Episode #1: Particles in Solution, pt. 2

[leveltwomods]

Harry Apparated to a point in the park about twenty metres from Malfoy and Bustamant. He could hear Bustamant's laughter as he came out of the ether. 'So you just imagine the place, and then you go there?'

'In essence, yes,' Malfoy answered.

'And how do you make sure all your bits arrive in the right order?'

'Practise, concentration.'

'And people don't see you?'

'Sometimes, but they usually just assume you were there all along and they failed to spot you.'

'It's disorienting.'

'You get used to it. Potter's arrived, which way do you think it is from here?'

Bustamant led them left out the front of the park, and down a long street, past a row of shops and terraces in varying states of repair. He walked swiftly, despite favouring his right leg. He had a few inches on each of them, and there may have been a tiny amount of scurrying to keep pace, but neither of them would have admitted to it.

Anne Russell's house was freshly painted and with the last of the wisteria not quite gone to seed.

'We should have rung,' Bustamant said as he pressed on the bell, but there was movement inside the house and the door opened within the minute.

A woman with a wave of swept-back white hair and wearing a navy blue trouser suit opened the door. 'Yes?'

'Anne Russell? My name is Harry Potter. This is Draco Malfoy. We're from the Ministry of Defence and we're investigating an incident you were involved in back in 1981.'

She looked at their cards briefly, then at Bustamant with concentration. 'I know you,' she said. 'You were there.'

'William Bustamant,' he said, nodding politely. 'Detective Sergeant back in those days. I'm assisting these two.'

'Well, you'd better come in. Cup of tea?'

Harry agreed, despite the protests of his bladder and Malfoy's urgent little head shake. She led them down a hallway lined with bookshelves into a sitting room with yet more books, several photos of a young Anne Russell and a young man, two obviously from their wedding, and one small white cat taking up an entire settee.

'Down, Milly. Let the gentlemen have a seat,' she said. To Harry's surprise, the cat moved. Mrs, he guessed, since she still wore a wedding ring, Russell smiled at them. 'I'll be back in a moment.'

She was, with a tray of matching tea things, including milk in a jug. She poured to order, and listened to their spiel.

'I always did wonder about that. There were so many terrorist incidents in those days. People forget. They think it's a new thing, and last year on the Tube and buses was simply awful, but really, it was every bit as bad back then. I mean, they went after the Queen and the Prime Minister. All those poor horses and policemen. And shoppers, children … So how can I help?'

'We were hoping you could tell us what you saw,' Harry said.

'Oh, it was a very long time ago … I remember mostly what happened afterwards. People running to help each other. You,' she looked at Bustamant. 'You were very good, moving between us, keeping everyone alive until the ambulances arrived.'

'Not everyone.'

Russell shook her head. 'There was nothing you could have done for those others. It was a terrible blast. I was on my way home from school, I was a librarian in those days, and I paused, because those two young men were having such a violent argument: I thought I might have to get involved. You wouldn't know it to look at me, but I was always very good at breaking up fights in the playground.'

'You remember the men?' Harry asked gently.

'I remember one of them. He was unusually good looking. Beautiful in the way men used to be a few years before that, with his hair down to his collar, and his clothes and boots all form fitting and black. He looked like a teenage girl's idea of Heathcliff - they forget he was probably black, you know, but it's all in the text,' she said to Bustamant. 'He was very angry, but very sad at the same time. That's what I remember about him, how beautiful he was, and how sad. I'm afraid I didn't get a very good look at the other one, and I don't know what happened to either of them afterwards.'

Malfoy coughed gently to attract her attention. 'If you were amenable to the idea, we have had some good results using hypnosis,' he said. ‘We’ve used it a lot with injured veterans, helping them to remember incidents, to recover from trauma. It’s completely safe and painless …’

Mrs Russell put down her tea cup. 'Hypnosis? How exciting. Does it require anything …?' She waved a hand vaguely.

Malfoy shook his head. 'I talk to you, while you focus on an object, and we see if we can access the parts of your memory that have been locked away.'

'It's that simple? How much will I remember? And what sort of object? A pocket watch?'

'You should remember everything that comes back to you. All we're doing is restoring your ability to access your own memories. It will be as though you are seeing it happen in front of your eyes. And I usually use, er, a stick.'

