Muggle Summer
A/N: Sorry for the break. With summer over and my post-DH depression at least partially overcome, I am happy to announce that I'm writing again.
Disclaimer: Not my characters, no money being made, etc., etc.
Chapter 50: The Basilisk Harvest
Saturday , July 7, 10:00am
Three Broomsticks, Hogsmeade
Ron's anchor point caught Harry and Hermione by surprise. Hermione badge-called Remus to inform him that they had arrived safely while Harry caught Ron's attention.
"Ron?"
"Yes Harry."
"Any particular reason why you picked this spot for our jump?"
"Oh, well…it was empty, and I, erm… I wanted to prank Hermione for anchoring that jump into the women's lav at that muggle restaurant a few weeks back."
"Erm…okay," Harry replied tentatively.
"Ron?"
"Yes Hermione."
"Wouldn't the prank have been more effective if this were the Wizard's lav, rather than the Witch's?"
"Well…sure," Ron replied. "It's just that the men's loo was a little smelly, and so…"
"Ron?"
"Yes Harry."
"When have you ever worried about smells in a loo?"
A toilet flushed before Ron could reply. A stall door opened and Luna walked out with a smile on her face.
"Good morning, Harry, Hermione," she said brightly. She then leaned over and gave Ron a peck on the cheek as she made her way to the wash basin.
"Thanks for waiting, Ronnikins," she chirped. "Anyone else need to go?"
"Erm, I'm good," Harry said with a smirk and a sidelong glance towards Ron.
"Me too," added Hermione, with a shake of her head.
"Right, then…we're off?" Ron asked, hoping to get out of this embarrassing situation as quickly as possible.
"Sure," Harry said. "Oh…wait." He reached into his knapsack and retrieved two packages. Handing one to both Ron and Luna he explained that they were the latest style of Clan Potter robes.
Luna smiled as she opened the package and held the dark maroon robe out in front of her. "They're lovely," she said, as she unfastened her old robes and let them drop to the ground. This left Luna clad in nothing more than sandals and a pair of bright red knickers, emblazoned in front with a gold crown, below which in big gold letters and all-caps was "WEASLEY."
"Bloody hell!" Ron exclaimed, as he stepped forward to cover his girlfriend in an embrace.
Harry dropped his eyes and began to inspect the lavatory floor. "Hey Ron, looks like you picked the right place to anchor our jump after all," he snarked.
"Erm, Luna…you do know that you can apply cooling charms to your robes, right?" Hermione asked.
Luna shrugged her shoulders as she pushed Ron away and casually pulled the new robes over her head. "Of course," she replied, as she ran her hands down the front of her new outfit. When her fingers got caught within a hidden seam Luna squealed in delight.
"You remembered!" she exclaimed. Luna ripped open the Velcro fastenings of a horizontal flap, exposing both her belly button and a fair bit of surrounding skin.
Harry looked up at the blonde-haired witch and smiled. "Well, we can't allow for any nargle nesting within Clan Potter, can we?"
Luna shook her head and turned to her boyfriend, who had just pulled his new robe over his muggle t-shirt and jeans.
"Oh, good, you did the same bit of tailoring for Ronald," she observed. Luna then reached out and ripped open his robe's stomach flap. Without warning she pulled out her wand and exposed his belly with a bit of magical cropping.
"What'cha do that for, Luna?" Ron asked.
Luna paid no mind as she bent down and stuck her tongue into Ron's navel. She twirled it around for a few seconds (causing Ron to flinch and complain about being ticklish), then announced that she had completed her nargle inspection.
"Are we good to go, then?" Hermione asked.
Luna nodded. "Unless we have time for me to manually check for ants in Ronny's pants."
"Erm, how about later, luv?" Ron asked meekly.
His girlfriend looked up at him and smiled. "Okay, but only if you promise to inspect me as well."
Ron's face grew even redder as Harry declared, "To much information!" He then showed Ron and Luna how to activate the mild notice-me-not charms that had been applied to the new robes. This allowed Ron to exit the woman's lavatory without becoming any more embarrassed than he already was.
