Chapter Sixteen: The Hidden World

The sensation was little more pleasant than having his head caught between the jaws of huge iron twisters slowly tightening on his temples. Harry winced and kept his eyes shut, the mere idea of sunlight causing pain to shoot through his sore skull with renewed enthusiasm. There was nothing dream-like about his splitting headache, and he was fairly certain he was back in his time at last.

He was sitting on the ground, his back against a hard but smooth surface. Silence surrounded him. Aside from his migraine, he felt very weak; his limbs seemed to have been cast into lead and when he tried to bring a hand up to his forehead, his fingers wouldn't move properly, as if they had been anesthetised. Harry abandoned the idea of trying to move. The trees' song had obviously poisoned him a little as it had made him relive the Third Kind's history; however, they were silent now, and everything seemed to be back to normal. The side effects of the song would probably subside in a few minutes.

He hoped so anyway.

Not feeling exceedingly reassured, Harry groped blindly in his pockets and around his belt for his wand, and his heart, which had been beating rather sluggishly in his chest ever since he had woken up, abruptly sped up when he failed to retrieve it.

Harry cursed in a low voice. “Where is it?” he hissed, tentatively brushing his hand against the grassy ground next to him, where the wand might have fallen.

He nearly jumped out of his skin when a pitiful whimper answered him, somewhere ahead of him.

“Ohhh… My head!”

Harry opened his eyes very slightly, holding up a hand to shield them from the gold-green light bathing the clearing he sat in. He wasn't wearing his glasses, and from under his lids he was barely able to make out a pale blurry form curled up on the grass, in the middle of the clearing.   

“Greengrass?” he called in a slightly hoarse voice.

“Don't be so loud, for the love of Merlin!” she wailed. “I feel like there's a Niffler inside my head trying to claw its way out…”

“Can you see my wand anywhere near you?” Harry asked, lowering his hand to cover his forehead in a reflexive gesture - as if it would stop the pain from shooting through his brain.

“I can't even open my eyes,” Daphne retorted. “I can't even move, it's as if I was glued to the ground!”

“Never mind then,” Harry mumbled. “Don't move, don't talk, and just try to rest, all right?”

Blessed silence fell again; Harry tried to push his worry out of his mind and reclined his head against the tree he was leaning on, doing his best to take calm, deep breaths. It seemed to help. A tiny little bit.

Daphne's voice rose after a few minutes, slightly muffled, as if she was hiding her face in her hands.

“Did you see the same thing as I did?”

“I don't know, what did you see?” Harry asked.

“A Queen,” Daphne said. “A battle. People dying. The Founders. More people dying. A kid that looked like you, but with rectangular glasses. And then you, running, and wrestling another man.”

“Sounds like the same thing I saw,” Harry laconically said.

“What was all that? Who were these people? They kept talking about wizards as if they weren't wizards themselves, yet they used magic and-”

“Greengrass, would you mind shutting up for a minute? I'll explain when I'm able to see anything without feeling as if I was being stabbed in the eye, okay?”

An annoyed sigh answered him, followed by a rustling of material as Daphne shifted on the ground. He tuned out those slight noises as well, concentrating solely on his own breathing and heartbeats, until he reached a state of complete, blank calmness. His tiredness, his headache, and the unhealthy heaviness that had seized his limbs, everything was patiently washed away as his body reacted and adapted…

“I'm cold.”

Harry raised both arms above his head, hands joined, and conscientiously stretched; then he placed his hands behind his neck and tilted his head backwards as far as he could, his eyes still tightly shut, his back arching slightly from the surface he had been sitting against.

“I'm really cold!”

“Really?” Harry distractedly asked.

“Yes.”

“Well, I'm not.”

His reply seemed to have disconcerted Daphne, for it was several seconds before she spoke up again.

“Excuse me,” she said, sounding quite vexed, “I'm only wearing my shirt and underwear, I'm still dripping wet from the river we crossed, therefore I'm cold.”

“And I don't have my wand with me,” Harry crossly retorted. “So there's nothing I can do for you at the moment.”

He had finished stretching; his limbs were fully under his control once more, and his headache had considerably subsided. Harry got his legs under him and carefully straightened up to his full height, and only then did he risk opening his eyes again.

The world was a light, mostly green blur. Squinting, he managed to make out Daphne's pale body sprawled on the ground, several feet ahead of him. Directly in front of him, a small glassy object that caught the sunlight was tangled into the long blades of grass. Harry took two steps forward and swooped down, picking it from the grass - it was his glasses.

He sighed in relief as his vision cleared, and immediately scanned the clearing for signs of his wand; but it was nowhere to be seen. Daphne was curled up in foetal position, her arms covering her blonde head, her bare legs folded almost to her chest. Her damp shirt stuck to her skin, as did the fine material of her knickers, the pale flesh of her round buttocks visible through the soaked-through white cotton imprinted with little blue rosebuds. Harry blinked and willed himself to keep his gaze attached to the back of her neck.

“Here, come on, Greengrass,” he said as he gently tugged on one of her arms. “Get up, we need to get out of here.”

She groaned, but resignedly unfolded her legs and lowered her arms - thus granting Harry an unimpeded view of her dark-brown bra and soft-curved figure, hardly hidden by the damp shirt clinging to her flesh; yet again Harry was forced to focus on her forehead - the motion exposing her pale face to the gold-green light.

“Ouch!” she cried out, covering her eyes again. “My head-”

“I know, a side-effect of the song, probably,” Harry said. “Here - get up, slowly… You don't need to open your eyes, I'm guiding you…”

“Where are we going?” Daphne asked as she stumbled next to him, one of her hands holding his tightly - which caused him to experience again the thrill of retrieving his sense of touch - while the other tugged self-consciously on the hem of her shirt in a futile attempt to cover her bare thighs.

“First, back to the river,” he said. “Your robes are probably still there, and that's where I must've dropped my wand, too. And my shoes,” he added as he noticed his bare feet for the first time.

At the mention of the river, Daphne shivered and seemed to hesitate. Harry thought he knew what she was thinking about.

“They were just three dead Death Eaters, Daphne,” he said in a soothing tone. “Okay, they were intimidating and we sort of panicked, but really they were just three sets of rotting bones. You won't have to look at them.”

The rest of their trip was eventless; Harry found his shoes about halfway to the river, and Daphne's clothes were not far ahead, lying in a messy bundle on the side of the path. However they had to go up to the very shore of the river to find Harry's wand, half buried in the mud. He picked it up without looking at the other bank, where the three cadavers lay imprisoned in the trees' roots, and quickly performed a drying charm on Daphne and himself. They got dressed.

“Where do we go now?” Daphne asked, pushing her hair away from her face to reveal two grey-green eyes staring enquiringly up at Harry.

“Same way I went last time,” Harry replied. “We follow the river until it goes downhill and then we'll find ourselves at the lake. That's a good hiding place, if a little uncomfortable.”

