Desperate Measures
Title: Desperate Measures
Rating: PG-13
Length: 3,400 words
Challenge: Who, What, When, Where Genfic Challenge
First posted: 20th June 2007, at Checkmated
Summary: The Trio resort to kidnapping. And they rope Neville in to help. But sometimes desperate times call for desperate measures, which may be understandable when the reasons are known ...
Notes: Written for the prompt set Harry, Neville, Petrificus Totalus, Boxing Day, St Mungo's (all prompts chosen had to play significant parts in the fic).
St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries
Boxing Day, 3.32pm
"Petrificus Totalus!"
Harry concentrated on the incantation for the Body-Bind as hard as he possibly could, while willing himself not to shout it out loud. To his great relief, the non-verbal spell worked perfectly; the arms of Harry's startled target snapped to his sides, and as his legs locked together he swayed and began to fall.
Ron looked heartened. "C'mon, Harry, let's get him out of here," he muttered, diving to catch the man before he could hit the floor. "The guard can't see us yet, can he?"
Harry craned his neck to look as best he could, shook his head, and quickly threw the overlarge Invisibility Cloak that covered them over their captive. He gave brief consideration to levitating him, but decided reluctantly that controlling his movements in the narrow hospital corridors would be far too error-prone. Instead, he simply grabbed his head and gestured to Ron to hold his feet.
Hermione had been watching the scene nervously from her vantage point in the middle of the ward. Neville came back into view and she followed him towards the door, with Harry and Ron tagging along behind them, trying not to drop the man they were carrying.
They held back as the guard opened the door for their visible companions, and while Neville retrieved their wands from the man, chattering brightly in order to distract him, Hermione repeated the trick she'd used on entry. They scuttled out as quickly as possible without making a noise; Harry, looking back from the stairs, could see Hermione bite her lip as the guard shut the doors, and then relax when they didn't catch on anything that wasn't supposed to be there.
Harry would have liked to wait for them, but didn't dare; someone might check for the presence of their unwilling companion at any moment. They carried him down the stairs as fast as they could, but at the bottom they were confronted with a reception hall that had become unexpectedly crowded over the last half an hour. Ron gave a low moan, and Harry could see his point; he couldn't imagine how they could negotiate a path through to the door without bumping into anyone
Fortunately Hermione, hurrying down the stairs in their wake, quickly summed up the situation. With an apologetic glance at Neville, she began a loud argument with an indignant welcomewitch about the treatment of patients and the ridiculous waiting times. This floor show distracted everyone's attention for long enough to allow Harry and Ron to reach the exit with agonising slowness and move their captive out into the London street beyond.
An embarrassed-looking Hermione and Neville joined them shortly afterwards. "Thanks, Neville," she whispered. "Can you make your own way back? You can Apparate now, can't you?"
"Yes." He looked pale, but triumphant, as if he'd overcome a number of fears.
"We'll talk to you later, mate," said Harry, and Neville looked round in surprise as if he hadn't expected Harry to still be there. "Go on, the coast's clear. You'd better get back home while the going's good."
Neville nodded and vanished with an echoing crack, and Hermione quickly ducked under the Cloak as a passing lorry hid her from view. She locked eyes with their captive for a moment, and turned away with a slight pinkness on her cheeks that Harry didn't think was due solely to the winter cold.
"Let's go," he said quickly. They each put one hand on the man and clutched the Cloak around them. "On three then ... one, two, three ..."
Harry had never been entirely sure they could pull off a simultaneous Side-Along Apparition, but to his relief they appeared outside the front door of 12 Grimmauld Place with all body parts still in place, and rang the bell in a particular coded pattern. The door was immediately opened by Remus Lupin, and within thirty seconds they were all safely inside throwing off the Cloak and exchanging looks that mixed glee with utter relief.
Lupin studied their prisoner -- whose eyes were still the only part of him that could move, and were looking around him in complete astonishment and not a little fear -- and smiled in reassurance. "Don't worry, we're not going to harm you. We might even do you some good." His expression became grimmer as he continued. "I'll be looking after you. But I'm afraid your stay may occasionally be a little ... uncomfortable."
Harry shuddered as it hit him. They'd just successfully carried out their first kidnapping. He sincerely hoped it would be their last.
*****
St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries
Boxing Day, 2.56pm
"I'll have to take your wands, I'm afraid, sir and miss. Security measures. There's a war on, you see."
"Yes, we know," said Neville, and Harry marvelled at how well he managed to keep sarcasm out of his voice.
