Harry Potter and the Secret Prophecy

Harry Potter
and the
Secret Prophecy

Alternate Universe Remix
fanfiction by Fox in the Stars

Chapter Eight
The Ministry

Incongruously, someone had taken thick white paint to the "AUROR HEADQUARTERS" inscription. A smile face was drawn in the "O," and another one positioned so as to be sticking out the leg of the "Q" as a tongue. Harry suspected Tonks even before she caught sight of him around a corner and called to him. "Wotcher, Harry!" Today her hair was in a honey-red ponytail.

"Hi, Tonks!" he said.

"Harry had his hearing and was cleared," Kingsley said as she came up to them.

"Too sweet!" she exulted. She gave him a thumbs-up "toast," and Harry was only a little awkward picking up on it, giving a thumbs-up too and knocking knuckles with her.

"Can you take this thing over to forensics?" Kingsley asked her, indicating the television. She drew out her wand, a very unusual-looking one made of shimmery figured maple with purplish metal tips, and took it. "Be sure not to touch --- wait a moment," Kingsley said, then conjured a wad of cement on the front of the TV to block up the switch before sending Tonks on her way.

"Later, Harry!" she called back to him. Kingsley led him down the opposite fork in the hallway as Tonks, and a few moments later Harry heard a crash from her direction.

Kingsley led him through stone corridors lined with arched, doorless portals and name placards. Through the openings Harry glimpsed black-robed wizards and witches working at desks, discussing parchments and maps, and in one instance a few of them stirring a Pensieve. Soon, Harry and his host came to an archway labelled "K. Shacklebolt, Au1^c."

As Kingsley was about to show him in, Professor Moody emerged from another archway. His "Mad Eye" stared straight at Harry for a long moment. "True what I've been hearing, then," he said gruffly. "Dragged you down to Thirteen, did they?"

"Yeah," Harry said. Kingsley did a double-take.

"Shacklebolt, a minute?" Moody asked.

"Go on inside, Harry, I'll be with you presently," Kingsley said, ushering Harry into his office before going to talk with Moody.

Harry stepped inside and looked around, over two robes on coathooks, one black and one clashy coral check, and over Kingsley's desk, which was neat and organised; Harry noticed a wooden box sitting out on it. However, it was the wall adjacent the door that froze him on the spot the instant his gaze fell upon it. Its whole area was covered in photographs, broken only by a map of the world and another of the British Isles, both dotted with colored tacks. Other than those maps, looking back at him from every square foot of the wall was his godfather's familiar face.

Harry's eyes darted randomly around the photo-collage; he wanted to take it all in at once but couldn't, and he hardly knew where to begin looking. There was the image from the wanted poster, of a threatening Sirius with dark, hollow eyes, as well as several others of him in Azkaban. Dates scrawled on the margins suggested that one had been taken each year during his imprisonment, but even in the first of them he looked frighteningly gaunt, and after that they all looked very much alike.

More incredible to Harry were the other, earlier pictures of Sirius young and handsome. Those showed his finely sculpted features youthful and smooth, his hair neatly trimmed --- short and silky but with fringe that fell around his eyes in an unselfconsciously good-looking way. It echoed strangely against Lupin's memory as if Harry had felt a reverse-mould there, the gap left behind by the flawless face in these pictures. But that wasn't the reason Harry's heart pounded in his ears at seeing them contrasted with the careworn Sirius he knew, at seeing them simply as pictures of his godfather --- of his family, because in very few of them was Sirius alone.

In one photo, Sirius stood next to Harry's mother, red-haired, green-eyed Lily Potter in her wedding dress, and he reached across behind her to poke teasingly at another man in a blue robe and hat, who had caramel-brown hair tied back with a great cavalier bow. Harry watched as his mother reached over her shoulder and hooked Sirius's finger in a sort of mock-judo move, and only as the three of them laughed and the man in blue raised his head did Harry recognise it as Professor Lupin, without a single line on his face nor a single strand of grey in his hair. Lily kissed him on the cheek, and he lit up so brightly that he didn't look a day older than Harry.