+++
Luna had expressed an interest in the basilisk harvest, so they had met at the Three Broomsticks so that she (and Ron) could use the floo connection. Harry and Hermione could have just jumped directly into Hogwarts using Remus as an anchor, but there was safety in numbers, and the fifteen minute walk gave the two couples time to catch up. Luna spent most of that time talking about her Ministry internship. Her reward for being Harry's friend (and Slug Club party date) had been a menial posting within the centralized mailroom.
For ten hours a day, five days a week, Luna's job was to date spell incoming mail and route it to the correct Ministry department. The only spell she was permitted to use was the flying memo incantation. Over the past few days, she had been successfully exploring just how much intent could influence this charm. As a result, rather than sending out simple airplanes, Luna was now creating flying origami swans, owls, and hippogriffs. Harry suggested that she turn the messages into paper thestrals, which would only be visible if the recipient had seen someone using common sense.
They found Horace Slughorn waiting for them at the gates of Hogwarts, intent on maximizing opportunities for fawning and face time with the Queen's Wizard and Potter Clan Chief. While Harry really wanted to turn the "notice-me-not" charm on high, he followed Hermione's lead and deactivated his robe warding. The Potions professor greeted everyone warmly, then proceeded to virtually ignore the others as he bent Harry's ear on the way to the second floor lavatory.
Remus was waiting for them with a small wooden cage in his hand and a large snake coiled at his feet.
"Good morning, Remus," Harry said cheerfully as he shook the werewolf's hand. "How are you feeling?"
"A bit wolfish around the edges," Remus admitted.
"I take it that the potion will be ready by tonight?" Harry asked, as he turned an eye towards Slughorn.
"Oh, of course, Clan Chief Potter," the potions master replied quickly. "I've got the cauldron on its final simmer."
"Good," Harry replied. He then squatted down and hissed a Parseltongue greeting towards the snake.
While the two were conversing, Ron asked Hermione why there was a large snake in the lavatory.
"Harry got tired of jumping back and forth just to open the Chamber for them," Hermione explained. "So he summoned the snake and struck a deal for its services."
"What kind of services?"
Harry looked back over his shoulders towards Ron. "Horace and his buddy on the other side of the entrance can use snake speak to open and close the Chamber when I'm not here."
"How does the snake know when to open the door?"
Remus held up the small cage, displaying a unusually large rat inside the bars.
"The toll is one rodent per entrance."
Ron frowned. "Isn't that a bit too easy for just anyone who wants to go in?"
Harry chuckled. "It's only easy if the bad guys know Horace's unusual tastes." He nodded towards the cage that Remus was holding and explained, "We imported prairie dogs from Latin America…turns out Horace and his mate have a thing for Mexican food."
The snake bobbed its head up and down, flicked his forked tongue towards the cage and announced, "I'ssss likesss itsss sss-spicy."
Harry laughed as he translated the snake's comments to the others. He then politely asked Horace to open the Chamber entrance. The snake complied, then coiled under one of the adjacent wash basins with his early lunch.
The goblins had modified the sloped pipe that connected the lavatory to the Chamber with an eye towards comfort. The pipe interior was charmed to glow luminescent green, and alcoves had been dug into either side of the pipehead. Small carpets were piled on one side of the pipe, facing an ersatz toll booth from which a now sleeping snake could be enticed to open the entrance from the inside.
Remus showed the others how to lie down on one of the carpets and gave them the code phrase to start the ride. He said that the carpets were linked somehow, so as to avoid head-on collisions. Hermione smiled, and commented just how much it resembled a muggle water park's tube slide. Remus then excused himself, citing the need to rest before nightfall.
The trip down the pipe was uneventful, save for Luna's impromptu decision to jump on top of her boyfriend and demonstrate that two could ride at the same time. The carpets took them well beyond the base of the pipe and ferried them laterally through the tunnels. They cruised past the cleared rock slide and stopped directly in front of the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets. The head of the goblin engineering team was there waiting to give them a tour.
"Irongrip," Harry said, as he reached for the goblin's hand. "Thank you for agreeing to meet with us this morning."
"No thanks are necessary, Clan Chief Potter," the goblin replied, "as we have business to complete now that our exploration efforts are complete."
Harry shook his head. "You know that I trust you to equitably divide the findings, Irongrip."
