Anomie

Chapter Two: Regulation

To Rue's surprise, Fairfax did not lead them into the street, but instead further down the alley. As they walked, a near-toothless man with an unpleasant smell about him called out gruffly, 'Got change, pretty lady?' Fairfax hustled her past, glaring at the man sitting on the ground, and they continued to walk quickly until they came to a red spray-painted image of a phoenix, its wings spread wide and its head turned to the side with one wide unmoving eye fixed upon them.

Fairfax held his wand up to the eye of the phoenix's eye and said, 'It's our shift.' The eye of the phoenix blinked; then, starting with the brick on which the eye was painted and growing rapidly outward, a hole appeared in the wall of the old building large enough for them to fit through.

Rue looked nervously toward the man in the alley, who was looking toward them intently. 'Fairfax, what about that Muggle?'

'He's a homeless drunk. Who would believe him? He watches me enter every day... watches the others, too. Come on.' Fairfax beckoned toward the entrance.

The room itself was small enough that it felt cramped to Rue even with just Fairfax there with her. On the walls were tall lockers, none of them with locks but all of them with labels. Wyndham Wolcott, Consus Quigley, Evander Edgecomb...

'Here's yours,' Fairfax said, making a tapping noise with his fingernail as he put his hand over the one labelled Rue Moreland. He opened it and took out a long Muggle skirt, a sleeveless shirt, and a pair of shoes to match, setting them down on a bench. 'We need to wear Muggle clothes for the Underground.'

'We're taking the Underground?' she asked, dragging the clothes nearer.

'Part of the way, yes.' He started unbuttoning his robe. 'Now normally you'll have to arrive here earlier so we can be at work by eight o'clock - you can get here on your own now, can't you? You have such a good memory - but I told Ajit we'd be late today since I couldn't pick you up earlier. Business, you know.'

'Hmm,' she murmured. Rue wasn't much interested in Fairfax's business and he knew it; it was probably a phone call to some other time zone for his father's company. The company or corporation or whatever it was did something Fairfax had told her about a thousand times, but Muggle business was one of the things Rue tried to forget about.

Rue was going to ask who Ajit was, as she hadn't heard of an Auror by that name, but her robes dropped to the floor and she was distracted by Fairfax's boyish bug-eyed look. She glanced at him and raised an eyebrow - it was nothing he hadn't seen before, after all - and he turned away, blushing. 'Oh, um, and don't worry about one of the others walking in while you're changing. The phoenix will make them wait if someone's already here. You have to unzip the side first,' said Fairfax, watching as Rue struggled to pull the skirt up over her hips. Fairfax rolled his eyes as her fingers searched for the zipper on the wrong side, and he reached over to tug the zipper down himself. 'Honestly, Rue, your mum's a Muggle!'

'I've never worn Muggle clothes!' she protested. 'Father always had me in robes, even when I was little! And I might ask how you know anything about skirts!'

Fairfax blushed deeper. 'I...er...'

Rue smirked and pulled her top on. Fairfax was still in his boxers. 'You might want to hurry,' she said pertly. 'The tube awaits.' Then, burning with curiosity and unused to having nothing to do while waiting for Fairfax as events always happened the other way around, Rue asked, 'What's he like, Fairfax?'

Fairfax looked up from the zipper of his pants in surprise at her question. She knew by the look he was giving her that she was acting too excited for his liking again, but how could she not be excited when she would be meeting the most famous wizard in England, maybe even in all of Europe or even in the entire world, in less than an hour? Fairfax shook his head and went back to changing. 'I'll tell you when we get there. We aren't allowed to discuss him outside of the building. It's against regulation.'

Rue pouted. 'Where am I supposed to keep my wand? This skirt has no pockets!'

'Just carry it, Rue. The Muggles really won't be looking at us that closely while we're wearing clothes like theirs. We'll be changing again when we get there. Oh,' he said as he tossed her a large plastic shopping bag, 'and put your robes in here.'

They left the room through the same wall they had entered it from, and Fairfax led Rue only a little over a block away to the nearest entrance to the London Underground. Rue had taken the Underground before during basic training, but she'd been in robes then. She had goggled at Muggle children playing electric games and Muggle adults talking into small gadgets in their hands, and they had goggled right back. Now she could stare at them all she liked as long as she looked away before they noticed her; she wasn't conspicuous at all. It was as if she and Fairfax were Muggles themselves! The thought nearly made her giggle out loud.

