THE FRENCH AFFAIR

Episode Two: The Mines of Pays de Caux

Harry couldn’t tear his gaze away from her young, pretty face, contorted in fear at death’s door. His wand cast a wan light over her body, the grey paving stones and the walls. It made her appearance all the more lifeless. Even the orange wall behind her head seemed to have lost all its colour. He swallowed again, his throat suddenly constricted. Flashes of old memories, jumbled and confused, played out in front of his eyes.

Too familiar was the sight. Too similar the look on the face. Dumbledore on the ground – the tower – Avada Ked- … his own hand, green light … Draco, so dead … Charlie – Bellatrix’s horrible laughter, before he blasted her to smithereens and – Footsteps echoing loudly the dark … running, always running …

Harry wrenched himself away from the dark memories the sight of Inès body evoked, memories drowned in too much Firewhisky, fragments of a lost youth …

Caw!

Harry jumped violently at the shrill scream cutting through the silence from above. The wand in his hand jerked and the shadows danced over the walls and the ground.

He let out nervous laughter. A fucking seagull. You’d think they’d be asleep. He clutched his wand more tightly. The tension was getting to him.

“But that’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?” he told himself.

His own hollow laughter rebounded eerily off the walls somewhere in the inky darkness, mocking him.

“More excitement. You complained about a lack of action. Now it turns out you can’t handle it. War fucked you up pretty well, huh Potter?”

Yeah. Like it did anyone else. Don’t we have all our demons? A lost generation, running, always running, footsteps on the ground, echoing, sharply resounding in the dark, always dark … so real, just a few meters behind him in the corridor of shrinking walls, always, yet never fathomable, like the monster that hid under his bed at night, consisting of amassed fear and shadows …

So real …

The hairs on Harry’s neck prickled.

He started up. It was real. Heels on the stone. It echoed distortedly from the walls, making it impossible to tell where it came from. It came from all around. He repressed the urge to call out, cursing himself for the sudden stab of fear. One dead body, and my nerves go haywire.

Harry squashed any feelings that had no place here, and let the Auror training take over. He pressed himself into a corner where two walls conjoined, the most defensible position accessible to him. A bit of fog had come down, drifting over from the bay, where the cooler night air mingled with the warm water of the Mediterranean Sea. It drifted lazily into the backalley, carrying a salty smell. He crouched down. His hand touched a tumbling shred of red-striped paper on the ground.

The steps sounded nearer. Nox. The light flickered and died. He heard his breath going steadily, then stopping; holding it. The silence was now complete but for his own blood rushing in ears. Tensed down to the last muscle, he bent forward, ready to strike. The steps rounded the corner … Expelliar-

“Harry? Harry!”

He exhaled shakily and lowered his wand.

The fog parted and revealed the tall form of Ana. She hugged herself, shivering in the cold fog, with only her thin dress on.

Harry relit his wand.

“Ana. Here.”

At that moment, every bit of tension left him. It simply evaporated. Everything caught with him, no longer repressed by the adrenaline. Pain slammed into him with the force of a rampant dragon. He felt his aching rips from the fight, the splinters still sticking in his side from when he’d blown up the ship; crusted wounds ripped open again, trickling warm, sticky blood down his side. His muscles burned from the sprints and the headache was back full force.

Harry’s legs cramped, and with a suppressed scream, he fell forward to the ground, his legs no longer able to support his weight. He was barely able to cushion the fall with hands, but at least the cold stone gave some relive as he knelt on the pavement and pressed his forehead against it.

Ana had rushed to his side and was now helping him up again. He stood shakily, leaning on her heavily.

“Alright, Harry?”

He shook his head no.

“One moment.”

With trembling hands, he pointed his wand at himself and muttered: “Vigoria.”

Harry sighed in relief as the energising spell banished the pain and fatigue from his body once again. It was a standard spell in the Auror Manual, to be used in any situation exactly like this. He’d have another half hour, perhaps, before he’d pay heavily for pushing his body this far – but by then, he was hopefully back at the bungalow and in his bed.

He cautiously moved away from Ana’s support, but there weren’t any problems, he felt fit enough to run another mile. How misguiding feelings could be.

He turned and kissed her cheek.

“Thanks.”

She frowned.

“What happened?”

“Before or after you left?”

“Harry …”

He took a step away from her and looked her squarely in the eyes.

“Because I’m not sure of either.”

His gaze fell again at Inès’s body behind her. Ana was silent, then: “The ship was attacked. I looked for you everywhere. Why did you leave?”

“Inès is dead,” Harry said dully.

“What? Harry –”

“She didn’t deserve to die.  Damn, she wasn’t supposed to! She should be somewhere, anywhere, just not –”

He stopped speaking and punched the wall angrily. Saying it out loud meant admitting it was real. He had spent an evening with her, gotten to know her, liked her – much too much, even, and now she was simply dead. Dead. Just like that. Her mischievous eyes closed, her laughter gone.

He suppressed the urge to start thinking of what might’ve happened; if he only had left the bar quicker … these thoughts led nowhere, but it was hard. No, there was just one thing left. He’d get to the bottom of this. For himself as much as for Inès. Her murderer would not escape unpunished.

Ana’s warm hand on his arm ripped him from his thoughts.

“How did it happen?”

Harry shrugged.

“The Killing Curse. I couldn’t see more. When I arrived, whoever did it was already gone. He stole your bag, that was the reason I followed him from the ship in the first place.”

Ana looked at him blankly.

“Who he? And what’s with my bag? I’ve got it here.” She lifted her left arm, showing her dangling handbag. “What are you talking about?”

“But …”

Harry trailed off, shaking his head, confused. He looked back and forth between Inès on the ground and Ana, stepping closer, touching the bag as if to make sure it was really there. Glass clinked inside, it felt fairly full.

“Then whose bag did I follow?”

He could have sworn that the bag the man had grabbed had looked like Ana’s. Had there been two bags?

Ana brushed a blonde strand of hair back, and looked around quickly.

“We have to leave, Harry.”

When he didn’t move, she took his hand.

“Come on, Harry. Or do you want to spend the night at the French Ministry explaining why you were found bent over the dead body of her?”

Harry took a small step, then paused again.

“We can’t leave her here like this!”

“And what do you propose we do with the body, Harry? Apparate with it, so that they’ll be able to track us? Or carry it through the town? Because that are the options.”

He stared at Ana, then at Inès, utterly torn. Unwillingly, his thoughts flashed back. The one moment in the Salon aboard the Sabuha … her face, so close, just inches away, burnt forever in his memory …

Ana’s hand tugged at his.

“Please, Harry. I don’t want you to end up in a cell. The night has taken a bad enough course already as it is. I’m sure the Ministry will take care of her; with all honours – probably even more than she deserves, too.”

He turned back to Ana, staring into her pleading eyes.

Moments passed.

Slowly he started to walk, his back turned to Inès, and she remained behind, her prone form swallowed by the fog that covered the cobblestone with a film of glistening wetness, and the darkness that claimed the alleyway, as soon as the light of Harry’s wand left.

~*~

When Harry woke the next morning, there was no dark-blonde shock of tousled hair next to him. The bed was empty. It wasn’t warm, either, so Ana had left already a while ago. Harry pushed the covers back, rising; wondering where she was.

His bare feet padded over the thick woollen rug in front of the bed. He took the dressing gown from the hook next to the wardrobe, wincing as the movement stretched the freshly healed patches of skin uncomfortably, and went to look for Ana.

