Innocence Lost and Found

The days that directly followed the retrieval of Sirius' childhood wand were calm and quiet by comparison. Because Harry had seemed to relax slightly after spending a day with Sirius and Hermione; and because Dumbledore had not granted Sirius permission to act and would be on the lookout for a hasty movement; and because the full moon occurred two nights after the theft of the ministry warehouse, Sirius elected to wait just under a week before returning to Little Whinging.

Remus had insisted that full moons were hardly worth noticing compared to what they had been during his adolescence, and that Sirius should treat that night as he would any other.

Sirius had insisted, more successfully, that some of his happiest childhood memories involved wrestling a werewolf and he was anxious to recapture them. And besides, he and Remus were supposed to be doing a job together so at least one of them should be at full mental capacity at all times. And besides, Remus had soundly defeated him the last time they had encountered one another in animal form and his ego needed some serious avenging. And besides, Remus had always claimed that having company made his transformations easier, and an easy transformation made easier was a very good thing. And besides, Remus had been on an emotional roller coaster over the past several days, and if the wolf reacted to Remus' emotional state, the transformation would not be as easy as he hoped. And besides, Sirius wanted Remus with him when he went to collect Harry in case there were complications. And besides, Sirius had spent most of his adult life surrounded by dementors, and would Remus want it be all his fault if Sirius wasn't able to perform a patronus charm because he did not have a fresh memory of playing under the stars to draw on?

At that point, Remus had rolled his eyes and given in, and proceeded to make Sirius promise to use his time in Azkaban as a guilt trip only once a week.

Sirius, who would have been willing to agree to use it only once a month, readily agreed.

Moony and Padfoot spent a splendid night running beneath the swollen moon. Remus was forced to admit that even wolfsbane could not change the worst night of the month into the best night the way Sirius could.

At last, when Remus was fully recovered and the number of owls flying between them and the other witches and wizards most firmly loyal to Dumbledore had slowed to a convenient trickle, the time came to deliver Harry from the clutches of his miserable excuses for relatives.

The lack of owls had given them a fine idea for recapturing Harry. Instead of using Hermione as a pseudo-Muggle guide, they planned simply to follow Hedwig, whom they had detained, straight to Privet Drive. The spells protecting Harry had been so greatly enhanced after Cedric Diggory's death that not just any owl could reach his bedroom window any longer; but surely Hedwig had nothing to fear from nets and was intelligent enough to make her way to what had, for several unfortunate expanses of time, been her home.

‘Do you think we should tell Harry we're doing this against Dumbledore's orders?’ Sirius asked as he and Remus sat down to finalize their plans.

‘Why wouldn't we?’

‘That's one of those ways that Harry is a lot like James. He's going to put his own well-being last if he's given the choice. Didn't I tell you about what he did after I told him I was coming back to England because his scar was hurting? He owled me and said he'd just imagined the pain.’ Sirius punctuated his story with a snort.

Remus rolled his eyes in a manner generally reserved for a story about Sirius. ‘That does fit in with his character.’

‘He doesn't want me to put myself out there for him. When I saw him last week he as much as said he blamed himself for my hiding out in Hogsmeade instead of being off throwing parties or something. He can't get it through his head that I'm responsible for him and not the other way around.’

‘He doesn't have much experience with parents.’

‘No, he doesn't. And even though I've never seen him for more than a few hours at a time, I haven't been of much help. The first time he and I had a conversation, he had to talk us out of killing Pettigrew, remember?’

‘How could I forget?’

‘He takes the blame for that, too. He's decided that if he had let us commit murder, Voldemort wouldn't have come back to power. I mean, it's possible, but so many things could have happened. We could have botched the spell, considering all the non-existent experience we have with working dark magic. One of Voldemort's other supporters could have come forward to help him. And in any case, we'd be in dead, or worse.’

‘We also didn't have to listen to a thirteen-year-old. But even if he needs to have this explained to him a few dozen more times, you can't not tell him that we're there without permission if he asks. And knowing him, he will ask. It never takes him long to start getting into the hard questions you don't want to answer.’

‘You think?’ asked Sirius sarcastically.

