Harry Potter and the Society of Orpheus and Bacchus

Chapter 14: The Pretender (Part I)

Madam Hooch reached the body first. Harry followed closely on his Firebolt, squinting in the dying light. Behind them, the murmuring crowd poured onto the lawn from the stadium like flood waters to a basin. The wind sweeping across the slope toward the Forbidden Forest carried the anxious murmuring of spectators as they bustled forward in curious clusters.

Harry scrambled off his broom, feet sinking into the damp, bald patches of clammy earth as he ran towards the Flying Instructor. She was already kneeling over the body of a boy. He lay twisted to his right, facing the wood, matted sandy hair in disarray. A clean-shaven cheek pressed awkwardly against the gnarled root of a tree and one hand dangled behind his back, fingers as limp as the mud-caked tassels of the Hufflepuff scarf wound round his neck.

"Is he...?"

"Dead?" Madam Hooch´s voice cracked sharply. "I don´t know, Potter," she said hoarsely. Placing a shaky hand on the boy´s shoulder, she pulled him onto his back.

Several gasps tore through the crowd gathering behind them. Madam Hooch had turned faintly green.

"Eamon Mulroney."

Suddenly the hush broke and the air shrieked with cries and astonished whispers.

"Mulroney! Merlin! It´s Eamon Mulroney!"

From the circle of students crouched round Madam Hooch and the boy, the frantic voices of students passed the cry down to the crowds behind in a macabre mimicry of Whisper Down the Lane.

"...left the common room after dinner... wouldn´t say where..."

"--looks pale... could have been here since last night..."

"...you see his face? ... scratches..."

"...blood on the sleeves... everywhere..."

"...dead."

Harry´s legs threatened to buckle under him. He stood gaping down at the Hufflepuff´s body and yet... saw someone else entirely. The heady swirl of panicked voices round him gave way to shrill cries in the inky chiaroscuro of a faraway hillside, misty and black as the midnight hour, and a collage of memories like a forgotten nightmare. A bolt of green and the felled body of Cedric Diggory; the strangling, shadowy circle of Death Eaters, calling for Harry´s death; the piercing garnet glare of the skeletal Dark Lord, newly risen; the searing, blinding pain of the Cruciatus, as if Harry's very bones had been ignited; and again, Cedric... Cedric... dead... Harry...take my body back, will you? Take my body back to my parents... He had to get to Cedric's body... Without thinking, Harry reached forward and--

The body moved. Eamon Mulroney groaned incoherently from underneath a cluster of low branches.

A strong grip seized Harry´s arm and he spun round, startled to find himself nose to nose with Professor Snape.

"Stand aside, Potter," ordered the Potions Master. His stern, chalky face was as grave as his voice, but for once exhibited none of the customary bile. "Give the boy some room."

A low moan issued from the ground as Mulroney´s lids fluttered open. The Hufflepuff´s unfocussed brown eyes blinked several times, peering dimly into the shadows of the assembled crowd.

"Wha... what´s going on?" Eamon sat up rather too quickly and swayed, bringing a hand up to his head. His palm paused halfway, however, and he stared, bewildered at the blood on his fingers and congealed on his sleeve. Mulroney´s eyes snapped open in alarm as he threw Madam Hooch a puzzled glance. "What...?"

Madam Hooch's hand shot out to snare the closest student. "Miss Bones, fetch Madam Pomfrey. Tell her we need immediate transport to the hospital wi--"

"No, wait!"

Mulroney winced and struggled to stand, gingerly favouring his left arm. Once on his feet, he paled further, but seemed to regain his equilibrium.

"I--I´m fine," he insisted, glancing round in awe at the bewildered throng. "Really." Mulroney gave the crowd an easy, if slightly pained-looking, smile. In some ways, Harry thought, it was just like seeing a ghost.

Harry stepped back, stumbling awkwardly against someone´s robes.

"Sorry--"

But Professor White hardly took notice of Harry´s muddy boot planted firmly on her hem. Her eyes, grim and dark as slate, mirrored the alarm on the Hufflepuff´s face, and her own pallor had gone as white as Sir Nicholas´s ruff. Harry wasn´t the only one to notice. Snape´s dark eyes observed the Dark Arts professor's reaction curiously. A look of bewilderment, followed by horrified recognition, flickered unsteadily in her eyes. She bit her lip, glancing over her shoulder at the castle and started almost visibly when her gaze met Snape´s. The Potions Master's eyes narrowed into malevolent little slits and his sardonic thin-lipped mouth had just opened, no doubt to unleash a biting comment, when the forceful command of the Headmaster cut through the assembled throng.