The goblin smiled. "Yes, Clan Chief, yet we must still pay respect to certain protocols, true?"
Harry nodded. "If you say so."
The goblin engineer smiled, and then led the small group into the Chamber proper. The cavernous area looked the same to Harry as it had during his first trip, save for a ladder propped up against the statue's opened mouth and the wire fencing that surrounded the basilisk carcass. Slughorn's eyes fell immediately upon the dead basilisk, while the others took just a few moments to admire the architecture.
"Blimey, Harry," Ron exclaimed, as he walked up towards the fence. "This is what I missed tangling with Second Year?"
Harry snorted. "Doesn't look as big now that I've grown a bit myself."
The others chided Harry for his modesty as they marveled at the size of the giant serpent. Hermione buried her face into Harry's chest, expressing words of wonder and regret that she hadn't been by his side during that fight. Harry reassured Hermione that he wouldn't have had any idea what he was up against had it not been for the parchment message in her petrified hand.
When Ron commented that the basilisk didn't smell, and was amazingly well-preserved given the amount of time since its death, Slughorn informed them that basilisk flesh was so poisonous that maggots and other microscopic carrion wouldn't go near it. Hermione then noted that the basilisk flesh should have dried out even if nothing chose to eat it. When Slughorn nodded in agreement, the goblin jumped in and told Hermione that they had found some magic that might explain the preservation. Hermione and Slughorn acknowledged Irongrip somewhat absently, their minds distracted by the potential price and horcrux-killing potency of fresh basilisk venom.
Harry suggested that they continue the tour and begin the harvest after lunch. The goblin engineer then led the group to one side of the statue, where a secret door had been discovered and unsealed. This doorway led into a small apartment that housed a small library filled with ancient works on Dark Magic. Hermione let out a predictable squee as she ran to the bookshelves and began reading the titles. When Harry warned her to be careful, Irongrip reassured them that each book had been checked for wards and curses. The only charm that they had found on the books was one that prevented them from being taken from the room. The goblin told Harry that there a chance that this charm could be removed, but at serious risk to destroying the books in the process. Hermione's head jerked back towards Harry when she heard this, and gave him a look that reinforced his opinion that the books could be left well enough alone until Hermione had taken a closer look.
Once the living area was fully explored the goblin took them up the ladder, through the statue's mouth, and into the basilisk's lair. The rough-hewn area was surprisingly clean and sparsely appointed. As the witches and wizards lit their wand tips they spied two large bowls…one filled with water, the other filled with bleached animal skeletons.
Hermione smiled. "I wondered how a sixty-foot basilisk could survive for a thousand years with only a few mice to eat." Irongrip nodded, not surprised that the Clan Chief's Consort had identified the bowls' purposes.
"These bowls have strong ever-full charms applied to them so that Slytherin's pet would always have something to eat and drink.
Ron furrowed his eyebrows as he looked more closely at the skeletons. "What are those, dogs?"
"We believe that they are non-magical deer," the goblin replied.
"So whenever the basilisk pulled some dinner out of this bowl another deer was magically summoned?"
"Correct, Clan Champion."
"Would love to have a smaller one of these filled with mum's cooking," he replied with awe.
Slughorn asked about the ever-full bowl of water, speculating that it could have provided enough water in the Chamber's air to keep the basilisk carcass fresh. The goblin agreed with that idea.
At that point Ron took another look around the lair and asked, "So if the basilisk ate deer for dinner, where are all of the table scraps?"
The goblin gestured towards a small pit in a corner of the room. "That hole in the floor has a banishing charm applied to its base."
"Really?" Ron asked. "I suppose that the basilisk was potty-trained as well, and used that pit as a loo?"
The goblin showed his teeth in a broad smile when Hermione snarked, "Ronald, not all sentients are slobs."
Taking a glance down at his watch, Harry politely asked Irongrip if this was the extent of the tour. The goblin nodded, reached into his pocket, and pulled out the two large gemstones that they had pried from the Chamber's door.
"The two bowls and these two stones are all of the treasure that we found, Clan Chief, unless you care to argue that the bowls are Slytherin relics."
Harry snorted in response. "Unless they're autographed by the wizard himself, their yours for the taking, Irongrip, and I'm sorry that your efforts failed to yield more than this."
