Of Princes and Knights

'A nice pickle we have landed ourselves in, Mr. Frodo!' he said, shaking his head.

--Sam Gamgee, J. R. R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring

-oooo-

II.

Atlas Has Green Eyes

On a gray day early in the month of July, a black-haired teenage boy waited, breathless, on the wrong side of the front door. His fingers were closed around the cool metal of the doorknob, and his eyes, behind round-framed glasses, were shut as he listened. No one stirred inside the house. He waited a few more seconds, and then peeped in through the crack. Inside, the furniture loomed like massive, sagging beasts, the bellies of the sofas scraping against the carpeted floor (weighted down from years of bearing the burden of Dursley the youngest), and the chairs slumped and wilting in the murky atmosphere. When nothing moved, he allowed himself to breathe and closed the heavy front door, careful to be as quiet as possible.

Harry lingered for a moment, waiting for Aunt Petunia to come out screeching or for Uncle Vernon to throw open the door and start walloping him with whatever was closest at hand (an umbrella, most likely, since the stand was right inside the doorway). When no punishment seemed immediately forthcoming, he jolted away from the house in an explosion of movement, jogging down the silent, sleepy street. His battered shoulder bag bounced against his thigh. The Gryffindor seal above the clasp had been covered up with the cheapest patch he could find at the local dollar store in Little Whinging, a green kokopelli figure holding a bong instead of a flute. Aunt Petunia had had a fit when she saw it, which only made the experience all the more enjoyable for Harry. The Dursleys were now convinced that he was not only a freak, but a pothead.

It was uncommonly cool for this time of year. The nascent sun was blotted from the sky by a menacing bank of clouds, the blue-black color of a new bruise. He slowed his pace as he turned onto Magnolia Crescent, and thought he saw a flash of light out of the corner of his eye. About ten seconds later, a low growl of thunder whispered through Little Whinging, promising a stormy day. Harry shrugged his threadbare sweatshirt higher and stuffed his hands into his pockets, continuing on his way to the park.

After two weeks of Privet Drive, Harry found even this inclement weather more welcoming than anything within the Dursleys' house. There he found nothing but cold glares and even colder shoulders--at least out here he was free from his stuffy room. Uncle Vernon had nailed the window permanently shut while Harry was away at school.

Far from being turned back by the coming storm, he found himself savoring that tingling sensation that danced delicately--almost imperceptibly--over his exposed skin, a foreboding of lightning. Anyway, the sky above his head was still a clear, pale blue; he still had a good hour of study time before he would have to seek shelter. Bearing this in mind, Harry picked up his pace, striding quickly down Magnolia Crescent towards the park.

Little Whinging was still asleep. The only person that Harry saw on his short trek was a mailman, who looked startled to see a teenage boy out so early. No, not startled--suspicious. Of course. Little Whinging was a small town, and everybody knew about the delinquent who lived with the Dursleys, that boy who went to St. Whatsit's Penitentiary, or whatever it was called.

As they approached one another, moving from opposite ends of a short side street off Magnolia Crescent, Harry dropped his gaze, consciously evening out his breath and concentrating. The black lower edge of his glasses cut a dark, curved swath across his vision, separating the clear and the indistinct. He slipped his wand out of his pocket and up into his sleeve, and discreetly pointed it towards the mailman, muttering something under his breath.

Discordantly foreign images and sensations jostled in beside his own, and his mind rebelled for a moment before succumbing to the strange new phenomenon. Legilimency was as bizarre for the caster as the victim, Harry had learned in the last week. He still wasn't used to it, having given up on trying to read Aunt Petunia's thoughts after being thoroughly disgusted by her lascivious feelings towards Mrs. Next-Door's brother-in-law, who was staying for the summer. Dudley thought of nothing but boxing, food, boxing, girls, boxing, maintaining his reputation, and boxing, so Harry had quickly dropped him as a possibility, and he didn't even want to attempt Legilimency on Uncle Vernon. Merlin only knew what sort of rubbish he'd find in that head.

He pushed these reflections away and concentrated on the thoughts in his head that were not his own. ...Looks like he's going to school. Doesn't he know it's July? Probably got cherry bombs or something in his bag. Or drugs. Wouldn't be surprised. Doubtless going to meet another one of his ilk...

With a derisive, half-offended snort, Harry dropped the spell just as he and the mailman drew abreast of one another. He looked up and met the middle-aged man's curious glare with an even stare of his own. He'd been practicing that look--after all, if McGonagall and Dumbledore (Merlin rest him) could use Looks to such an effect as they did (had), Harry could, as well. It would probably be a useful skill. So he'd started cultivating a Look of his own in front of the tiny, battered mirror in his room, arranging his face muscle by muscle into the coldest, most disdainfully disinterested expression he could manage.

The mailman responded just as Harry wished, shuddering involuntarily and looking away, his footsteps moving faster as he continued past the teenage boy. Harry waited a few moments and then grinned. Well, my Legilimency's improving. I only wish I had someone to practice Occlumency with.

Abruptly, the cold blank air fell about him again. Even something as innocuous as Occlumency brought to mind the Traitor, as he referred to Snape. The feeling of that man's name in his mind, on his tongue, was poison, so he refrained from using it at all now, even mentally. That hooked, pallid face haunted his dreams, a sneer set beneath the beaklike nose, the black brows drawn down together over eyes like chips of flint, cold and opaque.