'And it's non-invasive?' Bustamant asked, looking narrowly at Malfoy.

'I promise you, all it does is allow what is there to become known.'

'And we can do it here?' Mrs Russell asked brightly.

'Now, if you'd like.'

'Can I have a quick word with Mr Malfoy first?' Harry asked.

Mrs Russell was surprised, but polite. 'Yes, of course. Would you like us to leave, or …'

'Not at all, we'll just step out into the hall for a moment.'

Malfoy drew in a breath as he followed Harry out. Harry put up a hand in a gesture of peace.

'I have faith that you know what you're doing,' he said, before Malfoy could get a word out. 'But, A, what are you doing? And, B, your equipment looks like … Well, it looks like wands and phials and cauldrons, because that's what it is. And they're used to wires and screens and things that go beep. That's what they think of as normal.'

Malfoy thought for a moment. 'That makes sense,' he said. He took one of the phials from his bag and drew out his wand. With a tap and a whisper, he changed it into a small black box with a screen, and wires trailing. He looked at it. 'How do you think we ought to attach the wires to her? We can't just stick them in her ears …'

Harry made an heroic effort not to laugh. 'So what are you going to do? Is it like Legilemency?'

'Exactly like, but with a little extra bit I’ve added. It projects and collects the memory. Perfectly safe spell, it just needs a willing subject and a little bit of effort. I’d remind you that I know nothing useful about hypnotism.'

'Of course. Right. Well, if you’re up to it, I'm thinking about a Muggle thing called electrodes. They're a bit sticky on one side and the wires go into the other side. Er, if you take a look inside my head …'

Malfoy looked at him, and Harry felt a light brush of another mind on his own. It felt nervous, though he supposed it was hardly likely that Malfoy would approach the task with the vigour of Snape, Voldemort or any of his Auror trainers.

'I think I can do that,' Malfoy said, and concentrated on his gadget. With another two passes of his wand, it looked suitably scientific.

'That should do it,' Harry agreed.

Malfoy kept the ex-phial in his hand as they walked back in. 'Mrs Russell, would you mind if we attached this to you while we work? It's a … a …'

'It looks like a portable EEG,' she said.

'Yes. Very much like that,' Malfoy said, and Harry thought the relief in his voice was really rather well disguised. 'I'll just attach these electrodes to your forehead. The machine will show us an increase in brain activity if this works.'

'Oh, how clever.' Mrs Russell held her hair back and let Malfoy work. 'Now I'm sitting comfortably, do we need to turn the lights down or can you work like this?'

'This will be fine.' Malfoy paused. 'It's quite normal for you to literally see your memories. I can make sure that doesn't happen if you think you'd rather not.'

Mrs Russell gave him a long look. 'It will be fine,' she said after a moment. 'It was hardly my worst day. Let's go.'

Malfoy drew his wand and murmured some hypno-nonsense around an augmented Legilemens. 'Just keep your eyes on the stick. You are back in 1981, at the beginning of November,' he told her. 'You are walking home from school. Two men are arguing in the street …'

'I see them,' she said, and as she did, they saw them, too. Sirius floated in the air in the middle of the sitting room, Peter above the coffee table. Bustamant started as the figures materialised, but stayed silent. Harry was impressed, but said nothing.

'It's very strange, because they're acting as though they are in private, but it's mid-afternoon. The street is quite busy. The early workers are heading home and mothers are on their shop run. Most people pretend they can't hear them, but a few of us slow down, in case there's trouble. The tall one is calling the short one a traitor. Asking him how he could do it. Telling him they loved him, and he killed them. He's taking a step forward and then he stops. The short one is shouting that it wasn't him, that it could never have been him. And now he's angry. Saying that they all lied. That they never cared for him. Now he's twitching and shouting, saying "No!" But the tall one isn't doing anything. He's just standing there, with his hands out. So I take a step forward, because I think the small one is going to throw something, and there are men running towards them from the pub, because they think the same thing. And that's when the blast happens.'

Harry could see where her memories had been altered. Sirius's hand was closed around something, but there was no wand there. Pettigrew had his fist furled around something similarly invisible. The blast was a white-out of explosive force, blurred and muted.