As they handed over the wands to the man at the small reception desk, a heavily-disguised Hermione began the routine they'd worked out to distract him. Adopting a hurt tone of voice, she said, "We didn't have this two Christmases ago! Surely the people on the Janus Thickey Ward are more of a risk to themselves than at risk from anybody else?"
The guard shook his head sadly. "You'd think so, Miss, but would you believe that very Christmas somebody killed a poor sod from the Ministry who was in here? Did it with a plant, believe it or not."
"What plant?" asked Neville with both interest and a touch of horror, and Harry felt sure that this, at least, was natural; it was most unlikely that anyone had ever told him the full details of Broderick Bode's demise. Meanwhile Hermione was leaning casually against the door to hold it wide open, and he and Ron quickly slipped through under the Invisibility Cloak hiding them.
"Something called Devil's Snare," said the man with morbid relish. "I don't suppose you'd recognise it though, nobody here did."
"I think I've heard of it," said Hermione innocently at the same time as Neville said, in genuine shock, "But everyone should be able to recognise that!"
The guard chuckled. "Maybe they should give you a job, lad." He sobered rapidly as he looked inside. "Sorry about your problems, anyway. Are you ready to go in now? I'm not supposed to leave the door open very long in case anyone sneaks out."
This last comment was addressed to Hermione, and Ron patted her gently on the backside through the folds of the Cloak to let her know they were inside the ward. She jumped slightly and then gave a very small smile. "I think we're all done for the moment," she said.
They followed her and Neville down to the far end of the ward until they were out of sight of the entrance, then Harry glanced around and muttered "Right. So far so good."
"Now what?" Neville muttered back, obviously trying not to look at where Harry and Ron were concealed. He seemed nervous, but excited, although he kept shooting glances at the curtains behind which Harry knew Frank and Alice Longbottom must be waiting.
"You two had better go on," whispered Ron. "We've got a ... teacher to find, and he won't be expecting us."
*****
The Burrow
Christmas Eve, 11.55pm
"Hi, Harry!" Neville's head appeared in the flames of the fire and Harry breathed a sigh of relief; they hadn't been sure if Neville would be able to sneak down to call them without his grandmother's knowledge. "Hi Ron, Hermione! I got your message on the coin. What's the matter?"
Harry checked over his shoulder. "Have to make this quick, Neville -- the house is full and someone could come in any minute. We need your help ... but we can't tell you why." He winced; that was getting to be too familiar a refrain.
Neville looked taken aback for a moment, but then set his jaw, glanced between the three people sitting in The Burrow's kitchen, and asked simply, "Is it for the war?"
They all nodded. "Could be vital for the war, mate," added Ron.
Neville looked pleased. "OK. Ask me anything, Harry, you know that."
"You mean that? Even if it's against the law?" Harry sat back to let Neville think about it, but his friend only needed a few moments to consider.
"Yes, if it's necessary." He took a deep breath. "Desperate times call for desperate measures, I suppose ... What is it?"
Harry winced at another phrase that was now far too familiar, but there was no time to beat about the bush. "We want to sneak into ward 49 at St Mungo's and get a patient out of there, without anyone realising they're gone until much later, and try to make it look as if they escaped all by themselves."
That got the expected reaction as Neville gaped at them. "What? But the ward's guarded now! And there are spells on the hospital to stop you Apparating and stuff! How are you going to manage that?"
"Yeah, we know. The only way we can think of is to Body-Bind them, and take them out under an Invisibility Cloak. The trouble is, I can't afford to be seen there, so we'd have to sneak in while someone distracted the guard. Someone with a right to be there. Someone like --" Harry hated himself for having to ask this "-- well, you actually, mate."
Neville stared at him for a minute, then said, surprisingly, "One person wouldn't be enough. You'd need to have someone talking to him while the other person held open the door to let you in."
Harry scowled -- they hadn't thought of that -- but after a moment Ron asked, "Would they let you bring a guest?"
Hermione nodded: "Me, say, as a friend to, um, support you?"
"Yes. Yes, they probably would." Neville paused for a moment. "Harry ... you know this is really dangerous, don't you?"
"What isn't that I have to do?" said Harry bitterly.
"Right. Fair enough." He gulped. "I ... I'll do it. Will Boxing Day be all right? I usually go to the hospital to ... visit Mum and Dad then."
Harry breathed another sigh of relief. "Thanks Neville. Yeah, that'd be brilliant, mate."
"Who's in there at the moment that you want, anyway?"
"You're not going to believe this ..."
*****
Number 12, Grimmauld Place
23rd December, 2.17pm
"You wanted to talk to us, Potter?" barked Moody. His magical eye was spinning all over the room, as if he expected to be told that the Order headquarters were to come under immediate attack. Remus Lupin, who had accompanied him, seemed to be struggling to stop his lips twitching at the sight.