It was the goblin's turn to snort. "Do not worry, Clan Chief…these bowls are rare, and more valuable than you might think."
"What, somebody has another basilisk that they need to feed?" Ron asked.
The goblin shook his head. "No, but Gringott's does employ protective devices with rather large appetites."
"The dragons down in the caverns," Harry concluded.
Irongrip nodded. "Right now they dine from ever-full bowls of beef and mutton…they will be very happy to have an expanded menu."
After agreeing to a fair-market value to the gemstones and bowls for the purposes of Harry's finder's fee, the goblin led them back down to the hidden quarters where they ate a picnic lunch prepared by the Palace. Irongrip then gathered the bowls and left for Gringott's while the others headed back towards the basilisk. After donning protective clothing from head to toe and getting a stern safety lecture from Slughorn, the five witches and wizards got on with the messy task at hand.
1:30pm, The Rookery, London
Augustus Rookwood turned onto Shaftesbury Avenue and smiled. He could finally give a different answer to the one of the two questions that had been asked a dozen different times from the back seat.
"Are we there, yet?"
The former Unspeakable sighed. "Yes, Amycus, we are here."
"Can we eat, now?"
"No, business first," the Death Eater said firmly.
"But there's a pub right over there…take but a minute to pop in for a pint and some pie…"
"He said shut it!" his sister screeched from the front passenger seat.
"Fine," the younger Carrow sibling mumbled.
Rookwood slowed down just a bit as they passed the front entrance to The Rookery. There wasn't anyone in front of the building. The blare of a car horn from behind encouraged the Death Eater to move on. It then took him close to thirty minutes to find a parking space within a mile of their target.
Rookwood sported a near-continuous scowl as they made their way back towards The Rookery by foot. The younger Carrow's hunger complaints were building on what had already been a horrid day. It had taken all morning to shuttle the safe house's other occupants to their assigned starting points for the night's attack, followed by a long drive into London with the Carrows. The only stop they had made was at a discount clothing store to replace Amycus and Alecto's muggle clothing. Their mismatched outfits had reeked to the point of gagging (which was saying something given the noisome tortures that Rookwood had participated in over the years). Without sufficient time or funds to dress them properly, Rookwood had been forced to purchase brightly colored casual wear for the two. They were quite a contrast to Rookwood's smartly tailored three-piece suit, but at least they were clean and internally consistent.
The former Unspeakable finally gave in to his companion's badgering and found a place to eat lunch. He wasn't surprised when the Carrows confidently stepped up to the counter and rattled off their orders; given the amount of fast-food wrappings that had littered the Bristol safe house it was clearly one part of the muggle world that the two had embraced. The only hurdle to overcome was Amycus's outrage at finding the same toy in his Happy Meal that he'd collected the week before.
The restaurant was only a few minutes walk from the Rookery. As soon as they were within sight of the building, Rookwood pulled the other two to the side of the walkway, surreptitiously removed a rune stone from his pocket, and traced the runic character with his wand tip. He gripped the stone tightly and whispered an incantation. A sharp pain erupted inside Rookwood's head that spread out like twin daggers cutting out towards his eyes. He silently endured a few moments of excruciating torture before the pain subsided and he reopened his eyes.
The vision stone was one of the artifacts that Rookwood had managed to liberate from the Department of Mysteries before being outed as a Death Eater. It provided a limited form of mage sight that revealed and identified the more common types of protective wards. While Rookwood knew several diagnostic spells that could provide the same kind of information far less painfully, the stone's magic didn't trip the Ministry's magical sensors, and was therefore much more useful when one wanted to do a bit of quiet surveillance.
With this rune sight active the former Unspeakable paid close notice as they walked towards the Rookery. The anti-apparition charm was slightly off color, indicating that it was the variant that allowed certain people keyed into the ward to bypass it. There was a portkey suppression ward in place that appeared to be similarly modified, as well as standard muggle repelling charms. Within the repelling ward, though, was something that Rookwood had never seen before.
