The Debt
Book

After the tunnel sealed and the dust settled, Harry thought he understood where the Ward was leading them. He didn't. Five years later, the Ministry of Magic has sanctioned a task force to monitor the dead. The Docket — as the press calls it — is a classified office inside the Department of Mysteries, charged with tracking anomalous ward signatures from the deceased. Its first case file: Sirius Black. His magical footprint continues to pulse at unscheduled intervals through the Azkaban log, even though his body was never recovered from the Veil. The Ministry has spent half a decade classifying appearances of a man matching his description across the British Isles — always too far away, always moments before a seal shifts. Harry and Ginny, now living together in a fragile domestic life, are pulled into a cross-country investigation of these sightings. Hermione has been exiled to the Docket as punishment for her independent investigations, and Ron is stationed at a coastal ward-post dealing with a different kind of breach: Muggles who have started to 'remember' things they shouldn't. The investigation forces Harry to confront the impossible truth: Sirius may have been released by something he doesn't understand, and Severus Snape — long presumed dead — is leaving messages in the architecture of the wards, using code only a dead man would know. Every sighting of Sirius corresponds to a seal Grindelwald touched. The Ward is learning from whoever last bled on it.