He found her at the sitting room window front, staring outside. Thick dark clouds had gathered over night, dipping the world in grey; and yesterday’s warmth was completely gone. Instead a fine, spray-like rain hid the far end of the bay from sight. The wind pushed the drizzle in gusts over sea and mountains and against the glass, where it gathered until the drops had become large enough to follow the pull of gravity, running down the window in irregular trails.

He watched her for a moment standing there, saw her gaze following the raindrops on the pane, until they reached the outer windowsill, where they formed a small puddle.

“Ana?” he said softly.

She was holding a half-filled glass of Bordeaux in her hand, he noticed. She took a sip, but made no indication that she had heard him. Harry crossed the parlour, joining her at the panorama windows.

He called her name again, but she continued staring out into the dreary day. He had given her nothing but a short summary of the events the night before, and she had said even less. He wanted to get a few answers.

“We have to talk about what happened on the yacht.”

She turned her back to him and walked further down the window front, to the door leading onto the patio, the glass in her hand.

“I don’t see what there is to talk about.”

The rain lashed against the window.

Frustrated, Harry pushed his hands into the pockets of his dressing gown.

“Perhaps about you and Inès, would that be a start? Did you know her?”

She didn’t answer.

He walked over to her in long strides, grabbing her shoulders. Ana stiffened under his touch.

“Leave it be, Harry.”

She sounded so resigned. He tried to get her to look at him, but she shook off his hands. Angrily, he stared at the pale reflection of her face in the window.

“What? You can’t seriously mean that, Ana. Completely ignoring the other strange ongoings;  what happened, there, between you, Inès and me –”

“Nothing happened. We came, had dinner and left.”

Her voice now held the hint of a warning. Harry had no problems ignoring it. He was quickly loosing his patience.

“What’s up with you, Ana? Don’t you think that just maybe I’m wondering where we are standing after all that, considering that you were the one wanting to talk later, on the ship? Remember? And now, you’re acting as if everything is just peachy? Don’t you have anything to say?”

She spun around. Her face was flushed in anger, but underlying was another emotion. Guilt? The glass slammed onto the windowsill.

“What? What, Harry? What do you want me to say? Should I ask if you kissed her? Slept with her? Heaven knows you had enough time and she couldn’t have been more obvious if she tried. Is that what you want to hear?”

He stared at her.

“Well, there you have it. Did you?”

“No, I did not. I –”

“Well, in that case I fail to see the problem.”

“Inès is dead, Ana!” Harry shouted. “You behaved completely out of character the entire time, were gone for ages, without giving me any explanation at all, while something was happening on board the yacht I have no clue about – something that was interesting enough for the French Ministry to send a batch of semi-officials, something that got me in a fight and Inès killed! And you were the reason we went aboard the damn ship in the first place! That’s the problem right there! I deserve an explanation after all that, don’t you think?”

Harry took a deep breath, realising that he had seized her shoulders again and almost been shaking her. More calmly, he asked: “Ana, what is happening?”

Only then, he noticed that her shoulders were trembling. She was crying.

“Oh, damn it all ...”

He tried to show her that he wasn’t angry, but she buried her face in her hands, refusing to look at him. He sighed and pulled her close, into his arms, before he fished his wand out of the pocket with his left hand, pointing it backwards and summoning a large armchair with a short flick. He sat down, pulling her with him. She curled up against him, still sobbing quietly into his side.

“I’m sorry, Harry. I’m sorry you got hurt and –”

He covered her hand with his own.

“It’s alright, Ana.”

Of course, it wasn’t.

“No, it’s not! What I did – I – oh Harry, I’m so sorry.”

“You’ll sort it out. You always do, hm?”

For a while he stroked her back quietly, until her tears subsided, and they sat in the armchair in silence. The only sound in the room was soughing of the rain outside, and the clock on the white mantelpiece, ticking the seconds and minutes away as the time passed.

“So what did you do?” he asked eventually. He felt a bit guilty for trying to use her state to his advantage, but he still wanted to know.

But Ana had already recovered.

Muffled in his side, she said: “I’m doing nothing I can’t handle. Trust me on that, Harry?”

He stroked her hair and pressed a little kiss on top of it, deciding to concede. At least for the moment.

“Alright.”

He was unconvinced, considering that she’d just broken down crying, but it was her life.

“As long as it doesn’t involve me?”

She shook her head emphatically against his chest.

“Not as long as you don’t get involved by yourself.”

He remained silent at that. Her breathing deepened and he almost thought she fallen asleep, when she asked in a small voice: “So we’re alright, Harry?”

It was half question, half statement, and a part of him wondered about her tentative behaviour, so unlike her usual self, and if they truly were alright, but he answered affirmative.

“Yeah.”

She sighed and he caressed her back, and eventually, she fell asleep at his side. He left her where she was, remaining in the armchair and staring now out into the rain himself.

The air between them seemed cleared, but his questions remained unanswered.

He now knew that there was indeed something happening, or had happened; Ana had all but confirmed that, but still not what. If he really wanted to catch Inès’s murderer he needed to know more. Asking Ana wouldn’t really achieve anything; if she didn’t want to tell him what she knew, nothing short of violence would make her.

Outside, more water poured down. Now, even this side of the bay was gone in a veil of rain.

Harry tried to go over the evening once again. Ana hadn’t wanted to go onto the ship. Something Inès had said had convinced her otherwise. Had she known Inès? No, that wasn’t likely. Inès had obviously been on the ship for quite some time, so where would they have met? And neither had shown any sign of recognition. But Ana had to have at least expected someone to show up.

Which meant that she had used their one-month-anniversary at least partly as a pretence.

He pondered getting angry at her once again, but in the end, it served no purpose. She obviously was feeling misery at its most acute already. Laying into her would achieve nothing, although it left a slightly bitter taste. He pushed Ana’s doings aside, concentrating on reconstructing the further course of the night.

Mr. al-Khayat, the owner of the yacht, had behaved oddly. Magic? It seemed likely. Perhaps a man from the Ministry had jinxed him, to keep him from noticing certain things. Had one of them also killed Inès? But why should they? Inès was French as well.

A small thought-fragment niggled on the back of his mind, but he couldn’t remember what it was about. It didn’t make sense.

So what had Ana done all the time while he had been together with Inès? Had she met someone, perhaps a third party, someone aside from the Ministry people? That was a possibility. Inès had looked for her and stumbled over something she shouldn’t have seen. And once she realised she was trapped when the wards went up, she fled and was killed later. Shut up, quite effectively.

Harry sighed quietly.

Hundreds of questions, and pitifully few answers. The man in the bar had obviously assumed he was in on whatever was going on at that time. He wished he was. What had happened really on the ship? And who had killed Inès, and why?

~*~

After a few hours, he guessed it was going towards noon, she stirred.

“Hey there,” Harry said.

She looked up at him. Her face was puffy, but at least she managed a watery smile.

“Thanks for being there, Harry.”

She kissed him softly, before standing up.

“Get dressed. I’ll make something to eat.”

He was still in his dressing gown. Harry returned into the bedroom, where he changed; afterwards walking over to the dining room on the other side of the house. Despite being only moderately big, it was still a stately room, with dark, wood-panelled walls, and a huge chandelier above the table. The lights were already burning, as the bleary daylight had trouble brightening the dark room.

On the oak table with a wine red tablecloth, two sets of plates and silverware were laid out already, but the high-backed chairs were empty. He heard Ana working in the kitchen. When he was just about to leave the room again to help her, a cough stopped him.

Harry turned back towards the sideboard, above which a portrait of a stern-looking wizard hung.

“Pollux. Something up?”

