Take My Hand

As Tate turned from the doorway, sprinted down the stairs and exited the house, she began an immediate mental inventory. She filed information away in different labels...three labels, one for each of her peers.

Ron would excel at marksmanship - this much she was sure of. With his big hands and his tendency to separate himself from reality, he would be a sure shot in no time. Harry had the makings an excellent point - his natural, visual prowess was incredible - or so she had gathered from Ron's endless yammering concerning Quidditch. And Hermione...well, Hermione would surpass them all.

Brushing ice laden branches out of her way as she pressed through a light thicket, Tate began putting lessons together in her head. Shortly thereafter, the light thicket dissipated, leaving her in an open area, dominated by the one and only playground. She drew her notebook from a pocket and sat down heavily on the steps of a small structure. Sighing deeply, she went over her most recent notes.

Nothing substantial had changed since their arrival - she was still more or less confused, even at this point. Shortly following the attack on the Hogwarts Astronomy Tower - during the lull in which Hermione was detained in Dumbledore's office - Tate had received post from Niels. It had been brief, irritating, and completely evasive. Unconsciously, she let loose a deep growl from the hollow of her throat. Niels was only vague when he had to be...and such a characteristic usually meant that trouble was brewing, if not already afoot. Tate pulled the post from the front of her notebook and read it again.

BEGIN TRANSMISSION Platinum STOP Will be unable to join you for next several weeks STOP Time of arrival as yet unknown STOP Repair playground STOP Design lesson plan for new recruit, do not overload STOP Use of Programs Alfa, Charlie, Echo, Foxtrot, Quebec, Victor mandatory STOP Xenon, Radium, Arsenic, Palladium send love END TRANSMISSION

She screwed up her face in annoyance - letters only came in such a telegraphic manner when the sender had to dictate his message through Floo Network connected to a magical military outpost that was purposely disconnected from any conspicuous Owl Post. Which basically meant that Niels was completely untraceable - he could be anywhere. She could reach him via satellite, but that was out of the question. This left Tate solely in charge of designing a very intricate and condensed training program that now had to be expanded to accommodate not one but three individuals.

Suddenly furious, she threw her notebook onto the snow covered ground and covered her eyes with her hands.

"And how am I supposed to cram a full year of basic training into a few weeks?" she asked the silent, gray sky. As expected, there was no definitive answer come from on high, only a slight belch of snowflakes and wind. Grudgingly, she retrieved her slightly damp notebook and brushed it off.

She opened it to the middle and regarded the last entry she'd written. It was a single word, with stars around it. Surveillance.

A slight shiver of guilt scuttled down her spine. She wasn't stupid, she'd known that everyone would explore the house right from the off and, eventually, they'd figure out how to open the locked drawer. It wasn't hard to open that drawer, if one had read the Hardy Boys...and even if one hadn't, Clarise was the loudest mirror in the house. So she'd taken it upon herself to remove the divider labeled Surveillance. The shock was bad enough already - they didn't need more. Not right now anyways.

She'd transfigured the divider into a pornographic image. It now hung on the attic wall beside Robert's former bed. It was an astonishingly large file - over seven hundred sub folders lay inside. Every single active Death Eater had a file - this unsettled Tate's stomach considerably. She couldn't even begin to imagine what the actual figures were. So many Death Eaters were inactive...laying in wait - Niels had said more than once that the projected estimate of fifteen hundred total Death Eaters was probably way off. Chances were, the actual total was three fold of the estimate. But no one knew for sure. Naturally, the Death Eater files accounted for ninety percent of the dividers information. The remaining ten percent belonged to a different kind of surveillance. A surveillance conducted by covert operatives of the U.N.M. Tate had hidden the folder based entirely on the contents of the U.K. division.

Hermione, Ron, and Harry wouldn't understand the basis of the coupling. She had no doubt they'd absolutely freak out if they got a look at the folders inside.

Tate sighed huffily, her breath white on the crisp cool air. Niels' could explain it to them. She had her hands full at the moment. She chewed on the edge of her pen for a moment, viciously kicking at the thick sheet of ice layered over the bottom step. She scribbled down thoughts as they came, crossing out most of them. Ideas came and went - nothing seemed to come clear, though. When concrete examples did arrive, most of them were derived from movies, T.V. shows, Nintendo games...ridiculous fluff. She clenched her fists angrily - Niels' had always been so proficient in coming up with teaching examples that paralleled with real life...but he was built to be a teacher, while she was still a student in so many ways.

"There better be a damned good reason as to why you're not here, Niels." She continued brainstorming and didn't move from her spot until the wind picked up and drove her from the clearing with a furious sweep.

*** *** ***

Draco shifted restlessly on the wooden bench of the Weasley's picnic table. It was evening - late evening - and the snow was falling again. Draco snorted disgustedly - he was so tired of the endless white crap that poured down over Ottery St Catchpole. Wasn't his grief enough? Did God really need to send minions upon minions of the evil white snowflakes just to deepen Draco's annoyance? Clearly, God thought so. Draco swept a gloved hand over the surface of the table, sending a bright white volley of snow into the air. Ginny smiled slightly at the gesture, from her perch on the other side of the table. She was busying herself with a small chunk of ice. Thus far, she had managed to chisel and whittle it into a shape that defined a small ice princess...sort of. Draco had commented earlier on her superior skills at creating an ice troll. She had gracefully declined to correct him.

Draco watched her curiously for a moment, before returning to his brooding.

It was horrible here, it really was. Granted, since the incident with Percy, Fred and George had lightened up considerably. Even Mrs. Weasley was surprised when they invited Draco to have a look at the Weasley Wizard Wheezes lab, temporarily constructed in their room (as neither Fred nor George wished to risk the possible danger of working at their major lab in downtown London). It was nothing short of amazing, the things they did in there...even Draco couldn't deny that. He was totally fascinated, and even offered his opinions on some charms they couldn't perfect. Fred and George were delighted, and invited Draco to join their tinkering at every available opportunity.

That aside, Mrs. Weasley had cancelled her subscription to the Daily Prophet, and the magical radio in the kitchen had mysteriously disappeared. Any connection to the outside world had been removed, and Draco wasn't stupid. Mrs. Weasley was a kind and caring person. The post had stopped because Draco's father's name was constantly in the press, and Mrs. Weasley did not want to upset him.

She really was nice, that woman. Much nicer than his own mother. Draco shuddered to think of Narcissa Malfoy. So comatose and sluggish, and yet so alive at any mention of the word mudblood.

But there was something else. Something had been tickling in the recesses of his mind as of late - something foreign. Draco considered himself to possess impeccable mind control and translation skills. If he was feeling anything, there was always a reason why, and he always knew that reason.

But not this time.

He felt it mostly at night. It was hard to explain...most times, it felt as though there was an invisible string looped around some nondescript hook in his mind and someone far away was tugging on it. Once it was stronger, like a slight push. But that was only once, and he hadn't felt anything since then. That had been two nights ago. An awful thought occurred to him, and he anxiously pushed it aside. The very idea of someone reaching into his mind made him feel sick. He directed his thoughts elsewhere.

He scratched at the underside of his wrist, barely relieving the itch with his gloved fingers, but satisfying it for the moment. He pulled his sleeve down, and regarded his recent tattoo with a glowing satisfaction. Black Sanskrit, emblazoned directly over the juncture of the arteries and veins in his wrist. It added to his already radiant sex appeal. Just when Draco couldn't get any sexier, someone went and tattooed him, thereby redefining the genre of 'bad boy'. This conclusion was based entirely on his own opinions, but that didn't matter at the moment. He couldn't stop a smile.

"What's funny?" asked Ginny, looking up from her ice design. Draco shrugged and shook his head slightly, pulling his sleeve down. Ginny frowned and returned to her work.

"Ginny! Draco! Haven't you been outside long enough?" Mrs. Weasley stood in the open kitchen door, hands on her hips. "It's nearly ten o clock! Bedtime!"

"Just a few more minutes, Mum," Ginny called reassuringly. Mrs. Weasley huffed in annoyance, but she nevertheless returned to the kitchen without further demands.

"You're nervous about something," Ginny said carefully, keeping her eyes trained on her ice princess.

"Of course I am," Draco responded, "Fred and George Weasley live here. How could I not be? The simple act of eating becomes a chore when I'm constantly wondering whether or not I'm going to end up a three-legged chicken for the next half hour, or spontaneously grow a pig fetus on the side of my head."

Ginny snickered. "You forgot the new one."

"No, I didn't," said Draco, shuddering, "It's hard to forget a charm that causes body parts to fall off and run away."

"And it fits so nicely inside a chocolate chip cookie," smiled Ginny, before collapsing into giggles. Draco allowed himself a small chuckle. It had been entertaining, to say the least, when Amos Diggory (who'd come by for a cup of friendly tea) had to chase after his nose.

"That's not what you're nervous about though," said Ginny, matter-of-factly, having composed herself.

"The Hell it isn't," Draco muttered, shaking his head. He wasn't looking at her, but he could feel Ginny's unconvinced stare boring into him. She kept it up for a few seconds before giving over. She set her finished ice princess on the table, and dusted a handful of snow around it. She leaned over to gather up more when Mrs. Weasley opened the kitchen door.

"Time's up!" she said good-naturedly, but forcefully, "Time for bed, you two." Draco jumped up, as though interrupted in some act of ill conduct. He composed himself with a sweep through his hair, and quickly made his way toward the house. Ginny stood up slowly, taking one last look at the peaceful evening. A light flurry of snow was just beginning to fall. She backed away from the table, glancing at Draco's retreating back. When she reached the kitchen door, she remembered her ice princess, and quickly stamped over to the table to retrieve it. But it was gone. A small halo of snow was the only evidence it had ever been there.

Goddamn the wind, Ginny thought to herself, pouting a bit. She walked quickly back into the house, stamped up the stairs, and went to bed.

*** *** ***

Tate made good on her word. The very next morning, Harry, Ron, and Hermione were shaken awake no later than five AM. It was still dark outside, and Harry and Ron groggily made their way downstairs to the kitchen. They were more than a little annoyed at Hermione's bright eyed excitement.

"Bloody 'ell, 'Mione, no one should be so excited at this hour," moaned Ron as he shoved a biscuit in his mouth. Harry simply stared at the plate of meager food with bleary eyes.

"You're just ecstatic we're going to be learning today, aren't you?" Hermione made a face at Ron, and continued to delicately chew her breakfast. Before long, it was over, and Tate appeared in the doorway, dressed in an outfit that made everyone distinctly nervous. Form fitting black fatigues, combat boots, and her hair was secured severely in tight braids wound around her head. Her wand was holstered at her left side, and Ron spied the handle of a large hunting knife secured by her boot. When she turned, he saw another harnessed to her arm, and the shiny handle of a handgun peeked from a holster on the waistband of her pants. Several compartments were attached to the low slung belt she wore; one for a flashlight, three for varying sizes of flasks, and two that were empty. She crossed the room and plopped her notepad down on the table.

"Why do you have a gun?" asked Ron in a quiet voice. Harry shot him a look. Since when does he know what a gun is?

Ron caught Harry's gaze and shrugged. Of course he knew what a gun was! Granted, he'd found out a mere twenty four hours prior, but that was hardly the point. Ron knew a look of disbelief when he saw one.

"Standard protocol," Tate answered belatedly, glancing at Ron briefly. She tried to drag a hand through her hair, only to discover she had secured it against such intrusions. She bit back a scream of nervous fury and desperately tried to remember what she had gone over not forty five seconds ago.