'You're like a little kid,' said Fairfax as they got off at their stop. 'You were staring at the Muggles like they were fish in a bowl.'

'Was not,' Rue replied petulantly.

Fairfax inclined his head. 'We're going that way.'

'Are we almost there? And why couldn't we just Apparate?' she asked as they walked through the throng.

'We can't risk being followed. That's why we only Apparate as far as the changing room and then take the Underground to get lost in the crowds. We don't have to worry so much about that now, but we still need to move away from the Muggles to Apparate.'

'Have you ever been followed before?' she asked.

'Not personally, but others have. It's mostly the reporters who try it, not anyone dangerous, at least not for years, and they're easy to spot. It's just a precaution. I'll admit that I've taken a chance and skipped the Underground when I'm running late, but I really shouldn't have told you that because now you'll do it that way all the time.' She smiled innocently and he glared. 'I'm serious, Rue; you can't do it regularly. If you get caught you'll get in serious trouble.'

Rue sighed. 'Fine, fine, I'll take the long way.' Under her breath, she added, 'Sometimes.'

It took at least ten minutes to walk to the Apparition point. It was inside a grungy bathroom in a dirty old Muggle building. 'Right, here we go.' He grabbed onto Rue's shoulder and Apparated.

Rue looked around in confusion. They appeared to be standing behind a large trash bin in yet another dank, smelly alley. 'For Merlin's sake, Fairfax, where are we now?'

'We're here.'

She closed her eyes in exasperation. 'You're telling me that You-Know-Who is imprisoned in a trash bin?'

Fairfax thumbed toward a metal door on his left that was attached to a tall building with broken windows. 'No, he's imprisoned here. What?' he asked jokingly upon registering her wide-eyed expression. 'Not quite what you expected?' Fairfax tapped his wand on the door. 'Only a Senior Guard can open the door, by the way - from the outside or from the inside. Lucky for us, I am one, so we won't have to ring the doorbell. It's here if you need it.' He indicated a small white button.

'You-Know-Who has a doorbell?' said Rue, deadpanning.

Fairfax opened the door. 'No, we have a doorbell. It's not as though he gets to decide who comes and goes.'

They entered a metal stairwell and walked only a few steps to another door. 'We can talk in the porter's office,' said Fairfax.

'There's a porter's office?'

Fairfax smiled and opened the door into a reception area; wicker chairs without cushions stood atop cheap and filthy rugs on either side of a very large set of thick wooden doors. Light streamed into the room, highlighting the dust in the air. 'Muggles only see an abandoned building from the outside,' said Fairfax.

Rue's eyes watered uncomfortably as she cringed away from the glaring brightness in the windows. 'I must be losing my magic then.'

He chuckled. 'It's an old Muggle apartment building that the Ministry bought out. We don't keep up much with the cleaning on this floor; he never comes down this far anyway. He'd never be allowed this close to a door. Actually, the front one doesn't open, but it's the principle of the thing.'

The porter's office was much neater though just as spartan with only an old but clean desk and two wooden chairs scrunched between the walls. Fairfax immediately took the chair behind the desk, leaving Rue with the one in front of it.

'So what should I know?' she asked eagerly as she leaned over the desk.

'There are rules,' said Fairfax. 'I've done this introduction at least a half dozen times now what with being on the job for eight years, so just let me go through my spiel and don't interrupt until I'm finished. I'll probably answer most of your questions along the way.'

Rue waited, her lips pressed tightly together.

'There are a few things you need to know before starting the job and a few more things you need to know that you'll pick up along the way. When we go upstairs, you will be meeting one of the most feared wizards to ever draw breath. The catch is that he is, as you already know, a Muggle now -'

'Squib,' Rue corrected.

