Harry Potter and the Crystal Fire

Chapter 06: Making Changes

Standing at the top of the stairs, she bit her lip and thought about simply turning around and going back to the guest bedroom. She had never realised just how long the staircase at Number 12 Grimmauld Place was. How many stairs it contained. Just looking at it made her exhausted all over again. With a sigh, she started down the steps, trying hard not to count each one. Knowing how many there were only made it worse.

The house was strangely quiet. She had a feeling that if anyone was around, they were in the kitchen. She had known instantly that Malcolm was not in the house; they weren't mind-linked, exactly, but she always knew if he was nearby. She suspected that he might have gone to the Ministry, to finish up the paperwork on their arrest. It was just one more way of making sure their cover held; they would never have let an arrest report sit unfinished over the weekend, not if they had brought a prisoner into custody. Malcolm's presence didn't alarm her. Still, she found it a bit odd that, in the two hours she'd been awake and working up the energy to get out of bed, no one had come upstairs. Odd, and unsettling. She wondered what was going on.

When she got to the kitchen door, she found it locked and Charmed. Sighing, she went into the living room and sat down on an enormously uncomfortable sofa. She supposed that she could have unlocked the door and removed the Imperturbable Charm. She knew that, had she done it, the effort might have had her passing out in the hallway. She settled down in the corner of the sofa to wait. In less than 10 minutes, she was asleep.

She woke up to find herself the subject of quite a number of stares. Some--Harry's, Remus', Bill's, the twins', Ginny's--were concerned. Some were carefully neutral--Arthur Weasley's, Charlie's, Hermione's, Neville's. The others were frankly suspicious. This category was far larger--Molly Weasley, Ron, Hestia Jones, and about ten people she knew by sight but couldn't match names to at the moment. "Sorry," she said, feeling distinctly wrong-footed. "I came downstairs but the door was locked and Charmed, and I didn't want to intrude." She felt herself flushing, and cursed her fair skin silently as she looked back at them.

She wouldn't have minded intruding, but hadn't had the strength to manage it, Bill suspected, looking at her. She was as pale as she had been the day before, and looked as if the trip downstairs had nearly done her in. Despite the blush and the strange gleam in her eyes, she looked fragile, as though a simple touch would shatter her completely. He was about to speak, but his mother beat him to it.

"Did you want some breakfast then, dear?" Molly asked. Her tone was perfectly polite, but her eyes were cold. Morrigan fought the urge to shiver. She looked down, unable to meet their eyes.

"No, thanks," Morrigan answered. Her face had lost whatever vitality it had held before Molly spoke. She'd heard the suspicion behind the politeness, just as she'd seen it in their eyes. She knew where things stood now. She knew she was the intruder. The outcast. Bill saw the knowledge in her eyes, and felt for her. "I suppose I should be heading home. There's probably a bit left for Mal and I to clear up, and I'd only be in the way here."

None of the members of the Order contradicted her, but Remus moved forward to help her up, and Bill moved with him. "We'll help you home, then," Lupin said, his voice gentle. "You're exhausted, and it's a bit of a trip."

"Upstairs first, to get your things?" Bill asked her, his eyebrows raised. She nodded. He and Lupin Disapparated upstairs with her. Harry and the twins raced up the stairs after them, Fred and George apparently so shaken up that they entirely forgot that they could have Apparated. Molly Weasley moved to stop them. Her husband put a hand on her arm, and shook his head. The protest in her eyes never made it past her lips.

***

"There were more attacks this morning, and from what we've managed to find you're your bosses from the Ministry were there. We'll talk more when we get to your place. Inverness?" Lupin asked her, and she nodded weakly, slipping the black robes she'd worn the day before over her jeans and t-shirt, and picking up the backpack she normally carried. She was too tired to try and put it over her arm. The knowledge that she had gone from one of the Order to one of the suspects in the space of a few hours exhausted her. It was so little time to have lost peoples' faith.

Harry and the twins crowded the doorway, looking on in silence, until Harry couldn't keep quiet any longer. "You can't leave," Harry told her angrily. "They're wrong. You can't let them toss you out like this." But he noticed that she wasn't meeting anyone's eyes. Even after a week, he knew her well enough to realise how uncharacteristic this was, and it made him uneasy.

He had spent the last week feeling as though he had finally found a way to control the past months' cycle of grief and rage. The expression on Morrigan's face was causing the control to give way. He didn't want to believe that she had lied to him. He didn't want to think that his cousin had betrayed anyone. Certainly, he didn't want to believe that she had betrayed him. But her face...he couldn't get past the look on her face.

She smiled wearily at him, and sat down on the edge of the neatly made bed. He walked over and sat beside her without waiting to be invited. "Harry, it's not always possible to change peoples' opinions. Sometimes you have to accept that they aren't going to think the way you do, and find a way to work around that fact." She sighed when his green eyes simply stared at her, angry and hurt. She lowered her head to rest on his for a moment. "If I stayed here for the next twenty years arguing with them, they wouldn't believe me. Or believe in me," she added. "And the last thing the Order needs with open war breaking out is to be split down the middle. If we're not together, we're lost. So, though I won't stop working for the Order and working with you--if that's what you want--I can't stay here while I do it." Something flashed through her eyes, something like guilt, and Harry tried his best to ignore it.

"It's wrong," he said stubbornly. "And it's not fair."

She laughed, but the sound of it was sad rather than amused. For a moment, she looked far older than her 28 years, and enormously sad. "Maybe, maybe not. In any event, it's what is. And there's no point in pretending any differently." She still wouldn't meet his eyes. Her fingers drummed nervously on her jeans-clad thighs.

"You weren't a Death Eater," Harry stated, hoping that he was right. Her head came up and her eyes finally met his. He knew a guilty expression when he saw one. He tensed.

"No, I wasn't," she agreed. "But I nearly was. And they're right to be wary of that. Especially now that my bosses are joining the other side."

The control he'd found over the past week simply shattered. It wasn't just the fact that she'd lied to him. It wasn't just the fact that she had pretended to be good and kind and nice. It wasn't just the fact that she had told him all about Sirius and his father in order to gain his trust. It was all that, combined with a sense of betrayal that was too enormous for him to comprehend. She'd helped him deal with the anger and the hurt and the grief, had helped him get it under control. And now he'd lost that control. It seemed, he thought later, as if all of his rage had been growing under the surface of control, increasing stealthily, simply waiting for the opportunity to let loose. He went from disbelieving to furious in the space of a moment. The force of her betrayal pounded in his head, beating away his control.

Harry's eyes darkened. "You never said anything about Death Eaters or anything. You walked in here and pretended that you were one of us," he said, standing up and turning to stare at her furiously. "You..." He trailed off, the anger far too intense, far too huge for words to get past for a moment. "No wonder you said that Snape wasn't as bad as I thought he was. You're no better than he is." His eyes were overbright, shiny with unshed tears. "I believed in you," he hissed. The rage nearly overcame him. He was afraid that he might hit her. Giving her a look so sharp his eyes seemed to cut her, he ran out of the room. She closed her eyes. Heard a door slam down the hall.

Remus was walking out of the room after him, anger darkening his features, when she called him back. "Moony, you can hardly blame him," she said, her voice flat. Dead.

"The hell I can't blame him," Remus said, his eyes snapping with outrage. "He's old enough to know by now that nothing is black and white." He looked, for a moment, ready to charge off to battle. She sighed, and when his eyes returned to her, he seemed to shrink a bit, the anger leaving him. They were both right, but arguing about it right now would solve nothing.

She shook her head. "Let it go, Moony. He has a point. I didn't tell him. Because I was afraid he'd do exactly what he just did. He has enough to deal with at the moment. Yelling at him for losing his temper won't help right now. Certainly not while I'm still here."

