The Song of the Trees

Chapter Thirteen: The Cat and the Spy

The next morning found Harry sitting at his desk, his legs crammed into the very narrow space bordered with two columns of heavy drawers. His gestures were slow and clumsy; his brain clogged by the last shreds of images and dreams it had produced all night under the influence of the Dream-Injector. Keeping the point of his quill on the parchment required an actual effort of concentration. Twice he considered giving up and going back to bed in order to wait for the effects of the Injector to subside, but both times he rejected the idea. He knew fully well that, should he be lying on a bed with only the cracked paint of the ceiling to distract him, he would automatically start mulling over a certain apricot-smelling woman -- and he had no intention to give his tired brain any opportunity to wander into that particular area. Especially, since he suspected that his thoughts towards Daphne Greengrass, if he was to draw conclusions from the extremely vivid dreams he had had all night, would turn out to be all but professional.

"I really didn't need that," he muttered thickly, running a weary hand through his hair. "Okay... Focus. Robards. Yeah."

Harry lowered the quill again to the report he was writing for Robards. It was important to allay the Head Auror's suspicions, if he had any. Otherwise Harry might well see his mission coming to an end in a quite abrupt and unpleasant manner: Robards' words about the Third Kind had been uncommonly harsh, even by the short-tempered Auror's standards.

Making this report interesting and plausible, all the while leaving out the small, most significant details, in such a way that Robards would know the main facts without being able to piece together the jigsaw, was a delicate and tedious task. Harry weighed every word, reread each sentence two or three times, took a thousand precautions before he dared add the simplest phrase. As his mind gradually became clearer, he was able to work faster and concentrate entirely on the task at hand.

A pallid light was already creeping into his room through the frost-covered window when he finished his report. He rolled it into a tight scroll and slipped it into a pocket. Pushing his chair back, he got up, mechanically smoothing his rumpled clothes as he did so, and threaded his way between the chair, desk and bed that cluttered his small room. It was a relief to step out into the corridor, no matter how narrow it was: at least he was no longer knocking his legs on a piece of furniture every two seconds.

Harry reached the hallway and proceeded to cross it, with the intention of getting out of the house and Apparating to a safe location -- a place where he would be able to send his report to Robards, through the safe connection the Head Auror had had established between Harry and him. He was already extending a hand to grab the doorknob when there was a sudden slamming noise right behind him: the door that led into the kitchen had just been forcefully pulled open.

"What are you doing here?" an indignant Daphne vociferated from the doorway. Harry, who had immediately whirled around, wand in his hand, relaxed a bit and lowered his arm. However, he did not put his wand away -- for Daphne looked as if she was about to hurl herself at him, and if he was to guess from her expression, her intentions were all but peaceful.

"What?" he said defensively. "I can't come and go as I please?"

"It's almost eight!" Daphne replied through gritted teeth. She was already dressed in another set of casual, worn-out robes that were tightened at the waist by a thick leather belt; her hair was tied back in a loose ponytail and her hand clutched a large mug of steaming liquid. "And the kids are usually dropped here at eight! I asked you to stay out of the way; do you think the mothers won't freak out when they see the Boy-Who-Bloody-Lived standing in my hallway?"

"All right, all right," Harry hastily said, holding a hand up to interrupt her. "I got it. I'll just step outside and Disapparate, okay?"

Just as he finished his sentence, someone rang at the front door.

Daphne sprang forward with a quickness of reflexes that took Harry by surprise; throwing her cup behind her, through the still open door, she seized him by the arm -- thankfully she was only touching his sleeve -- and pulled him away from the threshold. Harry heard the cup crashing on the floor of the kitchen in a loud tinkling of broken china, but Daphne didn't even blink.

"Up there!" she hissed, pushing him up the staircase with all her might -- which wasn't much. "No time to go back to your bedroom now, she'd see you in the corridor -- I'm coming, I'm coming!" she yelled over her shoulder as the bell rang a second time.

She hurtled down the stairs again and crossed the hallway at a run, pausing for one second at the door to turn back to Harry and say, "Find a room to hide in upstairs; and don't move until I come up and tell you to. Got it?"

"Open that door, Greengrass, or she's going to break it down," Harry shot back at her, nodding towards the door where, indeed, the woman could be heard knocking insistently. Daphne cursed under her breath and turned her back on him; he turned away as well and climbed the few remaining steps two at a time.

He had just made it to the top of the stairs when he caught a snappy, slightly nasal female voice answering Daphne's.

"...what happened, Daphne? Did you rely on one of those Muggle alarm-clocks again? That's the best way to oversleep, I thought you would know it! Anyway, I've got no time. Damien has the flu, here's his potion, two spoonfuls before lunch and one at tea. Goodbye sweetheart, Mummy will pick you up tonight as usual. Be nice to Daphne."

"Oh, I'm sure he will be--"

"Don't let him near the other children, Daphne. I'm sure he picked up that flu in this house. You should be more careful..."

Harry rolled his eyes and started walking along the corridor, while the woman's voice faded away into unintelligible mumbles. He opened a door at random and peered inside; the door led into a small bedroom, which had two windows offering a view on the front garden and the main street. This was precisely what he had been looking for.