“That's… where I saw you fighting the other man, right?” she said with a frown.

“Yeah.”

“Who was he?”

“Voldemort,” Harry shortly replied, and ignoring her gasp of surprise he added, “Hurry along, Greengrass.”

For once, she didn't protest and hastened to catch up with him. They started walking side by side on the narrow shore of the river, following its flow to where it opened into the lake. After a little while, Daphne cautiously spoke up again, reminding him that he had promised to give her explanations.

Harry started talking in a low voice, telling her of his flight in the Forest, with the Death Eaters on his heels, of the loss of sleep and sensations that had ensued; he told her about Ron, Luna and the Head Healer being shot with arrows when they had been close to discover something about his condition; he related the events that had followed - his coma and his recovery, his long searches in the Hogwarts library, his discovery of Pallas' fate, the wolves he had seen in Hogsmeade and then again at Frog End, where they had changed back into women.

He told her everything, except that he had been bitten by a werewolf and could transform into a white wolf. He was strangely reluctant to talk about this part of the tale - his transformations had been moments of such fierce, pure joy, that he didn't feel comfortable about speaking of it. It wasn't any other weird ability of his; it was part of himself in a deeply intimate way, so that he could only share it with his closest and dearest. And Daphne wasn't part of them.

“… Since the Department of Mysteries didn't seem to see the Third Kind with a very good eye, I had to follow the spy and silence him. That's why we had to get out of your house and come here - they're probably after the pair of us now, and this is the safest place from wizards that I know of.”

“Why didn't we go straight to the lake?” Daphne asked, frowning. “You just said we'll be safe too, on this side of the lake. Why did you take me to the clearing?”

“I hadn't planned beyond getting past the barrier of trees,” Harry admitted. “Then after we got across the river, I didn't have the time to think at all. I'll remind you that we ran like maniacs to the clearing.”

“Yes, true…” Daphne fell in thoughtful silence for a few seconds before she spoke up again. “Do you think they did it on purpose?”

“Who did what on purpose?”

“The trees. Think they scared us away from the river and into the clearing, so that they could sing their song to us?”

Harry stopped and watched her in wonderment. “You know what,” he said pensively. “I wouldn't be surprised if you were right… First time I got here, I could barely see because of the Cruciatus Curses, and I had the impression something was guiding me to the clearing.”

“They were taking you to a place where they could cure you,” Daphne guessed; colour was rising in her cheeks and excitement made her eyes shine.

“Just like they lured Pallas past the barrier so that they could kill him more easily,” Harry completed.

They stared at each other, their eyes widened in sudden comprehension, and identical grins slowly spread across both their faces - then they burst out laughing. Harry wouldn't have been able to tell what was so funny about the situation; maybe they were still a bit intoxicated and giddy from the trees' song, so that coming together and at the same time to the same conclusion struck them as tremendously comical. The fact remained that he was holding his sides, and tears were rolling down Daphne's cheeks as she hiccoughed, breathless from laughing so hard.

“Okay,” Harry wheezed, struggling to be serious again. “We have a bit of a way to go still. Better get going.”

Still giggling, Daphne followed him good-naturedly, and their journey ended much more pleasantly than it had started. Their explosion of laughter had dissipated the lingering influence of the tree's song, as well as the tension that had been tightening their nerves all through their flight into the Forest; and now, alone in the quiet Forest, they found themselves glad of each other's company. They chatted joyously as they walked, swinging back and forth their linked hands, and for the first time their conversation started to dwell on subjects other than their belonging to the Third Kind.

“… And you've been running a day nursery ever since you got out of Hogwarts?”

“Yeah,” Daphne said with a shrug. “I had a lot of experience in babysitting already, but I had no idea watching after kids all day would be so trying. Magical kids screaming and bouncing and blubbering and needing to be fed, changed, amused, put to bed, without mentioning the bloody accidental magic. Once one of those brats turned my hair purple. I had to ask my sister to change it back, she's a much better witch than I am. Hey,” she added, her eyes going wide, “that's odd. You and I can do magic a bit like wizards, even if we're not - I mean, I can use my wand, even if I'm lousy at magic in general… But you're a good wizard, and so's my sister! Isn't she supposed to be Third Kind as well?”

“Not necessarily,” a rasping voice said from right behind them.

Harry started and wheeled around at once, wand pointed in front of him, while Daphne let out a little scream.

An old woman stood before them, a smile on her lips. She was tall, skinny, and excessively wrinkled. The mud of the river had slightly stained the hem of her long grey robes and the tip of the staff she leant on - a long, big, scarred piece of gnarled wood that looked several decades old - but she showed no sign of exertion; she didn't quite look as if she had been following them, but rather seemed to have been standing there for a long time.

“I do not think there is a need for this, young man,” the stranger said, touching lightly the tip of Harry's wand with her staff. “What harm could an old woman like me do to you?”

“I know who you are,” Harry retorted. “I've seen you before. I know what you can do with one of those.” He jerked his chin in the direction of the staff.

The woman drew back her staff and leant on it with both hands, emphasising her stature slightly slumped by age; this, combined with the benign smile playing on her lips and the amused twinkle animating her eyes, gave her the harmless appearance of a beloved great-aunt. But Harry had now recognised the wise, deep blue gaze he had seen in Hogsmeade and in Frog End. The silver mane of hair tied back into a loose bun was the exact same shade of grey as the rich fur of the blue-eyed Wolf he had met twice. The picture was so vivid in his mind, he couldn't possibly be fooled by the woman's apparent frailness.

“I assumed as much,” she said. “However, I did not expect you to see me as a threat. Are you not one of us?”

“You are Third Kind,” Harry started.

“Actually I am an Isiame,” she interrupted. “Third Kind is a wizarding term. They always tended to use euphemisms in order to avoid saying the true name of those they feared, did they not?”

The reference to Voldemort was too blatant for Harry to miss it. He opened his mouth to answer - by contrariness, he was rather tempted to defend wizards from the Isiame's condescendence; however, he found himself unable to find the right words. Sadly, she was not wrong.

“You are one of them!” Daphne chipped in, very nearly knocking Harry out of her way in her haste to get closer to the Isiame. “How did you-”

The old Isiame lifted a hand, silencing Daphne with an apologetic smile. “One moment, young lady. I am very much looking forward to answering your questions, however Mr. Potter and myself aren't quite done talking yet.”

She turned her gaze to Harry once more. “I told you,” she said softly, “that we would see each other again, did I not, Mr. Potter? Now is the time. You must have questions for me. I am ready to answer them. I am surprised to see you so defiant; did you not consider yourself as belonging to the same kind as Miss Greengrass? Did you not go to considerable extents to protect your secret? I am here to take you where you can meet your peers at last. Was this not what you wanted?”

“How did you find me?”

