Splendour Falls

-----

"Come, my friends.

Tis not too late to seek a newer world. [...]

Though much is taken, much abides, and though

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are--

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

(--Tennyson, Ulysses)

----

Chapter one: Pomp and Circumstance

They were told not to throw their hats in the air.

Professor McGonagall always made the same speech, every year, to every class. They were always told not to throw their hats in the air. Wizard hats were pointed, and even if they were soft, there was always the chance of someone getting inadvertently poked in the eye when the things fell down again.

This year, the class gazed at her solemnly, and promised, and she got the idea they weren't really interested in the proceedings anyway. That saddened her, really, as much as anything else that year, and there had been plenty during the course of the term to make anyone sad. This was their graduation--it was supposed to be full of promise and excitement, the beginning of their adulthood, the end of their innocence.

This particular class had lost its innocence years ago. They were feigning it, because it made the rest of the world more comfortable. The charade would be over soon.

She wondered how many of their futures were already planned. Oh, there were some she was sure of, of course. Harry Potter's future had been mapped out for him since he was little more than a year old, and though he may be as committed a hero as anyone could hope for, she knew it was fate and manipulation, not free will, that made him so. Ron Weasley was with him, because Ron and Harry would always be together, inseparable, backing each other up while the world collapsed around them. And Hermione Granger--her favourite, which everyone knew but she never actually said--was joining a research team in Wales, one of the most elite wizard think-tanks in the world. Hermione was the youngest to ever be invited. Minerva swelled with pride just thinking about it.

Most of the Gryffindors had agreed to help with the resistance in some way. So had a good number of Hufflepuffs and nearly half the Ravenclaws. Some would be more involved than others, of course, but even the most innocent noncombatant can keep a safehouse or pass a message. Voldemort was rising, and they needed all the help they could get.

Which left the Slytherins, of course. The house as a whole gave the impression that they would sit back, let the two sides fight it out, and be prepared to step in at the last moment and take sides with the winner. This was how Slytherin operated. But there was more to them than that, Minerva thought. She wondered how many already had chosen a side. Probably more than would admit to it aloud. Some were already all but given to Voldemort. They believed the pretty promises he wove, pictures of a world where wizards need not fear being seen by Muggles, where they were superior, dominant. They believed his ideology was more than rhetoric. He told them he would avenge all the indignities of wizardkind, that he would build them a new and better world. She wondered if he still believed it himself.

When Severus was executed, the students had pretended not to care. It wasn't safe to care, not in Slytherin house, where you never knew who your words would find their way back to. It was too bad, they said, but he was a spy, and if he was so unfortunate--or other, less complimentary words--as to be caught, then death was all he could expect.

But she suspected some of them had taken it harder than they let on. At least, she hoped so. It had been devastating for her--and not only a blow to the Resistance. She had lost a colleague and a friend.

The students were looking at her expectantly. "Into lines, then, with your Houses," she directed, and without waiting to see that they obeyed, she swept into the Great Hall, tall and proud, the hem of her velvet robes trailing the ground behind her.

****

The Great Hall buzzed with congratulatory parents, with noisy siblings and noisier graduates. Draco Malfoy scanned the milling crowd for signs of his parents, and concentrated on looking pleased with himself. He had graduated second in the class, after all, just behind Granger and barely inching ahead of that ridiculous bookworm Webber from Ravenclaw. It was the beginning of the Rest of His Life. He had every right and reason to be proud.

The Rest of His Life. Or the beginning of the end of it? But Draco Malfoy, though he might indulge in the odd bit of morbid curiousity on the subject, did not make plans to allow for failure.

"There you are, Draco." Smooth, slick as oil, as eelskin. His father's voice. "Congratulations on your graduation, my son."

"Thank you, Father." Draco turned, favoured both his parents with an ingratiating smile. He remembered he had loved them once, naively and unconditionally. He had believed in them. He had to look away before his smile turned bitter. "Mother, you look lovely."