In another picture there stood a figure that could almost be Harry, or maybe Harry in a year or so, except that the lightning-scar was missing, and the eyes were the wrong shape and color, hazel instead of green. It was Harry's father, James Potter, standing beside a berry-red-chrome motorcycle on which Sirius was carelessly half-seated. A younger girl stood between them; she looked ten or eleven --- first-year-aged --- and, like James, had glasses and wild black hair. Against a backdrop of blackberry brambles, James raised two fingers behind the girl's head. She noticed and slapped his hand, and Sirius pulled her over to him with playful protectiveness as she and James stuck out their tongues at each other. Harry had never seen her before, and he checked the handwritten caption: "James & Sirius & Henrietta." He had never heard that name, either, but he guessed she must be his aunt, or maybe his father's cousin. She was like a wonderful gift, but still it made him sick to look at her. He knew he didn't have any blood relatives left except the Dursleys, which meant that this girl must be dead.

He looked up again and came practically face-to-face with Sirius: a school portrait in his Hogwarts uniform, probably seventh-year by the look of it. As Harry stared at the portrait, the image of Sirius winked at him, then pointed past its frame to direct him to another photo.

When Harry found that one, he lifted it from the wall, and it came loose without resistance. It showed the porch-steps of an inviting stone house. Harry's mother stood smiling and waving from the doorway; his father waved as well, leaning against a pillar. Sirius sat on the step, bouncing a baby on his knee --- a baby that had to be Harry. He watched Sirius lift his baby-self and turn him to face out from the photo, pointing out the fifteen-year-old Harry looking down at them. Sirius waved; his lips moved without sound, but Harry could almost hear his voice: "Say 'hi,' Harry!" The baby instead grabbed clumsily at his hand and clung to his finger while looking up with wide green eyes. James crouched next to them so that their three faces were bunched close together, and he and Sirius waved and mouthed "Hi-i!" as Lily watched them with a brilliant, motherly smile.

"Doesn't look like a picture of a killer, does it?"

Harry was jolted back to the present as Kingsley came in and crossed to the desk. He looked around in confusion, and the school portrait of Sirius moved in a way that caught his eye. As Harry looked at it, Sirius cupped a hand to his face and mouthed "play along."

"Just set that back on the wall. Have a seat," Kingsley said, shuffling some papers. Harry lay the photo against the wall again and it held there as he took the chair beside Kingsley's desk.

"Now just relax," he told Harry. "You're not in any trouble, I only want to ask you some questions. No one's going to twist your arm; just answer as best you can, all right?"

"Okay," Harry said, bracing himself. As he had expected, Kingsley asked him a series of questions about Sirius --- about the the night Harry had learned the truth about his godfather, since that was the one time they had officially met, and then whether he'd seen Sirius since or knew where he was. Harry stayed to the truth enough to maintain Sirius's innocence, but carefully avoided saying anything that might give away his whereabouts or incriminate anyone. Shacklebolt either didn't notice him being evasive or didn't care; he just asked the questions in a very businesslike way and wrote on some parchments as Harry answered, barely even looking up at him.

Finally Tonks poked her head around the archway. "Hey, Harry!" she said. "Kingsley, thought I'd tell you, Hooper's got your telly."

"Oh, good," he said, shifting from his settled seat. "I think we're done here. Tonks, could you get Harry some clothes from the Muggle closet and take him home?"

"Not a problem!" she said. "C'mon, Harry."

"Wait a moment," Kingsley stopped him as he stood up. He picked up the wooden box from his desk and handed it to Harry. "I know you haven't seen him in some time, but if Black should happen to appear, just open this box, all right?" he said, and winked.

"Okay," Harry said. He stuffed the box in his pocket, then followed Tonks out into the hall. She took him to a large walk-in closet in which there were indeed Muggle clothes and accessories of all descriptions --- "For when we have to go under cover you know," --- and she let Harry shut himself inside for privacy and change out of his pyjamas. The jeans he found needed to be belted in and cuffed up just a bit, but the adult Aurors' clothes weren't as baggy on him as he had expected. He also found a sports bag to carry his pyjamas and orphaned slipper home in. Once he was finished, Tonks peeled off her black robe and shut herself in for a few moments to swap her "Wyrd Sisters" T-shirt for one with the name of a Muggle band on it.

