The Unspoken Ally: Part Six

Title: The Unspoken Ally
Author: bridgetlynn
Fandom/Genre: Harry Potter/NCIS Fusion
Relationship(s): pre-slash Tony DiNozzo/Sirius Black
Content Rating: R
Warnings: canon-level violence, language, fanon accepted conspiracy theories

*re: certain characters in this chapter – I don’t do dialects or accents in my writing. It’s fanfiction so you know what they sound like. Rule 17 and all that. Also, rough week. Thank god this is a first draft.*

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Wednesday September 1st 1993

British Ministry of Magic
Department of Magical Law Enforcement – Level 3
Whitehall
London, England

The stares and whispers had been annoying for the first twenty minutes; but now, after an hour of standing at attention in the waiting area outside of Amelia Bones’, the Head of the DMLE, office they had surpassed annoying and gone on into obnoxiously rude. This was one of the few situations where his robes were a blessing rather than a curse; no one knew exactly who had pissed Madam Bones off to the extent that she had left them outside her office for over an hour.

Amelia Bones was not a petty woman; she was a famously patient straight-shooter who accepted that mistakes happened and would protect her Aurors like a mama bear so long as evidence backed up the mistake as being honest and not a result of negligence. So for her to keep someone who had an appointment waiting, as that was the only way anyone, even an Unspeakable, would have gotten that close to her office, was a sign that the robed figure had somehow found the end of Bones’ infamous tolerance.

Tony saw a rune light up on Bones’ secretary’s desk, watched as the younger witch placed a finger on the gold filigree ear piece she wore and waited with only mildly baited breath; this was the third time in an hour he had seen this process and he had yet to be sent through the door.

“Unspeakable Canister,” the witch finally spoke in a haughty, overly important, tone, drawing an unseen eye roll from Tony behind his robes, “Madam Bones and Head Auror Scrimgeour will see you now.”

“It’s Canis Star,” he enunciated slowly in a biting tone, almost snickering at the spells that made his voice sound echoing and ominous and relishing how she seemed to draw back and shrink in on herself.

Without another comment he brushed past her desk, smirking at the squeak it drew from the girl, and in a pique of annoyance sent a wandless blast of magic at the door; just enough to open it without damaging the entrance. He paused in the office, just clear at the doorway and glared at the two occupants – knowing all they would see was an empty black hole where his face should be – and blasted the door more strongly to make it slam behind him.

Silently Tony reached up and pulled his hood off his head, letting his glare settle further onto his face as they could now see him and drawled out one single word that let his annoyance come through clearer then any look possibly could, “Well?”

“Well what?” the red headed woman sitting at the large desk reflected back at him, looking incredibly disinterested.

“Well…I don’t know, how about – you called me back to England, I don’t actually work for you anymore, what the hell was that song and dance about leaving me standing out there like an asshole for an hour…I could go on if you’d wish? Was that a power-play over Croaker – see how long you can make his flunky wait around for a by your leave? Or was it cause you know I’ve been working with Martin Mason for two years and you haven’t stuck it to him enough?”

Tony knew he’d scored a direct hit when she flinched at the last question, though Scrimgeour sent him a confused look; he was fairly certain Chief Mason had zero to do with him waiting outside the office, and maybe bringing him up had been unfair, but he was extremely aggravated and borderline exhausted. Croaker had given him his orders, including what Bones and Scrimgeour wanted him to do, he didn’t expect to be summoned up to the DMLE on a whim three days before he was first supposed to meet with Hermione Granger in person.

“You’d do well to remember that you’re not that important Unspeakable,” Amelia snapped at him between gritted teeth. “You might be a hot shot right now, but you’re still young – that kind of fire burns bright…and fast. There’s plenty of time for you to screw up.”

“I feel threatened,” Tony responded with a heavy dose of sarcasm. He liked and, mostly, respected Madam Bones. Had in fact enjoyed working under her – for all the minimal interaction he had with the Head of the DMLE as a newly minted Auror – and he felt like she was one of the few Ministry officials whose policies he could honestly support. All that aside, he very much resented the implication that she could have a single effect on his career; that influence had evaporated the day he left the DMLE and officially joined the DOM. When he considered the fact that the Paddington’s were also older and more widely politically aligned then the Bones’ Tony couldn’t help if a little bit of superiority crept into him.