"Why, thank you, Draco." She smiled at him, and then of course it was true. Narcissa Malfoy was always stunning when she smiled, even if it never quite reached her eyes. Nobody looked at eyes anymore, anyway.

"Are you ready to go home?" Lucius asked, his gaze drifting across the room with mild distaste.

Draco shook his head. "Actually, Father, I thought you could go ahead without me." He sounded dry, nonchalant. He was an expert at it. "Some of the Slytherins wanted to have a bit of a party in the dorms. One last wild fling before we grow up and turn responsible, you know?" Smile, on cue. Hands in pockets. "Crabbe and Goyle and I figured we could get to Hogsmeade tomorrow, and home from there."

Lucius' frown had slowly faded through this speech, just as Draco had anticipated. "I don't see any harm in that--you should celebrate, after all. Just make sure you're home by tomorrow night. Your Family--" enunciated slightly, audibly capitalised--"wants to see you too. And we'll have Business to conduct soon, the two of us."

Draco straightened, hid his disgust behind a stiff smile. "Of course, Father, how could I forget?" Then, to disguise the lack of true enthusiasm in his words, he leaned in to kiss his mother's cheek. "I'll see you soon, truly. I'm going to go find Crabbe and Goyle before they get lost somewhere." His parents' reply was fatuous and empty and quickly lost in the crowd.

Locating Crabbe and Goyle was not nearly so challenging as he'd made it out to be. It was part of their image, after all--he was the brains and they were the muscle, and how often did anyone ever bother to look past that front? They had already arranged a meeting place, one of the Potions lab rooms on the second floor, and Greg Goyle was already waiting, sprawled in the teacher's heavy mahogany chair. The room was small and cramped and not nearly ventilated enough for its primary purpose, but as the most undesirable of the lab rooms, it was also the least used. Especially on graduation day, they would not be interrupted here.

"Vince'll be along, I reckon," Greg said as Draco folded himself on top of the foremost table. "Did it go all right then?"

Draco nodded, tugging loose his tie. "I told them what we planned, that we were having a party and we'd get home from Hogsmeade. Lucius no doubt thinks we're plotting to terrorise Mrs. Norris or some other infantile thing even now. What about you?"

Greg shrugged. "Just so I'm back in time for the ceremony, he could care less what I do." His voice was flat, colourless, as if he genuinely didn't care that his own father, his single surviving family, didn't want to be reminded of his existence. Or worse, as if he were used to the idea.

The door creaked open again, thumped shut, and Vincent Crabbe joined them, tugging at his tie. His shirt was damp with sweat and his sleeves already pushed up to his elbows. "Sorry I'm late. Got a present from my grandma. Then my dad wanted to have our little 'man to man talk.' I told him about our party, he's fine with it."

The three young men were silent for a moment, considering where they were going, and what they were doing to get there.

"Well," Greg said finally. "This is really it."

Draco nodded, and the world--and his head--seemed heavier than it had even moments before this blunt, obvious announcement. "Indeed it is. Our last night of freedom, gentlemen. Let's make the most of it."

"Here, here!" Vince grinned goofily. He was the one who put the idea in Draco's head to begin with, however involuntarily; it was his brainchild and he was parentally proud of it.

"We're really going through with this," Greg said softly, as if he didn't quite believe it.

"Of course we are!" Draco's head snapped up sharply, his eyes narrow. "Our fathers chose their side, and we've chosen ours."

"Oh, I wasn't trying to back out or anything." Greg smiled sheepishly. "It just feels strange. Right, but strange. D'you reckon they're meeting tonight then?"

"Doesn't matter," Draco answered. "We have to go tonight in any case, we won't get another chance." He slid off the table and stood, back straight, head tall, chin tilted aristocratically. "Shall we, gentlemen?"