She paused and swallowed. 'I'm on the ground. There's far too much blood. I have my scarf off, and there's a lump of wood beside me and I am reaching for it and I'm going to pass out, but then there is a man. He's very ordinary, but very calm and he asks me what he should do, so I tell him, and he does it, and I think he is simply marvellous. His name is Eric. We still exchange cards you know, every Christmas. Then the tall black policeman comes by and he starts chatting with me, and then he sees my foot and he stands up and shouts for the ambulance personnel, who have just arrived. He asks me how long it has been since we put the tourniquet on, then he pulls out his pen and he writes the time on my leg. I think how clever that is.

'The ambulance men lift me onto the trolley. Eric comes with me, he's carrying my handbag and my bookbag and he's found my hat. Oh. The beautiful man. He's still there. He's standing in the street, and he's covered in dust. I had forgotten that. And now they're shutting the door. It's all been so fast. I thought it had been much slower, but it was only a matter of minutes.'

Harry couldn't help himself. 'Before the blast, do you remember what they said?'

'Yes, of course, he said …' Mrs Russell paused. 'He said …'

They moment at which her memories had been removed was obvious: Pettrigrew shouting 'No', Sirius shouting 'Peter!'

'How strange. I know I heard more. I must have hit my head. Maybe that's how I lost my hat?'

'That's all we're going to get,' Malfoy said, quietly. He tapped the altered phial, then held his wand in front of Mrs Russell's face. 'On the count of three, you will wake up feeling refreshed and relaxed. You will remember everything, but it won't distress you. One, two, three.'

'Of course it won't distress me,' she said, patting his knee. 'It was twenty-five years ago. I came out of it with a few scars, but they were mostly physical.'

She rolled up her right trouser leg and showed what Harry was startled to see was a real ankle above her slim leather shoe, circumnavigated by a white scar. 'Absolutely wonderful work at the hospital. They told me I would probably lose it, but there was a team working on experimental surgical techniques, and in the end it healed in record time. Doesn't even trouble me now: I get worse from the hip I banged in the fall when it rains.'

'That's excellent news, Mrs Russell,' Malfoy said. 'You have very fine ankles.'

'Dreadful young man,' she said, smiling broadly. 'Now, was any of that any help?'

'Yes, very much so,' Malfoy said without hesitation. Harry nodded agreement.

'I can't help wondering if it mightn't be better all buried,' she mused. 'I mean, the Irish did have grounds for complaint. But not when there were innocent victims involved, don't you think? Some of the people on that street were just children, and one of them died. You can't overlook that, can you? Not if there's a chance someone did it on purpose?'

'No,' Harry said. 'You can't.'

They spent another half hour in pleasantries, and taking down Eric's details, and promised to update her with the results of the investigation, which Harry fully intended to do in an edited manner. Malfoy ended up with the cat in his lap, and Mrs Russell apologising for the large amounts of white hair shed onto his black trousers. But he apparently liked cats, so it was Malfoy's hand she held onto as they made their farewells.

'Do stay safe, won't you?' she said. 'And you, Mr Bustamant.'

'And you. It was very good to see you again, and to see you so well.'

Bustamant led them down Amhurst Road to Mare Street where the explosion had occurred. He walked ahead, and seemed to be thinking.

Malfoy started off striding to keep up with Bustamant, then stopped to drop back beside Harry, then walked faster to catch up to the Muggle, before giving up and lagging back with Harry. He gave Harry a few curious looks as they walked. 'Potter, are you all right?' he asked at last.

'Fine,' Harry lied. It had been one thing knowing what had happened on that day, but another seeing it. He hadn't realised that Sirius had hated Pettigrew so thoroughly because he had also loved him once, like a brother. The same way I love Ron, he thought. Or, more accurately, Neville. Though Neville could never have committed a betrayal like that. But he had seen the moment when Sirius had wanted to kill Pettigrew, and had been utterly unable to do so.

Malfoy jogged ahead to catch up to Bustamant. 'Are you all right?' he asked.

Bustamant stopped. 'That was your people who fixed her foot, wasn't it?'

'Yes,' said Malfoy.

'So you can do that.'

'Sometimes. Not always. But we would have tried for all of them, I think. Our people would have considered it their fault, and that they should do what they could.'

'Which makes up for everything, I suppose.'

