Notes

Harry Potter looked up from the report on his table as a knock sounded on the door. That was unusual. Anybody who needed to speak to him knew just to enter. After a moment in silent contemplation, trying and failing to figure out who it could be, he crooked a finger at the door and it opened. “Come in.”

A woman of indeterminate age stood in the doorway. Long black hair framed a face that Harry could have passed a dozen times in Diagon Alley and not looked at twice. Somehow, though, she reminded him of Dumbledore. “Can I help you with something?”

“Harry Potter,” the woman said. She approached the desk and sat down in the chair in front of it. “My name is Perenelle Flamel. Our mutual friend, a certain Archimedes Shorner, suggested that I approach you.”

Harry blinked, and leaned back in his seat. “Indeed? What can I do for you, Mrs. Flamel?”

“It has been said that you have a knack for finding lost things of unusual provenance, Mr. Potter,” she said.

Harry frowned. He was not sure he liked the way this conversation was going. He was not, in fact, renowned for finding lost things. The only lost things he had found were Voldemort’s horcuxes – and if looked at from a certain angle, the Deathly Hallows. Neither were public knowledge. “I’m not sure what you’re referring to,” he replied.

Perenelle sighed. “Let us not dance around the issue, then. I know of certain objects that you recovered during your war. It is not them in which I have an interest – as I said, it is your talent for finding lost things. My husband, Nicolas, has been kidnapped, and I would like you to find him.”

Harry’s mouth opened, then closed. What? Then he remembered something, and became even more confused. He dragged a palm across his face, trying to wipe the last vestiges of sleep away. Six in the morning is too bloody early to start the day. “From the beginning, then. Ten years ago, after I stopped Voldemort from stealing the stone, Professor Dumbledore told me that it would be destroyed, and that you had planned to die. Was he mistaken?”

Perenelle smiled a small, dark smile that made Harry question his decision to get out of bed this morning. “He was not. That was the story he agreed to spread to certain people, to insure the information was disseminated.”

Harry’s eyes drifted away his visitor. “You wanted people to think you were dead. Let me guess: the stone he had hidden was a fake.”

Perenelle let out what a charitable person would have called a laugh. “I am glad to know that I came to the right person. Yes, indeed. That was our opportunity, long sought, to step out of the public’s eye. It seems it was not as successful as we had hoped.”