Disclaimer: Chances are if you missed the disclaimer in the first chapter, you’re skimming this fic and probably missing more of the story than you think.
Chapter Nine
The Interpretation Thereof
Sirius sat hunched over in the darkest corner in the room. It was easier than he thought to avoid the other patrons of the Painted Rose; in fact, the noisy pub seemed to cater almost exclusively to rough and suspicious looking clientele. His skin crawled with disgust and anxiety.
Why here? Why here of all places, smack dab in the middle of Knockturn Alley? Sirius remembered the raids the Aurors had conducted through here, looking for the elusive black markets of magical London. All they had found were rumours, dark magic and death.
He wondered for a moment just how Harry knew about a place like this – the Painted Rose certainly wasn’t something gossiped about in the Gryffindor dorms for cheap thrills like firewhiskey. Not like the Hog’s Head at any rate.
But then again… Harry hadn’t exactly seemed like a typical student. No thirteen-year-old he knew of could kill like that – not even Bellatrix and she had been a right hellion at that age. Sirius could readily attest to that.
Harry made him uneasy and it wasn’t just the sheer level of dark magic that wafted off of his person. It was the mannerisms, the way of speaking, the absolute control, absolute knowledge he held of himself. Not a limb moved without him knowing exactly where it coincided with his other limbs and how that movement should relate to the rest of his body; it was a level of bodily awareness and economy of motion that didn’t happen without years of training. There wasn’t much wasted in how Harry responded to his physical surroundings, talking with his body, saying just how powerful and skilled he was with the slip-slide of skin over muscle. He reminded Sirius of the ex-Unspeakable who taught hand-to-hand combat to all new Aurors-in-training.
And from what he’d gathered, the wizarding world had been in a relative state of peace for the last twelve years.
Why then, why did Harry know these things? How to fight? How to kill? How had he known about him and his animagus form? Harry had recognized him. Recognized him. His eyes had lit up in complete knowledge that the scabby, dirty dog in the bushes was his long-estranged godfather.
Which beget the question – just who was Harry?
The door of the Painted Rose opened and a dark-clad figure of medium height sauntered over to the bar. He leaned against it, speaking to the bartender in close, murmured tones and a wide, impish grin.
The pretty young women smiled and replied back with some witty remark, leaning over to display the full amount of cleavage possible. The figure tossed his head back and laughed and Sirius belatedly recognized his godson.
Harry picked up two brimming tankards and wove his way through the crowd to Sirius’ corner table.
“Couldn’t have picked a darker, danker corner than this?” Harry said with a grin, depositing one of the tankards in front of him, amber liquid sloshing over the sides.
He raised an eyebrow at his godson’s nonchalant disregard. “I don’t know where you’ve been for the past week, but I am one of the most wanted men in all of Britain,” he replied in a low voice.
Harry leaned back in his chair, regarding him with a piercing gaze. “Apparently, we’ve barely even met and have already started off on the wrong foot. So let’s try this again.” Harry shifted forward, bracing his forearms on the table, lips curling into a hard smile, tone clipped and low. “Hello, my name is Harry Potter. And you are Sirius Orion Black, my godfather, Grim animagus extraordinaire, falsely accused of being the spineless son of a bitch that betrayed my parents. When in fact, it was Peter Pettigrew who was the traitorous secretkeeper; a rat animagus whom when you confronted, proceeded to bite off his own finger, blow up the street killing twelve Muggles and leave you for the Aurors to find holding the figurative murder weapon in your hand. You recently broke out of Azkaban because you found out where Wormtail is. And now you are out to get him. If you want to prove your innocence to the ministry instead of killing off the only evidence there is, I can help you with that."
Sirius gaped. “How…?”
“That’s a story in and of itself. Just know that I am here to help you and I will do everything in my power possible to make sure you clear your name. If you can wait a few more weeks, I can grab Wormtail from Hogwarts and bring him to Bones. That should be the easiest way, no mess, no fuss – I can tell her that I caught him transforming or something similar. And then I can submit a petition for a retrial and after that, your life is back into your control. Congratulations, Sirius, you are that much closer to being a free man.”
He stared at his godson in disbelief. “Who are you?”