"Yeah. Er, we need your help to do something that's a bit ..." Harry trailed off, not quite sure how best to phrase it.
"Illegal," supplied Ron.
"How illegal?" asked Lupin sharply.
"Well, sort of ... kidnapping someone from the hospital." Lupin's eyebrows rose. "And then using ... possibly objectionable methods to find out what they know. Nothing that Dumbledore wouldn't use," he added hastily, before his former teacher could object.
"A captured Death Eater?" asked Moody, who didn't seem particularly shocked by the concept.
Harry coughed. "Well, no. Er ... Gilderoy Lockhart, actually."
Moody was so surprised that his magical eye actually stopped moving for a moment. "Golden Boy? What do you want that clown for?"
Harry shuffled his feet. "Well, that's the problem ... we can't actually tell you. Well, we'll have to tell Lupin some of it, but honestly, it would be better if we put a Memory Charm on him afterwards." He added hastily, to stave off the alarmed reaction, "Hermione would do it. She's been studying."
Lupin stared at them as if that statement hadn't been entirely reassuring. "Hermione, what do you yourself think about this?" he asked eventually, in the manner of a man appealing to a voice of reason.
Hermione's chin rose. "I think it's necessary, sir. We wouldn't ask if it weren't."
"Something to do with what Albus has you three doing?" asked Moody pointedly. When they hesitated, his scarred face twisted into the closest thing to a grin that it could manage. "All right, I'm in. The first priority of the Order is to support you, Potter, he always made that very clear. Desperate times call for desperate measures! What do you want from us?"
"Well, your Invisibility Cloaks for a start." Moody's eye span in panic, and he hastily added, "We've got to be sure to cover both ourselves and Lockhart, and mine won't be big enough on its own. We want to make one big Cloak out of them ..."
Moody stared at him for a moment, then said gruffly, "Very well. Make sure you can unmake them afterwards, boy! What else?"
"Well, if this does go wrong we might need you to use your contacts to, er, ..."
"Keep our backsides out of Azkaban," finished Ron.
Harry nodded, and Moody snorted. "I'll do my best, but Lupin here's got closer contacts with the Auror Office these days."
Lupin reddened slightly. "And from me? What do you need to tell me that I'm not supposed to know?"
Harry exchanged glances with Ron and Hermione. "Well, it's not so much can't tell you ... more that we need someone to do something when we get him here, and you're the only one we can think of who might be able to do it ..."
*****
The Burrow
22nd December, 11.31am
"I don't suppose Dumbledore left you any instructions on how to do it?" Ron asked hopefully after a while. Harry shook his head.
"I don't think we could just learn it from written notes," said Hermione thoughtfully. She flushed at the looks of surprise Harry and Ron were giving her. "Well, we couldn't! Even I don't think you can get everything from a book! It's the sort of thing that needs lots of practice to get right -- we'd need someone with experience."
"We don't know anyone with experience now though, do we?" said Harry. He looked at Ron and Hermione's faces and frowned. "Do we?"
"I think Lupin can do it," said Ron tentatively. "I always did wonder how come he believed Sirius so quick that time in the Shack." Harry winced. "All he did was look him in the eyes, didn't he?"
Hermione nodded. "And I heard him talking to Moody about what you had to be able to do to spy. At first I thought he was talking about Snape --" Harry winced again "-- but now I think about it, he must have been talking about being with the werewolves. I mean, he did that in the first war too, and he'd need it in case a Death Eater turned up, wouldn't he?"
"But that Memory Charm of Lockhart's was really powerful," said Harry dubiously. "I bet even Dumbledore couldn't have found anything quickly, and you can't tell me Lupin would be as good a Legilimens as Dumbledore."
"No, I suppose not ..." said Hermione, clearly thinking hard: "He'd probably need to conduct intensive sessions daily over a period of weeks. It would be very disorienting for poor Lockhart, wouldn't it?"
Ron snorted. "Have they got a Healer in the Order?" He didn't sound too upset at the idea of Lockhart being disoriented, and Harry could sympathise -- if their former Professor had succeeded, both of them would be in St Mungo's suffering the same loss of memory. "Someone who could go in and introduce Lupin as an expert, and say that it was treatment? Hell, it might help him get his memories back!"
"They don't let Healers wander in and do it just like that, Ron!" said Hermione, throwing him an exasperated look. "It's considered an intrusive method. You have to get permission and show all sorts of papers to prove you're a trained practitioner, it's all in the Handbook of Modern Healer Procedure. Hardly anybody does it because of that."