Morrigan looked up at Bill. "You don't have to go," she told him. "Your family isn't really likely to applaud you for it, and--"

"Cut the crap, Morrigan," he said, shaking his head at her. "Maybe you can tell Harry they're right to be suspicious, but it's not going to convince me. I saw what you went through yesterday. And if you were the kind of person who really valued what they have to offer, you never would have made it to the Wands last night. You would have given in and told them what they wanted to know once MacInnes started in on you."

"Spot on," Fred said, walking over to stand next to his brother. George was next to him in an instant, nodding. "So, where are we headed?" Fred asked Lupin. Lupin told them all as he and Bill helped Morrigan up off the bed. The spare bedroom was empty an instant later.

***

They arrived at the Carricks' house in Inverness--or, rather, near Inverness. The house was certainly bigger than the Weasley brothers had expected, closer to a manor than a home. When they Apparated in front of massive double doors, Morrigan pointed her wand, and they went inside quickly. She shut and locked the door behind them, and led them into the Great Room. Out the diamond-paned front windows, Loch Ness, framed by trees, sparkled darkly in the midday sun. Morrigan sat down on a small sofa near the windows. Bill sat at the other end of the surprisingly comfortable couch, and Lupin and the twins sat across from them on a larger sofa.

When she insisted on hearing the latest news, Lupin gave her a brief version of the events from that morning's Prophet--attacks in six towns had left twelve more Witches and Wizards dead. And the Order had learned--it was unspoken, but understood, that the Order had learned this from Severus Snape--that MacInnes and Whiting had been along on at least two of the attacks. She took the news without commenting, but she had gone even paler, and Bill was grateful that she was sitting down, as he thought she might have passed out had she been standing.

After a few moments of silence, George spoke up. "Right. I know it's terrible, and we'll deal with it later. Merlin knows we can't wave a wand and make that all better. So let's talk about what we can deal with. Like why have they stopped trusting you all of a sudden, just because your bosses are mad?" George asked Morrigan.

"Right," Fred added, nodding, "I want to hear the whole story."

She sighed, nodded, and got her cigarettes out of her backpack. "Want tea, then?" she asked. Fred and George nodded, and were about to stand up and get it when she shook her head at them. She waved her wand in the direction of the kitchen and said, simply, "Tea." Eyes wide, the twins watched as a tray holding a tea kettle, mugs, sugar, cream, and lemon floated toward them and set itself down on the table.

"That's not a spell," Fred pointed out, raising a brow at her.

"Malcolm's idea. He gets too impatient to summon everything separately, so he cast a Summoning Charm on the whole set and somehow taught it to assemble itself and make tea." She shrugged, but a smile ghosted across her face.

"So," George began, once he and Fred had made a production of pouring out and handing everyone tea whether they wanted it or not, "You were saying."

"Or I was about to say, at any rate," Morrigan agreed, and sighed again. "The whole story starts with wandless magic. The kind I have is different from what an ordinary Witch would have."

"Right, because of the Elf thing," Fred put in. Looking like she would have grinned but for the circumstances, Morrigan nodded.

"Because of the Elf thing," she agreed. "The big problem with my magic, when I was growing up, was that no one else had anything like it, and very few people knew how to control it. So I never really learned the most important things about my magic, which are control, and focus.

"Elven magic is different from ordinary magic in a lot of ways. There is no Dark and no Light in Elven magic. It comes from nature, which has no good and no evil. Everything is what it is. It's what you use it for that makes it good or evil." She blew smoke toward the window, nodding at it, and the handles near the sill cranked themselves, opening the window on their own. "In other words, I was a kid who had next to control over her magic and little more focus, in charge of a power that could be good or bad depending on how it was used. Bad combination," she summarised wryly.

"It wasn't so bad at first, because our Da--" here her voice tightened ever so slightly--"helped us with Wizard magic, and that's what we used. For Mal, it worked out well, because though he has more than a touch of Elven magic, he doesn't have enough for it to do much more than boost his power.

"I was the problem child." Her laugh was soft but harsh, and entirely without humour. "I ended up with a walloping dose of Elven magic, and when you're not brought up around Elves, that's big trouble. It doesn't usually show itself right away, according to our grandmother. But eventually, if your magic is strong enough, it'll start popping out all over the place. That's why the control and the focus are so important. And that's why Elves learn it almost as soon as they're old enough to speak.

"Well, my magic started showing itself--strongly enough for me to notice, anyway--when Mal and I were at school. I'd always been able to do wandless magic, but before that it had been smaller things. Anya--that's our grandmother--said that it was likely that my Elven magic had been working through my wand until the point that it got strong enough to break out on its own. All I'm sure of is that it waited until we were at school to show itself strongly, and that was not such a good thing. I mean, you're at school where everyone's doing magic all the time, and you find out you have this cool new talent. Are you really going to tell your parents or your family all about it, or are you going to try and figure it out for yourself?"

"Hell, that's easy," George said heartily. "You use it for all it's worth." The gleam in his eyes suggested that using such a talent for, say, homework, would be the equivalent of a major crime.

Morrigan smiled tiredly. "Exactly. And along the way, you get the idea that it might be a bad thing to point out to your family that you're still trying to figure out how to control it. They might put the brakes on it all." The twins both nodded, understanding that perfectly. "And you hide it, pretending to use your wand, so no one interferes," she said. The twins nodded as though this made perfect sense.

"So fast-forward to the summer between our sixth and seventh years. Mal and I had three very close friends that we always spent every summer with. You've met two of them, Nick and Gwynne. Keith was the third." Her eyes went dark with some memory, and cleared slowly. Very slowly.

"Keith's parents were Death Eaters, though they weren't exactly open about that little fact," she explained. "He and I were dating that summer, and I ended up spending a lot of time at his house, just hanging around."

If that was true, Bill thought irrelevantly, Keith had either been the world's slowest mind or a eunuch. He looked over at the twins, and saw that they were thinking along the same lines. He wasn't sure he'd wanted to know that, and he reached for his cigarettes to distract himself.

"The five of us were close, and most of our parents were close. Our Da," she said, her face getting that tight look again, "wasn't around enough to really know our friends' parents at all. So we spent most of our time making our friends' parents crazy. They didn't seem to mind. But, like I said, I spent most of that summer at Keith's house, with him and his parents.

"Keith's parents were the cool parents in our group. They didn't care about curfews or troublemaking or any of the things most parents go nuts about. And they encouraged us to mess around with magic. They were always wanting us to try this or that, and they never failed to tell us how good we were when we managed something particularly tricky."

Bill, who could see where this was going, felt a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. His eyes met Lupin's, and Lupin nodded almost imperceptibly. Bill blew smoke toward the window to mask a sigh. He wished there were a way for her to tell the story without having to relive it. What had been done to her was ugly enough without that.

"I didn't notice it, when things changed. I was too caught up in hearing how terrific I was to realise that we'd gone from trying something fun here and there to doing serious work. I didn't think about why it was wrong to be summoning documents from people's houses and banishing the parchments to other places. Oh, they had all sorts of little tricks for me to try, but stealing the documents was the worst of them.

"I was too involved in proving that I could be even better, even more praiseworthy than I had been the last time. And when people started being hurt by the documents that were turning up in the wrong places, I turned a blind eye. Because people I didn't know weren't as important to me as my ego.

"So the inevitable time came around when Keith and his parents sat me down and asked me to come on over to their side of things. By that time, Voldemort had been gone for--I don't know, maybe five years?--and they were careful to keep their loyalties underground. But they trusted me with it, and idiot that I was, I was flattered.

"I wish I could say I turned them down flat. I didn't. I seriously considered going along with them. It didn't seem all that bad, not the way they described it. I mean, they weren't really hurting anyone, just making trouble for people they disagreed with. And they always made me feel so good about any little thing I could do. It seemed like a pretty good deal, really. A few weeks later they asked me to join them, officially. I thought about it, really thought about it for the first time in three months of working alongside them, and couldn't go along with it.

