own neck this mess would be strung around.
White noise squealed over his earbud and Crevan plucked it out with a grimace. Make that four dead.
Goddamnit! Who the hell did Potter have helping him?
There was a crackle of twigs on his left and a figure of medium height and slim build emerged from the darkness. It was the assailant; it had to be. It was in the way he moved – too smooth, too sure to be civilian. Crevan watched the figure duck past a muggle vehicle and jog around to the back of the house. He signalled to the rest of his team and followed the man into the shadows.
Number 12 read the house’s faceplate. It felt oddly like a death knell.
Crevan rounded the corner of the house just in time to see the shed door swing shut. His team fanned out behind him, weapons poised and ready. No more mistakes with this one. He’d wrap this up, retrieve the boy, write up his report and take a well-deserved break. Piece of cake.
Rustling came from inside the shed and static crackled on the air, like a radio being tuned. A voice faded in from the white noise, a soft, lingering tenor.
“/Oh momma, I’m in fear for my life from the long arm of the law…/”
Crevan nodded to the four remaining men around him; they crept forward, using the music to hide their footsteps.
“/Law man has put an end to my runnin’ and I’m so far from my home…/”
Light and shadows rippled faintly through the bottom of the door. Crevan braced himself against the side of the shed, wand ready to draw, as another team member reached for the door.
“/Oh momma, I can hear you a-cryin’, you’re so scared and all a-lone…/”
The door opened without a squeak, the hinges smooth and oiled. He rolled off the wall into the shed, wand outstretched. It was empty. Boards from the back wall were missing, large enough for a person to slip through. A strip of cloth was tacked up next to the light fixture; it fluttered in the soft breeze, casting shadows over the dirt floor.
Oh. Shit.
“/Hangman is comin’ down from the gallows and I don’t have very long…/”
With a resounding ‘Yeah!’ from the radio, the shed exploded outwards, hurling Crevan backwards with the force of it.
He landed hard on his back and felt white hot agony race up his left arm to wrap around his ribs – it pure luck that he was able to raise a shield in time for the second explosion. The muggle transportation device behind him vaporized in a fireball of bright heat and sound as a spray of lightning-white projectiles peppered his shield and shredded his not-so-lucky team members. Only one other operative managed to raise a shield. Crevan peered dazedly at the projectiles hammered into the ground, bright spots still dotting his vision.
Nails, those were fucking nails!
Crevan hauled himself to his feet, breaking out into sprint towards the end point of the anti-apparition wards, his feet slip-sliding on the wet grass beneath them.
He turned back to see the assailant walk calmly past the burning vehicle and fire a killing curse at the remaining member of his team. This mission had officially gone balls up and Shorner could shove it where the sun didn’t shine if he didn’t like that. Crevan turned down a darkened alleyway between two rows of houses.
But maybe, just maybe, it could be salvaged. As the assailant appeared at the mouth of the alley, Crevan surged forward.
He twisted the figure’s wand arm away from him, causing the curse to go wide. It smashed into a window, glass falling to the ground in a musical shower of fine sharp pieces. The assailant turned into the movement, punching Crevan with his other arm. Crevan rolled backwards with the punch, coming to his feet, lethal spell on the tip of his tongue.
The spell caught him low in the stomach, blasting Crevan off his feet. He landed on his bad arm at the other end of the alleyway. Gasping with pain, he lay there for a moment fighting with unconsciousness. The man moved forward again and Crevan banished one of the muggle vehicles at him.
The grind of warping metal on asphalt sounded like nails on a chalkboard. He watched stunned as the man simply vanished the car. Not losing his momentum, the assailant ran towards him, twisting to avoid Crevan’s amber necrosis hex.
Crevan came to his knees, blocking the man’s foot from his face. He grabbed the foot and pulled, flinging it upwards.
Instead of losing his balance, the man flipped backwards using the momentum to come up on the balls of his feet. He was fast, too fast and Crevan knew he was outclassed. He blocked Crevan’s fist and struck his bad shoulder with a sharp, chopping motion.
