A/N: Well, I’m hoping that I can get a chapter out every weekend now, since I’ve dropped one of my subjects at uni to give myself more writing time. Well, I tell people that so that you can heap praise upon me for my dedication. I just hated the subject. Thank for those at DLP who helped with the last scene. I took all of your thoughts into consideration and altered it where I saw fit.

Nymphadora Tonks would be the first to admit that she was feeling a little apprehensive about the upcoming mission. It had been almost twenty-four hours since Harry and Tonks had been assigned to the ‘snatch and grab’ operation. It rankled her that Potter had been given control over the operation over her. She was an Auror, for Merlin’s sake! Sure, Potter was powerful, she wasn’t denying that. Nobody who had ever seen him in action would deny that. But she didn’t think he had the right temperament to take responsibility of a delicate operation such as this. She ignored the whisperings of her conscience that were telling her that this operation was in clear violation of Auror protocol and Ministry Law- the Ministry was fumbling blindly with the issue of You-Know-Who. Only by working with Dumbledore could she prevent the destruction of the magical world she loved- even if it meant joining an illegal vigilante group.

Tonks may have been lost in thought as she stood in the brightly-lit kitchen at No. 12 Grimmauld Place, but she wasn’t an Auror for nothing. Somebody was sneaking up behind her. Tonks made no apparent movement, her training and experience even keeping her muscles from reflexively tensing up, until the person was standing right behind her. In a blur of movement, her wand flew into her hand and she spun around, readying a chain of the Auror-Nine. The Auror-Nine were select Auror-Class spells that could be chained together through wand movements and incantations, where one wand movement led to another and the last syllable of an incantation led to the first syllable of the next. They were very effective in overwhelming an opponent…if there was one there, of course.

The hallway leading to the foyer was empty and Tonks frowned, suddenly feeling very foolish as she stood there with her wand out. Sighing, she tucked it back into her robes and suppressed a scowl. This stupid house always gave her the chills and now it was making her paranoid. Suddenly, there was a rustling of fabric from behind her and a warm breath on her ear.

“Wotcher doing, cute stuff?” somebody whispered.

Tonks restrained the urge to shriek like a little girl. Instead, her leg flew up and lashed out behind her, instinctively going for the crotch. The person behind her grunted as he dodged, allowing Tonks to whirl around with fire brewing in her eyes.

“Godammit, Potter!” she snarled, brandishing her wand at an amused-looking teenager. “Don’t do that!”

Harry cocked an eyebrow and grinned at her, not looking bothered by her anger at all. In fact, he reached forward and flicked her on the nose.

“Has anybody told you that you’re incredibly sexy when you’re pissed off?” Harry remarked. He cocked his head, frowning thoughtfully. “Now that I think about it, you’d probably be even sexier if you had no clothes on. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, if you know what I mean.”

“You’re not meant to say wink…” Tonks started, then sighed and rolled her eyes. She adopted a beautiful smile and beckoned at Harry with one hand. “Well, I suppose we have a bit of time. I could show you what I look like underneath these robes.”

“Really?” Harry asked, his eyes widening with surprise and delight.

“No,” Tonks snapped. “Now hurry up and tell me what you’ve got planned. We only have a little bit of time left!”

“Well, I was thinking that we could run in, grab the guy, killed anybody who got in our way, shout something about retribution and the dark lord and run out,” Harry told her. He scratched his head. “That way, everybody will blame the Death Eaters and we get off scot free.”

“You do realise that this is supposed to be a clandestine operation?” Tonks demanded. She had the sudden urge to smack her forehead and groan when Harry looked at her blankly. “Clandestine. It means secret, subtle, stealthy…”

“I know what it means,” Harry snapped irritably. “My idea is just better.”

“If it’s alright with you, sir,” Tonks continued sarcastically. “Then maybe we could fall back to the plan we had to start with.”

“We had a plan?”

Tonk screwed up her face and Harry looked impressed as she began to change. Short, pink hair grew, lengthened and tied itself into a braid of brunette hair. Large blue eyes shrunk into beady, brown eyes that looked as if they had a permanent squint to them. In a few seconds, Tonks had seemingly morphed from Auror to nondescript, boring woman. Harry surveyed her carefully. There was nothing remotely attractive about her now, but there wasn’t also anything that would make him double-back, even it if was for a giggle. She was…average, which Harry supposed was the point.