"SILENCE!"

The agitated whispers faded instantaneously into a respectful hush, vanishing entirely as the spectators parted to admit the girth of the Headmaster's white robes. "The heads of houses will please escort the students back to their dormitories. Mr Meeks," said Dumbledore, nodding at the gangly sixth year, "would you kindly escort the Hufflepuffs back to the school while Professor Sprout and I tend to this matter."

A subdued procession began wending its way back up the slope. Snape´s colourless lips flattened into a grim line and he reluctantly disengaged from the crowd. His arms mechanically herded the last of the rubber-necking Slytherins toward the castle, but his suspicious stare remained riveted on Professor White's back as she hurried up the grassy incline. Harry frowned. He liked Professor White, but... much as he loathed to admit it, he wondered if perhaps Snape might actually be onto something this time. The Gryffindors turned to follow Professor McGonagall, but the Headmaster stayed Harry with a hand on his shoulder.

"As witnesses, Harry, perhaps you and Miss Bell might stay to answer a few questions?"

Katie Bell nodded, clearly relieved that she hadn´t discovered a corpse after all. Ron and Hermione lingered curiously as well, and the Headmaster raised no objection.

At Dumbledore's urging, Madam Hooch and Harry recounted their summary of events while Mulroney listened with growing alarm. He straightened his stained collar and tugged edgily at his sleeves. When they had finished, the Headmaster turned to Mulroney, his blue eyes brimming with concern behind his half-moon spectacles.

Professor Sprout clucked solicitously, inspecting the boy's bloody arm. Her stout fingers pulled back his sleeve to reveal a thick, dark smear of dried blood and a couple of small wounds. "Mr Mulroney, how did this happen?" she gasped. "What did this to you?" Her unruly salt and pepper brows furrowed deeply below her short, lined forehead.

Mulroney frowned. "I...I'm not...." He shook his head in confusion. "I was just... going for a walk--"

"You are aware, Mr Mulroney, that the Forbidden Forest is precisely that as regards unsupervised students," said the Headmaster gravely. "Forbidden."

Mulroney opened his mouth, and then nodded, closing it again in resignation. "Yes, sir."

Dumbledore sighed, little pouches lined with concern forming beneath his eyes. "And how do you feel, Mr Mulroney?"

"I'm all right," replied the Hufflepuff. "Honestly, professor. There's... really no reason to fuss." He looked down at his shoes shamefacedly. "And I... I´m sorry. I didn´t mean to cause such alarm."

"If you have an explanation for your absence, Mr Mulroney, I'm sure that your head of house and I would very much like to hear it," said Dumbledore with a severe nod to the plump Professor Sprout.

Mulroney's eyes flickered back to his feet and his cheeks pinked ever so slightly. But he nodded.

"Let Madam Pomfrey see to those cuts first," said the Headmaster. "I shall expect you in my office first thing in the morning."

"Yes, sir."

The little Professor Sprout resumed clucking round her Hufflepuff charge with great concern, as if he were one of her prize Mandrakes on the mend. Harry understood the fervour of her fussing. Judging from the tears welling up in the stocky witch´s eyes, she must have been overpowered with relief that another one of her students hadn´t suffered the same fate as Cedric Diggory. But Eamon gently put her off with a small reassuring smile and a shake of his head. Appeased and satisfied that the boy´s condition had improved, she contented herself with walking him to the school. Harry, Ron and Hermione followed behind the pair, a few paces ahead of Dumbledore and Katie Bell, who was giving her account of what she had seen.

Bemused, Harry watched the Hufflepuff and Professor Sprout go, Eamon pausing to offer his arm to the old witch, who blushed like a schoolgirl as she took it. Harry admitted to being slightly surprised at the Hufflepuff´s recovery. Despite all the blood, perhaps those scratches were pretty superficial, after all. Mulroney seemed perfectly all right now. And since they were downwind, Harry could even hear him starting to whistle a sad little--

"Ow!"

A panicked hand seized Harry´s arm. He wriggled his wrist from the pinch of Hermione´s death grip. Her face had gone ash white.

"That song," she choked. "That song he´s whistling."

"What about it?" Harry asked. He and Ron eyed her quizzically.

"Don´t you recognise it?!" Hermione let go, looking at them both with wild, frightened eyes.

Harry and Ron frowned and shrugged at each other.

"No."

Hermione let out an exasperated tutting noise. Jutting her chin forward, she tossed back her bushy mane and stalked off at a furious pace toward the castle.