“Why, I did not. I heard the trees singing from my home last night, and assumed a young Isiame, ignorant of the danger, had slipped into the Sanctuary and was now prisoner of the trees' Song. I came here to retrieve them. It was a pleasant surprise to find out that the trees sang to no other than yourself and Miss Greengrass; you were so engrossed in your conversation that you walked by me without even noticing the old woman sitting on a stump.” A humorous spark came to light up her eyes.

“You mean, people of your kind often come here to listen to the trees?”

“Oh no, we don't,” the Isiame said. “We know how toxic the Song can be. But sometimes, youngsters ignoring they are not wizards leave the school and go wandering into the Forest. I find them, and take them home.”

“Home? To Hogwarts?” Harry asked, raising his eyebrows.

“Of course not,” the old woman scornfully said. “I take them to our home. Their home.”

“Where is that?” Daphne interjected; she had again the eager, almost greedy expression that put Harry ill at ease every time he saw it on her face.

“Just around the corner,” the old Isiame said, smiling at the young girl's enthusiasm. “Here, let us not waste more time.”

And upon these words, she resolutely set off towards the mouth of the river, passing between them without a backward glance. Daphne followed without hesitation.

“Daphne!” Harry hissed. “I'm not sure-”

“Oh come on,” Daphne shot at him over her shoulder, without doing so much as slowing down. “She's like us, I know it, I can feel it! What's your problem?”

“My problem is, I don't trust any stranger walking up to me and saying, 'Hello, I can answer any question you can think of, and by the way I incidentally want to show you some unknown place I'm sure you'll really like!'” Harry testily replied in an undertone.

“You said you've met her before-”

“We didn't exactly have the time to sit around a coffee and get to know each other at that time.”

Daphne briefly stopped and turned round to answer him. “I trust her, and I'm following her. You do whatever you want.”

Harry didn't have the time to react before she spun on her heel again and hurried to catch up with the old Isiame, who did not seem to have paid any attention to their argument.

Harry wavered for a few seconds before cursing loudly and setting off after the two women.

“So you're saying my sister isn't necessarily an Isiame?” Daphne was asking when he caught up.

“Indeed. Isiames aren't much different from Wizards under this aspect; there are Muggle-born Isiames, and Wizard-born ones, like you. Most of them probably have an Isiame in their ancestry, just like most Muggle-born Wizards have remote magical ancestors.”

“But… My family's pure-blood, though…”

“How old is your family?”

“Few centuries?”

“Mankind is thousands of years old, child.”

There was a short pause.

“So you're saying I always was an Isiame?” Daphne said uncertainly.

“Of course. You were born one.”

“And Potter is, too?”

The old woman stopped and turned round, locking gazes with Harry, who was walking a few steps behind them. Harry slowed down to a halt as well; the woman's scrutiny felt like an aggression, as if it was baring his soul to her eyes - not unlike what Dumbledore's piercing gaze had felt, years ago. He gritted his teeth and held her gaze, unconsciously jutting out his chin in a defiant sort of way.

“Strong Isiame blood runs in Mr. Potter's veins,” she said in a thoughtful voice. “That cannot be questioned. But unlike yours, his power has not matured yet - and I doubt he knows the sheer extent of it.”

“He looks a bit like the Queen we saw in the dream,” Daphne blurted out. Harry's eyes snapped to her: she wasn't looking at him, but stared avidly at the old woman as if attempting to burn a hole in the side of her wrinkled face. “Sort of pale, dark hair, green eyes…”

“An ingenuous idea,” the Isiame replied, tearing her gaze from Harry at last to smile benignly at Daphne. “But I'm afraid Mr. Potter mostly inherited his looks from his father, whom I am sure did not have a drop of Isiame blood in his veins. Besides, the Queen you saw died many centuries ago… Physical resemblances are unlikely to survive this long.”

“Oh,” Daphne said. Harry glanced at her; her face wore an odd, almost pained expression, mouth set in a rigid line, nostrils flaring, and eyelids fluttering quickly as if she was trying hard to gain control over her mobile features and hide her emotions. He frowned. She looked… relieved, and a little ashamed.

Daphne caught him staring at her and glared, colour creeping up her neck to flush her pale cheeks, then resolutely wheeled around and strode away. The Isiame looked from Harry to Daphne and back again, her thin lips stretching in a smile that was a little too shrewd to Harry's liking, then resumed her walk with a little nod in Harry's direction.

Harry made sure his wand was within immediate reach and followed.

They did not need to walk much longer before they reached the mouth of the river. It turned murky where it mingled with the water of the lake, its currents forming small whirlpools before being smoothed into the glassy, flat surface of the great lake. The last two trees bowed over the mouth of the river on either bank, like the two pillars of an archway of live wood. Here, the green-gold light dimmed, and beyond the archway obscurity still reigned.  

The old Isiame lifted a skinny, gnarled hand and gripped a large branch of the tree that stood as the right pillar of the archway.

“Be careful, the ground is slippery,” she said.

Then she raised her staff, firmly planted it in the soft ground of the river shore, and started advancing in the middle of the river as if she was trying to cross to the other bank, still holding the branch over her head for support; the frail tree slowly bent as her weight pulled it towards the centre of the river - and at each step, she sank a little deeper into the dirty, whirling water.

“Wait,” Harry called, instinctively taking two steps forward, “it's too deep, you're going to-”

He hadn't finished his sentence when the old woman let go of the branch, which immediately swung upwards with a great rustling of leaves, and abruptly disappeared underwater as if she had fallen into a crevasse.

Harry swore and kicked off his shoes again, pulling out his wand as he ran into the water. The currents immediately gripped his legs like long, powerful hands, and after a few moments of furious struggle, he felt with a thrill of dread that he was losing his balance. In the single second that his fall lasted, he threw his hands out in an instinctive, desperate search for something, anything to cling to and allow him to escape drowning…

His right hand found the branch of the pillar-tree.

And the currents left him alone.

Harry found himself standing in the midst of foaming whirlpools with as little inconvenience as if he was sitting in his bath. The water flowed round his legs instead of rushing into them and trying to knock him down, and the ground was as smooth, firm and solid as polished stone.

“Potter?” Daphne's voice called behind him. He heard a splashing sound.

“Don't touch the water!” Harry shot at her. He twisted his body around to see her without having to move his feet - he did not dare risk to break his fragile balance again. “Try to get hold of a branch first - that's right, catch it, and then only try to join me!”

“What does the tree do?” Daphne asked as she carefully progressed in the water, frightful eyes staring down at the swirling currents, her right hand gripping the branch so hard Harry could see the knuckles turning white.

“Protect us against the current, I ima-”

The rest of Harry's sentence was lost in another startled oath: directly in front of him, the old Isiame's head had appeared again, laid on the surface of the river like a long-haired, wrinkled egg on a liquid table.

“Well?” the old woman asked, the lines at the corners of her sparkling eyes betraying her amusement. “Don't take too long, youngsters, the gate won't stay open for you until tomorrow.”

And then she vanished again underwater.