His curiosity piqued, he stopped a half-block short of the front entrance and ordered Amycus to walk inside. It took a bit of arm-twisting from his sister, but the Death Eater finally agreed and made his way up to the front steps of the building. With Rookwood's rune sight active he watched as a separate repelling ward that he had earlier missed enveloped Amycus, only to magically push him away from the entranceway. The Death Eater spun on his heals, and with a look of confusion on his face started to walk down the street away from the other two.
Rookwood swore quietly, then sent Carrow's sister off to retrieve him. He followed behind at a slower pace. As he passed by a building that was under reconstruction Rookwood stopped by a bin of construction debris and picked up a hand-sized fragment of brick. He held the stone close to his side, trying to draw as little attention as possible as he tossed it up the stairs and into Rookery's front entrance.
The wards didn't bother to spit the brick fragment back out.
With a nod of recognition and an idea formed in his head, the former Unspeakable continued his stroll down the street. While it wouldn't have taken much effort to catch the Carrows, Rookwood maintained his rather sedate pace. So long as he could keep the other two Death Eaters within his sight, he was going to enjoy this bit of idiot-free solitude.
+++
Harry Potter was busy magically scraping off bits of flesh from the underside of the basilisk hide when he felt his Art Club badge vibrate. Not wanting to say too much in front of Slughorn, he turned towards Hermione, who was elbow deep in basilisk gizzard, and gave her a questioning look with a finger pointed towards his chest. She shook her head, indicating that her badge hadn't been activated. Harry nodded, and announced that he needed to take a break. It took a good five minutes for his protective clothing to be scourgified and decontaminated to the point where he could strip down and gain access to his badge. Making his way to the hidden living area, Harry took note that it was Mrs. Granger calling him.
"Harry," she said after their greetings, "we've got something you should take a look at down here at the Rookery."
"Lucius decide to go on a walk-about?" Harry asked.
"No, we had somebody trying to make an unauthorized entrance into the building, and then a minute later somebody decided to throw a brick up the stairs as they walked by."
"Really?" Harry asked. "Were they glamoured?"
"No, but the first bloke was wearing a cap low on his face, and the second one was sporting a rather nasty hairpiece."
"So maybe muggle disguises…anything else you notice about them?"
"Just that a woman went chasing after the first guy once he left the front entrance, yelling out the name Amycus."
Harry covered his badge so that his swearing wouldn't reach Mrs. Granger's ears. He then told Emily that he'd join her in a few minutes, and made his way back into the Chamber.
"Got some Queen's Wizardry to attend to, I'm afraid," he announced. Ron and Hermione looked up with alarm. "Nothing immediate…just checking up on a few new visitors on Shaftesbury."
"Sure you don't need our help?" Hermione asked.
Harry shook his head. "Not right now…how much longer before we're done here?"
Slughorn looked up from his work and said that it would only be a few more hours. Harry nodded, and asked Hermione to ring him up once they were finished. Giving wide berth to the basilisk body hot zone, Harry made his way out of the Chamber and badge-jumped to London.
3:30pm, Smithfield Market, Central London
Severus Snape stepped onto the curb with a thin wallet and thick scowl. Hiring the taxi had been an expensive but necessary luxury, given the lack of meeting place directions and his unfamiliarity with the area. His Death Eater comrades hadn't been any help, not that he was surprised…whether Light or Dark, wizards and witches had avoided this part of Central London for centuries. This was perhaps due to the fact that Smithfield had been, over the years, a favorite spot for muggles to burn witches, behead heretics, and boil counterfeiters in oil.
The Potions Master looked up and down the street for before walking into the "Stake and Ale," a working-man's pub whose signage played up its name and the local history with an image of a pointy-hat witch within flames. The strong contrast between sunny street and darkened interior forced Snape to squint. As his eyes adjusted his nose took in strong scents of tobacco, beer, and raw meat, which he soon attributed to the burly patrons…meatpackers and butchers whose clothing still bore the stains and smells that came from working just down the street within the largest wholesale meat market in the world.
Snape scanned the room, then walked up to the bar in front of a portly, ham-fisted barmaid who was filling stout into a marginally clean glass.
"Right with you, love," she said with a smile.
The barmaid dropped the full pint glass in front of a patron and deflected a ribald comment as she took a few coins from the pile in front of him. After ringing up the sale, she returned to the wizard and asked, "What can I get you, luv?"
