Strong Love

"We got something," Christopher's voice reached through the entire Aurors office all the way to the big briefing room where Ron and Harry were close to ripping the hair out of their skulls if they wouldn't get anything soon.

It was late already, and Harry had wanted to go home hours ago, but he had stayed just to help Ron sort through the documents that were now no longer of any use to them. Malfoy had gotten back from Hogwarts half an hour ago; also working overtime because exam season was coming up and he had a lot to prepare. He had sent Harry a Patronus, asking if he should wait up for him, and Harry had been about to send one back when he had heard Christopher's shout.

The Auror appeared in the door, Ron and Harry already looking up at him. "What is it?" Harry asked.

"Someone tried to break one of our charms. Clark Walk, Ettington," Chris replied. "Lily Hardman."

Harry's eyes widened, and when he looked at Ron, he could see that his friend was just as shocked as him. "When?"

Chris checked his watch. "One minute and thirty-six seconds ago."

The three of them Disapparated without another word, appearing a few houses down from the one belonging to Lily Hardman. The street was deserted, and the summer sun had already set, leaving only the streetlights to illuminate the street. Warm wind was brushing through Harry's hair, but there was no sound apart from the leaves in the trees and a bird chirping somewhere. No sign of a Dark wizard or anyone else for that matter.

Lily Hardman was a Muggle-born witch; Harry knew that. He knew all of the people whose houses were now protected. Lily had been in Hufflepuff and had graduated from Hogwarts three years before Harry had started, and when Voldemort had risen again, she and her mother had left the country and lived with her aunt in France. They had moved back after the war had ended and were now no longer associated with the Wizarding World. But that wouldn't matter to Avery as long as she was carrying the name of Harry's mother.

"Go, go, go!"

The Aurors straightened up at the sound of the whispers and when the light of four streetlamps in front of Lily's house were extinguished, Harry felt Ron stiffen next to him, undoubtedly also thinking of Dumbledore's Deluminator. There was a circle of darkness in the middle of the street now, reaching almost to where Harry and the other two were hiding behind a corner. Harry wondered for a moment why he always failed to take his Invisibility Cloak with him on missions like these.

"We can't get in!" Because the street was entirely empty and dead-silent, the whisper carried effortlessly to the Aurors.

"Shit, bloody hell, fuck!" another man cursed.

"What?" a third voice asked, then suddenly filled with fear: "You don't think this is Potter, do you?"

Harry clenched his jaw. They had no idea. But he didn't know how long the protection charm would last, so the Aurors couldn't stay hidden for all too long.

"If it is, then he already knows what we're doing!" the first man whispered.

"Did you really think he wouldn't?" the second man replied, exasperated.

Harry forrowed his brow. He knew that voice, but he couldn't place it. One look at Ron told him that he was thinking the same thing.

"He's not stupid, you know?" the man said.

"We have to get back," another voice came out of the darkness. "Let's go!"

That was Harry's cue. The three Aurors ran out from their hiding place, and with a flick of his wand, the streetlights turned back on and exposed the four men standing in front of the house. Their faces were hidden underneath their hoods, reminding Harry with a painful stabbing feeling of the Death Eaters in their masks.

"Stupefy!" Harry shouted, hitting one of them square in the chest.

Another was so fast that he Disapparated without anyone being able to stop him. "Expelliarmus!" another of them shouted, but his spell didn't hit anyone, the red light shootng just past Christopher's ear as he ducked to the side.

"Avada Ke-"

"No!" the third screamed, pushing his comrade to the side. "He's not yours to kill."

Harry's brain was fuzzy all of a sudden, and he was overwhelmed with a nauseating feeling. It had been a long time since someone had aimed the Killing Curse at him, and he had thought those times were over. Voldemort's laugh was ringing in his ears, echoing around his head as if he were right next to Harry, as if the spell had been cast by him.

"But the others are!" the man shouted back, his voice breaking through Harry's reverie and pulling him back to the present.

It took Harry a second to gether himself, but he knew that in this job, a second was all it took to cost him or his friends their life. But before the hooded stranger could aim his wand at Ron, Christopher took him down with the Full Body-Bind Curse.