‘I know,’ Remus laughed in response. ‘Every time I had a conversation with him during that year he asked me at least one thing I didn't want him to ask. The time he wanted to know if I knew you I could barely get an answer out.’ Sirius turned away so that the question in his eyes would not be so obvious, but Remus answered him anyway. ‘If you're wondering, I dodged the question. I dodged a lot of questions from him. That was my original point-- he's clever, you know that. And even though the term is overused with regard to him, it's true that he's a fey child. He just knows at some level whose intentions are good and whose are bad even when he doesn't know he knows. And it's more than that. It's more than surviving things he shouldn't or being wise beyond his years. Even if he hadn't been the Boy Who Lived, there would be a kind of pure light around him. He wouldn't have been an easy child to raise if you'd had the chance. It's not going to be easy helping him through the rest of his childhood.’

‘I never expected it to be easy.’

‘I didn't think you did. I just suspect that you'd be starting off on the wrong foot if he asked if you were supposed to be there and you said yes. He doesn't trust many people, and he doesn't do well with being lied to by the ones he does trust.’ Harry's words from over a year earlier still struck Remus to the core: I trusted you, and all this time you've been his friend! The fury and betrayal in the young voice had nearly been too strong to describe. The desire they had evoked in Remus to remain as one of the trusted in the mind of James' son had been equally powerful.

‘Well,’ said Sirius with feigned levity, ‘then let's get on with being trustworthy and helping him through the rest of his childhood.’

********************

Not so very far away, Harry was not sure he would be able to make it through the rest of his childhood at all; nor was he sure that he wanted to do so.

Aunt Petunia had done what Uncle Vernon had not: she had recognized Hermione for one of Harry's friends from school and had been absolutely furious with her husband for allowing Harry to go off with her. In desperation, Harry had attempted to prove that the man with Hermione had been his all-powerful godfather. He had sworn that if Sirius could come once, he could come again, and had noted that Sirius would not be pleased to find Harry in worse shape than when he had left. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon, though, seemed to believe his words even less than he himself did.

The day after he had seen Hermione and Sirius, new bars had been fitted to his window, bars much stronger than the ones that had been used several summers before. Additionally, the pane of glass between the bars and the room had been closed and made airtight. His door had been entirely replaced by a block of metal which looked rather like the rest of the doors in the house but which most certainly was not. It was sealed not only with a common deadbolt, locked from the outside of course, but with a computer code as well. Harry doubted that even the Weasley twins would have been able to worm their way around that one.

Nonetheless, in some ways, he felt better than he had before being locked away in his cell. His solitary confinement had given him an opportunity to digest the thoughts that had come spinning to the surface of his mind during his one day of freedom.

Foremost among these thoughts was a statement Sirius had made: I'd still protect you, like you, love you, if you were a Death Eater. Love? Harry knew that that was an endearment often given by parents to their children. He had had to listen to Aunt Petunia's nauseating declarations of love for her ickle Duddy-wuddy-kins on a daily basis for most of his life. More recently, he had begun to be exposed to the Weasley family and their less sickeningly sweet, less plainly spoken, but equally passionate feelings for one another, visible even when they were fighting . . . .

‘You're not by any chance writing out a new order form, are you?’ said Mrs Weasley shrewdly. ‘You wouldn't by any chance be thinking of restarting Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, by any chance?’

‘Now, Mum,’ said Fred, looking up at her, a pained expression on his face. ‘If the Hogwarts Express crashed tomorrow, and George and I died, how would you feel to know that the last thing we ever heard from you was an unfounded accusation?’ . . . .

No matter how many times Mrs. Weasley yelled at the twins for their marks, or for their lack of ambition, or for their dangerous hobbies, no one, least of all they, doubted that she loved them. For their part, no matter how much time they expended on ridiculing their brother Percy . . . .

Percy Weasley stuck his head through the door, looking disapproving. He had clearly gotten halfway through unwrapping his presents as he, too, carried a lumpy sweater over his arm, which Fred seized.

‘P for prefect! Get it on, Percy, come on, we're all wearing ours, even Harry got one.’

‘I-- don't-- want--’ said Percy thickly, as the twins forced the sweater over his head, knocking his glasses askew.

