Disclaimer: As I’m not a blonde, rich, talented Englishwoman, I’m afraid this isn’t mine. Harry Potter ™ and all related characters belong to JK Rowling. I just borrowed them for three chapters.

She was more miserable than she had ever been in her whole life. How could she have let this happen, right now? Who had done this to them?

A hard knock on the door shook her out of her thoughts. She wiped her eyes hastily. Whoever it was needn’t know she had been crying. She then opened the door hesitantly.

“May I have a word with you, madam?”

She sighed. “Of course, Mr Potter, erm… I’d say ‘come in’ but I guess we’ll be short of space, won’t we?” The boy nodded.

“Well, that won’t be a problem, Mrs…?”

She laughed sadly. Why, after all these years, someone had finally bothered to ask her name… “It’s Susan, dearie. Susan Austin. And why won’t that be a problem, may I ask…?”

The boy looked at her for a moment. “Would you mind waiting here for a moment, please?” She shook her head. “Good. I’ll be right back.”

Indeed, less than two minutes later, he was back. “I guess we can talk safely now, Mrs Austin. Would you mind coming out of the toilet now, please…?”

She did so, exiting the cubicle in a hesitant pace. “What do you want from me, Mr Potter?” she demanded.

He seemed to hesitate. She was feeling really uneasy towards him now. That boy was a lot smarter than she had initially given him credit for, which was good in a way, but if the murderer wasn’t discovered… well, she could sense he would place the blame on her in the blink of one’s eyes. “I just need information.” He looked at her in the eye. “When did you board the train?”

The question caught her by surprise, but she answered it nonetheless. “In London. Mathias and I come from London every year to get the students home…”

Harry frowned. “May I dare to assume Mathias is the machinist…?” he said, eyeing her with… amusement?

Susan Austin looked taken aback by how lightly he seemed to be taking the situation. She nodded. Harry, however, was far from over with her.

“So, when did you arrive in here, madam?” he asked.

It was her turn to frown. She had to be very cautious… “Two nights ago. We usually stay in the Leaky Cauldron for a while, and we wanted to pay our last respects…” For a moment, Harry thought he saw something that resembled commotion in her eyes, but before he could analyze it better, it was gone.

This set Harry up. He needed to know what was going on there, and he needed to know it now. “Then for how long has that man been in the compartment, Mrs Austin?”

He prayed she wouldn’t realise he knew nothing and was acting upon a mere conjecture. Still, judging by the look on her face, he’d hit the target.

Susan looked at him, shocked. “Do you intend to say I murdered him and left him there?” she whispered.

“Well, as a matter of fact, I didn’t, but that’s a possibility, you have to admit it. But I meant something slightly different…” He struggled not to shiver at the look on her face. “Why did you hide a Death Eater in here? Why did you keep students away from that particular compartment? Why did you have to go and kill him?”

Susan cringed. “I did not…”

Harry put all his effort into remaining impassible, like he hadn’t heard her faint complaint. “Then how did you know it was a man? Because you had seen him alive! You always referred to the victim as ‘him’, but we both know it’s impossible to recognize him in that state! Once and for all, Mrs Austin…” He was struggling to look at least intimidating now. He was succeeding, or at least it seemed so. “… what was this man doing in the Hogwarts Express?”

Susan could not keep her tears any longer. Her heart remained the same way it had been when she was young, seemingly cold and untouchable, her face and concerns hidden behind a mask, but she knew that was a fake. She could act no more…

“You say you didn’t kill him; what proof do I have of that?” Harry insisted with the crying woman, though he felt like beating himself into a pulp. However, he could not imagine what was still to come.

“He was my son!” Susan cried out.

Silence ensued. Harry let out a breath. This promised to be a very long story…

XoX

“What!”

Harry nodded. “Yeah… sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But it does make sense…”

Ginny had been hearing Harry’s explanation for a quarter of an hour now and still couldn’t believe the situation could get more complicated than it already was. “So, let me get this straight… this man…” She pointed to the door of the compartment “… is the witch’s son?”

“Yep” Harry answered. “We’ll have to check this story with someone in the Order, though…”

“Why?” Ginny’s tone was a mix of impatience and curiosity.

“She claims he was a spy for the Order… a Death Eater that could give information on the attacks planned easily, for he was not a recent addition and wasn’t close enough to Voldemort to be suspected…”

Ginny sighed, putting her head in her hands. “I don’t get it, Harry… what is a spy for the Order doing in here?” She shook her head. “It doesn’t make sense!” she burst. Harry twitched in impatience.