"Before we get into serious training, I think it only fair that I show you guys all this place has to offer." Ron and Harry brightened considerably. Aside from Ron's brief encounter with hunting, neither had seen the outside world since they arrived.

"That'll take up a little bit of the morning. After that though, there won't be much room for playing around. I hate to do this to you guys, especially since we're all the same age, but you're going to have to listen to me. I know you've been in places I couldn't even imagine, done things I've never even heard of, but that doesn't...really make a difference out here." She paused, choosing her words. Jesus, the last thing I need to do is sound condescending. She took a deep breath.

"Out here, you're in a new element - Hogwarts is long gone, along with authority and protective adults. All we have to survive on is each other. I know you guys are good at that, but...in light of new circumstances, I've been instructed to introduce you guys to the basic methods I've been using since I was a kid. If you have questions, reservations, anything, you need to tell me. We can't work effectively if people have unresolved problems." She turned, heaved a massive duffel bag off the floor and slung it over her shoulder. Ron picked up a large basket containing their lunches for the day, and they all exited the kitchen.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione...who had spent so much time relying only upon each other, exchanged a few slightly confused...and slightly irritated glances, got up, and followed her.

As Harry stepped outside and turned his face up to the sunrise, a great weight rescinded from his shoulders. The smell of fresh, clean air heightened his senses and made him feel free again. More than once during his lonesome childhood, he had imagined himself as a safari guide. As a traveling circus lion tamer. As a watchmaker. As a cowboy overseeing a ranch.

Now, he was on an American ranch - definitely not a cowboy ranch - but a bonafide American ranch all the same.

And it didn't look a thing like it had in his imagination.

In the wake of the vicious storm, the sun was greedily reaching her long arms of gold and warmth over the icy, deadened earth she had been denied of. Even with the frozen ground and iced over lakes, the snow was not overwhelmingly deep and the winds were mild at best. But there were no picket fences, no grazing herds of cattle. No red barns, nor silos - no bales of hay or stables full of horses. Just a shitty old house, an iced over pond, and - instead of a roughened old cowboy - a disturbing girl dressed like GI Joe. Still, it was outside...it was fresh, crisp air.

Ten minutes of walking in the pleasant thicket and light foresting had Harry, Hermione, and Ron laughing as they had not in days.

Tate smiled grimly, a few feet ahead of them. Must be hard for them to up and come here. Crazy place with no rules or authority beyond nature...New team, no leader...Oh well, I guess they're used to no leader. Doesn't make a difference if I'm not.

She lifted her left hand and folded her pinky and ring finger under her palm in a silent genuflect to her former team.

Her reminiscence was only deepened when Ron gave a shout of surprise as they came upon the main training grounds. Or, as Special Team Halide had called it, "the playground".

Ron's cry alerted Hermione to the new, and unfamiliar surroundings. The thickets thinned unexpectedly into an open area, surrounded by woods. The sight she beheld was rather amusing, in an intimidating sort of way. A colossal ropes course stood directly in front of her, spanning at least six hundred feet, and then leading off into the wooded area.

Everyone stopped to regard the magnificent structure. A massive rappelling tower, upwards of a hundred feet high marked the entrance. A medium sized utility shed constructed of aluminum stood off to the side. Beside that was a tiny building that shimmered in forest tones of green and brown. A sharp square of bright green, clearly enchanted and artificial grass was positioned directly next to it. From an aerial view, everything, even the rappelling tower and aluminum shed, blended into the forest (not that Hermione, Harry, or Ron were aware of this).

"That's the obstacle course," Tate said, pointing toward the rappelling tower. Her finger trailed toward the edge of the open area. "It's a good three hours out of your life. Flip the switch," she pointed toward a large black level attached to the side of the rappelling tower, "And it'll be six hours."

"Why?" asked Harry.

"The switch activates the enemy SIMs that are scattered throughout the course. All the interaction doubles, if not triples, the time." She gestured to the shining aluminum shed. "In there, we keep all the vehicles used around here. Two helicopters, six jets, and a crop duster. Plus that shitty Cessna we came here on. There's a few trucks in there too, plus some four-wheelers, dirt bikes, brooms, skateboards, blades, scooters, what have you...That patch of astro-turf is the Apparition Pad. That's the only spot in the whole compound that will allow Apparition, and even then it's a chore and a half. All kinds of charms on it. Past those trees," she waved an arm toward the left of the ropes course, "Is the skid pad, the track, and the half-pipe. Y'all will see that when we get into all that stuff...so to the most important part, shall we?" She headed toward the small, shimmering building.

The three newcomers trudged excitedly behind as Tate reached the door and placed her hand inside a gelatin filled box. A small pin pricked her finger and extracted a drop of blood for foolproof identification (an uncomfortable, yet indispensable method, should anyone under Polyjuice Potion attempt to enter the facility). A tiny optic sensor extended from a hidden compartment to scan her retina.

"Identify," said Tate.

The machine whirred and buzzed as the optic sensor retracted into the shimmering wall. "Welcome, Special Agent Platinum. Will you have any visitors?"

"Three."

"Please enter them into the system upon entry. Have a pleasant day, Special Agent Platinum."

Harry, Ron, and Hermione were still dumbstruck by the exchange when a heavy black door materialized and slid open.

Hermione could tell from the short blast of cold air that - like most magical structures - this building held much more space than it appeared to. Dazedly, she followed Tate through the dark doorway. Once Tate stepped over the frame, the lights flickered on in succession, revealing a space smaller than Hermione had expected to see. The Gryffindor Common Room was easily three times its size. Like the outside of the building, the inside was constructed entirely of solid steel - even the floors. Seven identical doors with black nameplates were lined up within a foot of each other on the wall to Hermione's left. She read the nameplates quickly: Palladium, Radium, Mercury, Platinum, Xenon, Arsenic, and Guest. Against the wall to her right was a panel covered in screens, buttons, and flashing lights. The wall directly in front of her was unadorned, excepting that it was constructed of silver, with one shimmering silver door.

Harry's eyes quickly flicked to the silver wall. Scratched directly into the left side, adjacent to the door, in halting, staggered penmanship, were several words.

"I'm on the loose with my neck in a noose, but hey...I enjoy the intense..."

Harry raised his eyebrows. Not exactly an uplifting quote...definitely not something he'd choose to spend several hours carving into a solid metal surface.

"All right, I need to input everyone into the system. You'll all get a code name like mine, and then you'll be outfitted. Then we go through decon, and you'll get to see the best part of the playground." She grinned proudly, excited at the prospect of finally sharing the secret. "All the code names are chosen according to elements from the periodic table, as you might've guessed from the plates. Pick your own, or I'll have the computer auto sort you. Ok?"

"Platinum, huh? Did you pick that moniker yourself?" Harry tried to swallow the annoyance building in his voice. Hermione pinched him, and Tate shot him a look.

"Yes, I did. I wanted Radium, but Robert nailed it first. Platinum was the next coolest. Make fun of me all you like, but I dig my code name. Will you be choosing silver or gold as yours, Mr. Potter?" Hermione laughed, and Harry pinched her in return, but refrained from making any more comments beyond a roll of the eyes.

Inputting themselves into the system did not take long. After the auto sort, which everyone excluding Hermione had elected to do, their handprints and blood were collected, their retina's scanned, and their voices were recorded into the voice identification software. Hermione was coded Iridium, Harry as Krypton, and Ron as Cobalt. Tate, noting the disappointment in Ron's face, quickly informed him that the three could only be coded as Special Agents by Niels. She had no authority to do so.

The door marked 'Guest' on the opposite wall split into twin doors (one labeled 'Male', the other 'Female') and Tate explained that they would find clothes in their size behind them. Harry and Ron went into their respective door, Hermione into hers.

"Can you believe this, mate?" quipped Ron as he shed his clothes and began pulling on the black fatigues provided on a steel rack. "Did you ever hear about places like these when you were a kid? Secret like schools for Aurors and Unspeakables and such?"

"Like James Bond," offered Harry. Ron looked at him blankly. "Oh never mind!"

When they emerged from changing, Tate and Hermione were gathered at the computer, chatting together excitedly. Harry cleared his throat, and the two immediately ceased their talk. Tate nodded sharply at the two boys, and quickly explained the basic mechanism of the computer operation.

"Push this black button," her fingers trailed over a massive black knob with a yellow post it note attached to it (which said, 'Push this black button'), "And that's that. Decon opens up, and you can go onto the SIM. She pushed the button, and all four stepped through a silver door that slid open directly next to the computer.

Tate, struggling under the weight of the massive black duffel bag, led them through decon, which turned out to be an elevator like thing. Once inside, all four (dressed in matching black fatigues now) were misted with various, strong smelling chemicals for about fifteen minutes. When the doors finally opened, the gasp was audible. The space was incredible, stretching for at least a mile, maybe more. However, at that point, it was only that. Space, and nothing more. No tables, no chairs, not even doors.

"Specify environment." The resounding, genderless voice caused Hermione to jump slightly.

"Code 0002 Charlie-1," Tate said quickly. Before the famed trios eyes, the empty space morphed in the frame of a split second. The huge area shrank to the size of the Potions classroom. A large blackboard dominated the far wall, and twelve desks were assembled in front of it, each with an identical black notebook and pen atop it. Harry, Ron, and Hermione quickly arranged themselves in the desks, as Tate moved toward the blackboard.

"Questions before we start?"

"Yeah", Ron piped up, "What the bloody hell is this place." A slight smile worked at the corner of Tate's mouth.

"We call it the SIM - it's the more technological aspect of the playground. Basically, it's a simulator - the empty space you saw is programmable. You give the computer the code, and that setting will be simulated. It's relatively new, really - Niels designed it. It's totally ripped off from muggle technology." The three 'students' stared at her in disbelief. She grinned.

"Seriously! Muggle pro sports teams use facilities like these to simulate weather conditions in team practice! Their simulators aren't quite as high-tech as this one, but the idea is the same. As we need classroom time now, the code 0002 Charlie-1 simulates a standard classroom atmosphere. Temperature at a comfortable 72 degrees Fahrenheit, no windows, and no distractions. So...I guess we'll go ahead and go over some basics."

She seized the black duffel bag and up-ended it. At least fifty books came tumbling out, all different sizes, all bound with identical white covers, and all heavily worn.

"Y'all will need these. Read them at your discretion. It's worth your while."

Hermione swooped down on the pile. "Military field manuals?" Tate nodded. Hermione raised an eyebrow, but selected at least twelve books from the pile. Neither Harry nor Ron moved from their seats. Tate kicked a book toward each of them. Grudgingly, Ron picked up the book that had careened into his ankle. He didn't bother looking at, just tucked it under his notebook. Harry leaned over his desk to read the title of the book that had come his way. FM 21-76: Survival. Sounded interesting. He'd bother with it later.

Hermione returned to her seat, and eagerly opened her notebook, preparing to take extensive notes. Ron glared at her in annoyance.

"I guess I'll start this off like Niel's always does. He's a big fan of quotes." She wrote quickly on the blackboard as she spoke. "'If you know the enemy and you know yourself, you will not fear the outcome of a hundred battles'."

*** *** ***

When they vacated the SIM that evening, the world had gone dark. In more ways than one.