Harry and Daphne exchanged a single baffled glance before silently resuming their walk. They were going down what felt like immersed stone stairs, heading towards the point where the old Isiame had vanished: the exact centre of the river, under the middle of the archway - right where the longest branch of the right pillar-tree ended and this of the left pillar-tree started.

Just before he reached that point, Harry felt the tension in the arm that held on the tree branch increase to a barely sufferable level; he redoubled his grip, wincing at the discomfort, but the tree branch was slowly slipping from between his fingers while his extended arm felt as if it was about to be dislodged at the shoulder. He had to let go.

He half-turned again to look at Daphne. She had halted when he had stopped moving, and was staring at him with wide, non too reassured eyes. Harry swallowed.

“See you in a minute,” he said.

Then he took a deep breath, held it in, and released the branch.

The water, which had been going up to the middle of his chest, surged upwards and closed over his head as he fell in the river's dark-green depths - then his feet fell on solid stone and the water abruptly washed off him, falling back behind him with the great rushing sound of a wave breaking on a beach.

He took off his glasses and wiped them dry on one corner of his shirt. When his vision cleared at last, he was able to see he was standing in a pool of water maybe five inches deep, his clothes quite dry despite the dive he had just gone through. The rough, dark-grey wall of a cave curved above him, the ceiling just high enough to allow him to stand without bumping his head on the unpolished stone. He looked behind him - there was no sign of the gate he had just passed. Just a shallow, glass-like extent of water, and the bottom of the cave.

“You might want to step out of the pool, Mr. Potter. You're going to catch a cold.”

Harry's head snapped round at the sound of the Isiame's voice; she leant heavily on her staff at the edge of the pond, before the mouth of the cave, silhouetted against the paling sky. Harry surveyed the staff with a wary eye and passed his wand from his left hand to his right.

The water started bubbling with a low rumbling sound directly next to him, and he repressed a start, instinctively stepping away from the disturbance and out of the pond; the next second the water of the whole pool rose in a white geyser, as thick and tall as a grown man.

Harry's eyebrows shot up in sudden recognition, and he turned to the silent Isiame.

“An Elemental Gate?” he asked.

“Indeed.”

“That's… fairly rare,” Harry noted, frowning. “I thought there were only three recorded in the whole world, including the Earth Gate leading into Hogsmeade Valley.”

“There are not many,” the Isiame agreed. “And all are Isiame-made. This one is the most recent.”

“'Isiame-made'? Wait-”

The geyser suddenly broke and the water fell back into the pond with a thunderous noise, cutting him off.

“Ah, Miss Greengrass,” the old Isiame said as a quite dishevelled Daphne came into view, standing precisely where the geyser had been. “Welcome, welcome. Please step out of the pool, and follow me.”

She turned around and took a few steps towards the mouth of the cave. Daphne slowly walked out of the pool, her steps uncertain. Passing the Elemental Gate seemed to have shaken her confidence a bit and she sought Harry's eyes as she advanced, as if wanting to know his opinion. Harry, who had not moved, shook his head slightly as he met her gaze, and she halted.

“Where do you want to take us?” Harry called at the retreating Isiame.

“To my home,” the Isiame said without turning round. “If I am honest with you, I must say I would greatly enjoy a good breakfast, and I thought you would like to sit and eat with me.”

“Hold on a second,” Harry snapped.

Was it his sudden change of tone? For the first time, the old Isiame seemed to lose her everlasting serenity; she halted and turned to face them, her face a hard, cold mask.

“Mr. Potter, your hesitations, although understandable, already made us waste a lot of time.”

“Then stop wasting time and tell me already where we are, and where we're going,” Harry brusquely retorted.

The Isiame narrowed her eyes at him, her long, gnarled fingers clenching more tightly around her staff - then she had a gesture that took Harry by surprise: straightening up, she lifted her staff and threw it at him with startling strength.

Harry caught the staff out of sheer reflexes. It was just thick enough to allow him to wrap his hand around it, and about as long as he was tall. As soon as his fingers closed on the wood, an electrical wave surged through his hand and up his arm, the sensation similar to what he felt when he touched Daphne - only much, much stronger. His sense of touch returned to him immediately, his skin erupting in gooseflesh as he was struck full-force by the cold of the cave.

He also became very aware that he was barefoot - until Daphne discreetly passed him the shoes she had apparently picked up before following him through the gate. He nodded to thank her and hurriedly put them on.

“There,” the Isiame said, claiming his attention again. “You are armed. I am not. That way, maybe you will find it easier to trust me. Now, if you would be kind enough to follow me, I will answer your questions en route.”

And without another word, she wheeled about and walked out of the cave, her back straight and her head held high despite the absence of her support.

Harry and Daphne exchanged another glance before following.

“Give me that staff,” Daphne whispered, as they emerged out of the cave in the bleary light of dawn.

“Why?”

“I want to hold it.”

“I'm the Auror,” Harry retorted out of the corner of his mouth. “Unless you're better at duelling than I am, I'm holding the staff.”

“Potter-”

“So what is this place, exactly?” Harry called to the Isiame, thus effectively covering Daphne's indignant spluttering.

The old woman slowed down to allow them to catch up with her. “As you can see, we're in the mountains,” she said, gesturing around.

Harry's eyes followed the motion of her hand. The cave they had just left was a black hole in the rocky face of a high mountain, and the road they were following, instead of leading them down, crept horizontally along the mountain's flank. There was no vegetation at all. The landscape was a desolate succession of sharp, naked rocks, deep crevasses, patches of snow and slides of rubble. The horizon was blocked by jagged summits, the pure white of their snow-covered slopes standing out sharply in the lingering obscurity, drawing against the still-dark sky a pattern that looked vaguely familiar to Harry.

“Those are the Hogwarts mountains,” he whispered out loud, eyes wide open in wondering.

“Indeed,” the old Isiame said. “I trust you remember the Queen Cassiopeia, who led the battle against the Founders?… She was a woman of power, but so young, and so foolish… She had a friend, a servant named Rosalyn, who saved her life by impersonating her at the end of the battle, while the Queen herself fled. Rosalyn was killed, of course, and Cassiopeia became obsessed with the idea of finding her body and burying it herself. She refused to leave the mountains for a safer location, and she even wasted many of her servants' lives by ordering them to dig the Elemental Gate we just passed.”

“But Elemental Gates are not human-made,” Harry contradicted her. “They are as old as the Earth itself-”

“So the wizards believe. Since they were never able to explain them, they decided the Gates were natural phenomena, perhaps born from conflicting magical forces when the Earth shaped itself. They found only three of them in the whole world, but they are a dozen. And yes, they are Isiame-made.” The old woman closed her eyes for a second, an expression of great weariness washing over her wrinkled face. “They are the product of Isiames pooling their power to create a gate from rock to rock, or from lake to waterway. The Fire Gates and Air Gates are too dangerous and instable, and very few of them were made. Many of the Queen's servants died to make this particular Water Gate. The Queen herself wasted all of her power and died from exhaustion, because she attempted to create in a few months what usually takes decades to make.”

