Warning: contains heavy spoilers for late HPMOR. Do not read if you have not completed HPMOR.
The Hogwarts wards had said that the Defense Professor had killed her.
This didn't make any sense. He'd seen the troll do it with his own eyes.
Now, typically the wards were entirely trustworthy, so you didn't have to go further. But for some reason, a crazy wizard in the middle east had made a lens that allowed you to see the more subtle shapes of wards, the way that they were bent by the people passing through them. You could, if you examined it carefully, deduce when and where a particular entity passed through the wards. This was basically never needed and the work to create it was severe, so it was mostly forgotten, but after reading 7 separate histories of the relevant magic, one of them mentioned it, and had instructions for it. Many of the elements were merely very expensive, such as quartz grown inside the belly of a lava frog, but the lens needed to be made from a piece of curse-struck glass, that is, a piece of glass that had a number of high-level curses pass through it—a withering hex, the blackfire curse, the nerve-unstringing curse, a blood-boiling hex, and critically, the cruciatus curse.
Most of these spells Harry did not know, and in any case, he reasoned, anywhere a single one of them was cast would soon be wrecked by something far more destructive, so no such glass survived in the wild. But Ministry Aurors carried collapsible transparent shield-screens into raids—panes that could be charmed near-invisible and made to ricochet powerful spells away. Such spells passed straight through the Auror and killed him, of course, yet the shield itself endured and could be re-used. One of those, Harry had realized, would do perfectly.
So, in this time of heightened tension, Harry had elected not to ask the Ministry himself, but instead have his classmate Susan Bones request one through her aunt Amelia Bones. Susan was told it would arrive at the Hog's Head at 12 noon on Thursday. Harry arrived at 11:00, waited an hour in his invisibility cloak, then time-turned back so that he was visibly there for the Ministry in this time, to see if anyone would attempt any silly business on him.
He knew that this would cause chaos back at Hogwarts, and that the Ministry too would be alarmed by his appearance here. He regretted not arranging some Ministry escort ahead of time to calm their nerves. While Harry sat conspicuously at the Hog's Head bar, quietly sipping on a Gillywater Cream Soda, looking around for a possible Ministry chaperone, he was interrupted by a yell from the front of the inn.
"Get your hands off of me! I won't put up with crypto-fascists getting in the way of my work."
Harry peered over his glass to see what appeared to be a homeless man stumbling in past a member of the bar staff.
"What business do I have here? I have every business being here! I'm in the drinking business. They call me Tequila Sunset for a reason, baby, and it's because I don't let busybodies like you tell me where I can and cannot go."
Harry noticed that he'd never seen a homeless person in the wizarding world since he arrived. Could it be the case that there weren't any? He knew that homelessness and poor mental health came hand in hand, and getting the way of a bad magical curse could certainly jumble someone's mind beyond repair, but from what he'd seen such people were well taken care of in St Mungos. He didn't imagine that they were left wandering the streets in this way.
"You're telling me I have to go? You're going to kick out a murder detective? You heard me. I'm the law, and I'm here on official investigative business. So butt out, kiddo."
Harry's first thought was that the man was lying, although him then producing a police badge of some sort made him think again. And his vibe wasn't that dissimilar to Mad-Eye Moody's. The man's beaten up work clothes also had carried him through some wars, and his mutilated face carried a story of damage. But whereas Moody's blue eye and scars implied the damage had come from outside, this man's sunken red eyes and puffy, lined, skin suggested a damage internal, from taking little care of himself. Both men carried an air that they'd be willing to kill you were it to come to that, but where Moody's alertness suggested he'd always be one step ahead of you on the draw, this man's shuffling gait, unfocused eyes, and poor balance, suggested he'd always be one step behind.
Harry elevated the hypothesis that some aurors didn't wear their years as well as Moody, and that this man could well be one.
Having found a Ministry man, he made to entreat him over.
"Good day detective! Might I offer you a drink?" Harry called out to the ambling man.
The man looked in Harry's direction, clearly not sure who had spoken. When the child in front of him waved, the man squinted and shuffled over.
"What do you know of alcohol? Do your parents abuse you?"
"I must say, I grow tired of the constant assumption that because I am unusually adult, my parents must have neglected me. We love each other very much, and I am not able to buy alcohol, though I can hand you a sickle for any drink you please if you won't tell anyone. In exchange won't you introduce yourself and sit awhile?"
The detective stared unblinking at Harry for a long moment, and then approached and sat beside him.
"I'm a cop. I've solved more cases than there are hairs on your head. I'm kind of a big deal around here. I'm a superstar and I know how to party under the disco ball. I am a notoriously difficult-to-work-with *wunderkind* with extremely unorthodox methods. I've killed a few people, and a lot more people have tried to kill me... as for my name, it's not coming to me right now. Sorry kiddo."
