The Shadowchasers
By the time Minerva had coaxed the boy away and found the Aurors' base of operations - a tent magically enlarged on the inside and enchanted to look like a Muggle telephone box on the outside - Arabella’s Protectors had arrived. They were a kind-faced elderly couple in soft azure robes, and they took charge of the boy expertly, patting and soothing him in a manner Minerva knew she was incapable of mustering. He was clearly best off in their care. Still, she felt a little wistful as he vanished into the tent, the hand that had held hers now clasping that of the female Protector. The last thing she heard before she turned to go was the woman asking "What's your name?" and his voice replying "Cyrus ..." followed by a surname she couldn't make out.
Cyrus, she repeated to herself, heading off to the meeting place Arabella had indicated earlier. Hold on, Cyrus. I won't forget about you. I couldn't if I tried.
Arabella was waiting for her there on the periphery of the damaged area, now accompanied by Dumbledore. Both of them had singed hair and clothing, as if they'd been walking through the fires without magical protection. Neither volunteered any explanation for their appearance, however, and from their identical stony expressions, Minerva gathered that she probably should not inquire.
"You got the boy settled, then?" Arabella asked as she approached.
"Yes," said Minerva. She saw Dumbledore watching her and gave him back a look that she hoped said Ask me later. It seemed to work. He said nothing, but touched her arm in silent empathy.
"Good," Arabella said briskly. "Come along. We're needed in the forest."
They were far enough from the center of the town, and near enough to the forest's edge, that they could almost have walked there, but to save time, they Apparated, materializing on soft, damp ground still warm from the day's sun.
"Most of these incidents have taken place near wooded areas like this one," Arabella explained as she led them past the first ragged line of oaks and beeches. "The attackers use the trees as cover while their forces gather, then strike and fade back into the forest."
That sounded terribly inefficient to Minerva. "Why not just Apparate directly to the attack site?" she asked.
"Why?" Arabella frowned. "Oh - you haven't been old enough to Apparate for very long; you won't have learned all the little tricks and rules yet. They can't because it's too dangerous - the more people you have Apparating to the same location at once, the greater the chance of splinches."
Minerva peered up at the sky, where a few early stars were beginning to appear in the spaces between treetops. "Well, I can't imagine that squadrons of them are swooping in on broomsticks, so they must be using Portkeys," she said.
"So we believe," said Dumbledore. "Some of the researchers in the Magical Surveillance group have developed a spell that will let us trace the path of a Portkey journey from one end point to the other, even without the Portkey itself. To use the spell, though, we must be able to pinpoint the location where the attackers entered the forest. They've been blocking our attempts to do that magically, so we have resorted to a more mundane method."
"And that is?"
"Scent," said Dumbledore.
"That's where Animagi come in handy," said Arabella. "That's how we intend to use you."
Use me? Minerva wondered. Something about that word choice was less than pleasant, but she ended up letting it go. They all had enough to worry about without adding quibbles over diplomacy to it.
~~~
Ten minutes later, she was creeping through thick old-growth forest, her head nearly touching the ground as she picked out the scent of living creatures from the drifting stench of smoke. Dumbledore had explained the reason Animagi were preferred for this sort of work: though ordinary animals could sniff out trails just as well, they couldn't analyze or report on what they discovered. Human intelligence and animal senses were a powerful combination.
Minerva had never really tried to follow a scent this way before - since all her previous quarry had been confined within the relatively small space that was Hogwarts, she'd only needed to watch and listen. Luckily, instinct took over now and filled the gaps in her experience. She could tell when a scent was the wrong sort, or when a path was going nowhere. It saved time, and that was good. Evening was fast approaching; pools of shadow were already beginning to form in the forest's hollows and thickets. Soon it would be blacker than the inside of a sack, and though she could see in the dark when she was in this form, she didn't want to meet the neighborhood predators if she could avoid it. What was more, she knew that the longer she spent following false trails, the greater the chance that the real trail would be lost.
After close to an hour of searching, she came upon something promising: a wild, doglike smell that she thought must surely be wolf. Its essence set off a deep, primal reaction at the heart of her cat-nature, and her mind responded by serving up a series of horrific wolf-related images from earlier in the day. Torn throat. Blood and glass and ash on the ground. The boy's face --
The boy. She forced herself to relax. The boy's father was gone beyond all hope of recovery, but she could still get recompense for the boy himself - if she could help to catch the men who had commanded the beasts.
That bit of rational thought was enough to counteract the powerful upsurge of instinct, and in control of herself once more, though with bristling fur and partly bared teeth, she set off along the trail again. It went straight to a semi-open area - not a true clearing, but a place where the trees were less dense - where it was suddenly joined by a medley of human scents, with repellent hints of dark magic mixed in.
Minerva made a broad circle around the spot, sniffing and considering. Then she switched back to her human shape, pulled out her wand and sent a red-and-gold beacon into the gathering dusk. Arabella and Dumbledore appeared almost immediately, one after the other and a few yards apart, followed a moment later by another person.