**********

The fire gave off remarkably little heat in the dungeon that evening. Draco threw his Quidditch gloves down with such force that they knocked the teacups from an end table in the Slytherin Prefects´ Lounge. The satisfying sounds of crashing porcelain and the tinny scraping of shards across the stone floor echoed through the dimly lit chamber. Bole´s venomous sneer wasn´t far behind.

"´Seems money can´t buy ev´rythin´, cannit, Guv?"

Draco bristled at the challenge in the Quidditch captain´s mocking tone, but stood seething in silence, not daring to turn back to the door. He fixed his eyes on the nicks and scratches in the weave of giant serpents etched in the limestone wall and forced himself to take deep breaths. He was a Malfoy, after all, and would not be so easily baited. Not by the slimy son of a second-class pickpocket, I won´t.

But Bole had never been known to stop until he drew blood.

"Why I--why any of us--ever listened to yeh," he said, shaking his greasy head with a melodramatic sigh. Draco watched the boy´s gawky shadow flicker ominously along the wall, dark as an oil slick on sunlit sands. "So, tha´ was yer idea of offerin´ teh help, was it?... Just owl Daddy and he´ll bail us out, right? Get us the latest Firebolt series, fresh off the Ministry testing racks? Fastest brooms money can buy--"

"They are," insisted Draco. And immediately bit his lip.

"And so they are," agreed Bole, pausing to pry the caked mud from his Quidditch boots... pausing as ice before it cracks under unsuspecting feet. The Quidditch captain´s skeletal form sank into the tenebrous mouth of a wing-backed chair by the fire. "Then tell me--heir of Malfoy," he spat mockingly, "why `pparently even the fastest broom in Europe can´t compensate fer th´ absence o´ talent. Your talent, teh be specific. Assumin´ yeh ever had it. Fer the record, I voted `gainst makin´ you Seeker, but yer father´d gone an´ put Flint´s dad on `is payroll, din´ he?"

"Exactly what are you so poorly articulating, Bole?" said Malfoy, gritting his teeth.

"´S obvious, innit?" scoffed the Slytherin, casually swinging his Beater´s Bat. "Even fer the likes o´ you, `mate. We´ve all `eard the stories. Even the great Lucius Malfoy was an ungifted little tosser at Hogwarts, couldn´ even measure up teh the Quidditch team--no´ even as a reserve. But `e compensated with the family fortune, din´ he? Havin´ all them galleons at yer feet makes any man stand tall, don´ it?"

"Not like you´d know anything about that."

The words had sliced out of Draco´s mouth before he could stop himself. In the charged silence that followed, he didn´t need to face Bole to imagine the eyes shining like black igneous rocks beneath that monobrow.

"I think," said Bole in a carefully measured tone, "it´s time teh get off `at high horse o´ yers, Malfoy. ´S no secret yer father´s clingin´ teh the Dark Lord´s skirts fer one reason, an´ one reason alone. Teh hide the fact that th´only real power he´s got´s limited teh what´s in `is purse."

Seething, Draco slowly turned around, gripping his wand. Only with Herculean strength did he keep his tone low and even. "I´ll tell you this just once, Bole. Don´t. You. Ever. Speak about my father like that again."

"Yeah?" Bole leaned forward in his chair, his dark eyes shining like a cobra´s in the shadows. "What´ll yeh do, Malfoy? Run teh Daddy?" He let out a vituperative snort. "If tha´ spineless plonker yeh call father were `ere, first thing I´d do is--"

"Ah, Draco," interrupted a voice, "Professor Snape told me I might find you here."

Startled, Bole sprang to his feet and Draco spun round, immediately shielding his eyes from the flames. The fire rose, roaring in sinuous yellow-green tongues that licked the very top of the hearthstone. Amid the flames perched Lucius Malfoy´s imperious countenance. His lips pursed in patent disdain.

"But I see you are... not quite alone." The ridges in the high plane of his forehead deepened and his pale grey eyes examined the Slytherin captain as they would a rodent in the silver cupboard. "You are the current Quidditch captain, are you not? Vole, is it?"

"B-B-Bole, sir," sputtered the Slytherin with a poorly executed half-bow, half-curtsey.

"Have I interrupted?" asked Malfoy in a tone bereft of apology.

"In fact, you´ve got miraculous timing, Father," drawled Draco, a slow satisfied grin candidly stretching across his cheeks. "Bole was only just telling me exactly what he´d do if you were to call in on us."

"Is that so?"

Draco was pleased to discover the cowering Bole´s face turning the perfect tinge of old celery.