He was Walburga’s father, and, opposed to her, quite civil; if you could ignore his constant glare, that was. From within the heavy golden frame, his eyes looked sharply out into the room, watching over the happenings constantly.

The glare descended on him.

“I couldn’t help but listen to your happy little conversations, first last night and now this one,” he declared.

“Of course you couldn’t,” Harry agreed.

“You would have done well to have acquired more information, Mr. Potter,” he said stiffly. “She should have told you what is going on. You should have pressed her. You realise that she effectively used you as a cover for whatever it was she did, yes?”

“Well, I wouldn’t put it that harshly –”

“– mollycoddling nonsense –”

“– but she said that it wouldn’t involve me. I believe her.”

Pollux continued to glare at him.

“Because you don’t have every intention to involve yourself with this matter, all on your own. I see.”

He snorted.

“You young fools are all the same. Take my advice and stay as far out of it as you possibly can.”

He paused and scrutinised Harry.

“But of course, you won’t. Why do I even bother?”

Then he sighed theatrically.

“Don’t let love blind you, Mr. Potter. You’re already halfway there.”

Harry frowned.

“Love … I don’t think I really love Ana. She knows that, too. I quite like her, I’m fond of her – I fell in love with her somewhat, perhaps. But that’s it.”

Pollux shook his head.

“I wasn’t talking about her. I meant –”

“Here we go, Harry,” Ana called, entering the dining room. A few plates were trailing behind her; bread, ham, cheese, some cold fish and salad. Ana liked salad.

“Not exactly French, but I didn’t feel like actually cooking something.”

Usually, whenever Ana made something to eat, it was influenced by her time here; which meant an extensive warm meal for lunch. Harry still tended to cook rather English.

With a swish of her wand, the plates and bowls arranged themselves at the table. Harry and Ana took seats, opposite each other, and started to dine. Harry watched her while she ate. She was a shade paler than usual, but otherwise, no reminder of her previous breakdown was visible. The traces of tears were all gone; he guessed she was already annoyed at herself for losing composure so completely.

Between two bites of her baguette with tuna, she said: “I’ll have to go to London for a day or so.”

Harry paused, the fork halfway to his mouth.

“When?”

“The earliest Portkey I can get.”

Harry put the fork back down.

“Wow. That’s a bit sudden. Your uncle?”

“Mmh. You don’t have to come with me, though. I should be back the same day.”

Harry shrugged.

“I can at least see you off, can’t I?”

“If you want to.”

He resumed eating, and then asked: “So, to the Avenue des Arcades or to the Ministry?”

“No!” she exclaimed. “I mean, do you want the hassle with twenty different types of papers at the Portkey Office? It’s gotten even worse recently – now the Department of National Integrity sticks their noses into it as well, citing ‘security reasons’ to check every international travel request. I’d have to run all over the ministry. No, I’ll drop by Portoloins Internationaux, for a hopefully short and not hectic visit, since they know me already.”

There were two ways to get your hands on a Portkey in France – you could walk to the Ministry yourself, fill out all the required forms which took ages and pay a relatively moderate amount of money. The forms would be checked, and once there were no objections, you’d get assigned a Portkey. Usually, that took days, but Ana had connections, so she could probably speed the process up substantially.

Or you could visit one of the licensed travel agencies, pay a significantly higher sum, but get your Portkey at once – if there were any slots still open, that was. Usually, they left two times a day, from separate Portkey Terminals all over the country. They did the paperwork for you, and submitted it later to the Ministry.

Harry wiped his hands on the napkin, having finished eating.

“Alright. Avenue des Arcades it is. Been some time since I was there anyway.”

Ana looked uneasy.

“Perhaps it would be best if you stayed here. You did beat up that Ministry guy, after all. To say nothing of the yacht.”

Harry shrugged.

“Doubt they’ll do anything. I am Harry Potter, after all.”

“Things change, Harry. The climate between France and Britain hasn’t been this frosty since before Grindelwald’s Great War. They might decide that you would serve quite well as some sort of bargaining chip.”

He shrugged again.

“I’ll risk it. I’m not going to be cooped up here all the time, Ana. You do your thing, I’m going to do mine. Also, you were there as well. They could detain you just a well.”

She frowned, but said nothing.

Harry grinned at her.

“Besides, we can always fight them together if they start getting frisky. If there’s gonna be a diplomatic crisis, it’ll damn well be me who causes it.”

Now Ana grinned as well, shaking her head.

“And the sad thing is, I actually believe you.”

She rose, sending the dishes, plates and bowls hovering to the kitchen with her wand.

“Well, come on then.”

~*~

As always, the Avenue des Champs Élysées was a sight to behold.

Harry had stepped from behind one of the trees in the Gardens of the Champs Élysées, where they’d arrived, onto the pavement. Even at the end of September, there were still hordes of tourists milling around, chattering in twenty different languages all at once and taking pictures of everything that moved and everything that didn’t.

Even the booths selling crêpes were still opened, but then again, perhaps they never closed in the first place.

Still, the many tourists dispersed on the pavement, which was as wide as a normal street. The street itself was a dozen times as wide as any normal street. Harry counted about eight lanes, on which the traffic thronged on its way, an endless line of cars and busses and lorries.

But all that wasn’t what made the street – the avenue – this spectacular.

Harry was leaning sideways past the endless row of plane trees, looking to the west, straight ahead, since the avenue led straight ahead – straight as a die, making it possible to see a mile off and more. It sloped slightly uphill, and in the distance, almost but not quite lost in the grey of day, the Arc de Triomphe shimmered white. 

He took it in for a few more moments, before he walked back to Ana, crossing the pavement again. She was looking slightly impatiently, but a small smile stole itself over face when he extended his hand towards her. Fingers closed securely around another, warmly; driving away the cold from the unpleasant wester blowing in their faces.

Together, they walked through the Gardens, over the patches of grass covered with the first golden leaves of autumn, past the sprinkling fountains and empty benches, past the huge, ornate wrought-iron gate flashing through the bushes on their right.

The air was crisp; filled only with the hoarse cawing of a colony of startled crows, rising up in a flock as Harry and Ana drew nearer to the tree, becoming small black dots in the sky, settling down somewhere else.

The sky over Paris was the same overcast grey as back at the Côte d’Azur; uniformly grey, perhaps promising rain, yet remaining dry. Windswept hair and red cheeks, twosome; walking on the wide pavement, between lines of chestnut trees that were aflame in red and orange, brightening up the dreary day … even if the sun never peeked from behind the grey in grey above, it was la plus belle avenue du monde, the most beautiful avenue in the world.

Harry and Ana strolled hand in hand past a now mostly deserted children’s playground. Ahead was a roundabout, where three streets crossed; creating six symmetrical traffic isles, each with a fountain and wide flower displays, providing additional strokes of colour.

Here began the second half of the Champs. Buildings flanked the street at a stretch, unlike the first, leafy part; the façades carefully matched in white fronts of stone, leading up like a frame to the Arc de Triomphe on its end. The houses never exceeded six stories, which coupled with the wide street, exuded an air of spaciousness.

More people were out and about, shopping in one of the elegant boutiques, stopping to look into the shop windows or simply watching others shop from one of the many cafés.

One of these cafés was the Café du Demi-Portail, an inviting, bright place. Through the wide arched windows Harry saw people sitting at small round tables, drinking coffee and reading papers, but it seemed like he was the only one who could, apart from Ana. The other shoppers and tourists looked at the small boutique that sold perfumes to the right and at the shop with luxury clothes to the left, but never at the little café in-between.

