Between the Devil and Durmstrang

The depths of the building were cool and depressing. It closed in on Jones by early afternoon, making her crave light and warmth. Anything to get out of the place where she had shattered her friend's illusions. The school's grounds seemed empty at first glance. She wandered around the Dark Arts building for an hour, staring at the grass and looking for any of the tiny white wildflowers that were hidden in the green. It passed the time and let her mind try to erase the image of Wronski's horror.

The drone of the bees working at a swath of clover made her sleepy and lulled her into a drowsy state. She could always blame the bees for not being more observant. Leaning against the building, near a side door, she sleepily watched a bee flit from flower to flower, sipping away at the nectar. Summer at its simplest. She was so mesmerized by the warmth, the sun and the drone of the insect, that she missed the movement to her right and didn't dive back into the safety of the building when the men in the dark suits showed up. One stepped in front of her escape into the building, the other stood before her.

"Rose Jones. As I live and breathe. How nice to see you. In such a good mood, too. How's it going, Jonesy?" Roy Peterson loomed over her, blocking out the sun like an eclipse.

Stupidly, she blinked at him, almost failing to recognize him silhouetted against the sun. The voice and the sheer push of his power were enough to jar her back into reality. She stepped back and ran into Smith whose braying laugh bounced against the stone walls to strike her ears discordantly.

"I thought we wouldn't get a shot at her. Look at this! She's just standing out here in the daisies. Waiting for us to come and call. Well, Jonesy, how's it hanging?" Smith laughed and smacked her on the back, pushing her into Peterson who put his enormous hands onto her shoulders.

Peterson had always made her feel small, but he'd never actually touched her before. She felt trapped and terrified under his grasp as both his physical presence and the sheer power of his personal energy beat at her. "Get your hands off me."

"Miss Jones, it is still 'Miss', isn't it? You always were a loner. Makes you vulnerable. I thought you might like some male company. Would you like to take a walk with us, Miss Jones? We know a group of fine men who would like to see your work in action."

Peterson forcibly turned her around and began pushing her towards the gates. She dug her heels in and began to shout, 'Take your hands off of me! I work here! Leave me alone!"

Her cries rang against the walls of the castle and faded into the drone of the bees as Peterson leaned over and whispered, "Sileo" in a silky voice that promised nothing good ahead. "If you keep it up, I'll make sure you aren't burdened by all those naughty magic bits. Be a good girl, Rosie. You know I can do it. If you're really good, maybe we'll just do our thing here and you'll have a nice, quiet life, free of any of that tempting magic stuff until we get the legislation passed that will let us haul your fat ass home. So, be a good girl."

The patronizing attitude was more than she could stand. Planting her feet, she made a grab for her wand. Too obvious and too slow. Peterson's growling laugh followed the open-handed slap that drove her to the ground.

"She's pushing up the daisies!" Smith guffawed, slapping the other man on the shoulder. "Good one! You know, we aren't home any more, are we, Roy?"

"No, we're not. I don't suppose the same rules apply here." Peterson's expensive shoes came to stop in front of her face. Instinctively, she curled up into a ball, protecting her head.

"Nice save," Smith crooned as he crossed around the cowering woman. "Remember when she got away? Don't you think she deserves a little ding for what she did to your partner?" There was an ugly silence. "Can you believe that this crippled Ralph for six months? Poor bastard couldn't hardly cast a Lumos after she blasted you guys. What was he doing, standing in front of her?"

The blood hammered in her ears. She heard the soft creak as Peterson crouched down next to her. Felt the air move as he moved his hand towards her. Images of her old rival popped into her head. The rival had been a cocky sort, too sure of his own powers and too loud about it. When Peterson had finished with him, there had only been a shell; no magic had been left and barely any will to live.

"Rose, I always wondered what you were made of. Did I ever tell you how much I enjoyed cracking your wards? Very nice work. Took days." Peterson's voice was soft, almost soothing.

She peered around her forearms, trying to see what he was doing. Peterson was too close, all she could see were his shins. There was a warm pulse that beat steadily, rolling off him, warning her. Inching her forearms apart, she could just barely see his knees when it hit. Racking pain flooded her, every nerve screamed and her vision exploded in whiteness. Then, nothing.

At first, all she heard was a sucking sound and then a buzzing. It stopped when she realized she was the source of the sucking noise. The buzzing belonged to one of the traitorous bees still working the little white flowers. She jerked to a sitting position and caught her breath. The two men stood off to one side, watching from the shade of the building.

"Poor old Ralph." Again the blinding pain. Again the darkness. Strength and knowledge, she mused as her eyes fluttered open to stare at the clear blue sky. It wasn't often she ran into someone with both, not like Peterson. Most people couldn't cast a Crucio with that much of a jolt. There were rumors that you could shred a person's sanity with the curse. As each of her nerves jangled from the spell, she believed the rumor.