"Let me show you something," she said, and Harry was only too happy to follow her. She led him down a transverse corridor which opened into a green courtyard, right there in the middle of this deep-underground structure. Above him Harry could see the sky, and the square space was all lushly grassy, dotted with bushes and trees. If not for the views into stone hallways through the four portals, one centered in each wall, Harry would have thought he was outdoors. Directly in the middle of the courtyard, a quartered ring of hedges surrounded an earthen mound with a sword thrust down into it, like some greener rendering of the King Arthur legend.

"What is this place?" Harry said.

"This is where we practice magical combat," Tonks said. "We've got a spell that keeps anybody from getting really hurt, like they use in sport-duelling. There's a cushioning charm on the walls, too." She slammed her shoulder against the stone and it bounced her back gently. Harry couldn't resist trying it, and indeed it felt like throwing himself against a mattress.

"The trees and hedges are to practice with obstacles and cover," Tonks continued, "and see the doors here. The arched ones are the entrances..." she pointed to the portal where they had come in, and to the one opposite, then to the other two portals, which unlike the first were flat on top, "...and the square ones lead to more practice area, made up like if you were fighting indoors."

"Wow!" Harry said, admiring it.

"Now, come on before we get caught; I probably wasn't supposed to show you that," she said, and led him out again. Harry only reluctantly left the courtyard and the sword-mound behind, and hoped that someday he could actually use the practice area.

As she led him out of Auror headquarters, toward the lifts, Professor Moody caught Harry for a moment. "Glad about your hearing, Harry, but don't let your guard down just because it went your way. Remember, Constant Vigilance!" he called as he left Harry and Tonks waiting for the lift.

"Yeah, I---" Harry barely caught himself before saying "I remember;" it hadn't been the real Moody who had told him that in class all those times. "I'll do that!"

The lift carried them back upward, and Tonks listed off what was on some of the various floors. Ninth was the Forum where people met to make laws and where they voted during elections. Sixth was mostly Beasts Division stuff; the Aurors got called up there sometimes to help the Werewolf Capture Unit. Fourth floor was devoted to enchanted objects, including most of Transportation and the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts office.

Harry asked to stop on that floor, and he and Tonks found Mr. Weasley working feverishly over the piles of parchments in his little cubicle. Harry just looked in for a moment to say that Tonks was taking him home, and Mr. Weasley managed to show them a tired smile before they headed back to the lifts. They got lost in the maze of cubicles for awhile, but Tonks managed to knock over only one wastepaper basket.

Harry happened to mention that he'd never been to the Ministry before, so when they finally found the lifts again, Tonks wanted to show him some of the sights on the floors above. He opted out of the Archives --- third floor, contained every Daily Prophet ever printed --- but she took him around the first floor, which housed the Departments of Magical Games and Sports and of Magical Recreation and Tourism. The best part of these places was the free promotional items, she said, and indeed Harry was able to stuff his bag with Quidditch posters, a miniature Gobstones set, several pairs of adhesive felt wings that would turn any round object stuck between them gold to make it look like a Snitch, quills decorated like the flags of various countries with the Department of Magical Recreation and Tourism's contact information imprinted on them, and some of the many free books and pamphlets. He picked up copies of "Vacationing Amid Muggles: How to Have Fun Without Showing It," "Charmed Destinations for the Financially Jinxed," "Duelling the Safe (and Legal!) Way," and "Aviana Florence: the Star Seeker who Invented the Golden Snitch," a book put out by Save Our Snidgets with a note identifying it as a biography of the group's founder. Not only was Harry interested to learn more about a famous fellow Quidditch Seeker, but the picture of Aviana on the cover made her look fascinating and pretty, with her famous pet snidget Lemmy --- or so the round yellow bird was labelled --- sitting on her finger. It was free, Harry told himself, nothing wrong with taking it because he liked the picture...

Thinking it would be silly to take the lifts for one storey, Harry found the stairway and Tonks followed him up the last flight to the atrium. Jan at the security desk called him over to give him his lost slipper, and Tonks took him over to show him the fountain.