‘And you're not sitting with the prefects today, either,’ said George. ‘Christmas is a time for family.’

They frog-marched Percy from the room, his arms pinned to his side by his sweater. . . .

And Harry had even seen the brothers use the word with one another . . . .

Dear Ron,

How are you? Thanks for the letter-- I'd be glad to take the Norwegian Ridgeback, but it won't be easy getting him here. I think the best thing will be to send him over with some friends of mine who are coming to visit me next week. Trouble is, they mustn't be seen carrying an illegal dragon.

Could you get the Ridgeback up the tallest tower at midnight on Saturday? They can meet you there and take him away while it's still dark.

Send me an answer as soon as possible.

Love,

Charlie . . . .

Love. Charlie had signed his note to Ron during Ron's first year at Hogwarts with that word as if it had been nothing out of the ordinary, as if it was the word that one expected to use when writing to one's youngest brother.

But never, ever, did Harry remember anyone but Sirius ever saying that he or she loved him, Harry. Hermione sometimes signed her letters ‘love from’ but that was not the same thing. Even though he was still concerned that Sirius' loyalty to him would lead Sirius straight back to the dementors and their kiss, Harry could not help but enjoy the knowledge that the word had finally been directed at him.

With no work to distract him, Harry sometimes found less pleasant ideas chasing themselves in circles through his head, which he was getting quite tired of living exclusively inside. Other times, though, to his great surprise, he found himself feeling something like a lethargic boredom. At these times, he berated himself for not stealing his books from beneath the stairs when he had had the opportunity. Reading, he was sure, would have allowed him some reprieve from his vague sickness; and he proved himself right when he began to work his way through the pile of unused books of Dudley's that stood in one corner of Harry's room.

Muggle literature would not be as helpful to him in the long run as doing his homework might have been; but in addition to making him feel less tired, some of Dudley's books were quite interesting. Lord of the Flies had been engrossing; and A Tale of Two Cities did not deserve half of the obscenities which Dudley had scribbled across its cover; and The Three Musketeers was extremely enjoyable, although the adventures of the fictional friends paled in comparison to some of Harry's real-life adventures.

Today, although Harry had been delighted to discover that Twenty Years After, another Musketeer novel, had also been deposited in his room for storage, he found himself reading and re-reading paragraphs without grasping the gist of the story.

Sighing, he put the book down beside him on his bed and did his best to look forward to a day of being hungry. He had been much, much better off, he decided, before his appetite had returned. In addition, his head ached, and when he pressed his palm to his forehead, it came away clammy. Finally, the pressure on his bladder was becoming increasingly painful; but he was escorted from his room for that purpose just once a day, usually in the late afternoon, hours from now.

As he shifted on his bed, accidentally knocking his book to the floor, a half-moan escaped his lips. Stop that! he berated himself. You don't feel that bad. At least you can feel hungry. Cedric Diggory would love to be allowed to feel hungry, wouldn't he? He'd love to be allowed to have a headache.

Well, I've come full circle. Thinking I wasn't to blame for Cedric cost me. I was better off when I had the run of the house, and now, even though I know that Cedric was my fault, I'm locked up here. I should never have, should never have, should never have---

‘Boy!’ A familiar call ruined Harry's internal berating. ‘Are you in there?’

Where the hell else would I be? ‘Yes, Uncle Vernon.’

‘Good.’ The bolt slid back and Uncle Vernon entered the room, snarling at Harry. ‘You expect,’ he asked once he had lowered himself to the bed, nose-to-nose with his nephew ‘that your friends will save you?’

‘No,’ answered Harry cluelessly.

‘As you shouldn't,’ he chortled. ‘We won't be fooled by them again.’

‘Is Sirius here?’ Harry asked, hoping against hope.

‘Your godfather, if that's who he really is, is on his way with another man. They're both wearing those ridiculous robes so I don't think they're trying to fool us. But they'll not be allowed to set foot in this house, is that understood?’

Harry privately thought that his uncle would hardly be able to stop Sirius and his companion, if that was indeed whom his aunt had seen from her customary lookout at the front window. However, he meekly told his uncle that he understood.