Hermione sat in her bed, the hour nearing ten, and her eyelids were drooping perilously. In her lap sat her childhood journal, which she'd packed out of habit. She hadn't written in it...really written in it since Fourth Year. She hadn't needed to. Every year that she had filled the tiny books pages with thoughts had involved some crazy sort of adventure with her two best friends. Without some impending doom to cloud her thoughts, she needed only her studies to calm down.

It seemed time to write again. But she couldn't find the strength to lift her arm and commit it down to paper.

Every single muscle in her body ached, and she couldn't find a reason why. They'd done nothing physically strenuous, unless sitting in a chair for hours counted as such. However, the things Tate had gone over with them...they were as mentally debilitating as a fifty mile hike uphill.

Hermione had a sturdy background of magical medical training over the past year and a half. She'd advanced further than any other student in her class - Madame Pomfrey was constantly showering her with praise (when she wasn't called away to deal with a student issue). She could easily fix any bruise, any cut, and heal most broken bones.

"We don't use magical healing here," Tate had said, "We do it the old-fashioned way. Unless something extreme is broken, blood is gushing, or you've been shot, nobody cares. Get used to that."

It was so harsh, the conditions they were expected to deal with. Madame Pomfrey would spring upon you in the halls, hold you down and forcibly drag you to the infirmary if she thought you were sleep deprived. But Hermione immediately knew that things here would be different.

She could tell by Tate's face. The hard line of her jaw...the unemotional, unwavering look in her eyes...this was what she had grown up with. Harry understood it too, but on a much more potent level. No one had cared a thing about him when he was a child. For him though, tough love had been replaced with disgust. At the Dursley's...the only real blood family he had...no one wondered if he was hurt, if he cried during the night, if he was scared or sad. And that was fine for Harry, he'd get along with training well. But Hermione was quite nervous.

For Harry, things were quite different. He was not nervous. No, he was far beyond nervous. He'd graduated beyond nervous the moment he was able to walk, what with Dudley coming after him all the time. He existed in a perpetual state of constant caution up until his acceptance to Hogwarts. Near the end of his first year, during his encounter in the Forbidden Forest, he'd tasted true fear. Since then, he'd returned to his reality of careful proceedings, stopping...occasionally screeching to a halt...to touch upon horror, awe, and fear cold enough to freeze his bones.

That was nothing compared to what he felt now though.

There were three things he loved in his life. In his narrow bed, on his impossibly comfortable mattress, he ticked them off on his fingers. Sirius...Ron...Hermione. Hermione was the one person he loved above all. She was his match, he'd known it since their first kiss...a stolen moment in the library one evening, when she'd dropped a load of books and he'd bent over to help her retrieve them. He hadn't meant to kiss her...it just happened. And he'd known instantly. It was her, and would be for the rest of his life.

Which was exactly why he was living in a parallel dimension of pure, unadulterated terror. Voldemort found a weapon that, usually, would be unchallenged. Voldemort had found a weapon that Harry couldn't ever combat. Voldemort had bad timing. He'd picked an era in which both halves of the equation existed. The only person in the world who could form the most important half was the one Harry happened to love above all.

He slammed his fists angrily against the soft surface, causing Ron to turn over in his bed and mumble incoherently.

"No--no Professor Snape, I turned it in, I did...check your desk, you flaming idiot..."

Harry squelched a smile. Ron's dreams were always interesting...thank god he tended to verbalize them. For most of the sixth year Gryffindor tower, Ron's sleep talking was an impediment, a terrible annoyance that everyone wished to eradicate (much like Neville's snoring which, for the most part, no one ever mentioned). But Harry found it comforting. It reassured him that Ron was all right. He wished he could hear Hermione sleep talk.

He thought of her, in the downstairs bedroom, and wondered if she were asleep. He reached out with his mind and tried to touch hers, but felt nothing beyond a vague shimmering of nerve endings. Goosebumps broke out all over his skin, and he shook them away angrily. The whole telepath idea seemed like a crock of shit. If it was such an important thing, wouldn't someone have written in depth about it? Why was there nothing?

Harry's thoughts were interrupted because, at that moment, a black, non-descript shape appeared in the stairwell.

Startled into action, Harry pointed his wand (which always resided under his pillow) straight at the dark figure.

"Back off, Harry," came the disconnected voice of Tate, "It's me. I'm going to bed, and you should too. Peace..."

Her amorphous shape quickly ascended the ladder of the lofted bed. It was still a few moments before Harry could lower his wand.

It's me. Ha. As if that should mean something. What was she to any of them aside from a temporary guide? Back at Hogwarts, at least he could've called her a Gryffindor. Now he'd discovered that wasn't true as well. He had no idea what she was.

She wasn't a boy...but, at the same time, she wasn't a girl. From the moment she'd appeared downstairs that very morning, in her training outfit, Harry had ceased to see her as a member of the female species.

Hermione had looked quite shaggable in her militant clothing, but Tate had just seemed...androgynous...she'd ceased to exist as a girl. Something in her eyes had changed...as though she were suddenly allowed to be just herself and not some bird playing a part.

The lighting of the SIM had played a major role in this as well. Hogwarts relied entirely upon sunlight, firelight, and candles to illuminate their surroundings. In the SIM, bright halogen lightening dominated the classroom atmosphere. As a seeker, Harry had natural visual acuity that Hermione and Ron did not possess. In the soft candlelight of Hogwarts, Tate easily passed as a pretty, sixteen year old girl. In the SIM, everything changed. When the light hit just right...which was nearly all the time, as it was all encompassing, Harry saw things in her face that he'd never noticed at Hogwarts. Scars...pain...confusion etched in masculine frowns...all of it unnatural to him. He was used to bright-faced, youthful students.

A body turned over.

"Harry..." It had to be Tate. The voice was distinctly muffled, and yet slightly masculine. Ron's voice was always furious when he was woken up.

"Huh?"

"Just fucking quit it, all right? I can't read your thoughts...and trust me, I don't want to. But I can feel it. So go and sleep with Hermione tonight."

Harry felt a chill break out over his body...definitely of the guilt sort. He suddenly felt as though he'd been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. His confusion still dominated slightly, and this prompted him to play dumb.

"What?"

He heard her sit up. It was a violent motion, rocking the rickety loft bed. Her voice was quiet, almost sad, yet rather terrifying. "You heard me. Get the fuck out of here!"

"Why?"

"Because Harry, I am fully aware that you despise me." Harry stiffened at the word 'despise'...but he couldn't very well contradict her. "And I can't read thoughts THANKFULLY, but I can still sense your presence. And it hates me. I can't sleep with that anymore than you can sleep with my sickening presence near you. So get your skinny ass downstairs and sleep with Hermione, all right?"

"You've got a real temper on you," snapped Harry, before he bolted from his bed and disappeared down the stairs. Hermione didn't wake when he climbed into bed with her - but she wrapped her arms around him and snuggled close for a long evening.

Tate turned over in her bed and pressed a hand against her forehead. "Jesus Christ...would I seem normal if I cared? Does it even matter?" She pushed it from her mind. Free from Harry's aura of mistrust and anger, she was asleep almost immediately.

Two beds away, Ron stared at the ceiling. He'd been awake the entire time. Was anything really normal? Before he let himself question it, he was asleep.

*** *** ***

The next two weeks passed as quickly as rainwater down a hill during the spring thaw. Tate managed her teaching duties as well as could be expected, though sometimes her patience wore thin. A rigorous fitness program was also in the cards, for everyone, in addition to classroom teachings.

The second day they spent in the Sim consisted entirely of classroom teaching, with the exception of the hour long break at lunch, which Ron elected they take outside.

To Harry's great relief, Tate did not expect them to look upon her as a leader, of any sort.

"The definitive feature of a perfected tracking team is versatility. There's no set leader, no set point, no set flank...everyone can switch positions as needed..."

They adjourned from training at exactly seven PM. All four returned to the house immediately - newly implemented rules postulated no exit from the house between the hours of eight PM and four AM, except those of emergency nature.

The third day, they spent the morning in the classroom setting, taking notes on different aspects of team operations, signals, and coded communication. After lunch, Tate had yelled out a code, and the environment had shifted into a gym. The days as such began to follow suit - each day they saw at least one new environment.

By the end of the second week, they had covered the basics of hand-to-hand combat and tactical tracking operations. Numerous exercises designed to sharpen and hone visual, auditory, and olfactory acuity had been performed with success. Tate had explained that, although the possibility of a necessary tracking expedition was highly unlikely, the experience would give the four participants the needed closeness for the following ideals.

This proved to work quite well. Not only were Hermione, Harry, and Ron learning to move stealthily in the dark without the aid of an invisibility cloak - they were learning to interpret every noise...movement...smell...every single aspect of their surroundings, and mostly without the aid of magic. The sheer experience of such training - even though it had only been days - had heightened their senses considerably. However, as high as Harry and Ron's senses had been uplifted, it was nowhere near the degree to which Hermione had, thus far, achieved. Harry knew her progress was rapid and brilliant - he could tell by the look in Tate's eyes. Pure awe and respect.

Although Harry, Ron, and Hermione still harbored formidable reservations concerning Tate's personal character - after all, she had misled them greatly...nearly unforgivably - they managed to develop an innate sense of trust in her.

This trust stemmed from her indisputable knowledge in the arts of military science and from despair.

There was no one else. If this was the path Dumbledore had intended Hermione to take, then they would all walk it. The looming danger seemed to dissipate in the face of such rigorous training and physical demand. They returned to their beds each night exhausted - no nightmares or dreams to be had. Harry wondered why he hadn't sought such an alternative before. How many times had his nightmares marred his sleep, therefore his performance? If dreamless sleep could be attained by such a militant routine, then he planned to keep it for the rest of his life.

*** *** ***

It was a rather interesting day when Tate opened the utility shed. When Hermione, Ron and Harry arrived, at precisely seven AM, Tate was driving a four wheeler onto a trailer, attached to a massive, weather-beaten pick-up truck. She smiled at them, and continued loading up the trailer. She'd driven out three more four-wheelers, and two dirt bikes before Harry had lost his patience and marched inside. He'd returned ecstatically with four brooms. Ron was overjoyed, and accepted a broom from Harry, hugging it to himself as though it were his lifeline. It was, after all, the first significant magical thing he'd seen in two weeks. Hermione politely refused a broomstick from Harry, but Tate bristled visibly when he offered one to her.

"Get that thing away from me," she said quietly, before leaping on her four-wheeler. Harry stared at her in confusion. "I hate broomsticks. Fly one if you must, and you too," she nodded at Ron, "if that is the movement you are most accustomed to. Follow me." She slid into the drivers seat of the truck. Hermione seized the dirty handle on the passenger side and winced at the grating squeak of the door. She hopped in quickly, and Tate started the car.

Once they had cleared the generous stretch of light foresting (on a bumpy, beaten path), they came into another wide open area, much like the one they had previously been in - though without the four constricting walls of trees.

A huge area off to the left had been cemented, with a black track running in an oval. A large wooden structure in the shape of a halved cylinder stood next to it, an entrenched pool beside it. Beyond a long, winding rail was a massive track, complete with jumps and uneven obstacles, and covered in brownish orange dirt.

They spent the day learning to operate the four wheelers and dirt bikes. It was the first day that Harry felt he was being instructed only to have fun.

Not a single complaint was to be had over the instruction - everyone loved the four-wheelers (although Hermione hated the dirt bikes). They spent the afternoon riding through forest trails.