"That wouldn't work, then," mused Harry. "Even if the Order could fake the documents, I bet someone would see through them before Lupin had a chance to finish. And we don't dare let anyone know we're involved, do we? If the Death Eaters get the idea he's important to us, they might work out why."
"They'd probably kill Lockhart too," said Ron gloomily. "Or You-Know-Who might use something different, and we'd be right back where we started."
"Well ... there's only one way to do it then, isn't there?" said Hermione, who looked terrified by what she was about to say: "We'll have to get him out of there and make it look as if he just wandered off, then bring him to Grimmauld Place so Lupin can work on him."
Harry sat back heavily. "You don't mean ..."
"She does," said Ron in a hollow voice. "We kidnap him Well, I suppose desperate times call for desperate measures ..."
*****
The Burrow
22nd December, 11.15am
"I've found it, Harry!" Hermione looked up from the pile of parchment that Charlie had managed to copy from the supposedly top secret records of the Transylvanian Ministry, her face glowing with excitement. "The curse Voldemort is using to guard the Hufflepuff Horcrux! Everything about the signature and effects matches! It's the same one!"
Harry looked up in sudden hope. "The exact same one?"
"Has to be! A vampire used it to secure his lair, and no-one could find a way in for centuries. Now I think about it, I can remember reading about the case, years ago!"
"What happened?" asked Ron, who had lost the despondent expression he'd been wearing while they ploughed through the records, and now looked equally excited.
"About twenty years ago, a hunter from Dnipropetrovs'k managed to find a way to break the curse. He got past the gateway, destroyed the vampire, and blew up the castle while the defences were weak so no-one else could use it as a stronghold."
Harry could feel his heart racing. "Hermione, that's brilliant. How did he do it?"
Hermione scanned the piece of parchment she was holding and shook her head in disappointment. "It doesn't say. The Transylvanians threw him out of the country for destroying a national wizarding landmark, so he refused to tell them. Then when they asked him again a few years later, he just claimed he'd never even heard of the vampire, let alone been involved in his downfall."
"Could we get him to tell us, do you think?"
Ron had been flicking through the records while they talked, and now spat an obscenity and sank back in his chair. "No, it says here he was killed a year ago. Probably by the Death Eaters. Charlie did say he thought they'd seen this stuff too -- You-Know-Who must have been suspicious." Harry echoed the obscenity, and even Hermione looked as if she were controlling herself with difficulty.
"So we're no closer to getting past that gateway then?"
Hermione shook her head. "But he might have told someone else ..." She trailed off with a typical don't-talk-to-me-I'm thinking look on her face. Her next move was equally, and annoyingly, typical; a hasty "Wait a minute!" shouted over her shoulder as she dashed out of the room in the general direction of the library.
Harry exchanged looks with Ron. "I wish she wouldn't do that."
"Tell me about it, mate ..."
Hermione interrupted them by running back into the room carrying a large book that seemed vaguely familiar. "I've just remembered where I read it! It wasn't in anything official, it was in this!" She held up the book so they could see the cover; it was a copy of Voyages with Vampires.
Harry stared at her until light dawned, and he began to laugh hollowly. "Wait a minute, you mean Lockhart learned all the details from this hunter bloke and then Obliviated him? And now his memory's wiped too ..."
"But that's the point, Harry, Memory Charms can be broken! Think of that poor Bertha Jorkins! Lockhart must still have the details somewhere underneath ..."
"Well, we're not going to use torture!" Harry shuddered as it hit him. "But I suppose ... we could play a bit dirty and try Legilimency; Dumbledore did sometimes. But where would we start?"
He looked at Ron and Hermione in mute appeal, hoping against hope that they wouldn't have to resort to desperate measures.
Additional Notes:
Thanks to gloryforever for betaing the draft version of this -- any remaining problems are my own fault.
This one was rather a rush job, when I decided that, after having previously argued that people should try writing more genfic, I'd better actually practice what I'd been preaching and write one for the challenge myself. It was the result of the usual desperate brainstorming with the prompt sets -- I wondered what you could do with St Mungo's, I thought of Lockhart, then I wondered what you could do with Lockhart, and decided that it might work if he actually knew something important. From there the rest seemed to follow logically!
Why the reverse chronology? It wasn't deliberate in the sense that I set out from the start to write a story like that (although I had wanted to give it a try after Niffling a couple) -- it was because the unique selling point was that Lockhart knew something important, the rest was just routine action/adventure stuff, so if written in chronological order the big finish would come at the beginning and be downhill from there. So it seemed like a good idea to switch it round and structure it to gradually reveal why the Trio were doing what they were doing.