Harry tilted his head forward and swirled the lager in his mug thoughtfully. “You know, I’ve asked myself that on more than one occasion. I’ve gotten a different answer each time.”
“Oh, right,” Sirius said, confusion beginning to take over the shock. “Who’s Bones?”
His godson gave him an assessing glance and his features seemed to soften. “Amelia Bones is the Director of Magical Law Enforcement and in the best position to help us. She’s a fair, well-balanced person and I would trust her with my life.”
“And your plan, it could work?” He didn’t want to hope. It killed faster than apathy.
“Yes, if you could lay low for just a little while, I can get the lion’s share of this done and you’ll be free before you know it.” A pleading note entered his voice. “Let me help you, Sirius. Let me do this for you. It’s all I ask.”
Sirius licked his lips, searching for the words to express himself. “Alright,” he said, unaware of the smile beginning to work its way across his face. “Alright. How can I say no to that?”
Harry smiled back. “You have no idea how relieving that is to hear you say that.”
Sirius glanced down at the ragged picture of a shy, scruffy, glasses-clad eleven-year-old ripped from an old Daily Prophet. He carefully folded it and tucked it back away in his pocket.
Harry tilted his head, curiosity written on his features, light hitting the pale scars on his face. “What? What is it?”
Sirius snorted to himself. “Nothing. You’re not what I expected, not even a little bit.”
“What? You expected a James Potter mini-me to be running around?” his godson replied with a wry smile. “I hate to disillusion you, but I never knew either of my parents. I’m not them. Never have been, never will be.”
"So I’m coming to understand,” replied Sirius and he paused. "I have seen your father kill in a battle once. And he was never quite the same after that. But you,” Sirius glanced back at Harry. “I saw you, Harry. I watched the whole thing. That wasn't the first time you’ve killed, was it?"
“No, it isn’t.” Harry said in simple agreement offering no more on the subject. Sirius filed that away into the steadily expanding folder titled ‘Things I Don’t Know About Harry and I’m Not Sure I Want To’.
“I find it sad that you never had the opportunity to know Lily and James. They were good people, would have been good parents too, had they gotten the chance,” Sirius smiled wistfully into his tankard. “God, I miss them. You have no idea what its like to have your life change in a single moment, to lose everything you knew…” he shook his head.
“Oh, I might surprise you.”
The words held an unexpected weight, one of bitterness and exhaustion. Sirius shook his head in disbelief. “What do you mean?”
Harry’s expression tightened and Sirius felt an unexpected prickle of fear along his spine as the sharp scent of dark magic deepened, drowning out the smells of the pub. Sirius had a momentary flashback to his youth, the ozone-flavoured tang of dark halls and disapproving relatives. Dark wizards, all of them, and the intolerable sin he had committed by befriending the Muggle boy from next door. They’d locked Sirius attic for a week and when they let him out, he had to wear the Muggle boy’s skin in penance. They'd flayed the Muggle boy alive. Sirius remembered the way the dead flesh felt against his own, cold, coagulating blood smeared onto his robes as Bellatrix and Narcissa laughed at his punishment.
‘No. Don’t. Don’t think about it.’
Sirius wanted to cry. His godson, the precious child James had entrusted to him, had become one of them. A dark wizard.
Why? He ached with the question, a sense of despair beginning to fill him. Why would he do such a thing?
“Sirius? Are you alright?” Concern flittered across Harry’s face. “You seem troubled.”
It was a trap. It had to be a trap, why else was he being nice? Sirius gripped the edge of the table, knuckles white against the water stained wood. ‘Stop it! This isn’t a trap, this is Harry. Remember Harry?’
No, he didn’t.
He didn’t know this cold, hard killer, this boy-man with the vicious smile and whiskey-velvet voice.
‘Lily and James would have drowned him at birth if they knew what he’d become. Oh Sirius, you poor, stupid animal. Look at what you’ve gotten yourself into.’ The brutal return of the Voice surprised him. How could it say that? How could it even…
‘No, you know I’m right. You saw what He did. How he slaughtered all those men. You didn’t even bother to stop him, the only thing you did was sit there with your tongue lolling out like the fool mutt you are.’
“Yoo-hoo! Hello? Is there any sign of life in there?” A hand was waving in front of his face.
Sirius tried to bite it.