He silently moved across the room, straining his ears for more sounds coming from downstairs; several shrill-voiced children were talking and laughing, and at least one of them was wailing at the top of their lungs. Harry smirked a little as he thought of Daphne, with her frail, delicate-looking body and her bossy manners, stuck with several overexcited magical children -- one of which was apparently crying for their mother.

Harry reached the window and, crouching so that his eyes were level with the windowsill, very slightly lifted the yellow curtain hanging in front of the glass panes.

His apprehensions were confirmed: several women were still gathered in front of Daphne's front steps, talking animatedly and showing absolutely no intention of leaving any time soon. He would not be able to go that way; even if he used a Disillusionment charm, he would still have to open a window then jump down before Disapparating, which would not fail to give him away.

With an exasperated sigh, Harry straightened up, letting the curtain fall back into place. He thought of finding a window that would open to the back of the house, thus allowing him to get away; or maybe he would be able to sneak into the living room and use the fireplace -- but the kids' presence was a problem. A burst of accidental magic wasn't unlikely when so many magical children were confined in the same location, and it wasn't something Harry wanted to see from up close. He wondered how Daphne was coping with them, and how she fixed the damage they caused. She didn't look all that good at magic.

In fact, it doesn't look as if she uses magic when she can spare it, Harry thought as he took a more attentive look at his surroundings. Indeed, there was an abnormally high number of strictly Muggle artefacts in this room: electrical lamps, an ordinary alarm-clock, sleeping pills instead of the usual bottles of Dreamless Potion and so on. There was even a telephone on the bedside table.

Harry was utterly puzzled: the Greengrasses, he knew, were pure-bloods. Daphne herself had been a Slytherin. And here he was, standing in what obviously was her bedroom, which turned out to look much more like a Squib's room than a witch's. His eyes swept the room as he started to walk, going from one object to another. The mystery surrounding his hostess had thickened even more, and his curiosity was growing accordingly; although he fleetingly wondered if this reluctance to leave Daphne's bedroom had another deeper, less respectable reason. However, thinking he probably would not like the answer, he wisely gave up on trying to go further into the matter.

As he paced, Harry distractedly raised a hand to straighten a framed picture, that hung a little lopsided on the wall covered in a strong-yellow wallpaper. It was one of those habits he still had from living with his Aunt Petunia Dursley for years, and as always, he caught himself just before he touched the picture and irritably lowered his hand again. Just as he was about to turn around, however, something in the picture caught his attention and he stepped closer, curiously staring at the two black-and-white girls who sat, side by side and their arms entwined, on a stone fence.

One of them was obviously Daphne; she looked fourteen or fifteen in this, and although her features and limbs had the awkward proportions typical of most teenagers, the large clear eyes, sharp nose and neatly drawn chin were the same. The girl sitting next to her looked several years older, maybe twenty, and was distinctly less pretty; but there was something in the line of her jaw and in her high forehead that convinced Harry she was Daphne's sister.

Harry suddenly frowned and peered more closely at the unknown girl. She looked familiar. He was certain he had seen her somewhere else... although he was completely incapable of recalling where and when. She was too old for him to remember her from Hogwarts... so where...?

"The kids are asleep."

Harry hurriedly stepped away from the wall, feeling a bit as if he had been caught leafing through someone's personal diary. Daphne was standing in the doorway, and although barely twenty minutes had passed since the first child had been dropped at her house, she was already as dishevelled as if she had been fighting with a gang of wild cats. Oddly enough, she didn't seem surprised or angered to find Harry in her bedroom. Maybe the children had drained her so much she simply couldn't muster the energy for getting angry again.

"Already?" Harry mechanically said, because he didn't know what to say. Then the strangeness of what she had just said struck him, and he went on, "How did you manage to put them to bed so soon? They've barely just arrived... And they certainly didn't sound tired ten minutes ago."

"My little secret," she replied with the shadow of a smile. "That's very useful whenever I need to do something else... I might not be as good a witch as you are," she added, her voice now tinged with defiance, "but I have a few tricks up my sleeve."

"Yeah, I can see you don't use much conventional magic," Harry distractedly said. He buried his hands in his pockets and leant against the wall, looking at Daphne from the corner of his eye. In daylight she made him think, for some reason, of a young cat: supple and graceful, yet almost ferocious at times, with her grey-green eyes and pointed, delicate features, there was something undeniably feline about her. He had the sudden mental image of her purring on his lap as he scratched behind her ears, and he had to bite the inside of his cheeks to refrain from smiling.

"What makes you say that?"

She sounded quite vexed, and her mouth twisted in a sort of pout that only caused Harry's smile to widen, despite his best efforts.

"On your bedside table only, there's a Muggle alarm-clock, an electric lamp, a telephone and a box of sleeping pills," he pointed out in an amused voice.

"Lord, do you Aurors always spot the slightest unusual thing in any place you find yourself?" she muttered with a curious mixture of annoyance and admiration.

Harry gave a non-committal shrug. "What can I say? I'm conditioned by my job."