"I... I was just... wantin´ teh thank yeh, sir. They--they was some great brooms yeh sent us. We jus´ needed a little time teh work out a few kinks. `Course, they wasn´t finished with tests at the Ministry an´--"

"Enough!" Malfoy´s eyes all but disappeared as he glowered at Bole down the length of his pointed nose. "Leave us now. I wish to speak to my son. Alone."

"Yes, sir. Thank yeh, sir."

As Bole crept backwards from the room, Draco couldn´t help but notice how much shorter the Slytherin captain seemed when he was cringing. As the door closed, Draco turned back, grinning at his father.

"My son." Lucius let out a bitter, mocking laugh. His head swung regretfully from side to side and he glared down at the glowing embers. "How it shames me to call you that after that pitiful performance of yours today."

The smile evaporated.

"I´m told that you had the Snitch within your grasp and yet... you failed to catch it before match over. Is that correct?"

Draco hung his head.

Though Lucius fell silent, Draco could almost hear a low grumbling from the fire. "After all that investment, everything your mother and I have done--"

Draco´s head snapped up toward his father´s almost beseechingly. "Father, I know how much you´ve invested in me--"

"Not you, boy!" Lucius Malfoy speared his son with a cold stare. "Those brooms! Even getting those mindless goons Yeats and Ely to swipe them from the Ministry has its price!... You continue to disappoint me, boy. If you didn´t resemble me at all, I´d have assumed you must have been switched at birth..." He sighed heavily. "Perhaps your mother is right. Perhaps your talents lie elsewhere--as they clearly don´t over the pitch." Malfoy´s lips flattened into a wry little line. "Your mother, at least, will be pleased to know that you´ll soon have another opportunity to redeem yourself. This next weekend we will hold the first of your Initiation Rites to the Dark Circle."

Draco raised his eyes to the hearth. There was no sympathy in his father´s eyes. Only the familiar cold appraisal.

"Take this."

Flying through the fire came a slim metal object, which Draco caught clumsily between his hands. It was heavy. A small dagger that he recognised from his family´s coat of arms, bearing the Malfoy insignia.

"This dagger is a powerful family heirloom, wielded in battle by our forefathers and their forefathers--Do be careful with it!" scolded Lucius, wincing as Draco knocked it against the coffee table. "You may shrink it and pin it to your robes--" The elder Malfoy´s brows knitted together sceptically. "You do know how to use a simple Shrinking Spell, don´t you, boy?"

Draco clenched his teeth. "Of course."

"If not for your mother´s entreaties, boy, I might not have been as excessively lenient in your upbringing as I have been. That was my mistake. Your weaknesses have been permitted to flourish unchecked. And yet, despite your obvious failings, the Dark Lord seems to have distinguished you amongst your peers for greatness." His father levelled his stare pointedly at his son. "But heed my words, boy; the Dark Lord will not likely be as gracious as I should you fail to please him. Then, even I will be unable to secure your favour with him. See that you do not disappoint your family again, Draco. It is time that you earn the name to which you have been born."

Lucius Malfoy´s icy gaze burnt into his son like a brand.

"Pin the dagger to your robes and keep it close. The last thing I want is that fool Dumbledore and his lackey Arthur Weasley owling me about my son wielding arms around the school..." he sneered, "though the time will come for that soon enough... When you get my owl at sunset on Friday evening, the dagger will be your portkey to the Dark Lord´s sanctuary. Professor Snape will pass on further instructions as the hour approaches. Is that clear?"

Draco peered defiantly through lowered lashes. "Yes, sir." But Lucius Malfoy had already gone.

With an angry sigh, Draco pulled the blade from its sheath and sat for a few moments peering at it curiously against the cold, greenish glimmer of the muted embers. From the emerald-encrusted hilt, the ironwork bore the faded etchings of a long-forgotten language his grandfather Lucian had once tried to teach him. In the dying light, he was only vaguely aware of a soft sibilant whispering in the stone chamber... and the gentle brush of cold fingertips at the nape of his neck. Mine. You. Belong. To. Me...

He scratched distractedly at the tingling, determined to recall the sounds of each serpentine letter. The words on the dagger felt familiar, but their meanings eluded him, as faces do in dreams. And still he sat transfixed, running his eyes back and forth over the blade in the dim light until at last... his mouth fell open. The shapes of foreign letters curled and twisted, overlapping and encircling one another in a strange symmetrical dance that culminated in the only word he remembered from those lessons long ago:

Death.

**********

"They weren´t upset?" asked Ron incredulously. "But... but we didn´t win."

