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Aldon’s brief Harry-hunting trip through Knockturn Alley had borne fruit. The pieces of the nightmarish puzzle that was Rigel, Archie and Harry’s lives fit a bit more neatly now, but brought with them yet more questions. Questions which Pansy and Millicent needed answers to, if they were to get deeper with their investigation. Unfortunately for Millie, Pansy was still cooped up with Draco most of the time, and the task of coordinating further information gathering fell to her. If Heiress Potter still wasn’t answering their letters, they would instead have to work to increase their chances of stumbling upon her.
Theo was willing to help out, but didn’t it feel a bit risky to send him to walk around in Diagon and Knockturn? He exasperated her sometimes, sure, but she didn’t want to see him get into a fight after carelessly offending someone. Maybe it was best to try and contact Blaise first.
How Rigel loves to give us trouble even when he’s hiding away, Blaise thought, as he read Millie’s letter. Ambling aimlessly through Knockturn Alley wasn’t his idea of a good time — really, he sorely missed shared good times, while he was away from Hogwarts — and, fortunately, he had a perfect excuse to avoid it. His mother had told him to research runic trap mechanisms, and he actually had to present an essay on it by the end of the week. That meant he only had 3 days to finish it, and it would probably require that long.
A naive runic trap required that the target step directly on the runes, which greatly decreased the chances of the trap being sprung at all, since the array itself should be small — so it could actually pack a concentrated punch. While that might be enough to satisfy a sixth or even seventh year student who was taking Ancient Runes to fulfill a career requirement, it was definitely below Madame Zabini’s expectations. To fulfill those, he was investigating the mechanisms that could be triggered by detecting perturbances in a radius around them, and that could direct their effects towards that disturbance — that required both more magic expenditure for actually drawing the arrays and testing them, and more effort poured into research and properly understanding them.
He wrote back to regretfully inform her that he was unable to help in this way at the moment, and wished Millie the best of luck in finding some other foot soldier.
Blaise had managed to weasel out of this, but Millie would definitely know his cousin wasn’t actually visiting from their internship in the Continent, so that wouldn’t work as an excuse. It would seem going to Knockturn and hoping to happen upon something interesting was on Theo; and it wasn’t like he could actually investigate by asking people questions — everyone knew that would only drive your target deeper or get you a knife in the guts for your efforts.
It was already late, so he’d be going there tomorrow. Apparently, Aldon had met Potter during the morning, so that was when he would go searching.
A full night’s rest was enough to make Theo ruminate on his trip a bit more, and it was with some trepidation that he flooed to The Leaky Cauldron. Was he ready to go into Knockturn Alley? It wasn’t the most reputable of places at the best of times, and right now he was feeling like the soon to be fifth year that he in fact was. It wouldn’t do to back down, though, so after getting something to eat in the Cauldron, he was on his way to Knockturn.
On his way, he noticed a small girl entering Diagon Alley via the entrance to Knockturn — she was a bit dirty, but looked healthy enough and was carrying a basket of flowers. Well, if she could manage to go through without issues, so could he! Psyching himself up took a bit, but he did manage to enter. If he stayed near the entrance and almost jumped out of his skin whenever anyone passed near, well, no one at Hogwarts would hear about it, would they?
Standing around doing nothing for a couple of hours was enough of danger for him, so Theo called it a day. If this is the sort of stress Aurors have to go through, I can see why the department is short on staff. The Floo in the Cauldron was just flashing green as he entered the pub, and he directed himself to the fireplace to go back home.
The next day, Theo decided he was going stay around the entrance to Knockturn, but on Diagon’s side. Repeating that stress two days in a row didn’t sound particularly healthy, after all.
Is that the flower girl going through again? It felt like she sneaked a longer than normal glance at him, but he couldn’t tell for sure.
Staying nominally in Diagon definitely helped in avoiding any — totally justified — scares, though he didn’t notice anything particularly interesting happening either. He ended up coming back home with empty hands, again.
Trying to bump into Potter by chance had felt like a reasonable idea earlier, but now that he faced returning tomorrow morning to try the same routine again, Theo felt like he had to at least complain to Millie about the assignment, and to Blaise, since he would have been the one originally tasked with it.
Millicent couldn’t help but snort when she received Theo’s letter. Boys. Really, she had sent detailed instructions, and they didn’t include standing around Knockturn in any sort of risk. Had he gotten that worried at the idea of going near Knockturn that he actually forgot her letter’s contents?
She tried not to word it too condescendingly on her response, but it took some work.
Theo’s letter made him worry somewhat for his friend, but it was a good reprieve to protect his brain from getting too fried. Blaise was almost done with his “homework”, though it had definitely taken a lot out of him. He realized his mind was not yet done with churning out ideas, as he glanced between his research and the letter. Could he leave runic traps around the Alleys to warn him about Heiress Potter going through? Theo would definitely owe him for not having to stand around like a little lost lion.
