Gryffindor Investigations

The firm of EWE Enchantments (“Edwards, Williams, and Ellis—our last names,” Tommy Edwards told Harry) paid Michael Archer a substantial sum of money per year in his capacity as Senior Designer. Quite a bit of it had gone toward a sumptuous five-room flat in Markham Square, a gated community in central Chelsea.

There were seven of them: Harry, Ron and Hermione (whom, to Harry’s relief, seemed to have made up their last quarrel), Dean, Tommy Inglethorpe (a thin, reedy ex-Ravenclaw approximately six years Harry’s senior), and two Muggles, Dean’s business partner Jack MacGuinness (who reminded Harry somewhat of Seamus Finnegan, having Seamus’ sandy blond hair and lean build), and Eleanor Archer MacGuinness, Jack’s wife and Michael’s sister.

Like Hermione, Michael Archer had been Muggle-born, and he evidently saw no reason to abandon his heritage altogether. It meant that he had to go through the relatively simple but invariably tiresome process of exchanging some of his Galleons for the pounds Harry had grown up knowing (not with, of course, considering that he had never received pocket money from the Dursleys), but upon viewing the flat, Harry was half-prepared to start doing the same.

The front door opened onto an immense, and decidedly messy, sitting room. While the mess wasn’t quite as bad as the squalor of Ron’s King’s Cross flat had been, there weren’t very many clean places to stand. There was a bin right beside the front door for recycling newspapers, but of the dozen or so issues of the Daily Prophet in the room, only two were actually in the bin; the rest lay on top of the large-screen television, the solid cherry wood coffee table, or strewn on the three couches surrounding it. Over in the corner, clean but rumpled clothing lay in an untidy pile, waiting, by look of the ironing board next to them, to be pressed. A mug of half-drunk coffee was on the floor next to the coffee table. Harry did a quick check, and found what he’d expected. Archer had left an Anti-Vermin Charm in place; otherwise, the coffee would have attracted all sorts of insects.

Despite the mess within the sitting room itself, the windows were spotlessly clean, and given the view, Harry could see why. The flat was on the top floor of the building, and the living room gave a truly magnificent view of the north and east. Big Ben, stately and majestic, stood off in the distance, although there were too many buildings in the way for Harry to make out Westminster Bridge

Hermione would be directing the Seeking Spell, and she automatically took on an aura of command. “I’m going to need a large, clear space on the floor,” she said as she moved further into the apartment. “Mrs. MacGuinness—”

“Please, call me Eleanor,” the other woman said, smiling.

Hermione smiled back. “All right, then, Eleanor. Would you show me where your brother’s bedroom was? We’re going to need something he would have been in contact with on a regular basis—or, if we can get them, hairs or nail clippings.”
Eleanor nodded. “It’s right down this way; I’ll show you,” she said, gesturing down a hallway leading along the front door’s wall.

As they walked, Hermoine asked, “Did Michael have any other appointments the day he disappeared?”

“The Aurors looked at his day calendar,” Eleanor replied, “but Dean was the only appointment he’d written in. If he had another one, he didn’t write it down.”

“Where is his day calendar?” Harry asked.

“Right there, actually.”

Harry and Hermione followed her gesture. To their left, there was a small space too small to be used as a bedroom, but too large to be a simple alcove. It held a battered desk covered with papers, an extraordinarily comfortable-looking chair, and an overhead hutch stuffed with papers and books. A pasteboard was on the wall to their right, covered with virtually incomprehensible scribblings.”

Hermoine peered at it in perplexity for long seconds before finally shaking her head in defeat. “It’s like trying to decipher an elaborate code written in a foreign language,” she complained.

“That’s why I’m not even going to try,” Harry replied. “You two go on ahead; I want to take a look through Archer’s desk.”

“But—” Eleanor looked momentarily uncertain, but Hermione quickly stepped between her and Harry and guided her back along the hall to Michael’s bedroom. Harry sat down at Archer’s desk. The chair was even more comfortable than it looked. The desk held two side drawers, a double and a single.

Harry tried the double first. Surprisingly, given the condition of the desk and the rest of the apartment, it was neat and well-organized. Everything pertaining to Michael Archer’s professional and personal life was arranged in tidy, clearly-labeled folders: rent for the flat, gas, electricity, telephone, retirement, checking account at Barclays, savings account at the NS&I, credit card statements.

Harry paid particular attention to the latter three, but they proved to be disappointing. Michael Archer was a man who used his credit cards heavily, but did not carry a balance from month to month. Neither his checking nor his savings accounts going back over the past year showed unusually high deposits (which argued against bribery) or withdrawals (which argued against extortion). Of course, it was possible that Archer had other financial accounts and kept the statements elsewhere, or not at all, but Harry felt that was a long shot at best.

The single held nothing but general office supplies: pens, clips, a stapler, and so on. Harry looked with some trepidation at the desk itself and the hutch above. Like the pasteboard along the far wall, the papers on both were covered in incomprehensible scribblings; if Hermione couldn’t decipher it, Harry knew better than to try to do it himself. Yet he couldn’t rid himself of the idea that they might contain a vital clue.

He settled for stacking them in a neat pile; *I’ll ask Edwards to translate them into English later,* he thought, and turned his attention to the date calendar. Eleanor had said there were no appointments aside from Dean on the day Archer had disappeared, but Harry was more interested in appointments in the days leading up to the disappearance.

Unfortunately, he drew a blank there, too. The appointments listed were few, and routine: the dentist, the bank, someone named Sheila Fargate, whose name had been written in one color ink, and then crossed out in another. Evidently they had not hit it off.

“Harry?” Hermione’s voice called from the sitting room. “We’re ready to start the Circle.”