“But why?” Daphne blurted out.

“As I said, she was foolish.” The old Isiame grew sombre. “My ancestor was one of those who followed her here. The story has been passed from one generation to the next, for the past thousand years.”

“Why did you stay here after the Queen died?” Harry asked.

“The Water Gate was finished at last,” the Isiame said. “And we discovered what happened to the fallen Isiames' souls. We listened to the Song of the Trees. And we realised our place was still here, at Hogwarts; that is where our ancient power lingers; that is where the Trees' sanctuary is; and most of all, that is where young Isiames, thinking they are magical, come and are taught the wizards' ways before they venture into the Forest and learn the truth… We're almost there.”

The road narrowed down to a path as it winded around sharp rocks while keeping a vertiginous precipice on its right side, and they all had to lean on the almost vertical wall on their left, rubble rolling under their feet and tumbling down the chasm as they progressed. Harry was so concentrated on where he put his feet that he didn't notice the Isiame was slowing down until he nearly bumped into her; he adjusted his pace to their guide's and cautiously raised his head to peer over her shoulder.

Directly ahead of them, the path twisted around a sharp ridge of the mountain and vanished out of sight behind it.

“What's around the corner?” he asked.

“Home,” she said. “Mind your step now.”

“Only now?” Daphne muttered furiously behind Harry. “What are we going to do next, walk on a rope over the precipice?”

“Spare your breath, Greengrass. You're going to need it.”

As it turned out, Harry found his own advice quite useful, as rounding the ridge of the mountain required all his attention; he ended up having Daphne go before him so he could watch her back. The former Slytherin obviously wasn't used to walking in the mountains and he didn't fancy having to stop her fall with a spell. In contrast, the Isiame walked with the assurance of someone who knew the pathway like the back of their hand. By the time they all found themselves safe and sound on the other side of the ridge, the night had been completely washed off the sky, the heavy clouds rolling overhead letting through a dull greyish light.

“Welcome home,” the Isiame said.

They were gazing at what looked like a huge, wide crevice carved into the mountain range by a giant's axe. The inner walls of it were smooth, polished stone, and sculpted into the façades of countless houses that were literally piled on top of each other. Everywhere Harry looked, from where the feet of the mountains were lost in misty shadows to where the summits gleamed with fresh snow, windows gaped, lintels topped elegant doorframes, narrow gutters ran down the vertical walls. Everything seemed to have been carved out of the mountains themselves and blended with their sides.

It would have looked more like a bizarre work of art than anything else, had it not buzzed with life. People were bustling about on the narrow pathways separating every line of houses from the one it topped, pushing heaps of accumulated snow towards the gutters - and though Harry couldn't clearly see what they were doing to it, the snow suddenly turned into water that cascaded into the drains, all the way down the mountains. Others were leaning out of the windows and chatting with each other, and only rarely did the words that reached Harry's ears sound like English.

“A city of Isiames?” he asked.

“The Isiame City,” their guide softly corrected. “Here are gathered the world's remaining Isiames; those we were able to find and convince that their abilities were a blessing, and not a burden, at least. Shall we?”

She led them into the city, along one of the narrow paths that was being cleared of the snow piling up on it. Long ropes stretched over the front walls of the houses, forming a much-welcome handrail they could cling to while advancing, and on their right, at the edge of the precipice, a low wall run along the path, cresting the roofs of the houses immediately below them.

The inhabitants of the Isiame City joyously called over to the old Isiame as she passed by them, and many watched Harry and Daphne with benevolent interest - although Harry couldn't help but notice that a lot of them frowned as they caught sight of him and squinted in an attempt to get a better look at his face. He stiffened and kept his eyes averted from theirs, pretending to take exaggerated caution in his walking.

“This is my house,” the old Isiame said, halting at last.

They had reached the largest house of all, situated in the very middle of the city. Wide stone steps led them up to a tall porch, shadowing a door made out of very, very old oak. The Isiame pushed it open, and it swung soundlessly on its hinges to let them in.

They stepped inside what looked like the nave of a cathedral. Dozens of wide stone pillars supported the weight of a ceiling lost in shadows. Each pillar bore sculptures of human faces, horses, swords and arrows, valleys and forests, mountains and oceans. The warm, moving light of several great fires lit in chimneys lining the walls, projected flickering shadows on the carved figures, giving the illusion that they were alive. Tall windows pierced the front wall, letting in the grey winter light that cast their shadows on a floor polished by the trampling of thousands of feet over hundreds of years.

“That's… homey,” Harry said.

The Isiame grinned. “This place was built to reunite the whole Isiame people in case of emergency. We could not do so in a hut, Mr. Potter.”

“The city's almost empty, though,” Harry remarked in a low voice. “Out of the hundreds of houses outside, I saw only a few dozens that looked as if they were inhabited. There aren't enough people to fill half of this room.”

“Yet there are so many more Isiames scattered all over the world,” said a breathless, eager voice somewhere on his right. “All they need to accept their nature and embrace their powers, is a true leader.”

Harry and Daphne whirled around in the same startled motion; standing beside a pillar, silent and barely noticeable in the stripped pattern of shadows and lights of the hall, was another old woman. She was as wrinkled and skinny as their guide and leant on a staff similar to that Harry was still carrying - but the contrast between her expression and the other Isiame's could not have been greater. Where their blue-eyed guide looked infinitely patient and serene, the newcomer's face glowed with hope and barely suppressed excitement, and a kind of avidity that was unpleasantly familiar to Harry.

“Welcome, Son of the last Knight,” she whispered. “I am delighted to see you again.”

“Sao,” their guide interrupted, a cold edge to her voice.

“Eunice,” the newcomer replied with a slight bow of her head, making Harry aware, for the first time, that he had never thought of asking their guide her name.

“Since you are here, would you mind calling one of our apprentices to take care of Miss Greengrass?” the blue-eyed Eunice asked. “I would like to talk to Mr. Potter alone. And you have your own duties to attend to.”

Sao's lips tightened in a thin line, and for a moment it looked as if she was about to argue, but eventually she bowed again to the pair of them and turned on her heel, beckoning Daphne with one gnarled finger as she walked away.

Daphne threw at Harry a very odd look before following the Isiame.

“The last Knight?” Harry murmured, as soon as both women were out of earshot. He was only vaguely aware that his fingers had tightened around the staff until the wood bit painfully into his flesh.

Eunice closed her eyes. “Sao is impatient by nature,” she said softly. “I did not intend to talk to you about this before tomorrow at least. You have enough to cope with as it is. But the harm is done, I imagine… The last Knight, as I am sure you have already guessed, was your mother.”