The hand turned around and slapped him upside the face. He came back to himself, cheek stinging, feeling like a bucket of ice water had been tipped over his head.
“You back with me, yet?” Harry asked, his voice tinged with irritation, worry and something like anger. “Because you growled at me like a goddamn animal.”
Sirius touched the side of his face in astonishment. “I… I didn’t know,” he swallowed, throat dry and tight. He guzzled the rest of his tankard, something fuzzy settling in the corners of his mind.
His godson buried his face in his hands. “Oh God,” he muttered, voice muffled by his hands. “You’re crazy. You’re fucking crazy. You’re a certifiable nut-job that probably shouldn’t be around children let alone other people. How the hell could I have missed this? No wonder Mrs. Weasley didn’t want me around you. Fuck me running.”
Sirius scowled at Harry. “I think I’m doing damn well for myself considering all things. At least I don’t kill people for fun. Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones,” he said sharply, not bothering to hide the disgust in his voice.
“Well,” Harry said derisively. “It seems that I have a previously unknown talent of being able to antagonize the fuck out of people just by breathing. Oh, wait! I already knew that. I just didn’t think that it applied to the people that I care about. How stupid of myself.”
“How can say ‘care’? Are you going to kill me if I don’t comply with what you want me to do?” Sirius muttered.
“I’m not going to kill you! What is it with everyone and thinking I’m going to attack them?” His godson’s expression was caught somewhere between hurt and rage, before it was wiped clean.
Sirius leaned forward, his wrath getting the better of him and slammed his hands against the table.
The pub quieted, eyes turning towards their direction. “Subtle,” Harry growled, a sneer audible in his voice.
Sirius sank back into his shadowy corner, the fear of being discovered overriding his anger.
When no sign of a fight came, the patrons of the Painted Rose turned their interests back to other things. In an ironic twist, Sirius felt intensely grateful for the pub’s rough-edged patrons who probably wouldn’t even bat an eyelash at a violent confrontation. His lip curled and he laughed softly to himself.
He gazed at his godson, realizing the stark difference between him and James. Harry was, for all purposes, a virtual stranger. Who apparently knew more about Sirius then he did about Harry.
An uncomfortable silence stretched across the table, seemingly severe against the rambunctious patrons of the Painted Rose. Harry met his stare and held it. Those eyes were not those of a child. He felt an overwhelming sense of guilt that he was probably the cause of it. Maybe if he hadn’t gone after Peter, maybe if he hadn’t given Harry to Hagrid, maybe if he had stopped to think about what he was doing, maybe, maybe, maybe. He tried not to think about it. There was too much there that just plain hurt.
“Awkward.” Harry sing-songed, eyes flicking away.
Sirius closed his eyes and pressed his thumbs to the bridge of his nose. “This really isn’t how I imagined meeting you.”
“Neither did I,” Harry replied, voice tinged with amusement. “I hadn’t counted on the fact you’d be absolutely disgusted by my presence.”
He stared at Harry with shock, the need to deny his statement rising up in him. His godson didn’t even blink, a self-depreciating smile on his face. “Don’t deny it,” he said. “I can tell if you’re lying to me and trying to say otherwise would just make me feel more like shit.”
Sirius struggled for words, knowing in his gut he couldn’t truthfully deny it.
Harry’s expression went terrifyingly blank.
“It’s not that, it’s… Just, why here? We’re in the middle of Knockturn Alley, Harry. Why here?” he said, silently begging Harry not to get angry.
“Because I had Special Forces on my tail and it was the only thing I could pull out of my ass at a moment’s notice,” Harry replied, voice dropping in tone and cadence, his smooth, lightly gravelled baritone becoming a stone-throated rasp. It was an uncanny sound and Sirius shuddered, skin crawling. James had been a tenor and Lily, a musical alto. Where this sound, this mutter of a feral cat’s came from, he did not know.
Harry’s head bowed, hands clutching his hair in white-knuckled claws. “Look, stay low for a little while, okay? I’ve got a few things to clear up before I can go after Pettigrew. I’ll contact you when everything’s in order.”
His head spun with the abrupt turnabout in the conversation. “Where…? How…?”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll find you.” With those words Harry stood and disappeared out the door.
What the hell?
Sirius began wonder just what he had gotten himself into.