*** *** ***

Once Tate was satisfied that her 'classmates' could effectively form a versatile team, they began to move on to more in depth (which was a nice way of saying frightening), yet indispensable pillars of the instruction.

This particular day, which Hermione had designated as Day 15, found the four standing in the emptiness of the unprogrammed Sim. Tate faced the three, her back to the non-descript space, a fold-up table set up next to her. On the table were seven firearms of varying size and color.

"This," began Tate, "Is an M-1." She gestured to the large, black rifle on the far right side of the table. "It is a U.S. standardized Rifle, caliber .30. This rifle is semi-automatic, gas operated, and reloaded with a clip. Each clip holds a capacity of 8 rounds." She moved on to the next.

"Here, we have a Colt AR-15, caliber .233. If anyone has ever watched a muggle movie, you might have heard of these. They were once referred to as M-16's." She made a quick face.

"Granted, most of my friends and colleagues find the U.S. military standardized firearms to be boring. Therefore, I present some of our own favorites. She gestured to a black handgun. "This is a Desert Eagle .44 magnum, equipped with a laser sight. This," she moved on to a shimmering silver handgun, "Is a Desert Eagle .50 AE Chrome. This is my left-handed preference." She grinned slightly, and moved on. "This is an SPP-1 Underwater pistol...if you ever find yourself in a water combat situation, you'll find its quite handy." She moved on toward a massive, black concoction of death and misery, and placed a loving hand on it. "This is VSK-94 Russian Sniper Rifle, complete with a silencer." She made her way to the left end of the table. "And last, but not least, a Winchester 70 Sharp Shooter rifle, 7.62x51mm NATO. Or, more simply, a .308 Winchester." She smiled proudly, and it was all Hermione could do not to cringe.

"Hermione," Tate's head swiveled to lock eyes with hers, "What's the maximum range I could hope to cover with accuracy using the .308 Winchester?"

"600 yards."

"And what is the maximum you could hope to cover?"

"None, at this time. An average shooter could possibly be accurate at a distance of 300 yards, but I wouldn't even know where to begin."

"A small problem that we shall fix today," Tate assured her, smiling broadly. She'd long since given up on getting technical answers from Harry or Ron. Hermione was her only saving grace.

"Today, we move into Beginning Handgun. For the first few exercises, we're all going to use matching Colt Double Eagles."

Tate opened a large case next to the table and handed each person an identical stainless steel handgun with a black handle. It was rather smallish in comparison to the rifles, but Hermione bit back a gasp when she accepted her own weapon. The metal was cold, nearly freezing to the touch, and it sent goose bumps up her arm. It was heavier, much heavier than it looked, and it felt unnatural and cumbersome in her hand. She regarded it disgustedly.

"Why are we learning how to use these?" she asked, in a sniffy voice.

Tate shrugged. "Why not?" Hermione rolled her eyes dramatically. "It'll fine-tine your visual acuity, for one...otherwise...I don't know! I was raised on these things, even before I came here...seemed only natural to show you guys how to use one." Ron was staring at his pistol apprehensively, while Harry seemed rather excited to be holding a contraption he'd seen so often during his childhood (Dudley had always been allowed to pick the Sunday evening movie). Tate barked out a code, and the space shifted into a much dimmer atmosphere. Twelve amorphous shapes were arranged at the far end of the wall, illuminated by twelve, sharply split halogen lighting sources. The area in which the four teenagers stood was also lit, yet at a very dim setting. Hermione could make out the basic shape of her hand, but not much else.

"Ok," said Tate, in an uncharacteristically light voice, "There will be a raised button near the handle of your gun, right about here..." she held her gun aloft and indicated a spot near the trigger. "This is the safety. Take it off by pushing it in." A loud series of 'clicks' in the otherwise silent environment signified the compliance of the rest of the team. "Since these guns are semi-automatic, you'll not need to cock anything. Simply pull the trigger, and the gun will fire."

There was a huge BANG, and everyone jumped back a step. Ron's face colored bright red in guilt. Tate smiled slightly.

"We rarely use live fire in the SIM." There was a great exhale of relief. "However, you still don't want to get hit with what we do use in practice." She bent over and dug in the box for a few seconds. When she righted herself, there were several small objects in the palm of her hand, and she spilled them onto the table.

"We use blanks in target practice. In combat simulation, we usually use these." She indicated several bean bags of varying sizes, as well as a handful of rubber projectiles. "These won't cause the tissue damage a real bullet will. But they really hurt like hell, so watch yourselves, please..."

*** *** ***

After the third week, Hermione was nearly accustomed to the two mile run she was forced to endure every morning. She could complete the arduous ropes course in just under four hours. She could successfully throw a knife and hit a target. She could empty an 8 round clip into a target 100 yards away and hit a kill zone at least once. Ron was even more accurate than she, hitting a kill zone seventy percent of the time. Only Harry seemed to have problems with firearms.

This particular day, the nerves ran high. Tate had been hinting that they would be moving into some very serious simulations - simulations designed specifically for Hermione and herself. Simulations designed to mimic psychic battles. Ron and Harry were advised to participate, if only to sharpen their senses. A true psychic battle would practically guarantee their death.

"Nothing in this simulator can truly affect the mind," Tate said firmly, standing in front of the three. "All it can do is scare you...which is similar to what a psychic attack will do. This is meant only to break us in - nothing can ever truly prepare you for the effects of such a battle. In the interest of catching you off guard - as an enemy will attempt to do - I'm not going to debrief you on what this simulation will involve. Your mission is to fight off any attacker, using any means possible. Your ultimate goal is to complete the course by finding the checkpoint. You will know what it is when you see it. We will do this together, and then separately. Code 1684 Alpha-J!"

The space went pitch black for a long, stretching moment. She begin to reach for Harry's hand and managed to stop herself - she would not be able to reach for him when the real event came.

An ungodly sound began to fill the room, and it chilled Hermione's blood. At first she thought it was a banshee, but then she realized it was human. Only a human could make that sound. It was low, agonized moaning...alternating from a broken sobbing child to the high pitched screams of a man in the throes of pain. It was like the cries of institutionalized prisoners - men, women, and children - madly echoing off the walls in a cacophony of terror.

A white shard of light pierced the darkness...divided, multiplied...Hermione looked around wildly, but there was no sign of anyone. She stumbled ahead, wand in one hand, a .357 Magnum loaded with blanks in the other. More lights began to flash, in brilliant hues of red and blue - but they flashed in a horrible, bullet like manner, confusing the beholder. She practiced her visual techniques, and soon realized that, when the lights flashed, they illuminated sights of unbelievable horror.

A flash of red - broken, bloodied bodies of children were piled on top of each other. A rubber bullet struck her in the shoulder and knocked her breath away. Pain spread and echoed throughout her body as though someone had poured a pot of boiling water over her. A flash of blue - a massive wolf baring its teeth. A flash of white - a black masked attacker with a bloody machete was advancing upon her. Hermione sucked in a breath, and forced her iron locked legs to move. In the space of another blinding white flash, a scream, and a fall, Hermione Granger did something that shocked Harry and Ron beyond all comprehension.

She failed a test.

*** *** ***

After the disastrous psychic prep exercise, Harry felt it was necessary to tone down the entire program. Following Hermione's collapse (and subsequent revival), everyone had received chocolate and dismissals. No more exercises would be performed that afternoon. Hermione had been ushered, by Harry, straight to bed, despite her mild complaints. It was dark now, and she had just woken to the sounds of raised voices downstairs.

Tate and Harry were getting ready to plunge into the first major disagreement they'd had since their arrival. And both were unloading serious animosity on top of that. Ron shrank away from the palpable fury that boiled between the confusing tough girl and the Boy Who Lived.

"Hermione will not be doing that exercise again, and that's that," Harry said forcefully.

"Oh, is it?" retorted Tate in a tone that resonated with forced calm. "Do remind yourself, Harry, that you are not in charge of training. I am. And I think that Hermione should try it again tomorrow." Ron looked helplessly between his two angry classmates.

"I don't give a flying shite what you think!" roared Harry. "You're not putting her in that thing again!" To prove his point, Harry picked up the plate of carrots and threw it at the wall. Ron flinched slightly at the sharp sound of shattering glass. Harry was losing control.

"Maybe you should listen to her, Harry," he said quietly. Harry's wild eyes swiveled to lock upon Ron, who quickly scooted his chair a few inches away.

"Oh, do you? You think I should listen to the girl who screwed you over? Don't forget what she did Ron, she led you on and then went behind your back with Malfoy!"

"Harry." Her voice dropped to a venomous whisper, laced with warning. "Please don't do this."

Harry paid no mind, as though he hadn't even heard the painfully obvious threat, which, in truth, he hadn't. All that mattered in his mind was protecting Hermione. And if he had to dig up the past, then that's just what he would do.

"Malfoy, of all people," he ranted, "Remember the statue? Remember how angry you -"

Harry's face suddenly went slack. Ron arched an eyebrow, slightly confused. Harry never spoke in broken sentences when he was angry - he made sure to get out every word possible. His eyes glazed over to a dull green hue. And then...something happened that would haunt Ron for the rest of his natural life.

Harry's slackened face blanched to a pasty white in the span of a nanosecond. A fine sheen of sweat began to coat his forehead and upper lip. His glazed, green eyes seemed to fade into a deeper hue...blacker...darker. And there was fear behind them. Fear beyond all reason. His hands, placed on the kitchen table, clenched until the knuckles turned white.

"Harry," gasped Ron as he leapt out of his chair to comfort his friend, "What is it, Harry?" But Harry did not answer. He threw back his head and let fly the most awful, desperate scream Ron had ever heard. The breath in his throat turned to glass, and he went to seize Harry about the arms, but Harry had begun to twitch and jerk convulsively before Ron's hands managed to make contact with his skin.

"Harry!" cried Ron, in a high-pitched, helpless voice. Harry drug his hands across the kitchen table, leaving eight perfect lines where his fingernails scraped across the solid wood. Blood began to well under his nails.

At a loss, Ron drew back a hand and slapped Harry, hard. Twice, he slapped him, with no result save for the angry red handprint that was rising on Harry's cheek.

"WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?" Ron roared at Tate, who sat across from Harry. Her face didn't register anything, as though she were in a trance. Ron seized Harry's upper arms and shook him violently. It was like gripping two ice blocks. On the third shake, Harry stopped screaming. He 'woke up', and Ron knew this from the terrified sparkle in his eyes, against their normal emerald tint. Harry's breathing was rough, uneven. He could barely lift his arms to thank Ron, who was uncharacteristically hugging him.

"Are you all right?"

"Yeah," whispered Harry gingerly. Hermione's voice drifted down the stairs. She was shouting.

Harry looked to Ron. "Will you..."

"Of course, Harry," Ron said quickly, taking the meaning and racing his way up to Hermione's bedroom.

Harry took another deep breath. "So..." he began.

"...So." Tate was watching him, her eyes tinged with sympathy. "How do you feel?"

"Like someone ran over my goddamned head, that's how I feel."

"Well, that's understandable."

Harry rubbed his temples, willing the receding pinpricks of fear away. She been inside his head, he had felt it...felt her...in his mind. But at the same time, it wasn't her. A dark shade of Tate had gone streaking through his soul, stirring up old memories of horror, and setting fire to all his fundamentals.

"I didn't want to have to do that, Harry. I would never intentionally hurt you, but if you can't listen to reason on an issue as important as this...I had to show you why." He was still staring at the table, confusion and anger flooding his vision in shades of black and green. "That was only a small taste, a very fleeting touch. The attack I just hit you with pales...no, it dies in comparison to what that demon is going to do to Hermione. She needs this practice. She needs it more than anything."