I know him, Minerva realized in surprise. This was one of the Aurors who'd investigated the student recruitment ring she'd stumbled onto during her first year of teaching. He'd been in the room when his colleagues were questioning her, standing silently off to the side as if he were supervising their efforts. Though she'd been addled by painkilling potions and truth spells at the time, she remembered his face. It wasn't one you'd forget easily: deep, ugly scars cut across cheek and forehead and pulled the corner of his mouth out of shape. Underneath the damage, he looked no more than middle-aged in wizard years - perhaps seventy or eighty, certainly younger than Albus or Arabella, though his hair had more grey in it than either of theirs.
When he saw Minerva, he scowled and turned to Arabella.
"You brought her?" he demanded.
"We needed an Animagus, didn't we?" Arabella returned. "Minerva, this is Alastor Moody, the other senior Auror on this case. I believe you two have met before."
"Not formally," said Minerva. "How do you do, Mister Moody?" She waited for Moody to offer her a hand to shake, but he only grunted in response.
Offended, Minerva turned away from his glowering face and deliberately addressed her report to Arabella. "This is where they entered the forest. There's scent all over this area, and leading off that way -" she pointed back toward the now-invisible town " - but none on the other sides. The ground is all trampled, too, you see, with footprints and paw-marks. I don't think they brought the wolves with them, though. The wolf trail comes from another direction. Could they have summoned them when they arrived?"
"That's what they do," said Moody shortly. "Albus, are you going to cast the tracing spell, or am I?"
"I will, if you like," said Dumbledore. Moody shrugged.
"Very well then," Dumbledore said. "Minerva, please show me the exact spot where you believe the attackers manifested."
"Just there," said Minerva, indicating a scuffed section of ground. Dumbledore walked to it, drew an intricate symbol in the dirt with the tip of his wand, and whispered an incantation - not in the usual Latin, she thought, but perhaps Greek. She had learned a bit of that at school, but not enough to understand what he had said.
As they all watched, a tiny ball of hissing, crackling white fire appeared over the place Dumbledore had marked. It grew to the size of a Snitch, then a Bludger, then a Quaffle. Then it rose, hovered briefly just above the trees, and shot off to the east, leaving a blazing trail in the air behind it.
"Right, I'm off to get the rest of my group," said Moody. "Come along with us, Albus. Arabella, we'll report to you as soon as we can." He glanced at Minerva. "Not bad. But if you've misled us somehow, I'll be back to find out why."
"Alastor," Arabella admonished. "She is Malcolm McGonagall's daughter, you know."
"Hmmmph. Some recommendation," Moody said, and Disapparated. Dumbledore made a droll face at Minerva, as if to say Don't take him seriously, then followed.
"What on earth was that all about?" Minerva asked Arabella as soon as the two men had gone. She was torn between bewilderment and anger. She hadn't done anything to Moody. Why should he be so unpleasant to her? And what had he meant by that last remark? Insulting her father was not the way to get on her good side - especially not right now. The image of the orphaned boy and the dead man fluttered across her mind's eye again, and she bit down hard on her lower lip to drive it away.
Arabella snorted. "Alastor can be a bit overzealous at times. It's part of what makes him successful as an Auror, though I'll tell you candidly that it also makes me want to give him a good, hard slap sometimes. Anyway, he wanted to have you interrogated with Veritaserum back when you discovered Grindelwald's recruiters at Hogwarts. Albus felt that would be needlessly traumatic for you, and asked me to prevent it if I could. I spoke to my superiors, who agreed that a basic Truth Spell would suffice. Alastor was overruled. He wasn't at all happy about it."
"I noticed," Minerva said. "Why did he want the Veritaserum used in the first place?"
"Because he's Alastor," Arabella said dryly. "He probably slips some of the stuff to his own mother a few times a year, just to make certain she's not Grindelwald in disguise. That was a joke," she added when Minerva didn't laugh. "All right, seriously, he simply couldn't believe that you'd come upon the recruiters by accident. He thought you must have known about it and set them up to save yourself."
Infuriating though this idea was, Minerva had to admit it made sense in a devious sort of way.
"Is there anything I can do to change his mind?” she asked.
"Probably not," Arabella said. "He'll come around in time, when he sees you're trustworthy. Until then, don't worry about it. He may be overly cautious, but he isn't irrational. He'll do nothing to harm you." Suddenly, she staggered a little and put out her hand to brace herself against Minerva's shoulder. "I'm dead on my feet. That hour of rest wasn't nearly enough. I think I'll go back to the Ministry offices - at least there I can sit down and start the reports. Why don't you come along? You can wait for Albus there."
The thought of sitting in a clean, quiet office, far away from all the ugliness of the day, was so wonderful that it nearly brought tears to Minerva's eyes. But she wasn't finished here. Not by far.
"Go on without me," she told Arabella. "I've a promise to keep."