‘I would think so. But here's an added precaution. You never should have left before.’ With that, he took a length of rope from behind his back and tied an unresisting Harry's right arm to the bed frame. After turning briefly to admire his handiwork, he left the room, double-locking the door behind him.

Harry lay down once more, the position made suddenly awkward by the restraint placed on his arm. The knife Sirius had given him rested in his pocket, as it had ever since he had been caught without it while facing the band of Merpeople who were guarding the bound bodies of the Triwizard hostages, but Harry did not bother to reach for it. He could not afford to look as if he were blatantly disobeying Uncle Vernon today.

His ridiculous metal door blocked a high percentage of the sounds that traveled up from the lower half of the Dursleys' house, but Harry was still able to hear raised voices, startled shouts, and a number of thuds. He did not even have to strain himself to hear footsteps running up the stairs and stopping directly in front of his door. The first bolt slid back, then the second, so it had to be one of the Dursleys.

Harry raised himself onto one elbow in order to meet the eyes of his visitor, and was shocked to see none other than his all-time favorite Hogwarts teacher, Professor Lupin.

Professor Lupin did not look happy with what he saw, because he muttered something under his breath that Harry was very, very sure he would not repeat in mixed company. Then, ‘Harry.’

‘Hi,’ was the best response Harry could invent.

‘My God,’ said Lupin almost as if to himself. ‘If Sirius sees this, he really will be guilty of murder.’ He strode quickly to Harry's side and made to remove the rope, but Harry jerked away as much as he could.

‘No, you can't.’

‘Why not? What's wrong?’

‘They'll be furious if you let me go. It'll get worse.’

‘Trust me, Harry,’ said Lupin with a very hard edge to his voice, ‘it's gotten as bad as it's going to get for you here. Ever.’

‘You don't know--’

‘I know!’

‘You don't know how they think.’ Harry squirmed desperately. ‘They don't like being shown up, and the next time I come back here--’

‘It's highly unlikely that you'll come back here. Certainly not any time soon.’

‘But--’

‘Let me untie that! What if something had happened? Muggle homes can be devastated by fire, or there could have been an intruder-- this is more than cruel, it's dangerous! Do you honestly believe it's all right to tie someone to a bed?’

‘My knife is in my pocket. I could have untied it. I just didn't want to make them mad.’

‘I think they're mad already. In more ways than one, perhaps. Will you let me get you out of that?’ In response, Harry handed him his precious knife. ‘This the one Sirius gave you?’ Harry nodded. ‘It's very nice. Of course, it would be. He never was one to go halfway when it came to weapons.’

He worked quickly and returned the knife to Harry, hesitating before taking Harry's wrist in both of his hands and examining it. ‘Does your wrist hurt?’

‘No,’ Harry sat up, hoping his former professor would not notice the wave of dizziness that passed over him as he did so. ‘He just tied it when he saw that you were coming.’

‘That's something. What do you have in this room that you want to keep?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing?’

‘All my Hogwarts stuff is down under the stairs.’

‘None of your clothes? None of your books?’

‘The books are Dudley's. The clothes are his hand-me-downs, too. The better ones are in my trunk.’

‘Right, then. Can you stand?’ Harry demonstrated that he could, with a minimum of weaving on his feet. ‘Let's go.’ Gratefully, Harry left the smallest bedroom of Number 4, Privet Drive, for what he dearly hoped would be the last time. He did not look back or examine the ridiculous steel door, but neither did he meet the concerned gaze of Professor Lupin. His eyes did stray unbidden to the bathroom door as they walked by, and a gentle hand between his shoulder blades directed him toward it. ‘Come down when you're ready. We're hardly about to leave without you.’

A few moments later, Harry, feeling considerably better, stared at his refection in the bathroom mirror. He was very pale, even by his standards, and his green eyes stood out in his face more than was their custom. His skin still looked slicked by a cold sweat, and he wondered whether or not he was truly physically ill. He supposed he should go downstairs.