Daphne snorted as she finally left the doorway and walked into the room, passing by Harry to go straight to her desk where she picked up a hand-mirror and a hairbrush. Holding the cracked, spotted mirror at arm's length, her eyes narrowed in concentration, she used the hairbrush with her right hand, always repeating the same wide sweeping motion that made her hair crackle with electricity. Harry was once again reminded of the thick, shiny fur of a cat; her hair wasn't white-blonde: it was of a warm, quite rare golden colour, devoid of the reddish gleams that usually go with such shades of blonde.

"I can just picture you," Daphne said as she vigorously brushed her tangled, messy hair. "Years from now, when you're retired, still picking up the dodgy details every time you find yourself somewhere unknown. Or suspecting everyone, like that Moody character. Ten to one you'll go mad."

"Assuming I live to see the age of retirement," Harry pointed out offhandedly. "Most likely I'll end up getting killed during a mission."

He wasn't paying much attention to the conversation; his eyes were following the hypnotic moves of Daphne's hand over her hair, and he had involuntarily straightened up and taken a few steps toward her.

"Optimistic," she commented without turning round to look at him. "I would've thought that after surviving all these years and succeeding in killing You-Know-Wh--"

Her eyes, reflected in the mirror, widened in surprise as she abruptly stopped talking, and her hand froze in her hair. Harry's face appeared right next to her in her hand-mirror.

She wheeled about to find him standing quite close behind her, and instinctively took a hurried step backward -- only to find her way blocked by her desk. Harry outstretched a hand, calm and purposeful, toward the mirror she was still holding in her left hand, which now hung limply at her side.

"Here," he said in an even voice. "Let me."

His fingers closed around her hand. He was prepared now for the electric wave that coursed through him at the contact of their skins, and he had to resist the urge to close his eyes and fully enjoy the brutal, almost staggering assault of sensations that overtook him. He raised her hand so that the mirror was held upright once more, then drew his wand from his pocket with his left hand and tapped the cracked surface once. It mended before their eyes, cracks and damp spots fading into nothingness as the mirror shone again with the brightness of brand new objects.

"There you go," Harry murmured; and he released her hand.

Then he felt it again, as he had dreaded he would, the cold, animal fear chilling his blood; the same unreasoned fear he knew to be inspired by Daphne herself, although he had no idea how or why. He took a step backward, his heart starting to race as he fought the desire to run away from her as fast as his legs could carry him. Yet fear could be controlled, he reasoned. Harry had been expected it and he stifled it as best as he could, forcing himself to stare at the woman standing before him -- to see her as she really was: a frail, pretty young woman whom he had beaten once already, whom he could beat again should the need arise.

He was surprised to see how easy it was. The ominous, rotten aura Daphne seemed to be exuding dissolved in a few seconds, only leaving in the back of Harry's mind an unpleasant sensation of damp void. He took a deep, soothing breath and grinned at a very dazzled-looking Daphne with renewed confidence. She blinked and gave an embarrassed laugh, averting her eyes as she put down the brush and mirror with shaky hands.

"Well, er, thanks for that," she said at last, her voice slightly higher-pitched than usual.

"Anytime."

She nodded and cleared her voice, leaning against her desk as though she wanted to ensure that she would be supported in case Harry planned to assail her.

"So," she resumed, having apparently gathered a little of her former confidence. "The kids won't wake up before at least an hour and a half. You might leave now, if you still want to."

Something in her tone piqued Harry's curiosity.

"'If I still want to'? Why, can you think of something that would make me want to stay instead?"

Those words, which Harry had spoken quite innocently, were barely out of his mouth when he realised how they could be interpreted; and sure enough Daphne raised an eyebrow at him, her cheeks colouring a little while a somewhat mischievous smile crossed her face.

"Well, what I have in mind might disappoint you," she said, her eyes sparkling with humour, "but it is worth staying for."

Several emotions and half-formed thoughts swirled in Harry's mind, one chasing the last in a wild ballet -- slight embarrassment, annoyance at slipping up, the urge to protest that he had not meant anything of the sort, apprehension at feeling the situation slip more and more out of his control, his natural curiosity, a guilty longing to keep the conversation going in the same completely unprofessional direction, and a vague, extremely vague desire, more guilty still, to just take that step which would bring his body in contact with hers and trap her against her desk--

He blinked. Damnit, the previous night's dreams had a lingering influence on the direction of his thoughts.

Daphne was frowning as she examined his face, as though trying to read his mind through the confused expression he was probably wearing. Harry blinked again and looked away from her.

"I'm not exactly supposed to hang around, Greengrass," he said in a slightly hoarse voice. He coughed loudly before going on. "Actually I should be going now."

To his relief she took the bait and quickly said, a note of urgency in her voice, "Oh no, you have to hear me out, it's -- it's about -- what we talked about last night."

"Really?" Harry said in a tone he was careful to make sceptical. "We talked about a lot of things last night, Greengrass."

"The... the language."

Harry's heart missed a beat, then started racing again immediately as his breathing quickened with excitement.

"The language?" he repeated slowly. "The one you heard me speak in my sleep?"

