Power Plays Chapter 66

Aurora was surprisingly giggly as she gestured towards the front door towards her flat. It looked like an abandoned factory of sorts, but the moment that they passed through the initial entrance, it transformed into a tremendously luxurious apartment complex. Harry had heard of this place before—Ernie Macmillan, a member of Dumbledore’s Army, lived there—and it looked just as fine as he expected.

A grand chandelier sat overhead the narrow corridor that led to the fireplaces and lifts that took everyone anywhere they needed to go.

“I’m on the top floor,” Aurora told him like it was something to be rewarded.

“How nice,” Harry said through slightly gritted teeth. Given the fact that he was here under false pretences, he needed to maintain his persona that he was more worried about the attack upon Daphne and whatever secrets about Rhys that Aurora could unveil rather than sleeping with her.

Regardless of his apparent uncomfortableness, Aurora pressed the button to summon a lift, and a door behind them opened up. She eagerly pulled him inside and pressed the button for the top floor.

As the lift carried them upwards, Aurora bounced about with excitement. “I have wine at home. Do you prefer red or white.”

“Red,” Harry answered gruffly. “But I’d rather get to the matter at hand.”

Aurora grinned up at him. “All good things will come in time. Let me have a drink, just one, and I’ll be all set for our fun.”

Harry had to hold back from rolling his eyes. Aurora felt like she was completely in control, and he had to pretend like she was.

Just as the lift neared the top floor, Harry’s body tensed slightly. If there was to be some type of ambush or attack, coming out of the lift where he had limited manoeuvrability would be a perfect place to enact it. His wand was in his wrist holster, just itching to be drawn.

But then the doors slid open, and all he was met with was an empty corridor. Moonlight streamed in from a large window in the wall next to them as they stepped out, and there was only a single door waiting for them.

“Here,” Aurora said, letting go of his arm and making her way forward with her wand drawn. She tapped the tip of it on the door handle and then stowed her wand back within her robes. “Welcome to my home away from home.”

A vaulted ceiling sat overhead with wooden beams stretching across from end to end with fairy lights filled with bluebell flames wrapped around them. The entire flat was one massive room with a pair of large sofas sitting on either side of a long coffee table, a decent-sized kitchen with an island along the western wall, and huge four-posted bed that had a four-panelled room divider stood just past the foot of the bed to provide some degree of privacy.

“Don’t be shy now,” Aurora teased as she walked deeper inside towards the kitchen. “I’ll get us some drinks.”

As Harry closed the door to the flat behind him, he honed in on his magical sensitivity, looking for anything in here that was magical. Tingles ran all over his skin as he felt the innate magical energy of the entire flat wash over him, but he was focused on more specific concentrations of magical power.

The first things that he felt were the runes that ran all throughout the building. In order for magical buildings to operate safely in muggle areas, there were quite a few wards that needed to be put in place in accordance with the Ministry’s rules. Harry could feel them beneath the floor, inside of the walls, and above his head. He glossed passed them and searched for anything within the flat itself that would be of interest.

Magical implements and odds and ends were briefly noted in the periphery of his mind, and then he found—

There!

Although he couldn’t see it, he saw something hidden on one of the wooden beams overhead. A pair of omnioculars.

Harry could almost laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation. He’d gotten the idea to use them from realising that Proudfoot and Amelia were using them to try to trap him. He wondered if she’d tried spying on Rhys too and this was how he got the idea to use omnioculars on Harry.

Suddenly, everything made sense. There was no attack planned for tonight. Aurora genuinely did want to sleep with him, and then she’d hand that recording of their night together over to Rhys. He could use it to discredit Harry in the public’s eye and damage Daphne’s campaign if he wanted, or maybe Rhys would use it to blackmail Harry. Whatever his intentions were, he was trying to get something very valuable indeed.

Harry tried to feel for anything else of note. He caught a few other magical artefacts—simple things like Sneakoscopes, a couple of cauldrons filled with potions that were being preserved under stasis charms, and an expansive set of magical paints and canvases—but nothing seemed dangerous about them.

Feeling much more at ease than he had been before, Harry sat down on a sofa and watched Aurora fill two glasses with red wine. She caught him looking and winked at him before sauntering over and sitting right beside him. She pressed her hip to his and pressed a glass into his hands.

