Part I: The Magic of Madness

VI.

The girl called Rhine Berlin was sitting at the kitchen table. Molly Weasley had captured and cleaned her when she had first seen her. Dead grey-green eyes looked at the Order members. Brown hair fell in her face. The robes she wore now showed the bump on her flat stomach clearer.

"Young lady," said Kingsley Shacklebolt's low, slow voice, "Please, tell us what you know about what happened to Harry Potter."

"Thames," she said, for the thousandth time, without impatience or weariness.

"We're getting nowhere. She's insane – what do you expect her to say, anyway?"

"The truth," snarled Moody and tried to stare her down, but that was impossible because nobody can stare down a corpse, "What's your real name, girl?"

"Max Planck," she said, looking up at him. Everyone knew it was a lie even if nobody knew who Max Planck really was, "Vill ve get our books?"

"We checked, girl," Moody said and waved the piece of paper she had given Sirius in one twisted hand. Her large crayon writing was visible to nobody. "None of these books were in Flourish and Blott's. You made up these titles, didn't you, to send us on a goose chase?"

"Alastor, not now."

Molly Weasley wrung her hands together, eyes bloodshot, red as her hair. She looked at the girl. She didn't know whether to pity her, or condemn her, since she had tried Harry into doing that with her. She inhaled a breath. She had been crying a lot in the past few months and hours. "Where did you meet Harry, dear?" she said, forcing the last word out.

Rhine pulled her knees up to her chest and began to cry into her kneecaps. She rocked back and forth, and answered no more questions. Remus got up from the table and walked out of the room, raking his fingers through his brown hair, glad nobody looked at him or tried to speak to him. He shut the door behind him and pressed up against it. Weariness and thirty years of it fell on his shoulders.

This was his fault. This was his fault. Harry was insane and it was his fault.

"Harry." Sirius's voice floated down the hallway. Remus shut his eyes – he didn't want to hear that. "Do you remember me? Do you remember me at all?"

"You know you can kill a cat but still keep it alive?" came Harry's voice, weary, tired, "Put poison and a Geiger counter in a box and . . ."

"Wotcher, Remus."

He turned around and smiled when he saw Tonks, awkwardly by his elbow, her hair pink-tipped brown. She had managed to sneak up on him. She held one wrist with her other hand and shifted, uneasily, in a trench coat drenched with rain.

"Hullo Tonks," Remus said, trying to smile but forcing it too much, "Where've you been off to for so long?"

"Scrimgeour," she said with another tangled sigh, "Tellin' him we found Harry. Had to say he was staying with Muggles in Cardiff – Prophet's going to have a field day, innit it?" She shook her hair to make it look windblown, pushing it into her eyes. Even she couldn't keep them from being red. "How are you, Remus?"

"Tired," he said. He kept his mouth shut about the rest. "Better than most."

"I don't think so," she said. Remus raised an eyebrow. Her face colored and she looked down at her feet. "Never mind."

"But the box," Harry's dry voice wafted out, "Has to be sealed against quantum decoherence. Waste of time, otherwise." He laughed. It sounded forced. Ha, ha, ha.

"Hasn't anyone gotten a healer to see him?"

"Dumbledore's trying to convince a mentalist – Adela Adams? – to join the Order. But not yet, and Madame Pomfrey hasn't been able to get away from Hogwarts so far."

Tonks shook her half-pink hair. "This is a nightmare," she whispered with disgust, "I want to wring the neck, personally, of whoever did that."

"Take a number," Remus said without humor.

Soft footsteps padded the ground. Sirius appeared in the doorway of the small bedroom. He had put on a good suit and shaved. His face looked emaciated but it was smiling. His eyes sparkled but looked grieved. "Tonks!" he said, smile stretching, walking over towards her, "Good to see you back again – you haven't met Harry yet, have you?"

She swallowed and her smile quivered. "Oh, no, I really need to, uh – work and um –"

"You can show him that trick you do with your noses!" Sirius tugged on her sleeve and pulled her in. She looked, eyes widened, towards Remus. Remus followed them into Harry's small room, his own hands shaking, heartbeat rising, guilt and bile swarming.