The Café du Demi-Portail was an entrance to the wizarding side of Paris. In close vicinity to its Muggle counterpart, it led to the French Ministry of Magic. It was frequented by the workers at the Ministry and always crowded, at least that had been the case whenever Harry had been there. It was never noisy, though; the atmosphere was a quiet, subdued one. People sat on the dark wooden chairs, bent forward and talking in murmurs; taking care not to disturb the other guests.

Of course, the coffee was quite overpriced, but Harry preferred tea anyway.

Ana took a single look through the warmly shining windows, pressed her lips together and walked past it.

Harry shrugged and again fell into step with her. It was more crowded here; but with short pardons to the people around them she picked up her pace, not even pausing to look at the recently stocked winter collections in the displays of the fashion shops, which left Harry with no time for more than a fleeting look through the window frontages of the car showrooms.

~*~

Ten minutes later, they stood at the Place de l’Étoile, with the monumental arc in the centre. The name, star square, referred to the twelve main streets that ran into it and provided a traffic chaos of epic proportions with wildly honking cars and swearing drivers. Perhaps it was lucky, then, that the thirteenth street was magical in nature and only existed under certain circumstances.

Harry and Ana walked carefully on the typical dark grey granite-cobbles of the street, directly next to the kerbstone; counter-clockwise along the large roundabout. After only a few steps, something seemed to nudge the buildings apart, and another street appeared between the Avenue des Champs Élysées and the Avenue de Friedland – the Avenue des Arcades, the main shopping street of the wizarding part of Paris.

The entrance was a fairly recent addition, at least when compared to the café that had been there for half a millennium, in midst of soggy swamps, long before the Muggle part of Paris had extended this far. It was only a hundred and fifty years ago, when Muggle-Paris had started to grow in this direction, that the entrance had been added; or at least that was what the small brass badge said on the wall further down.

It was hidden from sight by the white mist that filled the street. Harry and Ana walked straight into it, and abruptly, the noise of the traffic and the bustling Muggles was cut off, swallowed by the fine mist. A few more steps, and the avenue emerged from within the fog. Turning his head, Harry could see that the many cars had vanished, just the square and the arc remained behind, their appearance as empty and pristine as the day they’d been build. The mist they’d just walked through was gone as well, but everything shimmered and wavered slightly, bleared; with a bluish tint, like being seen through the haze of a particularly hot summer day.

The Avenue des Arcades in front of him was in no way inferior to the streets they’d just left. Wide-stretched, lined by the gracefully curved arcades under the flat two-story buildings that housed the shops and gave the avenue its name, it led from this end straight up to the circular Place du Ministère, with the slim form of the Tower of Merlin rising up into the sky in its centre.

The deep black pavement provided a sharp contrast to the shining white edifices, diligently kept clean and unblemished, even if the day’s dark weather dampened the effect. In the sun, it usually was dazzling, prompting the visitors to stare in awe.

Harry usually only got headaches.

The tourists that were here however still took photos, pointed and stared. A family with stressed-looking parents and two whinging children stood in front of the ice-cream parlour. To his left was a shop selling cauldrons, Ministry-regulated, with standardised size and wall thickness. The owner was engrossed in conversation with a second, Eastern-European wizard in business dress robes.

Ana and Harry had to walk around an entire school class that was standing in front of the Maison Noue, the most ancient building in this place. It belonged to old Madam Moreau, and had been built by her ancestors over thousand years ago, in midst of the sump, to have quick access to the magical plants that grew there. It had been the first real apothecary in France; and, constructed from sturdy dark oak planks on a flat rise surrounded by treacherous ground, had to have looked like the stereotypical witch’s cottage.

Well, the stereotypes had to come from somewhere, too.

Even if the shop was no longer there and the timber-framed walls had made place for the white stone to fit the rest of the street, the inside had largely stayed the same. Today, it held a museum detailing its history (the various murders of a few owners in the early days were interesting) and explaining the variety of magical plants and their properties (that part was not).

The teacher pointed at the crest above the entrance and the class moved inside, out of the way of the other shoppers. Harry hadn’t recognised the school uniforms; it had to be one of the smaller schools in Europe. The noise of the shouting and laughing children receded, but the jumble of different languages spoken all at once around him remained.

And in close intervals, there were wizards and witches in official looking light blue uniforms, French Aurors. They watched over the street, looking with grim expression at the people that passed them with hasty looks.

Harry looked around and frowned. It hadn’t been like that the last time he’d been here, a year ago. People seemed … edgy. Anxious. There was a certain nervous energy in the air, that hadn’t been before – as if people were waiting for someone or something to happen, or perhaps feared it. Small groups of French wizards and witches, standing huddled together, looking around quickly, restless. What had happened?

He darted a sidelong glance at Ana on his right. She behaved the same way. She looked tense and alert and avoided the looks from the Aurors, yet constantly checked her surroundings. More unusual behaviour. That had been partly the reason why he’d wanted to accompany her; he was curious to see what she was up to. Her sudden call to back to England fitted right in there with the rest of the strange ongoings.

Ana had assumed a brisk pace, walking purposefully along the avenue. Past shops with clothing and wands, brooms and pets they reached the square with the Tower. It was the original, the one in which Merlin had spent quite some time, and it was the most famous building in France.

Above the milling wizards and witches, Harry spotted the ornate sign of Portoloins Internationaux. This particular business seemed to attract especially many people. Rushed-looking wizards with baggage streamed towards it across the square, glaring at the relaxed tourists standing in their way.

Ana steered directly to the wide, two-story entrance portal. Behind it was an impressive hall, with grey marble flooring and gold inlaid posts carrying the ceiling fifty feet above; at least as large as the Great Hall in Hogwarts. Scattered throughout were groups of seats, all of them occupied. On the left, two guarded gateways led away from the waiting hall; labelled “Arrivée” and “Départ”. This was a Portkey Terminal, Paris – Avenue des Arcades, as the huge sign above their heads said. Harry frowned at that.

“Don’t you have to get the Portkey first?” he asked as Ana watched the people vanish in the departure passage.

“It’s centralised here. The licensed travel agencies have offices up there,” she answered shortly, pointing ahead. A curved cantilever staircase led up to a separate floor in a wide turn, put in at half height in the back of the hall. People stood at the railing of the gallery and looked down.

Ana and Harry crossed the hall and started to climb up the stairs. The desk of Portoloins Internationaux was thankfully not overcrowded; only a short queue led up to the petite travel agent, who was talking busily with a client. She had dark brown hair which she flipped back unconsciously, pointing out something in a colourful travel brochure with her finger. For one moment she looked up, their eyes meeting.

And for one moment, his heart sped up. The magical spotlights above her counter made her dark eyes glitter … the light from the star-like lamps embedded in the ceiling … Harry stood there, frozen, as if turned into stone. Her eyes stared directly into his, sparkling jauntily, a faintly mischievous smile playing on her lips … framed by loose strands of hair, just inches away; close enough to make out the single lashes of her eyes … His mouth opened, but no sound came out. His own eyes searched for the small mark on her left cheek, and …

“… Harry?”

Harry blinked. She moved her head, the light changed and the apparition was gone. There was no mark. Her smile was cool and professional, her hair lighter. She shook the hand of the client, he left, and the next one had his turn.

Harry shook his head.

“Sorry, Ana. What did you say?”

“I was asking if you’re going to wait here or do something else in the meantime?”

Ana had gotten in line; four people were before her in the queue.

“I’ll wait.”

