aibhinn_fics

Title: Heal The Pain
Chapter 6 - 'At A Distance' (Part 2)
Rating: Teens
Words: 12,294 (Both Parts)
Warning: In this chapter, Harry goes to training camp, roughly similar to boot camp. I've tried to keep the swearing PG-13, but a word here and there might offend. Apologies in advance if they do.

30 September

Dear Ginny,

Ron's overreacting. Really. Cipher is a git, but he's not even in Malfoy's league, which makes him basically little better than a bug. I know you're concerned, but don't be. There's nothing to be concerned about. Unless it's your prat of a brother, who's going to get it when I'm done here. He had no reason to worry you with that letter, when there's absolutely nothing to any of it.

To take your concerns one at a time:

Yes, Cipher was the one who hit Ron and me with the Stunning Spell, but it was an accident. The whole lot of us, all 12 recruits plus our OIC and several other officers, were right there; they would have known if anything funny was going on. *Cipher didn't duck the golem's defensive shot and got hit; that's all there was to it.

Yes, Cipher has a tendency to make snide remarks about me. But I lived with that for seven years from an entire house and a professor. One git with some sort of grudge because he made himself look a fool in front of me and the rest of the recruits is not going to make me lose sleep at night. Nor is he going to cause any major trouble for me. Not here at camp, at any rate; and I doubt I'll see much of him once we're in the field. Elijah can see the way Cipher reacts to me, and he won't let them put the two of us in the same squad. It would destroy the whole point of a squad; we're supposed to be able to trust each other.

Yes, Cipher has tried to convince some of the other recruits that there's 'something fishy' about me, or so I'm told, but nobody has believed a word he's said; he's made his dislike of me too clear. I understand Gabriel and Buzz (a couple of the other lads training with us) took Cipher aside and warned him off, even. Which probably only made matters worse, but I won't interfere; that would just put the clincher on it.

Cipher only has one person on his side: a sort of hanger-on, a mousy bloke called Mercury (who's about the fastest runner I've ever seen; they have a tendency to choose unbelievably fitting code names, the Department) who seems to be anxious to be liked by just about anybody. Sort of Neville in Slytherin, if you can picture such a thing. But I can't imagine Mercury trying to cause problems.

No, Cipher has never once, not once, put me deliberately into danger, no matter what Ron says. Yes, there was the accident, but we all saw the golem's spell hit him. He ended up in the Infirmary, too. Had a nasty hex mark all across his shoulder. And I'm just not prepared to believe that he threw himself into the path of a curse just on the off chance of getting a chance to hurt me.

Remember, Ginny, there's a huge difference between disliking me and trying to kill me, as Ron and Hermione and I learned in our first year at Hogwarts. Think about Snape; he hated all of us, but in the end, he gave his life to help get rid of Voldemort. He even saved Sirius once, and I know that nearly killed him. Love, I'm sorry Ron had to write to you about this, but really, it's just not that big a deal. I can handle a few snide comments and a dirty look or two. I'm here to focus on learning what I need to learn so I can get out there and help destroy the Death Eaters once and for all. I don't care what Cipher does; nothing is going to stop me doing that.

You know, there are much more enjoyable things I'd like to be thinking and writing about right now.

Like your smile when I kiss you.

And the softness of your skin.

And the way you fit into my arms when you hug me and rest your head on my chest, below my chin.

And how much I would give right now to hear you laugh and see you look at me out of the corner of your eye, with that "how much mischief can I get away with" expression.

And the way you make me feel when we're together. Content. Whole.

The next time I see you, I'm going to tell you about everything I Saw in that Vision I had of you last September, when we first got together. I intend to make every one of the things I saw come true, Ginny. Never doubt it for an instant.

Four more weeks. I'm counting the days.

I love you.

Harry

-----------------

10 October

Dear Harry,

All right. I trust you to know what you're talking about with regards to Cipher. Ron does sometimes exaggerate a bit. At least the git (Cipher, I mean) has had the good manners to reveal how he feels about you, so if something does happen, it won't be completely out of the blue.

And you will tell me if anything does happen, won't you?