'No,' said Harry, joining them. 'They were just trying to do what they could.'

'And you can see inside people's heads?' He was glaring at them.

'Not easily,' said Malfoy. 'Usually only when they let you. You don't need to be magical to keep someone out if you really want to. Whoever changed her memories could only manage it because most people trust the man with the official card or the uniform, and believe he has their best interests at heart. But we can collect memories that people give us access to. That's what the box does. Stores it up for later, so we can review it.'

Bustamant rubbed his eyes. 'Did you get what you were looking for there?'

'No,' Harry said.

'Are they all going to be like that? Where you can see things are missing?'

'Probably,' Harry admitted.

'But we might be able to see a pattern in the absences,' Malfoy said. 'Or stitch small clues together into usable ones.'

'Down this way then. John Lumley still has the newsagency.'

********************************

Lumley's newsagency was a short distance from the blast site, and one of the buildings that had had its windows blown out. The street had long since been repaired, but there was a plaque that spoke movingly of the 13 victims, one never identified.

Lumley himself still worked there most mornings, they caught him just as he was handing over to one of his staff members. He was the sort of man who, though in his mid-fifties, would have considered Harry and Malfoy contemporaries, and was exaggeratedly polite towards Bustamant, because he definitely wasn't racist.

'After all this time, eh?' he asked, peering at Harry and Malfoy's identity cards. 'Well, better late than never, I suppose. Come through, I'm upstairs. I was about to put the kettle on, can I tempt you with a cuppa?'

'Yes, of course,' said Harry, ignoring Malfoy's quiet groan behind him.

'I did think that story was suspicious, you know,' he told them as they arranged themselves around his mostly IKEA living room. 'Because I said to Ronnie, that's the missus, she works at the job centre, I said to her afterwards that it was amazing none of us ever smelled any gas. And I know they said it was well underground, but you would think that if that much had built up … Anyway, what can I tell you?'

Lumley turned out to be even keener on the idea of hypnosis with EEG feedback than Anne Russell had been. 'Does it have a printout?' he asked, lifting up the box as Malfoy attached the electrodes to his head. 'Only it would be good to be able to show Ronnie, wouldn't it? Prove I've got a brain and all.'

'No printout,' said Malfoy.

'No, too small to fit one in, I suppose. It's amazing what they can do with electronics these days. Suppose it uploads wirelessly?'

'Bluetooth,' said Harry, who had been mostly listening when Dudley explained his new phone last time they caught up. 'We can print it out back at the office and send you the readout.'

'That'd be champion, cheers. Just amazing. Right. So what do I do?'

Anne Russell appeared in Lumley's memories. He had heard the argument, tutted loudly about young people today with one of the customers in the shop. He'd gone to the door, planning to shout at them to shut up and shove off.

'That big bullying one was just shouting like a madman. Kept waving his fist. And the poor little fella, you could see that he just wanted to turn tail and run. There were a bunch of the locals who stopped to see what the problem was and I was just about to step outside and sort it all out, when …'

He had been luckier than most. A spate of robberies had seen him reinforce his door and install safety glass. Although he was peppered with debris, none of it was lethal, and the people who had been propelled into his windows came out of it with broken bones, not slashed arteries. He had run to the phone and called for ambulances and police, so he wasn't wholly without sense, though Harry noticed that he had taken the time to lock the till before he had gone outside to help.

But here, too, they could see the hands of the Muggle-Worthy Excuses team. The argument had been more muted from inside the shop, but Lumley had been watching Pettigrew closely towards the end, and he simply froze in position, some seconds before the blast. It, again, was a blur of white and heat, with no way to make out details.

Bustamant frowned at the two of them, and Harry shrugged. They had known they would not find it easy to go beyond the work of earlier wizards.

Lumley was less inclined to chat afterwards than Mrs Russell had been, but he also extracted a promise that they would keep him up to date. 'Because when you're involved in something like that, you want to know the details, don't you?’ he said, which Harry couldn't help agreeing was perfectly reasonable.

'Pub,' said Malfoy as they left the newsagency.

Harry looked at him in surprise.

'Pubs have lavatories,' Malfoy said.

Harry began to suspect that Malfoy might actually be as clever as he thought he was.

