A/N: Thanks for reading, please review. Chapter title inspired by the Foo Fighters. Things are starting to happen in this story now - exciting, action-type things. Enjoy.

*~*~*~*

Chapter 7: Long Road To Ruin

It's not like I drifted here on the tides of fate.

I'm here because I chose to be here.

Destiny had nothing to do with it!

--Irvine Kinneas

Faced with the sparkling green light of death, Harry did quite possibly the only sensible thing in his situation and fell down onto his arse. Boy Who Lived he might be, yet it had been a long while since he had put the Avada Kedavra to the test.

The curse roared over his head and fierce, biting tendrils of light, vicious sparks, brushed the very tips of his unruly hair as Harry hit the marble floor tiles with a grunt, tightening his grip on his wand.

Umbridge's death curse slammed into the interior of the golden-grilled elevator hard, and exploded with all the wrath and hate necessary to fire such a curse in the first place. The lift erupted in green flames, the metal groaned as it twisted and snapped, and Harry rolled away to the right as the solid bars of the grille came tumbling down at his head, torn straight from their holdings and alight with green flame.

He rolled onto his knees and from his knees straight up, his wand raised and pointed straight at-

“Avada Kedavra!”

Ah, hell, that was unnaturally quick spell work - especially for a dead woman.

Harry ducked away again, felt the cold brush of death again, and was showered in dust and chunks of plaster and marble as the wall behind him exploded, the green flames clawing along the wall and up across the ceiling. For a terrible moment Harry stood bathed in the emerald light, yet he took the offensive a heartbeat later, as this time he had remained on his feet.

“Vestic!” he said, and whilst technically Dark magic, the curse was an authorised means of using lethal force against an adversary. It was a killing curse, although unlike the Avada Kedavra, it could be blocked with a shield charm.

A thick and weighty purple light erupted from the tip of Harry's old wand and swirled through the air, striking Umbridge in her shoulder and shoving her back half a dozen paces until she slumped and fell, the wand in her hand clattering away.

Not taking any chances, Harry summoned the fallen wand and shoved it into his pocket, glaring down at the woman who had killed herself not a week ago in her cell on Azkaban Island. Did she just twitch? Impossible - Vestic stopped the heart beating and cut off all oxygen to the brain. Then again, how was a dead woman attempting to assassinate him at all? This was certainly no Inferius.

And that wasn't even the most disturbing thing, really. That was...

Well, the first thing Harry noticed was that Umbridge was naked, not wearing a stitch of clothing. And that was nearly enough to make him sick, especially as her body had been stitched up after the autopsy by the Unspeakables, and was well on its way through the first stages of decomposition.

Bloated and flabby, reeking of death and Dark magic, Dolores Umbridge had seen better days.

“What in Merlin's name is going on?” Harry whispered. A third arrow aimed at his heart? Another message from his faceless foe?

There were alarms going off in the distance, and it would only take a few moments for his Aurors to arrive, alerted by the Dark magic detectors in the Ministry that some serious Darkness had been conjured here today.

Umbridge's corpse moved.

Harry took a wary step back. The green flames eating away at the lift and walls were dying down, the magic in the curse no longer able to keep the fires burning without some sort of fuel - namely wood or fabric - and Harry stood in its failing light, alongside the more natural orange-fire torches.

Slowly but surely Umbridge rose back to her feet. It was her eyes that Harry concentrated on, keeping his wand at the ready and a blasting curse on the tip of his tongue. Her eyes were white and grey - or rather, white with tendrils of faint, glowing grey mist rushing through them, swirling faster and faster.

Mist, Harry thought. “Shadowman,” he said.

Umbridge cocked her head to the side and the flesh around her bloated neck tore as she eyed Harry through the mist. Then she began to laugh, baring her bloody teeth and blackened gums as if she were about to bite.

“It will never be over... Harry... not for you.”