She nodded. Her stiff stance gave away her state of extreme tension, and Harry caught a glimpse of her white teeth as she started nibbling on her lower lip. She averted her eyes as if his intense gaze was burning her, and took a deep, shuddering breath.

"I can show you," she said at last, with the expression of someone finally taking the plunge. "The words I know. I'm going to tell them to you, and you can tell me what it is."

She ventured a hopeful glance at his face. Harry was peering curiously down at her, internally weighing the pros and cons: he really, really wanted to hear more about the "language" she had been talking about; but did he want it enough to tell her about the Forest?

Yes, he decided almost immediately. He didn't need to tell her every single detail, and besides, he doubted she would want to spread the knowledge around. That piece of information would be safe with her.

"All right. You have a deal."

Daphne became suddenly much more businesslike. She asked him to sit on her bed, for obscure reasons that Harry wasn't sure were clear to herself, and stood before him with her hands behind her back, looking remarkably like a schoolgirl about to recite a poem; Harry stared at her in confusion as she closed her eyes and took slow, deep breaths, her face taking on an expression that looked oddly alien on her. She looked like a different person, all of sudden.

Then her lips parted, very slightly, and a strange sound came out of them; it called to mind a soft hooting, a rustle of leaves and long, profound sighs. It was a sound Harry didn't believe could come out of a human mouth. After two seconds though, he stopped trying to identify it and just revelled in how wonderfully soothing and familiar this language sounded. He could almost catch words -- he knew she was talking of silence, of starry nights and of the wind in the trees, although he had no idea what gave him such certainty. It was like hearing again his mother tongue after years spent in a foreign country, to the point where he had almost forgotten it.

He shut his eyes and let Daphne's voice submerge him like a powerful, warm wave, and there was nothing else in the world that mattered, nothing that was worth him interrupting her or even opening his eyes.

***

Harry felt good. Much better than he had felt in years, in fact. He was very comfortable, lying on his stomach on a soft bed, his arms folded under the pillow that supported his head. He kept his eyes closed, wanting to linger a little longer in that blurry, ethereal moment between sleep and awakening.

Wait a second -- sleep?

Harry's eyes shot open, and he had a moment of panic when he failed to see anything other than a colourful blur. Someone had taken off his glasses.

Sitting bolt upright, he felt a blanket slide off his shoulders and fall in a heap at his waist; he completely pushed it away and started groping feverishly for his belt holster. He had been half-expecting to find himself unarmed, and couldn't hold back a sigh of relief as his fingers found the familiar wooden wand, safely hanging from his waist in the thin leather case. He drew it at once.

"Accio glasses!"

Like so many times, he only managed to catch his glasses at the very last second, right before they would hit him on the nose. He put them on and blinked once or twice as Daphne's yellow bedroom came into focus. Everything was as he had last seen it, when he had been sitting on the bed and listening to Daphne's singing, except that there was no Daphne in sight. Another difference was that the sky, which he could catch a glimpse of through the pale curtains, was of a dark blue that turned to pink on the horizon -- it was nightfall.

He had slept through the entire day.

Harry took off his glasses again for a second as he rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand. He was as fully awake as he had ever been in all those sleepless years, yet there was something different. He felt -- so wonderfully refreshed. Before, there had always been this lingering feeling of complete exhaustion, this impression that he was drawing his strength from a kind of unhealthy fever rather than from normal energy. From there came his hatred at wasting his time, his lack of enthusiasm for any activity that wasn't absolutely necessary, and also his lack of interest for anything that wasn't a life-threatening situation in general.

He got off the bed, examining closely the rumpled sheets and pillow. Not only had he actually slept, something that hadn't happened to him in over three years, he had also instinctively turned on his stomach in his sleep and hugged the pillow to his face. This was an old sleeping habit of his; however, when he was under the influence of the Dream-Injector, he would always stay flat on his back and never move a muscle. But he hadn't had the slightest dream. He had slept like a baby for a solid ten hours, according to the alarm-clock sitting on Daphne's bedside table.

Harry outstretched one hand, smoothing in wonder the sheets of the bed he had slept on. Where was he, again, right before he had fallen asleep? He had been sitting on this bed... Listening to Daphne... Yes, that was it: the song, Daphne's song, the otherworldly tune she had been singing, and which had sounded so familiar... His eyes had closed and he had easily slipped into a deep slumber...

Someone softly knocked on the door. Harry straightened up at once and stepped away from the bed, feeling yet again as if he was being caught doing something he should not. As he struggled to think of something to do, something to say, the door handle turned with a soft creaking sound and the door was pushed open.

"Oh, you're awake," Daphne said. She stepped inside and closed the door behind her; Harry noted she was wearing a satisfied kind of smirk, and he felt at once a stab of irritation. He hated it when people acted as though they knew something he didn't.

"How perceptive of you," he shortly retorted.

"I would've woken you up sooner," she went on with the same little mocking grin, "but you were sleeping so soundly... Didn't you say you were quite busy, today?"

Harry had to fight back an exasperated sigh; in vexation he brusquely turned his back on her and pretended to search for something in his pockets, in order to give the impression of composure.