Rating: PG-13
Length: 3,400 words
Challenge: Who, What, When, Where Genfic Challenge
First posted: 20th June 2007, at Checkmated
Summary: The Trio resort to kidnapping. And they rope Neville in to help. But sometimes desperate times call for desperate measures, which may be understandable when the reasons are known ...
Notes: Written for the prompt set Harry, Neville, Petrificus Totalus, Boxing Day, St Mungo's (all prompts chosen had to play significant parts in the fic).
St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries
Boxing Day, 3.32pm
"Petrificus Totalus!"
Harry concentrated on the incantation for the Body-Bind as hard as he possibly could, while willing himself not to shout it out loud. To his great relief, the non-verbal spell worked perfectly; the arms of Harry's startled target snapped to his sides, and as his legs locked together he swayed and began to fall.
Ron looked heartened. "C'mon, Harry, let's get him out of here," he muttered, diving to catch the man before he could hit the floor. "The guard can't see us yet, can he?"
Harry craned his neck to look as best he could, shook his head, and quickly threw the overlarge Invisibility Cloak that covered them over their captive. He gave brief consideration to levitating him, but decided reluctantly that controlling his movements in the narrow hospital corridors would be far too error-prone. Instead, he simply grabbed his head and gestured to Ron to hold his feet.
Hermione had been watching the scene nervously from her vantage point in the middle of the ward. Neville came back into view and she followed him towards the door, with Harry and Ron tagging along behind them, trying not to drop the man they were carrying.
They held back as the guard opened the door for their visible companions, and while Neville retrieved their wands from the man, chattering brightly in order to distract him, Hermione repeated the trick she'd used on entry. They scuttled out as quickly as possible without making a noise; Harry, looking back from the stairs, could see Hermione bite her lip as the guard shut the doors, and then relax when they didn't catch on anything that wasn't supposed to be there.
Harry would have liked to wait for them, but didn't dare; someone might check for the presence of their unwilling companion at any moment. They carried him down the stairs as fast as they could, but at the bottom they were confronted with a reception hall that had become unexpectedly crowded over the last half an hour. Ron gave a low moan, and Harry could see his point; he couldn't imagine how they could negotiate a path through to the door without bumping into anyone
Fortunately Hermione, hurrying down the stairs in their wake, quickly summed up the situation. With an apologetic glance at Neville, she began a loud argument with an indignant welcomewitch about the treatment of patients and the ridiculous waiting times. This floor show distracted everyone's attention for long enough to allow Harry and Ron to reach the exit with agonising slowness and move their captive out into the London street beyond.
An embarrassed-looking Hermione and Neville joined them shortly afterwards. "Thanks, Neville," she whispered. "Can you make your own way back? You can Apparate now, can't you?"
"Yes." He looked pale, but triumphant, as if he'd overcome a number of fears.
"We'll talk to you later, mate," said Harry, and Neville looked round in surprise as if he hadn't expected Harry to still be there. "Go on, the coast's clear. You'd better get back home while the going's good."
Neville nodded and vanished with an echoing crack, and Hermione quickly ducked under the Cloak as a passing lorry hid her from view. She locked eyes with their captive for a moment, and turned away with a slight pinkness on her cheeks that Harry didn't think was due solely to the winter cold.
"Let's go," he said quickly. They each put one hand on the man and clutched the Cloak around them. "On three then ... one, two, three ..."
Harry had never been entirely sure they could pull off a simultaneous Side-Along Apparition, but to his relief they appeared outside the front door of 12 Grimmauld Place with all body parts still in place, and rang the bell in a particular coded pattern. The door was immediately opened by Remus Lupin, and within thirty seconds they were all safely inside throwing off the Cloak and exchanging looks that mixed glee with utter relief.
Lupin studied their prisoner -- whose eyes were still the only part of him that could move, and were looking around him in complete astonishment and not a little fear -- and smiled in reassurance. "Don't worry, we're not going to harm you. We might even do you some good." His expression became grimmer as he continued. "I'll be looking after you. But I'm afraid your stay may occasionally be a little ... uncomfortable."
Harry shuddered as it hit him. They'd just successfully carried out their first kidnapping. He sincerely hoped it would be their last.
*****
St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries
Boxing Day, 2.56pm
"I'll have to take your wands, I'm afraid, sir and miss. Security measures. There's a war on, you see."
"Yes, we know," said Neville, and Harry marvelled at how well he managed to keep sarcasm out of his voice.