"But you said she had to be untrained," Harry said slowly, raising his eyes to hers.

"I'm not teaching her to manipulate her telepathic powers, Harry." She spread her hands out innocently. "I wouldn't even know where to start. I'm trying to teach her how to protect herself, just like I'm trying to teach you. She has to have some idea of what to expect. No one can go into a fight like this blind. It's suicidal."

"But she can't take it...you saw that today."

"Yes, she can," Tate ground out, empathetically, "Her mind is equipped to take the most brutal of beatings, she will be able to do this. You know that she can."

Harry had no choice, but to relent. Later that evening, Tate called Hermione downstairs.

"You're going to do it again, Hermione," Tate said mechanically. Hermione nodded, but she could not hide the fear behind her eyes. "But listen, the most important thing to remember is that nothing is real. It's all fake, a big light show to confuse and scare you. It's precisely what a psychic attack will consist of. Except that a psychic attack will hurt. That's why we use rubber bullets, to simulate some sort of intense discomfort. The illusions will attack you and cause you pain, but it's all in your head. Nothing is real. The pain is in your mind. You have to remember that." Hermione nodded again.

"What do you mean it will hurt?" she asked in a small voice. "Can you tell me that much?"

Tate's eyes grew clouded and dark. "What are you scared of?" Hermione was silent.

*** *** ***

The next morning, they were set loose through a highly toned down haunted house of sorts (minus the rubber bullets) - intending to build up Hermione's tolerance to fear. When the hour hand hovered above one, Tate stopped the simulations for lunch break. Harry, Ron, and Hermione turned toward the decon.

"Not you, Harry." Harry stopped, mid-step, and turned to stare at her. "You stay. Ron and Hermione, please try and make it back in an hour." Hermione nodded, and she and Ron left. Harry arched an eyebrow at Tate, confused, and more than a little irritated, that he had to miss lunch.

"OK, Harry, we're going to work on your gun control. Pick a gun from the cabinet upstairs, preferably a handgun. I've got some subs down here already." Sighing his annoyance, Harry made his way up to the first floor and threw open what appeared to be a small cabinet door.

It opened into a large room - but he was used to this. After scanning the walls, he decided on a Berretta M9 Dolphin. He snatched the black, gleaming handgun from its perch on the wall and stomped his way back through the decon. When the doors opened, he squinted slightly to adjust to the dramatic lighting difference. A dim, yet harsh, white light was centered along the edge of the wall he had just entered through. Hundreds of feet away, he could see black targets with blinking red lights barely shaded by the extremely dim spotlights - targets to shoot at, naturally. Tate had removed her flack jacket, leaving her in a black tank top.

She was fiddling with several sub machine guns at the front counter. Harry approached softly, and placed the gun barrel against the black, lacquered surface in what he hoped was an intimidating manner. She glanced at him, and then down at the handgun.

"Good choice. It's closed--"

"Bolt," finished Harry. "I know." Tate smiled tightly and nodded.

"Good." She selected a full clip from the counter and handed it to him. Harry looked at it appraisingly and noticed that she had handed him a live clip.

"Um...shouldn't I be using blanks?"

"Not today. Load up and shoot."

And so he did, pausing only to accept two extra clips from Tate and tuck them inside the ammo pockets of his tactical vest. Harry lifted the handgun, grasping the handle with his right hand, and cupping the butt of the gun with his left. He fired a round at the black target. The red light continued to flash - an indication that he had not hit a kill zone.

"Fuck."

"Ask me questions. Ask me anything." He looked at her, his eyes betraying a mixture of confusion and annoyance. What the hell was her deal, anyways?

He looked her over. Since they had arrived in America, Tate had steadily been losing weight, as was Hermione. Her muscles were stark and pronounced. In the right sort of lighting, the raised veins in her forearms made her look nearly emaciated. The previous week, during their morning run, Tate had peeled off her sweat soaked shirt to finish up in her sports bra. Once the run had ended, Harry couldn't stop a jaw drop of near horror. She'd lost a good ten pounds since their arrival. Her skin seemed to barely cover her bones, and her muscles strained against it relentlessly, angrily chewing on whatever small sustenance she decided to give them for the day. Harry was nearly convinced for a moment that she had taken a black pen and drawn lines on her stomach - but this theory was overturned when Ron stomped over and placed a hand flat on her stomach. Tate had assumed a classic "deer in the headlights" look, at which point Ron drug his hand across her stomach, leaving a dirt streak against the sheen of sweat.

He did the same to Hermione, who also shrank away. Hermione's muscles were nowhere near the proportion of Tate's, but she was toning up quickly. This was made all the more evident by her own diminished appetite. Ron had refused to begin training until he'd dragged them both back to the house and forced a "proper" breakfast down their throats. Both girls had thrown it up less than an hour later, to the enraged fury of Ron and Harry.

Harry raised his eyes to her face, which was, as per usual, an expressionless mask. Occasionally, she would smile, but never during their time in the SIM. He had confined her displayed emotions into two categories. Disappointment and approval comprised one. Passion comprised the other, but it never registered in her face. It burned behind her eyes in bright, flickering flashes. Ah, yes...her eyes were often made up. This had not gone unnoticed by Harry, but the act itself seemed to be misplaced. Why would she wear make-up? Why would anyone who went through such strenuous physical activities each day bother with make-up? Hermione never did. So, at a loss of ideas, this was the first question he posed.

"What's with the make-up?"

She shrugged nonchalantly. "When you spend a good portion of time as the opposite sex...even years, as I did...one feels a need to prove their sexual identity. I don't really act like a girl, or so I've been told. I don't feel like a girl, most of the time. By societal standings, a girl...doesn't do the things I do. So, I need to remind myself. Make-up is one way to do that. Plus, it looks fucking cool. Or so I deceive myself."

"What about tits and your monthly? Isn't that enough to remind you that you're a girl?"

BANG!

Harry jumped back as a live bullet slammed into the ground, mere centimeters from his left foot, sending up a volley of asphalt in its wake. The floor quickly closed over the disturbance.

"Yellow zone, Harry," she said in a hard voice, "Always yellow zone. Never drop your guard. And never bring that up again. My 'tits' and my 'monthly' are my business."

"Geez...you really need to lighten up," Harry snapped, angrily firing another shot into the arena. The red light continued to flash, ever mindful of his terrible aim.

"Sensors off," called Tate, "Target Code 2481 Foxtrot-9." All the red lights ceased their flashing, and the black targets disappeared. Harry watched as the back wall shimmered briefly between the shifting settings. However, just as a new environment was materializing, the lights went out, cloaking the entire space in thick darkness.

"Jesus Christ Tate, is this a power outage?" Harry suddenly felt unbalanced and nervous in the suffocating blackness. He reached out for the counter to steady himself, but grasped only air. "Tate? What the hell is going on?!"

"What do you love about Hermione?"

Harry jumped, and waved his arms furiously. Her voice had sounded proximal enough that she might've been standing right behind him, but his flailing fists connected with nothing. He edged a foot forward to move, but the floor sloped downward quickly. He drew his foot back and edged it in the opposite direction, only to find that way inclined upward sharply. If he tried to go either way, he was relatively sure he'd fall.

"What the fuck are you trying to do," he spat angrily, "Turn the fucking lights on!"

"Not until you answer the question, Harry. Why do you love Hermione?"

"Are you trying to seduce me, you slag? Turn on the goddamn bleeding lights right now or I'll make you very sorry!" Harry was suddenly aware of a numbing cold that began to seep through his clothes. A chilling wind swept through the blackness, and Harry found himself uncontrollably shivering. His lightening bolt scar began to pulse with a dull, aching pain...a pain that only presented itself when evil was nearby. Harry froze, suddenly terrified, and pointed his gun straight ahead.

"I'm waiting," came Tate's disembodied voice. Harry whirled around violently at the sound, the suffocating blackness and cold fear overtaking him on more levels than he thought possible. A frigid slice of air ruffled the long hair that now reached his collar and tickled the back of his neck. To his left, something snapped. To his right, something scraped against the floor. When something whistled sharply past his ear, his rationality overloaded.

Purely on instinct, he squeezed the trigger of the gun. The massive, echoing BANG that issued removed any other sounds from his ears, which served to comfort him greatly. He began firing in every direction, flinging his arm this way and that, until the entire clip was emptied into the air. The gunshots were so loud and powerful that Harry didn't hear the furious howl of outrage and pain.

A hollow clicking sound signified the departure of all his precious bullets. Without thinking, he reached into the inside pocket of his vest, seized a fresh clip, discarded the old, and reloaded his gun.

"Feel better?" asked Tate, her voice much further from him now. It was oddly strangled, as though she had just run a distance. Probably hit the ground in his gun crazy moment, he thought. Good. Maybe she'd broken something.

"I love Hermione in more ways than someone as cold and distant as you could possibly understand," he ground out furiously. There was silence. "I love her because she's, quite simply, the most incredible person that exists on this planet. She's brilliant, she's witty, she's kind... She would lay down and die for any one of her friends, if we asked her too. She's the only rational piece of mind I've found in this ridiculous, upside down world. She and Ron and Snuffles...they're the only reason I have for getting up in the morning. They make me feel alive." He inhaled deeply, having taking barely a breath throughout the entire delivery. Inwardly, he marveled at his speech. Who'd have ever thought Harry Potter was poetic?

The sound of a body turning over on the floor made Harry spin a 180. Then Tate's voice came from the same direction, and shouted a single word.

"Activate!" A bright light snapped on behind Harry - he could tell by the way his eyes seemed to retract into his head, willing him to close them.

And then Harry heard Hermione scream. He whirled around in blind terror...in his shock and confusion, he unconsciously employed a vision tactic Tate had taught them in the first week. His eyes locked upon the far away illuminated image and focused immediately. It was Voldemort. The red eyes glowed maliciously, and Harry didn't have to think twice. He didn't even aim. He fired once...twice...three times. He emptied the entire clip into the distance, dropped the gun and whipped out his wand. Screw the gun...it was time for magic.

The overhead lights came on in a blinding flash, and Harry shut his eyes tight against the searing assailment, whipping his head toward the ground. He brought his forearm up and scrubbed his eyes against it, willing them to open. When they did, more than a few moments later, he saw a brilliant white atmosphere through a haze of yellow and green sparks. He blinked several times before adjusting to the decidedly frightening atmosphere. It was rather like being in a mental institution - constant brilliant halogen lighting surrounding you all the time. Like a surgeon's operating table. Pristine white floors, white walls...everything except the straight jacket. He looked around the seemingly endless white space and spied Tate, who lay on her back fifteen feet away, her left leg folded up against her chest. Both of her hands were tightly clamped around her shin just below the knee, and Harry could see what appeared to be blood squeezing between her fingers. He didn't feel the least bit sorry, but he briefly wondered what had happened.

"Good job." She said tightly, not bothering to look him in the face. Her complexion was pasty white and covered in sweat. Harry stared blankly at her. "I think that exercise likely righted any further t-trouble you might have had."

"What are you talking about?"

"The lights wouldn't have come on if you hadn't succeeded in achieving the goal, Harry." She winced as she turned her cheek to the floor, keeping her hands fastened around her leg. "I designed this exercise two days ago. Hermione helped me. She described Voldemort based on descriptions you'd given her before, and we used that to develop a realistic image of him. Add Hermione's voice to the equation, drop the temperature, simulate chilling wind, spooky noises, and uneven flooring to evoke fear, and there it is." Harry's jaw had dropped long before she finished speaking.