That was Umbridge's voice, simpering and flowery, and a week of death had only given it a slight, decayed croak. Yet Harry heard something else beneath that voice, something darker, something laughing at him.

“Who are you?” Harry asked. And WHAT magic is this? He had just noticed that Umbridge's hands were covered with blood, and not all of it was dry. Whose wand did he have in his pocket? “Tell me how you've done this!”

“Live... to fight another... day...” Umbridge giggled. “A lot more... fun... to come your way...”

And as if a pair of invisible hands grasped the side of her head and twisted, Umbridge's neck snapped completely, her head turning a full circle with a series of sickening cracks and the rough, nauseating sound of flesh tearing from bone. The glowing light in her eyes faded, the mist dying away. Her head hit the marble tiles and rolled to rest at Harry's feet before her body slumped back down, dead a week and looking it.

Ron found Harry first, Teddy Lupin at his side and all thirty of the recruits, new and old, trailing behind them both. Drawn by the wailing alarm, and only a few corridors away in the lecture theatres, Ron arrived with his wand drawn to find Harry kneeling down on his ankles over the head of Dolores Umbridge.

Next to him Teddy paled, his hair turning white. He raised a hand to his mouth and turned away before he was sick.

“Harry?”

“Hello, Ron,” Harry said without looking up. With his thumb and forefinger he opened Umbridge's eyes wide, first one then the other, looking for any trace of the mist. He could see her pupils again now. They were glazed and faint - not at all out of the ordinary.

“What happened?”

“Umbridge here attacked me, I disarmed her, and then her head fell off.”

Ron was looking more than a little green. He ushered his recruits back, away from the crime scene. It was a futile gesture, Harry knew, as there would be no physical evidence of his Shadowman here. He wasn't that lucky and, once again, it seemed Umbridge had been possessed from afar.

The misty substance in her eyes had been a clue - another link if he needed one between what had happened on Azkaban and what had happened to Albus at Hogwarts, and now what had happened deep within the Ministry, at the Department of Mysteries no less. The Shadowman had, in the space of a week, bypassed all the defences and wards of what were arguably the three most secure buildings in the wizarding world.

Harry felt like hitting something - hard. He was already so many steps behind, and this just set him back even further. The questions had been piling up for a week, and now the bodies were starting to as well.

And he had no answers to either problem.

*~*~*~*

Albus's second week at Hogwarts could be considered somewhat relaxing compared to the first. Still getting used to the ancient castle and its ways, he, Frank, Gary, Rose and Hannah often got lost on their way to lessons, even on their way to the Great Hall and back to Gryffindor Tower.

It sometimes seemed as if entire corridors moved, or a staircase led somewhere different when used a second time. Doors were not doors, portraits hid secret passageways, and one never knew when a trick step in the staircases was going to change places. All in all, it was very confusing.

Word spread fast that James was the new Gryffindor Seeker. Albus had been informed by Alison Bennett, the Captain, that he would be training twice a week with the house team, Monday and Thursday, out at the pitch on his Windburn. The first game of the season was just after Halloween, against Ravenclaw. He knew he didn't have a real chance to play, as James was fighting fit and ready to go, but it would be exciting... in front of the whole school... to catch the Snitch and win the match. He wad daydreaming about that a lot.

There had been no sign of the mist creatures, and Albus was actually managing to fall asleep at a reasonable hour after a few nights of staying up late, reading his Defence Against the Dark Arts book and just making sure now and again that all the windows remained closed and latched.

Hagrid had told him that none of the creatures in the forest had seen or heard anything out of the ordinary the night he was attacked, which was strange considering that a fair swath of the forest had been drowning in the eerie glowing fog. But then the whole bloody thing was strange. His mum was owling him at least once a day and Albus was getting a little tired of that. He was old enough to attend Hogwarts now, and didn't need checking up on every single day.

On Wednesday after Charms, Albus, Frank and Gary were heading down through the castle for lunch, talking excitedly about the new charm they had learnt for casting fire from their wands. Incendio. Albus had been the only one who had managed to produce more than a few small sparks - he had set his notes of parchment well and truly ablaze - and had earned Gryffindor five house points for doing so.