"So, Jonesy, are you going to be a good girl or do we get to enjoy this scene a few more times?" Peterson shut out the sky as he stood over her. Rallying her pride one last time, she tried to glare up at him.

"Maybe she ought to wipe the drool off her face, huh, Roy? I don't know about you, but I can't take her very seriously when she looks like that." Smith was laughing as he joined his partner. "Jesus, Jones, have some pride." He shook out a Kleenex from his pocket and handed it to her.

Rolling to a sitting position, she felt her jaw. Her hand came away sticky with saliva and a smear of blood. Taking the tissue, she wiped her face. Every movement bought some time. She ran a hand through her tangled hair only to have the hand grabbed. In a rough, painful jerk, she was brought upright, forced to stand on her toes.

"It's up to you. You can cooperate or not. I'm not going to wait much longer. As you know, there are other ways to make you mind." Peterson released the hand and waited.

She swallowed and looked away. There was little doubt that Peterson knew several different ways to force her to do whatever he wanted. There was no whiny lawyer screaming about her rights nor were there any other faces, friendly or otherwise, to witness what they could do to her. Keeping her eyes averted, she nodded.

With a little push to direct her, she walked towards the gates. The guards looked them over and there was a questioning look on one's face when he saw the ashen-faced Jones. The other didn't even look up as he waved the group through. She hated every step of the familiar path to the Portkey room. Hated it even more on the other side when they all three stepped through the curtains into the bathroom where Smith hissed the question, asking if she needed to use it now or later. They shoved her through the main tavern room, closed that day to the usual crowd, and it took all her will not to try and run when they opened the door to the backroom where Werner's men took their leisure. She'd really enjoyed that room and now it was a prison for her.

The room was crowded. People sat on the edge of the pool table. Chairs were crammed in untidy rows, filled with official-looking men and women whose eyes looked her over with a frankness she didn't care to think about. Smith grinned broadly at someone in the back and waved as Peterson gave one last hard shove to push her into a space at the front of the room. She bounced against the wall and stood silently only because of the spell. Inside, she cursed them both to the depths of every hell she could think of.

"We thought we'd show you a real test of our technology," Smith began, his voice sounding overly loud for the room. His bland face glowed as he faced his audience. "This here is Miss Rose Jones. Some of you might remember when I introduced her around the other day. Well, Jonesy here is a professional Dark Arts type. She's been high on my list of bad guys for years. I can personally attest to having questioned her at least twenty times, ain't that right, Rosie?"

Jones looked disgusted. She sneered and mimed that they'd put a spell on her so she couldn't talk. Some of the crowd laughed. Others looked annoyed. "Let her speak," a Texas drawl yelled. "What's the matter, Smith, y'all afraid of a little thing like that?"

Smith grinned, "What's the matter, Tex? Don't you know that everything isn't bigger in Texas?" The joke fell flat. Smith looked over at Peterson who gave a small shrug. Moving faster than Jones expected, two fingers smacked her across the mouth, in an almost open-handed slap. Her audible gasp told the crowd that the spell had been nullified.

"Jonesy here was recorded on our machine at least twice. I'm going to demonstrate the storage retrieval capabilities of our device." Smith walked forward to a humming black machine, no more than eighteen inches long and half again as wide and tall. Leaning over, his hand fumbled with something and a side opened out, displaying a monitor and a keyboard. His tongue poked at a cheek while he pecked at the keyboard, logging himself in. "What we do now is connect with the server." He looked up, the annoying grin plastered over his face. "You folks do understand what computers are, right? This isn't too advanced for you?" The crowd, already hostile from waiting in the too small, too warm room, was not receptive to Smith's attempt at humor and an ugly murmur swelled. "Just asking." He returned to his keyboard, tongue once again firmly poking at his cheek. "OK. Now, we need to key the suspect's number into the database."

"How is the number assigned?" a deep voice, hinting of the Middle East yelled.

"Well, that depends…" Smith began to drone at length about algorithms, alpha numeric sequences, random number generations, masking techniques, firewalls and a lot topics that no one in the room was interested in.

Jones was amazed at how dense the man was. Even she, who wanted nothing more than to get out of the place, wanted him to get on with the presentation. She used the time to look at the faces in the room, recognizing a few, but not certain where she had seen them. In the back of the room, familiar faces in very familiar black uniforms clustered. She crossed her arms and leaned against the wall, wondering if it would be worth the pain to do something very fatal to Smith. She had narrowed it down to the Separa spell, enjoying the image of Smith's layers exploding outward in a messy fountain or to using an Incendio to burn him slowly.