"You unimaginable bitch," he swore, "How could you do something that sick?"

"Taught you to shoot, didn't it? That one lesson will stay in the back of your mind forever. You'll never forget it - more importantly, you won't forget how to shoot. The trick with you, Harry, is that you act almost entirely on emotion. When you think, you blow it. Every single time I've seen you lift a gun, with the exception of just now, you've thought about everything that goes along with it. You've thought about aiming, about reloading, about correct handling procedure...hell, you even thought about bracing yourself for the kick before you even lined up the sights! Hence, you couldn't hit a target less than fifty meters away. What's betting that you can now? Target Code 2481 Foxtrot-2!" The white walls dissipated, and Harry was once more surrounded by the familiar target practice simulation.

"Don't think, Harry."

He didn't. The counter from earlier, covered in firearms, had materialized right in front of him. He seized the closest gun - a Carbine .30 M1. As he lifted the large rifle to his shoulder, he became aware of the sense that he was simply slipping on a temporary physical appendage. Like merely pulling on a glove as opposed to lifting a heavy metal contraption. His cheek touched cool hard metal, and he barely registered taking the safety off.

Stop the red.

There were twenty five flashing red lights in the arena. The magazine loaded in the M1 held thirty rounds.

Harry squeezed the trigger. Every flashing red light was Voldemort, looming over him, laughing at him, killing Cedric Diggory and his parents over and over again. Pure rage took over, and Harry found himself shouting amidst the sharp succession of noise that issued from the barrel of his gun in clouds of smoke, gunpowder, and sparks.

CLICK

Harry stared into the dimly lit area. Nothing blinked. No red lights. Nothing but space. Harry was shaken from his reverie by a quick bout of strained applause.

"I'd say you've cleared Beginning and Intermediate Firearms, Harry. Excellent, truly excellent work." He turned slowly to face her, his head bowed low, eyes on his shoes.

"Thanks," he whispered, barely audible.

"Sure. My job, isn't it?" Harry raised his eyes to her. She was standing in an awkward position, with all her weight on her right leg. Beneath her left leg was a long, dark smear...in the dim lighting, it looked almost like tar. An awful thought occurred to him.

"Christ," he breathed, "Are you all right?" She looked almost distracted as she began to limp toward the counter. He rushed to help her and seized her left arm at the elbow. She howled and shoved him away roughly, hopping the rest of the way toward the counter. With her right arm, she pulled herself atop it and hoisted her left leg up. Harry felt something sticky between his fingers, but declined to look at them, knowing what he would find. Tate blew air out between her teeth as she unsheathed her knife and cut her left trouser off at midthigh. She slit the fabric straight down the middle and eased the section off of her leg. Harry's stomach did a sickened somersault at the sight of dark red blood streaming from her knee.

"C'mere," she said. Harry remained where he was. "C'mon dude, you fucking shot me, now you have to deal with it!"

She was crazy. She had to be. Harry broke out in a cold sweat. Hermione and Ron...in a very short time, they'd come back from lunch. He'd hear them enter the building...and fifteen minutes later they'd be done with decon, they'd walk through the door behind him and they'd know he'd shot someone. What would they say? Oh God...

Something skittered across the floor and knocked against Harry's boot. He looked down at the shiny object. It was a silver pair of pliers.

"You've got to be kidding," he said slowly, realizing what they were for. "Don't you need a doctor?"

"Nope. Nothing to it." Her voice was becoming more strained, and her jaw popped audibly. Gingerly, Harry bent over and picked up the pliers.

"See the red box on the wall?" Harry glanced to his left, at the red plastic first aid kit. "Grab that too." He complied, and made his way toward the counter. Gently, she took the kit from him. His eyes fell on her shin. Amidst the sticky mess of blood, Harry could see a medium sized, ragged hole where the bullet had entered. Tate pulled a syringe and bottle from the box, prepared a local anesthetic, and quickly administered it around the wound.

Harry shook himself out of his trancelike state and disinfected his hands and the pliers with a wave of his wand, while Tate poured a clear liquid that reeked of alcohol over her shin.

"Alright," she said, gritting her teeth hard, "Get in there and get it." Harry's hand shook madly, as he stared blindly at her bloody shin. Tate seized the edges of the counter and gripped them. "Go on, it's alright. It's not in the cartilage, it's lodged directly below it, in the bone." Harry swallowed a mouthful of vomit at the word 'bone'. A wave of nausea washed over him and, amidst the overwhelming retch, Harry remembered a simple charm George had taught him last summer. The charm had been designed to temporarily enchant specs to see through people's clothing. However, it was imperfect - the wearer saw right through the clothes, as expected, but also through skin and muscle. In fact, the wearer saw only the skeleton of the desired subject.

"Lascivious," he said, and tapped his glasses with his wand. Instantly, Tate's skin and muscle disappeared, leaving only her skeleton, bleached white against a neon bluish background. He could see the tiny foreign object, the tip of it buried in her shinbone amidst fragmentation, just as she'd said. Without skin, Harry imagined Tate to be an inanimate object...just another toy Dudley had broken that he was forced to fix. He placed one hand on her knee, and she, sensing his charm, grabbed his other hand, quickly guiding the pliers into her leg. He seized the edges of the bullet and pulled it clean.

"Finite Incantatum." Harry dropped the offensive bullet to the ground and flung the pliers as far away as he could manage. "That hurt?"

"Which part?" she asked sarcastically. Harry breathed a sigh of relief. If she was joking, then she was all right. She pulled a flask of dirty looking liquid from the red case and uncorked it. Squeezing her eyes shut, she poured most of the contents over her knee. It smoked and sizzled upon contact with skin, and Harry waved a hand through the reddish brown fumes that rose off the bubbling reaction. He took a small step back, as Tate poured another dose of the potion over the slight ricochet gash on her arm.

He'd never seen her legs bare before. Now he was only seeing one bare, and only from the mid-thigh down, but it looked exactly like he'd imagined. Riddled with scars. A long slashing line of white...puckered purple knots...numerous marks yawned and stretched along the length of her calf, ran along her thigh, peeked from under the ragged cloth of her trousers. Tate glanced at him and sighed.

"Go on. Ask."

Harry tried to assume an expression of indifference. "Ask what? It's your business."

"Yah, I guess." She returned her attention to her knee. The potion had stopped foaming, and she wiped it away with a handful of gauze. The skin was unmarked, and any evidence of the recent gunshot was removed with a sweep of the cloth.

"Why aren't the others healed like that?" Harry hadn't meant to pose the question, but it had tumbled out before he could stop it.

She shrugged. "Lots of reasons. No time, shoddy medical teams, inappropriate situations." Harry nodded mechanically, tearing his eyes away from the disfigurement etched on her leg. He spun around and propped his back against the counter, crossing his arms over his chest. Everyone had a few scars to show, this much was true. He himself had a memorable handful. But, living in the magical world, it made no sense for someone to bear so many. It was so easily to heal them after all. A flick of the wand, and all evidence erased.

Tate wrapped her arms around her shins and rested her cheek on her knees. At Hogwarts, it had been easier. All the minor scars on her body, excepting her hands and torso, had been temporarily glamoured, erasing their existence. At the playground, the glamour was no longer necessary...but that didn't make explaining any easier.

"It's like this. The SIM costs money. Lodging, supplies and clothing for team members costs money. It's not like our parents pay tuition - everything is privately funded. Special Team Halide isn't just a group of students learning, you know, the art of war..." she said the phrase with a sarcastic dramatic flair, "We're also a free-lance association."

"What do you mean free-lance?"

"Hirable. Hands down, we're one of the best tracking teams in the world. We've been running ops with the American government for three years, domestic and international. Occasionally, we get hired out to a foreign country. Training doesn't make an expert - experience does. So that's what we do."

"I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say." He caught the general gist, but Harry didn't quite comprehend where she was going with it.

Tate sighed, and abandoned the subject. "Neither do I. Just talking, I guess." Harry returned his gaze to her shin, and he gently poked a twisted, white disfigurement on her ankle.

"How'd you get that?"

"Arrow. During a forest training exercise when I was ten. Went right through my boot and lodged in the bone. Exercises in the open woods usually last all day. And you know, you can't heal wounds magically after six hours have gone by. Same in the muggle world - the risk of infection is too high after that point." Her eyes suddenly lit with excitement, and she pointed to Harry's forearm, where a thin white slash, three inches long, marked the skin.

"How'd you get that?"

"First year, when Hermione, Ron, and I went after the Sorcerer's Stone. There was a room full of charmed keys with wings, and I had to ride a broom to catch the one that would open the door. But when I touched the broom, they dive-bombed me and cut me all to hell. Madame Pomfrey screwed up the healing charm on this particular one, and I somehow doubt Professor McGonagall has let her forget it." While he was talking, a grin had stretched on Tate's face. It was infectious, and Harry smiled as well. They were sharing something light and easy - it was fun and silly, but poignant at the same time. Harry pointed at the dominant scar on her leg - a long, thick white slash that came screaming out from under the fabric of her pants, stopping above the knee.

"Machete. I was fifteen. We were running a track op in South America, when we came upon a group of rebel guerillas - they had nothing to do with our mission, but they were mad hostile and attacked us. We've always got at least three flasks of Insta-Mend potion," she indicated the flask previously emptied on her knee, "But Cody took a hit to the chest. It took all three flasks just to get him back on his feet. So Sergei and I had to do it the old fashioned way - stitches and antiseptics. His arm was gangrenous by the time we neutralized the target."

Harry screwed up his face. "Gross!" He kicked his leg onto the counter and pulled the edge of trousers up above his knee to reveal two matching circular scars right above the kneecap.

"Third task of the Triwizard Tournament," he said proudly, "Massive spider grabbed me and lifted me right off the ground. It was a few hours before Madame Pomfrey got to me, so she couldn't fully heal it."

"Seems to have a lot of trouble, that woman." Harry laughed, and nodded his agreement.

"She's an overworked shrew. But she means well, even if it comes out in shrill, banshee-like tones." Tate laughed hard, and slapped a hand against the counter.

"Here, check out these." She grazed her fingers lightly over two raised purple knots on her calf, one in the center of her thigh, another closer to her backside. She drew up her right pant leg and showed Harry two more of the same circular scars. ".357 Magnum. First time I ever got shot. Look, you can see on the other side of my calf where they went through." Harry looked at the raised scars thoughtfully.

"Does it hurt?"

"Does what hurt?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "Getting shot. I mean, you just acted like you skinned your knee. Is that how it is?"

Tate smiled slightly. "When I was fourteen, there was a rather serious incident. Since then, it's been S.O.P. to carry a basic first aid kit, and Insta-Mend every day, all the time. I used a Numbing Potion on my knee before the lights went up." Harry nodded. Tate glanced briefly at the scarred gunshots that littered over both of her legs. She took a breath.

"It hurts like you wouldn't believe. You never really get used to it...but the more often it happens, the better you become at dealing with it. It comes with the territory, really. I've been shot more times than I can remember...well, that's not true. I've taken eleven live bullets...but I've always been lucky...It is pain most people can only imagine. However, that's most people. Anyone whose ever been under the Cruciatus Curse...well, they'd get it. To a much higher degree." She paused, and suddenly plunged into an expression of deep thought.