As they handed over the wands to the man at the small reception desk, a heavily-disguised Hermione began the routine they'd worked out to distract him. Adopting a hurt tone of voice, she said, "We didn't have this two Christmases ago! Surely the people on the Janus Thickey Ward are more of a risk to themselves than at risk from anybody else?"
The guard shook his head sadly. "You'd think so, Miss, but would you believe that very Christmas somebody killed a poor sod from the Ministry who was in here? Did it with a plant, believe it or not."
"What plant?" asked Neville with both interest and a touch of horror, and Harry felt sure that this, at least, was natural; it was most unlikely that anyone had ever told him the full details of Broderick Bode's demise. Meanwhile Hermione was leaning casually against the door to hold it wide open, and he and Ron quickly slipped through under the Invisibility Cloak hiding them.
"Something called Devil's Snare," said the man with morbid relish. "I don't suppose you'd recognise it though, nobody here did."
"I think I've heard of it," said Hermione innocently at the same time as Neville said, in genuine shock, "But everyone should be able to recognise that!"
The guard chuckled. "Maybe they should give you a job, lad." He sobered rapidly as he looked inside. "Sorry about your problems, anyway. Are you ready to go in now? I'm not supposed to leave the door open very long in case anyone sneaks out."
This last comment was addressed to Hermione, and Ron patted her gently on the backside through the folds of the Cloak to let her know they were inside the ward. She jumped slightly and then gave a very small smile. "I think we're all done for the moment," she said.
They followed her and Neville down to the far end of the ward until they were out of sight of the entrance, then Harry glanced around and muttered "Right. So far so good."
"Now what?" Neville muttered back, obviously trying not to look at where Harry and Ron were concealed. He seemed nervous, but excited, although he kept shooting glances at the curtains behind which Harry knew Frank and Alice Longbottom must be waiting.
"You two had better go on," whispered Ron. "We've got a ... teacher to find, and he won't be expecting us."
*****
The Burrow
Christmas Eve, 11.55pm
"Hi, Harry!" Neville's head appeared in the flames of the fire and Harry breathed a sigh of relief; they hadn't been sure if Neville would be able to sneak down to call them without his grandmother's knowledge. "Hi Ron, Hermione! I got your message on the coin. What's the matter?"
Harry checked over his shoulder. "Have to make this quick, Neville -- the house is full and someone could come in any minute. We need your help ... but we can't tell you why." He winced; that was getting to be too familiar a refrain.
Neville looked taken aback for a moment, but then set his jaw, glanced between the three people sitting in The Burrow's kitchen, and asked simply, "Is it for the war?"
They all nodded. "Could be vital for the war, mate," added Ron.
Neville looked pleased. "OK. Ask me anything, Harry, you know that."
"You mean that? Even if it's against the law?" Harry sat back to let Neville think about it, but his friend only needed a few moments to consider.
"Yes, if it's necessary." He took a deep breath. "Desperate times call for desperate measures, I suppose ... What is it?"
Harry winced at another phrase that was now far too familiar, but there was no time to beat about the bush. "We want to sneak into ward 49 at St Mungo's and get a patient out of there, without anyone realising they're gone until much later, and try to make it look as if they escaped all by themselves."
That got the expected reaction as Neville gaped at them. "What? But the ward's guarded now! And there are spells on the hospital to stop you Apparating and stuff! How are you going to manage that?"
"Yeah, we know. The only way we can think of is to Body-Bind them, and take them out under an Invisibility Cloak. The trouble is, I can't afford to be seen there, so we'd have to sneak in while someone distracted the guard. Someone with a right to be there. Someone like --" Harry hated himself for having to ask this "-- well, you actually, mate."
Neville stared at him for a minute, then said, surprisingly, "One person wouldn't be enough. You'd need to have someone talking to him while the other person held open the door to let you in."
Harry scowled -- they hadn't thought of that -- but after a moment Ron asked, "Would they let you bring a guest?"
Hermione nodded: "Me, say, as a friend to, um, support you?"
"Yes. Yes, they probably would." Neville paused for a moment. "Harry ... you know this is really dangerous, don't you?"
"What isn't that I have to do?" said Harry bitterly.
"Right. Fair enough." He gulped. "I ... I'll do it. Will Boxing Day be all right? I usually go to the hospital to ... visit Mum and Dad then."
Harry breathed another sigh of relief. "Thanks Neville. Yeah, that'd be brilliant, mate."
"Who's in there at the moment that you want, anyway?"
"You're not going to believe this ..."
*****
Number 12, Grimmauld Place
23rd December, 2.17pm
"You wanted to talk to us, Potter?" barked Moody. His magical eye was spinning all over the room, as if he expected to be told that the Order headquarters were to come under immediate attack. Remus Lupin, who had accompanied him, seemed to be struggling to stop his lips twitching at the sight.