I haven't said this before, Harry, but I'm glad you're going to work for the Department. I've not Seen anything since the attack in the orchard, which is a bit unusual. I didn't even get warnings of the Death Eater attacks since. It makes me wonder if something's… blocking me, somehow. I don't know how; I don't even know if it's possible. But I do know that since Voldemort returned in third year, I've had at least one Vision a month, until last summer. I don't want to worry you unnecessarily, but something just seems wrong about this. I almost wish I could tell McGonagall about them, but I'm still afraid to. I don't want the knowledge that I'm a Seer to get out.

McGonagall and I have been working hard on my Animagus training, and I think I may actually (finally) know what my Animagus form will be. We're still not entirely certain, so I don't want to tell you just yet, but it's both entirely fitting and rather surprising. I think I'll enjoy seeing your face when I tell you, if we're right about it. On Halloween, when you come.

I can't bear to think that you might not be able to be here on Halloween. I can't bear to think that I might not be able to see you after all this time. Except for summers, this is the longest we've been separated since my first year. And I've never had to endure the school year alone.

The school, and especially the common room, holds so many memories of you. I can't sit at a table to do my homework, or relax on the sofa, or walk to class, without seeing you there, feeling you there. I can feel you curled against my back when I sleep. I can see your eyes crinkle in a smile from across the room. I can hear your laughter when I sit at the Gryffindor table at meals.

I want to see you, talk to you, hold you so badly it hurts.

I love you, Harry.

Ginny

-----------------

19 October

Dear Ginny,

I'm not sure when this letter will get to you, as we won't be back in the main camp for a few days; we're doing field exercises, and I won't see my bed for some time. I'm not sure if we'll have post call out here or not, so you may end up with a fourteen-page letter written over a week.

Writing to you is most of what is keeping me sane. Having Ron, and to some extent Hermione, nearby has helped, but these seven weeks have been nearly as lonely as summers at the Dursleys'. I didn't know what companionship was until I came to Hogwarts; I didn't know what real happiness was until I found you.

I'm feeling rather melancholy today, if you couldn't tell. It's mid-afternoon, and I should be sleeping—I'm on the night watch, so I still have about eight hours until I'm on duty—but writing to you is infinitely more relaxing than sleeping has been for the past few days.

I brought all your letters with me when we packed for the field. Silly, really; I won't have much time to read them with all we have to do, but it makes me feel good to know I have that much of you, at least, nearby. It reminds me of the real world to read about you studying for your N.E.W.T.s, and working on your Animagus transformation, and all the other normal things you're doing. It almost makes me feel like you're here, in spirit if not in the flesh.

Only two more weeks 'til I have the real you. It feels almost like this will never end, like this has been my whole life and everything else, Hogwarts and the Dursleys and everything, has been a dream. My whole life has become fighting and training and standing watch, training with curses and counter-curses and weapons and evasive techniques, learning strategy and tactics and Death Eater methodology. I eat and sleep and breathe the Department of Mysteries. My only escape is in letters.

Ginny, we promised each other at the start of the summer that we would be completely honest—no more hiding, no more fearing. I know you understand how much I want to do that, and I know you understand that I can't always, when it comes to the Department. But there's so much that I want to tell you that I just can't put into words. I need to see you again, Gin. I need to feel you in my arms. I need to smell your hair and touch your skin and let myself just be. I can only do that with you.

----------------

"Onyx!"

Harry raised his head from the letter he was writing rather awkwardly on a piece of parchment perched on his upraised knees. He squinted, trying to make out who was standing in the shadows. It might have been mid-afternoon, but the room was dark to keep from disturbing the sleepers who would be on night watch with him. "Nox," he murmured, and his wand light went out. "Crosswire?" he guessed, judging by the broad silhouette he could just discern against the faint light behind the man.

"Yeah," the familiar voice said in a low tone. "Elijah's asking for you. I'd guess you're up tonight, mate."

Harry groaned and set the parchment and quill down next to his duffel bag, carefully screwing the cap back onto the ink bottle before levering himself to his feet and following Crosswire out the door. He'd been sitting on his bedroll in a corner of the run-down house they were using as shelter for this exercise, trying to stay in a spot where the light from his wand wouldn't disturb Ron, who was sleeping next to him, while Harry passed the time until he was either tired enough to sleep without dreaming, or was called to duty. He blinked in the bright sunlight, pausing a second to let his eyes adjust before setting off. "You sure it's me tonight?" he asked the dark-skinned man as they jogged (nobody ever just walked anywhere in training camp) toward the outbuilding that was the base of operations.