Professor Flitwick had even commented that he had a natural affinity with charms work, as so far he was way ahead of everyone else in terms of actually casting the charms. Sometimes it even worked when he didn't get the wand movements just right, although the casting wasn't as powerful.

Albus had asked why it sometimes still worked even though his wand movements weren't always perfect.

“Magic can evolve, sometimes,” Flitwick had said, shrugging his tiny shoulders. “And there is always a little leeway. The magic adapts to you, to your style. Why, I recall young Teddy Lupin had the same grasp on charms as you do, Mr. Potter. He was casting fourth-year spells with more confidence than most halfway through his first-year. Very bright, very bright that lad.”

Albus had been glad to see that Frank had had his bandages and sling removed that morning. His arm was still sore, he said, and an ugly purple-yellow bruise stretched from his elbow down to his wrist, but he could use it again.

“No more adventures for me,” he had said quite sincerely.

Gary had slapped Albus on the back and said not to worry, he'd be along on the next one. Albus assured him that if adventure arose unexpectedly again, he'd also be sitting it out. Gary could go play in the Forbidden Forest in the dead of night with crimson-eyed monsters all on his own.

Albus shivered, and shoved the memory of that calm, cool fog from his mind. All the excitement he wanted now was over the wide selection of food in the Great Hall. As he and his friends hurried around a bend in the corridor from the Charms rooms, they almost bumped into another Gryffindor heading the same way. The Head Girl, no less, and someone Albus had met before.

“Hello, Victoire,” he said, as Gary and Frank ran ahead, hungry for lunch.

“Albus,” the seventh-year Gryffindor replied. She stood tall and proud, yet was on her own. “How are you today?”

Albus had known Victoire for as long as he could remember. She was the daughter of Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacour-Weasley. His dad had told him that her name was French for 'Victory', as she had been born in the aftermath of the Battle of Hogwarts, one year to the day. He also knew she was very pretty, just like her mother, but such things did not really matter to Albus just yet.

“I'm good, just had Charms. Hey what happened to your eye?”

Her long blonde hair had been drawn like a curtain over the side of her cute, angular face, covering the bruising around her eye. It looked as if someone had punched her, but that was ridiculous. Victoire was friends with everyone.

“Ah,” she said, giggling. There was a cultured tone to her voice, no doubt from her mother's side. “This happened last night - I fell in my dormitory, if you must know, and hit my face on the corner of my trunk.”

Albus winced. “Ouch. Does it hurt?”

“A little,” she said, nearly whispered. “But I grew up with two brothers, so this is nothing. I set a vanishing potion to brew this morning in the dungeons. It should be ready by now.”

“That's good.” Albus was ready to run ahead and catch up to Gary and Frank. If he didn't get to the Great Hall fast enough then those two would make sure personally that all the best sandwich meat was eaten. He was about to say his goodbyes to Victoire but paused, remembering something James had said before getting on the Hogwarts Express a week ago. Victoire and Teddy had been snogging! He grinned. “So how's Teddy?” he asked.

Victoire flinched, her eyes narrowing for just a moment before the good-natured smile returned to her face. “He is fine,” she said, and ruffled his unruly hair. Why did everyone always want to do that? “Owled me just yesterday. He is training to be an Auror with your father.”

“Really?” That was news to Albus. They had reached the Entrance Hall, and the doors to the Great Hall were wide open. Teddy as an Auror. “That sounds wicked.”

“Yes,” Victoire agreed, turning toward the corridors that led down to the dungeons and Professor Slughorn's potion laboratories. “Run along now, Albus. I will see you later.”

“Okay. Bye, Victoire.”

Albus headed into the Great Hall to grab himself some lunch. He had Defence Against the Dark Arts next period, his favourite lesson, and was hoping Professor Drogin would be setting another quiz, and therefore another chance for house points. He was getting pretty popular with all the other Gryffindors, as his personal house-point tally stacked up.