Harry's head spun. He had been suspecting a connection between his mother and the Isiame people after what he had seen in the Trees' dream, but the idea of her being a Knight, which he supposed meant a soldier of the Isiames, simply didn't fit in the picture of the young heroin of the first war against Voldemort. She had been a witch. She had married a wizard. She had served the wizards' cause and had even died for it…

He realised for the first time the sheer extent of the secrets he had been uncovering. The Isiames' mystery was including more than his own identity and power, it was spreading around him like a poisonous gas and tainted the memory of the dead - the Founders, and now his parents. For the first time, Harry wished he had left alone the mystery of the Third Kind. It contradicted too much of what he believed in, and now it threatened to alter the pure, beautiful image he had of his mother. He wished-

Harry ground his teeth and forcibly shoved his doubts to the back of his mind. It was too late to back off; even if he did, he knew he would keep wondering and worrying about it. There was nothing to it, he had to finish what he had started.

He raised his head to see the Isiame Eunice watching him thoughtfully, her head tilted slightly to one side.

“Is that why I saw her pick up Rosalyn's sword in my dream?” he asked, in a carefully neutral tone.

“Indeed,” she said in the same even voice. “It was the only precaution Cassiopeia agreed to take in case we lost the war; she enchanted the weapons we used so that every time someone would find a fallen Isiame's weapon, they would become a Knight. And so, ever since Hogwarts fell into the wizards' hands, Knights have guarded the entry to our city, kept it safe and secret. At the Knight's death the weapon go back to the Isiame people. There is a room full of them in this house, if you'd like to see it.”

Harry nodded curtly. “Yes, I'd like to see it. Please.”

She bowed her head in answer. “Follow me.”

She led him through the great hall and into several rooms, most of them cold, silent and deserted. They climbed stairs and walked through long and wide corridors. Outside the hall there were no windows, and the place was lit by small balls of glass in which white little flames flickered, apparently without a need for combustible. Harry tried to remember his path - left, right, right, left, up the stairs, right, left - but the task was hopeless. The house was immense and seemed to take up the entire width of the mountain, and he suspected there were many hidden connections between it and the other houses of the city.

At last they stopped before a door made out of solid oak. It was the only door he had seen inside the house, since the rooms usually were connected by narrow archways merely closed by thick curtains.

“I will need my staff,” Eunice said, turning to him.

Harry hesitated.

“If you fear that you might lose your sense of touch again, don't worry; you are inside the Isiame city. You are surrounded by more elemental energy than you would ever need to replace the amount you lost during your duel with the heir of Slytherin, and which cost you one of your senses.” The Isiame gave him a thin, weary smile. “Here, you are perfectly healthy again.”

“How do you know I-” Harry broke off. The Isiames had been following him for a long time; he had met them too often as Wolves for it to be a coincidence. No doubt they had learnt a lot about him, his infirmity included.

Here, you are perfectly healthy again.

The words echoed in his head. Harry lifted the staff off the ground and threw it to its owner, who caught it with practiced ease.

And his sense of touch, although it was slightly dimmed, remained.

“Thank you,” Eunice said, then turning her back on him she used the staff to rap on the door twice. It creaked open, and she went inside without a backward glance; he followed.

The room was much longer than it was wide, and it stretched ahead of them like a closed-off portion of corridor, lit by several glass balls hovering near the arched ceiling. Life-size portraits lined up on the walls. Under each of them, a weapon rested on the floor, gathering dust. There were quivers and bows, swords, axes, hatchets, daggers, spears, and several other strange-shaped weapons Harry couldn't name.

“The most ancient portraits are near the door,” Eunice said, pulling him out of his contemplation. “Mind your step, some of those blades could still be sharp enough to cut off one of your toes.”

They set off, slowly passing one portrait after the other, Eunice whispering in his ear stories about each of the Knights. There were men and women, the old and the young, the poor and the rich. According to Eunice there had been little more than two Knights every century, and all of them had died doing their duty - most tortured and killed by wizards. Harry felt increasingly uncomfortable as they neared the furthest extremity of the room.

“And this,” Eunice said, halting at last in front of the last portrait, “was the last Knight.”

Harry gazed up at the portrait. It was her, all right. Lily Evans had been painted in her Hogwarts uniform, leaning against a tree of the Forbidden Forest, holding with both hands the hilt of Rosalyn's naked sword, the tip of which rested on the ground at her feet. She looked grave and stared in the distance, her green eyes wide and thoughtful. She could not have been older than sixteen. A knot painfully constricted Harry's chest.

“She was very young,” Eunice said gently. “And very brave.”

“Her eyes-” Harry stopped talking and cleared his throat loudly. “I mean, I saw the Queen's eyes, and they were-”

“Your mother had the Royal Family's eyes,” the Isiame interrupted. “So do you. But she was no descendant of the Queen… and she was no Isiame.”

Harry turned to look at her, puzzled. “What? What do you mean, 'she was no Isiame'? I thought she was your last Knight?”

Eunice inclined her head. “Very few of our Knights actually were Isiames, Mr. Potter. As I said, they found themselves with the duty and the power to protect our people, as soon as they laid a hand on an Isiame's weapon. Most of our Knights were Muggles. Wizards usually avoided the places where Isiames had dwelt or fought, and where they might have found their weapons, but we did have a few of their kind as well. Your mother is one of them.”

“Why does she have the 'Royal Family's eyes' then?”

“I don't know,” the Isiame said. “She was certainly born with the predisposition of giving birth to Isiames - you are evidence of this; but why she was graced with a physical feature of our Queens, is a mystery I have been trying to elucidate for a long time. So far, alas, I have no answer.”

Harry turned back to the portrait and stared hard at it, absorbing all the meticulously painted details of his mother's aspect, her stance, her expression. His feeling of unease grew as he focused on her unsmiling face, and with a pang of anguish, he wondered if she had ever regretted picking up the ancient sword in the mud of the lake.

“We are usually able to contact most of our Knights once they have found a weapon, so as to explain their duty to them,” Eunice murmured. Harry suspected she had been watching his expression, and he wondered how much of his thoughts she had guessed. “But we never got the opportunity to talk to your mother. Her duty was stronger than even her own survival instincts, so she found herself alarmed at the idea that people would get too close to finding the entrance of the city, without even knowing that the spot she was defending was the entrance of a city. She got scared and worried without understanding why, all the time. It must have been such a burden to her.”

“And you couldn't talk to her,” Harry said, his voice a little hoarse. “You managed to meet me twice before today and you were never able to get her on her own?”

“Unfortunately that's right. The first war against Slytherin's heir was raging, and the wizard Dumbledore kept a close eye on all of his students. After she left Hogwarts, she married a young wizard, and they were soon hidden away. We were unable to find them.”

Harry nodded, more to himself than to her. The Fidelius Charm had indubitably worked against the Isiames as well as against the rest of the world.

“Eventually, they were found,” Eunice went on. “But not by us. By the time we were finally able to locate them and rushed over to their home, they were both dead. I am sorry.”

Harry shrugged one shoulder. “Not your fault,” he muttered. He looked away from his mother's sober face. The tale of the last years of her life had brought a bitter taste in his mouth; she hadn't deserved it. As he mechanically cast his eyes around the room, searching for a distraction, he noticed for the first time something very odd.