"See, I should have known better all along. There shouldn't have ever been a question in my mind. My Mum was killed by Death Eaters. So were my Carrick grandparents. My Da dedicated his entire life to fighting them. My Donovan grandmother stayed married to a man she loathed in order to protect Mal and I from one. So I knew better. I suppose that, in the end, that's why I turned them down.

"That's when they got nasty. They threatened to hurt my Da, and Mal, and Nick and Gwynne, if I didn't go along. By that time I was starting to realise just what I'd helped them do, and I had no idea how to get out of it." Morrigan leaned forward, crushed her cigarette out, and immediately lit another one. "So I went along, for a little while longer. Merlin only knows how long that would have gone on had they not made a huge mistake. Keith invited Mal over to work on our summer homework, and they tried to hold Mal hostage for my agreement to sign up for good."

"Didn't go so well for them, did it?" Bill asked, and, startled, she looked at him. She could barely meet his eyes. She looked back down quickly, but shook her head in the negative.

"It went rather badly for them, actually. All it took, for me, was one look at Mal, tied up and beaten half-unconscious with Curses, and that was that. I'm not positive they even knew what was happening. I'm not even sure I knew. One moment they were standing there, the three of them, laughing at Mal and looking at me as if they'd won. They had both of our wands. The next, they were all tied together, gagged, and half-screaming in pain. It was a Bloodfire Curse," she said softly, eyes darkening again at the memory, "but I hadn't used my wand. It was the first really focused, entirely wandless magic I ever did." She sighed. "Not a particularly wonderful first lesson," she said darkly.

"At any rate, Mal and I got ourselves home and got hold of our grandmother. She got hold of our father, and he took care of Keith and his parents. We...had a talk. I spent the last three weeks of summer with her, learning all about how to control my magic. And when we got back to school, Mal and I both settled down. Cut out the troublemaking--well, mostly--and studied harder than ever. And things seemed to have corrected themselves.

"The trouble wasn't quite over, though. When you use Elven magic for selfish purposes, you open up a door. And the door is very hard to shut. You see, the power always wants to escape. You can close the door on it most of the way, but never all of the way. It's always open just enough for you to remember how good it felt to work the magic."

She paused for a moment, and forced herself to say it. "They're right to worry. The pull is very strong these days."

The room fell silent. Unlike the silence she'd woken up to at Number 12 Grimmauld Place, this silence wasn't awkward. Wasn't accusing. It was simply thoughtful.

Comforted by that, she didn't fight very hard when sleep started tugging at her mind. She was already asleep when her body slid sideways, coming to rest against Bill's arm. He looked down, realised what had happened, and grinned at her involuntarily. Then he looked at the twins, who were smirking at him as though they'd been waiting for this to happen for ages. His eyes threatened retribution, but he had no desire, at the moment, for immediate revenge. She was soft and warm against his side, and despite the insanity of the last twenty-four hours--or maybe because of it--he simply didn't feel like giving that feeling up to take on the twins. At least, not yet.

He and Lupin talked about Lupin's new job in Muggle London. It was still difficult at best for Lupin to find a job in the Wizarding world, due to what Bill, the twins, and Lupin felt was the Ministry's inordinately harsh werewolf policy. Dolores Umbridge's removal from Hogwarts might have benefited the students, but it had not yet benefited many others in the Wizarding World. The werewolf legislation she'd help draft was still in full effect. With the Second War already in its beginning stages, and given the fact that werewolves had flocked to support Voldemort in the First War, it was unlikely that the legislation would be repealed anytime soon. Philosophically, Lupin had decided, rather than wait for changes which were unlikely at best, to find employment elsewhere.

In Bill's opinion, and in that of the twins, it was a horrible waste for Lupin to be tending bar rather than teaching. If Lupin felt the same way, he wasn't admitting to it. He seemed to welcome the chance to escape the Wizarding world and, Bill suspected, memories of the good friend he'd so recently lost. In view of the way most of the Wizarding world treated known werewolves, and having seen over the past year how close Lupin's friendship with Sirius had been, Bill couldn't say he blamed Lupin for the choice he'd made. At least, Bill thought, Lupin seemed to be making enough money to survive on, which was better than he'd been able to do last year. And, strangely enough, Lupin's job in the Muggle world put him in a good position to hear a great deal of news that was helpful to the Order.

Bill and the twins decided to stop by the pub where Lupin was working the next night, a plan that Remus agreed to with unusual enthusiasm. While they were discussing anything and everything they could think of that had nothing to do with the Order, Bill became aware that his arm was draped over Morrigan's shoulders, preventing her from slipping to the side. He doubted he would have noticed but for the smirks which once again decorated his brothers' faces. Stifling the urge to pound them both within an inch of their lives, he did his best to focus on the questions Lupin was asking them about the Diagon Alley branch of Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes. It didn't work too well, but the twins had apparently decided not to make an issue of their oldest brother's lapses in concentration.

When Malcolm arrived an hour later, his eyes passed over his sister, asleep on Bill's shoulder, and he seemed amused but said nothing. Bill was grateful. The looks he'd been getting from Fred and George were bad enough. He thought he'd seen Lupin biting his lip against a grin several times, and that had been worse. Had Malcolm said even one word, Bill would have really wanted to leave. But he didn't think he would have. He was just too comfortable where he was.

Remus Lupin looked at Malcolm questioningly. Malcolm nodded. Things at the Ministry, then, had gone as expected. While this was a relief, it didn't change the fact that the Order was facing a serious crisis. It was divided, some of it on the side of the Carricks, most of it against them, and the War had started in earnest. No one was much looking forward to the meeting that night. They talked for most of the afternoon, avoiding the subject like the plague, while Morrigan slept.

***

After Morrigan had awakened and gone upstairs to shower and change, Lupin headed off home for a while, and Bill, Fred, and George worked out how to deal with their mother when they returned to Number 12 Grimmauld Place. After they'd come to a decision, Bill headed to the kitchen to tell Malcolm that he was going back to Headquarters. Fred and George had headed outside for a while, never having seen Loch Ness up close. He stopped short when he heard low voices, heated, coming through the doorway.

"It's for the best, then." The words were nearly hissed in an attempt to keep them quiet. They held anger, and some other emotion Bill couldn't put his finger on. The voice was clearly Morrigan's.

"You can't do that. Mor, you know damned well why you can't do it." Malcolm's voice, a bit louder and far angrier. "It's too bloody dangerous for you. If they find you out they'll be gunning for you from both sides. You know how strong the pull has been lately. You can't risk it, Mor."

"What else can I do? I can hardly work with the Order now, can I?" If Bill hadn't known her, if he hadn't seen what she had gone through the day before, he would have been made very, very nervous by the bitterness in her voice when she spoke of the Order.

"He won't let you do it," Malcolm said. Then came the sound of something hitting wood, hard enough to crack it. "He'd better the hell not let you do it," Malcolm corrected himself. He sounded furious. "There's no need for it. Not yet."

"You can't wait until you need it, you know that, Malcolm." Her voice was softer, less angry. "Do you think we'll just be walking in there and asking if they mind?"

Silence. "Dammit, Mor, it's not the same for you as it would be for me."

"Right. First of all, they haven't bothered to approach you. And you know damned well why." Morrigan's sigh was loud enough to come through the door. "Remember Keith, Mal?" She laughed. It was not a pretty sound. "It'll never go away," she said softly, and sighed again.

"They've got no reason to think you're less trustworthy because of that," Malcolm argued.

"Don't be an idiot, Malcolm. Of course they do. Just as the Order does," she pointed out. "Just as Harry does." For a moment, on Harry's name, her voice trembled. "We don't have an option, Mal. Not now. There's no way I can do anything for the Order. Dumbledore at his strongest won't convince most of them now. If they don't trust me, they don't trust the information I can bring in."