"Yeah. Er, we need your help to do something that's a bit ..." Harry trailed off, not quite sure how best to phrase it.
"Illegal," supplied Ron.
"How illegal?" asked Lupin sharply.
"Well, sort of ... kidnapping someone from the hospital." Lupin's eyebrows rose. "And then using ... possibly objectionable methods to find out what they know. Nothing that Dumbledore wouldn't use," he added hastily, before his former teacher could object.
"A captured Death Eater?" asked Moody, who didn't seem particularly shocked by the concept.
Harry coughed. "Well, no. Er ... Gilderoy Lockhart, actually."
Moody was so surprised that his magical eye actually stopped moving for a moment. "Golden Boy? What do you want that clown for?"
Harry shuffled his feet. "Well, that's the problem ... we can't actually tell you. Well, we'll have to tell Lupin some of it, but honestly, it would be better if we put a Memory Charm on him afterwards." He added hastily, to stave off the alarmed reaction, "Hermione would do it. She's been studying."
Lupin stared at them as if that statement hadn't been entirely reassuring. "Hermione, what do you yourself think about this?" he asked eventually, in the manner of a man appealing to a voice of reason.
Hermione's chin rose. "I think it's necessary, sir. We wouldn't ask if it weren't."
"Something to do with what Albus has you three doing?" asked Moody pointedly. When they hesitated, his scarred face twisted into the closest thing to a grin that it could manage. "All right, I'm in. The first priority of the Order is to support you, Potter, he always made that very clear. Desperate times call for desperate measures! What do you want from us?"
"Well, your Invisibility Cloaks for a start." Moody's eye span in panic, and he hastily added, "We've got to be sure to cover both ourselves and Lockhart, and mine won't be big enough on its own. We want to make one big Cloak out of them ..."
Moody stared at him for a moment, then said gruffly, "Very well. Make sure you can unmake them afterwards, boy! What else?"
"Well, if this does go wrong we might need you to use your contacts to, er, ..."
"Keep our backsides out of Azkaban," finished Ron.
Harry nodded, and Moody snorted. "I'll do my best, but Lupin here's got closer contacts with the Auror Office these days."
Lupin reddened slightly. "And from me? What do you need to tell me that I'm not supposed to know?"
Harry exchanged glances with Ron and Hermione. "Well, it's not so much can't tell you ... more that we need someone to do something when we get him here, and you're the only one we can think of who might be able to do it ..."
*****
The Burrow
22nd December, 11.31am
"I don't suppose Dumbledore left you any instructions on how to do it?" Ron asked hopefully after a while. Harry shook his head.
"I don't think we could just learn it from written notes," said Hermione thoughtfully. She flushed at the looks of surprise Harry and Ron were giving her. "Well, we couldn't! Even I don't think you can get everything from a book! It's the sort of thing that needs lots of practice to get right -- we'd need someone with experience."
"We don't know anyone with experience now though, do we?" said Harry. He looked at Ron and Hermione's faces and frowned. "Do we?"
"I think Lupin can do it," said Ron tentatively. "I always did wonder how come he believed Sirius so quick that time in the Shack." Harry winced. "All he did was look him in the eyes, didn't he?"
Hermione nodded. "And I heard him talking to Moody about what you had to be able to do to spy. At first I thought he was talking about Snape --" Harry winced again "-- but now I think about it, he must have been talking about being with the werewolves. I mean, he did that in the first war too, and he'd need it in case a Death Eater turned up, wouldn't he?"
"But that Memory Charm of Lockhart's was really powerful," said Harry dubiously. "I bet even Dumbledore couldn't have found anything quickly, and you can't tell me Lupin would be as good a Legilimens as Dumbledore."
"No, I suppose not ..." said Hermione, clearly thinking hard: "He'd probably need to conduct intensive sessions daily over a period of weeks. It would be very disorienting for poor Lockhart, wouldn't it?"
Ron snorted. "Have they got a Healer in the Order?" He didn't sound too upset at the idea of Lockhart being disoriented, and Harry could sympathise -- if their former Professor had succeeded, both of them would be in St Mungo's suffering the same loss of memory. "Someone who could go in and introduce Lupin as an expert, and say that it was treatment? Hell, it might help him get his memories back!"
"They don't let Healers wander in and do it just like that, Ron!" said Hermione, throwing him an exasperated look. "It's considered an intrusive method. You have to get permission and show all sorts of papers to prove you're a trained practitioner, it's all in the Handbook of Modern Healer Procedure. Hardly anybody does it because of that."