Harry shrugged. "Well, we didn´t lose, either," he said, "and that seemed good enough for them." They rounded the last corner before Gryffindor Tower and gave the password ("Byron´s nightshirt") to the Fat Lady. "Considering that they went into the match pretty much assuming we´d lose, a draw isn´t so bad, is it?"

"Then if I know Fred and George," mused Ron, "they´ll be up to their usual shenanigans in no ti--What´s that noise?" They paused in the threshold as the door swung open.

Loud popping sounds ricocheted through the nearly deserted common room as Harry and Ron stepped through the Gryffindor portrait hole. A moss-coloured projectile greeted them from across the room and slammed into the wall behind them with a squishy thud. The air was, in fact, thick with objects springing round from all directions. Easily hundreds, all identical, landing with odd squelching sounds and hopping about on the antique kilims and polished oak floorboards. The boys ducked for cover, their arms shielding their faces. Harry risked a peek from beneath his arms. A blitzkrieg of... toads. Slimy green bodies settled in every nook and cranny until all they could see were glutinous green lumps at their feet. The common room detonated in a croaking chorus.

A muffled shriek erupted from the direction of the couch. Ginny, hooded under a bottle green Weasley jumper and clutching a pile of books and parchment, barrelled from the room. A small thunk! resounded between the chairs as a slim purple volume dropped onto the floor. Harry might have rescued the book if at that moment three toads hadn´t decided to land in the hood of his Quidditch jersey.

Once the amphibian downpour began to taper, Harry peered tentatively through his fingers. "Wha--"

"What the hell was that?" wailed Ron. He grimaced, disgustedly running a hand over the clammy patches on his hair and robes. "Eeeuuucch!"

George and Fred, clad in yellow plastic ponchos, chuckled from the far end of the common room. Grinning triumphantly, the twins each spit a little green gumdrop into his hand.

"Are these... were those... Those looked like Neville´s toad." Harry goggled round his feet, perplexed to find that all the toads had vanished.

"It works!" George hooted. Half skipping with glee, he disentangled himself from his rain slicker and flew across the room to set Scouring Charms on the medieval tapestries on the far wall. Harry looked on sympathetically as the woven unicorn cringed from the blobs of oozing slime. "´Just testing a prototype for our new gag that´s--"

"--still very much in the experimental stages," finished Fred, raising his eyebrows pointedly at his twin. "Won´t be ready until after Christmas sometime."

"Er... yeah, right," coughed George. "Still experimenting. Anyway, good thing you turned up. We wanted to ask you a favour." He stowed his wand back into his robes and grinned at Harry.

Ron shot his brothers a wary glance, wiping his bookbag off with the sleeve of his robes. "What kind of favour?"

"Keep your hair on, Ron. Not from you." Fred scowled, nodding absently at Hermione, who was just slipping through the portrait hole. She crooked a thin brow as she unloaded her bookbag, watching the discussion with interest.

"´Couldn´t lend us Hedwig, could you, Harry?" asked George.

Harry´s eyes widened in horror; he wondered which rings of hell Hedwig might put him through if he allowed her to be cloned and knocked about like a football. But George hastily added, "Er... to deliver a letter, of course. To a new supplier we found for the last ingredient to our Dop--" (Here he was stopped by a look from Fred.) "--for this, um... new product we´re testing."

Ron shrugged disinterestedly as he and Harry arranged their Herbology and Potions readings on the low table.

"What´s wrong with Errol?" asked Ron, referring to the Weasleys´ geriatric barn owl.

"Nothing," replied George, "unless you count the nocturnal wheezing, the arthritis and his potentially fatal pulmonary disorder. That and he´s off delivering a letter to another supplier in our network--"

"Have you checked the owlery? What about one of the school owls?" Hermione´s voice came from behind two voluminous stacks of A Concordance of Runic Works where Harry suspected she was crouched over an Arithmancy problem set.

Fred shrugged. "Aren´t enough of them this year or something," he said. "Hagrid thinks they´re being overused, says he sees fewer and fewer perches occupied anymore." Harry darted a quick look at Ron and Hermione. No one mentioned their suspicions about Filch´s involvement with the poaching ring. "You´d have thought with the new students we´ve got this year, we´d have got more of them," Fred continued thoughtfully. "´Course, maybe they´re all just busy with international post runs, all those transfer students and all."

"How far away is it that this letter has to go?" asked Hermione. "I suppose...well, maybe you could use Crookshanks if you´re really stuck. He´s gotten quite expert at deliveries this summer. I´m sure he won´t mind; the poor thing´s been literally scratching at the walls since the beginning of this year."