Crevan’s vision blackened and he wobbled. The assailant’s foot surged forwards into his side and Crevan collapsed against a low garden wall, his body beginning to shut down against his will. He fired off one last curse before his wand was snatched from his hand, broken in two by the strength of the man’s grip.
The man sized his bad arm and twisted it, bracing his boot against Crevan’s back, forcing his body to the ground. He gasped against the dew-wet grass, body folded into an awkward, painful position.
“Now,” his captor said in a voice like honey over gravel. “You will tell me everything I want to know.”
Shorner stepped away from the glass board where he, David North and Connor Blackwood had watched in tension-laden silence as the red dots signalling Crevan’s team were steadily picked off. He was shaking, dear God, he was shaking. It was one thing to read someone else’s report; it was another to see it first hand.
And then the last blinking red dot faded and the glowing layout of Harry Potter’s neighbourhood went blank.
“FUCK!”
Connor’s coffee cup went sailing across the room and smashed into the wall, leaving a stark, puke-coloured splatter on the white paint. The door slammed behind him hard enough that it bounced open again. Shorner watched the swath of destruction Connor left in his wake with a particularly spicy cocktail of hysteria, nausea, and dread.
North tried to be as inconspicuous as possible as he shuffled out the door, head down, shoulders hunched. He fairly sure that North was headed out to smoke his way through the entire pack of cigarettes he mistakenly thought Shorner didn’t know about. Shorner thought for a moment about joining him. Now would be a great time for an addiction.
He gathered up Potter’s files, the reports from Brazil, his personal notes and a few other things before giving into the inevitable. Shorner closed the door and threaded his way through the overturned desks and disgruntled employees of the bullpen to his office. He went to push the door all the way open before he stopped.
Wait, hadn’t he locked and warded his door? Yes, he thought, his mental voice drawing the word out to its full perplexity.
Then why was it ajar?
Shorner cautiously pushed the door open with his fingertips before stepping inside. Everything looked to be in its proper order, desk buried under stacks of papers, bookshelves overflowing. Shorner grimaced and kicked the door shut behind him; he seriously needed to stop working 72-hour days. Sleep depravation, wakefulness charms and high amounts of caffeine could not be good for his system. Shifting the pile in his arms, he stepped behind his desk and resumed the never-ending paper-shuffle-tango.
Movement by the door hinges caught his eye.
He lounged idly against the wall on his left side, hands in his pockets, feet crossed at the ankles, half-hidden by the conjoining shadows of the bookshelf and doorframe. He had hair like a crow’s feather and skin the colour of cream, crisscrossed here and there with tattoos and slivering scars, some newer than others. His build was lean and strong, not too tall and not too short. Eyes, green as a cat’s, stared at Shorner, their expression one of languid amusement.
“Good evening Mr. Shorner. I would say it’s a pleasure to meet you, but,” the shadowed figure laughed low and amused, his voice an unusually rich baritone. “You’ve made it pretty clear you’re not my number one fan.”
Shorner dropped the files he was holding. “Harry Potter.”
The smile was slow and knowing, an expression far too old for his supposed age. Potter shifted and sauntered towards Shorner’s desk in a rolling, fluid motion. “Yes, that is my name. Though I don’t think I’m too fond of it lately – seems to be getting me into trouble.”
“I… can’t imagine why,” Shorner replied, stunned at the normality of the conversation. There was a little voice inside his head shrieking hysterically that the monster under his bed was real and it was standing at his desk with a placid, Dumbledorian smile on his face. Shorner tossed a heavy mental book onto top of the voice and squashed it until it stopped screaming. “How did you…?” he said, motioning towards the door.
“I learned how to pick locks from a stage magician.”
Shorner couldn’t stop the incredulous expression from spreading across his face. “Oh really?”
“I can also escape handcuffs, remove straightjackets and that reminds me,” he said as a very familiar blue velvet money pouch appeared in his hands. Potter tossed it onto the desk. “You should keep a better eye on your pockets.”