“That was cool,” Harry remarked. Suddenly, a though occurred to him and he grinned with excitement. “Say, can you transform your looks into anything? I only ask because of the whole sexual kink that we could get out of it.”

Tonks sent him a strange look as she checked herself over. Looking satisfied, she whipped her wand through the air a few times and summoned a large duffel bag to the kitchen table. Inside were robes and clothes in a range of different bland colours.

“We infiltrate the bar, gather in information we can and take out our target when he leaves,” Tonks said. Her voice had changed as well, become slower, duller. “This way, there’ll be minimal resistance and we can establish a persona in case we need to stake out the place later on. Now, all we need to do is to give you a disguise and...”

Tonks had glanced up and her worlds had trailed off. Standing before her was a stunning woman, tall, slender and dressed in white and silver robes. Silver eyes stared down at her imperiously, dark hair glinted with some kind of inner light and her very posture screamed of majesty. It was a haunting beauty, one that took Tonk’s breath away as feelings of awe bombarded her mind.

“Potter?” Tonks muttered in awe.

“Well, illusions are becoming one of my specialities, you know,” the woman purred. She smiled at Tonks sensuously and stroked the Auror on the arm, sending tingles of warmth up the older woman’s spine. “It’s quite real, isn’t it? She really is the most beautiful woman I’ve seen before, although she’s not too happy that I can do this- even if this is just a pale comparison of her true looks.”

“It is, but that’s not what I was going to say,” Tonks said, breathing deeply. She closed her eyes and concentrated. When she opened them again, they were burning with anger. “What I wanted to say was…don’t fuck around with my mind like that again!”

“Oh?” the woman uttered and smiled. The feelings bombarding Tonk suddenly stopped, although the woman’s beauty didn’t diminish at all. The woman took a step back, a mischievous smile crossing her face that Tonks could recognise as looking more on place on Harry rather than anybody else. “You fought off the glamour? Not bad. Perhaps Dumbledore was right. Perhaps you’re not totally incompetent as I thought you were.”

“I am an Auror,” Tonks replied stiffly, emphasizing her rank with a cold glare. “I am trained to recognise external stimuli and on how to counter them. Now, drop that illusion and choose something more discrete. We don’t want to draw any attention to ourselves and that is hardly inconspicuous.”

“Man,” the woman sighed, rolling her eyes. She disappeared silently, without a flash of glimmer or anything, and standing her place was Harry, who looked glum. “You know, when I met you I thought you would be fun. I also thought you were sexy as hell. So far, you’ve only shown to me that you have great sexual potential.”

“What?” Tonk asked, looking bewildered. She stopped, huffed and glared at him. “Well, I’m sorry for disappointing your obviously high standards. But there’s a time for playing and mucking about and there’s time to be serious and get our work done.”

“Smart people like me can mix the two,” Harry grumbled. He flicked his wand, absently muttering incantations as he wove an incredibly complex illusion around himself.

Tonks watched him, looking impressed. She knew of the charm that he was using, an incredibly difficult spell that only a few wizards and witches she knew could do. The illusion wrapped itself around the user like a second skin, moving as it moved to cover up the gaps that were commonly seen when wizards tried to pass themselves taller than they really were with lesser charms. It also needed quite a bit of power behind it, since it created something akin to a physical barrier to create the appearance of mass where there wasn’t. A short wizard like Flitwick could use this charm to appear four times as tall as he was, and there would be no way to tell from casual touch- to a point. Most wizards didn’t bother trying to master this spell. Self-Transfiguration and certain potions required a lot less effort and worked just as well. The fact that Harry could do something like that said a lot about his skills.

“Is this better?” Harry asked Tonks when he was finished.

His appearance had transformed to that of a middle-aged man with scruffy brown hair and a lean face. There was a cruel tilt to his chin and his eyes were filled with barely restrained malice. Harry just loved the irony of it, really. He had stolen the former black wizard’s apartment, now he was stealing his face.

“You look like a sociopath,” Tonks said bluntly. “Then again, considering where we’re visiting, that might be a good thing.”

“I am a sociopath,” Harry muttered under his breath, drawing an odd glance from the Auror.

“What was that?” Tonks asked as she led them out of the kitchen and towards the fireplace in the living room.

“I said ‘nice arse’,” Harry said blandly.

“Pervert,” Tonks snapped.

“Damn proud of it too,” Harry said with a grin.