And always, as he stood before the Traitor in those dreams, frozen with hatred, Harry could feel a presence behind him, and smell something sweet and tart--like sherbet lemons.

His throat felt thick with emotion. He shook his head violently, as though the action could fling all memories of the Traitor (and what he had done) out of his mind. As it was, his glasses very nearly flew off his face, and he had to lift a hand to straighten them and brush the hair out of his eyes. It was longer than it ever had been before, thick and shaggy; he knew it only added to his felonious appearance, but didn't bother to trim it. In fact, he realized as he scratched his bristly cheek, he had forgotten to shave the last few days. He must look like some sort of homeless vagrant.

The fact of the matter was time had finally had its effect on Harry. When he looked into the mirror, he no longer saw a boy hiding his fear behind a brave, scarred façade. He saw a young man, determined and unwavering in his goals--or, more accurately, goal. His face was more angular than he remembered it being, having lost any of the roundness that his indigent childhood had offered; his shoulders were stronger and broader, developed by long Quidditch practices and longer hours spent doing chores around Number Four, Privet Drive. There was a sort of grim resolve about his mouth, a look reminiscent of reserved anguish. Despite this gravity, he wasn't unattractive. In fact, Harry was rather pleased with how he'd turned out. He certainly resembled James Potter, and now in more than just a vague, familial resemblance sort of way. One day last week he'd held a photograph of his father up beside his own reflection, and the similitude had startled him. No wonder he was always being told how very like James he looked!

His mother had left her mark on him, as well, and it became clearer every day. All reports declared Lily Potter to be one of the most brilliant witches of her day, a rival to the legendary Hermione Granger, whose name had become a Hogwarts byword (and synonym for 'swot'). As he sought refuge in his books, he found himself recalling more, being able to focus with increased ease, and it seemed that every day he uncovered a new and untapped reserve of intellect or power. Using books and his own intuition, he had taught himself the tricks behind Legilimency, which was deceptively similar to its foil, Occlumency. It had been several days before he could actually apply the spell, but now he was progressing in leaps and bounds, as wayward and uncoordinated as they were. He knew everything about Horcruxes that the first two texts contained; if he had wanted to, he could've made one himself with little difficulty.

His steps quickened as he crossed from pavement to dew-silvered grass, aimed at a low-slung ash. The lightning-struck tree served as his library and study here in Little Whinging. His skin was alive with electricity, and his mind churning with unease.

He could make one himself with little difficulty. And he had considered it more than once during the early summer nights, those long stretches of darkness that made the last two weeks feel more like two months. After all, if he was completely honest with himself, what were the chances of an almost-seventeen-year-old wizard defeating the man (if he could be called that) who had struck fear into the hearts of hundreds of thousands over so many decades? Even the story of David and Goliath was no consolation to the heartsick young man: in the real world, giants didn't fall so easily.

He was jaded, that was his problem. Too many years of unimaginable stress, too many years spent looking over his shoulder, too many years of grieving and griping and procrastinating--

Too many years of being selfish.

That selfishness prompted a comfortable, intoxicating sense of invincibility in him. Surely he couldn't die, if he didn't want to. It just couldn't happen.

It could. Sirius hadn't wanted to die. Neither had Dumbledore. And try as he might, Harry could not dispel from his mind the fleeting look of surprise on Cedric Diggory's face as a bolt of light, as green as Harry's own eyes, struck him full in the chest.

But recognition is the first step towards change, or so he'd read at some point in the hazy past. He would fight the selfishness of youth as hard as he could from now on. He realized now, after so many nights spent studying and trying not to listen to Dumbledore's voice as it whispered in his ear, that his purpose in life wasn't to be as normal as possible, or to hide from the public or try to avoid his fate. He wouldn't run from the phantasm of his prophesied future anymore. He would accept his role in this terrible game.

This resolution made him bold. He had barely been in Surrey for ten minutes when he sat down and wrote a letter to Mundungus Fletcher, the Order's resident felon (a felon, despite his many gaffes, who was devoted to the memories of Sirius Black and Albus Dumbledore, and most of all to the Boy Who Lived), asking him to find as many books on Horcruxes as possible. Since then, he had begun to regularly request items from the crooked wizard--from texts on Legilimency, Occlumency, and wandless and wordless magic to such mundane items as Chocolate Frogs and Owl Treats for Hedwig. Now, with this special dispensation from the Ministry, Harry was wallowing in magic of varying shades of white and gray--and even studying (though never practicing) the Dark Arts. It couldn't hurt to know what the enemy could throw at him. The Dursleys avoided him like the plague, even going so far as telling him not to cook or clean for them anymore (though he reckoned that was because Aunt Petunia was afraid he'd poison them or hex something). He'd been so busy that he hadn't even looked at his owl post in over a week.

For the first time in his life, Harry Potter took himself seriously--and because of this, so did others.

McGonagall, in her spare letters, expressed pleasure at Harry's professed diligence and tenacity. Lupin stopped trying to make him feel better, and seemed to appreciate that the boy had finally grasped the fact that life was not fair, and probably never would be--especially for Harry. He hadn't read any of Hermione or Ron's letters--he'd received a veritable flood of them in this last week and a half--figuring that they were probably full of either each other or their plans for next year, all of which could be tackled when Harry joined them after his seventeenth birthday.