“Don’t try that hoity toity pureblooded bull-shit with me Paddington,” Amelia snapped. “I know, just as well as Rufus, that you wear that shit like a well designed set of robes. The pureblood poncey prince, who’s just intelligent and athletic enough to pass muster and get an Auror slot. No one looked twice at you while you were here…despite graduating top of your Auror class and qualifying as a Hit Wizard. They even forgot you were Head Boy and a bloody Ravenclaw.”

Tony merely raised an eyebrow at her commentary and asked, silently, with his expression why she was stating the obvious.

“Alright,” Rufus Scrimgeour, the Head Auror, interrupted before Amelia could keep going, obviously spurned on by something that had aggravated her. “Anthony, we asked you here because, we need to know why you’ve been tailing Albus Dumbledore and accessing records from the war.”

Tony froze and his mind scrambled, mostly in an attempt to figure out how they even knew he had been doing those things, and then it clicked, “You flagged my magical signature!?!”

“Yes,” Amelia answered, almost hesitantly. “We did.”

Tony smirked, internally grateful that Granger had spent the summer in France and had therefore been outside of the Ministry’s detection range so they didn’t seem to know about her, and allowed his channels to pull some more from the Paddington Well and flare his magic over the office and power his voice in a near compulsion, “I’m guessing by your expression that you realize exactly how fucking illegal that was. You want to flag what your Aurors are doing – fine, whatever, that’s your right. But you can’t even blink in the direction of my magic. I’m an Unspeakable. I work for the blood Queen; just because you and all your fellow lemmings have forgotten that Queen Elizabeth is the final authority in this country – especially to Magicials – doesn’t mean we have. Tracking what I do magically, under the protection of my job, could be considered treasonous in the right circumstances. So you better explain yourself right now.”

Madam Bones pursed her lips and Tony could feel her fighting; which was fine because Scrimgeour cracked immediately.

“You’re making waves and investigating Dumbledore could destabilize Magical Britain. He’s too respected and looked up to.”

“You mean he’s too revered, has too much power and knows where all the bodies are buried,” Tony broke it down in more clear terms. “I thought half the reason I was requested to do an, independent, investigation into Sirius Black was because I wasn’t in Dumbledore’s pocket.”

Scrimgeour spluttered in indignation and shook his head negatively, “You weren’t supposed to investigate anything! Just keep an eye around Hogsmeade and make sure he wasn’t killed if he showed up before we could decide what to do about the problem.”

At that comment, and Amelia’s incredulous look at Rufus, Tony let up on his magical assault – mildly impressed that Madam Bones hadn’t cracked.

“Ahhh, I see,” Tony spoke quietly and nodded. “So you could decide what to do about the problem. Now, since neither one of you are the types to be bought, with gold at least, that means that you have to decide who will be embarrassed if the Black situation was a screw-up…or worse, who will be, potentially, found guilty if the Black situation was a set up. Then you have to figure out how that affects your own political capital.”

“How dare you!” Amelia snapped. “I have never taken a bribe or considered anything other then the law in my life.”

“Oh yea, then what’s with the big stink about me poking around the Death Eater files? And keeping an eye on Dumbledore. He was and is the Cheif Warlock…maybe you trust him, to an extent, but I don’t trust him at all. And I want to know exactly why the probable Heir of an Ancient and Noble House got thrown into prison without a trial, on his say-so, when Bellatrix fucking Lestrange was given that courtesy.”

“Dumbledore didn’t have anything to do with that. Crouch did,” Amelia insisted and Tony rolled his eyes.

“I’ll repeat myself since Magicals outside the DOM aren’t known for their application of logic – he was the Chief Warlock. It was his testimony that said Sirius was the Potter secret keeper; not that he’d say why they were under a Fidelius Charm or even offer proof that they actually were.”

“Why would he lie about that?” Rufus asked, looking honestly confused.

“Oh I don’t know,” Tony replied snidely. “Maybe because he had a hand in practically every fucking thing that went on during that war? Hell, they never found Voldemort’s body and I found the bare minimum of forensic reports from that night…for all anyone knows Dumbledore strolled up and killed everyone himself.”

“You do not honestly think that,” Amelia stated, rather then asked, looking at Tony in disbelief.