He sent a missive to Millie to see if she could see any, let’s say, legal flaws in his plan, and told Theo he could stop pouting, now that help was on the way.
It took him most of the next two days to get something he could actually use for his purposes. Warning him from a distance when the detection conditions were met meant he had to figure out how to fit a transmission array into the design. Fortunately, he was able to repurpose the activation of the usual explosion or light flash from his week’s studies into a trigger for the transmission. He certainly hadn’t expected such a subject to become useful that soon.
He also had to figure out the triggering condition. The traps couldn’t warn him for every person coming near them, as that would have made them entirely useless: all the schemes he had studied supported only a single activation. He would have to somehow make it react only to Heiress Potter — a non-trivial task.
He kept that requirement on the back of his mind as he worked on the transmission scheme and planned what his artifacts would even look like. Etching the runic arrays into small polished stone disks seemed like a good choice, both in how the magic would work and in how suspicious they would be, at a cursory glance.
A full day of working on the initial scheme was enough to jog his memory: an article on simulating how owls identified wizards by their names using runes had been published a few years ago! Potter was avoiding their letters, but she couldn’t avoid all sorts of owl magic. Blaise mentally thanked Grismelda Burke for her contributions to the field of runic enchantment, and got to work incorporating her designs.
He met Theo in the Cauldron the morning after he was done etching his artifacts, and they set out together for Knockturn Alley.
“So, where will we leave these?” Theo asked.
“Millie told me that as long as we don’t leave them inside someone’s property, it would be hard to sue us for any wrongdoings.” Blaise answered.
“So, outside the store she brews for, uh, The Serpent something, will be fine?”
“Exactly. Did you get a good look at the apothecary?” Blaise asked. Theo’s slightly embarrassed face startled a snigger from him. “Too busy worrying about your own skin to even take a look?”
“You would have done the same!” Theo exclaimed hotly.
“We will never know, will we?” Blaise said and winked at him. Theo’s angry face made all his research and etching worth it.
They didn’t talk much more on their way into Knockturn, though Theo clearly made an effort to enter with his head raised high. Their detection net had been planned thus: one placed near the entrance to the Cauldron, which they had already left in place; some disks in the entrance to Knockturn, and at least one in the front of The Serpent’s Storeroom. Dropping off the disks went flawlessly, as far as they could tell.
Blaise had to wait two days for the first sign of life from the disks. Theo knew to be ready for him to drop by so they could go together to Diagon Alley. It was 4 in the afternoon when he noticed the pull on his magic, which made Theo somewhat grouchy, what with him not having had dinner yet.
Since Potter had been detected near The Serpent’s Storeroom, their plan led them to wait around the entrance to Knockturn Alley and try to intercept her. Unfortunately, there was hardly anyone coming out of the entrance, and it wasn’t dark enough to hide someone trying to pass by unnoticed.
“Well, she doesn’t seem to be here yet… We should give her some time to appear.” Blaise said.
Harry watched as Margo came across the corner, hurrying straight towards her.
“I think that boy was around here a few days ago… Is he another of your gentlemen callers, Harry?” Margo asked.
“Wha-at? No! Why would you think so?” Harry exclaimed, a bit flustered.
“The last one that came around at least had the grace to get flowers from me, he definitely did better than this one.” Margo answered impishly.
“I will have you know I don’t have any gentlemen callers. If you are done here, could you please let Leo know this is handled? I know these two.” Harry replied, taking the opportunity to change subject.
She didn’t know exactly what their plan had been, but her ambient magic awareness had warned her about the weird disks pulling on her magic before she had a chance to get close enough to trigger whatever their effect was. The rune work — according to Leo, since she couldn’t get close to them without risking activating them — looked quite advanced, and they decided to get ahead of the situation by triggering the disks in a controlled setting, so their effects could be watched. Seeing her own classmates looking for her as Harry, and not Rigel, certainly surprised her. Whatever could they want?
They noticed Heiress Potter, but by then she was walking purposefully in their direction.
She looked at Theo accusingly. “Is this why you were hanging around near Knockturn a few days back? To leave traps for me?”
“You saw me?” he exclaimed, surprised.
“Yes! I passed in front of you, even. You aren’t some master of disguise.” Harry answered.
Blaise felt the need to direct the conversation onto more productive grounds. “Apologies, Heiress Potter. We would have liked to approach you in a more appropriate manner, but your insistence on not answering letters forced our hand.”
“Just… Harry, please.”
“Harry, then.” Blaise said, slightly awkward. “Would you answer some of our questions, please? While we have you here.”
Talking to Draco or Pansy again would have been nearly impossible for her right now, but she hadn’t been as close to these two.
Harry pondered for a moment, and decided to take a small leap of faith.
“Sure, as long as you pay for my ice cream.”