Gryffindor Investigations

Sorry it took me so long to post a new chapter--I was bringing The Harry/Ron Community up to date. This chapter, as all future chapters, is being crossposted in AdultFanFiction.Net, The Harry/Ron Community (harry_and_ron), and The Dream Team (harry_ron_ship).

Disclaimer: I do not own Dean Thomas, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, Harry Potter, Rowena Ravenclaw or her diadem, Kreacher, Minerva McGonagall, Moaning Myrtle or her toilet, Gryffindor House, Ravenclaw House, the Room of Requirement, Number 12 Grimmauld Place, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Diagon Alley, Apparition, house-elves, the Imperius or any other Unforgivable Curse, Muggles, or firecalling. JK Rowling invented them all. Amazing, isn't it?

Rating: PG for slight angst

Relationships: None


As Dean, Ron, and Williams began to clean up after the Circle, and Hermione had taken Eleanor MacGuinness into the kitchen to make coffee, Harry found himself alone with Tommy Edwards, the senior partner of EWE.

Harry found himself warming to Tommy Edwards immediately. Everything physical about the ex-Ravenclaw was thin—the spare frame, the almost gaunt-looking face, the dark brown hair that was falling out prematurely, the eyes that were a washed-out blue. However, Edwards’ personality, open and engaging, more than made up for his physical appearance.

Like all Ravenclaws, Edwards’ mind was exceptionally quick and inquisitive, and he had a seemingly limitless supply of questions about the diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw and its eventual destruction in the Room of Requirement. Harry answered these as best he could, but he was far more interested in the recent past, and did his best to guide the conversation there.

And Edwards, since his mind was so quick, picked up on Harry’s preoccupation. “I’m sorry, Mr. Potter—”

“Harry.”

Edwards smiled. “All right, Harry, then. I do apologize; I freely admit to having more than my fair share of House pride. Once this is over, I promise you, I will be after you to tell me everything about Ravenclaw’s Diadem—but I’m sure you have more immediate interests. Yes?”

“I’m afraid so, Tommy,” Harry replied.

“Fine. I noticed you going through Michael’s desk; I assume you’re going to want to do the same in our offices?”

“That’s right.”

“Again, fine,” Tommy nodded. “I’ll put his office and his assistant at your disposal whenever you like. Did you find anything interesting in his desk?”

Harry started to tell him everything he’d seen in the desk, and the theories he was beginning to form—but Ron called his name sharply. He glanced over; the redhead was wearing a completely neutral expression, but Harry knew those blue eyes as well as his own green ones, and they were radiating disapproval and annoyance almost as though they were tangible energies.

“Excuse me a moment,” Harry said. He made his way over to Ron. “What is it?” he asked impatiently.

Ron, on the other hand, was visibly trying his best to be patient. “Harry,” he said, his eyes boring into Harry’s, “I know I haven’t been at this as long as you have, but didn’t you tell me something about how to interview witnesses—and potential suspects?”

“What do you mean?”

“Edwards,” Ron said, jerking his head in the ex-Ravenclaw’s direction. “He doesn’t need to know what you found in that desk. So why were you about to tell him?”

“I wasn’t going to tell him everything!” Harry snapped. “Where the hell do you get off telling me how to conduct an investigation?”

He spoke, perhaps, a little more loudly than he’d intended. Heads around the room turned to stare at the pair. Harry flushed, embarrassed and annoyed, and whispered in a harsh tone, “Do you suppose we could talk about this later?”

“No,” Ron said, equally angry, “I know we will talk about this later. And ‘later’ should be about ten minutes from now, after we’ve Apparated back home.”

“Now?”

“It’s either that,” Ron said coolly, “or I follow you around until we go. Your choice.”

Harry’s look could have melted solid rock, but he nodded curtly and turned to the others. “My partner and I have to leave,” he said. Before Hermione could say anything, he continued, “’Mione, I’ll call you later this week.”

Harry turned back to Ron. “Are you ready?” At Ron’s nod, he said, “All right, then; let’s go.”

Ron was a hair faster; Harry heard the beginning of his CRACK! before Michael Archer’s flat vanished and he reappeared in the sitting room at Number 12, Grimmauld Place.

Ron was waiting for him. “‘Never give anyone any information for free.’ That’s a direct quote, Harry.”

“Why are you being such a prat about this?” Harry snarled as he tossed his jacket onto the back of the sofa.

“I’m trying to understand why you were about to tell tales to Edwards!” Ron shot back. He hung up his jacket properly; for some reason, that made Harry even more annoyed. “What could he possibly have told you that would have been worth any sort of trade? We’ve barely begun looking into this, Harry—why would you have been tipping our hand to anyone?”

Harry’s eyebrow rose, and he felt his lips twisting into a sneer. “This wouldn’t be because Tommy’s a damned good-looking man, would it, Ron?” he said nastily. “Jealous?”