"Sounds Italian, doesn´t it, Fred?" said George, reaching into his pocket and peering at an address on the envelope. "Someplace called... the Concini Palace. `Reckon that´s a bit far for a cat--"

"A palace!" Ron stopped rummaging through his rucksack. "You´ve got good connections. Who´d be living in the lap of luxury and wanting to help you two out?"

"´Thing is," said George, scratching his head, "we don´t know ourselves. The other day we got an owl containing an offer for several ingredients." He glanced at his twin. "You know, Fred, it could have been in response to one of those mass-owlings, couldn´t it? Anyway, this turned up with no name, just the address of this Concini place. Could be the supplier who lives there."

"What a stroke of luck, too," said Fred, "since the last ingredient to this new gag is so hard to come by, we were just starting to give up hope--"

"--when what should arrive but this letter!" George kissed it sententiously and waved it in the air.

Harry rolled his eyes, but couldn´t resist a grin. "Oh, go on then," he said. "Take Hedwig. I think she´s been at least as far as the equator, so I reckon she ought to make it to Italy easily enough." Though Harry would never confess it within earshot of Mrs Weasley, he dearly loved the gags the twins came up with. Weasley´s Wizard Wheezes made everything from the O.W.L.s to the threat of an impending Death Eater invasion bearable.

"You´re a star!"

"Thanks a million, Harry."

Fred and George grinned in duplicate. "And as a gesture of our appreciation," said Fred, arching a ginger brow, "how about a sampling of our new and improved toffee?"

Harry wrinkled his nose at the innocuous-looking little bag in Fred´s hand.

"Erm... no, thanks." He still hadn´t forgotten the summer before last and the Ton-Tongue Toffee incident. The memory of Dudley´s tongue expanding to the size of a life raft was enough to quell any curiosity his taste buds might have felt. "But you´re welcome to Hedwig, anyway. I´m sure she wouldn´t mind seeing another castle for a change."

"Great!" said George, turning on his heel. "I´ll just go get our reply, shall I? I´ll be right ba--oy! What´s this?" He peeled a slim volume from the gummy sole of his trainers.

Fred glanced up, tucking the toffee bag back into his robes. "Hey, isn´t that Mum´s copy of Dame Fra--"

"I´ll take that, thank you." A burst of orange-red darted in from the stairwell and tackled George, pinching the book out of his hand.

"Ouch! Ginny!" he cried, wincing melodramatically. "What´re you doing reading Mum´s Dame F--"

"None of your business!" she said hotly, flashing the twins a pointed look that seemed only to amuse them further. Her face glowed an attractive shade of pink.

Harry blinked as he sank down into his armchair. Has she always blushed like that? He frowned to himself, wondering why he hadn´t noticed it before. Oblivious to his own loopy grin, he met Ginny´s gaze and her face flamed to the colour of her hair. Next moment, her head ducked--almost guiltily--and she fled the room.

"What was that all about?" said Harry. "The book and all?"

Fred shook his head. "Haven´t the fog--"

Fred thumped his twin with the back of his hand. "The book! It´s just given me an idea." Fred grinned cheekily, leaning in to whisper to George. Casting surreptitious glances from his Potions book, Harry could only make out a few disjointed phrases: "Listen, it´s perfect... remember the chapter on... every witch´s... Francesca´s guide to... see the target... visualisation--ooh! That´s key, that!... manifest desirable assets..."

George leaned back, the mirror image of his smirking twin. "Are you thinking what I´m thinking?"

Fred wriggled his eyebrows mischievously. "Let´s go."

Snickering wickedly, they followed in Ginny´s wake, vanishing down the stairwell.

**********

"Not to be entirely contradictory, Padfoot, but how can you be so sure?"

Remus Lupin poured the tea, sneaking a quick glance at the door. Professor Dumbledore was sure to return to his office at any moment with the Transylvanian topographical surveys Mrs Figg had requested. The firelight flickered warmly in the cosy book-lined turret room and Fawkes, resplendent in his brightest garnet and ochre plumage, wheezed drowsily in one of the galleries. "You´d been up all night on reconnaissance," Lupin said quietly. "You were tired, you thought you saw someone running in and out of the shrubbery. There was fog, it was dark--"

The blue flame of Sirius Black´s eyes flared as he leaned forward in the leather-bound chair. He seized Lupin´s free wrist.

"It was her, Remus."