Fairfax made an impatient noise. 'Regardless of the technical definition, he's a Muggle for all intents and purposes. But the biggest mistake you could possibly make would be to underestimate him because he doesn't have magical powers any longer. He is still extremely dangerous by any standards. With or without a wand, he is a homicidal sociopath. He has killed before and has no regrets whatsoever about it. Are we clear?' Rue nodded. 'Good. That means you must keep your wand with you at all times, and by that I mean we follow the Two Second Rule stringently, as well as the First Grab Rule. Remember, he may not be a wizard, but you're not a witch either without a wand; if he manages to separate you from your wand, you will be on equal footing with a man who has no compunction against murdering you where you stand. Clear?'

Rue nodded again. She'd had trouble with the Two Second Rule during Auror training, but it was instinct to her now. All it meant was that she could keep her wand wherever she liked so long as she could aim it at any target in the room within two seconds. As for the First Grab Rule, it was pretty cut and dry: make sure you can reach your wand before your opponent. She didn't approve of it being a rule at all since it seemed like little more than common sense to her.

'We also have another rule here, the Two Meter Rule, meaning you have to stay at least two meters away from him at all times, but no one really follows that one unless they're alone with him.' He raised his hand to silence her before she could speak. 'No, I have no intention of leaving you alone with him any time soon. Don't worry. We usually have at least two guards out of four with him physically at any given time while the others perform any necessary building or ward maintenance, laundry, cooking -'

'We cook for him? But I can't cook!'

'I know, I know, we'll have you do something else. Ajit usually cooks anyway.'

'Can't someone else do his cooking for him?' she went on, talking over top of Fairfax's assurances. Then, having heard that odd name again somewhere in the jumble, she asked, 'And who is Ajit?'

'Rue,' said Fairfax, rubbing his temples. 'Let me finish!'

'Sorry. But cooking was not in the job description!'

'If I may continue, the job doesn't end with just guard duty. This building is nine floors tall and we have to keep it reasonably presentable on all of them. I know it sounds absurd, but the Ministry has mandatory health and safety standards for all buildings it owns, including this one, even if almost none of it is ever used. We're the only ones allowed inside, so we have to do the cleaning. We had a house-elf for the first few years, but after those working standards for house-elves passed the Ministry had to get rid of it because You-Know-Who counted as an "unsafe working condition".

'As you already know, each shift is for twelve hours. We're the Monday to Thursday shift from 8 AM to 8 PM; the night shift led by Quigley and Wolcott will take over from 8 PM through 8 AM, and then we'll take over the next morning, and on and on it goes until Thursday evening, and then it picks up again on Monday when we take over from O'Hare and Hasib on the weekend shift. You'll get the hang of shift-changing as you go along, and I'll be here to walk you through the procedures.

'So we've gone over the rules you need to follow for your own safety, the chores that will be expected of you - no cooking, cross my heart - and the basics of your shifts.' Fairfax counted each off on his fingers. 'All that's left is what you need to know for his safety.'

'For his safety?'

'Right,' Fairfax said, ignoring Rue's cynicism. 'In case it hasn't become obvious by now, no one but us is allowed in the building...generally, anyway.'

'Generally?'

'There are scheduled visitors. You don't have to worry about that. If anyone else tries to enter, an alarm will sound. If the alarm is disarmed...well, there are always at least two of us on his floor. Sound the alarm - standard procedures, you know those - and fight them off. Keep him secure.'

Rue thought sadly about the sort of people who would want to attack him: those who had lost loved ones to that mad crusade. Fairfax must have misinterpreted her expression for fear, for he said kindly, 'Don't worry, Rue. We've had three attacks in nearly a decade, and none of them have been well-organized.

'The final rule, which will apply more frequently than the last, is that you cannot do any harm to him, no matter how much you want to.' Fairfax rolled his eyes. 'Believe me, you'll want to. If he gets cranky, immobilize him, but don't Stun him.'

'Why not?'

Fairfax sighed. 'We've had a policy against Stunning him since before I got on the job. I heard that he took two Stunners at once and nearly had a heart attack. The man's eighty years old, Rue, and he's defenceless. Mind you, he is in very good shape for his age - to be honest, I think he might have faked the heart attack bit, but it's policy not to Stun him anyway.'

'How can anyone fake a heart attack?'

'If anyone could, it'd be him.' Fairfax looked exasperated at the mere thought of him. 'I'm done with the regulations for now; there's only so much a person can absorb at once. Questions?'