“On my way,” Harry said. He slipped the date calendar into his back pocket—it still might prove useful—and went to join the others.

Ron and the others had done as Hermione asked; the furniture had been pushed aside, and the rug rolled up, leaving the bare hardwood floor. Hermione had produced a brazier from somewhere, and a quick fire-calling spell from Ron lit the charcoals in it. She waited until they had burned down to almost nothing (Harry noted, with some surprise, that there was very little smoke), and then reached into her purse and took out a sealed oilskin pouch, the mouth of which was tied shut with a tightly-knotted drawstring.

Deftly, Hermione undid the knot, and dumped the contents of the pouch into the brazier. A thick, pungent smoke began to waft up from the red coals. Hermione took up a hairbrush, pulled perhaps half a dozen hairs from it, and dropped them into the brazier as well. The smoke turned an off-white color in response.

“Everyone sit,” Hermione commanded. She’d told them earlier exactly who was to sit where. Ron and Harry were on her right, with Eleanor MacGuinness between them. Dean was on her left, sandwiched between Jack MacGuinness and Tommy Edwards.

The ritual was loosely based on the Law of Contagion: what was once a part of you is always a part of you. Hermione would be the Seeker (“No pun intended, Harry,” she’d joked; she would try to establish a magical connection the hairs from Michael Archer’s hairbrush to the man himself, thereby determining the man’s location. Harry, Ron, and Dean would simply be loaning her their strength; the others would be feeding her their knowledge of the man.

Hermione, her eyes closed, began to chant in a language Harry had never heard before, and wasn’t sure was even human. To his utter amazement, the smoke from the brazier responded to the chant. It turned to flow sideways toward Hermione, and, as it reached her, wreathed itself around her head in a halo effect.

There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the chant that Harry could discern; Hermione’s voice varied in pitch and volume, and she never seemed to use the same cadence twice running. Whatever else it was, however, it incredibly hypnotic; Harry found himself becoming……not sleepy, exactly, but incredibly relaxed, lulled by the sound of Hermione’s voice.

And then he felt something…..drawing him. Drawing him to the hairs in the brazier, even though his rational mind pointed out that they must have been less than ashes within moments of being tossed in the fire. The hairs thickened and multiplied, and slowly, ever so slowly, a face began to form under them.

This, then, must be Michael Archer.

Harry committed every bit of Archer’s face to memory: the curly, dark hair, the brown eyes, the slightly stubbled jaw, the narrow, pointed nose. But now that he had a better idea of *who*, he had a far more important question.

*Where*?

He felt a flash of annoyance, then realized that it hadn’t come from him. The brief flicker of emotion had definitely had a very “Hermione” flavor to it, and was directed squarely at him. He fought down his impatience and allowed her to continue.

She did. Her voice built in intensity and volume; unconsciously, her arms were rising over her head, bringing Ron’s and Jack’s with them.

And then she screamed. And a dark curtain suddenly dropped over Harry’s vision.

Only to fade, revealing a side street in London Harry thought he recognized.

He was walking down that street, checking his watch constantly. Harry felt a terrible anxiety, and there was a feeling of “Dean” connected with it.

With a start of surprise, Harry realized he was reliving Michael Archer’s life just before he was taken.

He turned a corner, and came face-to-face with the ugliest, and possibly the largest, man Harry had ever seen. He was easily two meters tall, and you could probably count his weight in stones, if the stones were the ones at Stonehenge. His face looked like it had been taken apart and put back together without any reference to a plan or a diagram.

Harry felt a surge of fear as the man whipped out a wand and snarled, “*Imperio!*”

And then he felt his eyes close, and he knew nothing more.

With a start, Harry came back to himself. His body was actually trembling; whether with the exertion of the scrying or from residual fear, he couldn’t tell. He took several deep breaths to calm himself and looked around the circle. Ron, Dean, and Tommy Edwards looked to be in similar condition, but the MacGuinnesses were in pitiful condition. Shock had drained every bit of color from their face, and their eyes were wide and fearful.

Only Hermione seemed relatively unperturbed. She gracefully pushed herself to her feet and moved to help Eleanor to hers, murmuring, “It’s all right, Eleanor, up you get, come on, one foot, now the other, so how easy it is?” Next to the two women, Dean was helping Jack up, but he seemed to be leaning on him as much as he was supporting him.

“Hermione,” Harry said, “did it work?”

“Do I know where Archer is, you mean?” she replied, even as Eleanor turned to look anxiously at her. Hermione shook her head. “Not an exact location, I’m afraid. The closest I could get was a general location: King’s Lynn.”

“How-how do you know he’s still alive?” Eleanor breathed, almost as if she was afraid to hope.

“I didn’t,” Hermione said simply, “but those,” she pointed at the brazier where Michael’s hairs had been, “did. If your brother was dead, they would have known, and they would have told me.”

Eleanor drew slightly away from the rest of them, her eyes even more terrified. Despite the fact that she was the sister of a wizard, Harry could see that she was frightened by the things they could do.

Hermione immediately stepped away from her, and clasped her hands in front of her body. “Eleanor,” she asked, “what happens to put flour in melted butter?”

“It makes a paste, of course,” Eleanor replied automatically.

Hermione jerked a thumb at Harry and Ron. “Trust me, Eleanor,” she smirked, “If I’d asked either of these two that question, we’d still be here next summer while they tried to figure it out. What they and I—and your brother—can do isn’t so mysterious or frightening, Eleanor. It’s just another set of skills.”

“And our particular skills,” Harry said, with an annoyed glance at Hermione, “is solving mysteries. Don’t worry, Eleanor. Ron and I will find your brother for you.”