The staff meeting had been going on for thirteen minutes. For eight of those minutes, Finn had been sat, cross-legged, on the floor of his Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher's office trying every variation of every unlocking spell he had ever learnt on the trunk he was determined to break into. Finally, after a little meditation and some real focus on imagining the trunk opening, he heard clunking of metal and the lid lifted easily from the box. He turned his head towards his companion, friend, partner-in-crime, whatever she was at this exact moment as she helped him search every imaginable place in the office for any hard, solid evidence that something was amiss with Professor Gregory's presence at the school. "I'm in." Somehow, Finn had grown convinced that the trunk held the answers to his questions. When the drawers had proven to be little other than teachers' mark schemes, class schedules, students' work, a few notes here and there which they felt certain they had been through thoroughly enough not to have missed anything, the trunk had become the main object of Finn's attention.
"Can I have some help over here?" he now asked, moving aside a drawer full of clothes with a flick of his wand, and revealing the section of the trunk which, no doubt, the teacher would keep anything important in. It was natural for this type of trunk and after a few other raids of the office, Finn was fairly convinced there was nowhere else anything could be. Besides, if breaking into the trunk had been such an effort, there had to be more than just clothes and toiletries hidden away. He pulled a bunch of papers out first, flicking through them without much hope of finding anything. After all, who was he even kidding? No 'bad guy' as intelligent as Gregory was going to have a piece of parchment handily titled 'evil plan'. Papers seemed to be their only chance, though, unless somehow one of the strange instruments in the trunk was illegal or his shampoo was actually poison. It was his own name which caught his eye. A folded piece of parchment held others together and Finn put the rest of what he had been holding down on the floor beside him and slowly, seeming to forget that he wasn't alone, he opened up the makeshift file.
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He knocked on the door of the office ten minutes earlier than he was supposed to be meeting the teacher inside over in the Defence classroom. The response was just delayed enough for Finn to remember to grab the parchment and quill from his pocket and write a quick note.
I'm going in now.
He gave the parchment a quick tap of his wand and then it was back in his pocket, before he even took the time to read the message which soon followed it, saying 'Okay. Can't talk. McGonagall. Be careful.'
"Finnigan. You're early. And in the wrong place. What's the matter? Can you not be here today?"
"Yes! Yes, I can, I just... I wanted to talk to you about something else first and I didn't have a lesson so when I walked down the Defence corridor and you weren't there at all, I thought, maybe now..."
"Certainly. Please, sit."
Finn sat down slowly, hesitating as if he was trying to think what to say first. "I've been thinking about jobs recently," he started. He rubbed his temple, not even having to act that the whole ordeal was giving him a bit of a headache recently. It was anyway. "I don't really have any ideas at all and I talked to Professor McGonagall and that hasn't really helped me think of ideas. All I know is that I want something to do with Defensive magic but I don't want to be in the DMLE or teaching and... Well, what else is there?"
"You are a very strong fighter," Professor Gregory told him. They were words which in the past would have caused Finn's chest to swell in pride, but now he saw them as simple flattery to pull his trust closer to the teacher he no longer believed in. "It's understandable that you want to work in this field, and I definitely think it is most suited to you and regardless of your thoughts on the DMLE, any application you were able to prepare now would most likely be too late to be considered for start in this year's training programme. In fact, I do believe that those who were earliest with their Hit Office applications are finding out if they have been successful this week."
Finn nodded, already knowing this from Wren's letter appearing at breakfast that morning, the same as Dirk's. It was part of the reason this conversation was such a pressing concern for him at the moment, now that both his best friends were so much closer to having their futures sorted out and he had applied to nothing. He let out an audible sigh. His options seemed so much more limited than he felt they should be.
Before he could hear his teacher's advice, however, there was a loud crash from the corridor outside. The noise had already increased a little as students moved between their lessons but now screams joined and Finn didn't need to look at the clock to know the exact time. His teacher was up and out without a word. Finn waited only ten seconds before he rose out of his chair and hopped round to the other side of the desk. The suits of armour which Libby had transfigured at break-time to come alive and Finn had charmed just a few minutes ago to activate should keep the only currently available teacher at this end of the school occupied for a good few minutes which combined with children running around in a panic, Finn hoped it would give him enough time. He wrote to Libby two letters, 'Go.' then tapped the bottom drawer of the desk.
"Alohomora."
Systematically, he went through each drawer, using revealing charms to search for any hidden messages on the parchment, all the while keeping an eye on his parchment.
He sorted out the suits of armour.
The message showed and Finn swore out loud. He hadn't found anything useful, yet, only piles and piles of lesson plans and work to be marked. He hurriedly moved onto the fourth draw.
A fourth year slipped down the stairs trying to run. I convinced G to take him to the H.W. He's sending me back to Transfiguration, but I said I had been on my way to the toilet and haven't gone yet, so I'm headed your way.
Now he relaxed again. The Hospital Wing was far enough away that he would have time to at least give the desk a thorough sorting through, if not anywhere else.
"I think I have ten minutes," Libby said as she walked through the door. "It won't take him much longer than that to go to the Hospital Wing and I can't get away with saying going to the toilet took longer than that, either."
"What are you going to tell McGonagall?"
"She's going to hear about this anyway. Just that I got caught up in it all. I was technically practising Transfiguration. What do you want me to do."