As if taken aback by the fervour of his own voice, Sirius succumbed to the throaty, hacking cough that he seemed to have developed during the Order´s last few weeks of nocturnal surveillance. There couldn´t have been much shelter for a dog lurking on the Scottish moors at night, thought Remus. Abruptly, Sirius´s fingers loosened their grip on Remus´s sleeve, gruffly waving away his concern. The cough subsided and Sirius sat back, distractedly fiddling with a shortbread biscuit. "It seems silly, now," he continued raspily. "... that was another time. And I thought I´d forgotten." A wraith of a smile tugged at his lips.

The corners of Remus´s mouth twitched, but flattened as Sirius´s face sank into shadow.

"After all those years in Azkaban... Just being there was..." Sirius cast a hollow stare into the fire as his tea grew tepid on the table. Remus rested his saucer on his knee, pained to see Sirius take on the shuttered, closed expression that had become as much a part of his friend as his roguish grin. "... There were certain memories I had to forget, had to push away in order to survive. Some I was sure I´d have lost to time, like candles snuffed out in the dark... But last night..." He turned to Remus with blue eyes shining, a contrast to his lined, unshaven face. "I know who I saw."

Sirius´s eyes drifted again, as if half lost in a plane of pleasant memory.

"So... what do you plan to do about it?" Remus asked.

Sirius´s eyes blinked clear for an instant. "What do I..." He scratched his stubbled chin thoughtfully, a timbre of regret in the coarse echo.

"Nothing."

"Nothing?" Remus studied his friend incredulously.

Sirius met his eyes gravely and gave a rueful shake of his head.

"Nothing."

They were startled by an off-key rendition of "Land of Hope and Glory" whistled through the Headmaster´s open door, precipitating the arrival of the crimson-capped, white-bearded professor himself. Twirling his wand behind him, Dumbledore conducted the dance of several scrolls that followed him through the narrow passage as the door closed behind him.

"Ah, gentlemen," he said, settling the scrolls between the mounds of parchment on the great oak desk. "I haven´t interrupted something, I hope?"

"Apparently... nothing, sir." Remus arched a sandy brow at Sirius, pleased to see his friend´s lip fighting the beginnings of a smile.

Dumbledore paused. His blue eyes examined both Remus and Sirius in turn, resting on the latter with an amused twinkle. He lifted one silvery brow.

Sirius cleared his throat, shifting slightly in his chair.

"Very well, then," sighed Dumbledore. The Headmaster´s chair creaked as he sank back against its intricate carvings. "Perhaps you would care to begin, Remus," he urged, "while I help myself to some tea." He held out his hand and a steaming cup and saucer materialised in his palm. As the Headmaster´s sugar cubes plopped into place, Lupin extracted the latest case file from the battered briefcase on the floor.

"The search for Mrs Crockford is on-going, as you know, sir. Sweeps conducted of wizarding homes on the outskirts of Little Hangleton last week yielded little information about her whereabouts. But there has been one interesting development in the neighbouring town of Batsworthy," said Remus, glancing up from the incident reports. "The body of a well-respected, retired country solicitor called Jacob McGovern was found in his study. Mr McGovern was a Muggle, but some wizarding names of note appear on his client roster, including Doris Crockford´s. The local authorities would have ruled out foul play entirely if not for the condition in which his body was found."

"That´s right," said Sirius, leaning forward. "We were tipped off by Frank Fenchurch, the Auror who happened to be sweeping the area for Death Eater cells. Fenchurch said he´d intercepted neighbours´ reports of `an incandescent, skull-shaped mist´ that gradually faded above McGovern´s property. Mrs Figg and I examined the house thoroughly and managed to leave before the Muggle inspectors arrived.

"McGovern was found face down with his fist pressed against chest. We found nothing to indicate a break-in. All of his books and papers were in order; nothing seemed to have been tampered with. His body was still slightly warm, but extremely pale, as if his death might have been the result of a coronary, except... except that about two-thirds of the blood in his body was missing."

Remus nodded. "An average person of McGovern´s size carries about six litres of blood. Our best guess is that Mr McGovern would have died when his blood level dropped to between two and a half to three litres."

"Exactly. What none of us could understand," continued Sirius, "was how he lost it. There was no sign of a wound or other physical injury."

Dumbledore´s brows furrowed above his half-moon spectacles.

"There´s something else," said Remus. "Sirius found this balled up in his fist." He pulled from the file a sheaf of crumpled paper, shorn along one side, as if ripped from its original binding. In faded ink, the words of a sonnet lay scattered across the page in a capricious hand. "You´ll notice that certain letters are conspicuously absent," said Remus, handing the page to the Headmaster.