Ana nodded, and he moved over to the wall, next to a poster in red and black, depicting a monumental gate-like building with a foursome horse and cart on top. “Visit Germania!” the text below said. From here, he watched the people moving around, to the news stand on the other side. The man who had just left the counter was now standing in front of the rack with the English-language papers, scowling heavily. He rubbed his moustache and turned towards the clerk, who was busy sorting new papers into other racks.

“He! Meister! Wo sind denn hier die deutschen Zeitungen?”

“Pardon?”

“Zei-tun-gen,” he said clearly, pointing at the rack. “In Deutsch. Wo?”

The clerk just smiled pleasantly and nodded.

“ Désolé, je ne parle pas allemand.”

The man coloured rapidly.

“Verdammtes Franzosen-Pack,” he swore angrily. “Ist es zuviel verlangt, in einem internationalem Zeitungskiosk auch internationale Sprachkenntnisse zu erwarten?”

Harry watched from the wall as he took his wand from within his travel cloak, and pointed it at the front page of a copy of the English version of the international Magical Herald, muttering: “Translingua.”

He studied the page for a while, mumbling under his breath, before he looked up angrily.

“Niemand hat die Absicht, eine Mauer zu errichten! Bah! Das ergibt doch kein Sinn.”

Obviously, the translation charm had failed to do its job properly, and translated nonsense. Those spells were notoriously fickle, and that was the reason people used a Translacticus, which had complex language-spells embedded, preventing people from having to cast it themselves.

The customer flung the paper back on the pile and stomped away; casting one last dirty look at the clerk. Harry walked over to the stand the man had vacated, scanning the headlines. The one the man had translated said: Spokesperson says: Nobody intends to start a war!

–– London (mia) The political tensions between France and Britain reached new heights last month, when Britain’s Minister for Magic, Rufus A. Scrimgeour, declared that France was ‘a shelter for terrorists and criminals of all kind’ who needed to be ‘exterminated eventually, if necessary by force’ as they were ‘a constant and direct threat to our [the British] sovereignty’. Today, a spokesperson from the Ministry played down the issue, when questioned about …

He flipped through the pages, until he found the part the quote was from. It was a transcript from a press-conference; at whatever occasion.

Annemarie Hochstätter, “Deutscher Magischer Bote”:

In your opinion, does the information you received that the remaining Death Eaters may be hiding in France mean that you will operate there? Are you determined to account for this fact, with all consequences?

S.:

I understand your question to mean that there are people in the Greater German Reich who wish us to mobilise our Aurors in order to invade France. I am unaware of any such intention. The Aurors are primarily employed with keeping up law and order in our country and they are working at full capacity. Nobody intends to start a war!

He put the paper back down, and picked up a Daily Prophet. It had been some time since he had read anything from the isle. The headline covered half the page and screamed ‘THE FELONY OF FRANCE’. Harry shook his head; it appeared he had missed nothing. He browsed through the sports section. Puddlemere lead the Quidditch League (‘Wood saves spectacularly’), then another name he recognised caught his eye in the business section.

“My hands are tied,” he says. “If the Française Nationale increases the price, I have to pass it on to my buyers.”

Harry lowered the paper and grinned, wondering how Daphne would be. That little bitch. He’d never regretted their short fling. She fucked like a tiger. But apparently, it had worked out to her satisfaction as well, if Daddy’s business was better than ever instead of stripped from him as it ought to; for the ugly little fact that Greengrass senior had supplied Death-Eaters, even if it was just for a short time and nothing substantial. Yes, the things a word from the Chosen One could achieve …

A movement made him look up. Over at the Portkey counter, Ana reached the font of the line. He shoved the Prophet into the rack and walked back, but she was talking with the woman in French. The only thing he could gather was that there were complications. Finally Ana sighed and said something which prompted the travel agent to fetch a map of France, on which every Portkey Terminal was marked.

Harry watched them for a few more minutes, until the discussion seemingly came to a conclusion. Ana nodded in agreement, pulled quite a few galleons from her handbag and handed them over, receiving the small card with her number and notations of origin and destination in return – at the same time ticket and Portkey-to-be.

~*~

“Problems?” Harry asked when they were back outside. Ana looked at her typically red-striped card, before she stored it in her handbag and shrugged.

“Some. There was no free slot from Paris until the day after tomorrow. Now I leave from Varengeville-sur-Mer instead, this evening at six o’clock.”

Harry looked at her.

“Where on earth is Varin-whatsit … sur mer … that place?”

Ana sighed, but grinned and put her arm around him, pulling him towards her.

“Poor Harry. Let me rid you of your ignorance. Varengeville-sur-Mer is a little township in Normandy; to be more exact, in a wonderful sweep of country called the Pays du Caux. Directly at the Channel coast; on the Côte d’Albâtre.”

“And they have a Portkey Terminal there because?”

“Because it’s also used to trans-ship Floo Powder, from the mines directly next to it.”

Harry snorted.

“So you’ll go over the channel as cargo–”

“Mademoiselle Dupont?”

A voice behind them had called out, and Ana jumped. For a moment Harry was sure she would bolt, but she turned around, slow and cautious. He felt her muscles tense, ready to … what?

“Oui?” she asked.

An elderly woman with small glasses hurried towards them.

“Mais oui! Anastasia, chérie.”

She’d reached them and hugged her, kissing her cheeks. Harry saw Ana’s tension ebb away.

“Madame Bernard!”

“J’étais sûre que c’était toi!” Then she noticed Harry. “And in company too! Bonjour, Monsieur Potter. How are you both?”

“Very well, thank you for asking,” Ana said, while Harry nodded. “This is Madame Bernard, my Duelling teacher in Beauxbatons,” she added to him.

“Former, now. I retired last year.” Madam Bernard beamed at her. “It has been so long, dear … how old are you now? Twenty-four?”

“Twenty-five,” corrected Ana. “My birthday was in June.”

“Yes, yes.” She looked at Ana fondly. “You always were one of the youngest in your year. But with marks plus parfaite in Duelling. Why, I remember, when you beat –”

“Madam Bernard,” Ana interrupted her. She waited until the woman looked at her and continued. “I’d love to stay and chat, but I’m afraid that I’ve got an urgent errant to run. I’m sorry. Perhaps another time?”

The retired Beauxbatons teacher looked a bit crestfallen, but nodded.

“Of course, Anastasia. You are welcome anytime at my house. Do look in, dear. The Auvergne is so beautiful in autumn.”

Ana smiled at her.

“Definitely. I’ll keep that in mind.”

Madame Bernard hugged her again, and resumed her shopping. When she had left, Harry raised an eyebrow at Ana.

“An urgent errant?”

Ana grimaced.

“Yes, well … she’s really not bad, but once she starts talking, she can go on for hours. I don’t think I could have suffered through a full-blown ‘do you remember when …’-afternoon. Besides, I do have a Portkey to catch.”

They had begun walking again, slowly moving through the hustle and bustle of the early afternoon.

“At six. It’s barely two now.”

Ana shook her head.

“I want to be at the Terminal as soon as possible. I have to get that Portkey. I’d rather wait in there for four hours than have something unexpected happen and miss it by a minute.”

They’d reached the marked circle of the official apparition point, and Ana stopped. Harry shrugged.

“Sounds a bit silly to me, but whatever.”

He watched her disappear on the spot, with a small pop, before he concentrated on the location himself, and let the magic taker over. One ticket to Varengeville-sur-Mer, please.

~*~

He arrived in a stone circle similar to the one he’d just left. Curiously, he peered around. He was standing in the middle of a thick forest, that even with autumn’s thinning out of the beeches and oaks blocked the sight in any direction. Behind him, he spotted a hedged complex consisting out of several extensive but flat buildings, and a few taller ones. On the ground patrolled pairs of wizards in Auror blue.