He'd even managed to get fifty on the weekend from Neville, for telling him straight away what had happened in the forest. That was more than anyone else so far!

 

*~*~*~*

Harry had a special access card that got him through the security at New Scotland Yard. Located in a twenty-storey office block near the Houses of Parliament along Broadway and Victoria Street in Westminster, The Yard had some of the best security the Muggle world could manage. It was right next to the Ministry of Defence, as well.

It was a high priority access-all-areas card. His immobile photograph sat on the tag next to a brief description - name, occupation, rank - and a large red '1', which meant to the average person not to ask the bearer any questions.

According to his tag Harry was Harry Potter, Specialist Consultant for the Ministry of Defence. Only a handful of people in this building knew the truth about his consultant status. It was indeed special - some would say magical.

Maggie King was one of those people. She was a DNA and crime scene analyst specialising in blood-spatter and infectious blood-transmitted contagions. Harry had worked with her more than once, when the two Aurors who were stationed at Scotland Yard called in for back-up.

That did not happen often, but when, say, a dragon had been sighted in the skies over London, Harry brought in the full force of his Department hard and fast. That was a few years ago, and it had escaped from the reserve in Romania - a disgruntled employee had actually set the bloody thing loose. Three Muggles had become lunch for the beast, unfortunately, before it could be caught and destroyed. And that single incident had done more damage to the Statute of Secrecy than Voldemort ever had during his time.

Muggle technology was a lot more sophisticated these days. They had satellites in space that had locked on to the dragon as if it were an inter-continental ballistic missile, and live feeds to what they called the internet, a world wide network of computers that had tracked the dragon's progress through London with near crystal-clear clarity, streaming real time footage of the magical creature all across the planet.

It had taken a lot of spin and pull with the Muggle government to knock it off as an elaborate hoax. And the footage still popped up now and again on the conspiracy sites, according to the Department of International Muggle Relations.

And it was because of Muggle technology that Harry was here today, at Scotland Yard. Magic could only do so much, and it couldn't do half of what the Muggles could when it came to analysing samples taken from a crime scene. The sample Harry wanted tested hadn't technically come from the scene of a crime, but he was willing to bet his weight in galleons the results were going to be interesting nevertheless.

“Good morning, Maggie,” Harry said. He had dressed himself in a simple Muggle suit - black trousers, black jacket, black shoes, and underneath a white shirt. Over the top of that he wore a regulation blue smock, which was required of all persons when entering the 'clean' labs below the Scotland Yard building.

A woman with curly brown hair, sitting at a very clean clear-glass laboratory table, looked up from examining a small Petri dish of some greenish substance, and pulled down the mask covering her mouth and nose. All around her shiny machines whirred and groaned almost silently, and a dozen computer monitors blipped and beeped, all incomprehensible to Harry.

“Harry Potter,” Maggie King said. “I always look forward to the owl delivering a note from you.”

Harry smiled. He thought Maggie looked older, just around the eyes. Small wrinkles, a pinched look, maybe she was just a little tired and run down. After all, she wasn't that old at twenty-nine. Harry himself was heading for forty in the next few years, and that was a frightening thought.

“Yeah, I'm working on a murder investigation - a convict in my custody was... beheaded. Need a little help from you and your machines.”

Maggie stood up. “Well, that's what I'm here for - although you lose points for failing to make polite conversation with a girl before jumping straight into all this beheading business, Harry.”

Harry raised his hands. “Ha, sorry. Got little else on my mind these days. How are the kids?”

“There we are,” Maggie said, removing the white gloves from her hands and tossing them in a bin marked 'Hazardous Waste'. “Just fine, just fine. Little Michael started school last week. He's already getting into so much trouble - just like his father. And yours?”

“My youngest son started school, too, and has been up to a little mischief of his own.”