****

They wasted time, taking nostalgic tours around the Slytherin dungeons, helping their classmates pack, trading congratulations and wishes for the future, until the courtyard was nearly empty and their footsteps echoed eerily in the abandoned halls. It was a peculiar feeling, watching the school that had been their home for so long fade into disuse in the space of less than a day, bidding farewell to memories that they had been so sure, when first they made them, would be ingrained forever in their blood. There was the closet near the dorms where Draco had his first kiss (Pansy Parkinson, fourth year, he tried to pretend it wasn't his first time and she slapped him for slipping his tongue in her mouth); the storeroom down the hall from the Potions classroom where they had hid together, Draco and Vince doing their awkward best to comfort Greg after he lost his mother over one horrible Easter holiday. Good memories, and awful ones, there was the part of the garden nobody used where Vince lost his virginity to Erica Mercer in sixth-year, there was Snape's office, closed off. There was the old classroom the Slytherin boys had set up as a kind of gentlemen's club in fifth-year, and now the billiard table and the dartboard (which had once featured a rough coloured sketch of Harry Potter's face) looked small and lonely beneath their dull coating of dust.

But the lure of plans a long time in the making was strong, and drew them out of the past and into the future they were determined to make for themselves. Their preparations were thorough--they knew the password to Dumbledore's office was 'nittle freeze' and, prepared to make a grand entrance, they swept in side by side.

The scene was disappointing. Some part of Draco had expected a secret meeting of furtive would-be heroes inventing codenames and planning battle strategies on the floor with Bertie Bott's Beans; instead they found a nearly empty room with an atmosphere more intimate than martial. There was the Headmaster himself, pretending to doze at his desk, while Potter, his robes characteristically askew, conversed earnestly in the corner with someone Draco didn't immediately recognize. Potter glanced up as they entered, and his body went rigid--he was half out of his chair before Dumbledore's voice made him freeze in place.

"Mr. Malfoy. Mr. Crabbe. Mr. Goyle. What I can do for you gentlemen this evening?"

Draco met that dark, beady gaze levelly. He felt Vince and Greg both looking at him, waiting for him to speak.

"We're here to offer our services," he announced. "You're fighting Voldemort." Reflexively, Vince flinched; he still didn't like to hear the name spoken aloud. "You need us."

"What?" It was barely even a word, Potter's indignant squawk of disbelief. "Everybody knows your father's a Death Eater--"

"Of course he is, Potter," Draco said patiently. "And within the week, all three of us will be joining him. Surely that's the point. Your side doesn't have a man in his camp anymore." Oh, how it still hurt to speak of that in such a careless manner, as if he and Vince and Greg and, yes, Snape were no more than chess pieces to be used, sacrificed if necessary, all to protect the one untouchable king. His lips curled into a grim parody of a smile. "We'll be getting at him one way or another anyway, with or without you. We thought it would be more efficient to work together."

Dumbledore was watching him with that piercing, too-intelligent gaze, his hands steepled in front of him. "I think I know what brought this on," he said calmly.

Draco smiled darkly. "He thought he had problems when Potter was his worst enemy. He has no idea what it means to piss me off." It was arrogant, inelegant, it was his very real anger, however briefly slipping through the facade.

Potter made another angry sound. Draco ignored him. Dumbledore just continued speaking, as if oblivious to the contention. "The three of you will need your own password--there's certainly no way to keep you abreast of the changes in a timely manner. I'm afraid this arrangement will be rather one-sided...I don't think the role of a double-agent is one you should even pretend to play." He looked--for one brief moment, a flash, a heartbeat only--profoundly sad.

Draco, eternally proud, only nodded. "We understand."

He knew he was speaking for all three of them; he had been given license. Beside him, Greg shifted and added, "We're aware of the risks, sir."

"Very well then." The Headmaster looked tired and pleased and sad, and so different from the bubbling, vague, senile old man Draco had become used to that he nearly didn't notice the clatter of Potter's chair against the floor when the angry wizard knocked it over in his hurry to stand.

"Surely you're not going to trust them!" he demanded. His eyes blazed, his mouth set in a thin determined line.

"What's the matter, Potter?" Draco snapped. "Still having trouble believing that anybody can dislike you without being on his side?" Memories--McGonagall's eyes wet, the catch in her voice; a week of cancelled Potions classes; sitting for three weeks in an empty office pretending its occupant would be coming back. Frustration thrust its way past dignity. "Goddamnit, Potter, not everything has to be about you!"

