The Road You Take Don't Always Lead You Home

December twenty-third, Harry let himself into Aspenloch and sighed wearily. He had three days off for the Christmas holiday and privately felt that it couldn't have come at a better time. He was exhausted.

George, Lisa, Kate, and Ron were setting up a game on the coffee table. Dean came out of the kitchen, clutching a large bowl of popcorn. "Oh, good, Harry, you're home!" he called. "Come play Monopoly with us. Plenty of room."

Harry was on the point of refusing, but then he decided, what the heck. "Sure, why not? What's left?"

"Well, Lisa's the shoe, Kate's the thimble, Ron's the lantern, George is the dog, and I'm the top hat."

"Can I be the train?"

"Sure." Ron fished the little gold engine out and set it on GO.

Draco and Neville stumbled in about an hour later. Neville, who seemed to be doing fairly well, sat on a chair near the Monopoly game and started watching. Draco, who looked dead on his feet, collapsed into another chair and closed his eyes, rubbing his temples wearily.

"Long day?" Ron asked sympathetically.

"You have no idea," Draco mumbled. "Thank God for Jake or I'd never get anything done."

Harry looked up, his emerald eyes unusually dark. "They brought Tobias DeGroot in while I was taking a message to Neville in the E.R.," he said neutrally.

Draco looked at Neville sharply. "Is he going to be all right?"

Neville hesitated. Everyone was watching him, Lisa with the dice cupped in her hand, preparing to roll. Finally, he sighed and shook his head. "He died a couple hours after they brought him in."

"I was afraid of that," Draco sighed, suddenly looking older and wearier than before.

"What happened?" Kate asked softly, the game forgotten.

Draco looked embarrassed. "I don't want to burden you guys with that, it's Christmas."

"But maybe talking about it will help," Lisa pointed out. "It's okay, Draco. If you're going to be bummed, we'll be bummed too."

Draco sort of chuckled. "Well...put simply, we walked straight into an ambush."

Neville's eyebrows shot up. "What? Who?"

"They call themselves--this is really weird--the Drache-nathtrach-gena Sealgair-lactro-jager a-abusquevan Eire-Latium-Deutschland. Led by some nut job called Sadki Darkclaw." Draco sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "A lot of the old Death Eaters have been rallying around him. He's promising the same sorts of things Voldemort did--power, glory, a chance to squish their enemies into lemonade, that sort of thing. But six teams had instructions to show up...one of Darkclaw's squad was supposed to be holed up in some little shack. We didn't think we were going to have much trouble, but I guess we underestimated how many of them there would be." He shook his head. "Six people hurt, but thank God only one casualty. With the Hunters, it could have been a lot worse."

Dean distractedly bit a piece of popcorn in half. "Why do they call themselves the--what was it you said?"

"The Drache-nathtrach-gena Sealgair-lactro-jager a-abusquevan Eire-Latium-Deutschland," Draco supplied. "In English, the Dragon Hunters of the Old Kingdom. They call themselves that because, quite simply, that's what they are. They hunt dragons. And draconi, but I'm not sure what they are."

Ron put up his hand, like he was at school. "They're humans who can shapeshift into dragons--or dragons who can shapeshift into humans, depending on how you look at it. They're the offspring of a human and a dragon. I just turned in a paper on them before school let out for the hols."

Draco blinked. "Oh. Well, they've apparently also got a vendetta against anyone who comes in contact with dragons and/or draconi. It's...complicated."

George frowned. "Wait. I think I remember the name Darkclaw."

"You do?" Draco asked in surprise. "How'd you know?"

"A group of the Hunters killed Charlie," George said quietly. "He was trying to defend a dragon reservation. I remember the name Darkclaw because he signed his handiwork."

A shocked silence fell on the group, broken when the dice clattered out of Lisa's hand. Ron glanced at them, counted mentally, and smirked. "You owe me fifty."

Jolted out of her morbid thoughts, Lisa counted the dots, then spaces, then swore softly. "I can never get out of jail without hitting you, can I?"

"That's why I like the browns so much."

Everyone laughed. The tension broken, Draco and Neville watched as the other five continued their game.