She had to look somewhere while Smith droned, so she looked at the faces she knew in the back. Werner had a pained, pinched look. She didn't have to guess very hard to figure out that he must have a horrible headache. Massys was an odd green color, probably still hung over. Baldung looked angry, counterbalanced by Mueller's expressionless face. She really did like them. She wondered if they'd miss her when Smith figured out a way to drag her back after the end of the training session. The thought must have shown because, when she blinked again, Werner's face had changed to angry and Mueller looked worried. She shifted her weight to one side and leaned against the wall.

"Get the bloody hell on with it!" A florid-faced man leaped to his feet and pointed at Smith. "You bloody well talk too much. Stupid git!"

Several people applauded. Jones snickered, regretting it immediately when Peterson slammed a hand onto her shoulder. In his best purring velvet tiger voice, Peterson made a few indistinct threats and then, keeping his hand firmly gripped on her shoulder, pushed her in line with the machine. "OK, Jonesy, what's your number?"

"I have a number?" She tried to put as much surprise into the voice as possible. Peterson's hand closed and she yelped. "Hands off! I have rights!"

"Rights? Jonesy, do you even know what the laws are here? You're in a room full of cops. Do you think any of them give a rat's ass what happens to you? You're a pro. You have the biggest file of any practitioner I know. When I get you back to the States, we're going to have a nice, long talk."

Jones froze and shut up.

"Number." Peterson gave her a shake, almost toppling her. "Num. Ber." Two syllables punctuated by a shake each time.

"Fuck you."

"I'm gonna make you dance."

"I'm going to see you in hell."

She could feel Peterson start the spell, his personal glow already slapping against her. It was going to hurt a lot. She knew she was going to go down and it might as well be done in style. Probably foolishly, she let her entire vision shrink down to him.

"You going to take me out, Jones?" Peterson purred as his hand cocked back.

"I did before," she said calling on her own store.

When she woke up, the crowd was milling all around. Angry and impatient voices in the background, bright lights all around and the damn machine still humming nearby. Things hurt, but not too badly. Someone had caught her before she hit the ground. Only a knee and her elbow were bruised. She could hear Werner snarling at someone and Smith's godawful voice going on and on. It wasn't over yet. She almost hated sitting up, knowing it would draw attention to the fact she was conscious. She rolled slowly to one side, hoping no one noticed and wondered if there was any chance in hell she could Apparate from that position and run out the door. It made her think for a moment. Could you do that? She'd never tried except when she was standing. It distracted her long enough to roll onto the bruised knee. The flash of pain brought a small grunt from her and she froze, waiting to see if anyone noticed.

A large set of hands gently pushed her down. "Be still." The rumble was almost felt more than heard.

Being still was hard. She tried to see if she could smell who was around her, but there were way too many people to sort out. From her position on her side, she could see the occasional pair of feet and a set of table legs, but not much more. The crowd's voices blended into a wall of sound, an individual voice would escape now and again, but it was mostly just noise. It was a shame that the only voice that was truly distinct was Smith.

Smith was ranting, non-stop, about the lack of security, the poor support, the sloppy police work, the ingratitude of the crowd. The list went on and on. It drove Jones crazy that she couldn't see what was going on. Whenever she moved, the hand would come back, reminding her to be still. The crowd eventually found their places and was quiet. As the masses quieted, a few voices began to stand out. From bits and pieces of different conversations, she gathered that both she and Peterson had been the recipients of a Somnus spell. She was delighted to hear that he appeared to be especially susceptible to them and was still asleep. Too bad it wasn't permanent, but he was still out. Smith had been tackled when it appeared that he wanted to verify that Jones couldn't get back up. Jones thanked whoever it was that had hit the obnoxious prat.

From the floor, she couldn’t see what had happened. Apparently, some sign had been given and the big hands began to help her up. With the lights in her eyes, she couldn't see what was going on. Standing in front of Mueller, she could see Werner's back as he talked to the crowd. She couldn't really hear what he was saying, but the crowd calmed down and seemed to be waiting again.

When Werner turned back to talk to her, she could see how tired he was. As he passed by her, she whispered, "Sorry to have been such a pain. I really hate those bastards. It's going to be hell when they take me back."

Werner slowed but didn't stop. "You are not going back, Professor Jones. You are in my district. If you could do something about their infernal machine, I would put a black uniform on you and call you an Auror."

"What a step down," she quipped as Smith strode forward.

"OK, Jonesy. I've had enough. Peterson had to be the big guy. He's asleep right now. I'm not. Let's get this straight. You're going to do what I tell you to do. I already cleared it with their brass. If you don't do what I tell you to do, we're going to use that little binding spell on your arm and you'll wish you were never born!" Smith snarled in her face.

"I'm so impressed," she growled, ready for another face off. Mueller shook her, very gently, but it caught her attention. She slumped in place and waited.

"Number, Jonesy." Smith was back at his keyboard.

"007," Jones replied.