“Wait, where's Rosalyn's sword?”

Eunice's face grew sombre. “It did not come back to us after your mother's death,” she said, “and we were never able to find it. I suspect a wizard found it at her home soon after she died, and took it away - perhaps hid it with many enchantments so that we could not locate it. We can only guess.”

Harry nodded absently as he let his gaze drift away in the room filled with glittering blades, feeling his mother's sad gaze lying heavy on the back of his head.

***

“So what do you think?” Daphne brightly asked, her arms spread as she slowly revolved in the middle of her new living room.

Harry, leaning against the back wall of the room, raised a sceptical eyebrow. “Rather… bare, don't you think?”

Daphne rolled her eyes. “Well of course, I have to find the furniture for it! I can get everything I need at the Muggle town, the tricky part is to take it back here. Brandon offered to help, do you want to join us?”

Brandon was the Isiame apprentice who had shown Daphne around the city and taken her to her new house; he was a jovial Muggle-born in his mid-forties, whom Harry didn't mind having around, but which he found a bit tiresome with his never-relenting enthusiasm.

“Tempting, but no, thanks,” he said. “In fact I don't think it's a good idea for you to get out of here at all. Let Brandon do your shopping and lie low for a little while, the Ministry might be combing the area-”

“You don't know that,” Daphne countered as she turned her back on him to check inside an adjacent room. “You don't even know if they're looking for us at all. It was all guesswork from the beginning. Merlin, this place is huge!”

“My guesswork tends to be pretty accurate as far as the Ministry's reactions are concerned,” Harry snapped. “I'm one of them, remember?”

He thought he saw Daphne's hands tighten into fists as her back stiffened, and he braced himself for the explosion of bad temper that would be so typical of her - then, to his great surprise, she relaxed and said in a mild tone, “Yeah, you're right. What are you planning to do then?”

“Uh - well, I was thinking I could try to figure out what the Ministry's up to,” he slowly said, a bit taken aback still at her lack of reaction. “My Head of Department gave me a mission, and he doesn't like the Unspeakables all that much, so I don't think he'll go after my blood right away. I could contact him and get his help to cover my tracks, I imagine.”

“And what if he's after your blood anyway?”

“I think I can handle him,” Harry said, hoping he sounded more confident than he felt.

Daphne nodded. “Good then.” She walked up to him and, taking him by surprise for the second time in as many minutes, leant up to kiss him lightly on the mouth. “Come back soon. And be careful, okay?” she breathed against his lips.

“Always am,” he murmured in answer, and since she was there, her face inches from his, her lips full and slightly parted and inviting, and since he had nothing better to do, he kissed her again.

When he walked out of Daphne's house, he found the Isiame Sao waiting for him, oblivious of the snowflakes that lazily drifted all around her, getting tangled in her long grey hair.

“Where are you heading for, Mr. Potter?” Sao asked, in that breathless, thready voice that systematically made Harry ill-at-ease.

“Does it matter?”

“You are free to come and go as you please, of course,” Sao murmured. “But we have waited for you for so long, we greatly fear we might lose you again.”

“I'm going out,” Harry curtly said, “but I'll come back. I don't want to leave my friend all alone here.”

“Miss Greengrass is quite safer here than she would be-”

“Even so.” Harry threw a sideways glance at the old Isiame as he walked past her and strode along the path, heading for the faraway Elemental Gate. She was hurrying to keep up, her staff hitting the polished stone with a dull, hard sound. He started distractedly fingering the handle of his wand.

“Do you not want to come back here for yourself?” she insisted. “Do you not feel better here, among your peers? Do you not have questions you wish to be answered?”

“I've got a mission to finish. Now, if you'll excuse me…”

The thumping sound of the old woman's staff died down at last, and Harry sped up his pace.

And then stopped dead in his tracks. “Now wait a minute,” he said, whirling around to face again the old Sao. “I do have a question.”

The Isiame slowly drew closer to him, hazel eyes questioning under her creased brow.

“The werewolves in Hogsmeade,” Harry said. “Why do they keep coming back, again and again?”

Sao's face split in a grin. “I thought it was obvious, Mr. Potter. The Forest has sensed the arrival of an exceptionally powerful Isiame. The Trees are restless. The werewolves sense it in turn, and keep coming back as close to the Forest as they can - and end up chasing the only human beings in the vicinity.”

“But what do werewolves have to do with the Forest?”

“We call them the moon's bastards,” Sao murmured. “The first wizard to be bitten by a transformed Isiame became a werewolf, and infected others after him. They do not have the full power of Isiames, but still have some of their abilities, albeit lessened… And they do sense an Isiame's power.”

“So all Isiames are able to transform into Wolves then,” Harry said.

Sao nodded, her eyes fluttering shut as a dreamy expression stole over her wrinkled, angular face. “Oh, yes. Those are my favourite moments, the transformations. The thrill of being part of the pack. Of running, without concern nor restrain, wherever the wind takes us. Just stopping now and again to salute the moon. Being in the pack makes everything feel right, in its own place.”

Harry couldn't help the shudder that ran up his spine. The woman's words found an echo in a very primal part of him, the part that yearned for his monthly transformations, for the long run across the countryside without any worry weighing on his mind. He had to blink several times to clear his mind, which had suddenly clouded with irrepressible longing. Sao was watching him, her smile a little too understanding to his liking.

“I'd…” He took a deep, calming breath. “I'd better go.”

And turning on his heel, he stalked away, striving to focus again on his duty.

***

The tall green flames of the secure Floo connection flickered and sprung higher, and a second later Gawain Robards' large silhouette appeared in their midst, spinning like a top. Harry stepped back, giving his superior enough room to move out of the fire.

“Potter,” Robards growled as soon as he had staggered onto a floor blackened with grime. “What the bloody hell is this… rat hole?”

“That would be Lance Colman's flat, sir,” Harry politely answered, fighting off a grin at Robards' disgusted expression. “It has all the protection necessary for a meeting.”

“Really?” Robards' small eyes swept across the stained walls and floor, the furniture covered in dust and filth, and the rotting bits of food lying all around. “And where is Colman now?”

“I told him to settle in my place for the duration of my mission. I doubt he'll come back here unless I kick him out of my flat again.”

“I can only understand him,” Robards grumbled. “Places like this one should be illegal. Anyway, Potter, can you explain to me the mess we've got now? Granger at St. Mungo's, an Unspeakable called Dramont found dead in a small chamber, apparently strangled, and for some reason the ninth-floor requested battalions of Aurors to be sent over to a house in Frog End - a house that also happens to be your quarters for the mission!”

“The ninth-floor had me followed,” Harry said grimly. “I caught Dramont spying on me yesterday evening. He accidentally died in the fight. I was able to trace him back to Hermione Granger and paid her a visit, but we couldn't reach an agreement and it ended a little abruptly. On my way back I grabbed the owner of the Frog End house and took her away, before the ninth-floor could get their hands on her.”