Immediately Rue's most pressing question came to mind. 'Why is he living here? I understand why he hasn't been killed; everyone worries that he'll be resurrected with his magical powers intact. And I understand why he's not in Azkaban: he might incite the other prisoners to riot. And I understand why he hasn't been given the Kiss -'

'No one understands it,' interrupted Fairfax. 'Well, Potter has some explanation, but he may as well be speaking Gobbledegook. The Dementors just won't do it. Not a one of them.'

'But even so, why a Muggle apartment building?'

Fairfax shrugged. 'Ask Potter. He chose the venue.'

***

It wasn't eerily quiet or explosively loud, just the feet of two men passing along the grass, with growls, snarls, and jabs interlacing the web of spells they threw at each other. 'Poor ickle Potter. Is this the best you can do? Avada Kedavra!'

Harry dodged the spell; Voldemort was quick on his feet and even quicker with his spells, but Harry was faster. He spared a brief thought for Dudley, which mostly went Dudley since there wasn't time for more than that. Then Harry shot off another spell, non-verbal, which Voldemort easily countered.

Not yet, Harry thought. His right upper arm was in agony, having been grazed early on in the battle by a spell Harry hadn't recognized. Spells in that category were few and far between, but trust Voldemort to know something obscure that Harry hadn't had a counter ready for. Voldemort had tried that same spell a few times after, but it was too slow to catch Harry now that he was prepared for it.

But Harry was bound to trip up some time under the barrage of curses Voldemort was casting at him, and they both knew it. What Voldemort didn't know was that Harry was simply buying time. Segnipedis, Harry thought, concentrating hard on the spell. An advantage of the Slowing Spell was that it appeared as a wide-ranging mist instead of a direct beam of light from one's wand, making it harder to dodge. A disadvantage was that it was easy to block, and Voldemort rapidly took advantage of that fact. Idiot! Harry cursed at himself. That spell was too juvenile for Harry to have reasonably expected Voldemort to get caught by it; he'd learned it from Kingsley during his first month of training.

Not yet. Harry blocked Voldemort's latest spell with pride; the Dark Lord had underestimated him again. 'Wearing down already, old man?' Harry sniped. 'I could go on all day.' But he wouldn't need to if Ron and Hermione got their job done soon. Harry couldn't make his move until they did, but nor could he fight to exhaustion before then.

Voldemort's knee was already giving the Dark Lord some trouble. Harry had gotten him there hard enough to bring him to one knee as his leg collapsed under him. But then Voldemort had guarded himself too well while recovering for Harry to capitalize. It would have been the perfect time for Harry's finishing move, if only Ron and Hermione had given the signal then. Surely Voldemort must have wondered why Harry hadn't cast something serious during such an opening - like, say, the Killing Curse...

Harry circled his opponent in the same way that his opponent circled him. If he could keep going for that knee, if he could keep injuring it and slowing Voldemort down, then he would have a fighting chance.

Voldemort smiled. It was ugly. 'Harry,' the Dark Lord said softly, 'just die.' A spell came Harry's way.

Not yet.

Harry opened his eyes without any rush; he had managed to push back the memories seconds before. Or, more accurately, he had let the memories fall away. It wasn't hard to stop remembering lately; in fact, it was harder to remember than to forget. It had all happened a long time ago, after all, and the memories had lost their urgency and colour. Harry wasn't even sure if he recalled all the facts properly anymore. That didn't matter; Harry could always check his memories against the transcript of his interrogation at the Ministry if he wanted to be accurate. He didn't much care to.

Harry sighed as he reclined on the couch, staring up at the ceiling fan, which made a rhythmic clicking noise with every rotation. He kept telling himself he was going to fix that, but he never got around to lifting his wand.

There weren't any chores he wanted to do. The Leaky Cauldron would be open now, but Harry hated drinking alone, and none of his teammates wanted to go drinking with him until evening; he had already called them all up through the Floo. I may as well do the shopping. There's nothing else to do.

But Harry didn't move at all. Shopping was so boring. Ginny usually did the shopping, anyway. He'd only muck it up. He sighed again; there wasn't anything interesting for Harry to do on a weekday morning with practice cancelled. He could go browse in Diagon Alley, but he didn't much care to see Quidditch fans glaring at him as he walked around the shops. Maybe after his next match those glares would turn to smiles again. Not yet.