“I didn’t poison it,” she joked.

“That’s alright; I always keep a bezoar or two on me,” Harry replied, although he wasn’t joking.

They both took a sip of their wine. It was clearly elven made from the quality of it.

“I won’t be able to stay long,” Harry warned Aurora. “What with Astoria—”

“Why don’t we forget about any other woman besides me for the moment,” Aurora said as she leaned in closer to him. Before Harry realised what she was doing, Aurora had managed to swing one leg over his and settle down nicely atop his lap. She took another sip from her wine and then set the glass aside as she placed her lips directly in front of his.

Harry was the one who closed the gap, kissing Aurora. She deepened the kiss immediately and pushed some of her wine into his mouth. He drank it down while wrapping his arms around her back.

Regardless of her plan tonight, Aurora seemed to genuinely want to have sex with him. She rolled her hips on top of his and pressed her breasts against his chest as her tongue battled with his for dominance.

As much as she was trying to seduce him now, Harry wasn’t going to let his mind wander from the task at hand, not that he didn’t enjoy feeling her body against his.

“You asked me to handcuff you, didn’t you?” Harry asked in a husky tone.

“Ooh,” Aurora purred. She pulled back with a saucy grin. “Have something special in mind for me?”

“Something like that,” Harry chuckled in agreement.

Grabbing her ass, Harry stood up from the sofa and carried Aurora with him. She wrapped her limbs around his body, giggling away as he started over towards her bed.

While he didn’t actually have any handcuffs, there were several spells used to create magical bonds that would keep a person’s hands tied up. Of course, these could always be undone thanks to magic, and Harry wasn’t willing to risk the chance that she somehow had a way out of magical handcuffs.

So, as he dropped her on her bed, he drew his wand and conjured two sets of muggle handcuffs. They could always be banished, but Harry truly believed that if Aurora had planned for this situation, she would’ve prepared for the magical equivalent which needed to be dispelled instead of banished.

Aurora raised her back off of the bed, showing off the curve of her breasts through her dress as Harry roughly grabbed her wrists and raised them above her head towards the frame of her bed. He tightened one end of each set of handcuffs around the frame of the bed and then tied the other end around her wrists.

“So, what are you going to do to me now?” Aurora asked, her eyes filled with anticipation.

“You really must think I’m stupid,” Harry said, suddenly pulling back from Aurora.

She looked up in utter confusion and tried to sit up, but the handcuffs kept her pinned to the top of her bed frame. “Harry, you’re scaring me.”

“Please,” Harry rolled his eyes as he stood up and drew his wand. “Accio omnioculars.”

The moment that the invisible omnioculars landed in his hand, Aurora’s face shifted completely. That scared, confused expression gave way to something filled with disdain as she realised that her plan was foiled. Her lips were pressed tightly shut, holding back whatever insulting words she wanted to hurl his way.

“You’re not the first person to try this on me,” Harry informed her as he stuffed the omnioculars into his robes for safe keeping. He’d go over the footage at a later date to see if she happened to record anything of use. Naturally, he’d wipe what happened between him and Aurora from the recording. “Now, why don’t we talk about what Rhys is up to.”

Aurora shook her head, refusing to speak.

Harry let out a tired sigh. He reached down into her robes and plucked out her wand before stowing it within his own robes. “Fine then. I’ll talk, you listen.”

He started casually walking around her flat, scanning for anything else that he might have missed as he spoke. “The fact that neither Rhys or any of his cronies have decided to participate in the election is quite confusing. For the man who’s had the most criticisms of the current government to not try to run suggests that he’s up to something. You and I both know that he would’ve had a decent shot at winning the whole thing if he tried.”

Aurora’s wardrobe was neat and orderly. Harry poked around and found nothing out of the ordinary. Moving onto the small desk he found by her bed, he rifled through scrolls of parchment. Most of them were simple memos from Rhys or others from his faction trying to coordinate meetings and confirming details of planned motions within the Wizengamot. Nothing exactly criminal, but more of his Aurors would be able to do a deeper dive into these documents when they had the time. For now, Harry conjured a large box and began transferring the documents into it.