Calling upon the self-restraint typically reserved for Dark Lords and First Years, Severus grimaced as he stated the pre-arranged recognition code.
"Do you serve warm milk?"
The request brought jeers from up and down the bar. The barmaid waited for the crowd to settle down before leaning over the bar towards Snape. Almost nose-to-nose with him she reached up and cupped her ample bosom with both hands.
"Aye, I do…will it be the left teat, or right?"
The approving roar of laughter from the other patrons drowned out Snape's response, so that only the barmaid heard his reply.
"Madame," he drawled, "won't there be more of a selection tonight?"
The cheeky reply caught the barmaid by surprise. She couldn't help but laugh as she nodded towards a small table at the back of the pub, then told her co-worker that she was going on break for a bit. There being little concern for hired help drinking on the job, the woman brought two pints of ale with her as she walked out from behind the bar and took a seat across from the Potions Master.
"Sorry for the bit of fun…this one's on the house," she said, placing the two glasses side-by-side in the center of the table. Snape looked at the glasses with suspicion, selected one, and placed his nose to the thin head.
"A bit cautious, eh wizard?" the woman asked, as she grabbed the other pint glass and brought it to her lips.
"Madame, it is the only way to live these days," Snape replied, before taking a draw from his own glass.
"The name's Maggie," the woman replied. "Though most around here call me Mother."
"I see little need for informality," the Potions Master stated. He looked back towards the bar and asked, "Are you certain this is a secure location?"
"Of course," the barmaid replied. "You're likely the only wizard within a mile of this place, and a few of those blokes at the bar are my boys."
Snape stared at the woman for a minute, before gazing back towards the bar. "Will they be in any condition to run with you tonight?"
Mother Maggie chuckled. "They'd need to be swimming in beer for them to notice once they transform. No worries, wizard…they'll follow the Pack's Alpha bitch."
Severus frowned as he pulled a stoppered vial out from an inside coat pocket. "And with this wolfsbane, there'll be no reason for you not to follow our Lord's, lead, correct?"
The barmaid snorted as she pocketed the vial. "I'd follow my Pack-leader to my death, if he asked me. So long as Fenrir follows your wizard master, you can count on me."
Snape sneered. "Were it my decision all of your Pack would be on wolfsbane and keeping their wits about them."
"What makes you think they'd be so willing to kill were that the case?" Maggie asked. "Few within the Pack are as aggressive during the rest of the month."
The Potions Master cast an appraising eye across the table. The woman before him struck him as closer in kind to Molly Weasley than Greyback. "I take it that you lack that…reticence?"
Maggie leered. "Wouldn't be Fenrir's Alpha if I didn't."
"And just how was it that Greyback chose a muggle for his Alpha?"
The barmaid laughed. "Made the choice easy for him, wizard. I either killed or covered every other witch and bitch in the Pack."
"Indeed?"
"Wasn't all that hard," Maggie said sarcastically. "Their magic's no help when the moon is full…it's the muscle that carries over into the night, and the lot of `em are weak-kneed daisies when their wolf isn't with `em."
Snape paused, then retorted, "Yes, well…just remember that others and I will be in the Alley as well...we won't hesitate to cut you down if you or yours stray from your assigned tasks."
The woman gave a Snape-worthy scowl as she rose from the table. "Don't tempt me, wizard."
Snape snarled. "You are certain of your target, then?"
Maggie snorted. "Yes, yes…look for the Diagon Alley shop with three big W's over the entrance..."
"…and focus on anyone with red hair," Snape added. "You have a secure entry point, I assume?"
Fenrir's Alpha nodded. "We'll be there," she replied. "Did you drop enough breadcrumbs to ensure you'll find the way back yourself, wizard?"
Snape nodded. Considering his mission accomplished, and the need to continue the banter diminished, he took a long sip from his glass. "The potion must be consumed no more than thirty minutes before tonight's sunset." He left before allowing the werewolf to reply.
It took a minute for his eyes to readjust to the daylight, and for him to get his bearings. Not that he really needed to…he'd be apparting into Diagon Alley that night. And if the werewolves did their jobs right, the Ministry would be too busy to care.
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