Potter looked stunned--his shoulders loosed a little, his lips slightly parted. At least he was quiet. Greg shifted uncomfortably next to Draco. Dumbledore sighed.

"You understand then that some things we just won't be able to tell you...only because what you don't know, you can't be forced to tell. The location of our headquarters, for example, or Mr. Potter's place of residence...."

Something about that surprised Draco. Potter had righted his chair and sat back down, though he didn't look happy in the least; the dark-haired man's hand was resting on his shoulder in an intimate, protective gesture. "I would have thought Potter'd be staying here, where you can keep an eye on him."

"Malfoy--" Potter would have been on his feet again if the stranger's hand hadn't kept him in his chair. Draco let out a long breath and stalked toward him, breaking from the line he and Vince and Greg had remained stubbornly positioned in.

"But it's true," he said, his voice low, dripping with every bit of hatred and hurt and honesty he could summon to it. "You're the saviour of the wizarding world, Potter. And who knows? Maybe there's some truth to what we've all grown up hearing, that you're the only one who can stop him. The one man I respected thought there was, and he gave his life protecting you. And if it comes to it, for his sake I'll do the same. But I don't have to like you."

He was gratified to see Potter's eyes widen in surprise as he wilted back into his chair. The stranger's fingers tightened against his shoulder, silently, tenderly, and Draco, irrationally, resented it. He turned back to Dumbledore, and saw Vince and Greg watching impassively, as if they didn't care. It was a Slytherin look, one they had all perfected before they were old enough to shave. "It may be difficult to come to Hogwart's every time we have information to pass along. Is there somewhere else we can leave messages?"

Dumbledore turned at this, toward Potter and the stranger. "Sirius? Do we have a steady message centre set up?"

So this was Sirius Black. That posed any number of questions for Draco--not least of which, was why a convicted murderer, the same one who had supposedly killed Potter's parents by betraying them to Voldemort, was allowed in the same room with Potter, acting like a human wall between the mean, nasty, /real/ world and the Boy Who Lived.

And yet for all his protectiveness, Black seemed more ready than Potter to accept their new Slytherin allies. With an apologetic glance toward the boy sitting stonily in front of him, he nodded to them. "Fred and George Weasley own a joke shop in Hogsmeade. They'll pass on any communications that can't come directly to Hogwart's."

The Weasley twins. It made sense, in a twisted kind of way. Everyone underestimated them, and nobody would believe them capable of being serious enough to take part in a war. Draco found he could appreciate the logic and irony of it. He nodded.

"Then we'll be in touch. Unless there's any other way we can be of use tonight?" It was all form and politeness, an elabourate self-dismissal.

"Asphodel," said Dumbledore abruptly. Draco looked at him in surprise, but the old man was beaming just as inanely as he always did, if one could ignore the dangerous glint in his dark eyes. "That's your password," he explained.

Draco nodded, ignoring the cold sick feeling that crept into his stomach at the sound of the word. Asphodel, the plant that stood for sorrow beyond the grave. Proudly, he spun on his heel, and he and Vince and Gregory swept out of the room.

****

Harry dropped the last box solidly on the floor. Something rattled inside, and he hoped belatedly that it contained nothing fragile. Oh, but he was tired. He and Ron didn't have much in the way of furniture, but there was an haphazard pile of pillows and blankets in the corner of the living room, and he flopped onto it with a long sigh.

Their new flat was small, but the two large windows taking up most of the far wall made it look larger than it was. It was on the third floor of a tall brown brick building in the wizard part of London, and though the building itself was ancient, the owners were continuously renovating and retrofitting it, so that now it was a peculiar combination of cracked mortar and wrought-iron balustrades and wide glass windows. The path to the front door was guarded by a pair of boxy, grumbling gargoyles called Hugin and Munin, who interrogated any and all comers with varying degrees of intensity, usually based on how bored they were at the time. It had taken Harry most of the first half of the afternoon to convince them to stop questioning him every time he headed up the path with a new box.