He didn't know how they'd react to the changes that were so evident even to himself. Hermione would be pleased by his increasing bookishness, but how she would respond to his newfound, steady confidence--which, he had to admit, occasionally took even Harry by surprise--was beyond him. And what of Ron? Harry hadn't turned into an old man over night, but he couldn't see himself being quite as amused by some of their past pursuits as he had been before.

Ron would stick by him, though--Harry knew this as an established truth, just as he knew that he would sell his life dearly to Tom Riddle. But it hurt him to admit that he wasn't as certain of Hermione. She had always been more independent than them, and though she had suffered during their numerous arguments, had fared better on her own than either Ron or Harry would have. She would always support him, of course: his question was, would she support Harry, or the Boy Who Lived?

And he couldn't help but wonder what Ginny would make of his transformation from the Boy Who Lived to the Man Who Intended to Keep Living. Would she hate him? How could she not hate someone who had actually entertained the thought of creating a Horcrux, even if the purpose behind such an action would be to preserve himself so he could protect others?

Certainly, Harry was no longer the boy he'd been a bare two weeks ago. Every day he grew a little more jaded, a little more cynical, a little less inclined to believe that everything would turn out all right. There was no such certainty in the world after youth--there was no master plan written to his exact desires. It was on his shoulders.

As he pondered his responsibilities, he settled down beneath the lightning-struck tree and opened one textbook. Another, last year's History of Magic book, served as an improvised writing desk while balanced on his lap. A few leafs of parchment and that day's copy of the Daily Prophet sat nearby, weighted down by Blackest Magicke.

Luck, however, was not with him today. No sooner had he wrenched himself from his inner world and become entranced by the old language and even older magic than something wet fell against his cheek, splattering up to mar his clean lenses. Blinking in surprise, Harry lifted his head. Outside of the ash's protective embrace, the rain had begun in earnest, pattering percussively against the grass and cement.

"Shit."

He stretched to grab his shoulder bag, and unceremoniously stuffed his papers into it before they were completely ruined, jammed the books down on top of them, and staggered to his feet, slipping on the wet grass. When he regained his balance, he set off at a run for the pavilion in the center of the park, cobbled paths radiating out from it like rays from a stylized sun to meet the sidewalk that marked the park's perimeter.

Lightning flickered too close, momentarily blinding him. The thunder that followed was not a rumble, not a growl--it was a shock, a harsh blow to his ears and head. He winced, his trainers sliding on the slick cobbles as he reached the pavilion; he tripped up the last few steps and landed on the pavilion floor on his hands and knees, soaked and panting. The rough wood floor scraped the skin off the heels of his hands. Sucking his breath in painfully, he slid the bag off his shoulder and turned so that he was sitting on the top stair, just within the protection of the overhang.

He fingered the raw flesh. It was surprising that, after all the agony he'd been through in his life--Cruciatus Curses, Quidditch mishaps, fights, falls, and that bloody scar--something as insignificant as a skinned hand could hurt so strongly. He smiled at the irony of the concept and held his right hand over the left. His wandless magic was still very weak, and he could only perform small charms with his wand hand. Nevertheless, it was growing.

Wandless magic was more complex because it required the user to consider not the conduit, but the magic itself. To do this, the user had to be aware of his very blood, of the way the life surged within his body, of the instinctual way in which the mind tapped this supply. He chewed his lip for a moment, waiting to feel a certain indescribable twist of his consciousness, and then whispered, "Percuro."

There was a flash of pain as brief and intense as the lightning flickering around the park, transforming the verdant trees into stark silhouettes for fractions of a heartbeat, and then new, soft, pink skin formed over the tender area before his very eyes. He smiled, satisfied. He discreetly performed the same charm over his right hand using his wand, now tucked into the left sleeve of his red, bedraggled sweatshirt.

He didn't hear the footsteps--the cacophony of thunder and hard rain pelting against the pavilion roof (the storm had really set in now) was too loud to allow that. But he felt the running steps reverberating through the wood beneath him, and rose quickly to his feet, turning to meet this unforeseen intruder with caution and alarm.

She didn't seem to notice him, but leaned against one of the plain, cylindrical pillars, her head tipped back against the wood. She was breathing hard, her cheeks flushed with exertion, and her black hair clung to the pale, rosy skin of her face and neck in stark curls. Her glasses were spattered with raindrops, and she cursed quietly as she attempted in vain to dry them off on her waterlogged, long-sleeved shirt, which bore the name of Stonewall High's drama association. "Damn."

Harry observed her unnoticed for another brief minute. She was short and of an average weight. In fact, each and every one of her visible characteristics seemed to be the epitome of average.

At least, so it seemed until she turned her face towards Harry, alerted to his presence by some small sound. They were a pale, pale blue, circumscribed by a ring so dark it almost matched the black, angular frames of her glasses.

"Oh," she said, as surprised by his sudden appearance as he was by hers. "Wotcher."

"Hello," he said as she went back to attempting to dry her glasses. Moving slowly--everything felt so sluggish with the heavy drumming of rain on the roof above them and the echoing thunder that rolled around Little Whinging, encasing it in a sphere of sound--he went over to join her. "That's not going to do much good. Mind if I...?" he asked, holding one hand out.