They lost man points for using the cubicles, rather than the urinals, but since Harry felt they were still involved in a little leftover metaphorical pissing contest, it would have just been far too weird. Bustamant was waiting for them when they came back, three meat pies with mash on the table in front of him.

'It's lunch,' he said, tucking in.

Halfway through his pie, he added, 'The secret is just to take one or two sips of the tea. You just need to show willing.'

Harry added that to his stash of invaluable copper tips. Normally his days were not back-to-back interviews, though if they were going to be dealing with cold cases in this office, he could see that they might well be in the future.



'Your people did a proper job on them,' Bustamant observed as they finished up.

'We have three more people we can talk to today,' Harry said. 'Then, if you wouldn't mind, we could ask Iris if she could chase down the others on your list. And we have more names, we can use our MoD contacts to see what they can find.'

Bustamant nodded. 'I'll ask her tonight.'

Malfoy pushed his plate away. 'Give it a few hours and we'll see where we're at then.'

'All right. We should call the others, see if they're home or if we can meet them somewhere.'

'Good idea,' said Harry. 'Can we use your phone?'

'Unless your wand has mobile coverage …'

He wasn't exactly sarcastic, but the interest he had shown at the start of the day, and the joy of Apparating, they had shifted into something darker.

'Mr Bustamant …' Harry began.

'Is it your leg?' Malfoy asked. 'We could see if the Healers could do anything about it. I've developed spells for a few of them, they owe me favours.'

'You leave my knee alone,' Bustamant whispered sternly. 'It's nothing to do with you. A stockbroker in a Range Rover making a left turn without looking. This knee paid off my mortgage, and I am happy to do all the physiotherapy it needs.'

'Sorry,' Malfoy muttered.

Bustamant stood up. 'Come on. You can owe me for the meal.'

********************************

Eric Partridge would be home at two for an hour. He lived in Highbury, so Harry paid for a cab, rather than worry about Bustamant's reaction to more Apparating. Partridge, agreed to help, but they had to be quick as he needed to pick up the children by three-thirty and his partner was unavailable.

His recollection tallied strongly with Anne Russell's. 'She's a lovely woman,' he said. 'She's met Bill and the girls, never forgets a birthday card.'

Partridge had not been as sanguine about the attack as Mrs Russell, nor as self-centred as John Lumley. As he recounted the events, he sweated, and Harry could see the ease which some long-gone wizard had tried to impart in his editing of the man's memories. It seemed Bustamant could, too, as he was quiet throughout their goodbyes.

'Thomas Wentworth should be next,' she said as he led them up the street. 'He's in Kennington, so we don't want to cab it. We can take the overground to Islington, then change for the Victoria Line and then the Northern …

'Or we could Apparate,' said Malfoy.

'It would be faster,' Bustamant agreed.

'Do you know the area?' Harry asked. It had been surprising enough that Malfoy had known of the existence of Hackney.

'Not really.'

'Fine. Let me.' He took both their arms, and transported them to a quiet driveway just around the corner from the station.

Bustamant looked around, then checked his notebook. 'It's not far from here. I was once called in on a particularly nasty murder just down that street. Chainsaw.'

Harry did not press him for details.

Thomas Wentworth, 45, activist, was not inclined to assist them with their enquiries.

'Is it compulsory?' he asked from his position at the top of the stairs, not inviting them in through the door.

'No,' Harry said.

'Though it would be helpful,' Malfoy added.

'Yeah, well I found that all very traumatising and I have no wish to relive the experience. Especially not if it's going to be used by the authorities to wage a campaign against an oppressed group.'

'We're just trying to establish the truth of events in 1981,' Harry began.

'Give up on that, your government makes up whatever it wants to fit the result it wants, doesn't it? I mean, look at Iraq …'

Bustamant's voice cut across. 'Thank you for your time, Mr Wentworth. We won't detain you any longer.'

Wentworth shook his head. 'It breaks my heart to see a brother mindlessly on the side of the Man,' he said.

'And it breaks mine to see a middle-aged man wearing cargo pants, but we move on. Have a good afternoon.'

'We could have Imperiused him,' Malfoy said as they walked back down the road.

'Do I want to know what that is?' Bustamant asked.

'No,' Harry said, quickly. 'And it's illegal, so we couldn't and wouldn't have done it.'