Ron jerked back as if he had been stung. His fists clenched and unclenched, and then, without another word, he turned on his heel and stalked from the room. Harry began a mental countdown; just as he hit “zero,” he heard a door slam.

Typical, he thought with disgust. That’s his solution to any problem: walk away. How he ever got into Gryffindor…

The sitting room door opened, and Kreacher appeared, dusting everything in sight. “Kreacher walks into many scenes like this of late, he thinks, Master Harry.”

Harry turned on the house-elf, his eyes blazing. “I don’t remember asking your opinion, Kreacher,” he snapped, “and if you want to avoid future scenes like this, there’s a very simple solution, involving a hat.”

The house-elf’s eyes grew wide, then narrowed. “That will not be necessary, Kreacher thinks,” he said coldly. “With Master Harry’s permission, Kreacher will go and begin lunch.”

“Do whatever you want,” Harry said with an offhand wave. “I don’t care.”

If Harry had been looking at Kreacher, he would have seen the house-elf’s eyes light up. “As Master Harry commands,” he said, and he was gone.

Harry was left feeling both annoyed and slightly foolish. First Ron, then that freak of a house-elf? He didn’t need this. He took up his coat and left first the sitting room, then the house itself.


When Harry didn’t show up for lunch, Ron was still too angry and hurt to notice. When he didn’t show up for dinner, Ron’s anger had faded into mere annoyance. He woke up early the next morning still dressed, sitting in the chair in their bedroom, blinking sleepily at a completely empty bed.

Harry hadn’t come home.

Now Ron was worried.

There was a tap on the door, and Ron cried, “Harry?”

The door opened, and Kreacher entered, his face grave. “Kreacher is sorry to disappoint Master Ron,” he said simply, “but Master Harry is not in the house. Kreacher looked for him.”

“Well, he’s not here, either,” Ron said. He stood up and stretched, grimacing at the stiffness in his back. The chair was comfortable, but not that comfortable. A good shower would probably take care of that, though—and besides, his skin was starting to crawl with the need for a bath. “So…”

“Kreacher knows, Master Ron,” the house-elf said. “Kreacher knew Master Harry was not with you when he came in. Kreacher needs to tell you of a thing, Master Ron, something that he had not thought possible, until he talked with some of the house-elves at Hogwarts, and……”

Ron, in the process of stripping off his clothes, paused. “Hogwarts……you’ve been to Hogwarts?” he said uncertainly. “When? Why? I mean, if Professor McGonagall doesn’t mind, I don’t, but…”

Kreacher held up his hand. “Kreacher visited Hogwarts last night, Master Ron, after dinner. Kreacher spoke to Master Harry yesterday, after Kreacher’s two Masters exchanged harsh words with each other. Kreacher was most disturbed by what Master Harry said to him……”

Ron, his shirt half off, pulled it back on again. A bath could wait. “What Harry—Kreacher, what did Harry say?”

“Nothing of importance, Master Ron,” Kreacher said, “merely words. Cruel words, words meant to hurt. Words that Kreacher would never have thought to hear from Master Harry, who goes out of his way to be kind to others.”

“Probably because of how rotten he was treated growing up,” Ron mused, “but you said you heard something from the other house-elves…”

“Yes, Master Ron,” Kreacher replied, and the house-elf shuddered. “There is a magic, an evil magic, that Kreacher had never heard of before—but the change in Master Harry was so quick, and so odd, that Kreacher felt he needed to ask the advice of others.”

“And they told you—?”

“That there is a curse, a curse as Unforgivable as the Imperius,” Kreacher said darkly. “That rather than affecting the mind, it affects the heart, so that the one caught under it turns against his dearest friends and hates where once he loved. Kreacher believes that Master Harry has fallen under this curse.”

“Why?” Ron asked. “Why do you think he’s not just being a prat?”

“Master Harry’s emotions do not normally change so quickly, nor do they change so completely,” Kreacher replied simply. “Master Harry is not so……” he paused, searching for the right word, “mercurial. Kreacher is convinced that Master Harry’s change of heart was imposed from outside.”

Ron began to pace, his mind working furiously. “We did a Circle yesterday,” he began—and then paused, looking at Kreacher uncertainly. At the house-elf’s nod of understanding, he continued thinking and pacing. “Hermione was leading it, but Harry took over just for a second. It could have happened then……”

And then he stopped, a horrifying thought coming to him. If Harry was under some variation of the Imperius—Ron couldn’t trust him anymore.

And Ron would have to conduct the investigation alone.

So I will. If these people have Harry’s mind and emotions turned around, the best way to set him right is to find them and stop them.

“I’m going to clean up, Kreacher,” he said, “and then I have to leave. Don’t tell Harry that you told me about this. If he asks where I am, tell him I left without saying anything.”