Smiling gratefully, she passed him the glasses. He dried them on the hem of his shirt, which had been partially protected by his sweatshirt and was, at the very least, not as soaked as her dark gray top, and passed them back. She replaced them, blinking briefly as her eyes readjusted to the world's clarity, and grinned at him. "Thanks."

"No problem."

They stood in silence for a few more awkward moments, neither knowing quite what to say. At one point, she drew in her breath as though preparing to speak, but seemed to think better of what she'd been about to say. She kept her peace--at least for another few seconds.

"You're Harry, right?" she asked. "Harry Potter?"

He nodded slightly, frowning and peering at her. She smiled; the expression was delightfully crooked and touched every feature. Her pale eyes narrowed and crinkled up in the corners, and he abruptly remembered something. A small boy in baggy clothing and broken glasses was running away from a posse of larger boys when a hand shot out and dragged him around a corner. His savior, a girl both a year ahead of him and several inches shorter, pressed one finger to her lips, and motioned towards the entrance to the back hallway. Still panting from the effort of the chase, the malnourished boy obediently hid behind the opened door just before his tormentors arrived. For a few moments, there came the sound of conversation as the boys interrogated the black-haired girl. Her answers were vague and blithe, given with a smile. When they left, her head appeared around the side of the door. You can come out now, kid.

"Ev," he started, then blinked and squinted, satisfied to find the lines of the child's face echoed and refined in the countenance of the girl before him. "Evangeline."

She nodded brightly, pleased at being recognized without prompting. "Angie MacTavish. You remembered!"

"You saved me a beating," he said with a smile, genuinely glad to see her. "Of course I remembered!"

Her smile was just as warm now as it had been then. "So, kid. Where've you been?"

His own cheery expression faded a little with the on-set of more self-pity. Willfully, he choked it down and made himself deliver the answer that his aunt and uncle had provided him with and obliged him to. "St. Brutus'."

She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, and Piers Polkiss is the next Mr. Universe. St. Brutus' Center for Incurably Criminal Boys." She snorted. "First of all, no one in their right mind would name an actual institution something as stupid as that. Second, you're no more a criminal mastermind than I am a ballroom dancer."

He brightened under her blunt appraisal, but she just eyed him up and down.

"The brawn behind the brain, perhaps," she amended her judgment. "You're a little twiggy, but you look rather fit. Oh! Not that you look stupid or anything. Bother. It was a joke," she said, flushing at his startled expression. "Sorry."

He laughed. "It's all right. I was just--surprised. You reminded me of someone else I know." Someone who just so happens to have bright red hair and six older brothers, he added mentally.

"Ah, someone from this mystery school of yours. C'mon, now, Potter. Where is it?"

"I can't tell you."

"Oh?"

"No."

"I bet I could wheedle it out of you. I'd give you--oh, maybe three days. You're the type that seems to be rather resistant to wheedling."

He smiled, amused by her amiable chatter. "What type is that?"

"Tall, dark, and handsome," she quipped. "Bet you've got a girlfriend for every day of the week at your mystery school, don't you, kid?" she asked with an affable smirk. This was the sort of teasing that the Weasleys participated in, this affectionate ribbing, and it was an entirely new (and very enjoyable) experience for Harry, even if the subject was somewhat painful.

"Every day of the week?" he scoffed, playing along gleefully. "I have a girlfriend for every meal of every day of the week."

"Tsk, kid. No one ever told you cannibalism was a bad thing?"

He laughed out loud at that. She opened her mouth to continue, but flinched at a particularly violent growl of thunder. "Bloody hell, this storm's a beast."

Harry nodded in companionable acquiescence to the comment, but was really contemplating whether or not to ask Angie if she wanted to meet again. He could definitely use a friend while he was trapped in the Muggle world--but could he risk discovery? And--

His train of thought was interrupted as Angie's eyes drifted downward, attracted by movement. She darted to the side and caught the newspaper that blew by, ripped from Harry's half-open bag by the howling, rain-laden wind, and made as if to hand it to him. Her eyes fell to the front page halfway through the motion, and she stopped, staring.

Harry's blood ran cold. A groan was wrenched from the very depths of his gut as he saw her eyes widen--

"The pictures are moving!"

If his life was a Muggle movie, the entire world would have stopped just then. The rain would hang like diamonds in the air, thunder would echo interminably, and a fly (miraculously exempt from the universal freeze) would zoom into Evangeline MacTavish's gaping mouth.

His life, however, was decidedly stranger than a Muggle movie. The rain kept falling and no freeze-defying insect appeared, though the thunder did continue to grumble through Little Whinging. Rather, Harry was frozen. Try as he might, he was as inert as he had been less than a month ago, when Dumbledore (something twinged inside him) cast an Immobulus charm at him. The results of this motionlessness looked to be just as disastrous as the results of that one had been, too.

"Daily Prophet, Premier Newspaper of the Wizarding World Since 962 AD," she read. "Another Controversial Choice by Scrimgeour: Weasley Made Chief Muggle Liaison. This--wow! Muggle." She grinned, savoring the flavor of the strange word on her tongue. She looked up, meeting Harry's eyes. "This is wi--Harry?"