“I’m not finished yet, Ginny. Susan Austin says her son refused to kill a child a fortnight ago and had to flee the Death Eaters after he lost the battle to kill them. Apparently, he had had enough and wanted to seek refuge within the Order… that’s the reason he boarded the train, to go unnoticed…”

“… but someone found he was coming in here and killed him… this is getting more confusing by the moment. For example, how did his mother prevent any students from coming in here?” Ginny was obviously in denial over the exposed theory. Harry couldn’t blame her, but he still thought it was worth acting on that new perspective.

“I also asked her about that. What she told me was that that compartment was the one where she travelled and kept her sweets. Apparently, she always chooses one right in the centre of the train…” Harry shrugged.

Ginny cringed. “Look, why don’t we levitate the body into a toilet? It feels bad to leave someone just lying there, Death Eater or not!”

Harry shook his head vehemently. “It seems to me you want one of these toilets out of use forever more, Gin” he said somewhat amusedly. “Anyway, that’d be destroying the crime scene – I wouldn’t want to meet an Auror ever again if we did that!”

“Well, it wouldn’t hurt to take one last look at the compartment, would it?” Ginny was pale, but Harry could see that, despite her comprehensible horror when confronted with the murder scene, she was both curious and itching to get her hands on whoever had dared commit murder on the Hogwarts Express. Harry wanted to get to the bottom of what had happened too, so he nodded and they headed towards the compartment where the dead man lay.

Before they had time to reach it, however, the train made such a brusque movement that Ginny got thrown against the wall, whimpering when her arm made contact with it. In less than a second, Harry was next to her. “You alright? Did you get hurt?”

Ginny gave him a fierce look that shut him up at once. “I’m fine. I just hit the wall with the bruised part of my arm, that’s all.” She showed him the bruise. Harry frowned.

“Did you get that with Romilda?”

“Yeah… she threw me to the floor. Why?” Ginny asked, feeling slightly disgruntled.

“Honestly, you needn’t fight over me, Gin. I’d never be with Romilda… not while I can maintain my sanity, at least. Anyway, how did she plan to approach me? We’re not even friends!” Despite everything, Harry was smirking. Ginny, on the other hand, had just remembered something very important.

“Harry… I forgot! She showed us the Cloak in the compartment, your Invisibility Cloak!”

Harry’s smirk disappeared almost instantly. “Ginny… how many people saw that Cloak?”

Ginny’s eyes widened. “Oh my! Everyone in the compartment, I think… Romilda, obviously, me, Mariah, Michael Corner and Zabini… Natalie saw it too, but she’s already illibated, I think… whatever they did to him, curse or not, requires either power or force, and she possesses none.” Harry looked at her and then entered the compartment.

He fully took the scene in for the first time. The man was sprawled on the floor, near the window, his face and chest to the floor. The enormous amount of blood came from both the smack he had taken to the head caused by the windowsill, probably when he had fallen, and a massive, hideous wound he sustained on his back, and which seemed to have been caused by an attack from upwards, but he couldn’t be sure. He also recognised the wounds that disfigured the man’s face as a product of multiple Diffindo curses.

He knelt down next to the body. The sight and smell of blood was as sickening as ever, but he managed to spot something he hadn’t before: the man had something in his hand. Mustering all his presence of spirit, Harry took the corpse’s hand in his and gently pulled some dark blue hairs out of it. Oh my God.

He turned to Ginny, who was standing behind him. “Well, he was attacked on the neck, by behind. I daresay whoever did this is not a shortie.”

Ginny made a strange noise with her mouth. “Well, I’m out of the list, then… where’re you going?” For Harry had made it past her and was already at the door.

“I’m going to claim what’s mine.” He offered.

XoX

“Will you or will you not give it to me?”

Harry was becoming increasingly more impatient, for Romilda hadn’t shown any signs of wanting to give him his Cloak. He finally reached his boiling point. Pointing his wand at her, he asked for it once again. Romilda hesitantly went over to her trunk and opened it.

The Cloak was gone, just like he had expected. Nevertheless, this story didn’t end here.

“Well, who picked it up, then?” At the baffled sight of the people in the compartment, he felt a sudden urge to growl, but managed to restrain himself from doing it. “Open your trunks, please, all of you. I’m not leaving without my Cloak.”

Reluctantly, all his colleagues obeyed, even Zabini, who looked somewhat off. The result all but surprised Harry.

His Cloak was in none other than Mariah Montgomery’s trunk.

XoX

“Ginny, I swear I didn’t do anything!” Mariah pleaded for the umpteenth time. The girl in front of her looked murderous.

“Then how did the Cloak get in there? You did not leave the compartment, did you?”

“She did.”

Ginny turned to stare at Harry, who was coming from the toilet. “How can you possibly know that?”

Harry shrugged. “I saw her in the corridor when I arrived, remember? She was standing between you and Vane. Ginny, may I have a word with you, please…? In private?” He added, pointing to the toilet the witch had been occupying previously.