Less than an hour later, Harry found himself in one of the coolest pubs he had ever been in. Granted, he could tick off the number of pubs he had been in on one hand, but this beat the others down with ease. He leaned back on his curse-burned chair, watching his surroundings with keen interest while his illusionary head remained bent down over his grimy pint of some foul-smelling alcohol. The walls were peeling with faded yellow paint, which said something about what went on here considering the number of preserving properties of magical paint. One possible source of the deterioration was the sheer amount of smoke that lingered in the air, creating a murky and, most importantly, revolting stench that lingered in the air. The origin of this smoke was just one man dressed in something that Harry first mistook as a pile of dirty rags. Harry’s eyes briefly rested upon a well-endowed witch dressed in a four-size-too-small robes and very little else as she wandered around the bar, handing out new rounds of drinks with a flirtatious smile and a large wink. He wondered if any of her riveted customers could see past the number of glamour charms that littered her true appearance- a pox-faced, hunch-backed witch.

“What a dump,” Tonks muttered as she nursed her own drink, her eyes flickering around the bar.

 

Harry would have reprimanded her for such stupid and noticeable behaviour until he saw that she wasn’t the only one doing it- everybody was. even that heaving, fat wizard in the corner who was laughing too hard and spilling drink all over his robes let his squinty eyes travel around the room, as if he trusted nobody.

“Yeah,” Harry agreed, nodding despite that fact that Tonks wouldn’t be able to see it past the grouchy illusion. “It’s cool, isn’t it?”

“You are such a teenager, you know,” Tonks said softly. Nonetheless, her bland features remained emotionless as she took a gulp of her drink. Harry suspected that her control over her face-changing abilities had given her some kind of control on how to suppress her facial emotions.

“C’mon,” Harry sighed, even as his illusionary head ducked in closer to Tonks. Tonks followed Harry’s lead and to the outsiders, it looked like they were conspiring together. “This is an authentic seedy bar. You don’t see them around a lot.”

“If I had my way, I’d burn the place down,” Tonks muttered. Her lips were barely moving as she set her glass down. “Along with everybody inside it. Good riddance, I’d say.”

“Random acts of violence,” Harry said thoughtfully. “I like the idea already.”

“This place is a den of criminals, a real hotspot for dark wizards,” Tonks said, eyes flickering to a lean, one-eyed wizard who was laughing boisterously at the tale of his smirking friend. “The Department knows it. The owners of the pub knows that we know it. But we make-believe we don’t know and the owners make-believe that they believe that we don’t know. But we all know. Everybody knows.”

“You’re not drunk, are you?” Harry asked, raising an eyebrow and glancing down at Tonk’s glass. It was almost three-quarters empty.

“That’s what this is for,” Tonks said, brushing something on her robes near her neck. “Transfigures the alcohol into normal water. Not good to get drunk on a mission.”

Harry saw a weird little metal disc that sat under the collar of the shirt underneath her large, baggy brown robes.  With his attention drawn to it, he could feel the tingle of magic running through it when she took another gulp, slamming her mug down on the table harder than it was necessary.

“If you guys all know about this place, why let it keep running?” Harry asked her as he motioned for the waitress to bring over another jug.

Tonks remained silent until another jug of alcohol was placed on their table and picked it up with feigned shaky hands. Harry saw a few white pills drop out of the sleeves of her robes and into the jug and nodded in approval, his respect for the Auror going up another notch. Tonks poured herself another glass and took a swill of it.

“Because it’s useful,” she said blandly. “The Aurors get a place to listen in on whenever they need to. The owners get protection from some of their legal obligations. The dark wizards get a central place where they know they can be relatively safe from the random spot-checks that happen everywhere else.”

“And they don’t know that they’re being watched?” Harry asked. “They look like they do.”

“Oh, they do,” Tonks said. Her face was emotionless but Harry got the feeling as he stared into her eyes that she was grinning on the inside. “But because of the lack of official security, a lot of stuff can go through here undetected. For them, it’s sometimes it’s worth the risk. Besides, only the best Auror undercover agents can remain undetected in here. I’m pretty sure they’re all suspecting both of us at the moment.”

“Really?” Harry murmured. He had noticed the occasional glance and two that had been levelled at them but there was nothing approaching an intense scrutiny that meant they were being carefully watched.

“You may be good with your wand, great with it even,” Tonks started chidingly.

“What wand are we talking about here?” Harry interrupted. His illusionary body grinned at her mischievously and Tonks narrowed her eyes.