And he unfroze. In seconds, he was standing over her, taking full advantage of his newly cultivated Look and the fact that she was barely more than five foot. "Angie," he said. "Give me the paper."

"Just a sec, Harry--this is so wicked--"

"Angie!" His voice crept up a few decibel levels. "Hand me the paper!" He made a grab for it, but she turned, placing her body between his hands and the Prophet, her lips moving silently as she read. Harry could see the picture over her shoulder--Scrimgeour, a dour expression on his face, was congratulating a grinning Arthur Weasley. "Evangeline!"

"Hold on," she said, holding up one finger to forestall him. Harry growled, infuriated, and lunged for the paper. "Wait, no--oooooooh!"

The protest transformed into a shriek as Angie attempted to dodge Harry's grasping hands and instead found only a slick patch of wood. Her feet shot out from under her, and as Harry watched she slipped the few inches to the edge of the top stair. He pounced forward to grab her, but Angie was faster than he was; her free hand swept through the air and latched onto the first thing it hit--Harry's sweatshirt. His curse joined her startled shriek as they toppled down the three stairs, landing hard on the wet concrete below.

"Shit," Harry hissed, rolling over and clutching at his wrist, which had been trapped at a strange angle between his body and the sidewalk. He ground his teeth, levering himself to his knees with one elbow. The treacherous newspaper was only a few feet away--he lurched forward and grabbed it, stuffing it hastily into the pocket of his sweatshirt.

As he rose to his feet, he heard a low moan behind him. A chill (far more familiar than he would have liked) tickled up his spine, raising the hairs on the back of his neck. He whirled.

Angie lay still on the sidewalk, rain splattering on her pale face. Her eyebrows were scrunched together in pain.

"Evangeline?" he asked, his voice hesitant. "Angie? Are you all right?"

She tried to lift her head, but paled visibly in the attempt and let it fall back to its previous position. An agonized moan emanated from her throat, and Harry chewed his lip, kneeling beside her. Not another one--Merlin, I'm so sorry! Bugger the stupid newspaper! The first Muggle who's had a kind word for me in sixteen years, and I bloody kill her! "Angie? Can you hear me? What hurts? Who's the PM? Can you count backwards from ten? How many fing--"

One hand shot up and grasped his, which he had been holding in front of her face. "Harry?"

Relief poured through him like butterbeer. "Yeah?"

"Shut it and help me up. I think... I think I hit my head. Oh, and 'Tony Blair,' 'ten-nine-eight-seven-six-five-four-three-two-one,' and 'two.' I think."

"Close enough," Harry said with a strained smile. It was close--but not as close as he'd like. Double vision was a bad thing. Was half vision worse? He extended his hand to her, and she weakly wrapped her own fingers around his. He could barely feel her grip. That won't do. He released her hand, bent over, and slid his hands under her waist.

"What--" Before she could complete the protest, he'd bodily lifted her and set her back on her feet. She swayed for a moment, leaning gratefully against him. "Thanks, kid. I--yeah, thanks." She shook her head, looking confused, and then winced. "Ow."

Harry cringed. "Shit, Angie. I'm so sorry--I shouldn't've--"

"Hey kid?"

"Yeah?"

"Stuff it." Wobbling, she pushed herself away from him and took a few steps backwards down the path. She seemed to strengthen even as he watched, to the point where she was able to grin crookedly at him, despite her paleness. "You know, it was good to see you again. Maybe we can do it again some time? Without the whole falling thing, of course."

"Of course." Something cold and slightly nauseating writhed within him; methodically, he quashed the feelings of guilt. She was fine, wasn't she? She was--

He gasped as she turned her back to him. A carmine stain dripped steadily onto her shirt from her wet hair. "Merlin!" he said, running towards her in time to catch her by the elbow as her knees gave way.

"Woo," she said with a dizzy smile. "The Earth's a little unsteady these days, eh?"

Harry couldn't respond, just helped her sit carefully. "Stay there for a second, okay?"

"Mmm? Sure."

He sprinted back to the pavilion and grabbed his bag, berating himself and apologizing the whole way. "I'm really, really, really, really sorry about this, Angie--I mean, I can't--can't excuse myself for being so incredibly stupid and childish and stupid and--"

"Harry, you're babbling," she said as he returned to where she sat in the pouring rain, hands pressed against the sidewalk in an attempt to not fall over. "It's cute and all, but you should really--hey!"

He had pulled her to her feet and wrapped one arm around her waist as she protested. "You're bleeding, and probably concussed," he said. "The least I can do is make sure you get home safely."

"Bleeding!" she exclaimed, and felt at the back of her head. She sucked in her breath in an agonized hiss as her fingers brushed against the wound. "Shit. Is it bad?"

"Um. I don't think so. Head wounds always bleed a lot, don't they?" he asked as they started down the path, Angie leaning heavily against him. Harry tried not to think of the pain in his sore wrist as he held onto the bag's strap, unwilling to let either of his burdens fall. "We should have someone look at it, though."

"Mmm. Dad's the football coach at Stonewall... he knows some first aid."

"Perfect," Harry said, even though it was as far from as could be. A venomous bubble of fear formed within his chest, squeezing the air out of his lungs and obstructing the necessary blood flow to his brain. Try as he might, he just could not think coherently. Grimacing, he ran over the facts again as they made their way back towards Privet Drive, where she also lived.