Harry was sitting on the bed, holding the arm in the cast, his plastered leg on a pillow, and untouched dinner on the bedside table. He didn't have glasses on. His eyes looked much bigger, the green consuming the whites, smiling vacantly, looking at the cracks in the wall. Sirius bounded to his godson's side, pulling Tonks along.

"Hey, Harry – this is my cousin's daughter, Nymphadora, but she doesn't like to be called that," Sirius said, pulling the chair closer towards Harry's side. Harry blinked slowly, as though with difficulty. "You can call her Tonks – we all do. She's an Auror."

"You put hydrocyanic acid in the box with the cat, but the cat can't touch the acid. Ruins it if the cat can get at the acid," he said, picking at the plaster, "I don't think Schrödinger liked cats very much."

"Wotcher, Harry," Tonks said slowly. He didn't look up. Remus swallowed hard, thick, pain constricting his chest. Sirius smiled widely, as if the larger he smiled the more right it would make things.

"You know I don't like cats very much either," Sirius said, leaning onto his knees, raking one hand through his hair, "Except Crookshanks. He's alright – don't you think Crookshanks is a good cat, Remus?"

"Very good cat," Remus said. His voice was inaudible. He tried to smile, too, but gave up. Tonks checked her wrist even though she wore no watch.

"Look at the time!" she gushed, relief, "I have to, uh, go and meet . . . Dawlish . . . pub . . . business – Dark Wizards –" She turned on her heels, and tripped as she ran from the room. Remus wanted to follow her. He stared at Harry, who turned, slowly, and smiled just as wide as Sirius.

"The cat becomes half alive and half dead," Harry explained, and tapped his temple with one trembling finger, "Do you think the cat can see God?"

"I'm sure it can, Harry," Sirius said. He spoke like he was at a man's deathbed, and couldn't believe the Reaper stood there, too. Remus clenched his hands so hard his nails dug into the muscle and the bone.

VII.

Leslie Callahan was on duty September the eighth. She was at the desk again, filling out the remains of Doctor Gilliam's patient files. There was a mix up in filing. John Doe (Thames London and Harry Potter, too) had not had a final analysis completed. She wondered how that had happened.

"We need to speak with Daniel Gilliam."

Leslie looked up. Two people, a man and a woman, in black suits and glasses stood in front of the desk. The man had a metal case in his left hand, and the woman had a six-star pin on her lapel.

"Excuse me?" Leslie asked.

"SIS," the woman said, and pulled a badge from her inside pocket. The seal of the Secret Intelligence Service reflected in a plastic case. The name said Jane Smith, and the woman had an American accent. "We need to speak with Daniel Gilliam."

Leslie swallowed and stood up, fumbling with the decision to put the pen down or take it with her. The woman's cold brown eyes looked at her behind dark glasses. There were flecks of wild, feline green in the brown, like grass in mud. "O-Of course I-I'll –"

"Now," the woman said. Leslie fled the desk and towards the hall, slipping in her plastic clogs. Gilliam was with the seventy-two-year-old with rheumatic fever. She heard his brogue float down the hallway. She saw him, back turned, by the patient's bed, his hair balding and white, like candyfloss.

"Doctor Gilliam," Leslie said, voice shaking, hands pale, vomit in her throat, "There's – there's people from SIS here to see you."

"What?" Gilliam turned. Eyebrows were cocked and his skin turned the color of his hair.

"MI-6," she said and licked her lips. She tried to smile. "You been, you been spying on us, Doctor?"

Neither of them laughed. Gilliam fixed his tie and swept his thin hair back, walking towards the man and woman by the desk. They stood, still as statues, cold as marble, black as ravens, and looked at him with unseen eyes flickered with bits of green.

"I'm Doctor Gilliam," he introduced, offering a hand. Neither took it and he let it fall to his side. "What's this about?"

"Classified matter," the man said with a Dublin lit, "You need to come with us, Doctor."

"Excuse me?"

"You need to come with us."

"Not until I know what this is about!"