“You obviously invited me here to try and blackmail me if the recording device is anything to go by, but what were you really hoping to do with it? Or, should I say, what was Rhys hoping to do with it?” Harry asked.

Again, he was met with silence.

“Right,” Harry muttered, shaking his head in frustration. “Be as silent as you want. Once I’m done here, I’ll be taking you into custody and tossing you into a Ministry cell until we can get you to a trial before the Wizengamot. And you’ll have plenty of Aurors coming in to ask you questions everyday. If you stay silent throughout it all, you’ll end up in Azkaban. Or, you can talk to me now and we can work out a deal.”

A smug smile danced across Aurora’s lips. “I’ll save my statements until I’m before the Wizengamot with reporters around. I bet that Britain would be dying to learn about how you came home with me tonight and the things we did.”

“And I’ll say that I was under duress when I agreed to come home with you,” Harry countered. “You were hiding your knowledge of criminal activity.”

“Then why didn’t you take me into custody in the first place?” Aurora argued. “Was it because you actually do like to fuck other women besides Daphne? I bet I could find a few other witches willing to corroborate that story.”

“It’s not a crime to sleep with other women,” Harry pointed out.

“But it will make you look bad,” Aurora stated. “And then what’ll happen to Daphne’s campaign?”

She wasn’t wrong, but Harry never intended to allow Aurora to speak in front of the Wizengamot in the first place. He was just fishing, trying to see what he could say to get her to open up, and now he’d found his way in. And once he got what he needed to know, he’d deal with her then.

If the world had to have one more Dawlish lingering in Azkaban, then so be it. He and Daphne were already in too deep to give half measures.

“Daphne will be fine,” Harry said as he made his way into her kitchen. “She knows how to handle delicate matters like this.”

He peered into the first cauldron and faintly recognised the scent and colour as that of a popular beauty-enhancement potion. The second, however, he was much more familiar with.

Polyjuice Potion was quite tricky to make and limited in how it could be sold. If you ever wanted more than a couple of days worth of the potion, you had to make it yourself. The only question was why Aurora Calderon was making Polyjuice Potion in the first place.

Harry walked back towards Aurora’s bed. “Why are you making Polyjuice Potion?”

“I like potion making,” she deflected.

“And what do you use these potions for?” Harry asked. “Are you making them for Rhys?”

Aurora snorted. “I already told you that potion making is a hobby of mine. I don’t make them for anyone else.”

“Right,” Harry rolled his eyes. “You do realise that I know the difference between one that has hair added to it and not.”

“It’s my own hair,” Aurora said.

She sounded genuine, but Harry sincerely doubted it. Polyjuice Potion isn’t something that you just make for fun. It’s a long-term, labour-intensive process that can be dashed at a moment’s notice. It’s not something who’s busy working for a Wizengamot member could afford to simply make casually.

No, the more likely scenario is that, given the cauldron was under a stasis charm, that she’d made this Polyjuice Potion a while ago and was holding onto it. Besides, the cauldron was barely a fifth of the way full. She’d been using the potion.

What if it really was Aurora Calderon’s hair. What if…

Since his break-in at Gringotts, Hermione had become terribly interested in the goblin magic used to dispel the effects of Polyjuice Potion. It wasn’t something that a normal witch or wizard could cast, but the effect could be replicated. She’d spent months in her seventh year at Hogwarts trying to recreate the effect as a passion project, and, eventually, she managed something worthwhile. She’d come up with a spell that couldn’t disable the potion entirely, but it could identify if someone was under the effects of it.

With a slick flick of his wand, Harry cast the spell, and Aurora glowed a vibrant green.

She was under the effects of Polyjuice Potion.

Instantly, Harry double checked the handcuffs to ensure that they were still there. Aurora thrashed on the bed, trying to kick him away, but Harry just used one hand to hold her legs back.

“You’re not really Aurora Calderon, are you?” Harry asked her calmly as he finished checking. The enchantments on the handcuffs would automatically resize them to whatever wrist size she had when she returned back to normal.

Aurora’s face twisted up in bitter anger as she looked away from him.