Diagon Alley proper was packed full and it was raining to boot. He drifted through the crowd, feeling detached from the world around him. Being around this many people, this many happy, normal people – it was like walking through a dream, everything overly bright and opium hazed – far too fucking good to be the real world. The real world had teeth; it wasn’t a candy-coated land of shits and rainbows.
Fuck. Now he had Puff the Magic Dragon stuck in his head.
Harry knew he’d been an asshole to Sirius. But he’d had to get out of there; his skin was starting to feel too tight and he was afraid that if he stayed there any longer, he might start bawling his eyes out or something equally stupid.
It was a bitter irony that the very reason why he started actively fighting the war was the one he could no longer get along with. He wasn’t thirteen anymore. He wasn’t some desperate, stupid child who only wanted a family that loved him and would take care of him. He'd given up on that dream a long time back.
Harry chuckled softly.
He knew what the problem was.
It was himself. He was still looking at Sirius with the memories of a child and those memories did not mesh with what he saw with the eyes of a man. Sirius was a broken, beaten wreck. Inside his own head, he was still twenty-one years old. Twelve years in Azkaban did not broaden one’s mind or reasoning skills or any number of things. Hell, Sirius had looked at him with fear.
And that hurt. Sirius, a man he remembered as trying to save him, was now afraid of him. It was like a knife to the chest and he intimately familiar how that felt.
Damn it. Damn it all to hell.
A flash of white-blonde hair caught his eye.
The senior Malfoy strolled imperiously past the teeming crowd, seemingly too powerful, too upper fucking class to even acknowledge those around him. Bastard.
‘One curse,’ Harry thought. ‘One curse and he’d be dead before he hit the ground.’
It was tempting – too tempting and his magic rose with a clamour under his skin. Rip the flesh from his bone! it sang, And cram it down his throat until he chokes on it!
‘Hush,’ he told himself, soothing the sudden violent hunger throbbing through his blood. Harry glanced back at Malfoy to find the man staring directly back at him, pale, cold eyes uneasy.
Harry bared his teeth in a caricature of a smile. ‘Felt that did you? Careful Lucius, I can smell fear.’
The crowd surged forward and Harry lost himself in it, using a series of Portkeys to cover his trail back to Number 4. He appeared soundlessly, right where he’d left four hours before.
Smoke curled up in a lazy trail, marking the sky with a giant ‘You Are Here’ sign.
“Oh Fuck,” Harry muttered to himself, the adrenaline rush from his magic beginning to fade.
The neighbourhood was just as wet as London, but that didn’t detour people from crowding up close to the still smouldering wreckage in front of Number 12. Police tape lined the scene and eight black body bags lay in a row waiting to be loaded into the coroner’s vehicle. Petunia stood next to the catty bint from Number 6, both resplendent in their dressing gowns and hair curlers. In fact, most of the crowd were still in their pyjamas.
Harry glanced up at the grey-lit sky, the smoky haze just now beginning to dissipate. Was it really that early? Yes, yes it was. Exhaustion was starting to creep into his bones. He turned around, intending to head back to Number 4 when Petunia’s shrill voice rang out.
“You!” she shrieked, finding some untapped well of courage to publicly confront him. “What the bloody hell did you do?”
A sudden hush ran through the crowd as every head turned to stare at the commotion.
Harry blinked docilely at Petunia, lack of sleep catching up to him. “I beg your pardon?”
“This!” she said, flinging a bony arm out at burning remains of the Isuzu and the bodies lying in a row, encased in their giant black Ziploc baggies. “You did this! I know you did. Dudley saw you! Murderer!”
Harry crossed his arms and braced his feet wide, shoulder length apart, keeping a wary eye on the by-now, very interested police. Double fuck.
He looked back to Petunia. He knew what she was doing. This was retaliation for the incidents in the kitchen and him running her out of the house before that. “Dudley saw me?” Harry replied, cynicism liberally lacing his tone. “And you believe him?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Yes I do,” she hissed. “I knew I should have left you at the orphanage. You are nothing more than a useless, sadistic waste of space. I always knew you’d go bad”
The bobbies were beginning to walk towards them, two on his right and three on his left. Harry reached forward and seized Petunia’s wrist, pulling her towards him. “Listen to me, you stupid cunt,” he snarled in her ear, hands tightening on her arm as she whimpered. “You are going to keep your mouth shut and I am going to get my things and leave. And, maybe, just maybe I might do this without killing you or your miserable dolt of a husband.”