“Magic school?” Maggie asked quietly, glancing around her empty lab, yet there was no one else in the room save Harry. Very few people had access this far and to such expensive investigative equipment.

Harry tapped the side of his nose and winked. “No such thing as magic, is there?”

“Nope, just owls delivering letters, dragons flying through the skies over London...”

“Haven't a clue what you're talking about,” Harry said with a shrug. He glanced around the room, having the strangest feeling that something was out of place.

“No, of course not.” Maggie laughed, it sounded a little out of place. Harry saw her hand resting against the glass table was shaking a little.

“Are you feeling okay?” he asked. She did look a little pale, more than just tired.

“Oh yes, I'm fine, just caught up in a few nasty cases of my own - lots of blood, and lots of mess. What can I do to help you with yours?”

Thinking it a little odd that Maggie, a blood-splatter analyst, felt squeamish around blood, Harry reached into his pocket and withdrew a small vial of crimson liquid stoppered with a cork. He'd drawn it himself from the vein in his arm before setting out.

“I need you to take a look at this,” he said.

“Blood, well, you've come to the right place. Anything in particular I'm looking for?”

Harry shook his head. “I don't know, to tell you the truth. There's a lot of explaining to do, but basically when this blood came into contact with certain... creatures, it destroyed them. I need to know why, if it's something your machines can tell me.”

Maggie hesitated in taking the vial. “Is it dangerous?”

“No, not to you. I'm just looking for anything out of place, for anything you wouldn't find in your normal, everyday blood.”

“Okay, I'll run it through the full work-up. Takes about ten minutes. Help yourself to some coffee.” She gestured to the table just by the sealed glass door. A pot of hot coffee sat on a burner, steaming nicely.

Harry nodded and wandered over, as Maggie began to turn on machines and uncorked his vial of blood. There was a stack of cheap Styrofoam cups next to the pot. Harry filled one with good strong coffee, stirring in a few sugars and a bit of milk.

He took a sip - it wasn't half bad.

There was a tinkling sound of thin glass breaking and Harry turned around to see the vial he had brought shattered on the cool white floor. His blood was a stark contrast to the almost shining-white floor, splattered across it.

“Oops,” Maggie said, giggling high and nervous. “I'm having a clumsy day. Lucky I got some in the dish before I dropped it.”

“Ah, it happens,” Harry said, sipping his coffee. Something wasn't right... “Here, I'll clean it up.”

“No, its okay - just enjoy your coffee. There are clean up procedures. I'll put this sample in the machine then take care of it.”

Harry shrugged.

By the time Maggie had run Harry's blood sample into the machine, and then cleaned and disinfected the floor, using a special chemical and about a dozen paper towels, dumping it all in the 'Hazardous Waste' bin, the computers had done whatever it was they did, and the results popped up on Maggie's personal laptop computer at her desk.

“Here we go,” she said.

Harry yawned, took the last swig of his coffee and stepped back over to the table, glancing down at the computer screen. He knew very little about all this technology, but then that's why he had Maggie.

“How did it get from there to here?” he asked, pointing at the machine his blood sample had gone in to.

“Wireless transfer,” Maggie said, smiling. “Back in the day, when we would've just been kids, results like this took hours and sometimes days.”

Harry nodded. His head felt heavy, and he was getting a headache. He swallowed, shaking away the discomfort. “And what do they say?”

Maggie tapped a few keys on her computer and jumped through a dozen incomprehensible screens, frowning at what she saw. There was a graph and several large spikes, a chart with a severe, harsh red line cutting up through the centre, and a list of numbers next to words Harry thought even Hermione would have trouble pronouncing.

“Where did you say you got this sample from?” she asked carefully.

“I didn't,” Harry replied, blinking his eyes rapidly - they were watering. “What's wrong with it?”

“Well...” Maggie began, squinting at the laptop through her glasses. “I ran a full diagnostic for everything from allergies to cancer, and everything came back negative. I can tell you this sample belongs to a male, about forty years old - and he's as healthy as a horse. All the cells, all the compounds are way above normal, but mostly in a good way. The platelet count is off the charts!”