"You can't work with them, Mor." Malcolm's voice was determined. Bill knew he wasn't talking about the Order. "Not now. Not when the pull's so strong."

"I don't see how I can avoid it, pull or no pull," she said with quiet resignation. "We'll find out soon enough, won't we?" she asked, and Bill heard her stand up.

"We're not done discussing this," Malcolm said, his tone holding a warning.

"Are we ever really done discussing anything, the two of us?" Morrigan asked, weary amusement in her tone.

"There's a meeting tonight," Malcolm said, and his voice got louder, accompanied by footsteps approaching the door. Bill headed back to the front room, and sat down on the sofa, his mind whirling.

"Hey. Had enough of the view yet?" Malcolm asked, raising an eyebrow at Bill, who grinned. From Malcolm's expression, he knew damned well that Bill had been standing outside the kitchen door. From Morrigan's, she hadn't a clue.

"I was just thinking about heading back to Headquarters. Meeting tonight," Bill said with a sigh. "And, of course, we've got to try and work on Mum." As if the question had just occurred to him, he added, "Going to the meeting?"

"I'll be there," Malcolm said, nodding and sitting down on the other sofa.

"Don't look for me there," Morrigan said, looking tired. It wasn't quite an answer.

"You know, you're still a part of things," Bill told her. She gave him a half-smile.

"Well, I can't imagine that the discussion that's going to go on tonight would in any way be made easier by my being there," she said. "You're too intelligent not to know exactly what they're going to be talking about. And I don't think it's fair to the rest of them if they feel like they shouldn't air their opinion just because I'm sitting right in front of them."

Bill's expression did little to hide his dissatisfaction with that idea. "Bugger them," he said bluntly, and was rewarded with the sound of the first real laughter he'd heard from her in twenty-four hours.

"In most cases, a pretty unattractive idea," she said, still grinning. "Still, the Order can't work if it's fighting among itself, can it?" she asked. Bill hated having to agree with that. He really hated it. So he didn't respond at all.

"I'm still working on getting her there," Malcolm said, his tone indicating that he expected to win her over eventually. Bill doubted it.

***

Bill was proved right, in the end. There were four unexpected people at the Order meeting that night, but none of them was Morrigan.

"This is Gwynne Petersen, Nicholas Chapuys, Tristan Hollis, and Alhena Farrell," Dumbledore said after their arrival had thrown the Order into momentary confusion. Gwynne, Nicholas, and Tristan all nodded to Bill, Charlie, Fred and George. Alhena, who only came up to Tristan's shoulder, was a timid-looking Witch with sun-streaked brown hair and dark brown eyes. She was caught between surprise and anxiety at having been made the center of attention, even for a moment. Bill felt sorry for her, showing up on a day like today. Half of the people in the room seemed to be looking at her three friends and her as though they were carrying signs proclaiming "Voldemort for Minister of Magic."

"They are from Caerdys, in Wales." Dumbledore paused as he looked around the room, and noted the displeasure that this statement caused. "Arthur Weasley, Alastor Moody, and I have had several long discussions with all four of them. They are going to help us set up the information network for the children, while they are at Hogwarts.

"Tristan is working on a headquarters for them, a kind of safe house. We will not be divulging its whereabouts to anyone, as a sort of double safeguard. What we will say is that the headquarters, like this one, will be protected by a Secrecy Charm, and will only be used for very brief periods, at times when it would normally accessible to the children. There won't be any wandering about the corridors after hours," Dumbledore said. Bill carefully concentrated on not looking at Charlie or the twins. He knew, as they did, that the junior Order's headquarters wasn't going to be in Hogwarts Castle. Apparently Dumbledore didn't want to eliminate that as a possibility in the minds of the Order, for his own reasons.

"Gwynne, Nicholas, and Alhena will be working with the children, here and at school. They're going to be tutoring, along with Malcolm, when he has the free time. The four of them will be assisting with the junior Order as well, but as I've said, that will not consume much of their time. Our biggest concern, as we've all discussed, is to get the children some kind of information so that they don't feel like they have to try and find it themselves. Anything the junior Order is to be told will be cleared through me, or our Fidelius Charm will restrict its being told at all." Dumbledore said this, and expressions of relief spread through the room. Bill noticed that his mother's was chief among those, and stifled a sigh.

"Are you all certified to tutor?" Molly Weasley asked, her tone a bit suspicious, and Charlie and Bill looked at each other, then rolled their eyes. It had been too much to hope for that their mother would take Dumbledore's word for the newcomers' qualifications.

"Well, I'm twelve years out of school," Tristan offered politely, "and I was an assistant to Caerdys' Potions Master for six of those years, before I moved here. "I've lived in Hogsmeade for the past six years, and I work at the apothecary's there."

"Nick and I have been out of school for ten years, and we work as Mediwizards attached to the British and Irish League," Gwynne said. "We're very strong in Potions and Herbology, as well as Charms and Transfiguration. So we can help out with all of that."

Molly's eyes turned to Alhena, who appeared to be attempting to remain inconspicuous by standing as nearly behind Tristan as possible. The other eyes in the room slowly went to Alhena, who didn't seem to notice the stares she was attracting at first. Bill thought she might actually think that by remaining motionless, she would become invisible. He and Charlie grinned at each other, then turned their heads to watch.

She remained oblivious until Tristan gave her a gentle nudge with his elbow and nodded toward Molly. She let out a barely audible squeak of surprise that had almost everyone grinning as her eyes went wide.

"Oh. Er...excuse me, I didn't hear the question?"

Across the room, Dumbledore hid a grin. Tristan leaned over and murmured in her ear.

"Oh! Right." She blushed, and cleared her throat. Her voice became businesslike, and she addressed Molly, who was the only person in the room still interested in her reply. The others were too busy trying not to laugh. "I've been a N.E.W.T.-level tutor, licensed, for the past six years. Before that I was working in private homes tutoring kids who weren't old enough for school yet. I'm licensed for tutoring in Ancient Runes, Arithmancy, Astronomy, Care of Magical Creatures, Charms, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Divination, Herbology, History of Magic, and Transfiguration."

"Did you get O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s in all of those? Molly Weasley asked, her eyes narrowed a bit. All four Weasley brothers rolled their eyes. Their father hid a grin.

"We don't have O.W.L.s or N.E.W.T.s at Caerdys. Our exams are called Basic and Advanced Levels. We get one grade per subject, and the most you can take are 13 Basics and 10 Advanced Levels. I made 10 Basics and 13 Advanced Levels. I missed the last three Basic Level exams out with pneumonia." She looked deeply ashamed by this admission. Molly couldn't help a smile.

"What kind of practical experience do any of you have in Defense?" Remus Lupin asked, an odd sort of grin on his face. Bill, Charlie, and the twins put it down to his having been Defense teacher at Hogwarts nearly three years ago.

"Oh, well, not much, at least not Nick and I," Gwynne said. "But we got our Advanced Levels in it, third and fourth in our year on the exam."

"I've had some experience with vampires," Tristan admitted, an odd smile lurking around his lips. "Not that I think that would be particularly valuable area for the junior Order. They've already studied them pretty thoroughly, from what I understand." Lupin had to bite back a grin; he'd been the one to teach them about vampires.

"And you, dear?" Hestia Jones asked, clearly to save Alhena any more embarrassment. Hestia's efforts were entirely unnecessary. Now that they were talking about academics, Alhena had obviously warmed to the conversation.