Unsure of himself, unsure if he should leave or if he deserved to leave, Harry paused on the stairs. All three Dursleys, Professor Lupin, and Sirius were standing in the front hall. Aunt Petunia held a frying pan, as if she had been cooking in the kitchen even as she spied her unwanted visitors' approach. Dudley was cowering, as he always did at the sight of wizards not named Harry Potter. Uncle Vernon was blustering in a way that would have frightened Harry more if he had not seen these displays on a regular basis for most of his life.

‘ . . . I know you scum-of-the-Earth wizards think you run the world, but you weren't here when that boy turned up on my doorstep fourteen years ago. You lost your little claim on him then.’

Professor Lupin replied with frightening calm. ‘You don't want Harry here. We don't want Harry here. It seems to me that we agree.’

‘We've invested too much in him to let him go,’ snarled Uncle Vernon. ‘Besides, he'll be back here next summer and we don't want him to be worse.’

‘We don't care what you want!’ hissed Sirius, sounding every bit the murderer he was assumed to be. ‘We care about him! The extent of our concern for you extends to our opinion that you would look lovely as a dung beetle!’

Around the corner of the stairs, Harry could just see Aunt Petunia shudder. She looked as if she might, with courage not often displayed, step forward and pull her husband back before he came to harm, but Professor Lupin moved more quickly. He draped an arm carelessly over Sirius' shoulders before addressing Uncle Vernon once more.

‘His things are under the stairs?’

‘They are, but I'll not have you rifling through them. How did you get past the computer, anyway?’

‘Firstly, you left a note with the code written on it right next to the door. Secondly, you're more than welcome to remove Harry's trunk yourself.’ He let go of Sirius to point at the cupboard. ‘Unlock that, please.’ To Harry, the steely edge in Lupin's voice belied his politeness of manner, but the control was lost on his uncle.

‘I'll not be told what to do in my own house.’

Sirius took advantage of the removal of his friend's restraint to close the distance between himself and Vernon in one long stride. Vernon Dursley was by no means a small man, but Sirius dwarfed him in his anger. ‘You'd prefer not to have a house at all?’ Quickly, he drew his wand from his belt. ‘We could arrange that--’

‘Now, Sirius,’ Lupin interrupted. ‘I'm sure threats aren't necessary. I'm sure he's just about to open it. Aren't you?’

Vernon grumbled something that Harry was unable to hear clearly, but keys clanked together and the unmistakable sound of his trunk sliding from the cupboard followed.

‘Thank you,’ said Lupin with a pleasantness that amazed Harry. Lupin had not looked as if he had had any pleasant feelings toward the Dursleys when he had spoken to Harry in his room.

‘Dad.’ Dudley's voice was not much above a whisper, but the terror it contained allowed it to travel clearly to Harry's ears. ‘You can't just let him--’

‘I don't believe anyone asked you.’ That was Sirius again. Dudley must be close to a nervous breakdown, Harry mused. Having Sirius' full attention directed at you could be an unnerving experience even if Sirius was not upset with you in the slightest. Sirius would have been able to look at water and make it boil even if he had not been powerfully magical and a fully trained wizard.

‘I-- I--’ Dudley's throat had obviously gone dry. Harry almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

‘DON'T TOUCH MY SON!’ Vernon bellowed.

‘It's hard not to. He takes up a great deal of space.’

‘YOU--’

Sirius was laughing. ‘You know, Harry was right. He does look kind of like a pig in a wig.’

‘YOU--’

‘Dudley, I heard you had a pig's tail once. Would you like another, or something different this time?’

Throwing caution to the wind, Dudley ran past Sirius as best he could, causing the whole house to shake. He scrambled up the stairs to where Harry sat observing, and a collision between the cousins was prevented only by Harry's Quidditch reflexes.

‘What are you doing here?’ squeaked Dudley.

‘Nothing.’

‘Why aren't you downstairs with your weird friends?’

‘Well, you seemed to be enjoying them so much that I didn't want to interrupt.’

While Dudley had never been a thoughtful, sensitive boy, he had grown up in the same house as Harry and was occasionally quite adept at reading his cousin's thoughts. ‘Are you afraid? Did you do something wrong at that school of yours, and they're here to take you to be punished? The one said he's a professor.’

‘He is.’