He released her and stepped back. “Number 4, Privet Drive of Little Whinging, Surrey was never and will never be my home. You made sure of that. Now you must lie in the bed you’ve made for yourself.”
Harry turned and began a steady jog back to Number 4, ignoring the shouts of the police behind him.
Six days later, Harry strolled back into the DoM, much the same as he had a week ago. No wonder the Death Eaters had so easily broken in; the security here was an absolute joke. Harry stepped off the lift and wove past the busy employees to Shorner’s office.
The door swung open and Shorner visibly started in shock at the sight of Harry, scattering papers and broken quills. “Damn it, Harry! Don’t you know how to knock?” he said, irritation lacing his tone as he mopped up the spilt ink with the edge of his robes.
Harry smothered a sheepish grin. “Sorry, I thought you knew I was going to be here today.”
Shorner scowled. “I didn’t mean you were supposed to sneak up on me.”
“Oops,” Harry replied without repentance. He dropped down into the chair in front of Shorner’s desk, tossing a bound stack of paper onto the desk. “Happy much belated birthday. I know you didn’t ask for Death Eaters, but I couldn’t reserve strippers on this short of a notice. Though I think you could probably convince your secretary to do that for you.”
The older man looked up from where he’d been removing the spilt ink with his wand, black liquid rising into the air like an inky cumulonimbus. “I don’t have a secretary.”
“No, not the cute little brunette? Oh, about this tall?” Harry said, indicating the woman’s height with a raised hand.
“You mean Maggie?” Shorner replied as he vanished the ink and reached for Harry’s report.
“And I’m the one who had to wear glasses for the first fifteen years of my life. You might want to take the chance the first time it’s offered; the sweet types like her don’t stick around for very long. She’s likely to be gone before you know it.”
Shorner glanced up and glowered good-naturedly at him. “I wonder about the irony of you talking about my sex-life. Found anyone who will shag a thirteen-year-old boy?”
“Ouch. Now that was below the belt. I’ll have you know that I had a wonderful vacation. A little sand, a little sun, a little bit of ocean. There are some magnificent beaches in Brazil,” Harry replied. “It was nice to see something there other than crazy necromancers and soggy jungle. You know, for the longest time, I thought that was all there was to Brazil.”
“And the half-naked women have nothing to do with it.”
Harry smiled. “Now who’s the one making assumptions?”
Shorner scoffed at his words, but the amused gleam in his eyes gave him away. “Right. I’m just glad you’ve mostly stayed out of trouble. Although your little stunt in Surrey gave me some problems. Don’t be surprised if you get hauled in for questioning the next time you’re in the Muggle world. By the time I was able to get through all the damned red tape, the incident had already spread too far for us to wipe clean.”
Harry's quick reflexes saved a tall stack of papers from tumbling into his lap as Shorner shuffled through the clutter atop his desk. “And?”
“We did manage to clear out any evidence you might have been the one that killed them, like fingerprints and whatnot.” Shorner replied, shaking his head as he dug through a thick manila envelope. “The ‘official’ story is that a gang trafficking drugs holed up there and a private militia tried to remove them to varying degrees of success. Not my best work, but it was what I could come up with at the time.”
Harry snorted. “Drug-running. Good one, Archie, but don't quit your day job.”
“Oh, believe me, it gets even better,” Shorner said, tossing a pair of circular steel discs onto the desk.
Harry reached out and picked them up; dangling from the end of a shot-bead chain was his name, blood type, age, and designation detailed in sharp-cut runes. They were much different than Muggle dogtags, being of magical origin, but still very similar.
Sharr, Hadrian, J.
AB-
28
SF
Holy shit. These were his tags, his military tags. The information was obviously very different from the first time they were issued to him, but still… “Twenty-eight?” Harry asked, peering at the number.
“Technically, you’ve had a birthday. Twenty-eight is quite a ways away from thirteen, but for what it’s worth, Happy Birthday.” A dry smile flickered across Shorner’s face. “Sorry I couldn’t get you strippers on this short a notice.”
