In which Evil faces an insurrection, Good faces an unexpected betrayal, and Harry means to find out which side Draco is on. H/D, R.

August, 2005

"Harry Potter?" Lucius repeated, and the amusement in his eyes was so cold that it chilled Percy. "The boy can live to be a thousand years old for all of me. That ridiculous vendetta was always Voldemort's greatest weakness, and when he rises for the third time it will be his undoing."

Percy's quill paused. "Then he is coming back. Really coming back, I mean; all this vandalism, the attacks, the Dark Mark, it's not just former Death Eaters making trouble on their own."

"You knew that was the case," Lucius said gently, implacably. "You haven't been with the Ministry long enough to learn willful blindness, child. Voldemort has returned, and he will make another bid for power, and you knew this when you first came to speak to me."

Percy swallowed hard and wondered how to navigate this particular path, and what was there to be found at the end of it; and found himself still, in his heart, hoping that the Ministry was right and Lucius Malfoy was wrong. "You've been in Azkaban for ten years. How could you possibly know?"

Lucius gave an impatient sigh and went to the window to look out over the water. "Do you know how I would have dealt with Potter, had the task been assigned to me?"

"No," Percy answered slowly, wondering what one topic had to do with the other and uncomfortably aware that he was not exactly holding up his side of the conversation.

"I would have waited until he was at your home, visiting your brother, and sent someone to him in the middle of the night with a Hand of Glory and a good sharp knife."

Ink splattered on the parchment, and Percy realized that his hand was shaking. "Why didn't you, then? You could have bought yourself -"

"Many weeks under Cruciatus and then an untimely death, and that if I was lucky," Lucius said dryly. "Rob the Dark Lord of his great and glorious revenge upon a little boy? Not one of us would have dared. Potter's death, you understand, was never enough. To satisfy Voldemort, the boy's death would have had to be as protracted and painful as it could, and to Voldemort's immediate gain. Do you know why?"

"Because Potter nearly destroyed him. Because -" Percy stopped, understanding rising in a flash.

Lucius was watching him with a small smile. "Yes. Because of all things, Voldemort cannot abide being balked. He can be very patient when he has to be, he can afford to wait and gather his strength, but before much longer he will be back with all the forces he can gather behind him. And he will be back at a time and in a way that any of his inner circle could predict - not with perfect accuracy, to be sure, but closely enough."

Percy's hand was trembling again. He set it flat on the table, palm down, heedless of the ink that oozed onto the parchment. "Then you could -"

"Yes," Lucius said, and the word was a door slamming shut. "But I will not tell the Ministry."

"Why not?" Percy blurted.

"Would they hear me if I did?" Lucius asked simply.

Percy opened his mouth - and then closed it again, a summer full of Daily Prophet headlines that painted Harry as an attention-seeking liar rising in his memory, and the sour knowledge that his own reports were sitting in Fudge's office amongst a hundred other inconsequential documents, unread. He wanted to protest, to defend the Ministry, to defend Fudge... and found suddenly that there was no ground he could stand on solid enough to convince either Lucius or himself.

"Time to go, Mr. Weasley," the guard said from behind him.

 

October, 2005

"Ouch," Draco said faintly, sagging back against the headboard, and Harry's attention whipped back to him. He summoned his wand and went to sit on the bed, wishing he had more time to do something about Draco's injuries, wanting to touch him and not daring.

"It's not that bad, Potter, for God's sake stop looking at me like I were the consumptive courtesan in a French novel," Draco snapped, looking exhausted and in pain.

"I don't think you'd look very good in a corset and a big fluffy skirt," Harry told him, and Draco gave a sort of pained wheeze.

"And don't make me laugh, either," he grumbled, sounding less irritable, at any rate. "Are you coming out, Goyle?"

A panel in the wall opened and Goyle poked his head out. "Cor, I keep forgetting how big your bathroom is. Thought I was gonna take a wrong turn and get lost."

"I don't like being crammed into a shower with no elbow room. Listen, Goyle, if my parents ask where I am, tell them I've gone back to Hogwarts for a while. Don't say anything about Potter being here; if my mother wants to tell my father then she can, but I don't think she will."

Harry dug in his pack and handed Draco the paper with the directions to the Order safehouse. "Here, read this over in case anything happens to the portkey. It's a safehouse in Cornwall. Snape's the Secret Keeper."

Draco's eyes flickered over the paper, and he nodded. "Potter - the forest wards aren't like the ones on the grounds. You can't go over or under them, you can only go through, and they're keyed to respond only to the master of the house - my father, in other words. If we have to go through them we're going to be screwed. Once they're activated not even my father can deactivate them."

"So if anything happens to him then you're trapped here if you don't have a portkey, you and everyone else on the property?" Harry asked dubiously.

Draco gave him a thoughtful, wary look. "You said something about a painkiller. Hit me with it and let's go if we're going."

"I think I should walk out there with you, boss," Goyle said slowly, and there was a tone in his voice that Harry didn't like. Judging from the sharp look Draco gave him, Draco didn't like it either.

"Why?" Harry asked over his shoulder, and pointed his wand at Draco. "Salve! "

Draco arched a little and drew in a deep breath as the spell took effect, and his eyes were clearer now.

"You remember Draco's mum said to stay off the ground? The Southeast grounds is where Theo'll be patrolling this time of night -"

Harry felt a low growl rise in his throat and clamped down on it, mortified.

" - and he's in charge of the Gabriel hounds. If they catch just your scent, the two of you, they'll likely come after you, son of the House or no; if I'm with you it might throw them off a bit. They know me."

"Those dogs won't attack me," Draco told them. "Not as long as they're bound to this house."

"They will if Theo sets them on you," Goyle said quietly, and Draco hissed in frustration and thumped the back of his head against the headboard.

"Look, what the fuck is all this about?" Harry demanded. "Malfoy, do you have a broom? What can I pack for you, and in what?"

"Yes, I have a broom, it's in the closet over there, and never mind the packing. I don't have much here besides a few changes of clothes." Draco sat up and swung his legs off the bed, wincing.

Harry pulled the closet door open and pushed Quidditch robes aside to pull the broom out of the back. "And Nott? Who the hell pissed in his pumpkin juice?"

"Nott doesn't like me," Draco answered, making Harry squeeze his eyes closed to keep from rolling them right out of his head. "I rather think he's never liked me."

"Well, it can't bloody do him and his parents any good to set the dogs on Lucius Malfoy's only son and heir."

"Theo's here," Goyle said as Harry turned back around. "His parents are with Voldemort."

"We don't know why he's here and not with them," Draco added. "I have my suspicions, but we don't know. And in the meantime… Nott isn't terribly astute, as Slytherins go. He probably sees a dozen ways he could vent his dislike of me without incurring my father's wrath, and he'll be even more likely to believe it now. There aren't, of course - if he ever tried to do anything worse to me than a split lip my father would turn his lungs inside out, because Nott isn't as important as he thinks he is - but the point is that we'd better avoid him as best we can anyway."

Harry summoned his pack, pulled out his broom, restored it to its usual size, and then shrank the pack down and stuffed it into his pocket. "Which way are we leaving?"

"Out the window," Draco said.

Harry looked from Draco to the window, then back to Draco. "So basically you could have left at any time," he said flatly.

"More or less."

"Then why the hell was that outer door locked?" Harry demanded in exasperation.

Equally exasperated, Draco shot back, "Potter, do you want to leave or do you want me to explain every detail of everything going on around you down to why the coq au vin was overdone at dinner and who's buried in the cellar?"

Harry raked a hand through his hair. "Oh my God, let me out of this house!"

"I thought as much." Draco swung a leg over his broom and drifted up off the ground. "Get on, Goyle."

Goyle looked a little green, but climbed gamely onto the broom anyway, clutching the broomstick behind him to avoid clinging to Draco's bruised ribs. "You'll let me off when we get to the ground, right? The way you fly makes me nervous."

"Yes, of course. Coming, Potter?"

"Right behind you," Harry answered, drifting toward the ceiling.

"Keep low to the ground and go slow," Goyle warned him. "The grounds are crawling with wards and guards. You need me and Draco to get through the wards, and you try to charge off to where you can use that portkey and someone'll blast you off your broom before they realize who Draco is."

"Stick close," Draco said over his shoulder, and floated out the window and immediately downward. Swearing between his teeth, Harry followed.

They drifted to earth in a pool of shadow cast by the crown of a very large and very old oak. Goyle untangled himself from Draco's broom and slid off it onto the ground.

"How's this gonna go, then?" he asked.

"I don't suppose that invisibility cloak will cover both of us and our brooms, will it, Potter?" Draco asked without much hope.

"No, so pull your hood up. That hair of yours will shine like a lighthouse in this moonlight." On impulse, Harry dug the protective charm out of his pocket and handed it to Draco, who frowned down at it in puzzlement. "Here, put this somewhere safe. It should still work as long as I'm close to it."

"Don't go far, then," Draco said, reaching into his robes to button the brooch into one of the inside pockets. "Get off your broom, keep it close but out of sight of anyone behind us, and let's go."

"So we're just going to walk out to the wards?" Harry asked, amused, as his feet hit the ground. "Getting in touch with your Gryffindor side, Malfoy?"

"Potter, I will thank you to keep this conversation on a civil level and refrain from hurling vile insults at me. You'd be amazed at the number of things you can get away with simply by doing them as if you had every right to." Malfoy pulled the hood of his robes up over his head, casting his hair and part of his face into shadow. Tilting his wand toward his eyes, he whispered the charm that would let him see the wards.