“I have to admit that I did expect water and a beach, after what you told me,” he drawled, earning a thump from Ana which he dodged.

“No, really. Are you sure we didn’t accidentally end up instead in, say, Varengeville-in-the-Forest?”

“Yes, quite,” she said dryly, pointing at the sign on the fence near a gate, which read Poudre de Cheminette Manufacture Française Nationale and below that Mines de France/Musée and Varengeville-sur-Mer, with the international Portkey-symbol next to the last line.

She entered the gate and they walked to the small building on the left. Affixed on the wall was the same symbol; two interlocked golden keys on red stripes. Harry opened the door. Inside was a single stuffy room with a door in the back and a desk on the right. Ana walked over to the desk. The room was laughably small compared to the Terminal in Paris; it had a single rickety wooden bench where an old woman sat and a table next to it with exactly one newspaper on top. Otherwise, the room was empty. It was the most desolate Portkey Terminal Harry had ever seen.

The man behind the desk looked bored. He placed Ana’s card on the controlling device that vaguely resembled an old-fashioned scale, and read what appeared on the paper in front of him.

“Varengeville to London Central, six pm,” he droned. “Once you’ve checked in, you can’t leave the fenced area. Security reasons. You’re also not allowed to enter the buildings of the Manufacture. Security reasons. You may visit the museum, a guided tour in English starts at two pm and takes approximately two hours. With your ticket, the entry is free, without one, it costs fifteen Sickles. Have fun.”

Without looking up even once, he chucked back Ana’s card, and resumed reading his magazine.

“What museum is he talking about?” Harry asked.

“You can visit the mines, apparently,” Ana said.

She looked around the room and at the woman, who was now dozing on her bench, emitting a snore every other breath. A faint scowl appeared on her forehead.

“I think I might just as well take a look. It can’t exactly be worse.”

They left the Terminal again and walked over to the building the arrow with Musée pointed at. It was one of the tall ones; a small group exited when they arrived. The guide, discernible by the badge on his robes, was just seeing them off in what sounded like German.

A new group formed quickly; apart from Harry and Ana, there was a family with a child, two older women and a few others. A group of young wizards joined them almost immediately, which increased the group to perhaps twenty people. Their guide smiled and looked at a pocket watch.

“Welcome. I believe we will wait for another five minutes to see if anyone else shows up, and then we will start.”

The two women talked, and the child began to whinge. Harry waited with Ana in silence, observing the others. When it became clear that no one else would show up, the guide closed his watch with a snap and lowered it into his pocket. Then he collected the entrance fee.

“Well, if you would follow me …”

They walked over to the tall building, which turned out to be an elaborate illusion housing a complete headframe, built over a mine shaft on wide black iron feet. The cage in-between was quite large; expansive enough to fit the entire group, at least. The guide pushed the grille open and Harry and Ana entered behind him. Once everyone was inside, the grille slid shut, and the big wheels of the winch above their heads began to spin, unwinding the cable holding them as if by magic.

Well, it probably was magic.

Over the rattle and clinging, the guide started to speak, while around them the ground rose up and the cage started to descend into darkness.

“The decommissioned part of the mines that we will visit is quite close to the surface, only thirty-five metres below sea level – or for you, eighty-two feet. But since we were are at an altitude of eighty-six metres, it means that we will have to ride one hundred and twenty-one metres into the deep. That’s roughly four hundred feet, and will take us seven minutes. In that time, I will give you a quick summary of the history of Floo Powder in general, and about the mine we will visit in particular.

“The travelling via fires burning Fluvalite was the second way to travel by the means of magic, invented after the Roman Portkeys, but long before Apparation, whose early form was developed as a response to the witch hunts in 1643. And so it was already in 1068, when the Norman Baron Fluvialis rode through this land, that the recent history of Floo travelling began. The annals tell us about it …”

The guide cleared his throat and lowered his voice a bit, as if he was going to tell an immensely gripping story.

“On horseback, riding through thick woods, the Baron was surprised by nightfall. Too fatigued to create a Portkey, and with no hospitable tavern in sight, he decided to rest in the wilderness and began to build a fire. It was crackling merrily, and Baron Fluvialis had made himself comfortable next to it, when suddenly a green darting flame shot up. At first, he thought to be deceived by his tired eyes, but he quickly realised that it was not his fatigue playing tricks on him.

“Thereupon, he picked up a twig, and poked around in the fire, and when he pulled his twig back for a moment, he saw, to his utmost surprise, that at the very top it now, too, was burning green. And then he did something remarkably stupid: He took his left hand, and held a finger in the green flame of the twig.

“He had no idea what would happen. For all he knew, his hand could have gone up in flames, burnt by magical fire that no amount of water could have doused and no spell he knew could have extinguished. He could have lost his hand or even his life. Nevertheless, he was lucky, and instead of getting burned, he just felt a curious prickling sensation at his finger. He moved it around, and that was when he realised that he had stuck his entire finger into the small green flame, yet it did not appear on the other side. As he wrote, ‘Truly! How most curious a moment, I felt as baffled as a forest troll in a river!’

“By chance, his gaze fell on his campfire next to him, and again, he wouldn’t believe his eyes as he saw his missing finger poking from within the flames. The manuscript tells us of his first experiments that night; he was able to move the finger like it was connected to the rest of his hand and distance didn’t matter at all. He tried other physical objects as well, his favourite eagle quill for example; and of course, the sudden gust of wind that moved the fire disintegrated the middle part of it, and what was left went up in flames, but the foundation was laid.”

The circular patch of checked daylight over their heads, punctuated with the grating of the cage, had by now shrunken to the size of a Sickle. All that was left of everyone were shadowy outlines, since the lift had no light. As the guide paused, the only noise remaining was the rumbling of the shaking lift speeding into the deep. Ana leaned back against him, and he closed his arms in front of her.

“Today we know of course what put Baron Fluvialis in that great a flurry then; it was a spontaneous Floo connection like it is forged in nature from time to time. For example, we have knowledge of an ancient druid ritual called ‘jumping through the fire’, a test to prove one’s daring, which can be roughly pictured as many different magically lit bonfires, nursed until spontaneous Floo connections had formed, through which young men had to jump – a great risk, of course, because spontaneous Floo connections are very much unstable in nature and prone to collapsing, as suddenly as they form. And even if they only shifted in mid-travel, it usually lead to the demise of poor fellow jumping through it.

“But Baron Fluvialis was the first to conduct systematic experiments, carefully laid down on over three hundred pages, and thus the mineral he eventually discovered is named in his honour. For almost two hundred years, his discoveries were the height of knowledge and determined the way it was used; with what we today call ‘forced spontaneous connections’. Meaning, that while connected at will, the established link was still forged spontaneously, and as unstable as ever …”

The guide continued to tell about the further studies of this phenomenon, which eventually led to the refinement of the Fluvalite through the means of magic, and the invention of the node-crystal in 1252, which enabled the wizards to create the very first Floo Network.

“At that time, it was highly expensive, and having a fire connected to the Node was seen as symbol of status. Comte de Mal-Foix, for example, was said to be ‘a man so rich to powder his nose with Floo’. That was also the first time the powder was referred to as ‘Floo Powder’ in writing, an abridged version of the correct ‘Fluvalite Powder’, and the short form stuck.