Now viewing it from the front, Harry counted five golden statues: a tall bearded wizard on an upraised pedestal at center, a shorter witch beside him, and standing around their feet a goblin, a centaur, and a house-elf. The wizard and witch's wands were upraised and spouting water. All five figures looked upward to a point beyond the tips of the wands, and all had their mouths open as if singing happy exultations. The expressions struck Harry as pat and fake; they gave the impression that the other three figures were joyously following right along in the wizard and witch's song, which, from what Harry knew, goblins and centaurs were highly unlikely to do. A house-elf might, he thought, but he had never seen a house-elf wear such a happy and carefree expression --- not one dressed in household linens like the statue was, anyway.

A gold plaque at the base of the fountain read:

DEDICATED TO ALL MAGICAL BRETHREN
~~~~~~~~~
Coins will be Donated to St. Mungo' Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries

Harry promised himself he'd pay the Aurors back with interest and dug in the pocket of his borrowed jeans for some coins, thinking variously of having survived the hearing, the free booty in his bag, Dedalus Diggle, and Neville's parents...

"In the bottom is just if you want to make a donation," Tonks said as he made to toss them in. "If you want to make a wish you have to get it in the wizard's mouth. That's what all the kids said when I was little, anyway. In the witch's mouth means you'll marry a pretty girl, but if you get it in the house-elf's ear, you'll lose your magic and become a dishwasher," she added.

Harry was grateful not to find out what Hermione would say about that childish superstition. He hadn't thought about making a wish, but now thought he may as well try it, if the hospital would end up getting the money anyway. He closed his eyes and thought about it. I wish... Kingsley's wall of photographs loomed up in his mind, but he pushed it aside; no good wishing for something that could never come back... I wish I could live with Sirius from now on. ---I wish his name would be cleared! Harry settled on that one and focussed his mind on it, and as he dropped the coins in the water, he reserved an entire gold galleon and aimed it carefully at the wizard's singing mouth...

He was just about to throw it when a flash of red hair flicked across the corner of his eye and struck a spark of recognition. Mr. Weasley?? They couldn't have sacked him in the last half-hour, could they? But then, Fudge had been wanting to do it, and the Hearing had made him so angry that he might decide he didn't need an excuse... Harry whipped around --- yes, he could still see that bit of red amid the people milling about, and he ran toward it. Heading for the fireplaces, better hurry --- "Mr. Weasley, wait!!"

But when he came close, the redheaded wizard turned around, and Harry found that it was someone much younger, with glasses --- Percy! Harry stopped short and stared at him awkwardly, by then too close to just walk away. He tried to think what he would've wanted to do if he met Percy, but found that talking to him didn't make the list, and most of what did would get him in trouble with Jan over at her security desk.

Percy showed him an impersonally-pleasant smile. "Good day, Harry. You can still call me Percy, you know, you don't have to use 'Mr. Weasley,'" he said, with an intentional chuckle.

"I thought it was your dad," Harry told him.

"Oh." His smile didn't fall, but he quickly moved on. "Have you seen Ron and Ginny lately?"

Harry nodded.

"How are they getting along?"

"They're good."

A short, awkward pause.

"Hearing went all right, I take it?"

Harry opened his mouth for a short affirmative, then suddenly it hit him: if Percy was asking that, he had to know that the hearing had been this morning. He knew they moved it up! Harry felt angry heat climbing up his neck. He wanted to punch those glasses right into Percy's smug face, but he knew he couldn't, and he just clenched his teeth and took deep, careful breaths...

Tonks appeared at his shoulder. "Wotcher, Mr. Weasley."

"Tonks, what are you up to?"

"Running errands for Kingsley. He had a talk with Harry and then asked me to take him home."

"I'm sorry, 'Kingsley'...?"

"Shacklebolt," Tonks said.

"Ah, yes."

"But anyway, since it was Harry's first time at the Ministry, thought I'd show him around a little."

"Is that really how you should be spending your time?" Percy asked, his tone irritatingly pleasant. "We have tour guides, you know."

"Oh, come on, I'm still the coffee monkey down there," Tonks protested. "Playing 'friendly neighborhood copper' is fighting more evil than they usually let me at."