“Like I was saying,” Tonks continued. “Skill with a wand means jack-all in this type of setting. You may think that we’re not being watched but we are. I’ve seen all five of them, and they’re ready to kill us if we prove to be Aurors. They might even do it as well, since we don’t have any backup waiting for us.”

“Well, that’s easy to solve,” Harry said cheerfully. “We’ll just have to show that we’re not Aurors. ”

“How do we do that?” Tonks questioned carefully.

“Easy,” Harry said, a sly smirk crossing his face. “I get up and act like myself.”

Harry ignored Tonks startled face as he stepped away from his table and approached the bar. At the same time, a large burly wizard with arms as thick as tree-trunks stepped away from the bar, a mug of firewhiskey in his hand. Harry wondered if his mother had been frisky with a Troll or something, but decided that he would be a perfect target. In a scene so well choreographed that it looked like it had been rehearsed, Harry staggered back as if the other wizard had just pushed at him with his shoulder. At the same time, his leg came up and smacked into the burly wizard’s shin. The other wizard lost his balance as his mug went flying, landing straight on Harry’s illusionary chest.

Had Harry been a normal wizard, even an Auror, then the illusion would have been disrupted to a certain point. However, with Meciel guiding the flows of magic that kept the image in place, she was easily able to keep up with the new changes without any delay. To that end saw Harry, soaked in Firewhiskey, glaring intently at the other wizard, who was glaring right back.

“What was that?” Harry bellowed, gesturing at his shirt.

“You fucking…” the man started, glaring at his empty mug in fury.

It was all Harry needed.

The man was cut off as Harry swung at him wildly, wearing a bloodthirsty grin as he smashed his empty mug on the other man’s face. The larger man gave a gurgling cry of pain as the glass shattered on his cheek, tearing into skin. Blood dribbled from the lacerations as Harry kept up the surprise assault, shoving the man to the ground with a violent push and shoving his wand in his face.

“Do I need to use this?” Harry whispered. His illusionary form was the perfect picture of a wizard standing in the abyss of madness, complete with the curled up lip, the bared teeth and the crazed, wild look in his frantic eyes.

The man was shaking with anger but reluctantly shook his head. Harry smirked and lowered his wand. Bending down, he plucked a large glass splinter out of the man’s cheek, ignoring the snarls of pain, and gazed at it. Inwardly grimacing, Harry rang the tip of his tongue over the blood-covered shard and smiled as the tangy taste struck his tongue.

“Cowardice, fear, dread, terror,” Harry whispered to the silent bar. “You’re not worth my time. Touch me again, though, and I’ll kill you. Alright?”

The man nodded slowly, muttering ‘psychopath!’ under his breath. Harry stood back, whipping his wand and repairing his mug with a single incantation. Ignoring everybody else, including a stony-looking Tonks, he strode to the bar, received his refill and move to sit back down.

“That was stupid!” Tonks hissed as Harry sidled down beside her, shooting the bloodied man intense looks of fury and maniac rage that only made him appear more of a psychopath.

“It worked,” Harry said blandly, even as he kept up his disgruntled glare at the larger man. “I’m a psychopath now. Besides, I drew attention to myself. Not exactly Auror behaviour, is it?”

“You need to…” Tonk started to reprimand softly, before she went silent and started to gaze into her glass. Cocking her slightly to the right, she spoke softly to Harry. “That’s him. That’s who we need to get.”

Harry kept his illusion hunched over his drink, moving his lips as if he were muttering something, while he turned his head and gazed at the alleged supporter of Voldemort. He wasn’t an impressive man, a lanky, unshaven wizard with long, stringy dark-hair and a set of greedy eyes. To Harry’s amusement, he strode over the table where the larger man Harry had smashed up was sitting.

“That’s his contact?” Tonks breathed in horror. “Potter, you’re an idiot.”

Harry huffed, while Tonks scratched her head. His sharp eyes picked up the quick subtle movements of her fingers as she placed something behind her ear. He frowned, but shrugged and took another gulp of his firewhiskey, feeling the generous burning sensations warm up the pit of his stomach. He knew he didn’t have to worry too much about getting drunk, after all, having a Fallen that could manipulate the very neurons in your brains provided some benefits.

Unless she was being a bitch. Then you woke up on a beach in Hawaii in the middle of the night with a spread of cocktail glasses around you and a hangover that rivalled the Cruciatus Curse.

“So now what?” Harry asked a few moments later.

“I can’t hear them,” Tonks said, frustration colouring her voice. “It’s all…static...like I have bad reception or something.”