"Oh! Well, I had to go through a Practical, didn't I, to be licensed by the Ministry for tutoring. They're not big on letting you get a license without it," Alhena said, almost chattily. "Vampires and werewolves and all sorts of demons and spirits, Dark Creatures, hexes, dueling, jinxes and charms. I--"

"That sounds lovely, dear," Molly Weasley broke in, when it appeared that Alhena was in danger of going on forever. Bill and Charlie had to bite back laughter. Fred and George, far from being disgusted as this obvious love of academics, seemed absolutely fascinated by her. Bill wondered at that, remembered the twins' policy on contrariness, and shrugged it off.

Talk moved on to the information the Order was trying to gather on the escaped Death Eaters, and eventually, almost reluctantly, circled around to Morrigan. Bill couldn't figure out why they were suddenly reluctant to talk about it; Charlie had told him that everyone at the house had been discussing it nonstop since that morning. Then he realised what the problem was. Morrigan and Malcolm had gone to Caerdys. Malcolm and four other Caerdys graduates were standing in the room, and it was not difficult to tell from the timid little wave Alhena had give Malcolm, and the nods sent his way by the other three newcomers, that these four young Wizards and Witches, and the Carricks, were friends. No one seemed willing to openly accuse Morrigan of being likely to betray the Order with Malcolm and the others here.

"Oh, for Merlin's sake!" Emmaline Vance finally exclaimed, exasperated. "We're tip-toeing around this, and it's ridiculous. Albus, we would like you to reconsider the membership of Malcolm's sister." She even seemed reluctant to mention Morrigan's name. "We're concerned about, well, her past," she said with almost ridiculous overemphasis. "And the fact that she's now working directly under two Aurors who are suspicious. They had her go to the Wands yesterday, after the Ministry and before she went home. And I, for one, don't think that seems exactly right. Why would she have gone there if she had just been attacked?"

Dumbledore nodded, though it was clear that his gesture had nothing to do with agreement. He looked around, eyebrows raised.

"At the risk of causing an argument," Bill said mildly, "I'd like to make it clear that this is not a unanimous request." His brothers nodded. Malcolm nodded. Tonks and Kingsley Shacklebolt nodded. Lupin nodded. Surprising them all, Snape nodded.

The newcomers looked distinctly disturbed at the accusation against Morrigan. Alhena's timidity had disappeared; her face was so pink and so outraged that Bill thought she might just walk out the door. The others looked as though they might follow her. "We saw her at the Wands," Bill continued calmly. "She very definitely did not want to be there. And she was very definitely in bad shape when she was there. We were surprised she made it out the door at all. We would have helped her home, but she was being watched very carefully the entire time she was there.

"In addition to that, she's gotten us a lot of valuable information we never would have gotten without her. She risked a great deal to go to Azkaban, and she did it willingly. Voluntarily, I might add. She obviously told you about her past, Professor," Bill said, unable to bring himself to call Dumbledore by his first name. Dumbledore nodded solemnly. "So she wasn't trying to hide anything from the Order. Frankly, I don't understand why any of us have a problem with her being in the Order. Whatever she did, she obviously disclosed it to the Ministry. If it was as serious as Emmaline is implying, it's likely that the Headmaster of her school knew about it. And they would have had to speak with him for her to have made it into Auror Training." He held up a hand when a half-dozen people looked about to interrupt him, and they let him go on.

"I know," he continued. "MacInnes and Whiting made it through Auror training as well. But they're very senior. They've been Aurors since before Voldemort rose to power the first time," he said, and ignored the flinches at his use of the Dark Lord's name. "It's apples and oranges," he said simply. "There's no comparison."

"And I don't suppose it's necessary to add this," Tonks said, looking as though she were going to fall off her chair in the attempt to keep her composure, "but I will. Because it's obvious that some people have questions about her commitment to the Order.

"If she were the kind of person to give in easily to coercion, or to switch sides, she would have done it last night. She was put under interrogation, using the Cruciatus Curse, for more than forty-five minutes last night. And the Cursing was done by an experienced Auror who could easily have killed her with it, had he chosen. She knew that as well as Kingsley or I do. She's worked for him for seven years. And she held out rather than tell him a thing." She leaned back in her chair, and, rolling his eyes, Kingsley caught it with one arm before it ended up going over backwards. Charlie stifled a laugh.

A silence descended over the room, and Bill and Charlie exchanged another glance. It was clear that, despite the evidence, they were definitely in the minority as far as supporting Morrigan went. Bill, going around the room, was a bit disheartened. He and Charlie, Fred and George, Lupin and Snape, Tonks and Kingsley, Dumbledore and McGonagall, Moody and Malcolm, and the four newcomers stood against nearly thirty other Order members.

Malcolm sighed heavily and stood. His face was dark with banked fury, though his tone was polite. "With your permission, Headmaster, I think it best if I leave now. As things stand, I can't participate in meetings here. It will cause too much division in the Order." His eyes passed over the members who remained unconvinced of Morrigan's trustworthiness. Anger and contempt slid through his control to blaze at them. They looked away. He turned to Dumbledore, waiting.

Dumbledore nodded, his face unreadable, but about him there was an air of sadness that seemed to chill the air around him. Malcolm turned and nodded his sister's supporters. He smiled sadly at Dumbledore and at Minerva McGonagall, then Disapparated out of the kitchen without the slightest whisper of sound.

Dumbledore sighed, and a troubled look passed over his face. He carried on with the Order's business. It was clear that he had no intention of opening the subject of Morrigan's membership in the Order to general debate. In matters of membership, at least, Dumbledore's word was law. He could not order them to trust Morrigan, but he would not allow her to be voted out of the Order. He had chosen her, and her brother, for a purpose. It was a purpose he would not share with the other members, concerned though they were.

The meeting ended quickly and the members of the Order dispersed, most going their separate ways. Bill and his brothers spent some time talking to Nicholas, Gwynne, Tristan, and Alhena. Bill couldn't help but notice that Alhena was back to trying to hide behind Tristan. She kept bumping against him where he stood, nearly shoulder to shoulder with Tris, and apologising in a tiny voice while continuing to shy away from everyone. As much as it amused him, he couldn't help but feel like he'd met her before. Something about her was eerily familiar. He pushed that thought away as they discussed getting together later in the week, and went their separate ways. Bill and his brothers went with Malcolm to his flat; Tristan, Gwynne, and Nicholas headed to Hogsmeade; and Alhena and Remus Lupin headed for the stairs.

***

Harry looked at the others, his face pale. Neville's face was just as pale, his features tense and drawn. Hermione had tears in her eyes. Ginny looked close to crying. Ron just sat there staring blankly.

"Forty-five minutes," Hermione said, her voice shaky. "She fought him off for forty-five minutes. No wonder she was so badly hurt."

"How did she survive it that long?" Neville asked. They all looked at him. He was trembling finely, as though he couldn't possibly manage to be still. "Forty-five minutes. It should have killed her," he said softly. They knew he was thinking of his parents, and none of them could think of a thing to say.

"Maybe it was the Elven blood," Hermione ventured after a few moments. "Maybe it affects her differently because of that." For some reason that seemed to make Neville feel a bit better, as though perhaps his parents' experience with the Curse at the hands of Bellatrix Lestrange didn't suffer by comparison. He appeared to sink deeply into thought, barely listening to the conversation, after Hermione's suggestion.

"They almost kicked her out," Ron said softly. "If Bill and Tonks hadn't said something, they would have kicked her out."

"Dumbledore wouldn't have let them," Ginny protested. "You heard him, he wouldn't even talk about it."

"He let Malcolm leave, didn't he?" Ron asked gloomily. "He might not have had a choice. The Order wouldn't be much good if half of the people in it were fighting against the other half, would it?" he asked.

Harry couldn't think of a thing to say. His insides were clenching and unclenching, and he wasn't certain he wouldn't be sick. She had lied to him. Lied, and pretended to want to help him. She'd been open and friendly and had told him things no one else had ever been willing to even discuss with him before.