“Well aren’t you a regular criminal?” he bit out, sharper than he intended as he stuffed the pouch back into his robes.
A wide, devil-may-care grin stretched across Potter’s lips. “I do try.”
The black-clad figure dropped into the chair in front of his desk, limbs sprawled across the armrests, completely possessing the space around him. He reminded Shorner of the great cats his grandfather used to hunt; of stories told to him as a young child of these magnificent creatures lazily sunning themselves on tree limbs and Sahara plains, animals that could so easily turn into the deadliest hunters of the world.
“Relax, Archie. You’re tenser than a virgin on her wedding night.”
Archimedes Darrin Shorner ground his teeth together and wrested his temper back under control. “It’s ‘Shorner’, Mr. Potter. Only my mother is allowed to call me Archie and God rest her soul – she’s been dead for six years.”
Potter raised an eyebrow, implying with leisurely delight that he had all the time in the world and every inclination to spend it stringing Shorner up by his nerve endings. “Fair enough.”
The boy wasn’t really a boy. Shorner couldn’t put a definite age on Potter just by looks alone. The voice and inflection was that of a man, but his build was still too slender to be any older than eighteen or nineteen. The eyes were hard, wintry and they could stare down a man thrice his age and size. His movements were economical and efficient, no extravagant gestures and no overly dramatic statements like most adolescents were prone to. And his intelligence was staggering, a creative genius of magic and violence. It was an unsettling combination.
The true feeling of fear was not high and panicky.
It was cold and sinking.
Shorner hated his reaction to Potter’s presence. “Why are you here?” he snapped.
“How convenient of you to forget that you just sent your guard dogs after me!” Potter growled in return.
“Well maybe if you hadn’t gone gallivanting around killing things we wouldn’t be here!”
The warm laughter surprised him. “Ah, Shorner, you never did lose that hair-trigger temper. Probably what kept us all alive.”
Something like shock rose within Shorner and pulled tight on his throat. “What? Wait…what?”
Potter straightened in his chair, each boot making a heavy thump as it hit the floor. “I’ll be frank with you because I know you respect that,” he said, eyes fixed on Shorner’s own as he leaned over the desk. “This isn’t the first time we’ve met. In fact, I’ve known you for close to eleven years now.”
The words shook him to his core and Shorner dropped back into his chair. “You… you’re not Harry Potter?”
The dark-clad man let out a soft huff of amusement. “Would that I could change my identity so easily. But before we go any further, I think you should know a few things.” Green eyes bore into Shorner’s own. “My name is Harry James Potter and I am twenty-seven-years-old. I was born on July thirty-first in 1980. I died on January the 9th of 2008. Not quite sure of the logistics behind it, but that doesn’t change the fact I’m almost thirty in a thirteen-year-old body. I feel like a goddamn paedophile in my own skin.”
Shorner’s mouth went dry. “You’re mad,” he breathed, eyeballing the door as if he actually had a chance of making it out of here.
Potter grinned, too many teeth in the smile to be friendly. “Feel like sticking around for a little story?”
“To make a long story short, Voldemort resurrected himself when I was fourteen using a bastardized version of a necromantic restoration ritual. A year after that when the Ministry finally acknowledged his existence, he went on a rampage that made life very difficult for the wizarding world here in the U.K. Needless to say, a lot of people were killed, both wizard and Muggle. By the time I was sixteen, I had already started to off any Death Eater I encountered. I knew then, that was the only way to deal with them. Hell, they were like fucking roaches. Squish one and four more pop up in its place. Oh, and remember the one that was dead? Yeah, well, it turns out Voldemort had La Muerte bring their dead back as simple cannon fodder zombies. They also resurrected our dead to make up the difference when they didn’t have enough of their own Inferi. Which was a pretty effective move on their part – it’s hard to face a loved one and have to kill them again, to have to look at the soulless meat puppet they’ve become – it’s a real psychological fuck-over. But that’s a little later in the story.”
The man paused to sip at the coffee Shorner had placed before him, figuring the he had better appease the crazy.
“We first met when I was seventeen and I was going into the Special Forces program. You were the newly inducted head of Mission Operatives – a big change from Experimental Magics, I know, but with Blackwood drooling into a bedpan at St. Mungo’s and Crevan’s defection, you were the only one expendable enough for the position. Lucky you. It was a good thing too; most everyone who survived the Collapse owed their lives to you.
“A lot of shitty politics and fighting later, Scrimgeour, the douche that got elected after Fudge’s resignation in ’96, made the stupidest move of his admittedly short political career. In fearing an uprising from the Muggleborn population, he decided to segregate them. Now, the chances of the Muggleborns revolting for whatever reasons dwelt inside his head were slim to none. Any intelligent person could see that then wasn’t the time for a revolution – especially one like what Scrimgeour feared.
“Dumbledore fought against the measure with every bit of his political and magical clout. But when Scrimgeour got paranoid, he got stupid. He declared a state of emergency and under some bullshit laws he had pushed through the Wizengamot, his word became absolute. And so, at nineteen-years-old I lost my best friend to the Muggleborn concentration camps. I never found out what happened to her. My last memory of her is of Ron and I fighting through the Auror blockades to try and reach her hands as the trains pull out.
“A couple weeks after that incident, Scrimgeour died. Official cause of death was drowning. Nobody was too interested in investigating any further and Amelia Bones took over as acting Minister.”
Shorner didn’t bother to hide his scepticism. “And unofficially?”
Harry bared his teeth. “He drowned sitting upright in his office chair. I watched as he choked on his last few minutes of life.”
Shorner blanched.
“Not even four months later, the Muggle and Magical Ministries fall to total pieces. We never could figure out just who was responsible for that. It could have been the Japs, it could have been the French; things at that time were so fucked up I was surprised we could find our own asshole with both hands and a goddamned Lite-Bright. Azkaban fell into enemy hands, not that it really mattered by then, everybody who was a danger had broken out when I was fifteen.
“And then some crazy Death Eater yahoo snuck into Hogwarts and blew a fist-sized hole through Dumbledore’s chest in the middle of the Great Hall during lunchtime before blowing his own head off. It wasn’t the first time we’d encountered a kamikaze Death Eater, it just so happened that this one was more effective than the others. Didn’t help matters that Voldemort was standing outside with a literal army of Death Eaters, dark creatures, dead creatures – you name it – it was there. The size of it, I can’t even begin to describe. I got as many people out of there as I could, but I was the only one on location. Of the seven hundred plus people in there, only thirty got out alive. I was twenty years old at the time.”
Shorner’s expression was one of slack-jawed horror. “Dear God!”
“Oh He definitely wasn’t listening by then. He’d already packed His Holy bags and left,” Harry said, draining the last of his coffee. “When we finish this conversation, I am going to find the nearest pub and drink until I can’t remember my own name.
“To make matters worse, Voldemort and La Croix – a man you may know of as Nicodemus Malfey, the head honcho of the French Malfeys – decided that most of North-western Europe was up for grabs. The Netherlands, France and Belgium all became Death Eater stomping ground. In a move wildly doomed to failure, my other best friend led most of the Aurors into a battle he would not survive with the intention of liberating those countries from evil. He was young and stupid and heroic and I killed a lot of Riddle’s men for that.
“I wasn’t there for Ron’s fall. If I had, he would have never of done something that monumentally stupid. I was in Japan, completing my last assignment from you, which was finishing off the last of the wizarding version of the Yakuza – I never did bother to learn their name. Fun stuff. I left under the mistaken impression that we had it in hand. Apparently that didn’t include keeping Ron from running off and leading a bunch of people to their death.
“After that fiasco, we went underground, literally. We ended up hiding out in an old WWII bunker with the rest of the Muggle refugees and what was left of wizarding Britain. There were less than three-hundred people left. I don’t know how it happened, but Amelia, you, and I ended being the leaders of our little rag-tag group. I don’t know what happened to the rest of the world after that; the ICW put up a blockade around the country – nothing went in and nothing went out. Supposedly it was to contain the problem, but Voldemort managed to escape anyway.
“Britain was one big fucking ghost town. You have no idea what its like. To stand in downtown London and be the only one around, its…” Harry trailed off with a cheerless smile and the beginnings of wildness in his eyes. “The wind, because there’s no traffic, no cars, no people to fill the spaces in between, the wind, it howls. It wails your ears, screaming that the world is empty and soon you’ll be gone as well. Go, go, go, back to the dust of the earth,” Harry sing-songed, laughing long and loud.
It was a dry sound, harsh in Shorner's ears and harsh in his mind as well.
“You're surrounded by the leftovers of humanity and you’re the only one around for as far as the eye can see,” Harry muttered. “It’s the most alone anyone could be and I hope you never experience it.”
He realized then, that that the isolation of a post-apocalyptic city was but the other side of the same coin of Azkaban’s grey monotony.
The whiskey-laced cup of coffee had long gone cold under Shorner’s hands. Silence stretched across Shorner’s office; the sheer amount of tension in the room made his skin itch and caused his stomach to roll about uncomfortably. He contemplated how long it would take him to reach the rubbish bin before he revisited his breakfast. Shorner clenched his jaw against the sensation.
Harry’s eyes were dark and unfocused, lost in whatever horrific memory that was replaying itself in his mind. There was a list of names tattooed onto the skin of his forearm where it was bared by the rolled up sleeves of his shirt. Shorner’s own was on there, just above two he didn’t recognize.
This, more than anything else, struck a blow against his disbelief. There were too many things that didn’t add up – Harry’s skills and knowledge of the DoM being chief among them. No thirteen-year-old he knew of could do these things. And Shorner would bet serious money that if the man across from him cast a spell, it would ping the trace alarms for Harry Potter.
Not a boy, not an impostor – time-travel was sounding less and less like craziness and more like a possibility. He himself was the Head of Experimental Magic and the things they could do right now seemed fantastical. Ten years from now and in dire conditions? Shorner doubted that they would stop with small jumps in time-travel. They’d give anything, anything to reverse the Hell that Harry spoke of.
Shorner shifted in his chair and watched as Harry’s posture changed abruptly from relaxed introspection to ready-to-kill in less time than it took to blink.
Dear God.
In front of him sat a ticking time bomb ready to unleash violence upon the world at the slightest provocation. This person was teetering on the knife-edge of sanity with a kill record probably numbering in the thousands and did Shorner want to give free rein to this bloke?
Not. Bloody. Likely.
He laced his hands together and rested his mouth against them. Harry steadily met his gaze, all traces of potential violence tucked away. “I’m worried about you.”
He raised a hand in answer to Harry’s confused look. “I’m not ignoring what you’ve told me. And I know there are things you haven’t told me for reasons that are too personal to share. I’m just concerned for you. How are you dealing with this? Actually dealing with what you’ve been through.”
Harry turned away from Shorner, black hair gleaming blue under the office light, face wiped completely clean of any expression. Shorner watched the man study the wall for several long moments.
“Archie, I’ve been back for less than a week,” he said, voice turned sharp and gravelled with bitterness. “I wake up and I think I’m still lying in my cell, the generators throbbing in my ears and the only thing I know is pain and hatred and darkness. I thought of death as a mercy.” His voice slipped down an octave as it descended into a savage rasp. Harry glanced over at him, green eyes glittering like pale absinthe in Shorner’s crappy office lighting. “Spare me the therapy routine. I haven’t even been back long enough to know if I will go off the deep end or not.”
Shorner shuddered at the level of viciousness his voice carried. Dark veela, Morrigans, were noted to have exceptionally exquisite voices, capable of enticing the listener with everything from lust and insidious beauty to the raw, poisonous hatred Harry expressed. It was as awesome as it was terrifying to hear. Harry had obviously inherited his grandmother’s talents in spades.
“I’m sorry,” Harry mumbled, hunched over with his face hidden in his hands. “I didn’t mean to snap. I haven’t slept for couple days and my temper is short.”
“I hate to dissapoint you, but I’m not going to start crying just because you got a little snippy,” Shorner replied bluntly, beginning to like the bloke much against his own will. “What do you plan on doing next?” As if it was possible to make some sense out this.
“Honestly? I don’t know. I really don’t know.” Harry straightened in his chair, pushing a stray lock of dark hair out of his face. “I have all these vague plans and ideas floating around in my head and the only thing I know for certain is I’m headed back to Hogwarts on the first.”
Shorner frowned. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“What, Hogwarts? Why not?”
“Because you’re twenty-eight years old and Hogwarts is moot point. Quite frankly, you are probably suffering post-traumatic stress disorder and I don’t want to put you around people you could hurt.” And I know hurting them would hurt you, possibly even drive you over the edge.
“I’m not going to hurt them!” Harry snarled indignantly.
“How do you know that? You’ve been conditioned to violently respond to outside stimuli, which is not a good combination with children who are prone to doing strange and stupid things. You are a highly skilled, highly stressed special op who could probably use a vacation more than anything else.”
Green eyes narrowed, anger beginning to spark across Harry’s face. “Did you listen to nothing I said? I can’t afford to take a vacation.”
“You can’t afford to hurt somebody else’s child either,” Shorner growled back, aggravated that Harry was so wilfully blind to the obvious problems of his situation.
Harry stood and paced around Shorner’s too small office. He finally stopped, head bowed, knuckles white on the back of the chair. “I just don’t want to tip my hand too soon. And if you think for a second that I’ll be able to slip away without notice, I’ll bet you diamonds to Galleons that Albus Dumbledore and Cornelius Fudge will be knocking down doors the moment Harry Potter doesn’t show up at King’s Cross on September the first.”
Shorner uncrossed his arms and leant forward, bracing his elbows on the desk. “Look, why don’t you compose a report of all the Death Eaters you know of and bring it to me in a week. By then, I’ll have sorted through all you’ve told me and you’ll have had a week off to regain a little sanity. Sometimes, you need to step back from a situation in order to properly deal with it. Go have a drink or climb a mountain or whatever has your interest. Just, relax and get some rest. Because right now, I’m leery of being in this office with you and I’m fairly certain you’re not going to attack me.”
A wry grin worked its way onto Harry’s face. “Point taken. You aren’t going to tell anyone about this?”
“Hah! Who would believe me? Especially after the amount of damage control I have to do in order to cover your arse not to mention my own. Did you really have to kill Crevan’s entire team?”
“You know what kind of men Mission Operatives likes to employ – especially for the Special Forces Unit. Kill a few and the rest think it’s a free for all.”
Shorner’s intercom system crackled to life, causing both of them to jump, a wand appearing in Harry’s hand where there had been nothing before. “Shorner! Crevan’s in the infirmary babbling about flying cars – his left arm is half-way ripped off! Get your arse down here, now!” Connor’s dulcet tones rang out from the aging Muggle speaker system.
Shorner looked at Harry in disbelief. “You left one alive!?”
“Yes, I dropped him off in your medical facilities,” Harry replied with a half-smile that didn’t quite thaw out the chill menace lingering in his expression. “He’ll be fine. Or at least he should be, once Blackwood’s done with him.”
“Just,” Shorner waved a hand in Harry’s direction; certain that he was an instance away from flailing about like a loon. “Get out of here. Go. I’ve got to clean up the mess you’ve made and I don’t want to see you for a week.”
Harry finally let loose a real smile and ambled out of Shorner’s office. “Good to have you back, Archie,” he said as the door closed behind him.
Shorner waited for the door to snick shut before giving into the rising panic within him.