Ch. 62

Bellatrix gestured toward the antique shop. "He just set that place on fire."

Harry jerked his head toward the shop. Smoke was just beginning to pour from one of the windows and a hint of flame could be seen through the other. "Unbelievable," he growled. He jumped up and began striding toward the door. "I'd better do something."

"No," Bellatrix declared, " we'd better do something." She jumped up and carelessly flung some coins on their table before chasing Harry out into the street.

The smoke had gotten the attention of a few people and a small crowd was beginning to gather in front of the shop. "Are there any firefighters we can call?" Harry asked Bellatrix.

Bellatrix shook her head no. "Wizards and witches usually don't have fire problems like this. I'm sure someone is contacting the Ministry though."

"They'll be too late," Harry said urgently. "There might be someone in there or something I need to see that Lestrange wanted destroyed. I'm going in." He drew one of his newly acquired wands.

"What's that?" Bellatrix demanded.

"I picked it up at Zimon's," Harry said.

Bellatrix sighed and drew her wand. "I'll go with you."

Harry and Bellatrix trotted up to the front door of the shop. Seeing that it was an emergency and that it probably didn't matter too much, Harry opted to take down the door quickly. "Reducto!" The door exploded into splinters and Harry rushed in with Bellatrix on his heels.

Immediately, they began coughing. Smoke had filled the room and one of the walls was burning. Harry used his wand to shoot water at the nearest flames. Much to Harry's annoyance, the water seemed to have no effect on the fire.

"This isn't fiendfyre," Bellatrix said loudly, "but it's the next thing to it. Very Dark."

"Bugger," Harry managed to cough out while Bellatrix cast some charm that seemed to repel the smoke from them a little. He tried to think of a good way to counter fire made from Dark magic, but his mind was coming up dry.

Bellatrix had already considered the countering option and dismissed it. "There's no way you can overcome this," she said urgently. "You'd have to fight fire with fire and unleashing fiendfyre isn't going to help anybody. We've got to do what you want and get out!"

Bellatrix had given Harry an idea though. Harry had thought of Hermione's bluebell flames and was wondering how they might be able to play into the situation. He swept his wand to the wall adjoining the burning wall and shouted the incantation, hoping that he had remembered correctly. Blue fire shot from his wand and leapt onto the wall.

"Are you crazy?" Bellatrix screamed.

"Maybe," Harry shouted. "The bluebell flames are harmless to us. There's nothing to lose."

They watched for a brief moment as the Dark fire that was consuming the wall at an alarming pace met with the bluebell flames that Harry had conjured. Harry was relieved when he saw that the Dark fire didn't consume the surface that the bluebell flames were on.

"Good work," Bellatrix called. "Let's move!"

Harry nodded and moved through a doorway into a larger room. Behind him, Bellatrix was copying the spell and shooting bluebell flames everywhere that wasn't already on fire. Soon, even the floor was burning blue.

The larger room appeared to be the antique dealer's showroom. However, most of the antiques appeared to have been severely damaged or destroyed-the fire was worse in this room. Harry decided that Lestrange must have started the fire here.

"There's no one here," he called, after checking around. "Let's keep moving."

Harry and Bellatrix dashed through the rest of the room and found themselves in a small backroom with a staircase. Bellatrix poked her wand at the staircase and it began burning blue. They ran up the flaming staircase and found themselves in a hallway.

"Separate!" Bellatrix yelled as she ran down the hall and used her wand to destroy a door. She dashed in and Harry did likewise, finding his own door to break through.

He found an empty store room that was already on fire. He retreated and wished that he had not destroyed the door that could have prevented those flames from spreading into the hall. He wasted no time and was soon searching another room and then yet another. He had just searched his last when he heard Bellatrix shout.

He rushed toward where Bellatrix's voice had come from and found her in a room standing over an unconscious wizard.

"He's still alive," Bellatrix said. "Can you side-along Apparate him out of here?"

"Yeah," Harry said, trying to think of the last time he'd Apparated in tandem. It was funny how one could get distracted by such trivial things in the middle of an emergency.

"I'll see you outside," Bellatrix said. She turned and disappeared with a pop.

Harry grabbed the unconscious wizard and tried to force him into a convenient position. He waved his wand and in a pop, Harry found himself standing outside with the wizard in his grasp.

.....

Professor Dumbledore appeared with a pop slightly down the street from the burning shop. Several other pops echoed his and he spotted Ministry employees arriving and rushing toward the fire. He too walked in that direction, but not nearly as quickly. Alastor Moody had alerted him via the Floo that there was a fire in Hogsmeade. Dumbledore had opted to look into the incident. There had been too many such incidents lately.

What he saw, or rather, heard, as he approached the former antiques shop surprised him. It was Bellatrix Black.

"Pine? Pine! Nobody makes wands from pine!"

A voice that sounded like that of Harry Ashworth's mumbled something.

Dumbledore resisted the urge to laugh at the conversation. As he came closer, Ashworth and Black came into sight, as well as an unconscious wizard lying on the ground while being looked over by a mediwitch and some aurors.

"Look, Ashworth," Bellatrix said, "if this is about money, I'll pay for you to go to Ollivander and buy a decent wand!"

"It's not about money," Ashworth groused.

"Then what is it about?"

Dumbledore shook his head thoughtfully as he moved past the two and their ongoing discussion. He spotted Moody and moved quickly to the aged auror. "Alastor," Dumbledore said by way of greeting.

"Albus," Moody nodded. He gestured to the shop. "Basically we can see that someone deliberately set this place on fire. That sort of Dark magic doesn't happen accidentally, and even if it was an accident, it doesn't happen in such a precise way. Someone wanted this place to turn into a heap of ashes real fast. They probably wanted that guy dead as well."

"This is not good," Dumbledore said slowly. "I suppose Mr. Ashworth and Ms. Black are involved."

"Apparently they rushed into the shop and saved the guy."

"How extraordinary," Dumbledore said. "I hope no one can say that either of them might have set the fire in the first place."

From the expression on Moody's face, Dumbledore could see that the aged auror wished that it was the other way around. "All the witnesses agree that those two weren't in a position to start the fire themselves," Moody said. "I checked that theory out already."

"Yet the question as to why they rushed into a burning building remains, I suppose," Dumbledore said.

"Could be anything from heroism or criminal stupidity," Moody growled. "I'll give them one thing though-they did some neat spellwork in there. By the time that Dark fire burns out, there will still be portions of the shop standing."

"Not very much though," Dumbledore noted as he glanced at the flames consuming the outside walls of the shop.

"When you're dealing with that sort of fire, anything at all is impressive." Moody commented, giving a sidelong glance down the street at Harry and Bellatrix who were still discussing something in somewhat heated voices.

Dumbledore fought the urge to burst into laughter as he heard Bellatrix's reaction to whatever it was Ashworth had said.

"Bamboo?"

....

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