Bustamant gave them both a look. 'That leaves Mary Dacre, she's moved to Canterbury, but she's in town, so we won't need a car. You realise you two will need a car if you plan to interview any normal people who live in the country or the suburbs, yes?'

Harry hadn't given the matter any consideration, but Bustamant was right. 'I'll organise something,' he said. 'Malfoy, do you know Canterbury well?'

Malfoy looked at him as though they were back in fourth year. 'Shall we meet at the Cathedral?' he asked.

'It's the easiest.'

'I'll take Mr Bustamant.'

Two hours later they were once again full of tea and cream cakes, and had had a lovely walk around the Becket Shrine, where Ms Dacre was researching for her new book. Harry had a newfound appreciation of mediaeval iconography, but feared they were no closer to any answers as they thanked their gracious host and left.

'It looks like a wasted day for you boys,' Bustamant said. 'Though it has been enjoyable to get out and about. And I have more of an idea of what it is you people do in one day with you than in fifty-eight years of having a witch as a sister.'

'She doesn't do magic at home?' Malfoy asked. Harry cringed a little.

'No, Mr Malfoy, she does not. Not since we were small children and our older brother used to bully her for being strange. That stopped the day she turned all his words into dog barks. My father put in an urgent international call to his second-cousin in Nevis, complaining the whole time that there went the month's drinking money. A few hours later a nice little witch from your Ministry came round and put the situation back to normal, then our father sat us down and explained a few of the family peculiarities.'

He had started walking quickly again, applying his walking stick to the ground with thumping vigour. Harry and Malfoy strode to keep up.

'You look like decent people, and you have treated everyone kindly today, so I don't for one moment think that you intend to be hurtful when you just take me by the arm and move me miles across the city, or when you tell me that you can wave a wand and say some words and my leg will be better. But you have no understanding of what it is like to know that, but for an accident of birth … And the tragedy of it is that there's not a thing anyone can do about it.

‘And I am not sure that I would want anything done, even if it could be. Mary has had dark days, and there was that time a few years back when she left her children with us and would not talk about what was happening. I do not think your world is entirely one of marvels.'

'Potter spent his childhood with the most powerful dark wizard of our times trying to kill him,' Malfoy volunteered.

It should not have worked as a tension breaker, but it did.

Bustamant laughed, and then stopped and looked at Harry, who shrugged.

'I'm still alive, he's not. It all worked out in the end.'

'And we're better off not knowing?' Bustamant asked with a raised brow.

'In this case, most emphatically yes.'

Bustamant stopped walking. 'I believe you. So. Will you want my help when you have more names? Or should we say our goodbyes?'

Harry started to talk, but Malfoy interrupted him.

'We haven't finished,' he said. 'I still need your memories.'

********************************

Iris had left for work long before, but Elizabeth Bustamant was still in the kitchen when they returned, presiding over a pot of something involving chicken and quite a lot of black pepper.

'That smells delicious, Beth,' Bustamant told her as he led them through the house.

She put her spoons aside to come over and kiss his cheek. 'You've brought your young men back with you. Are they here for dinner?'

'No, just one more thing we needed to sort out. We'll be in my office.'

'No drinking beer, we promised William and Amy we would visit them tonight.'

'I haven't forgotten,' he called back, leading them out into the garden. 'Anyway, these two are still on duty.'

He unlocked the shed and bustled them in, offering them bottles of craft brew from the fridge. Harry accepted one, raising it and saying, 'Two sips.'

'So you can be taught.'

Bustamant sat heavily on his preferred sofa and pulled the coffee table close enough to put his bad leg up on it. 'So.' He looked at Malfoy. 'You wanted to look inside my head.'

'If you allow it.'

'I didn't see the explosion. I was driving my car, and I wasn't close enough to see past everyone there.'

Malfoy was removing yet another modified phial from his satchel. 'I'm hoping to gain a better sense of what happened after the explosion. You were assessing the scene for victims, you would have looked at it closely.'

Bustamant nodded. 'That makes sense. You don't really need to attach that to my head, do you?'

'You can just hold it.'

'Give it here. All right, pull out your wand, let's get this done.'