Percy chuckled again. "Well, keep at it then. Good talking to you, Harry," he said, then tossed some Floo powder into the fireplace and set off for "Witch Weekly Head Office."

As soon as he was gone, Harry was glad to see Tonks stick her tongue out after him. "Smarmy git. You wanna see the garden on the top floor, Harry?"

"No, I don't think so..." he said. The run-in with Percy was leaving him hot and trembly. "Let's just go home --- Wait." He realised he still had the galleon in his hand.

Harry walked slowly but purposefully back over to the fountain. Forget Percy, forget the hearing, forget everything, just think about Sirius being cleared... He closed his eyes for a long moment to think of that over and over, opened them again, and tossed the coin. It bounced off the wizard's nose, then sharply off his lower lip. Harry watched it desperately, afraid it would glance off his cheek and fall, but it came down again right on target and jangled in his mouth.

"Too sweet, Harry!" Tonks cheered. "You're a good shot! What'd you wish for?"

"I didn't think you could tell things like that," he said, smiling again.

"You can't? Who told you that?"

Apparently wizards had a different superstition than Muggles, but Harry still couldn't tell this one; not in public, anyway.

Tonks led him to a small lift at the opposite end of the atrium from Jan's desk. It carried them up to a telephone box, and as the floor came to rest at street level, a disembodied voice spoke not from the phone but from the air near Harry's head. "Thank you for visiting the Ministry of Magic. We hope that your visit was pleasant and productive and that you will come again soon. Have a good day!"

"You take this same box to get into the Ministry," Tonks said, "Just pick up the handset and dial 'M-A-G-I-C.'"

They emerged from the box onto a quiet and dingey street; from the outside, the Ministry looked like an abandoned building of crumbling brown bricks, with painted-out windows and no door in sight. From there, Tonks led the way and soon brought Harry to an underground station. Her undercover equipment included Muggle money for the fare, and looking around the station, Harry discovered that they were in London. Well, where else would the Ministry be? he thought. After a few stops, Tonks led him off the train and they started walking again.

Soon she had taken him to an even more run-down area than where the Ministry had their phone-box. "Are you sure you know where you're going?" Harry finally asked. She was turning down a street where all the houses seemed to have flaking paint, patchy yards, and cracked windows.

"This looks like it," she said, and checked the sign. "Right, 'Grimmauld Place.'"

She crossed to the even-numbered side and checked the numbers on the houses. Harry looked at them too: ... six ... eight ... ten ... Tonks stopped halfway to the next house, then checked up and down the street. Looking past her, Harry saw that the next house was numbered "14." But the last one was ten, so where's...?

Tonks gripped his hand and turned away from the curb. Right in front of her, a crooked, broken picket fence separated Number Ten from Number Fourteen, and she walked directly into the first post. Suddenly the neighborhood split along that fence and opened up to reveal a huge mansion, an imposing Victorian Gothic in rose-black stone, towering over every other building in sight. Harry tilted his head far back to see up to its high bay window and intricate roof, and as he looked back down to the door, he found the tarnished gold "12" framed in filligreed moulding above the entrance. Tonks pushed the door open with a loud creak, and through it Harry recognised the entry hall of the Black House. "Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place," she announced, "Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix."

"Tonks, what if someone heard that!?" Harry hissed; how could she just say the headquarters' location out loud to the whole world!?

"Try and say it back to me." A hint of mischief twinkled in her eyes.

It seemed an odd request, but Harry tried and found that he couldn't do it. He remembered Tonks leading him in, but the sequence of the steps and the identifying images were all blurred out of his mind's reach, like trying to remember a dream. Harry discovered that he hadn't the faintest idea where this house was, and that he certainly couldn't find it again on his own. "What the...?"

"Inn'it it wild?" Tonks said with a smile, and leaned over to whisper in his ear. "It's Fidelius Charmed. ---Speaking of wild charms," she straightened up again, "brace yourself when we go through the door. It's Unwelcoming, so this won't be much fun until we find Cousin Sirius, but thought I'd show you the front way in just once..."