Harry swallowed, feeling flushed. “Platelets?” he asked.

“Very small cells in the blood. Their main role is to clump together at places where injury to blood vessels has occurred. They are what causes blood to clot. A high count, such as in this sample, is actually very dangerous.”

“How so?”

“High numbers of platelets make a person more vulnerable to internal clotting. And are a sure sign of a bone morrow affliction such as leukaemia, or cancer. But this test came back negative for all disease. Very strange... unheard of, actually. Where did this come from?”

Harry shook his head. “Anything else?”

“Yes, actually, and this is weirder than anything else.” Maggie tabbed through a few pages on the computer and came to a breakdown screen. “All of this is normal,” she said, gesturing to the first half of the page. “It's the only thing that is. These are the erythrocytes - red blood cells - they contain haemoglobin and are responsible for distributing oxygen through the body. That's well within normal range. However, the leukocytes are much the same way as the thrombocytes-”

Harry raised his hand. He was feeling a little dizzy... “Forgive me, trombonesites?”

“No, thrombocytes - another word for the platelets that cause clotting, coagulation. It's the leukocytes that are the strangest of all, however.”

“How so?”

“Leukocytes are white blood cells - they are part of the immune system and destroy and remove old or aberrant cells and cellular debris, as well as attack infectious pathogens and foreign substances. The cancer of leukocytes is what we know as leukaemia.”

“Right...”

“The leukocyte count in this sample is simply impossible. They would have had to have been genetically integrated into the blood - these levels aren't found in nature.”

Harry was feeling sick to his stomach. “And you're saying they attack outside, foreign substances?”

“Yes, pathogens - bacteria and such.”

“W-what colour are they... you know, in the blood?”

Maggie was sweating, and biting her bottom lip. She kept glancing over to her machines as if assuring herself they were still there. “Harry...” she began, shaking her head. She sighed. “Well, the red blood cells usually outnumber the white, by about ten times as much, but if you remove them from the plasma then you're left with something - the leukocytes and the thrombocytes - which is straw-yellow in colour, almost golden.”

Harry closed his eyes as the world spun. He thought of his conversation with Albus in McGonagall's office:

“Your blood?” Harry said sharply, as Albus spoke of punching a mist-creature and having it explode in a fountain of golden sparks. “You're sure, Al, your blood was glowing?”

Albus nodded quickly, toward the dried blood that stained his hands from the half a dozen cuts and scrapes all over his arms. “Only it didn't work for Frank, just me.”

He opened his eyes - Maggie was speaking, as if over a great distance, her voice echoing in his ears. “Harry?” she said. “Harry? Are you okay?”

“I... I've just got one more question,” he said, shaking his head and trying to clear the dizziness. “Maggie, please tell me what you put in the coffee?”

She flinched as if struck and all the blood drained from her face so fast that Harry thought she might faint. Tears that had been barely concealed since she arrived fell from her eyes and down her cheeks.

“Harry, I'm so sorry-”

He should have realised that a whole pot of coffee was a little much for just one person, and placed conveniently in a room that was to be kept clean and sterile. Maggie's eyes went wide and Harry spun, following her gaze and twisting his wrist, shooting his wand into his hand from the holster strapped to his forearm.

In the corner of the room alongside the blood analysing machines a figure emerged from underneath an invisibility cloak, a figure in dark robes and a white, skull-like mask. With a wand trained on Harry's heart, the masked man snarled and cried:

“Narvarica!”

His movements slowed and his mind foggy from whatever poison had been in the coffee, Harry didn't get out of the way in time. A jet of aqua-green light slammed into his left shoulder as Maggie screamed and he was thrown back over her desk, smashing her computer and overturning the heavy glass table with his weight.