“The costs stemmed mainly from the refining process, which was very inefficient; much Fluvalite was needed, more than could be found simply lying on the ground, which was how Baron de Fluvialis discovered it when it ended up in his fire. So mines had to be developed, and the wizards used subjected Goblins for that task from a quelled rebellion just one year prior. Of course, the Goblins were not happy to be used for wizard’s menial work without adequate compensation, which led to a series of new rebellions in the mines, starting as early as 1394 …”

The lift descended further while the guide summarised the development of the mine over the centuries, which went deeper and more far-reaching, always following the richest seams. From below, a light started to shimmer through the darkness, and when the lift reached its source, the guide had reached the present, with the six hundred year anniversary of the French Mines coop, which ran the mines.

The grille clattered open, and the group exited. More lights flared to life, glistering and sparkling, reflected thousandfold from the snow-white chalk walls, and Harry had to shield his eyes at the sudden brightness. Next to him, Ana didn’t fare much better.

Once his vision had adjusted, he saw that they stood in a spacious cave, with several tunnels branching off. Their guide was standing in the middle, and resumed his explanations.

“As you can see on this map –” a clear picture of the world appeared on the cave wall “–Fluvalite is an exceedingly rare mineral. Apart from France, only Tibet and Australia have noteworthy deposits …”

Harry watched the map while the guide explained; apparently France had one third of the world’s known deposits of Floo. Another map showed Europe with France in the centre; arrows emanated from it into the surrounding countries. The thickest stretched east, to the bulky mass of the Second Empire dominating mainland Europe. In its centre, marked as the capital, was Germania. Harry stepped closer. Binns had always focused on Britain and Goblin wars, and he knew next to nothing about the rest of the continent. The Empire stretched far to the east and north, up along the Baltic Sea; further north than even Scotland. Somewhere there had to be Durmstrang.

“… with Britain as the second largest importer of the powder.”

The guide pointed with his wand at the arrow from France to Britain.

“Britain possesses small own deposits, in the hills of the Downs in the southeast, which is logical, given the fact that it is largely the same stone as this one; belonging together in a geological sense, perhaps most obvious in the escarpments of the opposing chalk cliffs on either side of the English Channel. However, for a reason that isn’t clear yet, it’s not nearly as rich as its counterpart on this side of the channel and only barely worth mining.”

The maps vanished, and he started walking.

“In the next cave, we will see amongst other things a cross section from this area detailing the different layers with different types of chalk, which will show that this area is indeed quite blessed.”

Everyone followed him to the tunnel on the far end of the cave, which was only a few paces long, before it widened to a second, equally brightly lit cave. A few strange-looking tools were piled up in one corner, appearing to be long out of use. The once gleaming metal was dull and rusty.

The guide pointed his wand on the clear wall, and a new picture sprung up. It was a profile of the land, starting with the ridge of the South Downs on the English side of the Channel. On the other side of the blue area was Varengeville-sur-Mer, symbolised by a house, as well as the shaft with the lift and other galleries, on various floors.

“The layer of chalk possesses a thickness of over two hundred metres and is divided into three sub-layers. It runs obliquely …”

Next to Ana, the small boy started to tug at his father’s robes.

“Daddy, what’s that red line mean?”

He was looking at the thick red bar dividing the cross section into two parts, vertically. The question had been whispered, but the guide heard it nonetheless.

“It marks the Border, of course,” he explained proudly. “La Frontière, the greatest work ever done by wizards and witches of our nation. No other country in the world has one that is as complete and impermeable as ours, which is – hm – ironique, given that it was devised from the enchantments of Merlin’s Tower, where our Nimue had entrapped him using his own powers. So really, it’s originally English and we truly do thank you for it.”

Ana grumbled something uncomplimentary and Harry grinned. The Tower, relocated from Brocéliande in Brittany to the central place in wizarding France for everyone to see, was a sore spot for every English wizard when it came to Merlin. That was also the reason every French wizard loved it. Well, that, and because it attracted hordes of tourists with money.

Harry was one of the few who didn’t mind either way. Merlin had tried to invade France, met Nimue walking barefooted on the shore in a skimpy white gown and decided at a moment’s notice to abandon all war plans, choosing to screw the hot French Veela instead. Harry could totally understand that. Merlin was a smart fellow and had his priorities straight.

And now he had a completely inappropriate vision of Fleur stuck in his head. Damn.

One of the group of younger wizards asked in broken English: “Tis Border. Vat exactly it does? Why the best?”

“Ah, that would be because it not only keeps out people, but also prevents them from travelling by magical means within the country once inside, if they still entered illegally by non-magical means. Grindelwald tried that during the Great War, walking past the Border, that is, and left just one day later, focusing on the east, which made France and later Britain the only countries without loss in territory.”

The guide continued to point out geological and aquiferous sediments in the section, and Harry looked at the vertical red line. Although the picture gave a width of roughly sixty-five miles for the channel, the Border was here quite close to the land, barely two miles off the coast. The guide moved on to yet another map, this one showing the layout of the mine, and Harry started to get bored, even though Ana appeared to be absorbing every word. He listened with only half an ear, while the guide now explained the route they would take.

“… the two caves we just walked through. This part of the mine is the oldest part, historically speaking; the first drifts were made directly near the coast, while today the work is done deeper and further inland. We will not be able to visit those areas for security reasons. It’s too dangerous for untrained wizards and witches to stay there while the Goblins are working. Instead we will follow this route, through the galleries there and here, all of which are decommissioned. As you can see, the mine even extends as far as two miles out under the sea, but those areas are closed or blocked …”

Harry’s attention was attracted by a thump into his side. Ana was looking at him, her eyes gleaming.

“Under the sea, Harry. What do you think?”

Harry started to grin. That was the Ana he knew.

“Didn’t he say it was closed?” he whispered back.

“Yes. So?”

The guide had started to walk again and was now on the other side of the elongated cave. The other visitors had followed him, leaving Harry and Ana lagging behind.

“Well, so it might be dangerous there?”

Ana just looked at him.

“Alright, so you were waiting for arguments against it, not in favour.” Harry’s grin widened. “Well, I don’t think I have any.”

She shook her head, and with a quick charm duplicated the map on the wall showing the course of the tunnels. She shrunk it slightly and they closed up to the group again. The ceiling lowered and the walls moved together, and the cave turned almost imperceptibly into a gallery. As opposed to the bright magical lights in the caves, it was illuminated by torches, fixed on the wall with iron holders in regular intervals; every dozen paces. The flames danced in the draught of the passing people, sending large shadows scurrying over the rough walls of the tunnel.

The guide told something about tools and magic used to drive tunnels, when the gallery took a sharp turn to the right. Ana hissed quietly, looking at her map, and pulled Harry to the left. There, hidden in the shadow of a sudden advance, a new tunnel forked from the main gallery. Harry quickly looked around; no one was paying them any mind. They shirked from the group, vanishing in the deep shadows, climbing into the gaping dark hole.

~*~

It turned out to be quite narrow. Harry and Ana had to walk behind each other and duck their heads; risking to bump against the ceiling otherwise, since there was no light. The flickering gleam of the torches lost its luminosity on the first metre into the new tunnel, leaving them in complete and utter darkness, feeling their way ahead with uncertain hands roaming gallery walls. The golden-glowing tunnel mouth fell slowly behind, a dim semi-circle of light in their back, and eventually, even that vanished. Only then Ana lit her wand.

“Lumos.”

The air was cold, even colder than in the part of the mine they’d just left. The white walls were speckled with pockets of black; wickedly sharp edges, flint. Ana looked at it intensely.

“We must be out from under the cliffs,” she murmured.