"Hope that hood doesn't come off," Goyle said nervously as they left the shadows and headed out toward the open plain surrounding the mansion, a different direction than Harry had come but with the same problem of too much moonlight and too little cover.

"Once we're away from the manor it won't matter if it does," Draco answered. Catching Harry's dubious look, he smirked; and suddenly his stride was just a little different, the way he carried himself, the set of his shoulders, the way he held his arms, and if Harry hadn't been staring straight at Draco's face he would have sworn he was watching Lucius move.

He looked away, unsettled at the reminder of how very much Draco was Lucius' son. "Your hair's still shorter than his," he muttered, feeling ridiculously as if he were grasping at straws.

The walk across that lawn toward the trees bid fair to be the longest walk of Harry's life. Every one of his senses was straining, alert for footsteps, voices, something moving in the shadows, an unexpected surge of magic; theoretically every step should have taken them closer to the trees, but he would have sworn they weren't covering any ground at all. "How far?" he asked finally, glancing back to see that they'd covered less than a third of the distance. Every second they were exposed like this was like sand grating over his nerves.

"Do you see the line of wards? We'll need to be within about eight feet of it," Draco answered, not sounding any more at ease than Harry was. Harry slipped a hand into his pocket and closed it around the portkey bag, reassuring himself.

He found himself counting footsteps, trying not to speed up his pace, and trying not to wonder which of them would come out of it the worst off if Lucius got hold of them.

The line of trees was close enough for him to hear the breeze in the leaves when Draco spoke up suddenly, doing extremely unpleasant things to Harry's spine. "Go back to the house, Goyle. We'll be all right from here."

Goyle frowned and fell back, letting Harry and Draco go on ahead. "If you're sure, boss. Good luck."

Draco glanced back over his shoulder. "I'll -"

There was a wooden crack and a shout from the trees in front of them, red light flared in Harry's vision, and Draco fell like a rock, his broom flying out of his hand to skid six feet across the damp grass. Caught in the penumbra of the spell, Harry went down with him, his entire body numb, holding onto consciousness by a hair's breadth. Growls rose around him, and he felt the protective charm flare into life around him and Draco, unsteady firelight leaping up to color his vision in a scarlet wash. His wand was underneath his hand, thank God, but he couldn't move to pick it up and he was teetering on the edge of unconsciousness.

"I'd ask if you're going somewhere, except you're not," someone observed flatly. "Bad luck, Goyle, but I've got my orders. Draco's going back to his room and Potter's going to Himself."

Harry relaxed his muscles and turned his attention inward; first things first, and there was nothing he could do until he'd shaken off the effects of the spell. He focused, breathed out, channelled his own magic as best he could without his wand for a conduit, and felt the effects of the stunning spell ebb just a little. From his right, where Draco's broom had fallen, came the sound of wood snapping and splintering in what were probably the jaws of a dog that stood five feet high at the shoulder and could break bones like twigs with a well-placed bite.

Goyle cracked his knuckles with a sound like firecrackers popping. "Theo, you pissant little gobshite, I'm gonna break you in half this time," he said grimly. Harry strained, flexed, and felt his fingers close around his wand.

Christ, some bloody Defence professors, letting Theodore Nott get the goddamned drop on us on open ground… Harry twisted his wand in the grass, pointing it at himself, trembling with the effort.

"Yeah?" Theo snorted. "Fancy being torn apart by the hounds, do you?"

"I'll fucking well take them apart too if I have to."

"Enervate," Harry whispered, and felt energy surge through his body with a force that left him shaking.

"Go back to the house, Goyle, and I won't tell Himself you tried to help Mr. Gryffindor there get Draco past the wards."

Harry cracked an eye open and took in the situation. The charm was holding the hounds at bay around him and Draco - or Nott was, one of the two - but Goyle was outside the circle, and the hounds were circling closer, growling and slavering. His own broom was in one piece but Draco's was snapped in the middle of the stick.

Three of them, one broom, one portkey that would only take two people, and Goyle couldn't fly well enough to get through the wards even if the dogs didn't bring him down before he got near a broom. Harry had no doubt that the hounds wouldn't take any more kindly to him hexing Nott than to Goyle taking a swing at him, and if the hounds attacked…

He came to a decision and shot up into a crouch, levelling his wand at Nott, who jumped back and to the side out of sheer reflex. "Back off, Nott," he said evenly. The circle was fading a little; Harry set a hand on the charm through the silk of Draco's robes and it flared back into life. The hound near him growled, long and low, red eyes shining in the firelight.

"Or what?" Nott demanded. "That spell won't keep the hounds back, and if you curse me they'll rip your throat out."

"I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. Don't make me hex you into a fine red mist."

Nott's gaze travelled down Harry's arm to where his hand rested on Draco's chest, and an unpleasant smile curled his lips. "Finally got round to doing more than staring at him in the shower, did you?"

Harry's face flared hot with fury. "Nott, you fucking -"

"You don't have time, Potter," Goyle interrupted. "He's stalling 'til post check. In a few minutes he'll have help from whoever's on check tonight and then we'll be screwed. Wake Draco up and get going, I'll hold your back."

"You against me and ten Gabriel hounds?" Nott snapped. "Even if you win you'll be so far in deep shit with Lucius that you'll be lucky to get out from under Cruciatus by your next birthday. You really going to risk that just so Potter here can remember how much fun he had playing hero in school, at our bloody expense this time instead of Gryffindor's -"

"Shut up and call those damn dogs back, Nott!" Harry said between his teeth.

"You're fucking up, Goyle," Nott warned. "Nobody on Potter's side is safe. The only thing he's good for is getting people killed. You're going to hand Draco over from his father to that? It'll be your bloody funeral when Draco gets sent back to his father in a box because you let Potter get hold of him."

Before he knew what he was doing Harry was on his feet, poised at the edge of the protective circle, his wand breaking the circle's edge to point at Nott. "I never fucking liked you, Nott, and now I remember why," he said, throat aching with the effort of keeping his voice down. "You can set the dogs on us and maybe they'll tear us apart, but you know what? It won't do you a goddamned bit of good when you're bleeding from the eye sockets because I've ruptured every blood vessel in that thick head of yours -"

"Doing Dark Magic now, Potter?"

"Who's going to take fucking House points for it, Nott, you?"

The hound next to Harry growled loudly, slavering over long, sharp fangs; the others answered it, circling closer. Harry stepped back, grabbed his broom, and swung up onto it. Not taking his eyes off Nott, he levitated Draco onto the broom in front of him; Draco was fighting the spell, tense but unable to bring himself back to consciousness, and Harry wrapped an arm securely around his waist. "I'm leaving, and I'm taking Draco with me. You don't get a say in it. Put your goddamned wand down and call the dogs off or you're not going to live to regret it."

There was a shout from across the field, toward the manor, answered by another one from the nearest guard post. "Time's up," Goyle said, and moved forward with astonishing speed to land a bone-breaking haymaker to Nott's jaw. Nott fell backward with a garbled cry, blood spurting through the hand he clapped over his mouth; the hounds sprang, slamming against the protective circle and falling back as Harry soared up and out of their reach, and the first one to charge Goyle met his fist head-on, fell to the ground, and didn't move again.

"Enervate," Harry hissed, pointing his wand at Draco, who came to with a jolt. The hounds coursed toward Goyle, who retreated backward toward the trees, pulling his wand belatedly out of his sleeve and nearly tripping over Nott's prone body.

"Avada Kedavra," Draco snapped, and a flood of green light enveloped one of the hounds. "Goyle, watch out, you're going to trip one of the -"

The hounds sprang, teeth glistening in the firelight; Goyle leaped backward, stunning one of the dogs in the lead, and came down solidly on top of a tripwire ward. Harry could see it gathering behind him, lines of magic solidifying into a blade, the hounds were almost on him and Nott was taking aim with his wand, and in a flash Harry had pulled the portkey bag out of his pocket and thrown it at Goyle. A quick charm yanked the bag to a halt in midair, sending the portkey flying forward to slam into the side of Goyle's head.

The bladeward passed through the air where Goyle had been and came within an inch of taking off the top of one of the hounds' skulls.

"That was your only portkey, wasn't it?" Draco asked tightly, aiming his wand at Nott. "Stupefy!"

"Yeah. And there are two of us and one broom. Hold on."

Harry kicked the broom into motion and shot into the forest, dodging between two wards and ducking underneath another one; a quick countercurse shredded a third as it massed in front of him, but something slammed into the rear of the broom as he tried to dodge two more, making him lose hold and sending them flipping end over end as Harry fought to bring the broom back under control. Draco was suddenly gone and just as quickly back, and when Harry finally managed to bring the broom back up and on course a foot from a tree trunk, Draco was facing backward on the broom, legs locked around Harry's hips and around the broom behind him, one forearm slung around the back of Harry's neck.

"Fly, Potter," he snapped, pulling them down so that Harry was almost flat on the broom. Harry arced upward, aiming for the clear air above the trees, dodging the wards in front of them as Draco tore apart the ones behind them and to the side; compensating instinctively for their combined weight as Draco moved unerringly with him, half a second behind. He dropped and ducked underneath a bladeward, sheared through a web like an acromantula's spread across the trees, and dodged around a ward saturated with the Cruciatus curse, and then was through the canopy and above the forest. The wards were no thinner here but they were easier to dodge, flares of magic that snapped and died with Draco's whispered incantations in his ear, and with his own, and Harry thought God we're going to do this we're going to -

"Fuck!" Draco pitched backward and yanked the back end of the broom up with his ankles, sending them spiralling down into a Wronsky Feint. Harry swallowed hard and pushed the broom faster, outracing the speed of their bodies in freefall, plunging back down through the trees - and a second later something massive hit the branches above them, smashing through them and sending leaves and tree limbs raining down on Harry and Draco before Harry yanked out of the dive a foot above the ground and soared back upward. On the way back up he caught a glimpse of something white, bloated, and huge; not caring what it was as long as it stayed behind, he arced around and toward the dark, glittering waters of the Irish Channel.