Harry was on the lawn in front of the house now, so close to the last men standing that he could have reached forward and pulled down his hood if he wanted to. "Give up," Harry said, his voice so full of menace and anger that it shocked even him.

This was the man who had feared that Harry was the one blocking them out of the house. Harry had recognised the fear in his voice only too well. So, this was who he was now, huh? A man the bad guys feared? He shouldn't be proud of that, but he was.

"Give up," Harry repeated.

The stranger in front of him hesitated for just a single second before raising his wand again. Harry shook his head, disappointed. He didn't even have to move a muscle; Ron wipped his wand behind Harry and hit the man in the head with a spell. Harry sighed. This could have been so much easier if they had just given up.

"Alright, let's bring them back," Harry said to Chris and Ron, who were already levitating the two other bodies.

Back at the Ministry, Dean ran to to meet them. Harry left the three in charge of the... he had no idea what to call them - Prisoners? Witnesses? Criminals? - and took the lift up to level one to see Kingsley Shacklebolt. To Harry's luck, the Minster was in his office and had time for him (though that didn't always have to mean anything because Kingsley kept insisting that the would always make time for Harry).

"Someone tried to break one of our charms just now, so we went and got everything under control. Well... almost everything," Harry reported, and Kingsley raised an eyebrow at his last sentence. "We have three of the four men downstairs."

The Minister leaned back in his chair and let out a breath, clearly thinking about the next move. Harry had no idea how to continue from here. He had never been in a position where he had to get information out of the people he had brought in because usually, those were the bad guys they were looking for. But those three? Harry didn't think they qualified for Azkaban yet until he found out more about what they had done, but first, they had to give him information on Avery. Anything they could tell him would be a huge help, seeing as he and his team hadn't gotten anywhere yet.

"Do as you see fit," Kingsley finally said.

On his way back down to level two, Harry sent Malfoy a Patronus back and told him that something had come up, but he had a plan and wouldn't be home all too late. Checking his watch, Harry winced when he realised that it already was really late, but he smiled at the thought of finding Draco already in bed, curled up on top of the blanket in just his underwear, looking all soft and cute and hot.

Ron, Dean, and Chris met Harry by the lift and walked with him past the Auror office where their cubicles were and along a long corridor with black stone on the walls and floor to the Investigation Department. Harry's hands were starting to sweat the closer they came to the door.

"We took off their hoods, but..." Ron started, his voice trailing off.

Harry looked at him. "You don't recognise any of them?"

Ron shook his head. "No, but I could have sworn I knew one of them."

"Right?" Harry said loudly. "Me too!"

He took a moment to clue them in on the plan he had, making sure the others knew what to do. He hoped this would work, or otherwise, they had to re-think their strategy. The good thing was: they had them here. The bad thing was: they didn't have time - Avery was probably already planning something else. The biggest problem they had was that one of Avery's men had escaped and undoubtedly told him about what had happened.

"What did Kingsley say?" Dean asked, opening the door to the one investigation room where the three men were being held.

Harry blatantly ignored the prisoners and grinned at Dean. "He told me to do what I want."

From the corner of his eye, Harry could see the three strangers stiffen - exactly what he had wanted. He turned to look at them finally, taking them in. The three were sitting shoulder to shoulder, their hands behind their backs while their wrists were magically chained to the wall behind them. None of them had a burned hand or black hair, so Harry wasn't sure if they were the same people as on Diagon Alley and the one with the hand was the one that had escaped in time, or if Avery had enough people gathered already to build two or more teams of four.

One of them was visibly shaking, and his eyes were racing across the room, taking in the three Aurors behind Harry and finally Harry himself. His bright blue eyes widened when they met Harry's, and he quickly looked away as if Harry were a rabid dog you should avoid eyecontact with at all costs. His light brunette hair was dishevelled, probably from the hood.

"You going to torture us now?" The man in the middle asked, sneering up at the Aurors. Harry immediately recognised his voice: he was the guy trying to kill Harry. "We all know you don't have it in you, Potter."