“No,” he admitted. “I don’t actually think that. But I do think that a lot more went on then we know about. There were questions that were never asked. Hell, I even believe they were under a fidelius that Dumbledore cast making Sirius Black the secret keeper. But no one ever asked under what circumstances did Sirius supposedly give up the Secret? He might have been a highly trained Auror and Hit Wizard; but he was still only twenty-one and everyone has their breaking point under the right torture.”

He watched their expressions stricken at that point and continued with his tirade, “And the cottage that everyone keeps calling the Potter Cottage? Sales records show it was purchased by Albus Dumbledore in April of 1978. No one ever asked about that. Potter House’s wards date back to the 15th century; they’re still standing. Why the hell didn’t James and Lily just stay there and apply a fidelius to that property? Even if someone gave up the secret it wouldn’t drop the wards on Potter House.”

“The deed on the cottage says a L.J. Evans was the owner,” Amelia immediately replied, inadvertently telling Tony that she had apparently had the same avenue of thought he had been following.

“Isn’t that interesting in and of itself,” Tony responded with a raised eyebrow. “I saw that too. Couldn’t figure out why it, technically, belonged to Lily Potter, Lily Evans before her marriage; but the sales filing is right there in Godric’s Hollow town hall for anyone to see if they actually looked. So you have to wonder why the Headmaster of a school would purchase a cottage in a magical village and then very quietly gift it to a muggleborn student – something he had never done before – sometime after her graduation and before May of 1980. The month he said he cast the fidielus.”

“Maybe the name on the deed was extra security,” Rufus pointed out. “Death Eaters weren’t going to care about her maiden name…or even think she’d use it for anything once she had a so-called proper pureblood name.”

“Maybe,” Tony conceded. “But these are all things we’ll never know until a proper investigation is conducted. So perhaps you should stop worrying about who this investigation could effect…unless that person’s name is Sirius Black. If he’s maliciously guilty then by all means throw the book at him and kiss the son of a bitch. But if it turns out he broke under torture…or, here’s an idea, wasn’t the actual fucking secret keeper or a bloody death eater at all, get him declared innocent so his family can see to his return to something resembling good health!”

“And what of Peter Pettigrew and the muggles?” Amelia questioned him looking serious.

“Well that was just a fuck up of epic proportions,” Tony declared. “Anyone who thinks Sirius Black, death eater or not, would be so stupid as to perform that level of magic in the middle of a busy muggle street raise their hands.”

When neither Rufus nor Amelia moved, except to look sheepish, Tony nodded and added, “That’s what I thought. Are we done here? Are you finished with trying to ham-string me before I actually get started?”

“Yes,” Amelia agreed, nodding slowly and looking disturbed. “You know Kingsley Shacklebolt technically has the lead right?”

“Yes,” Tony nodded. “It’s not hard to miss. He’s doing a bang up job so far too,” he added, a little sarcasm seeping into his voice once again.

“What’s your problem now? Kingsley is an exceptional Auror,” Amelia almost growled out looking annoyed once more.

“I know he is. But Kingsley also thinks Dumbledore hung the moon and the sun and the stars. When I was still an Auror if I even implied I didn’t like a decision he made in the Wizengamot I found myself reorganizing the file rooms. If Albus hints to Kingsley the direction he wants the investigation into Sirius to go then your oh so trusted Auror will find a way to make it happen. He was the same way in school; he might have been five years ahead of me in the Eagles Nest but he had no problem harassing me, even as a first year, because of my families known stance of not being aligned with the Dumbledore bloc. It made the first two years at school interesting.”

“I’ll keep an eye on things,” Rufus interjected, giving Amelia a quelling look. “But all this aside, you really are making waves Anthony. Ignoring what you think about us; if you make too many waves you risk the Minister pushing for Black to be eliminated.”

“He has a kiss on sight order,” Tony pointed out. “That’s pretty well eliminated. Look, I’ll be a little more circumspect. But I’m not going to stop looking into things; my Father has been getting waylaid since Arcturus died. And Arcturus wasn’t getting any answers before that. So there has to be a lot of people’s secrets riding on Sirius being in Azkaban; which means there’s much more going on then just what went down on Halloween in ‘81.”

“And you think Black’s the key?”