Robards nodded curtly. “You think they would've arrested her?”

“I'm positive, sir. The ninth-floor is researching about ancient creatures, very powerful, which are somehow related to werewolves-”

“-Hence the Hogsmeade business.”

“Precisely. You've seen they're ready to sacrifice an entire village if it can get them information about those creatures; they would hardly shrink from arresting an innocent.”

“So it seems,” Robards agreed, a troubled expression on his wide, crude features. “Blast it, Potter, I hate this situation. Scrimgeour is doing exactly what Martin asks him to do, and leaves me in the dark. Were you able to find out whether those creatures are dangerous?”

Harry hesitated. “I'm… not sure, sir,” he said at last. “I'm watching them closely.”

“Good. Stay out of trouble. Don't try anything without referring to me first.” Robards brought up his left wrist, pushing back his sleeve to bare a thick, hairy forearm and a Muggle wristwatch. He vanished the glass with a swish of his wand and started moving the hands of the watch, his tongue stuck between his teeth as he squinted in concentration.

“It's half past one in the afternoon, sir,” Harry helpfully supplied.

Robards snorted. “Thank you, Potter, but I have absolutely no use for this piece of information. Ah… Chloe?”

Harry had to repress a start when a tinny female voice answered, coming from Robards' wristwatch, “Yes, Mr. Robards?”

“Chloe, be a dear and use the secure Floo connection in my office. The password is the name of my favourite brand of cigars, I trust you remember it.”

“I do, sir,” the tinny voice said.

“Good. Take the file number two hundred and fifty five with you. I'm expecting you.”

“Yes, Mr. Robards.”

Robards nodded to his own wristwatch and waved his wand at it again, causing the glass to reappear. Looking up, he caught sight of Harry's expression and sniggered.

“When you're grown-up you'll get one of those, Potter.”

Harry emitted a non-committal grunt. “You're bringing your secretary into this?”

“She's loyal to me,” Robards gruffly said. “Between you and me, she might be the only Ministry employee I completely trust - ah, here she comes.”

The green flames had just leapt with renewed vigour, enveloping the revolving form of a thin woman. Moments later Robards' secretary cautiously stepped out of the magical fire, the file Robards had asked for clutched to her chest, wide eyes darting left and right around Lance's apartment; then there was a flash of recognition in her eyes and her nose wrinkled in disgust. Harry then remembered that Lance had had a brief liaison with her, and had apparently taken her to his apartment - something that had probably sped up the breakup process - and he had to pinch his lips to hide his grin.

“Chloe, the file,” Robards sharply ordered.

The secretary gave it to him with a mumbled word of assent and stood there, casting her eyes around her with the same vaguely disgusted expression, her arms folded across her chest in a somewhat defensive stance. She shifted slightly on the spot, probably a little cold - Harry couldn't tell, since his sensitivity had once again evaporated as soon as he was out of the Isiame city - and as she did so her rather plain features were exposed to the light of the dying flames.

Harry frowned as a memory suddenly popped to the front of his mind.

“Here, Potter, take a look at this…”

At his boss's injunction, Harry drew closer to him and glanced at the file Robards held open. There, the comings and goings of Alphonse Martin, Chief Unspeakable, had been meticulously reported for the past two days. The Frenchman had apparently gone on several errands, some of them in Paris, a few at Hogwarts, and a dozen in Frog End, over the past ten hours.

“Interesting, eh?” Robards rumbled. “Looks like you were right. The old Frenchie's going crazy over that case of yours. He's a dangerous man, Potter; you might want to look out for him.”

“You had him followed, sir?” Harry slowly asked, trying not to show his incredulity.

Robards snorted as he snapped the file closed. “You think I'd delegate that task to anyone? Nah, I did it myself. Here, you keep that - see if you can make any sense of Martin's wanderings. Chloe and I are leaving through the Floo connection. Contact me again in twenty-four hours.”

“I will.”

“Good. I'm off then. Oh, and Potter…” Robards paused just as he was about to step into the Floo fire, his head turned so that he could look at Harry over his shoulder. “You know, when I told you to 'break into the Department of Mysteries if you had to'… I wasn't being literal.” He chortled, not bothering to hide his satisfaction. “Merlin's balls, Potter. You should've seen the Unspeakables' faces this morning. Priceless.”

Still chuckling, he waved his wand around him, causing the fire to roar back to life and envelop completely his voluminous person. He was gone in the blink of an eye.

“Well, I'll take my leave as well,” the secretary said. “Goodbye, Mr. Potter, and good luck, I suppose.”

“Hey, wait a moment here,” Harry brusquely said. Grabbing the woman's elbow, he spun her around so that she was facing him and unceremoniously thrust his wandlight into her face. She squealed and squirmed, trying to escape him, but he did not lower his wand until he had had a good look at her face.

“Well,” he said lightly at last, “it was a pleasure, Miss Greengrass.”

The secretary stopped protesting at once and flinched under his relentless stare.

“I must say I'm a bit surprised you would specifically send me to your sister's house, out of all the places I could've stayed at in Frog End,” Harry went on.

Chloe Greengrass winced and didn't answer; Harry grabbed her chin and forced her to look at him in the eyes. He couldn't help but notice that touching her skin absolutely had no effect on him at all.

“Who told you to pick that house?” he asked in a low voice. “Not Robards, right?”

“I…” The girl took a deep, shuddering breath. “No one. She told me you were different, a bit like her, and I thought - I thought you could help her…”

Harry stared at her hard. He didn't like her explanation - it sounded far too convenient that he would be sent precisely where the Isiames had been waiting for him, just because Chloe Greengrass was worried about her baby sister. But the girl's face merely showed fear.

“Is she alright?” she stammered.

Harry sighed, then let go of her. Chloe brought a hand to her elbow and started rubbing it, shaking slightly where she stood.

“Yes,” Harry said. “She's fine. She's safe.”

Chloe glanced up at him again, shyly averting her eyes when she met his gaze. “Will you take care of her?” she asked in a small, pleading voice.

Harry inwardly groaned. This conversation wasn't turning out the way he wanted it to. Damn the stupid saving-people reputation. “Fine, fine, I will, now hurry up or your boss will wonder where you've gone,” he snapped.

She jumped at his irritable tone and hurried to the Floo fire, adjusting her robes as she went. As the flames rose high all around her, Harry caught a last glimpse of her face, smiling gratefully at him - in the same way it had been smiling in the small picture hanging on a wall of Daphne's yellow bedroom.

Harry muttered under his breath about women in general and sisters in particular as he cleared the remains of the Floo connection; then with a sigh of relief he got out of Lance's filthy, stinking apartment, Robards' file under his arm, and jogged up the stairs that led from the underground flat to the courtyard.

There he Disapparated at last - back to the Isiame City, where Daphne was waiting.