"Of course I do know that this song tends to make the listener sleepy," Daphne continued behind him, and the smirk was becoming audible in her voice. Harry's annoyance grew to the point where he would have been glad to hit her with a good strong Silencing Charm. "But I usually use it on children. Who would have thought that the great Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, the Chosen One, the mighty Auror would--"

"Okay, enough of that, Greengrass," Harry barked at her. He had dug up in an internal pocket a scroll of parchment that he proceeded to unroll, without paying much attention to what he was doing. "And I'm not a boy."

He regretted at once letting that remark escape him as Daphne burst out laughing.

"Merlin, Potter, you sound like one of the brats I'm looking after," she giggled.

"At least I -- fuck!" Harry blurted out as he glanced down at the parchment he had found in his pocket. It was his report to Robards. "I should've sent that hours ago -- Greengrass, if you'll excuse me--"

Harry stuffed the report back into his pocket and ran past a taken aback Daphne to the door of the room. He heard her calling after him but didn't slow down, turning instead in the corridor and rushing into the staircase, taking two steps at a time. He jumped down the four last steps and landed, supple as a cat, on the carpet of the hallway. The floor was, once again, littered with toys; and excited childish voices were coming from a room on the right side of the hallway.

"Potter!" Daphne hissed, catching up with him as he hesitated for a second and laying a hand on his arm. "The kids--"

"I'm stepping out and Disapparating," Harry ground out. "The bloody kids won't even get a glimpse at me. Shouldn't you be watching them, anyway?"

He shook off the hand she had clenched around his elbow and quickly walked across the hallway, Daphne on his heels; he could hear her cursing under her breath as he opened the door as silently as possible and sneaked out in the clear, pastel-coloured twilight. The children gathered in the living room did not seem to be disturbed.

"Are you going to explain what happened?" Daphne called after him; she practically had to run to keep up with his long strides as they both crossed her front garden. "You promised, Potter. Did you recognise the language? And why did you even sleep for over ten hours when I sang that ridiculous little song?"

"Merlin's balls, Greengrass," Harry burst out. "Don't you have something else to do than follow me around? Like, I don't know, doing your job?"

"Oh, that!" Daphne waved vaguely towards her house, looking supremely unconcerned. "They can survive for half an hour without me, I think."

Harry rolled his eyes. "If I ever have kids," he muttered through gritted teeth, "remind me never to leave them in your care."

"Key word: if," Daphne scathingly replied. "You still have to find a woman willing to get in your bed and stupid enough not to use contraceptives -- and look at me when I'm talking to you!"

She grabbed his wrist again in an attempt to force him to wheel about. Harry abruptly halted, digging his heels in the ground, and instead of turning around he twisted the hand she was holding so that his fingers wrapped around her own clothed wrist in a deathly grip. She let out a little scream as he forcefully pulled on her arm, without looking at her, thus managing to drag her around until she stood -- or rather, staggered -- in front of him.

"You want to tell me something?" he said, looking down into her startled face. "Do it now, please. I don't have time for a great long conversation, I have work to do. Me falling asleep wasn't exactly planned, otherwise believe me I would've had more time for you."

He stopped speaking, and although the light was scarce he thought he caught a flicker of fear crossing her face. Even though her authoritative manners had annoyed him more than once since the morning already, he had never meant to scare her, and he felt a little guilty as he released her. She mechanically brought a hand to her wrist, massaging it as she kept her eyes on him.

"We're special, Potter, aren't we?" she said in a surprisingly calm voice.

Harry raised his eyebrows at her, having not expected that question at all. "Yes, we are," he slowly answered. "You've already asked me yesterday."

"Then why are you keeping me in the dark?" she brusquely shot at him. "It's... It's us, against the rest of the world, don't you see? We need to stay close to one another if we want to survive among them all! It's the first time I've ever met someone like you. Someone like me. Please don't push me out. Don't you see we need each other?"

There now was a note of desperation in her voice as she went on, taking a tentative step closer to him so that their faces were inches apart. "I want to help. I want to be useful. And goddamnit, Harry, I want to know what the bloody hell is going on. I'm going crazy."

Harry was moved in spite of himself by Daphne's plea. Raising both hands, he took her by the shoulders and gently squeezed, awkwardly trying to bring her some comfort.

"Daphne," he started, very aware that he had never called her by her first name before. She was looking at him wide-eyed, wearing once more that slightly unnerving expression of avidity, hanging upon his every word. He opened his mouth to say more, to reassure her, to tell her he would fulfil his promise to her in time -- but then he caught a sudden, out-of-place movement from the corner of his eye.

At this time they were still in Daphne's garden, a square lawn of unkempt grass with a few shrubs growing before the windows of the house; circling the garden was a white, neatly kept fence, inside of which no one could Apparate or Disapparate. Beyond the fence, on a small strip of dirt lining the pavement, was a thick hedge of evergreens. It was one of those bushes that Harry had seen shifting -- yet the air of the December night was completely still. Harry tensed, his stomach clenching with sudden apprehension.