Someone in the room laughed. Mueller grumbled behind her, "65720." Her spirits sagged, even her friends turned against her. Jackie was right. Couldn’t trust any cops.

Smith picked out the number haltingly. His face glowed in the light of the monitor as he watched the screen. Several iterations of data entry and waiting followed. Jones craned her neck to see the screen, but couldn't see more than the lower corner of one side. At last, the machine seemed satisfied. Smith turned to face the crowd, "OK. This is the last recorded signature we have for her. It's four years old." On the wall next to her, a pattern of colors shown. Smith's expression became unfocused as he began to analyze the patterns for the crowd. It was interesting for about three minutes, but the technical jargon was boring to the uninitiated.

When the crowd became restless again, Smith moved on to his next topic. He displayed the same pattern taken from Gregorov. The colors and patterns were quite different. Even Jones took an interest. Then, Smith had the machine analyze his own signature, demonstrating from the actual spell through all the intermediate steps to the very end of the analysis. It was interesting in an abstract sort of way.

As Smith began his hard-sell of the product, she began to wonder if the basic theories of the process worked. It sounded to her as if the machine wouldn't catch a lot of things, but what Smith was selling involved a lot of cash savings and the ability to record the techniques used by individual sorcerers. The fact that it wasn't for any of the spells most professionals used was beside the point. The machine produced something you could point to and say it matched. She could see bureaucratic heads nod and take notes. The whole thing was bad. She could see where the damn purring machine opened other doors down the way.

So involved was she in thinking about the process that she missed it when Smith turned back to her, an oily smile on his face. "Ok, Jonesy, it's show time."

"What?"

Smith looked hurt. "You haven't been listening."

"I only listen to worthwhile things." The Texan in the back of the room howled. Jones cracked a small smile at the sound.

"Grab your wand, Jones, and do the spells. You know the routine."

She stared at him, prepared to be stubborn, still wondering if she could take him out given half a chance. Mueller poked her in the shoulder. She looked up briefly and then decided to get it over with. She reached into her pocket and found two wands, not one. Smith didn't understand when she smiled. She felt the surface carefully before withdrawing one. Her own wand was as familiar as her thoughts. The other one felt cold and sluggish. She made certain to pull Wronski's old wand out and, with the resigned air of someone who has done the procedure many, many times began to cast the signature spells.

Wronski's wand gave her a few close calls. It wasn't meant for her. It felt wrong each time she called on it to perform. It did direct the magic. Its sluggishness looked as though she was being sulky about doing the work. It refused to do one spell twice and the third time released a lot more magic than she wanted. It felt weird and wrong. At the end of the sequence, Smith began his patter again. She quit listening early on, knowing that what he was selling was a one-way ticket back to Seattle for her. She tried to remember the city and why she missed it so much. Once they finished stripping her of her power, she could at least look forward to some decent food and seeing her family and Ricco and Connor. Of course, she wouldn't be much use to anyone. She'd seen what was left of her competition after Peterson had finished. Not pretty. She leaned back, expecting the wall and instead found Mueller. His hands settled onto her shoulders and she enjoyed the moment for what it was worth.

Smith tapped at the keyboard for a few seconds and declared that the analysis program had begun. With little enthusiasm, she watched as the machine put up the results from her spells four years ago and then began overlaying the new results. They didn't match. Choking back a scream, she saw where large portions seemed to be shifted to one side and other parts didn't correlate at all. The crowd exploded. Accusations of false representation flew from all corners of the room. Smith stared dumbfounded at the screen. It didn't match. He pecked at his keyboard, looking up after every few strokes. Little, if anything, changed. It still didn't match. Jones started to laugh.

People stormed out of the room. The Texan in the back room waved his enormous hat in the air and hooted. The group from the Caribbean laughed outrageously as they left. The room emptied. Smith sat down by his marvelous machine and seemed unable to speak.

The awful overhead lights dimmed so she could finally see the rest of the room. In the back, Haken stood by the door, his face inscrutable. Baldung and Massys had a large bottle they were pouring drinks from. Werner had the proverbial cat that ate the canary grin as he watched Smith try to make the records match.

She turned around to see Mueller and watched quite amazed as he began to take his jacket off. It was warm in there, but, as far as she could tell, the on-duty Aurors would rather die from the heat than ever take their coats off. She worked on a snide comment as he pulled the coat off. Then, with a dramatic swirl, he popped it over her shoulders.

"Thanks, but it's too warm in here." She fingered the coat as she looked up at Mueller.

The big man smiled down at her. "I'm just following orders."

"Orders?"

Werner looked up from Smith's distress, his eyes flickering from Mueller to Jones and back before he smiled. "Ah, yes. I did say so."

"What?"

"I did say that, should you best the machine, I should dress you in black and…"

Jones' eyes grew huge. "No, don't say it."

"Call you an Auror."