Bustamant's recollections began as sound: the flick-flick of an indicator light, the engine of a Fiat, and loud shouting from outside the car. His hand, younger and stronger, reached out for the radio that was snugged into his dashboard. He announced his identification and asked for assistance from the nearby station. 'Altercation on Mare Street, crowd forming. I'm going to have a look, but uniforms would be a good idea …'

He was halfway through the turn when the car was hit broadside by the blastwave. They could see it bounce on its shocks, and Bustamant's head smacking into the back of his hand on the wheel.

'Shit!' His hand pressed the radio handset urgently, while he drove his car onto a bare spot of pavement and turned the engine off. 'Urgent assistance required! Urgent assistance! Significant explosion, I can see bodies and casualties. Full response required. Send whatever ambulances you have free, and get Bomb Disposal down here, there's probably more.'

He was out of the car before he finished speaking, tossing the radio back inside and slamming the door. He paused only long enough to grab a first aid kit from the boot before running into the cloud of dust. He went straight past Sirius, pausing only long enough to ask, 'Are you all right?'

'All right? I'm all right,' Sirius echoed, and then Bustamant was past him, sprinting towards a man slumped outside the off-licence in a pool of rapidly spreading blood.

The next eight minutes was like being back at the Battle of Hogwarts. People groaned and screamed, and asked if they were going to live. Bustamant moved among them with calm determination, grabbing the uninjured and mildly bruised and pairing them with people in need of assistance. He gave clear instructions, assuring them they were doing excellently, and that the ambulances would be there very soon.

The scream of sirens came closer from several directions at once. Two PCs in uniform were first, one busied herself with first aid while the other began dispersing the crowd that had begun to gather, telling them they were in the way and that the ambulances would need full access up and down the road. Harry could hear his monotone of 'Move along' through the rest of Bustamant's recollection.

There was Anne Russell and Eric Partridge, he ran past John Lumley, and a shocked young man that Harry recognised as Thomas Wentworth. A teenaged Mary Dacre assured him that she was covered in someone else's blood and then the ambulances were arriving and he directed the first two to the heavily bleeding man and to Mrs Russell.

And then there was a crack of sound, ignored by most but not by Bustamant, and Aurors had Sirius on the ground and Bustamant waded in, shouting.

He had been polite, earlier that day. His actual words had been far more direct. 'Fucking Aurors, I do not think so. This is my crime scene on my patch and you are not contaminating it. Pack up your shit and put down that man and get the fuck out.'

The lead Auror had stopped, surprised, but only for a moment. 'We need to take him in,' he had said. 'He's one of ours. This is one of our problems and it's spilled out.'

'Well you can fucking unspill it.'

They could see in the remnants of the shop windows how thoroughly Bustamant towered over the Auror, but the Wizard had neither been cowed nor sought to intimidate. 'We've got a team coming in now. I've put them in high-vis vests, told them to tell everyone they're trauma specialists.'

They had lost this elegance of procedure in the chaos of the Voldemort years, Harry thought. He wasn't sure which of the Aurors who had been on the scene this was, but he made a mental note to find out, and to read his reports, because this was proper policing, restoring order and safety, even if they were horribly misguided when it came to the arrest.

Sirius was behind them, being dragged to his feet. He was shaking his head, and laughing: incongruously, ironically. 'You're entirely wrong,' he said, more than once, and then he was gone, along with the men who had been holding him.

'That's a bullshit arrest,' Bustamant told the lead Auror, but then he, too, was gone, and Bustamant turned to find his scene filled with men and women in orange vests, some of them climbing into the back of ambulances, some speaking gently to the casualties. He looked down the road in time to see Bomb Disposal appear, which finally saw off the crowd of onlookers.

'I think that's enough,' he said, in the present.

Malfoy tapped the phial with his wand and the projection of Bustamant's memories ceased.

'So. One more view to add to your collection, no closer to finding out what actually happened,' Bustamant said.

'Not at all,' said Malfoy, emptying his satchel. 'You've actually provided the final proof we needed.'

'I have?'

'He has?'

Malfoy gave a small smile. 'Potter, when you blast someone with your wand, what direction does it go in?'

'The direction you throw it,' Harry said.

'Exactly. Simple physics.' Malfoy tapped all the used phials with his wand and multiple images of the street appeared, with Sirius and Pettigrew seen from several angles. He flicked his wrist and the images all moved together into one, complex view, almost wholly three-dimensional.