"This, this will sound very strange," he hurriedly went on, saying the first words that came to his mind as he strained his ears to catch any noise coming from the bush, "but although I know we, ah, haven't known each other for long... I mean, a day and a half isn't long, right, and, huh, we never used to be close. But--"

Daphne's expression had changed from eagerness to complete confusion. He squeezed her shoulders a little tighter to try and make her understand something abnormal was going on, but he only managed to make her furrow her brow and stare at him as if he was out of his mind. As long as she shuts up.

"...but, well, it's hard to be living in the same house as you... always seeing you, getting to know you and everything... It's hard to, ah, be living all this and... be expected to forget you once I go away," Harry rambled on. He kept an eye on the evergreen he had seen moving a few seconds earlier; and soon, before his eyes, a branch bent at an unnatural angle, as if pushed down by an invisible hand, and he thought he heard a barely audible whisper -- like an incantation. Then, invisible to anyone who wasn't paying attention, tiny twigs disentangled themselves from the branches every single shrub lining the white fence and flew through the air, all of them heading for the bush Harry had first spotted.

"...And after what happened last night, how could I ever forget you?" Harry said, now speaking a little faster as he tensed more and more.

"Harry," Daphne said, her tone suggesting she didn't know whether to be impatient at his raving or completely puzzled.

"And this is why I need to ask you--" Harry interrupted, speaking over her; he slightly shifted her, so as to clear his path to the bush where he suspected whoever had Summoned all the little twigs was hiding. The branches slightly moved again, as if the invisible onlooker had just stood up and was getting ready to leave. "--to GET DOWN!" Harry finished, and he pushed her so violently that she stumbled and fell to the floor with a scream of surprise and pain.

Without taking the time to check if she was all right, Harry ran to the fence, grabbing it with one hand to jump over it; he heard a startled exclamation coming from the bush he had been surveying, and without thinking he blindly lunged forward. His outstretched fingers closed upon an invisible arm and he held on tightly, his other hand reaching for his wand holster. But next second the arm he was gripping seemed to twist from under his fingers and out of his grasp; he understood in a fraction of a second what was about to happen, and bracing himself for the shock, he grabbed the arm with both hands and squeezed with all his might.

The Side-Along Apparition expelled all the air from his lungs, the unnatural pressure on his chest and limbs growing to an almost unbearable level. Harry had not Apparated in the regular way in months, preferring to use the wind, and for a second he thought he had splinched himself. However he did not have the time to check if his body was still whole and unharmed: the oppressive darkness lifted to be replaced by the shady insides of a tiny, low-ceilinged room without windows, and a fraction of a second later he received in his right side a violent blow that almost caused him to let go.

With a grunt, Harry straightened up, groping at his invisible opponent with the hand that wasn't busy squeezing their arm. He soon managed to tear the invisibility cloak off the stranger's body, revealing a thin, moustached, rat-like little man, which he knew to be an Unspeakable.

An Unspeakable who was now pointing a wand at him.

"Stupefy!" the man cried out. Harry ducked out of the way, letting the red beam fly several inches above his head; he had kept a strong grip on the man's left arm, and in moving he viciously twisted it. The Unspeakable screamed in pain but almost immediately sent another Stunner. The second spell missed Harry's head by the quarter of an inch; he smelt burnt hair, and heard something break and clatter loudly to the stone floor behind him -- something like a bookshelf.

Harry wrung the man's arm further still behind his back, sweeping his legs from under him with a well-placed kick that brought him down to his knees. Harry dug one of his own knees into the Unspeakable's back, forcibly keeping him on the floor, and promptly seized the man's right wrist with his free hand. He twisted it in one brutal, forceful gesture, and as the spy cried out in pain again, his fingers loosened and the wand he was holding dropped to the floor.

"Much better," Harry panted. "Can't trust an Unspeakable with a wand. Where the hell are we?"

The spy went very still at these words, probably startled that Harry had recognised him so easily. Harry, who had by now caught his breath, gathered both of his opponent's skinny wrists in one hand and started to feel around his waist for his own wand. The struggle had entangled his robes and he had difficulty accessing to his holster.

"It's you I'm talking to," Harry insisted, driving his knee a little deeper into the Unspeakable's back as he still fumbled with his own robes. "Where. Are. We?"

Again, the Unspeakable did not answer. It was at this moment, however, that Harry's robes caught fire.

With a startled yell, he instinctively released the Unspeakable and jumped backwards, his hands reaching up to his collar and hurriedly ripping his flaming robes off his body. The Unspeakable had fallen on all fours and was now scrambling to where his own wand lay on the stone tiles. Straightening, he hurriedly pointed the wand at a black line painted on the floor between him and Harry.

"Oh no you won't--" Harry furiously exclaimed as he finally managed to throw off of him the burning shreds of his robes. His right hand finally found his holster, still attached to the blackened leather belt, and in the blink of an eye he pulled his wand out.

"Vitraparlor!" the man squeaked, just as Harry shouted, "Incarcerous!"

Thick ropes shot out of Harry's wand, heading straight for the mousy man who looked, for a second, extremely frightened; but then they seemed to hit an invisible wall and bounced, forcing Harry to destroy them with one hasty incantation as they were hurled back at him.