“Can we snatch him now?” Harry asked, rolling his eyes.

He’d be the first to admit that he was starting to get bored. Sure, he didn’t mind spending his time sitting on his arse but he preferred to do it somewhere where he didn’t have to worry about some random nobody putting a knife in his back or something.

“We’ll wait for him to leave,” Tonks muttered. “Then we’ll follow him out, nice and quiet.”

A few moments rolled into ten minutes, all the while Harry was getting more and more irritated, to the point where the scowl plastered on his illusion’s face was genuine. Just as he was about to snap at Tonks, their target shook the hands with the large, burly man in a business-like manner.

“Looks like they’re done,” Tonks muttered.

Harry said nothing, watching carefully as the larger man pulled out his wand and tapped his glass, narrowing his beady eyes in concentration. A flash of blue light seeped from the tip and both Harry and Tonks realised what was happening in an instant.

“A portkey!” the female Auror hissed.

“Follow my lead,” Harry barked, jumping up from the seat. His mind whirled with a dozen possibilities, finally settling on one as his feet struck the ground and his wand reached his hand. He levelled it at the surprised pair of criminals and allowed his illusion to sneer menacingly. “Crucio!”

A crack filled the air as a blast of dark crimson light flashed once, slamming into the man and propelling him from his seat. Shrieks and startled yells filled the air as the burly man, his eyes widening, grasped the completely portkey and disappeared. Harry stalked forward, his wand darting forward and slicing into one of the wizards who tried to stop him. The bar was in madness, several of the patron promptly disapparating on the spot or fleeing for the doors. A few tried to stop him, but most saw no need as Harry strolled over to the fallen man and grinned down at him.

“Who are…” the man started, before a scarlet flash of light blasted his consciousness into oblivion.

Harry hauled him up and grabbed a startled Tonk’s arm as she ran towards them. From what he knew about the Ministry detection systems, he knew he only had a few more seconds, so he faced the rest of the bar with a terrible glare on his illusionary face.

“Remember this!” Harry yelled out in a voice different from his own. “This is what happens to those who dare oppose the Dark Lord! Remember!”

And with that overly-dramatic statement, Harry, his arms around Tonks and the prisoner, turned on his heels and disapparated with a sharp crack, just as the first of the Aurors burst through the door in a whirl of crimson cloaks.

“What the hell were you doing?” Was the first thing Tonks bellowed as they appeared in the kitchen of No. 12 Grimmauld Place. She snatched her arm away from Harry, glaring at him angrily.

Harry ignored the overly loud Auror as he dropped the unconscious man, who landed on the ground with a loud thud, and walked over to the kitchen sink. Tonks watched, her disguise gone as she morphed back into her original- or so Harry thought- self. There was no hiding the incredible amount of anger that the other Auror was feeling.

“Your breasts look sexy as hell when you heave like that,” Harry complimented, flashing a grin at her. He turned back to the drawers, opening them and pulling out the occasional utensil. “I should piss you off more often.”

“You used an Unforgivable Curse,” Tonks said, breathing deeply. “You used one of the most illegal curse in the history of the Ministry of Magic in front of an Auror, a witch who is legally obliged to stop you.”

“I did, didn’t I?” Harry asked absently, gazing at a large prong-ended instrument. An unbidden thought came to mind and Harry grimaced, dropping the kitchen utensil back in the draw. “For my sake, I’m not going to use that.”

“What are you doing?” Tonks asked. Her nostrils were flaring with the effort of suppressing her anger but she was clearly curious as to what he was up to. “Why do you need all of those?”

“Interrogation,” Harry answered her blankly.

He flicked his wand and the man’s unconscious body floated behind him as he stomped up the stairs. He ducked his head into one of the many doors and surveyed it, making sure that it seemed disused and abandoned. It wouldn’t do for somebody to try to break in when he was working. Footsteps pounded after him and Tonks burst into the room, her bubblegum-pink hair framing her wild eyes.

“Interrogation?” she practically shrieked.

“Well, I probably won’t use most of them,” Harry admitted. “But it’s all about appearance. He’s gotta believe that I will. Trust me, I’ve done this before.”

“You…what…is…” Tonks was stuttering her words now, looking horrified.

“Why do you think I’m here, Nymphomaniac Tonks?” Harry asked her. A cold smile curved his lips when she stayed silent, staring at him if she had never seen him before. “Dumbledore picked me for this because he didn’t want to dirty your hands.”