“Fine, don’t talk,” Harry said as he pulled up a chair. “I can wait. I know that no Polyjuice was in your wine because I would’ve turned into Aurora if there had been. The last time you’d have been able to have a sip of any was just before I came out of St Mungo’s. A single dose from an above-average brew will last for around an hour. I’m guessing that you have ten or fifteen minutes at most before the effects start to wear off.”

Aurora only grew angrier as she twisted her body entirely, landing on her front with her arms crossed over her head.

“Turn back around,” Harry ordered her. He didn’t want to risk the chance of her doing something that he couldn’t quite see.

Petulantly, Aurora rolled back over. “You’re a real sick bastard.”

“This can all be over if you tell me what I want to know,” Harry reminded her. “I can help you out or make things as difficult as the law calls for. What I won’t tolerate is someone hiding information about threats to the people I love.”

That was the one edge she thought that she had over him. The idea that she knew something about the attack on Daphne that he wanted to know.

And yet, something in his face must’ve given away the fact that he didn’t really care as much as he claimed to. Or maybe Aurora just decided that it wasn’t worth it.

“Go to hell,” she muttered as she stared up at the ceiling, working her jaw like she was chewing on something.

Minutes ticked by as Harry sat and waited. Five minutes went by, then ten, then fifteen.

By the time the half-hour mark had been reached, he started second guessing his belief that Aurora was the one taking the Polyjuice. She could’ve been making it for Rhys or someone else or—

And then, the reversion began.

It started small with her shoulders bulging out a tiny bit. Then, her brown hair began to quiver and grow in length.

“No,” Aurora muttered as her face began to change shape too.

Harry stood up and watched as Aurora’s form changed entirely into that of a woman he hadn’t seen in over a year.

Nerys Orpington, Rhys’ niece and Cyrus Greengrass’ former ally, blinked as her face returned to its normal shape. Her hair turned black and grew substantially in length until it fell halfway down her back. She’d been missing ever since he and Susan had arrested her and Cyrus Greengrass before they mysteriously broke out of Ministry custody.

Most of the prettiness left her face as she snarled at him. “You should’ve taken me in when you had the chance.”

“Nerys,” Harry murmured. He almost laughed at the hilarity of him and Tonks wondering if she’d been secretly fucking Rhys and that was how she got her position. No, she was here because she was his niece, and they were plotting something together. “From working with Death Eaters to being a lowly Ministry employee under your uncle. How pitiful.”

“The only pitiful one here is you,” Nerys spat at him. “First, you killed the one good man who was going to cleanse this world of the rot that filled it, and then you had to go on and kill everyone who would’ve carried out his will. Do you really think that the Wizarding World can change without strong action?”

“No, I don’t,” Harry admitted regretfully. It would’ve been nice to live in a world where Kingsley was a right and just Minister who helped everything change for the better, but that wasn’t how the world worked. Strength led to change, but Voldemort’s change was wrong. Harry and Daphne would be the heralds of change that gave muggleborns and half-bloods equal status within the Wizarding World and ended the disgusting practice of vile dark magics designed to torment others.

But Nerys continued on like she hadn’t heard him. She raved like she’d gone mad. All traces of her Aurora personality were long gone.

“You’ve ruined so much in your short, miserable life! Rhys is going to be the one to finally enact the change that we all need! He’ll—” Nerys stopped herself, biting her tongue so hard that it began to bleed. She laughed then. Not a giggle or a chuckle, but a full-blown belly laugh. “He’ll fix everything. And you won’t be around to see it. Daphne’s election campaign will fall, Amelia’s will too, and Rhys will rule over a new empire the likes of which the world has never seen before.”

Harry’s senses all went on alert. He focused his magic on anything magical that he’d missed. “I’ll stop him before he can do anything like that.”

“No, you won’t,” Nerys laughed madly. “You won’t be around to see it. You’ll be dead. And so will I.”

Suddenly, a rush of heat ran along the soles of Harry’s shoes. His magical sense picked up on the runes in the floorboards, the ones he’d assumed helped the building to maintain its anonymity in muggle London, activating all at one. It was a cascade of magic that came on too quickly to stop.

Nerys’ laughter was only drowned out by the explosion that ruptured everything. Wood and brick went flying around as the flat shattered. Holes tore through the roof of the building as blasts soared upwards.

And Harry was caught in the middle of it as everything faded around him.