The girl nodded. “Excuse us, Mariah.” They entered the toilet he had just left and closed the door.

“Muffliato!” Harry pronounced, pointing carefully through the ancient keyhole to the part of the train external to the toilet. He then faced Ginny. “Mariah’s not the culprit, Ginny.”

Ginny looked puzzled. “How do you know?”

Harry looked sombre. “I just found this. It was in the toilet itself. It was very lucky that no one had the need to flush it. Read this…” He extended a piece of parchment to her, obviously repaired, but still legible.

Winchester, 7th June 1997

Blaise,

Our Lord’s spy forces have notified me of an amusing occurrence. It seems like a certain Mr Marius Austin has decided to show his true allegiances a while ago. As it turns out, he was spying for the Order of the Phoenix, giving them inside information on our plans.

As you’ve so wisely apprehended, there is no place in this world for betrayers of any sort. All of them must be banished, and the race purified. As a recent inductee, this will be your first task to show your value to our Master.

According to Yaxley, Austin is going to board the Hogwarts Express in order to get to London unsuspected. It will be your mission to find and kill him, leaving to trace behind whatsoever. It would be advisable for you to leave his Mark showing; with a strike of luck, those foolish things that call themselves Aurors will end up chucking a Light supporter in jail.

Annex, I enclosed the family dagger. All the family’s killings have been done with it, and its properties to the killer are immeasurable, so forget not to use it. You may also want to thank the Weasley family, who so generously and naively sold us both the distractions and the artefacts that made Yaxley’s spying possible. Don’t forget to destroy this letter as soon as you have finished reading it.

Your father,

Giles Zabini.

Ginny looked gobsmacked for a moment. “Well… this is what I call a strike of luck…” She turned to Harry. “Let’s send this to Tonks straight away! She’ll know what to do…”

Harry, however, put his hands up. “Ginny, wait, please. We may have a reason for what happened, but this doesn’t prove it was Zabini who committed the crime.”

Ginny looked taken aback at this. “So what do we do to prove it?”

Harry looked thoughtful. “Well, one thing is certain, it wasn’t Mariah. Marius was attacked from behind, so he could never have grabbed his attacker’s hair. It was put there to misguide us. Also, Marius isn’t very tall, but Mariah couldn’t stick a knife on him from upwards. Neither could you, Vane, Natalie or Corner. Zabini, on the other hand, could, judging from his height…”

Ginny frowned. “Why are you restringing things just to my compartment?”

Harry licked his lips nervously. “Well, it would take a while to access Mariah’s trunk, wouldn’t it? Whoever did it wanted us to think it had been her, probably because she has a very good reason to hate any Death Eater, spy or not…”

“Her brother…” Ginny muttered.

Harry nodded. “Well, that’s a fair deal for Zabini… but I think I’ll get Mariah to confiscate his wand or something, she’s Head Girl after all… and she does deserve to get revenge on him, after all… and then we shall se if he has or hasn’t performed the Diffindo spell recently.”

Next to him, Ginny smirked bitterly.

XoX

“I can’t believe you didn’t call us!” Hermione squealed in protest.

They were the last students standing in the Platform 9 ¾ . There had been a fairly grand deal of commotion when the Aurors had arrived, in possession of Giles Zabini’s letter, to inspect the train. The search had proved fructuous. The Zabini family dagger had been found glued magically to the back of the lavatory, as had some Instant Darkness powder Harry suspected would have come in handy weren’t it for his Cloak. Blaise Zabini had eventually been force-fed Veritaserum and confessed the authory of the murder in front of Susan Austin, that had immediately shot a death plague on him. Time would see to it that it bore effects on its victim.

“I can’t believe this! I’m gonna kill you both! Harry, mate, I’ll never forgive you” Ron’s playful smile denied his words entirely. “How could you be part of Zabini’s downfall and not invite me!”

Hermione looked aghast. “Us, Ronald… us…” she said, a hint of a smile forming in her lips. Harry and Ginny exchanged meaningful glances. Things seemed to be coming to terms…

“C’mon, people, I don’t have the whole evening!” came the shout from the machinist, Mathias, who seemed to be in serious lack of sleep but was grinning faintly nonetheless. As Harry approached, he leaned over to him.

“Thank you sir… for bringing justice to my son…”

Harry eyed that man compassionately. He had been expecting this. Locking eyes with the man, he stated “No one deserves what he got, Mr Austin. I couldn’t have acted any other way. But I’m sure it was not the end for him – wherever he is…”

And, leaving a speechless man behind them, the four friends turned away and crossed the barrier to the Muggle world for the last time.

A/N: That’s it. It’s a bit too short, but I hope you liked it. In any case, please leave your thoughts on the story. They would help me a lot :)