Harry was unimpressed with the man's bravado. He assumed that the man forgetting his name was a blatant lie, although perhaps he was someone who'd gotten in the way of a few too many memory charms in his line of work, after which basic facts could often evade you.
"Tell me," the man said, staring at Harry. "Are you... a communist?"
"Pardon?" said Harry.
"You know. Do you stand with the real workers in this town? The rotten people whose lives make yours possible? "
"I have been astounded by the sheer hope Marx has in the forces of history, in that he is willing to destroy the existing institutions managing society while giving little-to-no guidebook for what should replace them and to trust that something better will arise. Even though I am still a child I have not been so childish as to believe that it will work."
The detective stared dumbly at Harry for a moment, as if a little die were being rolled in his brain determining what he even thought of that response. Then, as though he had not paused at all, he began to speak.
"Yes! Aha! How I love the hope and the ultimate failure. This is truly the best part of communism, the greatness of its aspirations, and how far reality is able to fall short of them after communism is achieved. Higher than any drug is this feeling, more potent. I have failed in all parts of my life, but never as greatly as the communards. In order to rebuild the dreams of the working class, they have gone to war with every living thing, every human alive, the ruling class, the government, the atom, the charm and the spin—and when it finally beat them all, it was snuffed out as though it was not even there. I sleep in a ruined building with gunfire still in its walls. You see this. We are saying the same thing. The only thing greater than this will be the apocalypse which comes next, but we shouldn't speak too loudly about that, should we?"
And with that he winked at Harry.
As Harry pondered how best to respond to the ravings of this mad-man, Harry saw the folds of the man's tie begin to move. Somehow both yelling and being very quiet, it said to the detective: "It isn't very disco to sit here without a drink! Get the money from the boy and order some damn alcohol."
After Harry tossed a sickle to the detective, he ordered the "strongest spirit" on the menu, and the lady brought back a fizzing cocktail that appeared to be on fire with a green flame. The detective took a sip, his eyes went wider than Harry had seen them yet, flashed green, and he spluttered. Then he quickly took another sip before turning back to Harry and asked him for his opinion on fascism. Even given the heightened political tensions, Harry wondered whether he would later regret inviting this crazy detective over to sit with him for the hour.
Warning: contains heavy spoilers for late HPMOR. Do not read if you have not completed HPMOR.
The Hogwarts wards had said that the Defense Professor had killed her.
This didn't make any sense. He'd seen the troll do it with his own eyes.
Now, typically the wards were entirely trustworthy, so you didn't have to go further. But for some reason, a crazy wizard in the middle east had made a lens that allowed you to see the more subtle shapes of wards, the way that they were bent by the people passing through them. You could, if you examined it carefully, deduce when and where a particular entity passed through the wards. This was basically never needed and the work to create it was severe, so it was mostly forgotten, but after reading 7 separate histories of the relevant magic, one of them mentioned it, and had instructions for it. Many of the elements were merely very expensive, such as quartz grown inside the belly of a lava frog, but the lens needed to be made from a piece of curse-struck glass, that is, a piece of glass that had a number of high-level curses pass through it—a withering hex, the blackfire curse, the nerve-unstringing curse, a blood-boiling hex, and critically, the cruciatus curse.
Most of these spells Harry did not know, and in any case, he reasoned, anywhere a single one of them was cast would soon be wrecked by something far more destructive, so no such glass survived in the wild. But Ministry Aurors carried collapsible transparent shield-screens into raids—panes that could be charmed near-invisible and made to ricochet powerful spells away. Such spells passed straight through the Auror and killed him, of course, yet the shield itself endured and could be re-used. One of those, Harry had realized, would do perfectly.
So, in this time of heightened tension, Harry had elected not to ask the Ministry himself, but instead have his classmate Susan Bones request one through her aunt Amelia Bones. Susan was told it would arrive at the Hog's Head at 12 noon on Thursday. Harry arrived at 11:00, waited an hour in his invisibility cloak, then time-turned back so that he was visibly there for the Ministry in this time, to see if anyone would attempt any silly business on him.
He knew that this would cause chaos back at Hogwarts, and that the Ministry too would be alarmed by his appearance here. He regretted not arranging some Ministry escort ahead of time to calm their nerves. While Harry sat conspicuously at the Hog's Head bar, quietly sipping on a Gillywater Cream Soda, looking around for a possible Ministry chaperone, he was interrupted by a yell from the front of the inn.
"Get your hands off of me! I won't put up with crypto-fascists getting in the way of my work."
Harry peered over his glass to see what appeared to be a homeless man stumbling in past a member of the bar staff.