"So you're moving in, are you?" Hugin demanded the first time. He looked vaguely Egyptian, like he might have been descended from the Sphinx or the statues of old animal-headed gods, and his voice was low and gravelly, as if someone nearby was shaking a jar of pebbles and sand.

"Yes," said Harry. "Three-oh-four."

Munin, whose head was shaped a bit like the deformed bastard offspring of a Chinese dragon and a Cocker Spaniel, stuck out his forked tongue and ran it along his lips. "You're moving in with that redheaded chap, aren't you?" he clarified in a thick Cockney accent that sounded ridiculously out of place. "Saw 'im headed up the stairs with his mum yesterday, I did."

"Yes," Harry said again. "That's right."

That was their introduction. By his sixth trip down to the sidewalk where he'd stacked everything he and Ron owned, the gargoyles had covered the weather, the traffic, and the state of his hair, and moved on to his future plans.

"Just graduated from 'Ogwart's, then?" asked Munin.

"Yes," said Harry.

"Got a job yet?" demanded Hugin.

"Um...sort of," said Harry.

"Glad to be out on yer own at last?" asked Munin.

Harry shrugged. "I guess so."

"Do you have a giiiiirrrrlfriend?" Hugin asked slyly.

Harry rolled his eyes. "No."

"Want us to find one for you?" offered Munin brightly.

"No," Harry said, trying not to groan. "I'm fine, really. Can I just go ahead and move my things in now?"

Grumbling, they subsided, and settled for conspiratorial winks and the occasional rude comment as he passed, boxes balanced in his arms.

A week ago, Harry would have said that he and Ron actually owned very little between them. They each had a broomstick and all requisite accessories, a collection of worn-out clothes and school robes, and piles of old textbooks (most of the last they had sold to incoming seventh-years for what was really a pitiful sum of money). Harry had his invisibility cloak, enough candy to send both of them into sugar shock for the next year, and some little gifts and trinkets his classmates had given him. Ron had his Chudley Cannons posters, statuettes of various professional Quidditch players (including one of Oliver Wood, with 'Ron--Good luck with everything. Oliver' scribbled on the bottom in black permanent marker), and the chess set Harry had given him for his last birthday. Mrs. Weasley had donated a set of her third-best dishes, some mismatched towels, and the pair of beds from the twins' old room.

It wasn't that much, really, so how come it took so long to move, and why was it so blasted heavy?

And where the hell was Ron, anyway, leaving him to move all of this by himself?

He sprawled on his back on the pile of blankets, arms and legs thrown lazily out to his sides. It was all so strange, it felt normal, as if he weren't one of the primary players in a highly dangerous and highly secretive war. Graduation, moving in with Ron, making plans to visit Hermione in Wales as soon as they had a chance. Moving furniture and unpacking towels. As if they were just getting on with things. As if Hermione's research wasn't going to focus almost entirely on the Dark Arts, as if Fred and George's joke shop was nothing more than it seemed. As if Draco Malfoy hadn't announced the night before that he was joining their side.

Harry had resisted the idea initially, and he hadn't expected to accept it soon, if ever. It was just that--well, Malfoy had a point. He did tend to see people as being either on his side or Voldemort's. That was the reason he'd never been able to straighten things out with Snape--it was too late of course, now, and there were nights, nights he wouldn't admit to anyone, when it made his insides tie up in knots and he couldn't sleep. He remembered his first Quidditch game (not that he'd ever forget that, no matter what else happened), when Snape was trying to save him, and all unknowing, Hermione set his robe on fire. He took points from Gryffindor, he called them names, he made Harry miserable. But he died protecting him, in the end. It made Harry's stomach hurt.

Not everything has to be about you.