A solid wall of entrapment wards flared into life in front of him. Harry swore and ripped through the first two layers, but they were coming up on it too fast and he didn't dare slow down; Draco glanced back and dropped down to hang backward off the front of the broom, legs tightening around Harry's waist and his wand coming up and back to rip through ward layers with sharp incantations that almost blended with Harry's. The wall buckled and wavered and a hole opened in front of Harry, dragging at his skin with the unpleasant tinge of Dark Magic as he shot through it.

And then they were over a cliff and out over the Channel, and the air was clear in front of them.

Harry punched a fist into the air and let out a victory whoop, and Draco laughed softly, pulling himself back up with an arm around Harry's neck. For a moment they were close enough to breathe the same air, close enough for Harry to feel Draco shaking with exhaustion, pain, and the aftereffects of an adrenaline high; then Draco smiled and slipped off the broom with a smooth, graceful movement. Harry banked and came around behind him, nearly matching his downward velocity so that he landed softly on the broom with his back to Harry's chest.

"Not the most aerodynamic of positions," Draco pointed out, and even his voice was shaking. "Unless you want me to fly, that is."

"No," Harry said, sliding an arm around Draco's waist, careful to avoid his ribs. "We're good."

"For some value of 'good,'" Draco observed dryly, reaching back to touch Harry's forehead. His fingers came away red, and for the first time Harry realized that his glasses were splattered with tiny droplets of blood and his head was throbbing. A quick probe told him that it was a small cut, already closing, and he turned his attention back to Draco.

"Can you Apparate?"

"God, no. Not for a while, anyway."

"Yeah, I don't really want to either," Harry said, and turned the broom toward Cornwall.

"Potter…"

"Hm?"

"Thank you for using the portkey on Greg. I owe you a minion."

Harry leaned his forehead against Draco's shoulder and laughed until he was out of breath. "We make a good team, Malfoy," he whispered against Draco's robes.

Draco gave a small, tired, rueful smile. "We might have, once," he murmured, closed his eyes, and went limp in Harry's arms.

Harry brushed ice-white hair out of his mouth, tucked Draco closer against him, and soared toward the Cornish coast.

 

The safehouse was small and isolated, in an easily defensible area with a cliff at its back and flat fields for a mile around; Harry passed over it twice in the dark before it caught his eye. Not bothering to try to maneuver either himself or Draco off the broom, he spelled the door open and flew inside, locking it securely behind him. He was in a small sitting room, and he'd take the time to get his bearings later but the pertinent thing at the moment was that there was no bed and he was exhausted. Lighting his wand, he spotted a hallway and veered down it. There was one bedroom, relatively large, containing a four-poster bed that didn't have acres of room but would at least fit two people comfortably. With a sigh of relief, Harry flew into the bedroom and levitated Draco onto the bed.

Draco stirred and blinked his eyes open as Harry lit a fire in the fireplace with a wave of his wand. "Cornwall?" he asked blearily.

Harry set his broom down in the corner, dropped his glasses onto the bedside table, and kicked off his shoes. "Cornwall," he confirmed. "Budge over, there's only one bedroom and I'm too bloody tired to find a couch."

Draco eased over a little and Harry collapsed onto the bed as softly as he could, trying not to jostle the mattress. "How do you feel?" he yawned, thinking vaguely that very few pillows in his life had ever felt so good.

"Like I've been sat on by a giant," Draco answered. "I'm afraid I'm not in any shape to hand over the customary reward for a rescue."

Harry forced a laugh. "Just as well. Pansy might have something to say about that, anyway."

"Mm, yes, she'd say 'My God, Draco, a sodding Gryffindor, do you not have an ounce of House pride?'"

It was, Harry thought, incredibly unfair of Draco to be doing this when Harry was too tired to tell if he was flirting or snarking. He wouldn't put either past Draco even in the condition he was in. "She said I have to be Slytherin now anyway," he muttered into the pillow.

"She said what?"

"Mm. Said I couldn't be a Gryffindor anymore."

"Did she say why?"

Harry's eyes blinked sleepily open, and before he realized what he was doing he had reached across the short distance between them and put his fingertips over Draco's mouth. "Draco. Go to sleep."

For a long moment Draco only watched him, looking a little stunned. Then he nodded, and Harry pulled his hand back, fingers tingling with the remembered softness of Draco's lips. He could hear the ocean outside, waves crashing against cliffs; and there was something he needed to tell Draco about that, something to do with the way that Draco's robes were as silky and cool as the moonlit sky against his fingertips, but he was too drowsy to remember what it was.

Draco was there, safe and beside him, and Harry slept.

 

Come the first light of dawn, Remus stood outside the Headmaster's office and watched the staircase descend obediently. Not as a rule a morning person, he was too tense and hyperaware to be groggy; in thirty-six hours the full moon was going to rise, and then they'd see how well Severus' new potion worked. He just hoped he could manage to get everything done that needed to be done in that time, before the aftereffects of the transformation put him out of commission for a few days.

Rather to his surprise, there were voices drifting out from behind the office door - Severus and another voice he couldn't place. Remus knocked sharply and the voices fell silent.

"Come in," Severus called, and Remus opened the door.

Severus was seated at the tea table, wafting about tea and an aroma of bacon that made Remus think with rather wistful urgency of raw meat. Shaking off the craving, Remus glanced at the room's other occupant, who was sitting across from Severus: a large, slow-looking young man with a vaguely familiar face and scent.

"Good morning, Lupin," Severus said, contriving as usual to make it sound as though what had made the morning good was mostly its utter lack of Remus Lupin and Severus was looking forward to returning to that satisfactory and Lupin-less state of affairs. "Do you remember Gregory Goyle?"

Remus looked at the boy with a little more interest. That was why he hadn't been able to place him - Goyle had spent his entire third year blending in with Vincent Crabbe and cast completely into shadow by Draco Malfoy's brilliant, if obnoxious, light. "Greg, of course. Have you been keeping well?"

"Yes, sir," Goyle said uneasily; clearly wishing Remus elsewhere so that he and Severus could talk. Remus knew the feeling.

Severus looked at Remus thoughtfully, appeared to come to some decision, and summoned another chair from across the room to the tea table. "Have a seat, Lupin."

Goyle looked uncertainly at Severus, but held his peace; Remus sank compliantly into the chair and accepted the invitation to pour himself some tea.

"Goyle arrived here at around three-thirty this morning," Severus said. "Portkeyed to my office, in fact, with the portkey that I gave Potter to use to bring himself and Draco back. Apparently there was… some difficulty in getting Draco off the grounds of his father's manor, and Potter handed the portkey over to Goyle."

"Well, not so much handed over as threw it at me and hit me in the head," Goyle said with a sort of rueful good humor. "Good thing, too. I was in a bit of a spot."

Well, they'd come back to that in a moment. "So Harry no longer has a portkey back?"

"No. By now he and Draco will have reached the safehouse in Cornwall," Severus answered.

"If they got through the grounds wards," Goyle said grimly.

Remus set his teacup down. "That's bad," he noted. "There is, as far as I know, no way into Hogwarts that's unknown to Ron Weasley, and therefore to the Aurors stationed around the grounds as we speak. No way that Harry and Draco could make use of, at any rate."

Severus took a drink of his tea. "I have to confess I'm rather impressed," he said in a tone that very nearly succeeded in being conversational instead of soaked through with bloody-minded rage. "I had no idea Weasley was sufficiently well-acquainted with the Hogwarts wards to hide Aurors in their vicinity from the Headmaster, of all people."

"Those wards have been known to let things slip in under the Headmaster's nose," Remus commented dryly.

"Under the previous Headmaster's nose. Not under mine."

Goyle refilled his plate with toast and bacon with the patient air of someone accustomed to waiting until the conversation rolled back around to something he was interested in.

"So you saw Harry, then?" Remus asked, taking advantage of Severus' lapse into silence to change the subject. "Was he all right?"

Goyle set his teacup down in front of the creamer, which lifted itself on spindly gold legs and tilted to pour milk into his tea. "He was pissed off," he said bluntly.

"At anyone in particular, or just at the universe in general?"

"Mostly at Draco. And then mostly at Theo Nott." Goyle smiled grimly. "Theo tried to stop him taking Draco away. Potter didn't like that. I wouldn't want to bet much money that Theo's still alive."

"God almighty," Remus said, staring at Goyle. "You can't think Harry killed him."

"You weren't there," Goyle said. "You didn't see the buttons he pushed, or how bad it was to push them right then when Potter'd just had a screaming row with Draco and looked like he hadn't slept in days. Shit, you have a row with Draco, the only thing to do is go sit in a quiet room for a few hours with some nice biscuits and an icepack on your head and hope nobody makes any sudden noises. Even hurt bad and not on his form he drove Potter the short mile to Coventry in five minutes flat."

Remus glanced at Severus, who gave him an almost imperceptible nod, and then turned back to Goyle. "Greg, I think you'd better start from the beginning."

Goyle gave his breakfast a woeful glance and fortified himself with some tea. "The Malfoys have these plants in their garden," he began, and kept going from there.