Kreacher bowed. “As you say, Master Ron.”

Ron cleaned up quickly, ate a hasty breakfast at Kreacher’s insistence, and was out the door much before midmorning.

It took him a long time to get across London. Harry had insisted that he learn Muggle ways of doing things, and Ron firmly believed that if this was how Muggles lived, he was just as happy to have been born a wizard. The Underground remained a never-ending source of frustration for him: trains running late, trains packed full, trains smelling like Moaning Myrtle’s toilet……it was maddening.

Finally, however, he reached the offices of EWE Enchantments, in the midst of Diagon Alley. He kept his eyes open for Harry, but there was no sign of him.

Geoffrey Williams turned out to be in his early thirties, and like Edwards an ex-Ravenclaw. He welcomed Ron into his office with a (declined) offer of coffee. “Mr. Potter isn’t with you?” he asked.

“No, he’s not,” Ron said shortly. “Another case. Now Archer’s office is…?”

“Right down the hall,” Williams said. He led Ron past a series of open offices, each one occupied by a twentysomething witch or wizard with a worn, harried look on his or her face.

“Here it is,” Williams gestured into an empty office. “Feel free to look around. Any questions, just ask.”

Ron gazed helplessly at the cluttered office. “I’ll have to conduct the investigation alone.” Just brilliant. Only one problem—I don’t know the first thing about doing that!

He picked up and looked at various papers on Archer’s desk, nodding sagely as if they showed him something he expected, then turned to a wizard photograph on his window sill. It showed a laughing young woman, pretty without being overwhelming about it, waving at the camera. “Who’s this?”

“Her name’s Elizabeth Wayne,” Williams replied. “She and Michael were seeing each other, off and on. It was more on than off lately, actually—you might want to talk to her. See if he’d gotten any more of those calls to his flat…”

“What calls?” Ron demanded.

Williams looked surprised. “Michael had been getting—oh, what do you call them—telephone calls. All times of day or night, always the same thing. He’d answer, the other wouldn’t say anything, and then the line would go dead. Didn’t Tommy tell you?”

Ron ground his teeth and kept himself from making any of the sarcastic comments he wanted to make. Harry had warned him about this, too—that people would keep things back, not because they were hiding them, but because they didn’t seem important. “No,” he said tightly, “he didn’t.”

Williams shrugged. “Must have slipped his mind.”

“Do you have an address for this Elizabeth Wayne girl?” Ron asked.

“Yeah, she lives in King’s Lynn,” Williams answered, then brightened. “Hey, that’s where you traced Michael—maybe he’s just playing truant with her!”

Ron cocked his head to one side, momentarily puzzled. “How’d you know we traced him to King’s Lynn?”

Williams was taken aback. “Um……Tommy must have told me. Or something.”

Or maybe you were involved, Ron thought. Edwards could have told you where we traced Archer—but if he did, why are you acting as though I’d caught you with your hand in my pocket?

“Say, Mr. Weasley……” Williams continued hurriedly.

“Ron.”

“Ron, then, and you can call me Geoff—are you enjoying working with Harry Potter?”

“Of course I am,” Ron said sharply—and a trifle defensively, as he thought about the previous day. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well, it must be a bit frustrating, playing second to his lead,” Williams said. “Now, if you worked on your own…or perhaps for a company like ours……” He let the sentence trail off suggestively.

“Sorry.” Ron’s tone was sharp enough to shave with. “Not interested. And besides, what the hell does that have to do with finding Michael Archer?”

“Well, nothing, of course, I just thought……”

“Geoff.” Tommy Edwards had appeared, leaning around the doorjam. “You’ve got a firecall. Your sister.”

Williams looked momentarily startled, then apprehensive, then somewhat relieved. “Thanks, Tommy,” he said. “Ron, if you’ll excuse me?”

“Of course,” Ron said. Williams quickly left the office, Edwards right behind him.

Ron continued to sort through the papers on Archer’s desk. When he looked up again, he was somewhat surprised to discover that almost an hour had passed. He looked down at the mess, but if there was a clue there, it was one that was beyond him. Time to find Williams, he thought. He made his way back to Williams’ office by the simple expedient of asking everyone he met how to get there, saving him from having to remember more than two directions at a time.

But Williams wasn’t in his office. Nor, when Ron went looking for him around the offices, anywhere in the building.

Edwards seemed just as puzzled as Ron. “He closed the door to his office to take the firecall,” he told Ron, “but it didn’t last long, he opened it again within a few minutes. I went back to my office, so I didn’t see him leave.”

Ron seethed with equal amounts of puzzlement and frustration. What was that call about? Had Williams had something to do with Archer’s disappearance? Were the two related? Or was Williams playing more than one game—or no game at all?