Disclaimer: Harry Potter and most everything in the world of this story do not belong to me as they were not thought up by my feeble brain, but by JK Rowling, who has more imagination in her thumb than most of us possess in our entire bodies.
Author's Notes: An inexcusable amount of time has passed since I last updated this story; I apologize. I got busy with school and other stories and it wasn't until I saw "HP and the Chamber of Secrets" on Friday that I got really inspired again. Thanks for your patience, and I hope you enjoy!
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An Organ of Fire
by Kristen Elizabeth
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After a quick breakfast of tea and toast, Harry and Hermione apparated out of Diagon Alley and onto the front steps of a two-story, impressively boring building, obviously designed to draw as little attention as possible.
"The Ministry of Magic," Hermione said as soon as Harry appeared next to her. She shivered involuntarily despite her warm navy blue and cream-colored robes. "I haven't been here in a...in awhile."
Harry was quick to take her mittened hand. "I promise we won't be here for long."
"Remind me again why we're here at all? Do you think someone might know what's happened to Sirius?"
He expelled a deep breath. "I don't know. Maybe." There was a pause. "Ron found something out...something that had the power to bring down Malfoy. And it cost him his life. Now Sirius has disappeared, right after he discovered the same thing, but before I could get here and learn about it."
"Given that pattern, I can't say I'm all that sorry that you're in the dark, Harry," Hermione's tone was quiet, but dry.
Blinking away the powdery snow that had sprung up during their conversation, Harry looked up at the mottled grey sky. His eyes dropped back down; beside the building's door was a plaque that read "Paddington and Associates," another obvious attempt at disguise. Few Muggles would wander into such a dour place with no real idea what was inside.
"I think I have to find out, 'Mione." He gently tugged on her hand, pulling her towards the entrance. "There must be something of Ron's old work left, in the records section, if nowhere else. Sirius discovered it, after all."
"Actually Ron's office..." Hermione bit her lip.
Harry stopped with his hand on the door and looked back at her. "Ron's office? What about it?"
"They asked me to come in...and clean it out. After his funeral." She hesitated. "I never did."
"So...all of Ron's reports and papers are still just...lying about?" Harry asked, frowning. "Then there's probably nothing left at all!! Malfoy would have gotten rid of it, either a long time ago, or right after he did...whatever he's done to my godfather."
Hermione shook her head. "No. That's just the thing. The reason I was supposed to do it and not, say, Percy who works here, too, if you remember, is that Ron had a complex network of spells set up to protect his files and workspace. I helped him cast the spells."
Realization settled onto Harry. "Ron didn't trust the Aurors at all, did he? He was one of them, but...."
"He didn't trust them as far as he could throw a dragon."
"I'd imagine all this information would have been useful awhile back, Hermione."
Meeting his exasperated gaze with a cool look of her own, she simply replied, "I'm sorry."
"I understand you don't want me getting involved in..." Harry stopped. "Wait. If Sirius can't get in Ron's office, where did he get this information about Malfoy? And how did he think we were going to get more?"
Hermione pulled her hand out of his, rather sheepishly. "I have to confess. I told Sirius about the spells...and how to get around them." At Harry's shocked and hurt expression, she continued. "I wanted him to solve everything, Harry! Again, I'm sorry!" Twin tears appeared in the corners of her eyes. "Ron's quest to bring down Malfoy got him killed and I had to watch it. Do you honestly think I was going to sit by and let you be next on his victim's list?"
"You know....we're never going to get anywhere if we keep trying to over-protect each other."
Because he said it with a smile, Hermione had to return the gesture. "You're right. We're losing sight of the true problem in all the secrets and miscommunications." She gestured to the door. "Why don't we just go inside? I can get us into Ron's office, and perhaps we can find out just what it was in Ron's files that Sirius found."
"We can't take too long," Harry said, guiding her through the plain, wood door and into a drably furnished waiting area which was completely empty. "Every minute that goes by is another in which Malfoy could be torturing him. Or worse."
Hermione slipped one hand out of her mitten and touched Harry's jaw; it was tightly clenched and cold to the touch. "Hey," she soothed, pressing her warm palm against the length of it. "Do you feel in your heart that he's alive?" After a moment, Harry nodded. "Then you have to hold onto that. All right?"
Harry covered her fingers with his and drew them away from his face in order to plant a soft kiss on her lips. "I'll try." Breaking the delicious contact, he glanced around at their new surroundings. His forehead crinkled. The room was no more than fifteen feet by fifteen feet, much smaller than it had seemed from outside. Stranger than that, there were absolutely no windows and no doors, save for the entrance and an aged metal elevator to their right.
"Um..." Harry turned around. "This is the entire Ministry of Magic?"