Harry landed with a grunt in a mess of wires and shattered glass. The curse that hit his shoulder was Dark magic, he knew, and already he could feel it eating away through his flesh. It would bore a hole straight through his shoulder and out the other side, and he'd feel every bite of it.

It's a Death Eater! His mind was screaming at him - in pain and urgency. There was a man dressed as a Death Eater trying to kill him, he had an unknown poison in his system, and a Dark magic curse was eating through his shoulder.

Harry could not remember the last time he had been so pissed off.

He rose to his feet in a mess of wires and computer cords, eyes focused and narrowed dangerously. Blood had soaked through his nice white dress shirt from his shoulder, ruining his Muggle suit.

“Avada Kedavra!”

Taking no prisoners, Harry thought.

Maggie King's lab was not that big - the distance between Harry and the unknown Death Eater was barely twenty-five feet. Yet even weakened by the coffee and the curse, Harry spun to the side, twirling his hand and firing off a stunning spell non-verbally, as for the third time that week the Killing Curse roared past him, powering into a load of expensive equipment and dousing the pale light of the room in cold emerald flame.

Maggie King was shrieking and trying to crawl away under the coffee table. She was no threat, whimpering as her lab was destroyed and two wizards duelled to the death before her. She'd lost her shoes, and her black stockings were torn in half a dozen places from the glass on the floor.

The Death Eater side-stepped Harry's stunner and it dissipated on the wall behind him harmlessly. “Aros Cri!”

Aw hell... Harry thought, as six metallic arrows, as hard as iron, shot out of the Death Eater's wand in bursts of purple light and cut through the air towards him.

Quick on his feet, Harry leapt to the left, the whole world spinning in his head from the dizzying poison in his veins, and cast muttered heating charms, small parcels of heat, in the air before him.

“Incendio!” he cried, and set the air ablaze.

The space between Harry and the Death Eater became as hot as a furnace as the heating charms ignited. A ball of flame roared outwards and Harry stepped back to save his eyebrows. In the heart of the split-second inferno the metal arrows were blasted with fire and began to melt in mid-air, globules of liquid-metal dripping harmlessly to the ground.

Only the first arrow made it through, as Harry's furnace exhausted its supply of air and the fireball dissipated. He fell to one knee as the arrow clipped him in the meat of his thigh, only a few inches away from making sure he never had another baby.

He gasped for a breath as the fire had absorbed most of the oxygen in the room, and as he did he thought to hell with it - he'd question the next bastard who came along and tried to kill him. This Death Eater was going down hard - no more friendly stunning spells.

Harry dropped his wand as the fire and smoke began to clear and reached under the dirtied blue smock, into his jacket, and withdrew from a holster strapped around his burning shoulder one of the first prototypes of the Technomancy project being headed by the Department of Mysteries.

A Muggle firearm, suitably modified with a charged crystal core. He had only fired off a few rounds down at the wand range - but the 9mm semi-automatic pistol was perhaps a shining example of the next stage in the revolution of the wizarding world. A revolution Harry himself had inspired by destroying Voldemort.

He gripped the handle hard. The weapon was coated in blood from his shoulder. He did not wait for a clear shot as the smoke dissipated through the air vents above. He pulled the trigger six times, and each time a burst of three small spheres of hard light erupted from the muzzle of the weapon with a deafening roar. Harry strafed the whole back wall, glowing bullets thumping into the whirring machines and glass, and when the smoke cleared he saw the Death Eater lying in a pool of his own blood, sucking in harsh and ragged breaths whilst trying to stop his stomach from falling out of the large hole in his gut.

Harry holstered the gun and picked up his wand. Muttering a few small healing charms, the best he knew, he managed to slow the spread of the Narvarica curse, though not stop it entirely. He'd need a Healer for that. The arrow buried in his leg was burning almost as fiercely as his shoulder, and black spots were dancing before his eyes. He managed to stand, and limped across the room using the blood analysing machine for support.

“Accio mask,” he whispered, standing above the fallen Death Eater.