He should have known. Just the kind of information she'd given him should have put him on his guard. It was too simple, too strangely perfect that someone who had known Sirius would just show up at the house claiming to be his long-lost cousin and tell him all sorts of things he wanted to hear. He should have been suspicious of her from the start. That had been part of her game, he thought, being so free with information, acting as though she thought he was old enough to handle it, in order to gain his trust. She was probably feeding information to the Death Eaters right this minute.

That didn't mean he'd wanted her to suffer forty-five minutes of the Cruciatus Curse.

He was done with letting people walk all over him. He was done with giving people the chance to let him down. His friends were one thing. He knew them, and they knew him, and he trusted them without hesitation. The Weasleys could be trusted, and Bill, Charlie, and the twins. Professor Lupin could be trusted, and Moody. Professor Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall were trustworthy.

Morrigan, and by extension Malcolm, couldn't be trusted. They had lied, or at least they had hidden information from him just like everyone else was always trying to do. He didn't even trust most of the Order members anymore. It simply cost too much to trust anyone else. Especially when they proved that he'd been wrong to trust them in the first place.

He leaned against the wall, legs out straight in front of him on the bed, and thought he'd been foolish to trust Morrigan, but at least he'd realised it before any real harm had been done. And at the same time, he remembered the look of pain on her face when she'd spoken of Sirius. He remembered thinking that it had hurt her to talk about his godfather. He remembered the sincerity in her eyes when she'd spoken of finding ways to share information between the Order and Harry and his friends. He remembered that she'd held him when he'd cried out his pain and rage and fear.

Most of all, he remembered the way she'd looked when she'd arrived at Headquarters after her ordeal at the Ministry. That, most of all, was making him sick to his stomach. He could still see the smile she'd given him when Snape had woken her to give her the Pain Reducing Potion. He could still see the wrenching pain in her eyes. And he couldn't reconcile that with her lies and what he'd recently learned about her. It had been bad enough being miserable after Sirius' death. Being confused and miserable, he was discovering, was far worse.

There was one way to make sure the misery and the confusion went away. He would not let anyone else into the circle of people he trusted. He would learn Occlumency from whoever Dumbledore had decided to have teach him Occlumency, and he would work really hard to learn it. Then he could protect himself from any other attempts to win his confidence and threaten his friends, or threaten him. He would study harder than he ever had before in order to make sure that he could protect himself and his friends when the time came.

The situation at the Ministry in June would never be repeated. He would never be fooled into another trap. He wouldn't let anyone ever use him to their own ends. He would fight to make sure that the game was now played on his terms.

If the rest of them didn't like it, so be it.

"Harry, are you all right?" Hermione asked, looking at him closely. She looked very worried. "Harry?"

Harry came out of his thoughts to find them all staring at him, anxious looks on their faces. He realised that Hermione had probably been speaking his name for a few minutes. "Oh. Sorry. Just wondering about the new tutors," he said, shrugging. He wondered where the lie had come from, and decided that it didn't matter. He didn't want to discuss his confusion. He had a plan now. He wasn't going to have to be confused anymore.

"I wonder what they're like," Hermione mused, willing to be distracted from darker thoughts, especially if the subject was school. "That one, the woman, what's her name--Alhena," she said with a nod, remembering, "sounds as though she's very smart, don't you think?"

Ginny wrinkled her nose. "Doesn't sound like much fun, though," she said. Harry had to agree with her. Morrigan had proved no better than a traitor, but she and Malcolm had been a lot of fun to learn Potions from.

Neville looked for a moment as though he were about to bring up the subject of Morrigan and Malcolm again, but looked at Harry and quite obviously changed his mind. He looked at Hermione. She gave him a slight shrug. She wasn't quite sure how to bring up the issue. Not now, when Harry was so obviously upset about everything. The set look on Harry's face reminded her of the day Harry had arrived at Grimmauld Place last year, and she wasn't, at the moment, up to an argument about Harry's cousins.

A knock on the door had them all looking up. "Come on in," Ron called, and the door opened slowly. Remus Lupin and a brown-haired witch stood in the doorway. Harry wasn't oblivious to the disappointment in Lupin's eyes as he looked at Harry. The disappointment had been there ever since that morning, when Harry had lost his temper with Morrigan. Even though he knew he'd had a right to be angry, Harry didn't like remembering the total loss of control that had led him to scream at her, especially in the condition she'd been in at the time. The confusion came back again, and he fought it down, looking at his hands, as Lupin spoke.

"I'd like to introduce you all to Alhena Farrell. She'll be helping you with Potions and whatever other subjects you need help in for the rest of the summer, and while you're at school. Some of her friends will be helping out as well, but Alhena's schedule makes her the one who will be there more often. She's a licensed tutor in all of your subjects, so there isn't much she won't be able to help you with."

Harry found that, because she was shorter than Professor Lupin, he could look at Alhena without meeting Lupin's gaze, and joined his friends in staring at her curiously. She was brown-haired, brown-eyed, of average height and average weight, wearing brown robes that had seen better days. All in all, Harry decided, she couldn't be more unlike Morrigan. That was enough to have him liking her instantly. That didn't mean that he trusted her at all.

"Err...hullo," Alhena said, smiling timidly at them. She looked, all in all, like she'd rather hide behind Lupin than say anything. Harry and Ron exchanged a glance. Clearly, she would be a much different teacher than the Carricks, who had laughed and joked and made them think that Potions could actually be fun. They sighed. It would be a long three weeks until school began. From the expressions on Hermione's, Ginny's, and Neville's faces, they were having similar thoughts.

***

Bill and his brothers followed Malcolm from his flat to the house in Inverness. It was still early, and they didn't want to sit around the house at Number 12 Grimmauld Place, avoiding questions and arguing with whatever Order members were still there. Nor did they particularly feel like heading back to the Burrow and avoiding questions and arguing with their mother, who had not been mollified in the slightest by Bill's and the twins' attempts to pacify her over the stand they'd taken that morning.

Morrigan was stretched out on the sofa when they got there, looking completely done in. She moved her legs off the end of the sofa. Bill sat there when his brothers and Malcolm picked other seats, trying his hardest not to roll his eyes. Mal brought out a bottle of Firewhiskey and glasses, poured out, and sent the glasses floating around to each of them. The extra glass was taken by Remus Lupin, when he arrived a few minutes after the rest of them.

"How did it go?" Morrigan asked, raising an eyebrow with an effort. It appeared that no one was going to speak of the meeting until they were forced to.

"About as you'd have expected," Malcolm said, "at least for the part I stayed for."

"No different once you left," Charlie said, rolling his eyes. "It's as if they've all just realised how much risk they're running just by being in the Order at all."

"They probably just have," Morrigan said philosophically. "Until something bad happens, it's easy to ignore the risk."

"What amazes me," Fred said, summoning a pack of cigarettes from the table and lighting one inexpertly with the tip of his wand, so that his eyebrows were in danger of being singed, "is that they're fully aware of the risk when they're telling people they can't join the Order until they're of age, but when it comes to themselves, they aren't aware of it at all."

George nodded agreement. "See, we knew it was dangerous. Haven't we seen what Harry and the others went through each year at school?" he asked.

"It's different, though," Morrigan told them. "It's different being worried for someone else than it is being worried for yourself." Who, she wondered idly, would know that better than she herself did?

Fred and George looked as though they considered that utterly ridiculous. In truth, Morrigan couldn't blame them. After a few minutes, they appeared to put it behind them and amused her with stories about her friends. They described how Alhena had tried to hide behind Tristan, then how she had perked right up when their mother started asking her about school. Bill couldn't account for the gleam in the twins' eyes, nor could he explain the odd smile on Morrigan's face during the stories. Then she shifted on the couch, her arm brushing Bill's, and he had to fight against showing his surprise.