"Must be. Everyone else on night watch tonight has had their turn." White teeth flashed in a half-commiserating, half-amused grin.

Harry groaned again. If Crosswire was right—and he very probably was—it was Harry's night to be acting OIC of the exercise. Which, by definition, meant that he was responsible for everything that would be going on. "Extra laps tomorrow," he sighed. "Lovely."

"Not if nobody cocks up tonight."

"Like that's going to happen. Cipher would do it just for laughs." Harry swerved around a tree, swearing as his foot caught a root and he stumbled. Dammit, he had to get more sleep, but if he was OIC tonight, it was going to be awhile before he could.

"He won't if he knows he'll end up running those laps right next to you."

"Oh, yes, he would," Harry said sourly. "Then he could spend the whole bloody time laughing at me to my face, instead of making snarky remarks behind my back."

Crosswire shook his head, avoiding a dry branch on the ground. "What is it with him?" he asked. "All the twit's done since we got here is target you and try to make himself look good. The latter of which he certainly hasn't managed; Elijah saw through him before we ever left the Ministry."

Harry sighed. "I know."

"I don't know how you keep yourself from smacking his gob," Crosswire said in a tone of mixed irritation and admiration. "I'd've done it long ago."

"Years of practice," Harry said, thinking of Malfoy. "Besides, he wants a rise out of me. I won't give it to him." Though it had been close once or twice. The anger that had been eating at him since he'd awakened in hospital after the Battle had finally found an outlet of sorts here at training camp, but it was still there, and Cipher was damned good at finding it.

They slowed as the outbuilding came into sight, tucked into a corner of the copse of trees that was their "encampment," and held their arms out to their sides, hands spread, so it was clear they were unarmed, as they approached cautiously. Harry scanned the area, looking for the four guards he knew would be on duty, albeit hidden. But finding hidden guards was part of their training, and he'd become rather good at it.

One to the right; two to the left. Which means there's someone behind us.

He caught Crosswire's eye and jerked his head backward, minutely, once. Crosswire nodded; he'd come to the same conclusion. They both stopped, waiting.

There was no sound to warn them; only the point of a wand pressing at the back of Harry's neck, and three figures appearing to stand in a semicircle in front of the two of them. "Password?" said the smallest of the three, a woman code-named Lakshmi. Her steady, no-nonsense voice and set features reminded Harry of Parvati Patil, the night of the Yule Ball in his fourth year.

"Give me liberty or give me death," Crosswire answered. The pressure on Harry's neck withdrew, and the other three guards lowered their wands.

Harry raised an eyebrow at Lakshmi and the two who flanked her, Mercury and Kestrel. "'Give me liberty or give me death'?" he repeated. "Sounds a little melodramatic to me."

"It's a quotation from an American Muggle during their revolution, Onyx," said a familiar tenor. Cipher strolled into view. Harry managed to avoid a groan at seeing him; the moment he'd seen Mercury, he'd known Cipher had to be there. They were, after all, partners, so they'd be standing duty together.

Figures he'd be the one to put his wand against my spine.

"Let me guess: you set it," Harry said dryly. Cipher had spent a good deal of the last seven weeks trying to impress everyone with his knowledge of Muggle and wizard military history.

"Yes. Fitting, I thought, that quotation. Besides, what Death Eater is going to know what an American Muggle said two hundred years ago?"

"What Death Eater is likely to be here?" Crosswire muttered under his breath. Harry suppressed a grin that he knew was unfair. They were supposed to be on full drill; Cipher was quite right to be thinking in terms of what the Death Eaters would and wouldn't know.

Though I'll deny to my grave ever thinking that.

"So," Cipher continued, oblivious, "if Elijah's called for you, does that mean you're OIC tonight, Onyx? I hope you'll do better than Red Knight did. That wasn't quite a disaster, but not for lack of trying."