As he followed Tonks through the door, Harry shivered as if he had walked under a flow of cold water, and the door shutting behind him gave him a jolt. He suddenly wanted a path to get out of this house at a moment's notice, and with each step down the length of the foyer, he was more powerfully tempted to bolt for the door. What am I doing here? I'm not wanted here... What am I thinking!? This is Sirius's house! He wouldn't want me to leave... But hundreds of years of Blacks glared down at him from the portraits lining the walls. He realised that he would have stopped walking if not for Tonks holding his arm, and she was moving none too fast. Harry made an effort to pull himself together and continue purposefully forward.

The walk felt terribly long; the heavy silence filling the room weighed on him and dragged at him as if he were walking through tar. Mrs. Black's portrait loomed so threateningly behind her curtains that he closed his eyes and let Tonks lead him to the stairway, and he turned away from the painting before looking. Light shone under the kitchen door, and they crept carefully down the steps. Harry felt a little braver when he heard Sirius's voice coming from inside, but only a little.

"No, they're not, but they're not stupid, either," he was saying. "You think they can't tell when you're covering up? You think any of them are going to believe that was just a clerical error!?"

"That doesn't mean you have to tell them Harry's getting railroaded!" Mrs. Weasley protested.

"I said it looks like what it looks like!"

"You don't have to tell them everything! You don't have to burden them with all of it when they're too young to do anything---"

"But they're old enough to want to know, and to get around you and find out! Remember when I got out of prison? Remember how you tried to 'protect' Harry by not telling him who I was, by saying I was some crazed Death Eater??"

"Well you can't blame us for thinking so."

"As a matter of fact, I can, and I occasionally do. But the point is, it did an excellent job keeping him clear of me, now, didn't it??"

Harry and Tonks stood very still. Harry deeply wanted to hear what they were saying, and at the same time felt like a wretched criminal. Who do I think I am to barge in here and start eavesdropping?? But he was also too afraid to touch the doorhandle...

"Harry's his father's child. Just hiding things from him isn't going to work," Sirius said.

There was a brief pause before Mrs. Weasley spoke again. "He's his father's child, but he's not his father."

"Hm?"

"He's not James, I said. Sirius, you don't treat him like he's your child. You act like you could just pluck your best friend out of the past and have him back!"

"I don't see what---"

"James is gone, Sirius!" she cut him off.

"I don't need you to tell me that!" he shot back at a roar.

Harry jumped and barely held himself to the spot, but Sirius continued much more softly.

"...Not after twelve years of those Dementors grinding it into me every day... That I was alive and he was dead..."

Even as Mrs. Weasley was saying "And Harry's your second chance?," Harry felt the Unwelcoming Charm start to get the better of him.

"Tonks, I--- I think we should just go..."

There came a scraping sound from behind the door, and a half-second later it was thrown open. Sirius stood there in the light from the kitchen, which struck Harry like a gust of fresh air.

"Harry!"

"He got off!" Tonks cheered.

"Oh, congratulations!" Sirius shouted, seizing Harry in a hug.

As soon as Harry saw Sirius, the dark spell over him broke, snapping the force that had been trying to pull him back out the door. It was such a release that he practically fell into his godfather's arms. "I'm using the Floo from now on!" he insisted. "I hate your door!"

"Oh, everybody hates that thing; I'll tear it out someday," Sirius laughed and pulled Harry into the kitchen, with Tonks close behind. As they came to the table, Harry thought he heard a soft clang from the dumbwaiter, and Sirius must have heard it too, because he crossed to it and called up the shaft. "You know you'd all hear better if you just came down here."

Mrs. Weasley jumped. "They couldn't be--- Professor Lupin was---!"

"Where's Moony?" Sirius called.

"He fell asleep." Ginny answered from the kitchen doorway as she and Ron rushed in to congratulate Harry.

Fred and George were close behind them, both grinning broadly. "Shame about the hearing really." "Here we were getting our hearts set on breaking you out!"

When Harry happened to glance at their mother again, she seemed frozen to the spot. Her ears and cheeks had turned cherry red.

to be continued in...
Chapter Nine: Blue Footprints