The woman stepped forward, her face etched, scowling though expressionless. "We have some questions regarding a patient under your care, Doctor – Harry Potter."

"He was discharged a week ago, on the fourth," Gilliam said quickly. His heart was pounding too loudly for him to hear his thoughts. "To, to his grandfather."

"Please come with us." There was no request or option in her voice. Gilliam would come, either in handcuffs or cooperation. He looked, helplessly, at the nurses behind him, the colleagues staring, the patients whispering. He swallowed and offered himself at the mercy of the agents. The woman led him away and the man approached Leslie.

"I need all the patient files for Harry Potter. I need to speak with Alison Monroe, as well." His eyes contained the sparkle, promise, and threat of pain and sanctions if he was not obeyed. Leslie scampered, feeling ill, wondering what the poor boy could have done to incite the MI-6 agents' wrath.

VIII.

There were numbers floating around him. They were numbers but didn't look like numbers – like light that were and weren't numbers at the same time. He tried to grab one, to see it, to feel it, to prove it had a purpose and they danced out of reach. He couldn't move far. His leg was captured. He was bound. He watched them glitter.

The new room was dark. There was no white. There was no screaming – they had chased away the screaming. But they were angry. They had been asleep so long. They told him not to yell, even though there was so much pain in his arm and leg and ribs. They told him not to speak about the things in the white room, about the others and the White Coats.

Rhine was gone. He shook with fright. He wanted to know where she was. They couldn't have her. She was his responsibility, they said. He had to protect her.

"Hullo."

"Who's there?" he asked. He held onto his broken arm. He couldn't fight if they attacked.

"It's just me, Harry – it's just me, Padfoot."

"I'm the Cat. Are you well?"

"I can't feel my leg," he said and tried to twitch it even though it didn't budge or move in its white plaster cast.

"Don't worry – Madame Pomfrey's coming down to see you first chance she gets. Busy school year and, and that." Something touched his hand and he yelled out because the hands were too warm on his cold skin. "Don't worry, you'll be back at Hogwarts before you can say Snitch."

"Pain means you're alive," said the Cat, and he could tell that whatever the Cat was it had grey eyes and hair, "It's a good thing to be alive. It means you can still do what you need to do."

"What? What do I need to do?"

"Harry?"

He shut out the other noise, the other voice, the man with warm hands in the dark room. He listened to the Cat. He listened to its purring voice. He listened to its message, its instructions, because he could tell that it was important to listen.

"You need to get a computer. A good computer. One that can work quickly." He nodded intently. He squinted to try and see the Cat. He could see the dark room. He could see the man with warm hands. He couldn't see the Cat. It scared him. It was invisible, like air and gravity and God. "And you need to kill the Black Hat."

He drew backwards. He knew that man. The Black Hat worked for the Man in Blue.

"I can't," he choked, "He knows . . . he – he can get to everybody. We're not safe. I can't –"

"Who're you talking about? Of course you're safe. Dumbledore made this place safe."

"The Black Hat!" he snapped to the man with warm hands, "Don't you listen!"

"Black hat? What hat?"

"You can and will kill the Black Hat," the Cat told him, soothing, calm, collective, sweet, honest, "You need to, otherwise he'll hurt more people. You need to kill the Black Hat first, because without him, the rest of the Coats are powerless."

"No," he moaned and drew tighter, holding closer to his chest his arm even though his ribs hurt most, "They're too powerful to ever be powerless."

"You must. You need to."

He shuddered. He was cold again. The dark was coming in, like rain. It was sweeping him with chill. He was thinking of the Black Hat, of the Man in Blue, of the other White Coats that flew under the Man in Blue's banner.

"There's five," he muttered, to himself, not to the rain, chill, or man with warm hands, "Five White Coats."

"Harry?"

"The Black Hat. The Beldam. The Southern Gentlemen. The Painter. The Demon." Their faces flashed across his eyes. Their wild eyes. Their furious eyes. Their glittery fly-eyes, staring down at him. "There's five of them. There were six of us. Seven. Mediterranean." He smiled. "Five, six, seven. Aren't numbers fun?"