"That wouldn't work, then," mused Harry. "Even if the Order could fake the documents, I bet someone would see through them before Lupin had a chance to finish. And we don't dare let anyone know we're involved, do we? If the Death Eaters get the idea he's important to us, they might work out why."
"They'd probably kill Lockhart too," said Ron gloomily. "Or You-Know-Who might use something different, and we'd be right back where we started."
"Well ... there's only one way to do it then, isn't there?" said Hermione, who looked terrified by what she was about to say: "We'll have to get him out of there and make it look as if he just wandered off, then bring him to Grimmauld Place so Lupin can work on him."
Harry sat back heavily. "You don't mean ..."
"She does," said Ron in a hollow voice. "We kidnap him Well, I suppose desperate times call for desperate measures ..."
*****
The Burrow
22nd December, 11.15am
"I've found it, Harry!" Hermione looked up from the pile of parchment that Charlie had managed to copy from the supposedly top secret records of the Transylvanian Ministry, her face glowing with excitement. "The curse Voldemort is using to guard the Hufflepuff Horcrux! Everything about the signature and effects matches! It's the same one!"
Harry looked up in sudden hope. "The exact same one?"
"Has to be! A vampire used it to secure his lair, and no-one could find a way in for centuries. Now I think about it, I can remember reading about the case, years ago!"
"What happened?" asked Ron, who had lost the despondent expression he'd been wearing while they ploughed through the records, and now looked equally excited.
"About twenty years ago, a hunter from Dnipropetrovs'k managed to find a way to break the curse. He got past the gateway, destroyed the vampire, and blew up the castle while the defences were weak so no-one else could use it as a stronghold."
Harry could feel his heart racing. "Hermione, that's brilliant. How did he do it?"
Hermione scanned the piece of parchment she was holding and shook her head in disappointment. "It doesn't say. The Transylvanians threw him out of the country for destroying a national wizarding landmark, so he refused to tell them. Then when they asked him again a few years later, he just claimed he'd never even heard of the vampire, let alone been involved in his downfall."
"Could we get him to tell us, do you think?"
Ron had been flicking through the records while they talked, and now spat an obscenity and sank back in his chair. "No, it says here he was killed a year ago. Probably by the Death Eaters. Charlie did say he thought they'd seen this stuff too -- You-Know-Who must have been suspicious." Harry echoed the obscenity, and even Hermione looked as if she were controlling herself with difficulty.
"So we're no closer to getting past that gateway then?"
Hermione shook her head. "But he might have told someone else ..." She trailed off with a typical don't-talk-to-me-I'm thinking look on her face. Her next move was equally, and annoyingly, typical; a hasty "Wait a minute!" shouted over her shoulder as she dashed out of the room in the general direction of the library.
Harry exchanged looks with Ron. "I wish she wouldn't do that."
"Tell me about it, mate ..."
Hermione interrupted them by running back into the room carrying a large book that seemed vaguely familiar. "I've just remembered where I read it! It wasn't in anything official, it was in this!" She held up the book so they could see the cover; it was a copy of Voyages with Vampires.
Harry stared at her until light dawned, and he began to laugh hollowly. "Wait a minute, you mean Lockhart learned all the details from this hunter bloke and then Obliviated him? And now his memory's wiped too ..."
"But that's the point, Harry, Memory Charms can be broken! Think of that poor Bertha Jorkins! Lockhart must still have the details somewhere underneath ..."
"Well, we're not going to use torture!" Harry shuddered as it hit him. "But I suppose ... we could play a bit dirty and try Legilimency; Dumbledore did sometimes. But where would we start?"
He looked at Ron and Hermione in mute appeal, hoping against hope that they wouldn't have to resort to desperate measures.
Additional Notes:
Thanks to gloryforever for betaing the draft version of this -- any remaining problems are my own fault.
This one was rather a rush job, when I decided that, after having previously argued that people should try writing more genfic, I'd better actually practice what I'd been preaching and write one for the challenge myself. It was the result of the usual desperate brainstorming with the prompt sets -- I wondered what you could do with St Mungo's, I thought of Lockhart, then I wondered what you could do with Lockhart, and decided that it might work if he actually knew something important. From there the rest seemed to follow logically!
Why the reverse chronology? It wasn't deliberate in the sense that I set out from the start to write a story like that (although I had wanted to give it a try after Niffling a couple) -- it was because the unique selling point was that Lockhart knew something important, the rest was just routine action/adventure stuff, so if written in chronological order the big finish would come at the beginning and be downhill from there. So it seemed like a good idea to switch it round and structure it to gradually reveal why the Trio were doing what they were doing.