But it was always about him, really, wasn't it? It was easy to say, if one happened to be Harry Potter, that Harry Potter was really just another young man just graduated from Hogwart's, and not actually that special at all. It was quite another to convince a world of it, especially a world that had displayed him as a figurehead against all that was evil since before he was old enough to walk. It was about him. Maybe it hadn't started that way, maybe in the beginning it was all about Good versus Evil and taking over the world and putting Muggles in their place and saving them and keeping the wizard and Muggle worlds separate and everything else they said it was. But at some point it had become personal, become Voldemort V. Potter, and all the allies on either side were barely more than spectators. They protected, they planned, they gathered information, but they also believed that when the final battle came, it would be the two main players who decided it all.

Even Malfoy believed it, and that surprised Harry.

Maybe you really are the only one who can stop him. It bothered him that it took Malfoy to make him really sit down and think about this--not that he didn't think about Voldemort more than enough already. But normally he considered plans, strategies, how he could win the fight--he didn't do much thinking about the nature of the fight itself.

Because deep down, he believed it, too.

He didn't like it, the idea that other people should sacrifice themselves to get him closer to the ultimate goal, but he accepted it. It must have started with Ron riding a giant stone knight across a chessboard, expanded when Voldemort said 'Kill the spare' and Cedric Diggory collapsed onto the grass, and culminated when Draco Malfoy said if it comes to it I will die for you.

Malfoy said he would die for him. Surely somewhere in the world pigs were turning purple and sprouting wings. It made Harry's head hurt.

And yet--Malfoy, and Crabbe, and Goyle. They were going to become Death Eaters, and they were going to become spies. They understood what would happen if Voldemort, surely now on the alert for the possibility of turncoats from the ranks of new Hogwart's graduates, discovered them. And they were doing it anyway.

And he didn't want anything to happen to them.

There is a distinct difference between disliking someone, making them miserable, or thinking they're a pathetic excuse for a human, and actually wanting them dead. Yes, Malfoy tormented Harry. He had always tormented Harry, ever since that first day, when Harry first discovered he was a wizard and a hero and everything that went with Being Harry Potter. He'd been there, in some capacity or other, for most of the really important moments in Harry's life. It was hard to imagine a world without him, or without Crabbe and Goyle shadowing him, glaring people down, making him look so much smaller than he actually was simply by standing near him.

Much earlier, that winter, when Professor McGonagall told them Snape was dead, Harry slipped into the nearest toilet and threw up. He felt empty and didn't understand why, and he felt guilty because he didn't know how he ought to feel or react or what face he was supposed to show. In the end he was just quiet. It was what people expected anyway. Harry Potter--the world crashes down around him, but he keeps going.

Acting normal felt strange, sometimes.

A key rattled in the lock, and then the door opened, and he was glad, because the distraction meant he could stop thinking. Ron nudged the door closed with his foot, tossed a thick canvas bag onto the floor and sunk down next to Harry. Sweaty wisps of red hair stuck out in all directions from his head, and his cheeks were flushed, as though he'd been running, or the bag had been very heavy. He was taller than Harry now--taller than just about everyone they knew, really, and had the sort of gangly, bony frame that made little old ladies stop him on street corners and chastise him for not eating enough. If Harry was there at the time, he'd usually laugh and say 'If you only knew.' Ron ate plenty.

"Those gargoyles downstairs," Ron announced, "are bloody annoying. Hope they get bored of us soon. How much've you got done?"

"All of it," said Harry sourly. "No thanks to you--where were you, anyway? Took you long enough."

"Picking up a couple of things I left at home. Your birthday present, for one. A going-away thing for Hermione. Some photo albums. Things like that." He didn't sound apologetic for making Harry do all the heavy work in the least. "Don't tell me you carried it all in here by hand?"

"I can't Apparate yet," Harry pointed out, "and all the Levi-carts were rented, since everybody else is moving this week too. What was I supposed to do, tie it all to my broomstick? Yes, I carried it. By hand, by myself, because you weren't here." He decided it took too much energy to be righteously indignant, and changed the subject. "What'd you get Hermione?"