"Dieu merci," the Unspeakable sighed, an expression of huge relief washing over his pointed face. He did not spare Harry a glance as he shoved his wand back into his pocket, then drew from inside his robes a small pouch hanging from his neck; from it he pulled out a handful of what looked like little twigs. Harry, who had been disconcerted for a second by the spy's actions, took a few tentative steps towards him; but he soon was stopped by the invisible wall that had sprung into existence between him and the mousy spy.

"What the hell--" Harry muttered, feeling the wall with his hands. It seemed much harder, much more powerful than any Shielding Charm he had ever seen. His eyes travelled around the room, and he noticed that the black line on the floor was continuing on the walls and ceiling, forming a frame for the magical wall.

Clearly the Unspeakable had not created the wall, but merely activated an already existing spell. Its black frame looked brand new; it would be near-impossible to break.

"Number one... right..."

The Unspeakable's mumbles caught Harry's attention again. The spy was apparently sorting the little twigs into several heaps; those were without doubt the twigs Harry had seen him Summon earlier. Actually they weren't twigs, as Harry suddenly realised: they were thin, hollow wooden tubes; the Unspeakable opened one with his wand and Harry was horrified to hear his own voice coming from it.

"...me falling asleep wasn't exactly planned..."

"What the bloody hell is that?" Harry burst out, furiously hammering the invisible wall with his fist. "How long have you been recording all this?" he asked with a sudden pang of apprehension.

"Two days," the Unspeakable replied offhandedly, without averting his eyes from the heaps of twigs.

The next question died on Harry's lips at the sound of the spy's voice. There was a touch of an accent in this voice, an accent Harry had heard before, coming from another mouth.

"Martin," Harry hissed through clenched teeth.

He detached himself from the wall and tried Disapparating -- he knew where Martin was, he would be able to find him if he managed to get into the Department of Mysteries -- but found out, with a jolt of panic, that anti-Apparition wards had snapped shut the moment he and the Unspeakable had arrived in the small room. He ran back to the wall and pressed himself against it again, willing to feel it waver under his weight, under his willpower -- in vain.

Panic then turned into fury. The hands he had pressed flat against the invisible wall curled into fists, and it required all his self-control to refrain from thumping wildly against the wall and screaming with rage. Standing there, powerless, while an Unspeakable was calmly sorting out in front of him the recordings of his comings and goings, was simply unbearable.

"You can't go through," the French Unspeakable said as he reached into his pouch again; he sounded almost apologetic, something that did not allay Harry's anger in the slightest. The Unspeakable pulled out of the pouch a fistful of glistening Floo powder, which he gathered into a small heap on the stone floor.

He's building a secure Floo connection, Harry thought, dread mingling with his anger. A connection exactly like the one Robards had had built between Harry and him, in fact, so that they could safely communicate.

The Unspeakable finished shaping his little heap of powder and straightened up, turning to Harry again.

"Well, I have to say I regret meeting you in such circumstances, Mr. Potter. I greatly admire you for your past feats. However, unfortunately, I have my orders."

He glanced down at the mound of Floo powder and the little heap of wooden recordings standing next to it. "After I've finished sending the recordings, I will have to erase your memory," he finished softly. "Memory charms are my specialty; everything will go smoothly, don't worry."

"Oh, that's how it works, then," Harry roared, unable to restrain himself any further. "I get my memory erased, I wake up at Daphne's, and I go back to my mission being followed by another piece of filth recording everything I say and do, right?!"

"It is all for the greater good, Mr. Potter," the Frenchman said in the same contrite tone. He raised his wand and crouched down, pointing it at the heap of glistening powder.

"Like hell it is," Harry growled, his anger rising inside of him like boiling water about to spill out. "Like hell it is!"

He banged his fist again against the invisible wall; his breath was getting laboured, and blood flooded his face in such a way that a crimson veil seemed to fall in front of his eyes, tinting red everything he rested his gaze upon. His limbs were quivering with the ancient energy, deeply anchored within him, that had awoken the day he had killed Malfoy. He couldn't control it. It just rushed inside of him, flowed in his veins, pulsed in his heart, spilled out of each of his pores to hammer at the wall that restricted his moves. The Unspeakable had started chanting in a low, soft voice, his wand swirling over the Floo powder; so concentrated on his spell that he failed to hear the ominous sizzling sound that came from the invisible wall, gradually sagging under the pressure of the energy gathering around Harry.

The wall wouldn't break. Harry dimly felt it through the red haze of anger that misted up his thoughts. The Third Kind magic, as ancient as it was, could not break down a wall crafted by centuries of wizarding power and experience. It still stood, shaken but solid, and no frontal assault would bring it down.

Harry squeezed his eyes shut. He could feel it, the primeval magic bubbling at his fingertips, he who could not feel either warmth or cold; he felt it as clearly as if it had been tangible, and he concentrated all his willpower on it. Bringing down the wall didn't matter, if he could get through it. It was impervious to spells -- would it be impenetrable to the Third Kind's power as well? He had to try...