By the time Goyle was finished talking, Remus had formed a number of opinions - prime among them the opinion that, come the Hereafter, James and Lily were going to have some strong words for him on the topic of letting their son lose contact with reality far enough to lay his life at the feet of Lucius Malfoy's heir. He looked thoughtfully down into his tea, noting the angle at which the sun slanted across the table - not much time left before his first class of the morning. "What are you going to do now?" he asked, and Goyle looked at him in surprise, either at the question itself or the fact that Remus had asked it.

"Dunno," Goyle answered, shrugging. "I don't think I can get back to where Lucius is on my own, and probably best to wait until he cools down a bit anyway. I'll go back with Draco when he goes back, I suppose."

Remus had his own opinions on that matter. Rowing with Draco might require quiet, biscuits, and an icepack to recover from, but rowing with Harry… well, Harry had a tendency to hide the biscuits and icepack until one saw things his way, while simultaneously making them urgently needed. And a Harry who was pissed off enough to hurt Theodore Nott badly for getting in his way was a Harry who was unlikely in the extreme to let Draco go back to Lucius without a hell of a fight.

"You're welcome to stay here, of course," Severus said. Remus glanced at him, wondering. "I believe that Draco would be pleased to see you when he returns."

Goyle tilted his head, clearly hearing something in Severus' words that Remus hadn't. "All right," he said amiably. "We didn't have much chance to talk while he was with his father. Be good to get caught up."

Between Pansy, Goyle, and Draco, Hogwarts was starting to look like a Home for Wayward Slytherins. Remus had too bloody many questions, and he held out no hope that Severus would answer any of them. "Severus, I'm due in class in a few minutes. I can speak to Ron about the Aurors if you'd like. I don't know if he'll listen, but I can try."

"Thank you, Lupin, I'll deal with the Aurors in good time."

"But Harry and Draco -"

"Are safe where they are," Severus said, with a tone in his voice that clearly indicated that the discussion was now over. Frustration flared in Remus, but he smiled amiably at Severus anyway.

"Lovely seeing you again, Greg," he told Goyle. "Severus, I'll see you at lunch."

He was tempted to listen as he closed the door; but he was going to be late if he didn't hurry, and they weren't likely to speak again until he was well out of earshot. Bloody Slytherins, he thought irritably, fully in a mood to blame that House for all the world's ills up to and including blight in the wolfsbane crops, and headed for his first class. It was going to be a very long day.

 

Silence fell with startling speed when he pushed open the door. A score of fifteen-year-olds, Slytherins and Gryffindors carefully segregated on opposite sides of the room, turned to stare apprehensively at him, and he tried to smile reassuringly as he made his way to the front of the room.

"Good morning," he said brightly, setting his folder down on the desk. "I'm Professor Lupin. I'll be standing in for Professors Malfoy and Potter until they return."

Half the hands on the Gryffindor side of the room shot up, but it was one of the Slytherin boys who asked. "Where are they?"

"I don't know exactly, but the Headmaster assures me that they're safe," Remus answered, not needing to see their expressions to know that they weren't going to be satisfied with that answer.

"When will they be back?" one of the girls on the Gryffindor side asked plaintively. Remus rather thought that, House loyalties and personal affection aside, a slightly reedy forty-five-year-old werewolf had to be a piss-poor substitute for two twenty-five-year-old former Quidditch players, and had to hide his smile.

"I'm afraid I don't know that either, but I'm sure it'll be soon."

"But why did they -" the Slytherin boy began, frustrated.

Remus whipped out his wand and took aim at the boy. "Expell -" he began - and found himself staring at an empty classroom. Laughing, he set his wand down. "Very good, very good. You can come out now."

There was a short pause, during which the Gryffindors peeked up over their desks and the Slytherins waited to see if anything nasty befell the Gryffindors.

"Come on, now, back in your seats, there you are. Which one of them taught you to take cover like that?"

"Professor Malfoy," one of the Gryffindor boys said morosely, and even a couple of the Slytherins grimaced.

"Taught you the hard way, did he?" Remus guessed.

"O'Dowd there had green hair growing out of his nose for days," his informant said, nodding over at a blushing red-haired boy. "All the way down to his chest, it was. And Pirbright grew tentacles, actual tentacles."

"Came in right handy at lunch, though," a stocky Gryffindor boy, probably the Pirbright in question, said philosophically.

"And Professor Potter pulled out his wand first thing at the next class, and then he laughed at us because we - because we flinched a bit," a blonde Slytherin girl said wrathfully.

"'Flinched a bit,' my… foot. We hit the dirt and hid under our desks," O'Dowd corrected her.

"Well, he oughtn't to have laughed, anyway," she shot back; and Remus heard real distress in her voice, and knew it wasn't for Harry's momentary lapse of sympathy.

"No, he shouldn't have," he said soothingly. "Bit tactless of him. Still, your professors are quite right - half of defending against hexes and jinxes is arranging to be elsewhere when they land."

Harry and Draco had made changes to his syllabus, all right - useful changes, at that. There was more theory now, and a section on law and ethics; but the practical sections were hard and relentless, tacit acknowledgement that war was still hovering over their heads. He wondered if they'd agreed on that openly or silently, discussed or simply understood.

"I see you're meant to be starting on curse-breaking today," he noted, looking down at Draco's lecture notes. Fortunately, they were clearly written, detailed, and well-organized - unlike Harry's, which were full of abbreviations, terse and opaque references, things scribbled out and scrawled in the margins. Harry's were clearly intended only for his own use, whereas Draco's had the look of someone who knew that another lecturer would have to step in and take over at some point. Remus knew that style from his own lecture notes, and he'd thought quite a bit about it the night before without coming to any real conclusions. "Let's make that a practical lesson, shall we?"

A few expressions of interest and many more of mild horror greeted the suggestion. Remus glanced at his pocket watch, pulled a roll of ribbon out of his pocket, and tossed the ribbon into the air. It unfurled with a snap and wound itself through the room, zig-zagging so that a length of it hovered just in front of every child in the class and the end drifted sedately in front of Remus. "Take hold of that, it's a portkey. In about… two minutes now it's going to take us to a burial site just south of Sutton Hoo. Leave your things here, I've locked the door. They'll be all right."

A Slytherin boy with hair so pale that Remus wondered if he was a Malfoy relation stuck his hand in the air. "This isn't something that's going to leave us with two heads, is it? Only there's an Arithmancy test next period."

"No, no, no, it's a minor curse at a teaching site. I took my fifth-years there the last time I taught here. There are lots of cursed barrows at the site, so don't go wandering, but the one we'll be working at won't do any worse than make you turn a bit purplish and sneeze a lot. Take hold of the ribbon, now, it'll be activating soon. And stand up - it's muddy where we're going and you don't want to be caught sitting down without a chair." Remus caught hold of his end and looked to be sure everyone else had a good grip.

If Harry and Draco had to disappear, he supposed it was just as well they'd chosen now to do it, when Remus had enough energy to manage twenty inquisitive fifteen-year-olds and still keep an eye out for approaching trouble. There were twenty portkey stones in his pocket; once those stones were transferred into the students' pockets, he could send every one of them back to Hogwarts with a word. He just had time for one last check around the room before the portkey activated, there was an unpleasant tug behind his sternum, and then the wind was driving a fine mist of rain into his face. Behind his students, the Suffolk Downs Educational Site - horrid, bureaucratic name for such a lovely place - stretched across a rolling plain, barrows older by far than Hogwarts showing tight-packed stone where they'd been excavated and grassy hillocks where they hadn't. Remus pulled a site map out of another pocket and double-checked it, then surreptitiously double-checked the wards and misdirection spells surrounding the site.

"Come along, you lot," he ordered his suddenly interested students. "This is an Anglo-Saxon ship burial site - the barrow we're going to work at dates from the late sixth century, and we'll see once we've got there that the curses laid on it are a sort of imported Scandinavian…"

Remus led the way through the downs, lecturing as he went. He was looking forward to refreshing his own memory on the topic of site-protective curses.

 

Harry drifted slowly toward consciousness, registering warmth and contentment before he registered the other body he was wrapped around. Stretching a little, he opened his eyes to ash-blond hair an inch away from his face and pale skin just beyond it, curving smoothly down into the graceful line of a collarbone. Unable to quite wake up and get his bearings and too sleepy and comfortable to care, he thought, Something's changed, and Nice, this is nice. His legs were tangled with someone else's, there were slender fingers entwined with his own on someone's chest, and Harry was just beginning to purr at the prospect of slow, not-quite-awake morning sex when he realized where he was and who he was curled up against.

He sat up quickly, feeling the loss of Draco's warmth like a burn all along his body, and squinted down at Draco as he stirred and opened his eyes. Malfoy began to stretch too, then winced and went pale.

"I need to see how badly you're hurt," Harry said, and told himself that the roughness in his voice was from sleep. "Can you sit up and take off your robes and your shirt?"

Malfoy blinked a little and rubbed his hand across his eyes. "My God, Potter, are you always this energetic first thing in the morning?"

"I'm tired too. But you're hurt. Can you sit up?"

With a resigned sigh, Malfoy began to lift himself up onto his elbows, then sank back, wincing. "That would be a 'no,' I think."

"All right, just… just stay where you are." Harry turned and gathered his glasses and his wand from the bedside table, slipped his glasses on and set his wand down beside him, and began unbuttoning Malfoy's robes. It took him longer than it should have; the material was rich, rough silk with too-small buttons, and Harry's hands were still clumsy with sleep. Pushing the robes aside, he pulled the tails of Malfoy's shirt out of his trousers and began unbuttoning from the bottom up. Malfoy, seeming rather reluctant, started with the top button and began working his way down.