"Harry?" Warm hands touched his hair. They flickered towards his scar. They didn't touch it. "Harry, don't worry, Madame Pomfrey's coming soon – Ron and Hermione, too. I'll bet Dumbledore'll let them come and see you."

"You must kill the Black Hat," the Cat told him.

"I can't."

"Harry what?"

"I CAN'T!" he roared. He swung his fist. It hit something. The screaming stopped so he began to hit again and again and again with the plaster hand. He smelled blood. It was like Mediterranean Jane's. "I CAN'T – I WON'T BECOME LIKE THEM! MURDERER! MURDERER!"

Thump. Smash. Something hit him. The screaming grew louder and louder. He couldn't bare it. People grabbed him. Nails drew on skin. People's hands – warm hands – the smell of beer –

Blue eyes. He screamed.

"GET AWAY FROM ME!"

"Harry it's us!"

"I SAW WHAT YOU DID TO MEDITERRANEAN!"

"It's me, Professor Lupin, remember?"

"Stun him, for Merlin's sake!"

"I KNOW WHERE YOU BURRIED HER BODY! I KNOW WHERE YOU PUT HER HEAD!" He swung the plaster arm. It was covered in speckles of blood. He saw blood before. Blood on white, dots on laboratory floors, as they shoved the needles – "MUM!"

"For God's –!"

"Arthur, do something!"

"Stupefy!"

And then the screaming stopped.

IX.

Remus joined Sirius for a beer tonight. He didn't drink much. He often wondered why he didn't drink more, now. The house was silent. Everyone else had gone, but Remus stayed. The beer tasted sour but neither of them minded it.

"He's really gone, isn't he, Mooney?" Sirius asked. His face was buried behind black bangs. Remus couldn't look at him. "He's really – he's mad, isn't he?"

"We don't know that," Remus began.

"Of course we bloody do!" Sirius looked up. His face was patchwork bruises and a broken nose. Harry had beaten him black and blue in his fugue. "He's insane."

"Dumbledore will find a way to fix it."

"Dumbledore," spat Sirius, "Was supposed to know a way to keep things like this from happening."

"We don't even know what really happened."

"I'm going to hunt down whoever did this," Sirius promised to the tabletop, "I'm going to find who did this and I'm going to tear them apart. I'll blast them to pieces so small they won't be able to find a finger."

Remus prayed it was just the beer speaking. He looked at his friend and saw vengeance lighting up the dead dark eyes.

"'Scuse me, 'Scuse me!"

Boots shuffled in the girl in the bomber coat. Rhine Berlin, she said her name was, over and over again. Her face and fingers were covered in ash. She had rolled up her sleeves to paint numbers in soot on her arms. Remus looked at her. He didn't want to deal with her now, never, actually. But he smiled in pity at the poor pregnant thing.

Rhine tugged at his shirt sleeve. Her filthy fingers discolored his arm too. "'Scuse me, vhere is books, paper?"

"What do you want?" Sirius barked at her. He had even less patience. He didn't have any patience anymore, really.

"Happy life for Tesla, Edison," she mumbled. She still tugged at Remus's arm. He took out his wand and summoned some paper from the next room over. She pounced upon it, dipping her finger in the ink to work. "Mama alvays told me you got to vrite addresses, und I vant to be a good Mama too."

She wrote down 4 Privet Drive. Sirius grabbed her arm and Remus stood up. Rhine blinked lazily.

"Who told you that address?"

"The Black Hat," she said simply. Sirius's fingers tightened around her wrist. He could break it, easy, since there wasn't much to that.

"Who's that?"

"Let her go, Sirius," Remus warned, moving just that much closer towards the unstable man. Rhine blinked her eyes again. Her breath smelled like halitosis and garbage. Remus wondered if she had lived off of garbage.

"He's the one vho found Thames," she said and began to shrink into her coat, "He found all of us. Mißgeburten." She whimpered, like an abused kitten. "Called us Mißgeburten. 144 Oppenheimer Avenue, London."

"What?"