"A book," Ron answered immediately, but his freckled face took on a definite pink tinge. "Well--I got her something else, too, but I got the book to hide it in, so I can be a coward and not actually have to watch her open it. She'll already be in Wales by the time she gets that far."

"I think you're underestimating Hermione," said Harry dryly. "She's liable to finish the book before the train's already out of the station. So what's this thing you're hiding in it, that you're too afraid to give her? A note proposing to her? Or just one that says 'do you like me, circle yes/no'?"

"Drop dead," Ron said cheerfully, but he was already fishing something out of his jeans pocket, and he tossed Harry a soft, small grey bag. Harry upended it into his palm, and out fell a petite glass charm on a thin silver chain. The pendant itself was deep, vivid violet, barely the size of his thumbnail, and formed in the shape of a tiny sleeping face. The colour swirled and shifted when his skin touched it, and then it was still.

"It's asleep," Ron explained as Harry peered at it. "It'll probably stay that way for a while. It was my mother's, but she hasn't worn it in years, she told me I could have it for Hermione. It doesn't do much but keep you company--that's why she hasn't worn it, I think. The one thing my mum does not need is something else that talks to her."

Harry peered closer at the tiny face, eyelids closed in dreamy slumber, the bump of its miniature nose, delicate mouth parted a little as if it needed to breathe. "It talks?"

Ron nodded. "When it's awake. It's nothing, really. Well, it's an antique, and they're rare now, but you used to be able to get them at any souvenir shop in Hogsmeade. They're from Australia, there's a beach there where the glass just washes up that way, or something. I'm sure she'll know the whole history of them." He sounded a little defensive when he added, "I just thought she'd like it, that's all."

Harry returned the charm to the bag and passed it back to him. "I'm sure she will. I suppose this means you're not going to actually tell her you've been in love with her since we were fourteen?"

"We're fighting a war, Harry," Ron said, and somehow, despite the fact it was the absolute truth, it came out sounding melodramatic. "It's not really the time for romancing girls, is it? Besides, she's going to have a whole new library to poke through. It's not like I'd ever be able to see her."

Harry chuckled at that. "Right. So you'll just be forcing me to listen to you whine about it all summer then?"

Ron narrowed his eyes and twisted up his mouth, but his voice was utterly calm. "It's not like you're ever going to have a love life, you're going to have to live vicariously through mine anyway."

"Yours doesn't exist."

"Hmph. Take what you can get." Ron grinned at him, the easy, companionable grin of an old best friend. "Mind, not that I didn't try to get you to go out with my sister...."

"Your sister," said Harry dryly, "had a crush on me when she was eleven. We've gone past that point. Besides, if I dated her I'd be instant enemies with half the fellows in Gryffindor, and I've got enough enemies, thanks." He watched Ron from the corner of his eye and added lazily, "You know somebody had to get the looks in the family."

It was almost disappointing, but Ron did not rise to the bait. "It's the hair. Stunning on girls, just makes us fellows look silly. Fortunately we get used to it."

"Looking silly? I should think you would."

"You," Ron noted idly, "are pushing it."

"Ah," said Harry. "That is what I'm good at." He folded his arms behind his head, wincing a bit because his shoulders were sore. "And if you're not nice to me, I'll tell Hermione how you feel about her."

"No you won't," said Ron, not sounding worried in the least. "I know where you sleep."

Harry made a noncommittal noise and was feeling about for something suitable to throw when the pain hit, like a lightning-strike, familiar and white-hot, bursting from his forehead and lancing through his limbs. He heard, "Harry?" and saw Ron leaning over him, but in a vague, blurred sort of way because he couldn't focus his eyes or feel his hands or comprehend anything but that he hurt. He felt like he was on fire. Ron touched his arm, and in the one place alone he felt cooler, but it refused to spread.