“Not necessarily; he might just be a side effect to a bigger picture,” Tony replied to Madam Bones’ question. “Personally, I think it very interesting that not only as Harry Potter’s godfather was Sirius Black the first person who would have been given custody of the vaunted boy-who-lived…but he was also Lord Potter’s Executor. So, Sirius in jail means James’ Will was sealed automatically. Yet, Dumbledore was Lily’s Executor…and somehow the custody list for Harry got whittled down until Albus was the only person left? And now the kid’s hidden away? Seriously – not one red flag for either of you? I was only thirteen when this shit went down and I knew something went seriously wrong almost immediately. And it only took me this last month to find out these key details.”

When both Department Heads only stared at him, looking more shocked then they had during the entirety of the rest of the meeting, Tony had to contain his laughter and could only wonder how a single thing got done in this building if he at twenty-six had managed to start to piece together that there was a major conspiracy going on.

He just didn’t know what the conspiracy pointed to or why it had been enacted.

“You’re dismissed,” Amelia almost whispered. “Do what you have to do. Just try not to get caught.”

Tony nodded and without another word, though he again wanted to point out that he didn’t actually work for her, letting his final rant sink into their brains left the office after pulling his hood over his head once more.

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Saturday September 4th 1993

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry
Gryffindor Castle
Hogsmeade, Scotland

Tony stared past the imposing gate of Gyrffindor Castle and shuddered as he saw who had been sent to collect him and bring him up to the school.

“Hello Hagrid,” Tony spoke, allowing the spells concealing him to work their magic on the half-Giant.

“Errr, Hello Unspeakable,” the large man stammered. “Professor McGonagall sent me down to collect you.”

Tony simply nodded and gestured towards the school; trying not to laugh as the groundskeeper jumped out of the way of his hand and started walking towards the Castle. The duo walked silently for a few moments, the large man continuously casting nervous glances towards Tony.

“Can I help you with something Hagrid?” Tony finally asked; he might be enjoying making Hagrid nervous since the half-Giant had made sure to let him know through actions, if not words, that he wasn’t worthy of being in ‘The Great Albus Dumbledore’s school’ all through his seven years, but it didn’t mean he wanted to be stared at like a bug either. Sometimes the Paddington public stance on Dumbledore’s power conglomerate was trying on the patience.

“Uhh…no?”

Tony nodded and continued walking, laughing under his breath as the nervous stares got worse the closer they got to the school. When they finally reached the main entrance of the school Hagrid seemed to straighten up, as though he was more protected from Tony inside the school and seemed to gather his vaunted Gryffindor courage and almost growled out, “Dumbeldore won’t let you dark magic users mess with his school. Just so you know.”

Tony nodded seriously and answered in an exceptionally cold tone, “Well…if I see any dark magic users I’ll be sure to let them know. After all, as someone who wasn’t expelled in their third year I would be a better judge of who exactly is a practitioner of the dark arts then a groundskeeper.”

“I’m a Professor. Thank you very kindly,” Hagrid replied to him, sending Tony’s eyes wide behind his hood in shock.

“A Professor? Of what exactly? And how did that get approved?”

“Care of Magical Creatures. Dumbledore approved it. Great man he is.”

Tony gritted his teeth and inclined his head, giving the implication of agreement and simply stated, “I can take it from here. Thank you for the escort.”

He immediately spun on his heel and stalked off in the direction of McGonagall’s office, his robes billowing around him, past students who were watching him in confusion or horror. His subconscious picked out the children raised in Wizarding Britain versus those of muggle upbringing based on their reaction to his presence and the sight of Unspeakable robes.

And he couldn’t bring himself to really care if he was scaring children at the moment.

He had purposefully made arrangements with the Head of Gryffindor to floo through to her office, from his own in the DOM, to avoid this kind of spectacle; and the aggravation that had been building since this morning when he received word from McGonagall that he would have to enter through the main gates was now a boiling rage with the knowledge that an unlicensed teacher – someone who didn’t even have OWLs – was instructing one of the most dangerous classes in the curriculum. He had expected power plays; Albus was still plenty annoyed that he had lost his gambit with Croaker over Tony’s presence in his school to meet with Miss Granger. What he hadn’t expected was this level of incompetence to be uncovered in the first five minutes Tony was in the school.

When he reached the painting of a dark forest on the 3rd floor, the door to a hidden room set aside for his meetings with Miss Granger, indicated in the letter he spoke the password authoritatively and entered finding Professor McGonagall standing with the teenager he had been tasked with observing.