"Oppenheimer," she repeated, spitting the word into Sirius's face, "Vhere Lazarus and Mediterranean are buried. But you hafe to run if you don't vant the real Mißgeburten to beat you to it." She giggled and tapped her ink-black fingers onto the tip of Sirius's nose. "You look like a puppy." He growled and let her go.

Remus followed him out of the kitchen and redoubled his steps when he saw Sirius by the doorway. His footsteps thundered on the dusty carpet. The acrid smell rose to his nose and he grabbed Sirius by his own foul-smelling robe.

"Where do you think you're going?"

"She gave a London address. It's a lead on whatever happened to Harry," Sirius said. Innocent, nonplussed. He saw no problems with his plan.

"They'll throw you back into Azkaban if Aurors catch you outside!"

"Let me go, Lupin."

Remus's fingers tightened. "You're not going to help the Order by getting yourself Kissed or killed. We'll investigate the lead."

And Sirius turned around to laugh in Remus's face. It was a shuddering, hollow, humorless slap across the face. "You think I'm going to leave anything up to you? It's your fault he's insane in the first place!"

He swung a fist and broke Sirius's aristocratic nose for the second time that day. Blood sprayed up on the walls. The Animagus stumbled backwards and hit the table. He looked bewildered, stunned, like his godson in the room above. Remus stared without seeing at the blood on his fist and on the wall and on Sirius's face.

"'Scuse me, 'Scuse me – I need paper. Lots of paper."

Nobody looked at Rhine.

X.

The next morning the sky was bright and blue and full of light. Remus was nursing a hangover and bruised knuckles. Tonks wondered how he got both but didn't want to ask. She chewed on a piece of bubblegum and the sound drowned out all the traffic in London central.

"I got in contact with Frieda – my old dormmate, the mentalist – she's supposed to meet me for lunch on Saturday. Dumbledore wants me to get her in the Order," Tonks babbled. She'd said all of this before. Remus still listened, checking his map and the little index card in his fingers.

Inspector John Collins

020 7230 1212 ext. 6546
Metropolitan Police Service
New Scotland Yard

He'd get what he could from the Muggle detective. Then he'd go to Oppenheimer Avenue.

He owed it to Harry to find out what had happened. It was his fault.

The Scotland Yard's building was tall and grey. It was full of people – uniformed bobbys and trench-coated inspectors. Many eyed Tonks in her cutoff shirt and low-rider jeans. Remus flushed when she didn't. A receptionist looking strained listened to his request.

"You're in luck," she said, "He's not on a case today. You can go see him – desk twelve, next to Homicide." She smiled when Remus and Tonks left her. He didn't think she should have. People shouldn't smile right after they've mentioned murder.

"Merlin, this place is worse than Auror's Offices at rush time," Tonks observed, sidestepping a hurried man in uniform, "I don't know how Muggles manage without magic."

"Tonks, shush," he said. The ring of a thousand telephones pounded into his head, shrill and echoing, reminding him of the hospital machines. He walked passed desk nine, desk ten, eleven, and stopped at twelve.

A man was asleep amongst paperwork and coffee and photographs of family members. Remus looked at Tonks, who smiled at him, and kicked the back of the man's chair. He snored, he shook, he shot up, and scratched his eyes.

"Ger, ah, Inspector Collins, at yer service," he said. Blue eyes looked at Lupin brown. "What can I help you two with?"

"One of the nurses at St. Sarah's Hospital gave me this," Remus said and passed forth the little business card, "You're working on my nephew's case." It felt strange to say. Remus was more family than the Dursleys were. But he'd been just as neglectful as them.

"And who's your nephew? Oh – he wasn't the beat up screaming kid, was he?"

Remus's hands went tight, his muscles taunt. Collins flipped through papers on his desk. He didn't hear Remus correct him and say, "No, he was Harry Potter." Collins procured a manila folder stained with coffee rings and opened up.

Photographs of Harry's smashed up, contorted, screaming, bloodied face first reached his eyes.

"What'd you want to know?"

"What exactly happened to him?" Tonks managed to ask because Remus couldn't. The photographs burned into his mind.

A broken nose. A blown pupil. Bloody skin covered in scratches. Hair shorn off. Brain matter leaking out of one side.

