JAMES POTTER AND THE VAULT OF DESTINIES

       'Sure would,' Price nodded, and James could see that he was watching Harry closely. 'I don't suppose you magical types have the ability to extract information from the dead, do you? No? That's a shame. And here we 'Muggles' all thought you were so much more advanced than that.'

       'Necromancy is a forbidden art,' Harry replied. 'Not that it was ever particularly accurate, even for those who excelled at it.'

       'Pretty convenient,' Price countered. 'Tarrantus being found murdered in his recently abandoned headquarters and us not being able to interview the deceased to find out where his people might have escaped to or what their plans were.'

'No sign of the missing senator, either,' Espinosa added reasonably. 'Very convenient.'

       'Convenient for whom, exactly?' Harry said, and James heard the barely restrained anger in his voice. 'Since I've been spearheading the international search for these villains, I can say that the lack of any prominent leads and the apparent murder of their leader is decidedly inconvenient. I had very high hopes that this whole mess would be concluded tonight, as you well know.'

       'So you keep saying,' Price countered. 'And yet there is no question that somebody alerted the W.U.L.F. to our raid only minutes before our arrival, giving them just enough time to escape. Not to mention the very damning fact that your name, Mr. Potter, was scrawled on the wall with the victim's own blood.'

       'A warning,' Harry said stonily. 'They want me gone, precisely because we are this close to capturing them. They've been attempting to thwart our attempts ever since they hired a fleet of pirates to sink us on the journey here. Tarrantus himself led the attack on the train and personally delivered the warning, telling us to leave immediately or face the consequences.'

       'And now, Tarrantus is lying cold in a wizarding morgue in downtown New Amsterdam,' Espinosa nodded. 'I mean, it could be that the name written in blood on the wall was a warning that you should give up and run home, Mr. Potter. But we cannot rule out that it might, in fact, have been the victim's way of identifying his killer.'

       'That's ridiculous, Mr. Espinosa, if you'll pardon me for being blunt,' Harry said coldly, 'even apart from the fact that I was with you at the time the man was killed. I've seen Killing Curses in action in my time. The curse that ended Tarrantus' life was not only brutal, it was instantaneous. He wasn't just killed. He was destroyed. I promise you, there were no final moments during which the man could have scrawled the name of his murderer on the wall in his own blood. Tarrantus was dead before he hit the floor and someone else wrote my name on the wall with his blood.'

       Espinosa asked, 'And why would the W.U.L.F. have murdered their own leader only moments before their escape from our raid?'

       'Perhaps for being sloppy,' Harry suggested curtly. 'After all, it was his own paper trail that led us to him. Organizations like the W.U.L.F. do not easily forgive such ineptitude.'

       'Could be,' Price agreed reluctantly. 'Then again, it could be that Tarrantus was getting ready to talk. Maybe he was getting cold feet about the organization's tactics and was planning on telling us everything he knew. Maybe someone else decided he was a threat and planned to overthrow him as leader. They'd have no choice but to kill him, of course. Whoever tipped them off about the impending raid, seems likely to me that that's the same person who's probably in charge now. What do you think, Espinosa?'

       'Just makes sense,' Espinosa agreed. 'Find the snitch, find the murderer. Find the murderer, find the new head of the W.U.L.F.'

       'And you think that person is me,' Harry said with a sigh.

       Price shook his head. 'We're paid to be suspicious, Mr. Potter. Don't take offense. If we had any actual evidence of your involvement, then we wouldn't be standing here in your study having this little chat. But I'll be honest with you. There's loads of circumstantial evidence piling up against you. The bloody name on the wall doesn't help.'

       Harry's voice was no longer restrained. 'That's insane,' he proclaimed darkly.

       'Lotta things are insane, Mr. Potter,' Price agreed. 'Wanting to maintain power over nonmagical people by not sharing your world with them, that seems a little insane to some of us. Conjuring up shadowy villains like the W.U.L.F. to scare your own people into living by outdated laws of secrecy, that also seems pretty insane. Of course, all of this is just conjecture at this point, I admit. But if it ever stops being conjecture, well…'

       'The W.U.L.F. is not a creation of the Department of Aurors,' Harry said with cold emphasis. 'Has it even begun to occur to you that it might have been one of your men who tipped them off about the impending raid? Frankly, if the Wizard's United Liberation Front believes what they claim, then your own people are much more sympathetic with them than is the Department of Aurors.'

'Really, Mr. Potter,' Price chided. 'That's a little childish, isn't it? You perceive that we are accusing you, so you accuse us in response. I expected better from you.'

       'Someone alerted them that we were coming,' Harry insisted. 'On my side, the only people who knew about the raid were Titus Hardcastle and myself.'

       'And we have your word for that only,' Price said, effecting an apologetic tone of voice. 'Be reasonable, Mr. Potter. Do you mean to say that you didn't tell anyone else at the Ministry of Magic? Or even your wife and family?'

       'I mean to tell you that those on my side who knew about today's raid,' Harry growled, 'are people who I trust completely. Members of our raiding party, including myself, might have gotten killed today had the W.U.L.F. chosen to ambush us instead of run. Why would my own people have risked that?'

       'If your people and the W.U.L.F. are one and the same,' Espinosa suggested, 'then it wouldn't be a risk at all, would it?'

       Harry drew a deep breath, composing himself. 'Gentlemen, if this is where we stand, then I fail to see how we can continue to work together. Either arrest me for conspiracy or let me and my associates work alone.'

       'Now let's not get huffy, Harry,' Price said, softening his tone and raising his hands in a conciliatory gesture. 'Espinosa and I are just doing our jobs. The task of the Magical Integration Bureau is to protect the interactions between the magical and the non-magical world and to see that the two coexist with as much harmony as possible. Your people have chosen to hide yourselves and live among us in secrecy, which has always struck the Bureau as suspicious on the very surface of it. You can't blame us for approaching our duties with a degree of healthy skepticism, can you? Look, if you're innocent, then you have nothing to fear from our involvement. If you're guilty, then of course we can't just allow you to operate without our supervision. Either way, Harry, you're stuck with us. Let's try to make that fact as pleasant as possible, eh?'

        There was a long pause as Harry appeared to consider this. In the window reflection, James could see Price standing to the side, his face stony, waiting. Across from him, Espinosa looked vaguely bored. He stared up at the dark ceiling, eyebrows raised inscrutably.

       'So be it,' Harry finally said. 'But if I suspect that your notions of mistrust are undermining our investigations, or worse, placing us all in danger, then be assured that I will abandon this mission, regardless of the consequences. Is that understood?'

       'Duly noted,' Price said with a smile. 'I'm glad that we can all dispense with any pretenses. Everything all out in the open. That's the way I like it. Right, Espinosa?'

       'Right you are, Price,' the other man agreed soberly.

       'I assume you can find the door on your own,' Harry replied. 'Merry Christmas, gentlemen, and goodnight.'

       James heard shuffling footsteps and saw the door's reflection as it opened again. A few moments later, the elevator doors dinged from down the hall. Price and Espinosa, apparently, were on their way back down to the parking garage.