"I've never been under the Cruciatus Curse myself. But I've seen it. Three years ago...back when Cody was still alive...all five of us were in the UK. The Secretary of Magical Defense hired us out to the British Ministry of Magic for a few months. We were assigned to head up a covert manhunt." Harry froze, and shocks of galvanic magnitude shot up his spine.

"We got called in pretty late though - the suspect had already been on the run for eight months. That ridiculous Minister...what's his name?"

"Fudge," Harry ground out furiously. The very name disgusted him.

"Right - he's a complete moron. If he'd just swallowed his pride and called us in immediately, he might've saved himself a lot of trouble. But oh no, he's got to take care of everything personally. I've a right mind to think he memory charms his personal staff in case something goes wrong to save himself from any blame." Harry blew air out through his teeth. He'd thought the same thing on multiple occasions, though he couldn't help silently thanking Fudge for his incompetence now. Tate eyed him carefully for a moment, but continued as though she hadn't noticed.

"We had nothing to go on beyond possible sightings, and this guy we were tracking might as well have been the wind. He covered his tracks like no one we've ever encountered - almost like he wasn't human...just a shadow. I'm not trying to be an ass or anything, but we've never...and I mean never...taken on an assignment we haven't completed." Her eyes betrayed an intrinsic respect to the one that got away. "We spent two months digging up red herrings before Niels told us to tank it. Stroke of genius, that was, cause it's my personal belief that we never would have found this guy. Niels wouldn't say why exactly, only that some important developments had come to his attention," Harry couldn't stop a smile, "And that we could spend a few days holiday in London before taking on a new assignment. So we sent a letter to the Ministry and kicked back. We ended up staying for nearly three months. I even left off Polyjuice - I mean, it must've been the first break we'd had in two years. And sure enough, Niels was dead on. Sirius Black was caught, and he promptly disappeared without a trace, not even an hour after we resigned."

"Yes, he did," beamed Harry proudly. Tate shot him an odd look. He thought of suppressing his smile for a moment.

"Oh hang it, Sirius Black isn't a bad man by any means," he assured her. "I'll explain in a bit. Go on."

Tate shook her head hard. "Hell no, you'll explain now! I'd love to hear something about him!" She propped her elbows on her knees and looked at Harry expectantly.

"Well...wait a minute - if Niels keeps in such close contact with Dumbledore, didn't he tell you why you were supposed to abandon your mission?"

Tate looked almost affronted. "Of course not. He told us to tank it, and we did. End of story. We never question orders. Niels is never wrong." She watched him carefully...and for a fleeting moment, Harry could nearly see the whirring wheels and cogs of her mind turning over behind her eyes.

"Listen - I'd like to try something, if that's cool." Harry instinctively backed up a step. Tate rolled her eyes in exasperation.

"Will you grow up? Listen carefully, Harry. I. Do. Not. Want. In. Your. Pants. I want to see if I can pull you into my memory."

Harry crossed his arms over his chest, more than a little confused. "Why?"

"I've just had this thought...I don't know why - probably because it's the first time I've thought about it since Cody died."

"What thought?" Harry felt very apprehensive, but curious all the same.

"I don't know yet...but I think if you see it, you might be able to tell me. Does that make any sense?"

Harry shrugged. What harm could it do? Tentatively, he stretched his arm out.

"You might be in there a bit longer than necessary," she said quickly. "It's really hard to work out timing when it comes to memories. It doesn't register as time in reality though. Is that ok?"

"Just do it before I change my mind," he said impatiently.

"Right." And she grasped his wrist. Harry was instantly aware of the sensation that someone had slapped a red-hot iron bracelet on him. Before he could fully react and yank his wrist from her grip, he felt a great whoosh of air go past his ears. His free hand clamped down on top of Tate's, and he pitched headfirst into her memory.

Harry landed upright in a sitting position, on the floor of a rentable room at the Leaky Cauldron. He was on a pile of blankets - and when he looked around the room for a mental inventory, he was rather shocked at the head count. Five people in a room built to comfortable accommodate two. The overabundance of human presence was palpable - even in spirit form he felt it - but no one else in the room seemed visibly bothered by it. A tall young man in his late teens, with hair so black it was nearly violet and eyes like blue ice, was standing in front of an armoire, pleading his case to the four other inhabitants of the room.

"C'mon guys, I'm so sick of London! When do we ever get to just relax?" A slight Russian accent tinged his voice.

"What you really mean to say," came a heavy, Spanish voice, "Is that you're sick of not getting laid, and only hags come into the pub downstairs." The room erupted in laughter.

"Fuck you, Robert, I just want to have a good time. We start our new assignment Monday - this is our last night to just chill!" The black haired man, whom Harry identified as Sergei, was pleading, and he appeared not to care.

"Where is this place anyways?" asked a sandy-haired man from the far corner of the room. When he turned to the left, he resembled an older Seamus Finnegan.

"Fucking Little Hangleton. I swear, Sergei, only you could pick the most pathetic of hot spots." Harry inclined his head toward the bed closest to him. There she was, perched on a bed next to a burly young man with a thick head of curly brown hair.

"Oh shut up, T., you have to go. It's your birthday - four years and you can legally drink!"

"Thank God for phony passports," sighed the Spanish boy, "And by the way, Sergei, her birthday was two and a half months ago. You've been too busy partying to notice." Everyone cracked up. Sergei took no notice.

"So, it's settled then? We'll all go in honor of T.'s birthday?" There was no clamor, merely half-assed assents. It became immediately clear to Harry that the five people never split up. Even four to one, if one person went, they all followed. "Shall we make her wear girl clothes?" A raucous chorus of laughter and cheers drowned out the furious NO!

The walls spun, and Harry found himself pelting down a breathless kaleidoscope of color and frozen images.

His speeding form came to an abrupt stop on a hard barstool, surrounded by smoky, dim lighting. He spun around and placed his hands upon the sticky bar. Tate appeared in the crowd, and sat down heavily on the stool across from him. Sergei was beside her. She'd put on a glamour of dirty blonde hair and tanned skin - a half-assed attempt at masking her features, but in the dim lighting and atmosphere of drunken people, it didn't seem to matter. They'd forced her into a black mini-skirt, and she looked profoundly irritated about it. She also looked distinctly ridiculous. The skirt didn't suit her anymore than it would have Hagrid. However, the most distinct glamour change was in her hands. They were smooth and unscarred.

Harry quickly tried to move out of the bartenders way, but the grizzled man walked right through him. Annoyed, Harry plopped his elbows onto the bar and studied the two people in front of him. Sergei looked drunk. Tate looked bored. The other three members of Special Team Halide were nowhere to be found, but Harry could sense they were nearby. Even in an old memory, their closeness was indisputable. It reminded him of the way he was with his own best friends. Find one and find the others.

"You're drunk," said Tate, staring into her pint. For a moment, Harry thought she was talking to him.

"Yes...yes, this is true," agreed Sergei, downing the last of a dark brown beverage. "But that's the point, isn't it? Work hard, party hard." He ordered another, and the bartender was only too happy to bring him an overflowing new one.

"I suppose so. It's nice to have a break. Back to work on Monday though."

"Yeah," Sergei's words were slightly slurred. "What's the new assignment again?"

"Uh...some new course in demolitions and explosives, I think. We're posted in the mountains of Peru. Fucking stupid place to test out explosives if you ask me, but whatever."

Sergei snorted into his drink. "Nothing there but llamas, right!?" They both cracked up. "Where's Robert? Isn't he coming back for his drink?" Harry looked at the empty spot beside Sergei. An abandoned orange drink with a tiny umbrella marked his absence.

"Nah," laughed Tate, "He's making out with some blonde tart in the corner."

"Is he? Lucky bastard!" Tate laughed hard and propped her elbow on his shoulder. She lit a cigarette, pulled it away from her lips and regarded it contemptuously. Sergei watched her, a curious light in his eyes.

"What's it like being a little girl again?" Tate's expression didn't change.

"Not real."

"Don't you mean surreal?"

"No."

"Freak."

"Dick."

"Lesbian!"

"Am not! Manwhore!"

"That's a compliment!" Sergei laughed uproariously as Tate glared at him in mock anger. "Oh, go on and finish that will you! It's nearly midnight, and you're barely tipsy!" Tate swirled her pint around, before downing it.

She eyed the pub suspiciously. "This place gives me the creeps. What's it called again? The Dead Man?"

Sergei glared at her. "No, the Hanged Man. S'pposed to be a haunted house not far from here. Lil' hottie tart back at the Leaky Cauldron told me about it. She said You-Know-Who was born there, or lived there, or something."

"Huh? What's a You-Know-Who?"

"You know, Voldemort...Tom Riddle - big, bad, British wizard back in the seventies."

"Oh yeah...geez, the way the Brits go on about him, you'd think the world didn't exist outside of the UK. What's with the You-Know-Who bullshit?"

"Oh that...I don't know, that girl at the pub was calling him that. She seemed pretty upset when I said Voldemort. Kind of grows on you."

"If you say so. I think I'll stick Brit history back on the "Do Not Care" shelf of my brain. Oy, another pint over here!"

"Oh c'mon T., he was pretty damned bad. I mean, think it over - every bad wizard these days is immediately referred to as a Death Eater. That man definitely left his mark." He grinned crookedly. "Want to go visit his old house?"

Tate seemed to briefly weigh the options in her head. "Definitely not. England's got a rep for some of the most active Dark Arts folks...I really don't feel like testing it. Watch us walk in on some Death Eater sacrifice. Harry, from his perch, noticed a hooded figure stop in its tracks as the words 'Death Eater' left Tate's mouth.

"Aw, fuck those Death Eaters," crowed Sergei, slurring more profoundly. The hooded figure remained where it was, mere feet away from the two people. Harry gripped the bar nervously. Tate seemed to notice the additional presence, just as Sergei picked up speed. Her eyes darted left and right, and she drew her eyebrows together.

"Fuckin' morons, they are," he spat, contemptuously, "They keep us in money, and that's all right...I mean, its not like we'd have cases to watch wi'out their ridiculous shit, but Jesus. Can you imagine your life if you did nothing but serve a dead man on bended knee?" Tate clamped a long white hand over his tanned one. Sergei's expression hardened as she caught his eye, and any indication that he was inebriated vanished immediately.

His voice dropped to a whisper. "What is it?" Tate increased the pressure on his hand, and Harry watched as the hooded figure began to shuffle forward again, but at a much quicker pace.

"Go get Bryan and Cody," she said softly, but in an urgent tone, "I'll find Robert." With surprising speed, the two darted in different directions, and Harry's spirit form was pulled right through the bar behind Tate, as she agilely threaded her way through the crowded floor. She came to a halt near the wall, and Harry spied long, dark hands caressing the blond hair of a woman. Abruptly, Robert's face appeared over her shoulder. He and Tate regarded each other for the space of a few seconds before Robert made a hasty apology to the blonde, who called him quite a rude name as he disentangled himself from her. He fell into quick step beside Tate, and the two pushed through the increasingly congested floor and burst out of the double doors. The other three men were waiting outside.

"I felt it too," the sandy haired man said to Tate...Bryan, Harry realized, recalling his picture. The five people exchanged calculating glances.

"Can we risk Apparating here?" asked Robert.

"You know we can't - T. and Sergei aren't old enough, even if we take them with us...and we're too close to the Muggles."