Harry stiffened. He could handle Cipher making snide remarks about him, but about Ron… "As I recall, Cipher," he said, "you and Mercury were the ones who misread the signals and got in the wrong position, and then you got yourself Stunned within the first ten minutes. Which was what started the whole bloody mess; if you'd been where you were supposed to be, Buzz and Gabriel would have had their backup and nobody would have got through the line. Red Knight had nothing to do with it." That was precisely what Elijah had said in their debriefing the next morning, but Ron had taken the laps anyway, even though it had all been Cipher and Mercury's fault.

Cipher flushed, obviously remembering the dressing-down he'd got. "You're his bloody partner," he snapped back, stepping toward Harry, his fists clenching. "You were his Second. Why the hell didn't you make sure I was where I was supposed to be?"

"Everybody else paid enough attention to know their positions," Harry snarled, also stepping forward. He was now only a foot or so from Cipher. "What was I supposed to do, hold your hand and make sure you put your feet in exactly the right place?"

Cipher's flush had grown deeper; he was almost purple. His eyes flashed. "You'd've loved that, wouldn't you? You'd love to get a chance to show us all up. Tell us all exactly what we're doing wrong."

"If it was you standing between my squad and a bunch of Death Eaters, damned right I would!"

"Enough!"

The single, barked word made them all jump and whirl to face the man who had come out of the building. Everyone snapped to attention at the look on Elijah's face. The older man looked furious. "Onyx—inside!" he snapped. "Mercury and Cipher, your shift is over; you are relieved of duty. Go get some sleep. Crosswire, you and Keystone are replacing them as sentries. That is all."

Keystone, an ordinary-looking man of about 25 with dishwater-blonde hair, appeared in the doorway behind Elijah; he slipped past his OIC and over to his partner, shooting Harry a sympathetic glance. Harry closed his eyes, took a deep breath to calm himself, then made his way inside the building, shoulders tense and jaw set. Elijah waited for him to pass, and then followed him inside.

Calm down, Harry thought, trying to slow down his heart rate as he walked inside. Remember what Bill and Charlie said. You have to abide by the regulations; don't let yourself get all worked up over a git like Cipher. Calm down.

The single room inside the building was in sharp contrast with its rough, run-down exterior: its interior walls were white and stark, and two tables stood side-by-side across the centre of the room, both of them spread with maps. Each of the maps looked like more elaborate versions of the Marauder's Map, which Harry had given Ginny at the end of the summer. The main difference was that instead of showing Hogwarts, these maps showed the area surrounding their encampment. Harry was fascinated; he wanted to take a closer look at them.

But he knew that, before he would be able to, he had a dressing-down coming. He stopped a few feet inside the door and stood at rigid attention, his back to the wall, waiting, as he tried to slow his breathing.

The door closed, and Elijah came right up next to Harry's left shoulder, his face only inches away. "You will explain yourself," he growled.

Harry forced down the fury at Cipher that still roiled in his belly. Hadn't Elijah heard them? Hadn't he heard all the filth Cipher had been spouting for the past seven weeks? How could he not have done? "Cipher accused my partner and me of incompetence, sir," he said tightly. "I was informing him that he was incorrect."

"At the top of your lungs, right outside the building where all our operations are centred, with the enemy who-knows-where, and maybe right in our laps!" Elijah stepped around so that he was in front of Harry now, glaring at him. "If they had been close enough, not only would they have heard you, but you would have been completely unsuspecting when they did show up, because you were too busy focusing on your argument. And you would have led them right to the spot where all our strategies and planning are being done! You would have given us to them—every one of us, every one of your own squad and every other squad on the assignment. And maybe more than that; you never know what kind of sensitive information is in the base of operations!"

Harry flushed. He hadn't thought of that. No excuses. Full drill, Potter. You know what that means. He didn't dare look Elijah in the eyes, but he could see the rock-hard expression on the older man's face in his peripheral vision.

"Now," Elijah continued, "I know about the crap that Cipher has been throwing in your face and saying behind your back since the beginning. I've even heard some of it. And I've kept a careful watch on the two of you. You've kept your temper for the most part, Onyx, and I've been impressed with you. But if there is any time that your temper must be kept, it's in the field, whether it's an exercise or a true assignment. Got that?"

"Yes, sir!" Harry said. He was still seething. If it were me, I would've smacked his gob, Crosswire said. Damn if I don't want to. Damn if I don't do it, soon as we get out of training. He's going to learn to keep his comments to himself if it takes a few broken bones to do it. I'm not fifteen any more, and I don't have to put up with it.