Their hands met on the middle button. Harry's eyes flew up to meet Malfoy's, and for a long moment neither of them moved. Draco's gaze was sober and strangely thoughtful.

Looking away, Harry brushed Draco's hands away, finished unbuttoning his shirt, and opened it. "Jesus fucking Christ, Draco," he said tightly, staring at the ugly mass of bruises that covered Malfoy's chest and stomach.

"They're only bruises."

"The fuck they are. You look like a troll stomped on you, and you were coughing blood last night. God only knows what kind of internal injuries you've got. You can't Apparate in this condition, you'll leave half your guts on the bedroom floor." Harry tried to breathe, fighting back a sudden stab of fear. They'd be back at Hogwarts soon enough, and Poppy could take care of everything that Harry couldn't manage.

"Potter." Draco's voice was suddenly hard, and Harry looked up at him. "You've done worse than this to me."

"I -" Harry looked away. "If I have, I'm sorry."

"No, you're not. You're feeling guilty at the moment. It'll pass. Now hand me my wand so I can -"

"Shut up and lie still, Malfoy," Harry snapped, feeling unutterably wretched. "Just… let me take care of you now, all right?"

"I don't need saving, Potter," Draco said quietly.

"And you don't need me either, right, I know," Harry said, hearing it come out more bitter than he'd meant. "Don't make me Petrify you. You can go back to making my life miserable when you can sit up by yourself."

"And what have I actually done lately to make your life miserable?" Draco demanded.

Harry paused, one hand on his wand and the other spread on the left side of Draco's chest, covering a particularly nasty bruise. The heartbeat under his fingertips was steady and strong. "Nothing," he whispered. "You haven't done anything. Just, please, I'm asking. Be quiet and let me do this."

The sheer weight of Draco's gaze was unsettling; Harry wanted to look away, too conscious of being considered and evaluated, and couldn't. After a long silence, Draco gave a grudging nod.

Harry resettled himself on the bed, crossing his legs under him, careful not to jostle Draco. Making an arbitrary decision as to where to start, he slipped his hand under the cool cotton of Draco's shirt collar and eased it back over Draco's collarbone, cast a cleansing charm where the skin was broken, and drew his fingertips along the bone, testing for breaks. Draco shifted a little, a bare flicker of movement but enough to tip Harry's fingers into the hollow of Draco's collarbone at the base of his neck.

Harry cleared his throat. "Well, that side's not broken, anyway."

"The other side isn't either, or I don't think it is, anyway."

"Good thing, too. I'm rubbish at healing bones. I'm always afraid I'm going to make them disappear, and it makes the charm not come out right." Harry set the tip of his wand against Draco's skin and cleared away the bruising over his collarbone and shoulder.

"I'm not very good at healing, period. Well, obviously," Draco said wryly, gesturing at his bruised torso.

"Did you try to heal anything?"

"No," Draco answered, and didn't say anything else.

Harry didn't push. He moved his hand across Draco's body instead, brushing over the hollow of his throat, and tested for breaks again. "I have to tell you something."

"Tell, then."

Harry finished healing the bruising over Draco's left shoulder and moved down to his chest, running his fingers lightly over the soft, nearly invisible scattering of hair. "The night you left, Hermione got attacked by Death Eaters. Not just Death Eaters, I mean. From what I could gather, Voldemort was there too."

Draco frowned. "Granger? Is she all right?"

"No," Harry said, cutting off abruptly as his throat closed. He took a deep breath and kept going, healing a bruise that looked as if the blow that caused it should have shattered Draco's sternum. "She's not. They don't, the doctors at St. Mungo's, they don't know if she'll ever be all right."

"I'm sorry," Draco said quietly.

"Ron thinks you had something to do with it. Because of the timing."

Draco snorted and closed his eyes. "Lovely. So as soon as I get back to Hogwarts I'm going to be hauled off to Azkaban. Out of the frying pan and into the fire."

"I'm not going to let him take you to Azkaban. But that isn't all. When she was… when they were questioning her, Hermione…" Harry paused and rubbed at his eyes under his glasses, then went back to healing bruises. "God, I don't even know how to explain this and there are so many things I should tell you about Hermione so that you'd understand why she -"

"Potter, I realize that we do in fact have all day, but I'd like to get back to Hogwarts in the near future so if you'd get to the point?"

"The point is that Voldemort's after you, and not just in a sort of general 'Wouldn't it be nice to kill Lucius Malfoy's son one of these days' way." Harry said bluntly, not looking up, easing Draco's shirt aside to heal a bruise on his ribs.

"Voldemort's - all right, I take it back. He's after me? Why in buggery, and what has that got to do with Granger?"

He sounded shaken, and Harry found himself almost stroking the warm skin of Draco's stomach, gentling him. "She… misunderstood something, or - well, I don't know, I'm not sure how Hermione's brain works sometimes. But she let Voldemort think that he can get to your father and me both through you. She wasn't thinking right by then. She thought she was protecting me."

"Protecting you? How? It's not as if Voldemort's going to suddenly forget about you because someone's painted a fucking target on my back too."

There was a long bruise running down across Draco's hipbone underneath the line of his trousers; Harry hesitated, then unbuttoned the trousers, the backs of his fingers brushing against the line of hair leading down from just below Draco's navel. "I don't know if I can explain it," he said, folding one side of Draco's trousers down and studiously not looking at his face.

"I think you can. I think you just don't want to."

Harry healed the bruise with a quick flick of his wand and rebuttoned the buttons. "You're right, I don't. You're going to have to take off your shirt and turn over."

Draco sat stiffly up, wincing, and shrugged off his shirt and robes. Grumbling under his breath, he resettled himself on his stomach, pillowing his head on his arms. "Just tell me, Potter."

Harry's hand paused a fraction of an inch above Draco's skin, then moved up. On the back of Draco's shoulder, half-obscured by bruises, was a green and silver dragon, inked in sharp, minimalist lines, small enough that Harry could have covered it with his hand. He drew his fingertips over it, half expecting it to move, but it was still.

Draco shivered at his touch, and Harry felt magic tingle and fade under his fingers.

Fascinated, Harry cleared away the bruises covering it, leaving it shimmering under Draco's skin as if it had been set into crystal. He'd seen tattoos enough in his life, but this was the first time he'd seen one done by magic this beautifully; the colors were gorgeous, hallucinatory in their clarity, silver brighter than moonlight and green that looked as if it were rich-dyed silk all the way down to Draco's bones. He realized suddenly that his fingers were tracing the dragon, over and over, and realized too with an odd sort of distant panic that he needed to stop doing that, now; but at the moment it was all he could do not to lean over and trace it with his tongue as well, filling his mouth with the taste of magic and Draco intertwined, and he wondered exactly what magic was set into the dragon and why it was placed where it was.

Oh, God. Bloody Malfoy. Sodding, bloody, fucking, straight, engaged Malfoy. Whatever he'd wanted revenge for all those years, he was damn well getting it now.

"Like it?" Draco asked.

Harry snatched his hand back as if he'd been burned and went back to healing bruises, annoyed with the blush heating his face. "It's lovely. Where did you get it?"

"At a tattoo parlor in the Rue Montparnasse, rather like Paris' equivalent of Knockturn Alley. Potter, why exactly is Voldemort after me?"

This really was not turning out to be one of Harry's better days. "Look, it's not that important -"

"And you're not that stupid. If Voldemort wants me badly enough he'll have a damn good chance of getting his hands on me, and I'll be in bloody bad shape if I have to figure out what he wants with me from him instead of being forewarned and knowing how to play the scene."

Harry traced Draco's spine with his fingertips, wand following in the wake of his hand, making Draco shiver again. "Hermione thinks - or was twisted into thinking, or something - that you're more of a weakness to me than I realize," he said finally, very quietly. "She doesn't think I can afford weaknesses."

"So instead of setting the bloody Dark Lord on Weasley, she set him on your Defence co-teacher?"

Christ, can't he just get it and stop? Harry wondered miserably. "She thinks you're more than that to me."

Draco was silent for a long moment before he finally said, "Ah. I see."

Harry pushed his hair wearily out of his face and kept working his way down Draco's back, bruises vanishing under his wand, trying not to notice the warmth of Draco's body under his hands.

"What's that charm you were carrying? The dragonfly," Draco asked after a minute.

"It's one Filius developed, a protective charm. The dragonfly was my mother's," Harry answered, and was glad that his voice was steady. "I think the charm needs some work. It's a bloody good protective spell against physical threats, but it makes you visible from space."

Draco laughed. "That's a bit inconvenient," he said, and yawned.

"Go back to sleep," Harry said. "You don't need to be awake for this."

"No, I'm fine," Draco said drowsily.

Frowning, Harry reached to trace his fingertips over a long, thin, jagged scar that ran from just under Draco's elbow nearly up to his shoulder, a hard ridge against the soft skin and firm muscle underneath. "Malfoy, where did you get this?"

"The scar? It's from that wretched hippogryff that took a slice out of me in our third year."

"Buckbeak did that?"

"Five points to Gryffindor for their usual quickness on the uptake."

"But… I thought Poppy got to it in plenty of time to keep it from scarring."

"Mm, yes, so did I, until I found out that hippogryff talons have some sort of toxin in them that keeps wounds from closing properly. I was in miserable pain for weeks."

"I -" Harry's face heated like a furnace, and he didn't know if it was with shame or outrage. "I thought you were faking it. Shit, Malfoy, you told me you were faking it."