Dudley sniggered, and while his snigger was rather high-pitched, it made up in meanness what it lost in post-traumatic fright. ‘You aren't answering. You are scared, aren't you? Scared of your own weird kind. Well, you can stay here. Ready to go back in your room? I'll lock you in.’

‘That would hardly be fair. I've been locked in all week. I think you should have a turn.’ Without magic, Harry had no way of forcing his enormous cousin into the room, and furthermore he had no real intention of doing so. But Dudley, still shaken by Sirius' threats, jumped backwards, and lost his footing on the stairway. Instinctively, Harry lunged for him-- he had gotten quite used to grabbing onto fellow climbers of stairs since moving into Gryffindor tower, which featured a trick step. Dudley fell quickly, though, and landed in the hallway like a beached whale. Harry's own momentum carried him forward, and he jumped over his cousin to stand near him. Both Sirius and Professor Lupin smiled.

‘Ready to go?’ asked Lupin with a cheeriness Harry suspected was sarcastic, but he was drowned out by Petunia's wails.

‘My poor Dudley. Oh, Duddy-- Vernon, call an ambulance!’

‘It was just a tumble,’ Lupin muttered aside to Sirius. ‘I think he's all right, don't you?’

‘I don't really care. But yes, it is a long way through all that padding to his bones.’

‘You-- you-- oh, Duddykins, Mummy's here.’ Petunia was torn between her desire to punish her nephew and her desire to cradle her son, if such a thing were possible without a forklift. She chose her son, though, when Dudley shifted into a sitting position with his knees drawn to his chest.

‘He-- he said he was going to lock me in his room.’ Dudley's lip trembled, and no matter how afraid he might have been of Sirius, Harry was sure that Dudley was now faking emotion to get Harry in trouble, as he had done so often before.

‘You wretch!’ Petunia had forgotten her own fear in her righteous indignation over the tormenting of her defenseless son. She raised her right hand, which still held the frying pan, and aimed a blow at Harry as she had many times before.

Always in the past, Harry had jumped out of the way. There had never been a follow-up attack; the whole thing had been something of a game. This time, though, Harry was studying his trunk, and his broom, and Hedwig's cage, and considering how Sirius and Professor Lupin intended to move it.

This time, Harry didn't think to dodge.

This time, of all times, the blow landed.

Harry fell to the floor. He regained consciousness almost instantly, blinking up confusedly at the adults in the room, wondering dumbly how they had moved as if seconds had passed without Harry's noticing. Sirius and Professor Lupin knelt on either side of him; Dudley was still on the floor nearby; Aunt Petunia was standing where she had been, frozen, clearly stunned at the result of her action; and Uncle Vernon stood behind her, as if not entirely sure what to do.

‘What--’ mumbled Harry wearily, struggling to comprehend the concerned faces that were mere centimeters from his own.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Sirius desperately.

‘M'fine.’

‘I--’ Aunt Petunia began to say something, but she looked lost, and Uncle Vernon cut her off in any case.

‘He's had it coming for a long time, Petunia. It's about time. And you can see it hardly phased him.’

‘THE PAIR OF YOU!’ Sirius had slid Harry entirely into Lupin's arms and stood up to face the Dursleys. ‘YOU ARE THE MOST MISERABLE EXCUSES FOR HUMAN BEINGS I HAVE EVER HAD THE MISFORTUNE TO LAY EYES ON, BUT I'LL NOT BE LOOKING AT YOU FOR LONG!’

Petunia whimpered, and cast a beseeching glance at Professor Lupin. ‘Please.’

Lupin, conceivably out of respect for the fact that Harry's ears were in close proximity to his own mouth, did not yell. He simply glared, and quite coolly commented ‘I'm tired of playing 'good wizard.' I want to see the two of you transformed into eels, and I'm the nice one.’

Sirius did not take his eyes from his victim, nor did he lower his wand, but he caught his friend's eye in the reflection of a window. ‘Eels, you think?’

‘Dung beetles are rather stereotypical. With a sea creature, you get to watch them try to breathe air. It looks very painful, the way they writhe around at first.’

‘They're still on the resilient side, though. How do you feel about spiders? Not an acromantula, just a garden spider, nice and fragile?’