"Well we ain't sure either. Woman called in an ambulance on Baker Street. He'd just been wandering around there, screaming. Can't tell you much more – ongoing investigation. He doing better?"

"Y-yeah," Tonks lied because Remus couldn't.

"We'll tell you if there's any leads on the case."

Tonks shot him a look, pursed lips, eyes crooked. Remus shrugged at her. She grabbed Collins by the wrist, oh so gently, and looked at him in the eye.

"Thank you, Inspector, for doing all this. I don't think I could live if we never found out what happened to my cousin." And Tonks began to cry. She could've been an actress in West End, Remus thought, numb and embarrassed. Collins looked awkward.

"It'll be alright. You've got the best in Metro police lookin' out for him. C'mon, you want some coffee?"

"Oh, t-thank you," she made herself choke and Collins led her away.

Deceptive, cruel, manipulative – Marauder material. She was blood with Sirius, alright. He pulled the same kind of trick on older girls for attention. Remus's knuckles hurt when he thought of Sirius and shook the past out of his mind.

Harry's case file was on the desk. He took the opportunity to open it and began to read.

Broken left radius + ulna

Broken left femur

Broken right fibula + tibia

Broken temporal bone

From observable notes to evidence log – there was a close-up photograph of a little plastic bracelet, like the kind the hospital had given Harry. But it didn't say 'DOE, JOHN – ICU' like the hospital bracelet had. Remus squinted to read it.

Nat. Name: P, HJ Given: LONDON, R.T.

Sup.: OSTERMAN, Jane

Chim. Child: Fielding, Davenport, Handler

Admin: 7/1/2005 3:15:48 AM. Lbtmy, Amyg.

PROPERTY OF LAZARUS LTD.

Rhine Berlin has said that 144 Oppenheimer Avenue was where Lazarus was buried. She must have meant Lazarus Ltd. That was a Muggle company title, Remus knew, but what on earth did that mean?

"Can I help you, sir?"

A Scotsman was leering down at Remus, arms crossed, eyes squinted. Remus closed the folder, said no, and went to find Tonks somewhere by the coffee machine. He didn't know how Muggles dealt with not having coffee automatically.

She bade goodbye to Inspector Collins and seemed glad to be rid of him.

"What'd you find out?" she asked, excited, but serious. The Auror's glint was in her baby-blue eyes today.

"Not much. Give me some paper." Summoning up his memory, he wrote down exactly what had been on the photographed bracelet onto the paper bit. His handwriting was rushed and sloppy but readable. "This is the second time I've heard Lazarus mentioned."

"What's Ltd. mean?"

"Limited. It's what Muggles put after company names.

"Weird," she said, shaking her bubblegum head. Remus sighed and pointed at the name Osterman, Jane.

"We should find her. I don't know what 'sup' means, but it's a full name, right?"

"Yeah." She tucked the paper into her pocket and looked square at him. "I think you need sleep."

"I'd say the same of you. You swallowed two bottles of Rambo Raggie's Energy Potion this morning."

"Remus," she said and took his wrist like she had taken Collins's, "You need sleep."

"I assure you I'm fine. And we're wasting time." He pulled out of his pocket a map of London and began to pick it apart with his eyes for where Oppenheimer Avenue was. He tried to ignore Tonk's observatory look and the photographs of Harry's frozen, screaming face and the memory of the mad babbling about Mediterranean Jane –

Mediterranean Jane. Jane Osterman. Were they the same person?

"I KNOW WHERE YOU BURRIED HER BODY! I KNOW WHERE YOU PUT HER HEAD!"

Well, whoever she was, she was decapitated. Or could he trust anything that Harry said?

Disclaimer:

I do not own Harry Potter. He and his universe are property of JK Rowling and Warner Brothers. I own this plotline and all original characters contained within it.

Author's Note:

Ugh. Been sick, took SATs, still need to do Studio Art homework. Finally finished this chapter and am not happy with it. It's nowhere near as good as how chapter one came out.

Now that I've trashed my own work, I'll hope you review it and tell me I'm wrong!

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