Their eyes met, and he suddenly knew why she looked so exhausted when she should have been sleeping the entire time they'd been gone. That one brush of her arm had told him all he needed to know. He'd felt the same thing when Alhena Farrell had brushed against his arm earlier, in the kitchen of Number 12 Grimmauld Place. He'd felt the same thing when Morrigan had fallen asleep on his shoulder this afternoon, on this same sofa. The others, he thought, hadn't noticed anything, though Remus Lupin was looking at him. Lupin's expression was knowing and amused. Bill suddenly understood Lupin's odd little smile during the meeting.

"So. From what Mal says, rumbles on the street, so to speak, suggest that there won't be a great need for part-time Aurors in the Department for much longer. More specifically," she added with a wry smile, "there won't be a need for two specific part-time Aurors."

"Terrific," Fred said cheerfully. "We could use some help in the shop, couldn't we?" he asked, making Malcolm and Morrigan laugh.

"Why the sudden change? Coming right now, it seems that the most ridiculous thing for the Ministry to do would be to get rid of any Aurors, part-time or no. I mean, Voldemort's back. There's a war on. They can't afford to lose any ground, can they?" Lupin wanted to know.

"Remus," Morrigan said, her voice full of affection, "since when has the Ministry done anything logically?"

After a moment, he had to acknowledge the truth of that. The way the Ministry had chosen to handle werewolves, for example, had shaped most of his adult life, but not in what he could call a positive way.

"It sounds," Malcolm said with a shrug that belied the sparks of irritation in his eyes, "from what I heard in the Department today, and from what Kingsley heard, as well, that someone's been spreading rumours about Mor and I. Specifically, they've been spreading rumours about how close we are with Dumbledore. Strange, since we've never been seen in public with him, in disguise or out of it. And Kingsley said that they started before we got to the Ministry yesterday. So it couldn't have come from anything MacInnes or Whiting got from Morrigan." He sighed. "The way Fudge has been acting lately, it won't be long before we're out on our arses. Of course, that's not the big deal of it."

"Don't get us wrong," Morrigan said. "We like our jobs. We'd like to keep them. But the really worrying thing is, who's spreading the rumours, and why?" She frowned and summoned a cigarette with a wave of her fingers, feeling too lazy to reach for her wand. "And, of course, what good are either of us to the Order without our jobs?"

"And I doubt that anyone trained as an Auror, whether they're working or not, could possibly not be valuable to the Order, if they've got extra time to spend around Hogwarts," Lupin observed mildly to both of the Carricks. "Either inside the castle," he said, looking at Morrigan, "and outside," he added, looking at Malcolm. "It's not just through official channels that we keep tabs on people, is it?" he asked rhetorically. This seemed to make Malcolm and Morrigan a bit less gloomy.

"But you need jobs to live off of," Charlie said, frowning.

"We're not badly off that way," Malcolm said. "We earned a decent amount of money, and we don't spend much. We inherited the flats in London, which saved us a lot. It's not a matter of money. It's a matter of who's spreading the rumours, and why."

Considering that, they talked until the grandfather clock in the foyer struck midnight, then went their separate ways. Tomorrow was a work day, and they had to put on a show of normality, no matter what had happened over the weekend.

*

When Bill arrived early at the Muggle pub to see Lupin, he found Malcolm waiting there. From the look on Malcolm's face, his day at work had been about as bad as Bill's had been. "Got our notice," Malcolm said in a tone that was neither surprised nor bitter. In fact, Bill thought, Malcolm sounded somewhat amused, now that the rumors had proved true. "I suppose it's somewhat better than having the axe hanging over your head for weeks, isn't it?" Malcolm asked, shrugging, and Lupin pushed a whiskey across the gleaming bar counter toward Bill, who grinned and greeted him.

"Sorry to hear it anyway," Bill said, and lit a cigarette. After today, he needed it badly. "What excuse did they use?"

Malcolm snorted with genuine amusement. "They're reorganising the Department. It wasn't just us. Two other more junior members of the Department got sacked, too. Mor felt terrible about that. She seems to think, and she might be right, that it was only to camouflage us getting sacked that they lost their jobs at all."

"She at home, then?" Bill asked.

"She's around," Malcolm said, shrugging. "I told her she come out with us and take a night off, but she said she wasn't in the mood to celebrate the Ministry's idiocy."

Bill had to grin at that. It sounded just like her. It was too bad; he would have liked to see her, but he didn't blame her for being upset at losing her job, no matter how little she'd needed it to earn a living.

"Interesting thing, though," Malcolm said after taking a drink of his whiskey. "Just as she was leaving, MacInnes and Whiting headed her off in the corridor. She didn't have time to tell me what they said, but I doubt it was anything particularly good."

Bill arched an eyebrow. Given the conversation he'd overheard between Malcolm and Morrigan in the kitchen in the Inverness house, he was extremely interested in this development, but wasn't going to force Malcolm to say more than he thought wise.

"It's odd," Malcolm said, reflectively. When Bill appeared unsurprised, Malcolm sighed. "Right. You heard us in the kitchen. Within a half-hour of being told today was her last day at work, she's suddenly approached by MacInnes and Whiting. She talked to them for quite a while. She's trying to get as much information as she can, I suppose."

Charlie and the twins came through the door, laughing, and waved at Lupin, then at Bill and Malcolm. Lupin filled their orders and leaned against the bar in the nearly-empty pub, while Malcolm filled them all in on what he and Bill had been discussing, then he went on with his story.

"I have no idea what they were discussing. MacInnes grabbed her as we were leaving, and that was the last I saw of her all day. She's not in her flat--I went home to check--and she's not in Inverness. Our Da's there--arrived this morning. That would keep her away sure as anything," he said with a heavy sigh. At Bill's questioning gaze, he explained, "They don't get along. Haven't, not since our Mum was killed. Mor looks just like her. I think Da's always had a problem with that."

Bill kept his opinion on that to himself, for the moment. Frankly, anything that ridiculous didn't even merit comment. Charlie snorted, and the twins made disgusted faces. Malcolm's expression suggested that he felt the same way. "So, what, she's suddenly in with MacInnes and Whiting?" Bill asked, wanting to clarify it in his mind. "Finding out what she can about what they're up to?" he added after a moment.

Malcolm nodded. "She can't do much inside the Order at this rate. Okay, well, she could, in the strictest sense of the word. Dumbledore wouldn't cut her out. No one would be able to vote her out. But she won't endanger the Order's ability to work together just to save herself." Malcolm sighed again.

"She'll just endanger herself and drive you insane in the process," Bill replied. Malcolm gave him a grin that held no real amusement, and nodded agreement. "But it's more dangerous for her, from what she was saying yesterday."

Malcolm nodded. "She told you about Keith." When Bill and the others nodded, Malcolm lit a cigarette and went on. "Well, knowing her, she played it down. See, Elven magic doesn't come from inside you. It comes from around you. The stronger your magic, the more power is channeled through you.

"Channeling the power is harder than it might sound, because it feels good to let the power go. Just like it feels good to use the power for your own purposes. And if you're powerful, like Mor is, the feeling is that much more intense. Among the Elves, being powerful is its own sort of curse. It's nice, of course, but it's more of a burden than a pleasure. So once you've had a taste of it, so to speak, the power pulls at you." He sighed. "The pull to let the power loose is always strong, from what Mor says. But it's gotten worse over the past six months or so, since we got involved in the Order. Probably because she knows there's a big fight coming up, which makes her more sensitive to it than she would be otherwise."

"What does that mean for her, if she's trying to work both sides of the line?" Charlie asked. His brothers nodded.

Malcolm sighed. "Your guess is as good as mine. All I'm sure of is that the last time she let it go full-tilt was during the Keith situation. And it nearly had her turning to the other side. Now's she's stronger than she was back then, and the pull is stronger. So she's, in effect, gambling that she has the strength to keep a lid on her power. If she loses the gamble, she'll be one hell of a dangerous enemy."