"Good." Elijah stepped back. "Now, I called you here because it's your turn to be acting OIC tonight. Red Knight will, of course, be your Second. You're both to report here an hour before your shift starts, and we'll brief you on what's going on. Understood?"

"Yes, sir," Harry said again.

"Right. Dismissed."

Harry turned and stalked toward the door. He had to find some way to cool off before tonight. And I hope I don't run into Cipher before I have.

"Onyx!"

Halfway out the door, Harry stopped and turned back. "Yes, sir?"

The OIC gave a half-smile. "I don't know about you," he said, "but I find running always lets me blow off steam."

Taking a few laps around the camp did sound good. It would be a chance for Harry to get some of his energy out, and he could check the perimeter while he was at it. "Thank you, sir," he said. "I think I'll take that advice." He waited for Elijah's nod of dismissal, then jogged back toward the shelter and his duffel bag. I'll change into my running clothes before I go. Cool as it is, maybe the exertion combined with the shock of the cold on my bare legs will distract me. There aren't many other reasons to wear shorts in October.

The lights were on and a number of the previously-occupied bedrolls were empty when he got back to the shelter, including Ron's. That surprised him until he remembered that the duty rotation had just changed; Ron had probably woken up when the lights came on, and got up to use the loo or something. Harry came on in the door and headed toward his corner, then stopped in the middle of the room when he saw what sat on his bedroll.

Cipher.

Cipher, reading the letter he'd been writing to Ginny.

Cipher, with a knowing smirk on his face. Knowing where Ginny was. Knowing her name. Knowing she was in seventh year. Knowing she was training up to be an Animagus. Just—knowing.

All the anger that he'd shoved away came flooding back, bringing even more with it until he was aware of nothing but the fury. He stalked forward, feeling the rage radiating out of him. He was sure that, if it had still been dark in the room, he'd have been glowing with it. All eyes followed him across the floor, but he didn't care.

Cipher glanced up and saw him. "Ahh, Onyx," he all but purred, apparently oblivious to the danger approaching him in the form of a livid Harry Potter.

I'll kill him. I'll bloody kill him…

"I never knew you had it in you. Such a lucky young lady, your Ginny." He shifted his voice into a higher pitch, despite the fact that Harry's baritone was lower than his own normal speaking voice. "'I need to feel you in my arms. I need to smell your hair and touch your skin and let myself just be. I can only do that when—'"

Harry had reached his bedroll. He reached down, grabbed Cipher by the front of his robes, pulled him upward, and swung a right hook into his jaw. Cipher crashed back down to Harry's bed, dropping the letter. He looked up, his left hand cupping his chin. There was not a sound in the room, not even from Mercury, who stood about ten feet off to Harry's right, staring dumbstruck along with everyone else.

"If I ever hear you mention her name again," Harry growled, "I'll bloody kill you. Now get your filthy hands off my belongings and get out of my sight."

Cipher shook his head as if to clear it, glared up at Harry, and scrambled to his feet, charging at him. His shoulder took Harry in the gut and Harry fell backward, Cipher on top of him as the blonde swung an uppercut at the underside of Harry's own jaw.

Hands grasped at them both, trying to separate them, but Harry fought them off, struggling toward Cipher. His vision had narrowed: all he wanted was to kill Cipher then and there, to take him apart with his bare hands if he could. Cipher had dared to lay hands on his one connection with Ginny. Cipher had potentially endangered her. "You bastard," he growled as he managed to get a punch through the tangle of interfering hands and into Cipher's solar plexus. The blonde bent forward, gasping for air. "You sodding bastard!"

Arms wrapped around him and finally managed to drag the two of them apart, and a shimmer appeared in the air between them. "Hold!" a basso voice sounded, and Harry had a sudden, vague sense that he'd heard that word shouted several times already. He stopped struggling, and the arms pulling him backward loosened slightly, though they didn't let go. Cipher was still trying to get to him.

"I said hold!" the voice said again, and Cipher finally stopped moving as well. He was being held by both Buzz and Gabriel, one of them on each of his arms. Harry looked down. There was only one set of arms wrapped around his, pinning his elbows to his sides, but the size of those arms meant—

"Red Knight," he croaked. It hurt to breathe; Cipher had hit his diaphragm hard with his shoulder. "Let go of me."