Harry gasped -- it was painful. He was no longer used to cope with physical pain; and this one was like a wound opened in his magical power. He felt as though a giant syringe was planted in the middle of his chest and sucked his vital energy out. His lungs and throat were constricted, as if the air pressure had drastically dropped around him, and when he tried to suck in a breath he found himself on the edge of asphyxiation: there was not enough air in the room for him to breathe.

The energy kept leaking from him, infiltrating through the invisible wall and slowly gathering in the portion of the room where the Unspeakable crouched, oblivious to everything other than the fire he was building. Already green flames were rising from the ground, casting on the darkened stone walls a ghostly flickering light. The Unspeakable wiped his sweaty brow on his sleeve and laid his wand aside to pick up the first twig.

"To Hermione Granger, head investigator of the Potter case," he slowly enunciated. "Top-priority."

"No!" croaked Harry, his voice coming out as a strained growl. His fist abruptly closed in one swift, snappy motion.

All of sudden the Unspeakable's back arched, as though run through by an electrical discharge, and his eyes bulged out of his face while his mouth fell open in a horrified expression. His left hand squeezed shut around the recording he had been about to send, his right flying to his throat and desperately clawing at it as he tried to relieve the foreign pressure on his windpipe.

"I have to say," Harry murmured, still pressed against the invisible wall, his fist clenched, "that I regret meeting you in such circumstances." The spy's eyes widened as Harry echoed his own words, terror painted all over his features. But he wouldn't let go of the recording. Harry tightened his fist even more, Lance's voice ringing in his ears, understanding finally dawning upon him. How did you strangle me? ... It was as if you and my windpipe had plotted my death together behind my back...

The Unspeakable's face was turning purple with lack of hair and his moves went jerkier, erratic.

"I can't control it," Harry whispered, his own breath coming in rattling inhalations. "I can't stop it."

The Unspeakable fell to the floor where he convulsed, driven crazy by his desperate need of air. He finally dropped the recording he was holding and gripped his own throat with both hands; and Harry watched, as though in a dream, as the recording fell down to the floor.

Right into the Floo fire.

There was a whooshing sound before the twig-like tube vanished from sight. Harry didn't even have enough breath left to swear.

Then, in a final spasm, the Unspeakable toppled onto his side, his eyes rolling in the back of his head. He had lost consciousness.

Enough, Harry thought, trembling all over. Enough!

But his fist would not unclench. The fingers remained curled upon themselves as if glued together. Before Harry's eyes, the power he had invoked finished off, merciless, the French Unspeakable.

Without warning, the invisible wall disappeared and Harry fell heavily to the floor. As he lay there, panting and shaking, he thought he could feel the Third Kind magic lazily gathering around him, wrap around his body like a protective blanket, filling him again with the vital energy he had felt ripped from him a moment before. Closing his eyes, he took several deep breaths, willing his panicked heartbeat to slow down to a normal rate.

"The recording," he suddenly said aloud, his eyes flying open. He pushed himself up on his hands and knees, hurriedly straightening his glasses as he did so. The Floo fire, into which the first recording had fallen, was burning low already. Still, the connection was useable.

If he acted quickly.

But it was also ridiculously dangerous; who knew what he might find at the other end of the Floo connection?

"Hermione," he said in a low voice. "I can deal with Hermione."

Harry scrambled to his feet and stepped over to the dead Unspeakable. He began searching his pockets, avoiding to glance at his blackened, distorted, horribly inhuman face. He took the Unspeakable's badge, without which he couldn't hope to go undetected into the Department of Mysteries, and found around the corpse's waist a strange belt with runes carved into the leather. The runes were blackened, as if scorched.

"Incendiary charms," Harry whispered. At least he now knew how his robes had caught fire.

There was nothing else worth taking from the dead body. Harry straightened up, experiencing a slight pang of regret when his eyes finally fell on the French Unspeakable's face. Killing him hadn't been necessary. The spell, whatever it was, had slipped out of Harry's control.

However, there was nothing he could do about it now. With an effort of will, Harry tore his eyes from the corpse, holding up his wand; a spell destroyed the remaining twigs that the Unspeakable had been about to send -- no doubt, Harry thought, the same kind of recording Robards had used against Martin mere days before. How ironic.

Another spell vanished the remains of Harry's burnt robes that littered the floor; he did not touch the corpse, however, fearing that the strain of the spell would drain him too much for his confrontation with Hermione. No charm would be able to trace the Unspeakable's death back to Harry, anyway... It wasn't as if he had used conventional magic to do it.

Harry slid his wand back into the holster and, taking a deep breath, stepped into the dying green fire. The flames licked at the sole of his shoes, dangerously feeble; there was no time to think, no time to doubt again.

"To Hermione Granger, head investigator of the Potter case," he said, intoning the words in the exact same way the Unspeakable had done. He nervously moistened his lips before adding, "Top-priority."

The flames seemed to retract even more, almost disappearing under his feet.

Then, just as Harry let out a tired, defeated sigh, they suddenly sprang high, higher than him; they enveloped him, trapped him in a bright green prison. There was a whooshing sound, and the room disappeared in a swirl of colours.