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon u_ rememb_ance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I s_ught,

And wi_h old woes new wail my d_ar time´s waste;

Then _an I drown an eye unused _o flow,

For precio_s friends hid in death´s datele_s night,

And weep afresh love´s long since cancelled woe,

And moan th´ ex_ense of many a vanish_d sight;

Then can I grie_e at grievances foregone,

And heavily from wo_ to woe tell o´er

The sad account of fore-bemoa_èd moan,

Which I new pay a_ if not paid before.

But if the while I th_nk on thee, dear friend,

All losses are rest_red and sorrow_ end.

N.R.P.

Dumbledore raised the paper to his eyes and read the passage again.

Lupin and Black watched the old wizard. It was a few moments before he moved, apart from fingering his beard in silent contemplation. Then Dumbledore stepped past the desk and climbed to the gallery above. He returned shortly, reading silently from a page in a large and weathered volume. "Gentlemen," he said, "I believe those letters--"

A brief rap on the door reduced the three wizards to an expectant hush. Fawkes shook his feathers, standing to attention on his perch.

Dumbledore rested a hand on Black´s shoulder. "Perhaps, Sirius," he said quietly, "you would be more at ease as Snuffles, for the moment."

Sirius Black´s five o´clock shadow vanished in mid-nod, leaving a bear-sized shaggy black dog at the Headmaster´s feet.

"Professor Dumbledore?" The main door creaked forward to admit a slim woman in unadorned blue robes. Remus noted that her long, dark hair had been tied back from her face with the kind of leather string found entwined around scrolls in the Ministry´s Military Library. Other than that, there was nothing remotely military in the flush of her cheeks or the amused blue-grey of her eyes as she took in the mess of scrolls and paper and the remnants of the Headmaster´s tea party.

"I´m sorry, sir, I didn´t realise that you had company." She nodded politely at Lupin. "Oh, how lovely! I didn´t know you had a dog!" she said, as Padfoot sidled slowly up to her. Her slender brows furrowed questioningly as she bent her head and locked eyes with the dog. Other than Padfoot´s wagging tail, neither woman nor dog moved for a long moment, broken only by Dumbledore´s pointed cough. She seemed to shake herself and blinked probingly at the dog, reaching down to scratch behind his ears. Padfoot nuzzled her hand. When she glanced up, there was a faraway sadness in her gaze that Lupin hadn´t noticed before. "He´s gorgeous."

Remus grinned. "I´m sure he likes to think so, too."

"Do come in, Bethany," said the Headmaster, beckoning the woman forward. "This is a rather fortuitous occasion, having you here. Professor White, allow me to introduce you to Professor Lupin, one of your esteemed predecessors in the Dark Arts post here at Hogwarts."

Remus smiled. It was just like Dumbledore to retain the use of his professor´s title, despite the circumstances that warranted his resignation of the Dark Arts post in that year. Lupin sent the Headmaster a grateful glance as he stood, holding out a hand to Professor White.

"Just Remus, please," he said. "And it´s an honour to meet you finally, professor, and an honour to the school to have so distinguished a faculty member."

Professor White flushed. "Please, call me Bethany," she said, shaking his hand. "And you, Professor, er--Remus, are certainly a tough act to follow. I´ve heard nothing but glowing reports from your former pupils. I do hope you´ll be staying for a while, in case I need to pick your brain." She grinned, jauntily lifting her brows. "Word has it that you can even vanquish evil spirits with a wad of chewing gum! That sounds like just the sort of thing one can only learn through a great deal of first hand experience with Peeves."

It was Lupin´s turn to blush. "Quite."

He grinned. Padfoot barked indignantly and kneecapped Remus with his tail. And a roguish twinkle shone behind the crescents of Dumbledore´s spectacles.

"I... truly am sorry to interrupt, sir," said Bethany, turning to the Headmaster, "but you did tell me to remind you that now is the time for the announcement. The students are just now being seated for dinner."

"Thank you, Bethany. Would you please inform Minerva that we will join them as soon as possible after our meeting--in any event," he said with a merry twitch of his beard, "in time to sample the house-elves´ new tarte au citron."

Professor White laughed. "Take your time. I´ll tell them to save your three places then, shall I?"

"Two places, professor," corrected the Headmaster.

"Oh. Of course." A puzzled wrinkle formed over the bridge of her nose. "I´ll let them know straight away. See you shortly."

She blinked at the desk one last time, then closed the door behind her with a soft click.

**********

On the landing, Bethany paused with her hand on the banister. She gave the Headmaster´s door an uncertain glance. Now, wasn´t that odd. She made her way slowly down the moving staircase, her forehead creased in thought.

It wasn´t until the stone gargoyle ground to a close behind her that she realised that there had been three cups of tea on the table...