They walked along the gallery, which started to twist and turn more and more. The small dots of light from their wands showed the walls starting to glisten wet, reflecting the light like little diamonds. They moved in silence; only their breathing resounded in Harry’s ears and the soft drip-drip of the water droplets splashing on the ground … until there was a new sound. Faintly at first, but soon it became a constant on their walk. A muffled roar, over their heads, now increasing slightly, the next moment ceasing a little, but never disappearing completely.

And suddenly, Harry realised what he was hearing. It was the sea, surging above their heads, breakers crashing against the feet of the cliffs. The restless sea, moving in continuous waves back and forth somewhere above their heads. He began to eye the trails of water running from the walls and alongside their way a little more closely. There were tens of thousands tons of water right above their heads; bearing down on the rocks, constantly gnawing at them, removing grain after grain, digging its way down, down to them …

It was a disturbing thought. He felt a pleasant shiver running down his spine.

Ana nudged him in the side. “The sea.”

“I know.”

And onwards they walked, with the thundering sea as their sole companion. Their way led them steadily down, and eventually, the gallery widened into a small cave, with three forks. Ana set down her bag and pulled out the map again. Kneeling over it on the ground, she tossed back her hair and placed the wand on top of the map.

“Point me,” she whispered, and her wand spun around. She orientated the map, while Harry illuminated it for her.

“Yes … we have to go … down.”

Her voice echoed in cave, resounding from the walls a few times before it faded away to a whisper.

“Down?” Harry asked blankly.

“There.” Ana pointed ahead. In the middle of the cave’s ground was a grate, slightly askew, and very much rusty.

“Every other way is blocked. See?”

She flipped her wand up and snapped: “Sphigneus!”

A small ball of compressed fire burst from the tip of her wand, roaring forward, across the cave and into the tunnel to their right. Not ten feet into it, it exploded in a burst of orange flames against a massive pile of stone. For one moment the entire tunnel was brightly lit, bathed in fire. A mine collapse had made it unusable. The fire vanished a heartbeat later, and plunged everything back into deep, inky darkness.

“That’d be the way. And I want to go a bit further. We still have half an hour, before we have to turn back.”

Harry watched her carefully and then shrugged.

“Alright.”

He levitated the grate of the mine shaft, revealing the first rungs of a wooden ladder. Harry looked at it warily. Ana appeared on his side, brushing off dust of her clothes, the bag again over her shoulder. She stared down into the shaft as well.

“It should be safe.”

She unceremoniously lowered herself into the hole and started to climb down. Harry watched her disappear and started to climb down after her.

~*~

The ladder was seemingly endless. They climbed in the dark, wands tucked safely away because both hands were needed. One rung after the next, left foot, right foot; a monotonous movement for what seemed like an eternity. They took a break every so often, but still Harry’s arms started to get tired. The air flowing up from below was warm and close, smelling stale.

While he wiped sweat from his forehead and his hands afterwards, to not slip on the ladder, his look went down, through the invisible rungs just inches in front of him, swallowed by the ever present blackness. Most likely the dark was a good thing, because it hid the gaping abyss under his feet.

Ana started to climb again, and he followed her. More rungs followed, only felt out with his hands in the eternal night of the mines, but just when he started to get fed up with the never ending climbing, a low exclamation from Ana a couple feet under him alerted him. She had reached solid ground.

Harry stood next to her, looking around. The gallery ran into two directions, completely straight. One end seemed to glow very slightly, in the very far distance; a flickering orange. Harry fancied he heard metallic clanging and scraping, but it could have been his imagination. Only then he realised that it was still fairly warm even though he wasn’t climbing anymore. The sound of the sea was also gone.

He touched the walls, which had lost their pure white colour and turned deep black. They weren’t nearly as cool to the touch as he’d have thought.

“It’s warm.”

He saw Ana nodding in her wandlight; she flicked it, and suddenly, figures appeared in the air for a short moment.

“Twenty degrees. It means we have to be over nine hundred feet below the sea.”

“How do you know?” Harry asked, looking at her strangely.

“We had around eleven degree directly below the surface, and the temperature goes up by one degree every hundred feet. Point me.”

Her wand spun again, and she started to walk away from the dim light. “This way.”

Harry hurried to close the gap, walking up next to her. She seemed quite determined to reach something. He wondered what.

“You know, not that think I walking a thousand feet under the earth isn’t cool, but what about the way back?”

Ana took her watch out of her bag and fastened it on her arm, without pausing in her steps.

“We’ve only been away for half an hour. The tour is just about halfway done, so we still have some time.”

She turned her head to look at him and smiled.

“Just a bit farther.”

They walked in silence again, black rock lighted by white dots of light at the tip of their wands. After a few minutes, he thought he saw something in the distance ahead; a small flicker perhaps.

“Nox.”

Ana looked at him questioningly, but copied him.

When the darkness swallowed them, something else appeared out of it. A faint glow, like an emergency light, with no real source, but too prominent to be just a trick of the eye.

“Yes,” breathed Ana next to him.

“What?”

“Come on!”

She relit her wand, and walked quickly onwards, with long strides; reaching the source of the light in a mere minute. It was like a curtain of red light, hazy and constantly moving; with small strands fizzling out wherever they met rock, running over it, releasing small sparks into the air.

“What is that, then?” Harry asked, trying to peer through it. It appeared like the gallery ended in a dead end shortly behind it.

Ana stared at the churning veil of red.

“That, Harry, is the Border.” She sounded awed. “Visible only because of the magical nature of the rocks, and the dust and particles they emit into the air. It creates a feedback.”

Harry turned slowly.

“You knew it would be here, like that?”

Ana shrugged.

“I suspected something like this, yeah.”

Placing her handbag on the ground directly in front of the Border, she moved forward and stuck her left hand into it, watching as the red darted out; small forked tongues licking a her skin, jumping randomly up and down and along her arm, as she pushed it further inside. Something rustled softly. Ana pulled her arm back at once, looking at it. Threads of red were pulled back with it, like a sticky syrup. It seemed to part with her hand most unwillingly.

“I was curious to see what it would look like.”

They stared at it for a while. It was magic in the most condensed form possible, surrounding an entire country. And even this deep within the bowels of the earth, it had still lost nothing of its power.

Eventually, Ana looked at her watch and turned to go.

“The tour will be over in forty-five minutes. We have to walk back.”

~*~

They made it just in time. The group was in the first cave when Harry and Ana inconspicuously joined in at the back. No one had noticed that they’d been absent for the longest time. Climbing into the lift, they listened to the final words of the guide.

“And so, the Mines de France supply only the PCMFN, which has the monopoly on Floo Powder in France. You might have noticed the large building on the other side of the mine shafts, but it’s closed for non-employees, of course. And from there, it is exported into the whole world.”

The cage reached the circular patch of white daylight over their heads. The guide smiled at everyone.

“In mine as well in as in the name of Mines de France, I thank you for your interest. I hope it was an at least slightly interesting insight into the history and winning of Fluvalite …”

The lift stopped, back above the ground, and the door slid open.

“Have a nice –”

“Nobody move!”

He was interrupted by two grim-looking wizards in blue robes, who had been waiting on either side of the shaft. Everyone around Harry and Ana froze. Restless mutters started to spread throughout the group. People looked over to the guide, but he seemed as surprised as anyone. The child looked up fearfully and huddled closer to his parents.

“Silence!” barked the taller one of the two.

They scrutinised the group quickly, until their eyes rested on Harry and Ana.

“You two. Move it!”

More clues, and the (political) stage is set. Next chapter it's back to England, and perhaps there'll be a hint of Fleur, too :D