Sirius' inquisitive turn of phrase would have been humorous had it not been for the immense hatred and gravity in his voice. Dudley was actually trembling now, and neither of his parents looked much better.

‘No,’ whispered Harry. His voice was barely audible, but it was lost on no one in the room, except perhaps Dudley, whose face had gone slack and vacant in his pure terror.

‘No? Harry, it's just a hex,’ said Sirius, still without turning around.

‘But--’ Harry struggled to regain his feet, and rather than argue with him, Lupin helped him to stand up. ‘She didn't mean to hit me. You can see that.’

‘She didn't mean to hit you?’ Some of the disgust in Sirius' voice was pushed aside by disbelief. ‘That's why she swung an iron frying pan at your HEAD?’

‘She expected me to move.’ Aunt Petunia was nodding frantically in agreement. ‘She's done that loads of times, and I've always moved before. Like the time I went up to the hedge and said 'hocus pocus' and told Dudley that would set it on fire, that was almost a threat, and when I jumped out of the way that time, she didn't come after me again. It's like when you're dueling with someone, and they suddenly get distracted so you hit them full-on with a hex you wouldn't ordinarily use, because you're just playing.’

‘Harry.’

‘Let's just go. Please?’ His voice had taken on a pathetic edge, and he didn't care. He didn't care that for all of his childhood he had hoped a mysterious guardian, a long-lost relative, a fairy tale godfather, would come forward and say these things to the Dursleys. He only wanted everything to stop.

‘If that's what you want.’ With an effort, and a half-flourish, Sirius turned his wand from the Dursleys to Harry's belongings. These he bound together with rope, compacted, bewitched to float, and, finally, made invisible. He worked so quickly that Harry could barely pick out what he knew to be four separate spells. ‘You're ready?’ Harry nodded. Sirius came to stand on his other side, and the three wizards walked through the front door together.

‘AND IF YOU EVER COME BACK, YOU'LL GET WORSE THAN A FRYING PAN TO THE HEAD!’ bellowed Uncle Vernon after them. Apparently, he had recovered his voice.

Quicker that quick, Sirius and Lupin exchanged a glance over Harry's head, and Sirius turned, shouting ‘Aranea!’ A bright light filled the room they had just left, and where Harry's uncle had stood, there was nothing. No, there was something. A spider. ‘Sorry, Harry,’ said Sirius, not sounding very sorry at all. ‘He didn't give me a choice. It wears off quickly, as I'm sure your aunt knows, despite that over-dramatic screaming. She did have a sister who was a witch.’

‘A witch with a sense of humor, no less,’ added Lupin, who was pulling off his robes. Sirius did likewise; both were dressed in Muggle clothing beneath the robes.

‘We aren't trying to make a scene,’ Sirius explained. ‘We just thought they'd be intimidated by robes.’

‘Scary as they are,’ added Lupin.

Harry looked over his shoulder, despite the pain that this caused in his aching head. ‘Why didn't you Apparate inside? That's intimidating’

If he had not known better, he would have suspected that an I-told-you-so expression passed from Lupin to Sirius. ‘Anti-Apparation fields,’ Sirius answered succinctly.

‘Why weren't they lifted? Can't Professor Dumbledore do that?’

‘He can. In this case, he didn't.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, he didn't want anyone to Apparate in there and take you, obviously.’

Harry stopped dead. ‘Anyone, including you?’

‘It would seem that way, yes.’

‘Thank you for the thought, but I'm going back now.’

‘Harry.’

‘He wouldn't keep me there if he didn't have a good reason! Sirius, whoever wants to kill me is probably going to kill both of you now, too.’

‘The Death Eaters would like to kill Remus, anyway. And they won't kill me because they get so much enjoyment out of watching me take the blame for their recent activities.’

‘I'm still going back.’

‘Harry,’ Professor Lupin suddenly took over, ‘we are not negotiating. We are not suggesting that you leave with us. We are not asking. We are telling.’

‘And if I don't want to go you're going to lock me up behind some metal door?’