"Well," Bill said, after a long while, "it seems pointless to talk about what's going to happen then. If you really thought she was going to fail at it, you would have made sure she couldn't have played the game she's playing."

Malcolm's laughter was dark and chilling. "You don't understand her kind of power. How do you prevent someone who can disarm you with a thought from doing whatever they want?"

Bill thought about that. "You discredit her with Whiting or MacInnes. But it's a bit late for that, from what I gather," he said drily.

"Spot on," Malcolm said, shaking his head.

"So what can we do to help her out?" Bill asked. It was clear he meant himself, his brothers, Lupin, and Malcolm. Malcolm's smile acknowledged that with gratitude. They sat there for an hour or so, discussing their options. When they left the pub, they hadn't come up with much in the way of a plan. There was simply too much they didn't know about the situation yet.

***

King's Cross at last. Harry breathed a sigh of relief. The last three weeks of the summer hadn't been too terrible. Alhena Farrell had turned out to be an excellent teacher, despite the fact that she wasn't much on fun. He hadn't had to deal with the Carricks at all; they hadn't been anywhere near Number 12 Grimmauld Place, as far as he knew, since the weekend they'd left and Alhena had taken over the tutoring. The Order had gone on with their business, which hadn't been very interesting since they'd remembered about the Imperturbable Charm after the night Malcolm had attended his last meeting. Charlie had left to return to Romania, but had hinted that he would be back sooner than they expected. Bill had spent most evenings there, helping Alhena Farrell with lessons. Fred and George had helped out as well, proving themselves to have been far more adept at most schoolwork than their marks had suggested.

Their trip to Diagon Alley had been uneventful, which had been a relief. It had been a risk, of course, but Dumbledore had approved it, and they had been so heavily escorted it was a wonder the Witches and Wizards doing their shopping in the Alley hadn't noticed. Still, whatever difficulties it had caused the Order to run herd on Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and Neville had been worth it in the end. The last three weeks of the summer hadn't been terrible, but Number 12 Grimmauld Place had begun to feel like a prison, as any place felt when people were forced to stay cooped up inside it for long. They'd bought their books and Harry, who'd grown much taller over the past school year, had bought new everyday and dress robes. He'd made Ron's day by wishing out loud that he had robes waiting for him at home; Ron had an assortment of everyday school robes to choose from in various heights, now that his older brothers were all out of school.

Visiting Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes had been the high point of the trip. Fred and George's joke shop had been crammed so full of people that it had taken them nearly fifteen minutes just to get in the door. They had gotten what the twins cheerfully called a 'DA Discount,' and had stocked up to their hearts' content. The sight of a sign in the window announcing the opening of a new branch in Hogsmeade next month had Mrs. Weasley alternating between beaming with pride and frowning with worry that Fred and George might be overextending themselves. Still, she had made her way through the crowded shop with a smile on her face, and the trip seemed to have done something, at least, to break the tension that had seemed to surround her since the Carricks had left Number 12 Grimmauld Place.

Harry stood on the platform beside his trunk and grinned at Ron, who grinned back. They couldn't remember being more glad to leave for Hogwarts. Professor Lupin, Moody, Mr. Weasley, Mrs. Weasley, Bill, Alhena, and Tonks stood behind them. Fred and George had wanted to come along, but things in the shop were too busy. Harry felt in the pocket of his sweatshirt and found his Chocolate Frog card, the one that was linked to the other junior Order members' cards. Fred and George had brought them over to Grimmauld Place last week, and had spent the better part of an hour showing Harry, Hermione, Ron, Ginny, and Neville how they worked. Fred and George hadn't said exactly who outside of the eight of them, including Luna, could be contacted, just that someone would always be monitoring the channel. This bit of Muggle terminology had taken the better part of fifteen minutes for Harry and Hermione to explain to the others, by which time Fred and George were gone.

Ron turned to ask Bill something, and Harry, for a long, painful moment, remembered his last trip to King's Cross. He hadn't been as happy to be returning to school, but the trip itself had been far more enjoyable. Sirius had been with him, as Snuffles. They had stood on the platform and Sirius had made Harry laugh until he nearly cried with it, jumping around and wagging his tail and generally causing confusion. Today, the only confusion stemmed from the heightened security at the platform; Aurors with wands drawn patrolled the area, and people watched them with eyes that were either wary or frightened. Voldemort was back. The Ministry had made it official. The knowledge hung like a pall over the station, and the normal noise and bustle was subdued. Expressions were watchful, even suspicious. Harry couldn't wait to get on the train.

After saying their farewells, Ron, Harry, and Hermione headed toward the door of the nearest carriage to get a compartment on the train. Ginny and Neville followed, waving over their shoulders, sharing the need to get off the platform. Harry was turning to lift his trunk up the steps when someone ran into him and he was knocked nearly off his feet. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Bill tense, his hand moving toward his wand, then relax slightly. Harry got a good grip on his trunk and turned back around, letting his trunk lead. He heard a softly hissed curse as his trunk returned the hit he'd taken, and recognised Draco Malfoy's voice.

"Out of the way, Potter," the tall, blond Slytherin prefect sneered. His pale eyes burned with hatred. Remembering the last time he'd been at King's Cross, remembering Sirius on the platform, Sirius who was dead now because of Malfoy's father and people just like him, Harry's eyes narrowed on Malfoy.

"Sod off, Malfoy," Harry sneered back, every bit of the pain of Sirius' loss infusing his voice with contempt. Malfoy, who obviously hadn't been expecting such a virulent reaction, and who was temporarily without his two hulking cohorts, Crabbe and Goyle, backed off a bit.

Ron's smirk obviously made Malfoy realise what he'd done, because on seeing it he stood firm and affected a mock-sympathetic tone. "What's the matter, Potter? You seem sad. And so alone. Your dog seems to be missing," he said, and his pale eyes took on a look of unholy glee.

"So does your Dad, Malfoy," Harry said, hoping his struggle for control didn't show. He had the pleasure of seeing Malfoy's expression go dark and troubled before the other boy found his composure again. "Back off," Harry said, and wasn't sure whether to be relieved or disappointed when he heard Crabbe and Goyle, just entering the platform, calling to Malfoy. Malfoy, obviously seething, headed over toward the other side of the platform, and Harry carried his trunk up the steps of the train carriage. He and Ron found an empty compartment, then went back to help Hermione and Ginny with their trunks.

Once the five of them were situated inside their compartment, Ron closed the door. He opened it again and hurried out, followed by Neville and Harry, when they caught sight of Luna Lovegood gliding across the platform. They got her trunk inside the compartment with the others, and, all settled, got down to discussing their summer. Luna's pale eyes sparkled excitedly and her earrings--which bore an uneasy resemblance to a pair of small purple artichokes--swung crazily as she told them all about the trip she and her father had taken to Sweden, in search of a Crumple-Horned Snorkack.

They all waved to the Weasleys, Lupin, Moody, Alhena, Tonks, Neville's grandmother, and Luna's father as the train began to move. Ron and Hermione headed to the front of the train, toward the Prefects' compartment for the inevitable beginning-of-the-train-ride meeting, and Harry felt himself relax as they drew further away from London and Number 12 Grimmauld Place. Ginny and Luna continued discussing the Crumple-Horned Snorkack, and Neville set his Mimbulus mimbletonia, which had nearly doubled in size since the beginning of the summer holiday, down in a safe place. He and Harry started talking about the new DA club and the shock Snape was going to have when he found them both in his N.E.W.T. Potions class.

Harry's heart felt lighter with every mile the Hogwarts Express traveled away from London. By the time the plump witch rolled the snack trolley through the corridor, he was positively mellow. He'd never been so happy to be heading back to school.