Malfoy snickered a bit and opened his eyes, looking up at Harry with sleepy amusement. "You're cute when you're afire with righteous indignation, Potter. I didn't have the heart to disabuse you of your conspiracy theories. It would have been like kicking a puppy."

Harry raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, all right. I didn't tell you because I was having far too much fun annoying you. And really, you weren't thinking. If Poppy had been able to close my wound right up, why would I have had my arm in a sling? Do you really think she'd have given me one just because I asked for it? I got to annoy you and snicker in my sleeve at your denseness. It was one of the few bright spots about the whole affair. And you know you wouldn't have believed me even if I'd told you."

The ridge of the scar was cold and hard under Harry's fingertips. The wound itself must have looked awful. "I would have believed you if you'd shown me."

"Potter, you are missing the whole 'entertain Draco in his convalescence' aspect of the thing."

Harry opened his mouth to respond sharply - and remembered Draco and Pansy curled together in Draco's bed, telling each other fantastic stories to keep his mind off the pain. "Well, I'm glad someone got some entertainment out of that, anyway," he said dryly instead, and went back to healing bruises.

"Hagrid really wasn't suited for the position he held, you know," Malfoy said softly. "He didn't hold to a useful curriculum or even understand the need to, and he had absolutely no judgment when it came to dealing with dangerous creatures. That made him unable to teach students how to deal with them, or to so much as teach them basic safety precautions. It was like having a Potions master who never wanted to do anything but complex potions with caustic and toxic ingredients, and never thought to teach the students elementary protective spells."

Harry sighed. "I know," he answered, feeling that he owed Draco at least one concession and understanding that for a Malfoy that probably counted as an apology. "All right, as an adult and a teacher myself I know that now. I even knew it then, though I tried not to. I just... he was my friend, you know?"

"And you're very protective of your friends, yes, I know," Draco said in a carefully neutral tone.

"You should have known I'd come for you," Harry whispered, and couldn't stop the touch of his hands from feeling too much like a caress.

"I said you're protective of your friends, Potter," Draco answered, letting his eyes drift closed again, and Harry couldn't decide if that was regret in his voice or something else. "I had no reason to believe that you'd do something like that for me."

Harry wanted to argue; but Draco was still exhausted and so was he, and it was getting too hard to keep himself from touching Draco the way he ached to, conveying reassurance and warmth with his hands the way he didn't dare to with words. "Well, next time you'll know better," he said instead.

"Mm," Draco said, faint and neutral.

Harry slipped a hand into Draco's hair and probed gently at his scalp. "Tell me if anything hurts," he said, watching silk-soft tendrils run over his hand like trails of rain.

Draco made a vaguely negative sound. "You have nice hands. You should have been a mediwizard."

"Sleep," Harry whispered, and healed a cut just above Draco's ear.

When Draco was asleep again, Harry got up and went in search of the bathroom. He stood under the shower for a long time, head bowed against the spray, his hair clinging to his face and sending water streaming over his closed eyes; soap-slick hands ghosting over his skin, too familiar to be satisfying.

 

When he got out of the shower and towelled off, he realized that he'd forgot to bring in his change of clothes. A little annoyed with himself, he wrapped the towel around his waist and headed out into the hall, shaking his head sharply and sending beads of water spattering from his hair to his shoulders.

Something moved at the edge of his vision, something too small to be Draco but moving purposefully and fast. In a flash Harry had slammed back against the hallway wall, summoned his wand, and pointed it at the small blur, prepared to throw a Petrificus Totalis.

The blur gave an oddly familiar-sounding shriek. "Harry Potter must not hex Dobby," it wailed, and Harry lowered his wand and squinted.

"Accio glasses! Dobby, what are you doing here? And lower your voice, you'll wake Draco."

"Too late," Draco grumbled in a voice still rough from sleep, and wandered out to lean in the doorway of the bedroom, wand dangling from one hand, raking the other hand through his hair. "Dobby, what are you doing here?"

Dobby looked from Harry to Draco and back, taking in Draco's dishevelled and shirtless condition and Harry's current state of undress, and his ears lifted in what looked horribly like delight. Draco followed his gaze and raised an eyebrow at Harry's towel, which had slipped down to his hipbones. Harry felt a blush start at his chest and work its way up to his hairline, stuck his wand in his teeth, and hurriedly readjusted his towel.

"Dobby has a message from the Headmaster," the house elf reported.

"Yes, well, hold onto it for a minute," Harry said tersely. "I'm going to get dressed."

He slipped past Draco, who showed an irksome lack of inclination to move aside, grabbed his spare clothes out of his pack, and went back into the bathroom to dress. When he came back out, Draco and Dobby were both gone, and Dobby's voice drifted to him from the kitchen. Harry followed it and found breakfast spread on the table and Draco, who had pulled on a shirt but hadn't bothered to button it, clutching a cup of coffee like a lifeline.

"All right, what's the message?" he asked, feeling a bit more able to hold up his end of the conversation.

Dobby's ears drooped a little again. "Harry Potter and Master Draco must not come back to Hogwarts yet," he reported. Draco and Harry glanced at each other, frowning.

"Why not?" Draco asked.

"The Headmaster didn't tell Dobby. He is saying there are things that must be made ready first, and that it is too dangerous for Master Draco to return right now."

Harry swore. "Lucius."

"Or Weasley," Draco said quietly.

"Or Ron," Harry agreed reluctantly.

"But Dobby will come every day to bring food and take care of Master Draco and Harry Potter," Dobby said. "The Headmaster says it will be safe to come back in a few days."

Harry cleared his throat. "Er, can you bring spare sheets and pillows? There's only one bed, and one of us is going to have to sleep on the couch."

Dobby's ears drooped a bit further, but he refrained from asking any embarrassing questions, much to Harry's relief. "Whatever Harry Potter wishes. Dobby must go now."

"Thank you, Dobby," Draco said dismissively, reaching for the coffee pot. "Tell Severus that -"

He cut off abruptly; the coffee pot handle slipped through his fingers, the pot clattered back down onto the table, and Draco went white, bringing up an arm around his lower ribs.

Harry swore and pulled out his wand. "Sit down."

"Potter, I'm fine," Draco said faintly.

"Sit down," Harry ordered; beside him, Dobby made a fretful noise and wrung his hands. Draco shot Harry an annoyed glance but sank obediently into one of the kitchen chairs. Harry moved forward, intending to kneel between Draco's knees, thought better of it, and pulled up a chair beside him.

Reaching out, Harry slid his hand flat along Draco's torso. The lower ribs along his right side felt strange, jagged and mis-set, the damage far more noticeable in this position than it had been earlier. "God. That's bad," he said. "You shouldn't be out of bed. Dobby, you're going to have to tell Poppy that Draco's got broken ribs. Ask if she can send anything to help."

Dobby snapped his fingers and vanished.

"I told you, I'm -" Draco began.

"Malfoy. Bed," Harry said firmly… or it started out firm, at any rate. Then he glanced up to meet somber grey eyes closer to his own than he'd thought, and heard himself falter a little.

"You really are very bossy, Potter," Draco said a little hoarsely.

"Yeah, well, you hang around Hermione long enough and it tends to rub off. Here, I'll give you a hand."

"Potter," Draco said between his teeth. "I can get to the bedroom under my own power, and the last thing I want to have to cope with when I'm in pain is Gryffindorness going on in my vicinity. It makes me tired."

"Tough shit, because being Slytherin makes me tired. At least let me bring you coffee and something to eat."

Draco sighed, then clearly wished he hadn't. "All right. Give me a minute." He levered himself up out of the chair and headed out of the kitchen, and Harry wondered how much it was costing him to move that smoothly and apparently effortlessly.

He took his time gathering up fresh coffee and a plate of bacon, sausage, and toast, decided against the scrambled eggs, and took the food into the bedroom. Draco was propped carefully on the pillows, restlessly pointing his wand around the room and making knick-knacks dance. Harry got the feeling that Malfoys didn't do boredom very well, and wondered if they were going to wind up killing each other if they were cooped up together in this tiny cottage for days on end.

"Thank you," Draco said absently as Harry set the plate down on the bed beside him and then sat down beside the plate.

"You're welcome," Harry answered, appropriating a piece of bacon. "Too bad we're not still in school, we could have Dobby bring us our homework. It'd be a pain in the arse, but it'd be something to do."

"The wards on this place need shoring up. There's barely anything there. And I haven't finished marking Potions essays. I'm sure they're execrable."

Harry frowned. "Snape's this place's Secret Keeper," he said around a mouthful of bacon. "D'you think he'd tell anyone?"

"No, but we've no way of knowing who Dumbledore told about it while he was the Keeper. Weasley, for instance, or my cousin Nymphadora, or any of a half-dozen other Aurors in the Order." Draco glanced up, saw Harry staring at him, and said, "What?"

"How do you know about the Order? And how do you know who's in it, and who its Secret Keeper was?"

Draco picked up a sausage and examined it critically. "Your side's not very good at keeping secrets, is it?"

"My - Okay, no, Malfoy, really, I'd like a little more of an answer than that. And I'd also like to know what's with the 'your side' business." Harry reached out and caught Draco's left forearm as he began to lift the sausage to his mouth. Turning it so they could both see, Harry ran his thumb over the pale, unmarked skin above Draco's wrist. "You're not Marked. You're not Voldemort's. And if you are, he can't bloody have you."

"And you'd prevent him how?" Draco asked dryly. "No, don't tell me, there's no need. I told you - I'm a Malfoy and a Slytherin. That's my side."