Harry let out a soft huff of amusement. “What was it that you had in mind?”
The older man pursed his lips and uncrossed his arms. “I’m making you one of us. Officially, you enlisted under your real name, Hadrian Sharr, in 1982 and served in the Special Forces Unit for the past eleven years.”
“I’ve got to ask,” Harry asked, realizing what was bugging him about the tags in his hand. “Where are you getting Hadrian Sharr from?”
“Your mother’s birth name was Lily Aideen Sharr. Her original file listed you, her son, as Hadrian Sharr,” said Shorner.
Harry blinked. “My name is Harry Potter.”
“And apparently its also Hadrian Sharr,” replied Shorner without missing a beat.
Something small and rabid deep in his brain chanted Mine, mine, mine, my name, you can’t have it, you can’t take it away from me, I own the clothes on my back and my name, my name, my name.
“Why?” he asked, pushing aside the moment of weirdness.
Shorner shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m only working with what I’ve got.”
“Who makes up those files?” Harry only knew the names on a pair of tombstones; finding out that his mother had led a life so wholly different from what he’d imagined was a bit like taking a brick to the face and trying to see straight afterward.
“I’m sorry?” replied Shorner, raising an eyebrow.
A surge of irritation ran through Harry before he could wrestle his temper back under control. “The file you got that name from – who made it?”
“Usually the nurse attendant. The file then updates itself as the subject ages. It’s a tricky bit of blood magic, but it works. Any more questions?”
Harry shook his head. “No – Wait. Can I get a copy of her file?”
“Which one?” Seeing Harry’s confusion, Shorner amended. “Pre-adoption or post-adoption?”
“Both, if at all possible.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” Picking up where he’d left off earlier, Shorner continued, “You, Hadrian Sharr, were born in 1965 to Artimis Sharr and Bree Verall, whose status is unknown which makes your ‘birth’ possible. Now we are obviously stretching your grandfather’s death date a little bit and I’ve already gone through the records and changed it.”
“You sure that's a good idea?” Harry replied dubiously. “Dead men may tell no tales, but the live ones certainly do.”
“I didn't have any other options as good as this one,” Shorner rejoined tiredly. “His death date isn't common knowledge, even among the DoM; most people just assume that when Dumbledore brought down he killed him and few know of Grindelwald’s real name, so it shouldn’t send up any immediate red flags. I thought you would appreciate the attachment to your family.”
Shorner tossed Harry’s well-modified folder onto the desk. “Congratulations. You are now officially Lily Aideen Sharr’s younger brother and an employee of the DoM.”
Harry whistled appreciatively. “Not bad, not bad at all. What are we going to do about Harry Potter? Considering that I, well he, doesn’t really exist anymore.”
“Harry Potter exists. He’s just only alive on paper. So, we’ll tell them the truth.”
Harry raised an eyebrow at Shorner’s satisfied expression. “Pravda ne novosti, a novosti ne pravda?” he said, making reference to the infamous newspaper of the USSR.
Shorner made a funny clicking sound with his tongue. “Are you accusing me of lying? Seems moot point by now,” he intoned in a dry voice.
Harry frowned, waving him off and Shorner took the hint to continue. “In addition to the missions we sent you on, you also assumed the persona of Harry Potter. For the last two years, you went to Hogwarts and played a part in order to lure out the last of the Death Eaters – Harry Potter becoming a name that we dangled as bait. The ‘real’ story being that Voldemort was taken out by yourself and your sister, Lily Sharr; at the age of fifteen, you and the late Lady Sharr combined your forces in a desperate move, one in which you were lucky enough to defeat him and one in which she did not survive in giving her life for you.
“Considering how powerful she was, it shouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say you two caught him off guard and managed to banish him,” said Shorner as he glanced up at Harry. “And yes, I did put ‘banished’ in the official report.”
“That's going to go over well.”
Shorner stacked the papers back together and put them aside. “Not like they have a lot of choice about that. If we can prepare them for war ahead of time...”
Harry nodded. “Then who knows how many we can save.”
“Yes,” said Shorner. “That is what I'm hoping for.”
