Dark Livestream

Chapter 9: Eight

In hindsight, there must have been something going on with the wards at Dark Headquarters -- Harry felt like he'd spent much more time there than the evidence indicated. It had thrown his entire day off. When he rose from his post-orgasmic nap (and Harry put that memory firmly aside for now), it was barely seven p.m.; there wouldn't even be dinner for another half-hour.

He fumbled for his phone on the nightstand, stretching out luxuriously over the bed. He hadn't gotten a lot of messages; Ron had texted him in the past hour or so, but that was it. Where'd you go, mate? at 6:12, and a minute later, whoops, herm just said you're sleeping.

Wiping at his bleary eyes, Harry refreshed his news feed a few times -- #DarkLivestream was trending again -- and clicked through a few posts, before he got another text, this one from Hermione. Meeting tonight, it read. You joining us?

Oh, right, it was a Friday, wasn't it? The Order would be in Number Twelve's kitchen, Mrs. Weasley would be taking over the kitchen from a chagrined Kreacher, and Snape would probably be there with more intel-

Intel. Harry froze, realizing, in the middle of reaching for the skin-tight leather pants he'd nicked from Sirius' closet earlier. (They were enchanted to shrink once they'd been zipped up. Harry couldn't imagine squeezing into the things otherwise -- but they were, he found, surprisingly comfortable.)

Snape would be reporting on Assistant -- Harry was sure of it.

Reporting on him.

Harry hadn't gone to Dark Headquarters with a plan , precisely. It hadn't even occurred to him to properly cover his tracks -- had he worn anything distinctive? What if he'd given away his identity without realizing it? His posture, maybe -- his speaking style -- the way he walked? If Snape had noticed anything, he would know. And he would tell them all.

Paranoia gripped Harry like a vise. With a glance to the door, he scrambled around the room, packing his few valuables and a change of clothes in his satchel, just in case. 'Assistant' could flee to Dark Headquarters in an instant by Portkey, he told himself; there was nothing to worry about, he could just hide there, Voldemort would take him in--

--and wasn't that a wild thought?

Two hours later, however, Harry realized he'd worried for nothing. Snape behaved no differently toward him than he always did when he arrived. The man's report began instead with a broad summary of the Dark Lord's recent projects, for those Order members who hadn't taken note of any of it (wasn't that a real generational gap), garnering responses from bafflement to genuine, pearl-clutching horror which shouldn't have been as funny as it was.

"Murdering people on live video?!"

"And they're watching this?"

"I thought the Prophet was exaggerating--"

"How absolutely disgusting--"

--and incredibly entertaining, Harry thought but did not say.

"The increasing popularity of this content," Snape continued when the noise had died down, "has led the Dark Lord to hire an assistant." Dark eyes looked over his audience. "It was a decision without precedent: Assistant, as he is referred to, visited the Dark Lord's current base of operations only a few hours ago."

Harry carefully did not stiffen in his seat; if he hadn't already been identified, he wouldn't tip the spy off by reacting now.

"I was ordered to observe the wizard when he arrived. Assistant was wearing one of the obscuring hoods commissioned for the Dark Order some months earlier," several Order members nodded, remembering the report, "and so his appearance was too well-disguised for me to discern any features beyond his sex and approximate age -- the latter detail being most concerning in light of the... interactions I viewed."