"And the Order?"

"Well, its existence is hardly a secret, is it? And who else would have been its Secret Keeper besides Dumbledore, and why else would Severus be keeping safehouses secret if not for the Order? Logic, Potter, it has all sorts of advantages, you should try it sometime."

Harry's hot response was forestalled by a small pop, and Dobby reappeared in the bedroom holding a small flask and a note. Draco tugged gently; Harry released his forearm, unable to resist brushing his thumb over it one more time to be sure, and was annoyed to feel himself coloring a little. "What did Poppy say, Dobby?"

"Madam Pomfrey is sending a potion to be sure Master Draco doesn't get…" Dobby paused a moment, searching, then brightened. "Infection! And she is sending this note for Harry Potter."

Harry held out a hand for the note, unfolded it, and read.

Harry,

I'm glad you and Draco are more or less all right. Severus won't let me go and see to you and you can't come back here, so I'm afraid you're going to have to stop dithering and heal his ribs yourself. He should have twelve on each side when you're done.

Harry snorted. That was Poppy, all right, never one to mince words.

The spell is costae emendo. Don't let Draco do it - he'll make a cock-up of it and wind up transfiguring his ribs into macaroni. As long as he's complaining, demanding things, and making you want to wring his neck, he's fine. If he's pale and quiet and insists that he's all right and just wants to be left alone for a while, send word as soon as you can by Dobby.

Severus has asked me to say that Gregory Goyle is here and in one piece, and that he'll send word when it's safe to come back.

Poppy

"Thank you, Dobby," Harry said, and handed the note to Draco. "Dobby… why do you call me 'Harry Potter' and Draco 'Master Draco'?"

Dobby's ears drooped a little. "Dobby forgets, sir," he said apologetically. "Dobby remembers when Master Draco is tiny and is trying to cast horrible curses on Dobby when he is not wanting to take a nap." He sniffled nostalgically.

"Malfoy!"

"I was three years old, Potter," Draco said absently, looking at the note in exasperation. "My mastery of the Cruciatus curse left a bit to be desired. It made the house elves sneeze."

Harry rubbed a hand across his forehead. "If you're not joking, I don't ever, ever want to know about it."

Draco glanced up from the note. "Dobby, next time you come here I'd like you to bring the stack of Potions essays on my desk. There are two stacks, marked and unmarked - bring both of them."

"You might as well bring the Defence essays I was marking, too," Harry put in. "They're on my table."

"Gladly, sirs," Dobby said, and vanished.

Draco sighed and set the note aside. "All right, go on, then. And no making my bones disappear."

Harry swallowed hard and retrieved the note, rereading the incantation. It was stupid to be so convinced that he was going to botch the spell; if there was one thing in life he was sure of, it was that he was a damn sight better a wizard than Gilderoy Lockhart. It would make more sense to be afraid of snakes and spiders because as a child he'd nearly been eaten by large and hostile varieties of each.

"Potter, your hands are shaking," Draco said with the slow smile that had never in fourteen years boded well for Harry. "Are you really that afraid of a bone-mending spell?"

"No!" Harry snapped.

"Maybe I should start breaking my fingers one by one until you give in and start healing them."

Harry confiscated Draco's wand from his hip pocket and set it back out of reach. "Did it ever occur to you that an encouraging word and a pat on the shoulder go a long way?"

Draco tilted his head. "Which one would start you healing bones faster, do you think?"

"Malfoy!"

Draco held up his hand and waggled his fingers. "Want to lay a wager on how good I am at wandless magic?"

With a muttered curse, Harry grabbed his wand and pushed Draco's shirt open. "Costae emendo!" he snapped, and Draco's ribs smoothed out under the skin. Harry ran a hand over them, testing; they all seemed to be there, he thought, resisting the urge to count them.

"You're so easy to wind up that it's almost disappointing," Draco commented. "Look, they're all healed, and what's the worst that would have happened anyway? They're only ribs, they'd have grown back."

"Skele-gro is bloody painful," Harry said shortly, sticking his wand back in his pocket. "I'm going to go get coffee."

"Potter…" Draco said, sounding almost contrite, and Harry froze. "I'm sorry. Thank you for healing me. Next time I have to prod you into doing something, we'll do it your way."

For once his eyes weren't wary and calculating, only serious - and maybe a little anxious, or maybe that was only Harry's imagination. And if Harry tried to say anything now, what was going to come out was I was so scared. Oh, God, I was so scared, and it would have nothing to do with healing bone, and he wasn't ready to say it even to himself.

Don't be stupid, he told himself savagely, thinking of Pansy lit by the sunlight through lake water - and thinking of waking up that morning with the dim realization that something had changed. He wanted it to change back, now, so he could stop feeling like he was drowning, before it got any worse. "Well, your way worked, anyway," he said. "You're welcome. Just don't do it again - that note from Poppy didn't tell me what to do if you're quiet, pale, and making me want to wring your neck."

"I'd like to see you try," Draco said good-humoredly, and yawned.

"You should sleep some more," Harry told him. "You look like you haven't slept in a week."

"I've had a lot on my mind, I suppose."

It was Pansy's job to lend Draco aid and comfort. That was her place, not Harry's. "Doesn't anyone in your family ever sleep?" he asked, and just that one more question and he was going to go and let Draco rest.

"The Malfoys have many talents, but sleeping isn't one of them." Draco looked a little more closely at him. "You look worn out too. There's room on the bed, you know."

Harry looked away, remembering the smell of Draco's hair, and skin so close that he could taste the salt of it like sea air on his tongue. "I'm fine," he lied. "And also starving. I'm going to go get breakfast."

"When was the last time you ate?"

"I've lost track a bit. Get some sleep. I'll set up some alarms before I go back to sleep myself, and we'll do something about the wards when you wake up."

He wanted to touch Draco, to brush the hair out of his eyes, to settle a blanket over him. Instead he went into the kitchen and poured himself a good strong cup of coffee, and stared down into the steam until he caught himself falling asleep on his feet.

He just hoped the bloody couch wasn't too uncomfortable, because it was going to have to do.

 

The moon had already risen when Remus Apparated to Devon, not far from the house the Weasley twins had bought when success had enabled them to move from the small apartments above their Diagon Alley shop to a more isolated location where failed experiments were less likely to bring down the wrath of the entire neighborhood. Apparating that distance wasn't difficult for him at this point in the lunar cycle; but it took something out of him nonetheless, and he paused to get his bearings.

Little Furze - which the Twins had bought from a slightly dotty maiden aunt and never bothered to change the name; Remus suspected that it appealed to their rather odd sense of humor - was situated on top of a small rise at the end of a tree-lined path, a small cottage with a workroom tacked haphazardly onto the back in the same ramshackle way that The Burrow seemed to have evolved over time. Remus could see firelight spilling from the windows as he started up the path, keeping to the shadows of the trees, and thought with some pleasure of the warmth and entertaining company waiting for him.

Assuming they didn't try to turn him into a canary, at any rate.

The door opened as he was raising his fist to knock, and one of the twins - Fred, he assumed from the "F" on the front of his Weasley-made jumper - exclaimed, "Remus!"

"Hello, er," Remus began, then stumbled a bit as the other twin appeared… also wearing a jumper with an "F" on the front.

"All right," he said patiently. "One of you is going to have to change unless you want me to call you both Fred all evening."

"People do that sometimes, you know," said the first twin.

"Saves time in the long run," said the other.

"Charlie used to call us 'You unnatural little bastards'."

"But he loves us really."

"Are you coming in?" they asked together, looking hopefully at him.

Remus had to laugh. "Of course. It's freezing out here."

"George, go change," said the first twin, whom Remus was prepared to assume was Fred. "Have a seat, Remus. I'll fetch you some brandy."

Remus settled comfortably into a squashy armchair by the fire, leaning his cane against the cushion. Little Furze was surprisingly cozy for the domicile of two bachelors in their twenties who spent their time blowing things up; the squashy armchair was more or less matched by a squashy couch, there was a welcoming and well-stocked drinks cabinet, family pictures were dotted about on shelves and tables, and if the rather crooked pair of paintings on the wall weren't high art, neither were they dogs playing poker. The whole room was warm and welcoming, and Remus had rather melted into the chair even before Fred returned trailing three generously-filled snifters of brandy in the air behind him.

When George - properly labelled - had come back downstairs and Fred had distributed the brandies, the twins sprawled on the couch, long legs propped on the coffee table, the cushions, and each other, and turned identically expectant looks on Remus. "How have you been, Remus?" George asked.

"Well enough," Remus answered, and decided to get straight to business. "I'm at Hogwarts for the moment, holding down the fort until Harry gets back."

Fred and George perked up like bloodhounds scenting a rabbit. "What's going on?" George demanded.

"All we know is that ever since what happened to Hermione it's more than our lives are worth to mention Harry around Ron, and -"

"Ron keeps saying it's Ministry business and he can't tell us anything," George went on, appropriating the end of Fred's sentence in his impatience. "Where's Harry, and why is Ron so furious with him?"

"Ah," Remus said, taking a drink of his brandy. "Well, you have to understand that I don't know much about what's going on myself. I just got to Hogwarts yesterday myself, and there are a few things I'd like to be filled in on too."

"But you know more than we do," Fred said plaintively.

"And I'll tell you what I can," Remus said, amused. The Twins settled in more comfortably on the couch, looking rather as if they were waiting to be told a story. "What happened first, it seems, was that Draco Malfoy disappeared."

"Disappeared?" George echoed.