The large man glaring up at him, laughing harshly and gurgling blood, was a man Harry had met before, more than once. He had been a lot more muscle than fat back then, and his hair had been more blond than grey. This man had fought in both the Battle of the Tower, where Dumbledore fell, and the Battle of Hogwarts, where his master fell.

“Thorfinn Rowle,” Harry said, gritting his teeth. “I've been looking for you for nineteen years.”

Rowle spat at Harry - blood and saliva - his words broken and speared with pain. “Old powers are returning, Potter... and old enemies...” He laughed, insane and dying. “You're... going to die...”

“Voldemort said the same thing, once upon a time.”

“Ah... you fear the Dark Lord...”

Harry wavered, nearly passing out. “I don't fear the dead.”

“This is only the beginning... Harry Potter...” Rowle chuckled as he died, warm blood coating his teeth and running down the sides of his face. “Your children will die... He will make your blood-traitor of a wife scream... and you will beg for death before the end... Oh yes, you will beg.”

Harry watched Thorfinn Rowle die and scratched him off the wanted list in his mind. In no fit state to contemplate what one of the last few Death Eaters at large had said, he turned away from the bloodied corpse and towards Maggie King.

Her laboratory was in ruins - and green flames still licked the far wall. Broken glass and destroyed equipment littered the floor, and her computers sparked and frazzled - dead to rights. There was a thick, black scorch mark on the roof from Harry's improvised fireball. The acrid smell of burning copper, sharp electricity, hung heavy in the air.

“Maggie...” Harry said. His shoulder was screaming, and the amount of blood soaking his trousers led him to believe that the arrow may have nicked an artery. “I don't want to ask again - what was in that coffee?”

Still cowering under the coffee table, which had survived the duel intact, Maggie edged forward, holding her arms against her stomach and shaking uncontrollably. She opened her mouth and closed it again, trying to speak and gaping like a fish.

“MAGGIE!” Harry roared. Everything was hazy, why was the world turning around and around in his head?

“A-a non-lethal nerve agent,” she said, blurting it out as fast as she could. “Three-Benzilate... I-it smooths muscle movement, incapacitates the body and causes confusion. There was enough in the coffee to put you out straight away. I-I don't know why you're still standing.”

Harry nodded. He was done here then - so long as the drug wasn't going to kill him, although he'd let the Healers decide that. He turned to leave, preparing to Apparate.

“I'm sorry, Harry. I'm so sorry. He knew you were coming here today. He said he'd kill my children. He hurt me. Oh god, I'm sorry...”

Harry had been lucky today. He knew that. A fair amount of skill had brought him through the fight alive, but a sheer amount of luck had been involved, too. This woman before him had no idea what she had gotten herself into - what she had very nearly cost the world - none at all.

“I understand,” Harry said, his voice calm and neutral. “Some men will come to see you very soon - they will want to know what happened and you are going to tell them everything, all that you can remember. After which, your memory will be wiped clean of all magical knowledge and we will never see each other again. Do you understand?”

Maggie shivered, her eyes bloodshot and frightened, and bobbed her head. “T-the sample you brought me, Harry. It was your blood, wasn't it?”

Harry nodded. The spots before his eyes were getting bigger. He couldn't wait any longer. He pictured St. Mungo's in his mind, as clear as he could.

In no fit state to Apparate, Harry took a few precious seconds to make sure he got it right and didn't cut himself in half.

Destination, determination, and deliberation, he thought. The three D's of Apparation.

He didn't make a sound as he disappeared, and the only part of himself he left behind was a few small drops of blood that hung in the air where he had been standing for a moment, before dripping to the floor, splattering against a shard of broken glass.

*~*~*~*

A/N: I had fun writing this chapter - sorry about the science lesson with the blood, but it's actually all fact - I didn't make any of it up. And it has been so long since I've written an honest wizard-to-wizard duel that I hope I pulled it off.

Next chapter already in the works, and maybe a little something else,

Joe