"Quit thinking like a Muggle, Harry." Hermione started towards the elevator. "Let's just hope they haven't changed the password for some reason." Looking straight at the metal doors, she spoke in a clear, precise voice. "Where, oh where has my little dog gone?" A moment later, the shaft opened to reveal a rather plush elevator cab. "Come on...it won't stay open forever."
Harry stepped inside with just a bit of hesitation. Just when he thought he had finally learned everything there was to know about the Magical world, he always found himself confronted with a new and unexpected experience. Fortunately, Hermione was there to guide him, or else he might still have been in the lobby, scratching his head.
A panel to the right side of the door on the inside was just like a normal Muggle elevator, except that each button for each floor had a different, moving picture for whichever department was located on it. To Harry's surprise, there were approximately fifty floors in what had looked from the outside to be a two-story structure.
He examined the buttons for a moment after the doors had shut behind them. "Which one..."
Hermione smiled and reached for the button with a picture of Azkaban. Like the other pictures Harry had seen of the place, a storm raged, sending crashing waves up onto the rocky shores of the island on which the Wizard prison was located. Lightning crashed, but Hermione ignored it as she pressed the button. The elevator lurched not straight up or down, but to a sharp right angle.
"Fifteenth floor, East Wing," she explained to Harry. "Auror's Headquarters."
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The Department of Magical Law Enforcement was nothing like Harry had imagined on the few occasions when he had thought anything about it. Although he knew that it existed and knew what purpose it served, he had always envisioned it as a rather neat and orderly sort of place, rather like a Muggle police station such as the ones he had toured with his primary school class back when he lived with the Dursley's.
He had not been prepared for the shadowed, cluttered and cramped office that he and Hermione stepped into from the safe confines of the elevator cab. There was no receptionist; in fact, there was no one in sight.
No one human, that was. On the floor next to an empty receptionist's desk, a three-headed dog, much like Hagrid's old pet, Fluffy, but the size of a regular animal, sat, watching the elevator doors. He snarled, baring crooked, but sharp teeth.
"Take it easy, Sideon," Hermione said, approaching the dog before Harry could stop her. She held out her hand and one of the heads sniffed it. "Do you remember me?"
There was a thumping sound as the dog's tail began to wag. The same head licked Hermione's palm before settling down to watch Harry with three keen pairs of eyes.
"He won't hurt you," she assured him. "Sideon belongs to the head of the department, Jeremiah Ringwood. I think you can guess why he's far better than a receptionist."
"I suppose no one really comes here who isn't either employed or looking for trouble," Harry commented, following Hermione around the desk, but keeping a safe distance between himself and the dog. "So, what category do we fall into?"
She flashed him a brief smile and pointed to a dark door. "This one was Ron's office."
"Not a very lively place, is it?"
"The Aurors tend to keep to themselves," Hermione said, gesturing to the myriad of closed office doors around Ron's. "Comes from the fact that any one of them are ready, at any minute, to turn a co-worker over if the need ever arose. It doesn't create a warm work atmosphere."
Harry grimaced. "Moody told us that we'd make good Aurors. Do you suppose that was some sort of comment about us?"
"Considering the fact that it actually came from the mouth of someone working with Voldemort to kill you, I wouldn't put too much weight on the suggestion." She withdrew her wand from her robes and stepped in front of the door. "Corpeus Inflamario!"
"What does that mean?" Harry asked, puzzled.
Hermione blushed as she pulled the door open, having released the first spell. "I'm fairly sure you don't want to know, Harry."
Still confused, but certain he was better off staying that way, Harry followed her into Ron's tiny office. She shut the door behind them, just in case any of the other Aurors wandered out of their offices. "All right. Ron kept everything of importance in that drawer." Hermione walked around the cluttered desk and sat down in an overstuffed chair. She seemed to be trying awfully hard not to break down at the complete sense of Ron that permeated the room.
And Harry himself was having trouble as he looked around. One of Ron's old Chudley Cannons poster, torn in several places, hung on one wall. In fact, the walls were almost entirely covered with maps, charts and hand-scribbled notes that had been haphazardly tacked up wherever there was room. Harry squinted to read one.
"IMPORTANT," the note declared in Ron's staccato handwriting. "Ginny's new boyfriend is called TheoDORE, not TheoBALD."
When he read it out loud, Hermione smiled softly, her eyes shining with new tears. "I had forgotten about that." But she didn't explain; she simply returned her attention to the desk drawer and the spell to unlock it.
Harry turned his attention to Ron's desk. It was cluttered with balled-up parchment, dry inkwells and broken quills. In fact, only two things held positions of importance, in that the area around them was relatively tidy. One was a Quaffle, the same one Ron had used in his first game as a Gryffindor Chaser. He and Hermione had been so proud of their friend that day; he might have been the one to catch the Snitch and win, but it had been Ron's game.