He had dark brown eyes and dark brown hair. A big scar was running down the side of his face and along his jaw, making Harry wonder how he had gotten it. He immediately disliked the man - especially because of the look he kept giving Harry and Ron - but Harry knew that it wasn't his job to like or dislike them. His job was to get them to tell him whatever they knew about Avery, and to Harry's luck, he already had an idea and green light from the Minister.

"No," Harry said, his voice and face completely neutral. "We won't torture you."

One look from Harry told his colleagues what they had to do. Dean uncuffed the rude, scarred man from the wall, his wrists still connected to each other behind his back. Ron took the other one, a blonde with green eyes who hadn't said a word yet. They shoved the men out of the room, bringing them into separate interrogation rooms and leaving Harry and Christopher with the shivering man. Chris was here to learn; otherwise, Harry would have asked for Ron to stay.

"What's your name?" Harry asked, trying as hard as he could to sound as friendly as possible to a man who had been about to kidnap an innocent woman.

When he had still lived with the Dursleys in Privet Drive, Harry had never been allowed TV or any other form of entertainment except for the dusty figurines the Dursleys hadn't cleaned out from under the stairs before shoving Harry in. So when he had been bedridden for seven days after Miles' attack on him on his birthday, Harry had found himself with an unusual amount of free-time on his hands, and decided to catch up all the years of movies he had missed during his childhood.

A ton of the movies had taught Harry a concept that had yet to be proven effective: the Muggles called it "good cop, bad cop." For now, Harry would be nice to the man and gain his trust - with empty promises if he had to - and if that didn't work, then he would send one of the others in to try another method. They didn't need all three to crack; not even two. One was enough, and from the green tinge in this man's face, Harry was fairly confident that he would be the one to break. Not today, though.

"We don't go by names anymore," the prisoner replied. "We are all Avery now."

Harry tried very hard not to sigh or furrow his brows or roll his eyes. Avery really had them give up their identities? It was a smart move to make - you couldn't give up anyone if you didn't know their name. But either way...

"You have a name," Harry said, "even if you don't use it anymore."

"Before I became Avery, I was Finneas Greengrass."

Harry made a mental note to check if he was in any relation to Daphne Greengrass, Harry's Slytherin classmate. "I don't have a lot of questions for you, Finneas," said Harry, souding friendly again. "But not tonight."

The blue eyes widened, and there was confusion written all over his face. Finneas couldn't have been a lot older than Harry, but he behaved like a way younger man - more weak, more breakable. Harry almost pitied him. He knew that not all of the Death Eaters had been there by choice, after all, he had married one. But Harry didn't know if this was any different. Was Avery forcing people to join him, or did he only take in whoever believed in his cause? Was Finneas really not Harry's prisoner, but Avery's?

"What-" the poor man asked and he looked like he might vomit.

"I will come back tomorrow morning to ask you my questions," Harry continued. "If you don't give me any answers, I'll let you sit in here all by yourself a little longer." Harry nodded at Christopher, who opened the door for him. "So you better give me some answers."

When Harry and Christopher walked through the door, Finneas screamed after them: "No! No, don't leave me!"

As they closed the heavy, with magic imbued, steel door behind themselves, Harry caught a glimpse at his prisoner, and his heart clenched. This wasn't an easy job to do, and seeing the man so afraid made it all the more terrible. All Harry wanted now was to get home and forget.

The four Aurors met in the hallway again, all of them looking visibly shaken. "Did they gve you their names?" Ron asked. "Mine just said he's Avery. Tough git, that one."

Dean nodded. "Frank Burke," he said. "Though I'm not sure as in 'Borgin and Burkes'."

"Finneas Greengrass," Harry told them, and Ron's and Dean's widened eyes told him that they were thinking of Daphne as well. "We'll look into it tomorrow." It was already one in the morning and Harry certainly wasn't in the mood to research any of them now.

"So we just let them sit?" Christopher asked Harry.

Harry opened the door to the Auror office and let the others through. "We will." He nodded at Christopher, making his way to his cubicle. "He'll talk."