"Not on your life, mate," Ron growled quietly. "Not until this is sorted out. What the bloody hell were you thinking?"

The owner of the basso voice appeared through the crowd. It was Slider, Elijah's partner and Second. "Let them go," he said. "There's a barrier up between them now."

Ron released him, and Harry rubbed his arms where Ron had been pressing them against his sides. Ron didn't know his own strength; he was going to have bruises. It made him feel a little better, though, to see the hand-sized bruises beginning to rise on Cipher's bare biceps as well.

Cipher glared at Harry and spat on the floor. The spittle was tinged with blood.

I hope I broke his bloody jaw.

"You two," Slider said with slow, deadly precision, "are going to come with me, and if either of you lay so much as a finger on the other, you will spend the next year on latrine patrol for every group of recruits we have. Am I understood?"

"Yes, sir," Harry and Cipher said, still glowering at each other.

Slider waved his wand, and the barrier disappeared. "As you were!" he barked at the milling crowd, which dispersed quickly. He shot a dark warning look at Harry and Cipher, and turned on his heel, striding toward the door. Without looking at Cipher again, Harry followed, Cipher by his side.

Unsurprisingly, Elijah was waiting for them just outside the door. He held out a walking stick. "Take hold of it," he growled. They obeyed, and he snapped, "Reverto Oficio!"

Harry felt the familiar, hated jerk behind his navel as the Portkey activated. They landed in an office about half the size of Umbra Nacht's, which was to say still fairly big. This was good, as both Harry and Cipher collapsed onto the floor as they landed, blown off-balance by the force of the Portkey; Elijah looked slightly windblown, but was still standing. He turned and walked around the huge, mahogany desk that sat at one end of the room, sitting down in a black office chair that should have dwarfed him, but somehow made him seem even bigger than he really was.

Harry struggled to his feet, Cipher beside him. "Sit down," Elijah said, indicating the two upholstered wing chairs that sat in front of his desk. It was clearly an order, not an invitation. Walking gingerly, his side, gut, and face all hurting, Harry slowly moved the six or so feet to the chair and dropped down into it. Cipher looked to be in even worse shape than Harry, which would have given Harry a flush of pride if he hadn't been half-convinced that Cipher was doing it as much for show as anything else.

Bleeding, whinging show-off.

There was silence for a long moment after they were all seated. Harry was tempted to squirm, but he held himself in check. He would not give Cipher the satisfaction of seeing it. Elijah looked at both of them, but his eyes finally rested on Cipher before he leaned forward and started speaking.

"On the day you arrived for training," he said in a quiet, deadly voice, "I told you something very important. I told you that you would need to learn to work as a team. To trust one another. To be able to watch the back of your fellow officers, and trust them to watch yours. To prepare for the worst bastards that walk the face of this earth and know that you are being kept safe by the others who are on your side." He shot to his feet, making both of them flinch backward. "And you, Cipher," he snarled, "have done everything you can to undermine all of that, not just with Onyx here, but with the entire camp!"

Cipher blinked, obviously taken aback at being singled out. "Onyx threw the first punch, sir," he protested.

"After you'd spent seven weeks goading him," Elijah snapped back. "Don't lie to me, boy. I've watched you, and Slider's watched you, and every recruit in camp has watched you. You're damned lucky Onyx can hold his temper, because you've been idiotic enough to get him angry enough to spit sparks."

Cipher was getting angry now, too. "And what about him?" he spat. "He threw the first punch! What are you going to do to him?"

Elijah held his hand out toward Cipher, who jerked forward as though caught by a Summoning Charm and was pulled halfway across the desk and into Elijah's waiting hand, which clenched on his robes just like Harry's had done earlier. "You will never," he said in a low voice, his face and voice livid, "ever speak to me like that again. You signed a contract, boy. I am your commanding officer. You are getting perilously close to insubordination, and I. Will. Not. Have. It. Are we clear on that?"

Cipher nodded shakily, and Elijah let go. Harry watched, enjoying himself thoroughly, as Cipher sank back into his seat. It's about damn time he got taken down a notch or ten, he thought vindictively.