"Come on, Harry--" Ron slid his arm under Harry's shoulders and hefted him up, supporting him entirely because Harry's brain couldn't seem to get a message to his burning legs that they were supposed to help him stand up. "Fireplace," Ron directed firmly, but he had to drag Harry toward it. The pain was incapacitating. It used to be that when Voldemort did something particularly dangerous for Harry, attacked or killed or planned his death, Harry's scar would hurt and he would wake up with a headache. But now Voldemort was stronger, and the more powerful he became, the more pain the attacks caused Harry. It hurt most when whatever the Dark Lord was doing involved Harry, or someone close to him, directly--which Hermione had suggested was fortunate, or he'd be able to eliminate Harry Potter simply by causing chaos and mayhem in some far-away part of the world for a while.

But now Harry was shaking, with a thousand sparks coursing through his blood and pricking him from the inside; he was sinking to his knees in front of the fireplace they hadn't even used yet, with Ron supporting him, trying not to let him hurt himself. This was the worst yet, it was like Crucio, and he just wanted it to be over, and Ron was pointing his wand at the fireplace and muttering things he recognised but was too far gone to understand.

The air behind them split, then, and there was a popping sound, as Hermione Apparated into their living room. Less than two steps to Harry, and she knelt down next to him, and Ron was looking relieved and explaining what happened. Hermione put her hand to Harry's forehead and murmured 'pacatus aquari', and the coolness spread from her fingers into Harry's skull and washed through him. The burning subsided. Hermione had her arm around one of his shoulders, and Ron the other, and both were staring at him with grave concern.

"You all right now, Harry?" asked Ron.

He nodded, even though his head still felt light and floppy, like it wasn't completely attached to his neck. "Fine. Thanks, Herm. That's a new one, isn't it?" She nodded, but he knew there was something wrong when complimenting her new spell didn't wake a glow of pride in her eyes.

"Wonder what it was this time." The light curiousity in Ron's tone was entirely forced, and it failed entirely at the expression on Hermione's face.

"That's what I was coming to get you for," she explained. "Voldemort's attacked again, or rather, somebody working for him has. They didn't get anyone--I mean, everyone's safe, who was there--but I came here as soon as I saw the Dark Mark--"

Ron stared at her, and Harry's foggy brain tried to process all the words tumbling out of her mouth in a rush. "Hermione," Ron said suddenly, "you're babbling. What's the matter?"

"It's the Burrow," she answered dully. "It's gone."

"What?" Ron's fingers gripped Hermione's arm, til she extracted it with a pained squeak. "That's not--I mean, I was just there, maybe fifteen minutes ago, everything was fine! Mum was just about to take Ginny down to Diagon Alley for--Ginny!" His eyes were wild, but he didn't move, as if he couldn't, as if he were paralysed on the spot. "They're okay. You said they were okay." Desperate. Hermione nodded.

"They're all right. They hadn't left yet, but they're all right. It's just--the whole house, Ron, it's gone. It's like it just...crumbled, and the Dark Mark hovering there in the air over it, right in the middle of the afternoon. Broad daylight. I think--I think it wasn't meant to kill anyone this time, that it was just meant as a warning."

"It's a declaration of fucking war, is what it is," said Ron, his voice hard.

Hermione sighed and stood. "I know." She sounded miserable and tired. "We need to meet with Dumbledore and your parents and the rest, and decide what to do from here."

Ron stood, shaking his head; he hauled Harry up with him. "Not til I go see what they've done to my house. We need to see it. Right, Harry?"

"Right." His lips were dry, and his eyes didn't want to focus; the pain was gone but had been replaced by a detached sort of numbness that made it difficult to feel the outside of his skin. The Burrow was gone, she was telling them. The ridiculous shape of it, rooms added on top of each other in every conceivable fashion, the yard full of garden gnomes and the treehouse he and Ron and Ginny had spent most of a summer building, all the noise and laughter and memories all vanished, stolen.

Hermione was watching them sympathetically. It was different for her--still personal, but not quite so deep. It wasn't her home, not the way it was Ron's or even the way it was Harry's.

Ron let out a long breath, anger and despair and disbelief. "Let's go check out the damage, then," he said weakly. "I guess I should just feel lucky that everyone's all right, and that I got the best of the photo albums out."

***