The second item was, Harry discovered after he turned it around, a framed picture of Ron and Hermione on their wedding day. Harry bit down on the inside of his cheek. They both looked so happy, feeding each other cake that he just knew had been made by Molly Weasley and laughing at each other before Ron swallowed and leaned in to kiss his bride.
He turned the picture back around and cleared his throat. "Any luck with the...Hermione?"
She had stopped her spell; her wand was caught up in her tightly balled fist. Her slender shoulders shook as she began to cry. "I miss him, Harry. I love you and I never stopped loving you entirely, but I loved him, too. I wanted to be able to love him more." Hermione wiped at her eyes. "I think he always knew. He never would have said it...never would have thought it...but I was just another hand-me-down. Someone else's belonging that got passed to him."
"'Mione..."
"He loved me so much, Harry. And I adored him. I would have done anything for him. It's just...he wasn't you. He never could be. And he knew that, too."
Harry forced down a rising lump in his throat. "Ron...was my best friend on this earth. I told myself when I left, that I wanted you to get on with your life. I'm glad it was with him." He reached across the desk for her hand and gently rubbed the back of it with his thumb until her fingers relaxed. "I miss him, too. Do you see now why I *can't* let Malfoy get away with taking him from us?"
She sniffed back leftover tears and nodded. Transferring her wand to her other hand, she went at the desk drawer again. "Adamo concumbo!" The drawer popped open and parchment paper went flying. After Hermione had collected all the loose pieces, she started pulling out scrolls bound in leather tubes. "Here. Start looking."
Two and a half hours later, Harry had a crick in his neck, his eyes were dry and itchy and his stomach growled for his attention. Ripping off his glasses, he pinched the bridge of his nose. "Anything yet?"
Hermione set aside one roll of parchment and reached for another. "I don't think Ron ever closed any of his files...and he worked here for a good seven years! He just left all of this scattered everywhere in that drawer." She unrolled the paper and scanned it with a wife's frustration. "That is so like him! Organizationally impaired, even when it comes to the most important..." Her rant came to an abrupt halt.
"What is it?" Harry asked, rubbing the back of his neck. When she didn't reply, he hastily slid his glasses back into place. "Did you find something?"
"This is it," she whispered. "This....is what Ron died for."
She barely reacted a moment later when Harry plucked the paper from her hands. Forgetting his hunger and fatigue, Harry quickly read the entire document. After the third time through it, he lifted his head. "Malfoy's robe..." The parchment crumpled in his fist. "I should have recognized it straight away!! How could I..." He squeezed his eyes shut and threw the paper down. "How could I have been so blind? Especially after Bill Jr. pointed it out to us?!"
"I didn't remember either, Harry. And I was far less caught up in the danger that night." Hermione stroked his arm with her own trembling hand. "You were fighting for your life; you can't expect yourself to remember every last detail of..."
"But I should, Hermione! It wasn't some little school fight I got into. It was a fight to the death with Voldemort! I should remember everything! And for the most part, I can." Harry began pacing in front of Ron's desk. "I can remember what it felt like to have him send lightning through my shoulder...I can remember every wrinkle in his face as he tried to strangle me...I can close my eyes and feel that sense of power when I called up every force in the world to cast him out of ours." He shook his head. "Why couldn't I recognize the robe...the only piece of him that was left behind...the moment I saw it on Malfoy in a picture?! Not to mention when I saw him in Hogsmeade..."
Hermione frowned. "You ran into Draco? When?"
"The Dark Mark. On his cape. I should have..." Harry stopped. "This is proof, Hermione. It at least points a bloody lot of suspicion towards the bastard. Enough maybe to knock him off his pedestal. I mean, just the fact that he figured out how Malfoy got it was enough for Malfoy to kill Ron. Because he knows that no one, not even the most corrupt pureblood family imaginable, would support him if it became public knowledge that he wears Voldemort's robe with pride. Right"
She picked up the paper and unfolded it. Ron's sloppy handwriting indicated how fast he had tried to copy down the information about the Malfoy family gaining possession of Voldemort's last remaining belonging after his death at Harry's hands.
"I suppose we'll find out. I just hope..." Hermione closed her eyes briefly as wave of nausea swept over her. "...that your faith in people...won't be...disappointed."
Harry's eyes grew wide as Hermione's head dropped to the soft cushion of parchment papers across Ron's desk. The memories, the revelations, the sheer exhaustion, it had all become too much for her. She fainted and not even Harry's arms around her could rouse her out of the blissful darkness.
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To Be Continued