One: she knew.

Two: despite his assuaging words and tone, the amount of blood congealing in her dark hair was beginning to alarm him, as was the fact that she couldn't seem to keep her balance without wrapping her arms as tightly around his waist as she could.

Three: he had completely bollixed everything up.

His plan, before their unanticipated trip out of the pavilion, had been to get the Prophet back, obliviate Angie, and then be on his merry old way. Sure, Memory Charms were dangerous things to play around with--but Harry's Charms essay, completed just the night before, had dealt with the niceties of charms that affected the brain's chemistry, so he was (relatively) certain that he could pull off a small one with no ill effects.

However, he was now positive that she had a concussion, and he wasn't stupid enough to obliviate anyone in that sort of condition. Merlin only knew what sort of damage--possibly permanent--a Memory Charm could do to her in this state! No, his only hope now was to try to convince her that what she thought was a moving picture was really just a trick of the light, and that the words 'Muggle' and 'wizard' had just popped into her thoughts unexpectedly after her head was so rudely introduced to the sidewalk.

Well, one thing was certain. Any hopes that Harry had previously entertained about finding a Muggle ally in Angie--Merlin knew it would be more than a relief to have someone civil to talk to while trapped in this hellhole--were completely demolished. He only prayed that the reason behind his lack of companionship would be that she decided she hated him, not that she was... permanently incapacitated.

Great. Just bloody brilliant, Harry. The one friendly face I have in this godforsaken world, and she'll never want to see me again. That, or she'll only want to learn more about the freak. I should've just stuck with St. Brutus'--would've done me as much good, he thought miserably.

Angie staggered, gripping his waist again to right herself, and whimpered. It pulled him from his self-pitying soliloquy, and he clung to her as well. She was as much his anchor at that moment as he was hers, and something inside of him changed irretrievably. He didn't know what it was, and that scared the hell out of him, but he knew that it could never go back to the way it was before (however that had been). The warmth at his side and the pain in his wrist told him as much.

"Harry," she mumbled. "Turn here. 'S my house."

He paused, looking up at the freshly-painted façade of Number Twelve, Privet Drive. Somehow, it managed to look cheery and welcoming even in this dismal weather. Maybe it was the stained glass accents around the edges of all the windows. Maybe it was the bright red geraniums in the window boxes. Maybe it was the yellow light spilling out through the windows, along with the distant roar of a televised football match. Whichever it was, he moved with renewed vigor up the path, half-dragging Angie along at his side.

Harry lifted one hand to press the doorbell, but was distracted as Angie's head fell heavily against his shoulder. He looked down, and something cold rose in his throat. He shook her. "Angie!" he barked, his voice sharp. "Stay bloody awake!"

"No need to swear, I'm up," she said with a small, groggy smile.

"Stay that way, damnit. And I'll swear all I bloody want."

She laughed a little as he raised his hand again. "Don't bother, Harry. Jus' go on in."

Harry obligingly opened the screen door, turning so that the bulk of his body would prevent it from closing on Angie. He pushed the heavier, dark blue door open, and kept one hand on Angie's back so that he could catch her if she started to stumble again. Soon they were both inside, though Harry had a little trouble when the strap of his shoulder bag decided to tangle itself around the screen door's handle. He dropped it onto the floor as soon as both of the doors were closed behind them, shutting out the dull roar of the storm.

"Is that you, Ange?" came a boy's voice from the same direction as the now exponentially louder match. "Ange?"

"'S me, Ian," she called, her voice a little uneven. Harry frowned as she moved slowly over to a nearby, straight-backed chair and sat down, her face still twisted in a pale expression of pain.

"Ian," he called, surprised by how deep and authoritative his voice sounded at that moment. A boy, perhaps only a year or so younger than Harry himself, poked his head out of the living room, a perplexed expression on his face. "Get your dad."

"Angie, what happened?" Ian demanded, ignoring Harry as soon as he caught sight of his bloody, disoriented sister. "What did he do to you?"

Harry scowled at the unfairness of this statement, but Angie just gave Ian a little smile. "Didn't do anything, Ian," she said, referring to Harry. "Go get Dad, wouldja?"

Ian nodded and disappeared, bellowing for his father--but not before shooting Harry the granddaddy of all evil looks.

Harry opened his mouth to ask Angie how she felt, but before he had the chance to speak, two pairs of heavy feet thumping down the stairs. He looked up abruptly; behind Ian ran a tall, wiry man with Angie's coloring. "Bloody hell," he swore when he saw his daughter. Without noticing the drenched boy standing ambivalently in the doorway, he escorted Angie into the kitchen; Harry tagged along behind Ian, anxious to know how she was. "What happened, Ian? She's soaked!"

"I dunno, Dad," Ian said, his brows knit with worry as he hovered over the pair. Mr. MacTavish had guided his daughter to a chair by the kitchen table, and was parting the hair on the back of her head to expose the wound. Harry looked away, unable to stomach the sight. "I just heard the door open, and there she was! Then that bloke with her tol--"

"Bloke?" Mr. MacTavish snarled. Harry was forcibly reminded of Ron's reaction when he learned that Ginny was going out with Michael Corner. "Bloke? What bloke?"