"Onyx," Elijah said, sitting back in his chair, "what made you angry enough to hit Cipher this time, when you haven't for seven weeks?"

Harry looked back at his OIC. The anger was still there in the older man's face, but it didn't appear to be aimed at him. He felt a rush of vindication. "He was reading a letter I was writing to my girlfriend, sir," he said as calmly as he could manage through his ire. "And when he saw me coming toward him, he quoted part of it at me. A particularly—personal part, meant for her eyes alone." He shot a glare at Cipher, who glared right back.

"Reading someone else's letters?" Elijah raised his eyebrows and looked back at Cipher. "That's illegal."

Cipher's eyes widened. "That's a Muggle law," he protested.

This isn't going quite the way you thought, is it, you wanker? Harry thought with an internal grin.

"And wizarding law as well. It's been around for nearly a thousand years. Owls being what they are, you know, sometimes the post goes astray—though not nearly as often as the Muggle post." Elijah leaned forward. "Do you deny that that's what you were doing? Reading Onyx's personal letters?"

Harry watched Cipher carefully and could almost see the gears working in his mind. He couldn't really deny it; everyone who'd been in the room—which was at least six other people—had seen him and probably heard him.

"No, sir," Cipher said finally, somehow, amazingly, managing a note of almost-defiance in his voice. "I don't."

Elijah's face hardened still more, if that was possible. "Right," he said, his voice like steel. "In that case, I have no choice but to—"

There was a sudden pop, making them all jump, and a cylinder appeared on Elijah's belt. He looked down at it in surprise, then pulled it off his belt and opened it. A piece of parchment slid out, and he unrolled it and began reading. His face drained of all colour, and, unbelievably, his hands began to shake.

Just at that moment, Harry felt the odd, muddy-brown roiling begin in the pit of his stomach again, just as he had the day he'd signed on with the Ministry. Unthinking, he glanced at Cipher, who had put a hand to his abdomen as though he felt it too.

He turned his attention back to Elijah, who still hadn't moved. "Sir?" Harry ventured. The OIC didn't respond, and Harry said again, more urgently, "Sir!"

Elijah looked up. His eyes were haunted. "We'll have to put this discussion on hold," he said softly. He held up the parchment. "I might as well tell you; you'd find out in a minute with the others anyway. Two squads of Department officers—two separate squads, on separate missions—were attacked and killed this morning. Wiped out. Completely annihilated. Which means that we are in need of precisely twelve new officers to take their places." He put the parchment down and looked Harry and Cipher square in the face. "Congratulations, gentlemen," he said soberly. "You've finished training camp early. You are now full officers of the Department of Mysteries."

Harry and Cipher stared at him. Harry's mind whirled with the suddenness of the news. Twelve officers? Annihilated in one morning?

Elijah held out the walking stick Portkey again. "Come on," he said heavily. "We'd best get back. We need to inform the others, and you'll need to pack up your things. You'll be home tonight, and you'll report for duty at 0800 tomorrow morning."

Harry and Cipher both grasped the Portkey. Just before Elijah spoke the spell to activate it, Cipher muttered something under his breath that Harry just barely heard.

"And may God have mercy on us all."

A/N: Ahmie, Noji8, Sherylyn, Fang-Face Dreamweaver, and Michele40 are angels in human form. They took it upon themselves to beta this 26-page chapter and the Interlude that follows.

The Disney reference from the previous chapter was actually quite hard to find; when I wrote the scene where Fred & George set up the dishes to wash themselves assembly-line style, I was thinking of the scene from The Sword in the Stone. Sherylyn guessed it in an IM conversation. Way to go, Sher!

A "First Footer" is part of the British (and especially Scottish) New Year's celebration, and refers to the first person to set foot in your door after the New Year strikes. According to custom, it is important that a dark-haired "stranger" be allowed into your house before a fair haired one. (The "stranger" is usually someone you know who's not part of your family.) The "stranger" may carry a lump of coal signifying warmth or heat, or a piece of cake signifying food, or Scotch signifying liquid. A good time is then had by all and sundry. No one is turned away at the door.

Thanks to all my readers, every one of you. It's you all who make this worthwhile, even while I'm cursing and swearing at my word processor. There's more to come after Book 5 comes out, I promise. Please stick with me!