Harry laughed. “And so, I am reduced to a fanciful bedtime story. It makes a hell of a lot more sense than a baby defeating one of the most powerful wizards of modern times,” he mused. “Truth is often times stranger than fiction. How are you going to push this through?”
Shorner pinched the bridge of his nose. “The only reason why we are going to pull this one off is that every current Head of the DoM gained their positions after the fall of Voldemort. Our story is that your file was a sealed deal and you’ve been operating under various aliases.”
“Which is true enough,” Harry agreed.
Shorner tipped his head in acknowledgement. “The man who instigated the black ops program, George Pryce, died eight months ago and he was not only the one who brought you in, but also your contact for assignments. Since his death you’ve been carrying out his last orders, but no one has contacted you since his demise. When Black escaped, the situation changed and you had to surface. You coincided that with a bit of personal revenge.
“In one of your earlier missions, you were supposed to take out one of La Muerte’s lieutenants. You succeeded, but were captured as a result of your partner’s stupidity. He wanted a trophy to show as proof of his escapades – and mind you, he’s just a name I dug up out of the obscure records of the Special Forces program – and was subsequently killed. You were held in captivity for seven months total, then escaped, hiding out for a further two months after that before you deemed it safe enough to come back in. After the psychological evaluations pronounced you fit, you returned to your Potter persona and to completing missions for us.
“Thus taking care of your sudden reappearance and profile.”
“You never cease to amaze me,” Harry said as he hung the tags around his neck.
“All that remains is for you to talk to Connor and the whole thing should fall into place,” Shorner replied, gulping down the last of the muddy sludge in his coffee mug. “I’ve also arranged to be your contact. I’m not sure how well that will go over, but you should be able to push that through. I don’t think Connor would want to argue with you.”
Harry winced; Snape had made potions that looked more appetizing than the contents of Shorner's cup. “Are you sure its safe to be drinking that?”
“No, but it's caffeine,” Shorner replied shortly. “Unless, of course, you'd like to get me something different?”
“I think I'll pass,” Harry muttered.
“Smart choice.” Shorner’s expression tightened. “If there’s anything else I can do for you, let me know. Don’t try to do this alone. It’s too much for one man, no mattered how skilled or powerful you may be. This will drive you mad if you don’t let anyone in.”
‘I think I was mad to begin with. Probably got dropped my head as a baby. I’m going to blame my father for that one; he seems like a likely culprit.’ Harry pushed the stray thought away. “Been there, done that. It's not easy to open up to people on a good day. But this... If I hadn’t walked away first, I’m sure he would have run off in fear. And I didn’t even get say any of the really freaky shit about myself.”
“Who was it?” Shorner cocked his head at Harry and settled his elbows on the table.
Harry was reminded a bit of a bird, a hunting falcon perhaps, especially with Shorner’s sharp grey eyes and high cheekbones. It was strange to see such a familiar expression on so different of a face. The beard was missing as was the short, silver-streaked hair and crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. In its place was a younger, more open face, long hair, light stubble around the jaw and a mouth more prone to smiling than scowls of anger or sadness. It was hard not to stare in total disbelief.
“Sirius Black, my godfather.”
Shorner’s jaw flapped up and down in a very comical manner. “I’m sorry; I could have sworn I heard you say…”
“He’s innocent, Archie, the wrong man accused of the wrong thing,” Harry said, a smile emerging again. “He was framed by Pettigrew, who, in addition to being the secretkeeper, is also a rat animagus. He cut off his finger and escaped into the sewers leaving Sirius with the blame.”
“Is there anything else you’d like to share with me?” Shorner replied incredulously, looking as if he might start to hyperventilate.
Harry was sure his amusement was written all over his face. He'd never been very good at hiding when he was happy. “Not at the moment.”
A strange combination of disbelief and tiredness crossed Shorner’s face. “Wonderful.”
“When do you want me to talk to Blackwood?” Harry said, steering the conversation back to its original purpose.
Shorner flicked his wand and Harry’s report flew across the room to hide in the bookshelves. “Sooner rather than later. Who knows what he might do since you killed his men. He might dub you an enemy of the state and put a bounty on your head for all I know.”
Harry shrugged. “How about right now?” Wouldn’t be the first time somebody tried off him for a price. He didn’t want to have to take on the Ministry itself, but survival was more than just an instinct.
It was a necessity.