"This pile," Finn said, sectioning off about half of the parchments he had taken out of the drawer. "Try to keep them in the same order. If you go from the bottom, they can go straight back in the drawer once you've checked them. Anything suspicious, and I'm using Aparecium on them as well just in case he's concealed anything."
They worked through them as fast as possible. By the time Libby called out "Here!"however, Finn had started to worry that maybe they wouldn't find anything. She dangled the parchment in front of his face, a simple reminder of a meeting with an unspecified person at the edge of Hogsmeade that coming Saturday.
"Really?"
"It was concealed. Why would he conceal it?"
Finn bit his lip, but it was all they had to go on so far and even as she took a picture of the note, concealed the writing again and finished off her pile of parchments, he knew that they weren't going to find anything else before the professor got back. He wanted to go through the fifth and final drawer, and he wanted to go through the trunk, but time wasn't on their side and Libby left to make sure she was well away before the teacher returned. It wasn't long before he got the note saying that she had passed him in the corridor and only been able to delay him a second. Finn had only looked at a handful of things in the fifth drawer. Some of the bizarre objects in there he might have to know more about, but he didn't manage to do anything but take a picture with the camera Libby had left behind, then close the drawers back up again so that he could be sat back in the chair, reading his Muggle Studies textbook, when the office door swung open.
"I apologise for that, Mr Frazer. It appears someone decided to play a small prank on the Defence corridor between lessons. Now, where were we?"
Finn, who had been doodling pictures of lopsided griffins instead of trying out the Protean Charm as he was meant to be, looked up in surprise at the sound of her voice. He turned to look at her, across the room, as the rest of the class did, too. Her eyes flickered ever so briefly to his, before returning to Flitwick's.
"Can you set two things up to copy each other no matter how far from each other and you they were?"
"Of course you can, Miss Mansfield. You must remember to set them up correctly, but you'll find the process for making the spell more lasting outlined on page 408," the teacher squeaked.
"So it could be used as communication?" Libby pressed. Finn sat up a little straighter, almost feeling the way she pointedly avoided looking at him, but understanding immediately her intention. They had been fretting about how they would be able to let each other know if something was wrong while breaking into Professor Gregory's office.
"It most certainly could," replied Flitwick. "Most famously it was used by the Fitzroy brothers to update each other on progress in their separate tasks when leading their series of revolutions. Although, of course that is more Professor Binns' area than my own."
"But it definitely can aid a two-way conversation?"
"Yes, Miss Mansfield, though I must ask you not to start using it as a loophole around the rule of no passing notes in lessons. Now, the wand movement for this charm is very similar to that of the permanent sticking charm, but you must not let your wrist flick off the paper..."
The lesson carried on but the suggestion was planted in Finn's mind and his mind was overcome with plans and thoughts, all the while compartmentalising in a way he had become so accustomed to in the past months.
A bribe to a third year known for keeping quiet, who talked to a fifth year with a lot of connections, who left an anonymous tip-off to a fourth year who loved wreaking havoc, who spent his break time talking to Peeves, and the trail was set-up. Finn was almost positive that it would be untraceable back to him. All he had to do was hope that everything had moved fast enough and that, come the last period before lunchtime, it would all be in place.
He made sure to leave the common room ever so slightly later than usual and he walked at a steady pace down to the classroom, picking up the speed only when he knew he was late. He ran round the corner and skidded to a stop, wide-eyed before he ran into his teacher.
"Sorry, sir," he said, breathlessly, before he could even be reprimanded for running in the corridor. "I lost track of time. Er... Shall we...?" his eyes darted to the door of the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom, and couldn't resist swallowing, needing to sort out a dry mouth that had resulted from the natural concern and slightly paranoid worry that perhaps he had figured it all out and Finn was about to be in trouble. His teacher didn't pick up on the action, or if he did he passed it off as tiredness from running, though, and let out a long exasperated sigh.
"Come on, Finn, we'll go in my office for today."
Finn hid his triumph at the suggestion and followed. They had been in the office a few times before, other times when the classroom had been unavailable for one reason or another, but Finn had still decided he needed a week of being observant and really getting used to the room. Perhaps this week, there would even be the advantage that his teacher would leave him alone for a couple of minutes while he sorted out Peeves. Sure enough, they walked through the door, Professor Gregory picked up a few pieces of paper, then turned around again. "Stay here," he said to Finn and left.
Finn couldn't risk having a proper snoop around when he didn't know how long the teacher would be gone, nor where to start. There was little out anywhere, so all his clues would be in the trunk, in draws, somewhere that meant rifling through things that he wasn't comfortable doing when he might have barely any time at all. Still, he got up and had a wander around the office, taking in the room. He tugged on a drawer to find it locked, and all the others were, too. He tried the cabinet, but found only clothes, and the trunk, also, was locked. Alohomora sent the top drawer sliding open, revealing a rolls of parchment which would need going through more thoroughly before Finn could determine if they were interesting or just students' work, but at that moment he heard footsteps and he slid the draw shut again.
"Colloportus," he whispered, then sprang over the desk, using a foot for leverage, and sat down in his seat, just before the office door swung open. Occlumency swept through him. He had a place to start when he and Libby carried out the plan they had composed on Monday evening.
