real panic yet. She remembered her training and knew that it was always best to be safe and embarrassed, rather than sorry and Hexed.
The stranger's eyes were a riveting shade of thunderstorm grey, made all the more intense because they fairly burned in a face that had been tanned a light gold. His gaze held a great deal of clarity and purpose, which one did not often see in a drunk wizard with a gripe and nothing better to do on a Sunday morning.
Yes alright, it was Sunday, but where the hell was security? She had hit the button two minutes ago.
"Is there a problem?"
He spoke again, the stranger did. It didn't sound like the voice of a crazy person. It sounded like the voice of an extremely annoyed person, actually.
Rosie slapped on a perfect Customer Service smile. "Not at all. Did you say you wanted to see Mr. Potter?"
"Yes," said the man, staring at her as if she was slow. "I'd like to see Harry Potter."
It seemed a pointless question to ask, but she was stalling now. "And do you have an appointment?"
Those magnificent eyes narrowed a fraction. "No."
"Do you have a pass?"
"I beg your pardon?" he repeated, obviously at the end of a tether that had frayed, dropped off and disintegrated quite some time ago.
"A pass to enter the building without an appointment," Rosie explained. His eyes weren't grey, she decided. There was too much of a metallic quality to them. These were silver eyes.
"A pass," he agreed, quite cordially, to which Rosie was very surprised. He smiled at her, his teeth startlingly white in his tanned face.
She released a breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding.
And just like that, he turned on his heel and walked out of the atrium. Spencer, the rotund Head Weekend Guard finally appeared, not in any hurry.
"Who the buggery was that?" he asked. There was quite a bit of sand on the polished floor and Spencer was staring at it quizzically.
Rosie hadn't a clue what to respond with. 'Some nutter' somehow didn't fit the bill. The man didn't look particularly off-balance, just...unsettling. She was glad he was gone.
Spencer waved off the rest of the guards that were taking their time in approaching the front desk. "False alarm boys," he told them, in a chuckling, slightly condescending manner that irritated Rosie. "She's only new!"
"Said his name was Merrybones. He wanted to see Mr. Potter," Rosie replied, briskly.
Spencer snorted in understanding. "Fan club, eh?"
"I doubt it. Seemed almost put off by the prospect, actually."
Both Rosie and Spencer pondered this fact, for surely there wasn't a man, woman or child in Wizarding Britain who wasn't in respectful awe of Harry Potter.
"Well then, sing out if you need us," Spencer winked and waddled off to the guards' room, ostensibly to go back to his game of something or other with the other bored Sunday guards.
Rosie sighed, unsuccessfully shook off a feeling of dread and resumed her assault on the Sunday jumble. She was halfway finished and quite pleased with herself, when it happened.
"I've brought my Pass," said the voice.
The man was back, but he wasn' t alone. Beside him, was the stiff, hovering form of a oh Merlin, he had said something about a delivery. He unwrapped the package.
It was a person. A gaunt, frail-looking woman, wrapped up in several yards of dusty fabric. Her long black hair, liberally streaked with white, was the only thing fluid about her. She was quite Petrified, her face frozen in a mask of snarling hate. The stranger gave this macabre package a little shove, whereupon it floated about a meter or so, coming to a stop before Rosie.
Thus did Rosie Pinkerton find herself face to face with the frozen, bobbing form of Bellatrix Lestrange.
Voldemort may have been the ultimate, faceless bogeyman, but everyone knew what she looked like. The posters had been up for years.
Training be damned. Rosie screamed.
Spencer and the other guards came just a bit quicker this time.
**
Harry had been napping on the lounge at Grimmauld Place, a half eaten sandwich resting on a plate, resting on his stomach, when the fireplace had stirred.
It took a few minutes to actually register what it was that a frantic and pale Zacharias Smith was telling him. Smith, who looked about as sleep deprived as Harry felt, had been catching up on his Wizengamot Administration paperwork when frantic guards had nearly kicked down his door to tell him what had just occurred in the Atrium.