‘I don't believe we have to. I believe you know you're doing the right thing by coming with us.’ Lupin certainly sounded annoyingly parental for someone who had never had children. Harry assumed that such things were covered in the teacher's manual handed out to Defense Against Dark Arts professors. He doubted that the average Defense Against Dark Arts professor would read said hypothetical manual; but Lupin had not been the average Defense Against Dark Arts professor, in that he had been competent.

Harry said nothing, but his silence was quite obviously taken as agreement and acceptance. By now, they had traveled to the small collection of shops nearest Privet Drive. Lupin pointed to a bench. ‘Sit.’

Harry sat.

‘Where does your head hurt?’

Where she hit me. ‘Where she hit me.’ I didn't mean to say that out loud. ‘Sir.’

Lupin laughed. ‘Harry, the formality isn't necessary. I haven't been your professor for over a year. Call me Remus or Moony, if you can handle it.’

‘Moony?’ snickered Harry, almost able to ignore the fingers that were probing at the bump on his head and the eyes looking into his own.

‘You used it when you were a baby.’

‘Wait-- I was old enough to talk when . . . .’ Harry's voice trailed off.

‘You knew a few words and that was one of them. 'Padfoot' was another.’

‘But you never said 'Wormtail,'’ Sirius added before Harry could question. ‘What do you think, Moony? Is it a concussion?’

‘It's just a bump. I don't imagine it feels very good, but there's no need to find a doctor who'll keep his mouth shut.’

‘You're sure?’

‘I've seen you concussed often enough, Padfoot.’ Sirius attempted to look affronted. ‘Don't give me that. We all know how many bludgers you took to the head in that one match.’

‘Harry probably doesn't,’ Sirius protested.

‘Well, he does now. Four.’ Remus threw a conspiratorial glance toward Harry. ‘Or we could discuss the time a group of Slytherins managed to break the spells on the windows of the Gryffindor common room, and your godfather thought he could get revenge single-handedly, and--’

‘Lies, Harry, all lies.’

‘Not to mention the Ravenclaw passageway incident--’

‘That was at least half your fault, Professor Moony.’

‘How many are we up to, three? We can't forget the time you got hit over the head with your own cauldron.’

‘It wasn't my stupid idea to have the houses that hate each other take potions together.’

‘I'll give you that. The Slytherins are bad enough all by themselves.’

‘And here I thought you were perfectly impartial, professor.’

‘I am perfectly impartial. Don't I sound perfectly impartial?’

‘In a word--’ Sirius broke off as he noticed Harry staring at them, wide-eyed. ‘Harry? What are you thinking about?’

‘Nothing.’

‘I doubt that.’

‘Honestly, I was just thinking that I'd only seen you together once before and you didn't exactly act like this then.’ The older men exchanged guilty glances, and Harry rushed on. ‘It's not as though you didn't have a good reason not to, but now you sound like Ron and me.’ Harry was saved from further explanation when a familiar blur of white caught his eye. ‘Hedwig!’

The beautiful owl swooped from the sky-- an odd sight for Muggles who knew the bird to be not only nocturnal but also non-native-- and perched delicately on the bench behind Harry, giving his ear an affectionate nip. ‘What're you doing here?’

‘She was helping us with the disorientation spells,’ Sirius supplied automatically, but as he spoke, his eyes lit, and met Remus' eyes. ‘Wasn't she?’

‘Oh, Hedwig did her job,’ answered Remus slowly. ‘But if you're asking if those spells were there, I didn't feel them.’

‘Dumbledore can't have taken them down. Not permanently.’

‘I don't believe he did.’

Sirius rolled his eyes skyward. ‘We ought to be used to that man being ten steps ahead of us, but how could he know when, exactly?’

‘It's not as if it's predictable for us to wait until a couple of days after the full moon, when our correspondence with Arabella and Mundungus conveniently slows to nothing.’ Sirius groaned. ‘Face it. He's smarter than we are.’

‘I never said he wasn't.’

‘Seeing as he is, I don't see why we shouldn't take Harry back to my house to look at his head and whatever other bruises he has. It should be safe for a day or so, before you go undercover.’

‘Undercover?’ inquired Harry warily. His head was beginning to throb all the more.

Sirius smiled. ‘Harry, we have interesting plans for the rest of your summer . . . .’