"Yes, on the night Hermione was attacked."

The Twins looked at each other, then back at Remus. "Did he have anything to do with it?" Fred asked bluntly.

"Ron's convinced that he did. Harry's convinced that he didn't. I'm not sure which of them has the weight of the evidence on his side, but Harry's gone to find Draco and bring him back to Hogwarts before Ron gets hold of him."

George gave a low whistle. "No wonder Ron's so bloody furious."

Remus sighed. "Well, you know Ron and Harry. They get something into their heads and it takes six memory charms and a good solid blow with a two-by-four to get it back out. This time they just didn't come down on the same side."

Fred elbowed George in the ribs. "Three Broomsticks," he said thoughtfully, almost questioning.

George frowned. "Sixteen."

"Still."

"Quidditch magazines," George said significantly, apparently agreeing with Fred this time. Remus wondered what in the world they were talking about, and decided that he was probably better off not asking.

"So Harry's gone charging off to rescue Draco Malfoy," Fred said, turning his attention back to Remus. "And you're covering his Defence course?"

"Among other things." Remus looked down into his drink and swirled it thoughtfully. "Fred, George - I need to ask you for help in something, but I need your promise that what I'm about to say will be kept absolutely confidential, even if it doesn't seem to you like something that needs to be kept confidential. I promise it's nothing that your family needs to know at the moment, and by the time they do need to know it, it won't be confidential anymore. Will you promise me that this will stay between us?"

The Twins looked thoughtfully at each other, silent for a long moment, and Remus was relieved - better a deliberate answer than the immediate, disingenuous one he'd half expected. "We promise," they chorused finally.

"Anyway, it'll be one in ickle Ronniekins' eye for not telling us about Harry and Draco," Fred said with gloomy relish. "Who knew he'd get as pompous as… well, he's bloody full of his job, anyway, and won't do anything but drive everyone insane asking questions about the things that went missing from Dad's workshop."

Remus filed that one away for later investigation, and hid a smile at Fred's epithet - "ickle Ronniekins" was taller than the Twins now and a good four inches broader across the shoulders. "How much do you know about Voldemort's recent activities?"

George made a face and took a drink of his brandy. "We know he's come back. Again."

"Bloody man never seems to do anything else. You'd think he'd give up after a while and retire to Brighton."

"There's not much in the papers. We hear rumors, and sometimes Ron or Dad lets something slip, but I don't think they know much either."

"Severus believes that Voldemort is coming to Hogwarts," Remus told them.

The twins exchanged a puzzled glance, then looked back at Remus. "Why?" they asked in unison.

Not "Why" as in What possible reason could he have for doing such a thing, Remus thought from their tone; "Why" as in That's not what we'd do. "To kill Harry, I should imagine," he answered. "And because Hogwarts would make a damn secure base from which to strike at the rest of the wizarding world, if he'd even need to strike once he had the lives of their children hanging over their heads. Even if Harry leaves, Hogwarts will still be in danger."

He paused for a moment, gathering his thoughts, warming his tongue with the excellent brandy. "As far as I know, there are seven hidden passages into Hogwarts from the outside, passages that bypass the wards. Most of the Death Eaters were students at Hogwarts and probably all of them know one or two of those ways, but to the best of my knowledge only six people now living know all of them: the three of us, Harry, Ron, and -"

"Peter Pettigrew," Fred interrupted grimly.

"Bastard lived in our house," George said with a shudder, and Remus smiled. He didn't think any of the Weasleys were likely to forgive that.

"I need someone to help me secure those passages - either to ensure that no one can get through them or to ensure that there are nasty surprises waiting for people who do. Harry's gone, I'd rather not involve Ron in this, and Peter's not likely to help me, so that leaves you two. Is there any way you could take a week or so away from the store and come to Hogwarts?"

"Sure," Fred said. "We took a couple of apprentices a month or so ago; they can hold down the store and fill mail orders from stock while we're gone."

"You want nasty surprises, we're your men," George told him. "Skiving Snackboxes alone could probably take down a whole scouting party."

"We'd have to have a higher concentration of ingredients and some sort of venting duct, but we could make the contents airborne," Fred explained.

"And without the antidote, whoever breathed it in would just keep hemmorhaging from the nose -"

" - or vomiting -"

" - or both," they finished together, and Fred went on, "The ones we sell have a failsafe so even if you lose the antidote the effects will only last for ten or fifteen minutes. But we can take the failsafe out."

"The Poultry Peppermints might be a bit of all right too, if we could figure out how to adapt them," George said thoughtfully. "Bloody hard to cast the Killing Curse if you're a chicken."

Remus began to get the feeling that he'd set a rather larger snowball in motion than he'd intended to, and squashed his qualms mercilessly. This was what he'd come here for, after all. The twins lapsed into a contemplative silence; Remus let it stretch for a moment, and then said, "How are your parents?"

The twins shifted a little closer together on the couch; George slumped down and settled his head against Fred's arm, and Fred wound his foot around George's ankle. "Dad's still on leave," George answered. "He's due to go back next week. Mum's…"

"Mum went to see Hermione this morning," Fred told Remus. "Charlie says she came back so upset that she locked herself in her room and wouldn't come down for hours, and then when she did she wouldn't say a word about what happened."

"And there's always the threat of a row hanging over everyone's head because whenever someone mentions Harry Ron gets all white around the nostrils, and Mum won't hear a word said against him. She still thinks of him as Ron's long-lost changeling twin, and I think she's lost all the children she wants to."

"We haven't been back to the Burrow much in the last few days," Fred confessed, sounding unhappy and guilty.

Remus sighed. "I'm not very good at this sort of thing, you know, but I am so very sorry," he said quietly.

Fred and George gave identical wan smiles, woefully out of place on their usually-cheerful faces. Then George brightened, and Fred followed an instant later. "Tell us more about what you want us to do," George ordered Remus. "When should we come to Hogwarts?"

"I'd like to at least have some plans drawn up before Harry gets back," Remus said, and didn't quite frown; unless Severus had sent word to them to stay where they were, or unless one or both of them were hurt too badly to Apparate, Harry and Draco should have been back by now. He made a mental note to discreetly pin Severus down on the topic at breakfast. "Can you come tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow evening," George answered.

"We've got to get things settled up at the shop," Fred added.

"I won't be able to meet you then, but I'll see to it that you're set up in rooms near mine," he told them. "And if Severus' new potion does what he says it does, I might be able to do some planning with you the next day, though I'll have to send the two of you to look into the state of the tunnels by yourselves."

"We'll bring our spelunking gear," Fred said happily.

"We don't have any spelunking gear," George pointed out.

"Then we'll bring along some rope and a bag of Lighthouse Lollies. They make light shine out your ears," Fred told Remus.

"I also need you to go into the Chamber of Secrets, and take Bill with you," Remus said, and the twins paled a little. "I've found out that there are at least two passageways leading from the Chamber to the surface; at least one is blocked with wards that I can't pass, and both are caved in. I need to know if they're impassable, and Bill will know if anyone will. That'll have to wait until Harry gets back, though, unless you know anyone else who's a Parselmouth."

"Not us," George said.

"Not thick on the ground, are they?" Fred added.

"Probably just as well," Remus observed. "Now: tell me how the two of you have been doing. Anything new brewing?"

It was two hours and another glass of brandy before Remus could extricate himself from the surprisingly complex business of making joke goods. His head spinning with potion names, ingredients, testing procedures, packaging, and the vague idea that at some point he'd been told how to induce a temporary sex change, he took his leave of the twins and headed out into the night air, deciding to walk a while before he Apparated.

It was a lovely night, bright and crisp. Remus stayed out of the moonlight out of habit but something in him was already answering its pull, already running on all fours over open ground in the moonlight that had done its worst and was no longer a thing to dread. Impatience crawled under his skin in a bone-deep itch, anticipation, adrenaline, magic, fear; he shoved all of them aside, stayed out of the light, and turned his attention back to the matters at hand.

Strange to think that he'd watched the twins change from children to men; it might not seem like yesterday that they'd been in his Defence class, but it certainly didn't seem like twelve years. Fred had been the first of the Twins to face the Boggart the year Remus taught at Hogwarts, and Remus had never been able to forget the look on the boy's face. He'd let the class out early that day, and watched helplessly as the twins stood in the center of the empty room, arms locked tightly around each other, faces buried in each other's throats.

The time to teach children about boggarts, he'd always thought, was when they were very young; when their fears were still things like spiders and disembodied hands and poor marks, things that could be made light of easily, and the lessons, in the course of teaching the children how to dispel a boggart, also taught them that a boggart was nothing to fear. When they grew older, when their fears became things far more difficult to laugh off, it was too late for them to learn that lesson. The twins had been fifteen years old that year, and it was too late already. Remus thought it probably always had been.

He stopped and turned to look back down the path to where the firelight spilled out from the windows. Fred had shifted on the couch and was stretched out with his feet dangling over the arm and his head in George's lap, talking animatedly about something or other. George's fingers were running through his brother's hair in hypnotically slow, gentle strokes, red transmuted in the firelight to glimmering red-gold and spilling over George's hand like heavy silk. As Remus watched, Fred brought his fingers together in some sort of complicated structure that looked like it should have required him to have more joints than humans are wont to have; George frowned a little and reached with his free hand to adjust Fred's fingers, making minute changes to the structure until both of them seemed to be satisfied with it.

War ought to be an old men's business, Remus thought. We'd bloody well have fewer of them.

Troubled for reasons he couldn't quite put his finger on, he turned away and Apparated.

 

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