'This is the street before the explosion. You can see where everyone is standing, the pile of magazines outside the newsagency, the overflowing bin. And this …' he twisted his hands and the picture changed, 'is the street afterwards. Sirius is still in the same position. There's a gaping hole where Pettigrew was. And Sirius is covered in debris, there are magazines at his feet, all that rubbish is flung up the street. Mrs Russell has been knocked off her feet back towards him. All the casualties radiate out from Pettigrew, and they are much, much worse in front of him than behind.'

Bustamant stood up and looked at the shapes in the air. 'The blast had to come from here,' he said, tapping the space where Pettigrew had stood.

Malfoy nodded. 'I needed to look at your memories, because they weren't modified. You didn't see what happened, so there was no point. But you agree in every detail with the dispersal of the materials and with the description of the crater. This is real. This is what was there. None of our people are on the scene yet. All of the lies they told later when they were faking the official reports and convincing people that what they saw wasn't real, none of it changes this. This is proof.'

'You're a very clever young man,' Bustamant said, approvingly.

'And I think that if we take our time to go through everything more carefully, we'll find a lonely finger, and images of a small rat running away. Mrs Russell described Pettigrew as twitching, and Lumley said he looked as though he wanted to turn tail. I think they made those connections from what they saw at the time and we'll find images to back them up, even if the links have been lost to their conscious minds.'

'A rat?' Bustamant sipped at his beer. 'You've lost me.'

'Peter Pettigrew could turn into a rat,' Harry said.

'Of course he could.' Bustamant thought for a moment. 'This dark wizard who spent his childhood trying to kill you; is he the homicidal lunatic behind the war that these two were caught in?'

'Yes.'

Bustamant nodded. 'And so, was that your family …?'

Harry nodded in return.

'I see. I have been less polite to you than I could have been today.'

'We dragged you out of your house across half the south-east and made you buy us lunch,' Harry pointed out.

'But you gave me answers.' Bustamant raised his bottle. 'Thank you.'

********************************

Kingsley gave them two days to write up their report, and open choice from the files for their next case.

'You've earned it,' he told them. 'I thought you'd do it, but in a month, maybe a week. Not one day. At this rate we'll run out of things for you to do by the end of the year.'

'If we're still going by the end of summer, I'll be amazed,' Malfoy muttered.

'I look forward to your amazement, Mr Malfoy. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have three more meetings before my dinner engagement.'

Their office had been finished in their absence, and Harry was pleased to see a tray marked 'Solved' on the edge of his desk. He dropped Sirius's file into it.

Malfoy was busy turning his clothes back into their original forms.

'That was good work today,' Harry said.

'Yes, well, not everything has to come with a huge price tag and a corporate logo on the side to be a worthwhile piece of magic,' Malfoy said.

'You don't need to tell me,' Harry agreed. Then tried again. 'I was expecting you to be good at the spellcraft. You were good at school, you've worked hard since. I've seen your file, I've heard what the other Unspeakables say about you. What I meant was, you did good work on the Auror side of things, too. You adapted to changing situations, you thought on your feet.'

Malfoy shrugged. 'I had a theory and it paid off. It might not have.'

'Then we'd have just tracked down every single other name on those lists,' Harry said.

'You would have. I'd have come up with a good excuse for experimenting on something.'

Harry laughed. Then he realised he was laughing at one of Malfoy's jokes, and stopped.

Malfoy looked at him. 'We don't have to be friends,' he said. 'Both of us have friends. But you work hard, and you give a damn, and you care about the actual job rather than the political crap around it. And I think that is a good thing for an Auror. And I think that I can do the things you can't, and you can do the things I don't want to do. Which means that even if this department only exists until Dawlish is fired or gets over being pissed off with you, I think we can make it work.'

'I think we can do it brilliantly,' Harry corrected him. 'Which will really, really upset Dawlish.'

'I'm all for that,' Malfoy agreed.

'And it will really make a difference to people like William Bustamant,' Harry added.

Malfoy had been packing his bag, readying to leave. He put it down. He reached over to Harry's desk and took half of the stack of potential case files. He sat back down and began to leaf through them. He waited until Harry had, smiling, begun to do the same, before he quietly said, 'I'm all for that, too.'

TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK...