"It's not anything, John!"
Harry stopped dead just before he reached the next corner and flattened himself to the stone work. "Don't give me that, Dean." His brother's voice filtered around the corner, sounding angry. "All our friends say they've seen you talking with her, a lot. What's up?"
Dean sounded exasperated. "Nothing's up. And if anything was up it would be none of your business."
Harry snapped off another homenum revelio and revealed the presence of the headmaster behind him and the two boys, Dean and John, around the corner.
"The Slytherins are my business — and Hermione is my business even more so." The voices started to get fainter and it was clear they were moving away.
"Well, why don't you talk to her yourself then? Then you can hear it from her that there's nothing up."
The voices faded away and Harry carried on walking ahead, deciding not to follow the boys, pointedly ignoring the Headmaster behind him, and giving no hint that he cared for anything about that conversation apart from not becoming a part of it. He shrugged. Maybe he'd go to the library and finish his homework for charms. He was sure that standing still in a library watching an eleven year old write essays was exactly what Dumbledore wanted to do with his time.
Lord Chief Auror Sirius Black leaned back in his office chair and shoved another parchment into the out tray. He reached for his in tray and grabbed the next parchment from the pile. Next to it stood a wizarding photograph of himself holding a happy four-year-old Alexandra in his arms, both waving up at him. In the corner of the room, a massive magical cactus plant was starting to yellow.
The door burst open.
"Hey, Bolt." Sirius greeted his auror partner without looking up.
"Hey Sirius," Shacklebolt rumbled in his deep baritone. "Thought you should take a look at this — might become hot soon." He threw a document at him.
Sirius now looked up, caught the roll, unfurled it, and started reading. "Muggle smugglers?"
Shacklebolt nodded. "The boys down in the DoM tripped the keyword 'magic' three times in the official police interrogation transcripts. Things like 'he would appear like magic from behind trees,' and 'I don't know how he did it, it was like magic.'
Sirius frowned. "Doesn't seem like the kind of thing we would usually follow up on."
Shacklebolt grinned. "It isn't. But check who the perp fingered as his main supplier of smuggled goods."
Sirius's eyes scanned down the document. His eyes widened and he choked. "Malfoy!"
Shacklebolt laughed, a deep low rumble. "Indeed."
Sirius tapped the office desk and frowned. "As much as I wish it were true, that's just not something I see Lucius Malfoy getting involved in."
Shacklebolt continued to chuckle and shook his head. "No, I agree. But it massively raises the chance that there's a wizard at play, and that, along with the muggle authorities involvement, puts this firmly in our hands as a possible endangerment of the international statute of secrecy."
"Any leads?"
Shacklebolt shrugged. "Not at the moment — it's just a waiting game for us. Nothing might come of us it, but I thought I'd give you the up." He stepped back towards the door. "You need to get out of the office more, anyway. Take little Alex out to a quidditch match, or something."
Sirius looked around distractedly. "Ah, yeah, I should really do that, shouldn't I?" He moved a stack of parchments. "You don't know what happened to the file with the department's new shield maintenance contract do you?" Dumbledore invisibly jogged down the first floor corridor, quickly turned the next corner, and arrived in the empty castle entrance hall — the operative word being 'empty'. Damn. He'd lost the little snake… again!
The moon shone in through the shrieking shack window. Daphne Greengrass focused intensely and tried to push more magic through her inner eye than she had ever pushed before.
She raised her wand and pointed it at the floor, just a few feet in front of her. "Profero oculus Kilrogg!"
Suddenly something really weird happened to her world. She looked both up and down, and saw herself, looking at herself, and at a horribly ugly floating green eyeball the size of a bludger, all at the same time.
"Daphne! Well done!" Angelystor clapped and whooped.
Hermione let out a resigned sigh and gave her a wistful smile of congratulations. "Yes, well done. I guess we now know who the seer of the team is."
Daphne smiled back at her. "I promise to lend you my new super powers if you ever need them."
Hermione's wistful smile widened a bit.
Harry was hungrily circling the Eye of Kilrogg and Daphne couldn't help feel a little dizzy from following him in two places at once. "Yes," he muttered, "this is going to be just what we need. The range is extremely limited, but that's not a problem. We can work from the pipe network right next to the third floor. It can already pass through most wards…. Can you move it?"
Daphne looked towards Angelystor.
Angelystor coughed. "It's all will and intent. No fancy wand movements or incantations."
Daphne nodded, sat down in her chair and started learning to direct and control her new floating eyeball.
While Daphne was settling down to practise with the floating eyeball, Harry stepped outside for a breath of fresh air and to get some business sorted. The winter festival had been productive in many ways, and one of those, was getting some fresh goods from Afghanistan. After all, mansions didn't pay for themselves. Safe in the knowledge that the girls were protected by the fidelius, he wrapped himself in the invisibility cloak, and soared out across the Hogwarts grounds, all the way to his other fidelius property in Hogsmeade.
As he landed, he couldn't help but chuckle. He now had four fidelius charmed locations and he was already planning a fifth — the Black Library. The sheer overpowered nature of that spell boggled his mind. Luckily there were only three people in Magical Britain who could cast it, him being one of them.
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