“Interesting choice of password Professor,” Tony began his verbal onslaught before either party could speak. “Was Unscrupulous your choice or the Headmasters?”

“It was mine,” Minerva McGonagall admitted, eyeing Tony with such distrust that he was almost afraid to guess what she had told Hermione Granger about the Unspeakables before this meeting. “Croaker insisted that Albus not know where or when you were meeting. It was one of his…conditions.”

“Good,” he stated firmly. “You can go,” he added, dismissing her without a second thought and absolutely enjoying the enraged expression that crossed her features.

“If you think I’m leaving a child alone with one of you then you’ve got another thing coming,” the Professor snapped in a high handed scolding tone Tony had heard plenty over his years at Hogwarts.

“That’s fine,” Tony responded, shocking the older woman into silence. “Miss Granger I’m afraid I am going to need to collect the device you have been entrusted with,” he added, removing a wooden box from his robes, opening it and holding it out in front of him. The space inside perfectly fitted to a time-turner displayed for both females to see.

“What?” the younger girl gasped, looking horrified. “But…I was told I needed it to take extra classes. Professor Dumbledore said so.”

“Did he also tell you that he doesn’t own the device? Or that the Lead Unspeakable had regulations set up for your use of the device? Did he even mention that most of the Ravenclaw’s are probably also taking extra classes under independent study?”

Tony watched the younger girl take in his words and could practically see the wheels turning behind her eyes; mentally he urged her on with the hint he had given her that Dumbledore wanted her to have the time-tuner.

He had been surprised this past month as he observed the girl. She was much more open-minded then he had been led to expect. He wasn’t sure if that was a by-product of what she had experienced during her first two years at the school or if she had entered the school with a firm mask in place herself. Because, the girl he had seen this summer was not the blindly trusting schoolmarm he had been told about; the girl he had seen this summer in Paris had been researching Albus Dumbledore herself, using sources outside of Britain, and hadn’t seemed all that impressed with what she found if what he had found written in her journal was to be believed.

He could work with open-minded. But now it had to be her move.

After a longer pause then Tony expected, leaving him a little nervous that this wasn’t going to go the way he had hoped, the girl spoke, “With respect Professor…I think I would like to keep the time-turner. And I should obviously therefore follow the rules set forth by the actual owner of the device.”

“Miss Granger…Hermione…I don’t think you understand what you are agreeing to. Unspeakable’s have a reputation. They are ruthless…they don’t mind using dark magic if it suits their goals,” the Professor began explaining in a hushed tone as though Tony wasn’t standing two feet away from them. “He will most assuredly make you swear things so as not to report back on what he does to you in here.”

Tony bristled at those words and interrupted icily, “Madam, I am not certain I like the implication of what you just said.”

“I implied what I implied,” McGonagall answered him, sneering. “Albus said you would be doing some ritual called the, ‘bakire söylem’. The best he was able to translate it was Virgin Discord. To disagree with virginity. Do try and remember she’s only thirteen…sex magic is illegal prior to the age of 16.”

“Oh for Merlin’s sake,” Tony snapped. “Get your conspiracy theory waving wand out of this room Professor. You might have a Mastery in Transfiguration but the lowest ranked Unspeakable has forgotten more about ritual magic then Albus Dumbledore has ever known. Bakire Söylem is a Turkish ritual. It’s direct translation is Virgin Discourse; not discord. The full name is, in English for your isolationist mentality, The Pure Discussion. It’s a truth ritual. Everyone participating in it must speak the truth as they know it to be while the circle is open. I will not be, nor have I ever, participated in a sexual act with an underage witch or wizard. Get. Out.”

Tony waited for the Scottish woman to storm out of the room before flipping his wand out and sending a visual wave of magic at the door, sealing the room with Family Magic for extra security. He took a few deep breaths to calm himself, still staring at the sealed door, and then turned to take in the expression on the face of Hermione Granger.

What surprised him most was the fact that she didn’t look indignant that he had insulted her professor; instead she looked intrigued as she stared back at him unblinkingly. It was the first time he had ever stood around another Magical, even one who knew his identity, in these robes and hadn’t inspired some degree of fear or suspicion.

“So Miss Granger…how would you like to do some magic?”

Her answering grin was all he needed to tell him that this assignment might be more fun then he had expected.