“Don’t call me…” Tonks started. She paused and glowered at him furiously. “Ha fucking ha. Like I haven’t heard that one before, Potter! Besides, Dumbledore would never…”

“Dumbledore already has,” Harry interrupted grimly. Tonks’ mouth closed with a snap as he continued. “Don’t mistake the man for the paragon of virtue. He’s determined to win this war, which means unleashing his most powerful weapon. Me.”

“You’ll really do it, won’t you?” Tonks whispered softly.

“Well, I suppose I could use Truth Potions, but I don’t have any on me at the moment and they’re not fool-proof,” Harry said blandly. “So we’ll do this the old fashioned way- physical torture.”

“You…I…Dumbledore? Really?” Tonks stuttered out. It was a fair cry from her normal confident self and Harry wasn’t impressed.

“Stop blubbering, you little twit,” he snapped coldly, making Tonks start. “This is the beginnings of a war. He,” he said, gesturing at the unconscious man floating beside him. “is the enemy. He has information I need and I will get it from him.”

“How?” Tonks asked, her voice barely a whisper.

 

“By using this,” Harry deadpanned, holding up a silver tablespoon.

Tonks stared at the gleaming spoon.

“People under physical duress will say anything to avoid it,” she quoted from somewhere.

“Nah, that won’t work,” Harry said, grinning. He took Tonks by the hand, one of his fingers extending up to the wrist and the rest pressing her fingers together firmly. “Tell a lie.”

“What?”

“Tell me a lie,” Harry urged her. “Go on.”

“You’re a decent human being,” Tonks said, pinning Harry with a pointed look.

“Your blood pressure went up,” Harry said instantly. He frowned. “There’s increased activity in the glands that produce sweat as well. There’s increased electrical activity in your nervous system, a common sign of stress. Hell, I can even tell that certain part of your brains activated for a split second just as you were creating that…lie.” He dropped her hand, smiling coldly. “He won’t be able to get a lie past me. All I need to do is to motivate him to tell the truth.”

Harry turned back to the man and paused, while Tonks stood rigid behind him.

“If you want to stay, stay. But this will probably become messy and there’ll be a lot of screaming and blood and all that crap. If you can’t take that, then you should probably go.”

Tonks looked conflicted, her conscience warring with the harsh reality of the situation. Harry, with his back turned to her, didn’t see what she did but a moment later the door closed quietly behind him. Harry stared back at the door thoughtfully, his green eyes narrowed in though. Then, with a sigh, he waved his wand and revived the man from his spell-induced coma.

“Aurors these days are a bunch of wimps,” he grumbled to himself as the man’s eyes shot open.

“Who are you?” was the first thing out of his mouth. His panicked voice filled the room as he twisted and flailed under the invisible bonds surrounding him. “Where am I? What’s going on? Why am I here?”

“Well, my name is…” Harry paused and dropped the illusion charm surrounding him, allowing his true face to show itself. “My name is Harry Potter. You’re in the headquarters to the Order of Phoenix. You were kidnapped because Dumbledore thinks that you have information about Death Eaters….something about an enclave or something.”

“I’m innocent!” the man screamed and Harry winced. He flicked his wand and a flash of blue shot around the room, seeping into the walls and producing a sound-proof barrier between that room and the rest of the house.

“Well, that sucks,” Harry said blandly. “I guess I’ll have to kill you now.”

“What!” the man practically squealed, his eyes wide with terror.

“If you’re innocent, then you know nothing,” Harry explained, rolling his eyes and sounding like he was explaining something to a particularly stupid child. “And if you know nothing, you’re not useful. If you’re not useful, then you don’t need to live.”

“You can’t,” the man whimpered.

“I can,” Harry said gleefully and dark fire flashed behind his emerald eyes. A slow, languid smile crossed his face as he bent down. “Here’s the thing. You’re a dead man now. You can die quickly and painlessly, or I can rip your fingers and toes off one by one until you tell me what I want to know. The only hope you have left is if you impress me with your lack of loyalty and tell me everything you know. After that, I might let the Aurors deal with you. That’s fair, right?”

The man gulped and shivered, his face screwed up in terror. A moment later Harry was hit by a pungent smell of fresh urine and glanced down at the man’s robes, seeing a newly-spreading wet patch. He grimaced and backed away from him, looking disgusted.

“I guess we’ll start with the wand-work for now,” he muttered. He raised his wand. “Here’s one of my favourites. Crucio!”