It suddenly occurred to Harry that leaving earlier probably would have been the smartest course of action to take. Mr. MacTavish was fuming. "Er... me, sir," he said, now doubly grateful for the fact that his voice no longer belonged to a boy.

If Ian's glower was enough to give Harry a high fever, then Mr. MacTavish's should have rightly put Harry six feet below. "What happened?" he snapped.

"We--we ran into each at the pavilion in the park. It started to rain; I guess we both wanted some... some shelter..." he said, his voice growing steadily smaller as he spoke. How do I continue without having Mr. MacTavish call either the police or the mental hospital? he wondered with a brief stab of fear.

"I slipped on the stairs."

Harry's eyebrows rose so high that they disappeared beneath his unruly, sopping fringe. He looked to Angie and released the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. Her own brows her knotted, as though she was trying very hard to focus on something. That intense pale gaze was fixed firmly on his face.

"Harry tried to catch me, but--but we both fell. I hit my head on the sidewalk. He helped me home. So be nice, Ian," she added with a growl.

Harry looked over in the younger boy's direction to see another set of pale, black-ringed eyes fixed on him, but with a considerably darker emotion behind them.

"I think she has a concussion," Harry said, turning his gaze back to Angie, who was smiling very faintly at him. He couldn't believe that she was covering for him. Had she forgotten? Bad concussions could lead to amnesia, couldn't they?

"She does," Mr. MacTavish agreed. His voice was still rather cool, but had at least lost the majority of its hostility. "The cut's not deep though. Just a scrape. Ian, go get the Tylenol and the iodine solution, would you? You, boy," the older man said, glancing sidelong at Harry. "Pour a glass of water."

Once he had done this, he lingered anxiously in the corner of the kitchen, unwilling to intrude on the family's crisis, but disinclined to leave until he knew that Angie would be better. He was very, very cold without the warmth of her body pressed up against his side.

Footsteps pounded back down the stairs, and a moment later Ian skidded into the kitchen, nearly slipping in some of the water that Harry and Angie had tracked in. Harry winced as Ian righted himself and passed the pills and bottle to his father. "Here, take this, baby," Mr. MacTavish crooned, offering a dose of the former to his daughter.

Harry looked away again as Mr. MacTavish carefully applied iodine to the scrape, but couldn't block out Angie's pained whimper. Instead, he set about looking for a cloth. He found a suitable one--it looked a little ratty, like it was used for the most menial of jobs--hanging from a magnetic hook on the front of the dishwasher. He took it up and, avoiding Ian's curious gaze, headed towards the doorway, dropped to his knees, and started scrubbing. Water trickled from his hair and trailed over his face, pooling on his forehead where it dripped to the floor. He wiped it away absently with the back of his hand, and resumed viciously scouring the linoleum.

"Ian, make sure she gets upstairs safely. She needs to change out of these wet things. And keep her awake."

"I'm not going to fall asleep, Dad," Angie said with her ubiquitous small smile. The way her eyelids drooped heavily belied her assuring words.

"Watch her," Mr. MacTavish repeated after a moment. Harry scooted to the side to allow Ian and his sister to pass, but didn't look up. In fact, he didn't stop scrubbing, either. The rag was now soaked and was doing a poor job of mopping up the puddles. "You."

Harry froze. Mr. MacTavish could only be speaking to him; Angie and Ian were already making the treacherous trek up the stairs. Swallowing hard, he rose slowly to his feet, meeting Mr. MacTavish's eyes. They were dark--almost black, in fact. While his children had clearly inherited his dark hair and delicate complexion, they must have their late mother's eyes. "Yes, sir?"

"Come here. You're bleeding."

Harry looked down in surprise, and saw that he was indeed bleeding. The new skin formed by the percuro charm had been completely scraped away on his left hand, and the abrasion continued down his wrist and halfway to his elbow. It wasn't too painful, but it was slowly oozing crimson. Obediently, he sat down in the seat that Angie had recently absented, and held his arm out.

"You look familiar," Mr. MacTavish said, wiping the blood away with surprising gentleness. "Do you live around here?"

"Yeah. I live with the Dursleys." He bit back a yelp as, while applying the iodine, Mr. MacTavish's hand jerked, brushing against the grazed area harder than necessary. He looked up to find the man's eyes fixed on his face, his jaw slackened ever so slightly. "Er... sir?"

"Harry Potter?"

He winced. Of course Mr. MacTavish would be so shocked. After all, his daughter had been saved--yeah, right--by one of the community's most notorious and disliked members, that juvenile delinquent who had been sent to St. Brutus's Secure Center for Incurably Criminal Boys. "Yes, sir," he acknowledged glumly.

Harry's frown transmogrified into a flabbergasted expression as Mr. MacTavish's dark eyes slid smoothly from the boy's face to the place where, hidden beneath the wet tendrils of black hair, a scar in the shape of a lightning bolt lay.

Shocked, Harry rose from his seat, pushing the chair backward. "You're--" He felt for his wand just in case. There weren't supposed to be any wizards in Little Whinging! Someone--he couldn't remember who--but someone had definitely told him that he was the only non-Muggle registered in the area! No, and there were no wands, no spell books, no enchanted clocks anywhere that he could see--that was football on the telly, not Quidditch--and Mr. MacTavish was still gazing at him with something that bordered on veneration.