"What business do I have here? I have every business being here! I'm in the drinking business. They call me Tequila Sunset for a reason, baby, and it's because I don't let busybodies like you tell me where I can and cannot go."
Harry noticed that he'd never seen a homeless person in the wizarding world since he arrived. Could it be the case that there weren't any? He knew that homelessness and poor mental health came hand in hand, and getting the way of a bad magical curse could certainly jumble someone's mind beyond repair, but from what he'd seen such people were well taken care of in St Mungos. He didn't imagine that they were left wandering the streets in this way.
"You're telling me I have to go? You're going to kick out a murder detective? You heard me. I'm the law, and I'm here on official investigative business. So butt out, kiddo."
Harry's first thought was that the man was lying, although him then producing a police badge of some sort made him think again. And his vibe wasn't that dissimilar to Mad-Eye Moody's. The man's beaten up work clothes also had carried him through some wars, and his mutilated face carried a story of damage. But whereas Moody's blue eye and scars implied the damage had come from outside, this man's sunken red eyes and puffy, lined, skin suggested a damage internal, from taking little care of himself. Both men carried an air that they'd be willing to kill you were it to come to that, but where Moody's alertness suggested he'd always be one step ahead of you on the draw, this man's shuffling gait, unfocused eyes, and poor balance, suggested he'd always be one step behind.
Harry elevated the hypothesis that some aurors didn't wear their years as well as Moody, and that this man could well be one.
Having found a Ministry man, he made to entreat him over.
"Good day detective! Might I offer you a drink?" Harry called out to the ambling man.
The man looked in Harry's direction, clearly not sure who had spoken. When the child in front of him waved, the man squinted and shuffled over.
"What do you know of alcohol? Do your parents abuse you?"
"I must say, I grow tired of the constant assumption that because I am unusually adult, my parents must have neglected me. We love each other very much, and I am not able to buy alcohol, though I can hand you a sickle for any drink you please if you won't tell anyone. In exchange won't you introduce yourself and sit awhile?"
The detective stared unblinking at Harry for a long moment, and then approached and sat beside him.
"I'm a cop. I've solved more cases than there are hairs on your head. I'm kind of a big deal around here. I'm a superstar and I know how to party under the disco ball. I am a notoriously difficult-to-work-with *wunderkind* with extremely unorthodox methods. I've killed a few people, and a lot more people have tried to kill me... as for my name, it's not coming to me right now. Sorry kiddo."
Harry was unimpressed with the man's bravado. He assumed that the man forgetting his name was a blatant lie, although perhaps he was someone who'd gotten in the way of a few too many memory charms in his line of work, after which basic facts could often evade you.
"Tell me," the man said, staring at Harry. "Are you... a communist?"
"Pardon?" said Harry.
"You know. Do you stand with the real workers in this town? The rotten people whose lives make yours possible? "
"I have been astounded by the sheer hope Marx has in the forces of history, in that he is willing to destroy the existing institutions managing society while giving little-to-no guidebook for what should replace them and to trust that something better will arise. Even though I am still a child I have not been so childish as to believe that it will work."
The detective stared dumbly at Harry for a moment, as if a little die were being rolled in his brain determining what he even thought of that response. Then, as though he had not paused at all, he began to speak.
"Yes! Aha! How I love the hope and the ultimate failure. This is truly the best part of communism, the greatness of its aspirations, and how far reality is able to fall short of them after communism is achieved. Higher than any drug is this feeling, more potent. I have failed in all parts of my life, but never as greatly as the communards. In order to rebuild the dreams of the working class, they have gone to war with every living thing, every human alive, the ruling class, the government, the atom, the charm and the spin—and when it finally beat them all, it was snuffed out as though it was not even there. I sleep in a ruined building with gunfire still in its walls. You see this. We are saying the same thing. The only thing greater than this will be the apocalypse which comes next, but we shouldn't speak too loudly about that, should we?"
And with that he winked at Harry.
As Harry pondered how best to respond to the ravings of this mad-man, Harry saw the folds of the man's tie begin to move. Somehow both yelling and being very quiet, it said to the detective: "It isn't very disco to sit here without a drink! Get the money from the boy and order some damn alcohol."
After Harry tossed a sickle to the detective, he ordered the "strongest spirit" on the menu, and the lady brought back a fizzing cocktail that appeared to be on fire with a green flame. The detective took a sip, his eyes went wider than Harry had seen them yet, flashed green, and he spluttered. Then he quickly took another sip before turning back to Harry and asked him for his opinion on fascism. Even given the heightened political tensions, Harry wondered whether he would later regret inviting this crazy detective over to sit with him for the hour.
To be continued. (And edited.)