"No," Mr. MacTavish said slowly, standing. "I'm not a wizard, Harry. I'm a Squib. Now, put that down, would you? I'm not going to hurt you, and you're starting to make me a little nervous."

Harry's heart began to slow a little bit, but he remained tense. "How come no one knows? You never said anything--this whole time you've lived here, and you've never mentioned it. Mrs. Figg doesn't know, either, does she? Why not?"

"Mrs. Figg?" Mr. MacTavish asked, confused. "What are you--"

"Let me see your arm."

Now Mr. MacTavish looked offended. "The MacTavishes, while pureblooded, are not members of that dogmatized group of fools, Mr. Potter, and never have been," he said with great dignity. In that moment, using those words and fixing him with that glance, Mr. MacTavish reminded Harry greatly of--of someone. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, though....

"Please," Harry said, his hard expression softening. He wanted to trust Mr. MacTavish so badly!

Relenting, the older man rolled up the cuff of his sleeve and exposed the pale skin beneath. It was unmarked. "I can understand why you're suspicious, Harry, really I can. I would be too, were I in your shoes. But you'll find nothing Dark here. The Ministry doesn't keep track of Squibs, you see. I never said anything because--well." He hesitated, tugging his sleeve back down and looking towards the entryway. Through the kitchen door, Harry could see Angie and Ian, the former now clad in fresh, dry clothes, heading towards the sitting room, where the match still blared. Funny--Harry must have tuned it out. "They don't know."

Harry looked back at Mr. MacTavish, eyebrows cocked. "They don't--know?"

"What I am. What they are." Mr. MacTavish pressed his lips together in a strange semblance of a grimace. "Angie's a Squib too, you know. I don't know how, since her mother, rest her, was a full-blood Muggle, but... she is. Well--not quite, but she's more Squib than Muggle. She can see magical creatures, you know. And when we went to London, she saw the Leaky Cauldron, though she couldn't quite make out what it was...."

Harry shook his head, holding up one hand to stop the onslaught of information. "Wait a second. You're telling me that you're a Squib, and so is your daughter? Who would be considered, at best, a half-blood?"

"It's crazy, I know," said Mr. MacTavish. "But there you have it. Life's nuts." He accompanied this pronouncement with a shrug. They lingered there for a moment, suspended in an awkward silence, neither knowing just what step to take next. Just to end the interminable quiet, Harry took his seat again, stowing his wand in his back pocket.

"She lied."

Mr. MacTavish looked up in surprise. "Pardon?"

"Angie. She didn't fall. She slipped. She slipped because I..." he hesitated, pained by the truth but determined to tell it. "I had a copy of the Prophet with me, and she saw it. Too much of it. Headlines, moving pictures... I made to grab it from her, but she twisted away. The wood was wet, and she fell. I tried--" his voice cracked. "I tried to catch her, really I did, but we both fell."

There was silence from the other side of the small table, and Harry didn't dare lift his eyes and look at the father of the girl he had hurt.

"I'm sorry, Mr. MacTavish. I'll just be going now." Harry stood and started towards the kitchen door, but Mr. MacTavish's voice stopped him.

"Cormac. Call me Cormac. And by Merlin, sit down, boy!" There was a little bit of shaken anger in the older man's voice, now, but somehow Harry knew that it wasn't aimed at Harry. "I don't blame you. I don't like that you did it, but I can't blame you for it at all. I probably would have done the same thing, if someone I thought was a Muggle saw something so incriminating. Let me guess; you were going to obliviate her?"

"Yes, sir," he answered quietly.

"And with the concussion...."

"I was going to try to convince her that it was all a figment of her imagination. A product of the concussion, maybe, or the lightning," Harry admitted, surprised to be having such a candid conversation with the father of his plans' intended victim.

There were several long minutes of silence as the man and the not-quite-a-boy sat there, once again uncertain of how to approach the subject. Finally, Mr. MacTavish slapped the table and stood. "Ian! D'you have any dry clothes Harry can borrow? I don't want him getting sick."

"Uh, sure," came the startled reply from the sitting room, just as Angie cheered for the winning team. The gleeful shout quickly transformed into a moan, and Harry had to remind himself again that her own father had just absolved him of all guilt. It didn't help much.

The clean, dry clothes did, though. Ian could've only been about fifteen, but between the age difference (Harry was only a few weeks from seventeen) and the differences in weight and height (well-fed Ian had the definite advantage, here), they turned out to be just about the same size. In fact, his clothes were a little large on Harry; the short sleeves on the tee came down to his elbows, and the shirt itself came down to almost mid-thigh. He felt ridiculous, but warm. Even trade, he thought as he stepped out of the MacTavishes downstairs bathroom, his wet things bundled under his arm.

"Now, Harry, you and I are going to sit down right here and have a little heart-to-heart," Mr. MacTavish--Cormac--said, motioning to the table where a pot of tea and two cups had been set out. Harry was astonished to also see a rather dusty old bottle of Ogden's Firewhiskey. The older man caught his eye and gave him a merry wink before adding a healthy dollop of alcohol to his own cup, and a smaller one to Harry's.

"Biscuit, Harry?"