"We'll have to hoof it then. Let's get going...fast." As one, they turned to the left and walked swiftly away from the pub. Harry watched curiously as they fell into a V-shaped formation, Bryan at the center. It was only a short walk to the nearest train station, and they covered the distance at high speed. Once in the depot, they flattened themselves against a wall and waited patiently, but the guarded looks in their eyes betrayed the palpable tension that permeated the atmosphere. A lone muggle security guard was nodding off at his post. Other than that, the station was completely devoid of human activity.

It didn't last long.

There was a series of short, staccato pops that echoed loudly in the empty station, and Harry jumped back suddenly at the sight of four new arrivals, all in black velvet cloaks. Their hoods were pulled tight around the faces, concealing their features. Harry rolled his eyes. If the Death Eaters were going for anonymity, they needed a new tag. The whole heavy cloak, shrouded face thing was so old, not to mention conspicuous. Subtlety was definitely not a valued quality amongst the more evil wizards of the world. Ironically, the shortest figure of the group stepped forth first. The distinctly subordinate manner in which the other three held themselves made it clear he was their superior.

"Good evening," the figure drawled softly, a dangerous edge to his voice. "I trust you are enjoying your stay in rural England?" Harry didn't have to see his face. He'd know that voice anywhere.

"Oh sure," Robert answered, "Nothing quite like the simple countryside. Can we help you with something?" To Harry's great shock, considering what he'd previously heard of Robert's thick Spanish accent, he'd managed to adopt a very convincing Bristol dialect.

The elder Malfoy removed his hood, and Harry blinked. Lucius Malfoy was under a facial glamour - but it had been badly performed. He still bore the pale, pinched face and trademark stormy grey Malfoy eyes. It clashed horribly with his new short, spiky, brownish red hair. A conspicuous "beauty mark", for lack of a better word, was positioned just under his left nostril. Harry wondered vaguely if it had been drawn on with a quill.

"How very polite of you," Malfoy said condescendingly, looking the company over as if they were street urchins. His eyes lingered upon Tate, the tallest of the five, who regarded him with an apathetic glaze over her eyes. She really did look absolutely ludicrous in such a skirt (especially considering it was paired with combat boots), and Harry bit back a laugh as Malfoy's voice reminded him of the seriousness of the situation. "We were simply wondering what five blatantly magical folk were doing in Little Hangleton."

"Free country, isn't it?" commented Bryan, in an easygoing tone laced with a thin veneer of ice. A British accent coated the German accent of Bryan's usual tongue, and Harry realized they all must've been going with it - which, in fact, they were.

"In a manner of speaking. It -"

"Right then," Sergei interrupted, "Now that we've established the fact no excuse is necessary, what say we call it an evening?"

The smirk on Lucius Malfoy's face vanished. A cold exterior of intense malice shone on his pointed face as his eyes flashed silver fury. "Strange," he said lightly, "That one would find such an...off color group in the Hanged Man. For the most part, wizards do not frequent the birthplace of the world's most infamous wizard. And it can only be described as...suspect when wizard children discuss delicate issues in a location of such repute."

"Now see here, bud," snapped Cody, "Just who do you think you're calling children?" Bryan put a light hand on Cody's forearm, and he quelled immediately. Instinctively, the five moved closer together.

"We don't want trouble," Tate said evenly. Lucius raked his gaze over her. The look in his eyes would have made any girl feel dirty and frightened, but Tate held her ground and betrayed no reaction. Neither did her male counterparts, although Harry would've been livid had it been Hermione in her position. Lucius raised an eyebrow when the tactic didn't work.

"Yeah," added Sergei, "So why don't you just get the hell out of here?"

"I'm afraid I can't do that," Lucius smiled. The opportunity for peace had passed.

"Buddy, if you come a single step closer," Robert ground out in a threatening tone, "We will alert the Ministry that Death Eater activity has been sighted." Lucius curled his lip in a snarl, but Robert continued in the same hard voice. "That's right, I know what you are. You don't stand a chance against the five of us - I guarantee that. I think you need to weigh your options." The faces of Special Team Halide discarded their apathetic, glazed masks as one. Intimidation and a veiled promise of violence all but colored the air around them. Lucius shifted his weight, as though he'd considered retreat and then thought better of it. The three flanking Death Eaters began to edge away in mute apprehension.

"Hey! What's going on here?" The unexpected arrival of the muggle security officer took the collective focus off of Lucius Malfoy for a split second.

"Crucio."

Cody doubled over and hit the ground in a convulsive agony. Complete pandemonium erupted. Simultaneously, Tate and Sergei dove at Lucius, only to be knocked back against the wall by Stunning Spells. Hexes and curses filled the air, and Harry jumped back a step as the fight escalated. The Death Eaters formed a wall of protection around Malfoy, who still held his wand on Cody, smirking with unmistakable pleasure. The Death Eaters, while they were most certainly not inept, were unsurprisingly overconfident. Robert easily threaded his way through their circle of protection. He ducked a Stun, which went spiraling into the Death Eater advancing on him from behind. Robert reached Malfoy just as Sergei leapt forward and brought one of the larger men crashing to the ground.

"Take it off!" shouted Robert, and he punched him hard in the face, causing the older man to stumble back several steps. But Malfoy held his wand tight, his eyes gleaming brightly in excitement. Something snapped - Robert's face had contorted in pure hatred, and Lucius was stumbling. Robert had broken Malfoy's nose. Bryan leapt between the two, and wrenched the offensive wand out of the older man's iron grip. The curse didn't stop. Bryan raised the wand over his knee and snapped it in two, which abruptly ended the Cruciatus Curse that had Cody twitching and screaming on the ground. He flung the two pieces of wood away disgustedly, and disappeared into the roiling fury of bodies.

With nine people rolling about and shouting, Harry could barely see anyone definitively for more than a few seconds. Sergei managed to pull himself from the melee and disarm the remaining three Death Eaters with a well aimed Expelliarmus. He flung the three wands onto the train rails, just as a loud screaming whistle and barrage of bright lights signified the train's arrival into the station. The muggle security guard was still frozen solid next to Harry, with his mouth wide open in complete shock at the unfolding events. The train's whistle screamed shrilly, and the encroaching mechanical grinding of gears seemed to bring the guard back to his senses. He fumbled blindly for his gun.

Forgetting momentarily where he was, Harry lunged at the guard. His hands passed right through the short, portly man.

The guard gave a shrill, terrified squeak that sounded a lot like 'stop', but it yielded no results. With a very shaky grip, the man fired a shot into the crowd. As it split the air, a high-pitched scream of agony drew from the fight and tapered off into the second resounding BANG. Harry heard a strong voice shout something that sounded like "amnia track us", but with all the noise he couldn't be sure.

Everyone hit the ground. By the second gunshot, the Death Eaters had Disapparated. By the third, Lucius Malfoy had Disapparated as well. A masculine voice screamed for the security guard to stop shooting, but nothing could pierce the thick shield of terror the muggle man had thrown up. He continued to empty bullets blindly into the air, his eyes squeezed shut in fear.

As the sixth gunshot rang out, the train lumbered to a stop. The seventh marked the opening of the metal sliding doors. The eighth and final gunshot was accompanied by the guards' terrified scream as Sergei advanced upon him.

"Obliviate!"

And the security guard was left standing in an empty station. He blinked his eyes twice, shook his head, and returned his gun to its holster. He was about to turn back toward his station, wondering why he'd left it in the first place, when he noticed a glint of light over toward the wall. Curiously, he walked closer to stare at it. Harry watched him from behind the thick glass of the train window, coated in fingerprints. The train lurched away, just as the security guard ran from blood spattered area and threw up.

Harry stood, silent, invisible, over the five compatriots. The entire fight had occurred in the space of two minutes - and the results were overwhelming. One hundred and twenty seconds (give or take) of sparring with enemies widely regarded as the most dangerous human threats in the present world...the good side had been winning too, Harry knew that. Perhaps another sixty seconds and the Death Eaters would have been incapacitated and probably carted off to Azkaban (at least, they would have been were Cornelius Fudge not the Minister of Magic, Harry reminded himself bitterly). The scant ten seconds of interference had destroyed everything. Ten insignificant seconds...eight tiny bits of metal...and here he was, looking at the spoils. Tate and Robert lay prone on the floor of the compartment, Sergei and Bryan bent over them. Tate was violently screaming and gasping for breath.

"Be still, T.," whispered Sergei, as he prostrated himself over her chest to keep her from sitting up. Her legs looked twisted and mutilated in the flickering lighting. They were, quite literally, coated from ankle to thigh in thick red rivulets and smears. Both her legs were twitching, as the overloaded nerves sought expression. Robert was quiet and pale, as Bryan fought to pry his hand off his chest. When he finally succeeded in tearing Robert's hand away, a great fountain of blood erupted, and Harry gasped in shock as several drops spurted through his shade like form. Bryan swore and clamped his hands over it. Blood coated the floor, the seats, the poles...great splashes of it everywhere.

"He hit an artery," Bryan whispered softly, in Cody's general direction. Harry tore his eyes away from the ripped and ruined flesh. Cody was slumped exhaustively in a seat, blood running from his nose and left ear. He was staring at the scene of emergency in fear, but there was a vacant glaze over his eyes...almost as if he'd just been shaken awake from a nightmare, but hadn't fully awoken yet. He began viciously searching his pockets. Bryan looked at him hopefully.

"Cody? All right there? Any Insta-Mend?"

"Yeah, but only one flask. Not enough to stabilize them both." He tossed the silver flask to Bryan. Bryan uncorked it quickly and poured it over Robert's chest wound. Thick steam rose from the wound, and the flow of blood slackened considerably, but not entirely.

"Call in reinforcements. Tell 'em we need assistance and an exit, immediately." Cody caught the cell phone Bryan tossed to him and dialed quickly. Tate's screams dwindled into thick, painful gasps as Bryan tried to assess the damage to her legs. Bryan leaned into Sergei and whispered quietly to him. Sergei drained of all color, and he quickly prostrated his entire upper body over both of Tate's legs, sliding his arms under her knees to apply more pressure against the flow of blood. Her eyes widened and flashed in pain. A scream seemed to die in her throat and escape as a pained, exhausted gasp. The train lurched to the left and sent a great pool of bright red blood veering off toward the wall. Bryan clamped his own hands over Robert's shoulder. Cody caught Bryan's eye.

"How many?" he mouthed.

"Two, one torso, one shoulder," Bryan said sharply, head inclined toward Robert. He jerked his head toward Tate. "Six, all legs." Cody stared at him in disbelief.

Even above Tate's labored breathing, Robert's quick, shallow gasps, Sergei's words of comfort, and the sheer noise of the train as it shot down the tracks, Harry could hear the tinny voice on the receiving end of the cell phone against Cody's ear.

"Sitrep."

"I.D. Mercury, group Halide. We have a man down," shouted Cody, taking in hyper, tiny swallows of air as though he couldn't get the words out fast enough, "Man down, require urgent assistance. Radium, double ventral gunshot to left shoulder with arterial bleeding, status urgent. Platinum, multiple ventral and dorsal gunshots to both legs, with venal bleeding, status immediate. Mercury, extended exposure to Cruciatus Curse; probable head trauma and internal hemorrhage, status delayed. Repeat, man down, require urgent assistance."

The train passed through a glitch in the underground tracks, and there were violent shards of bright blue electricity that rocketed past the windows. The mechanical screaming of the rails was deafening. The train began to slow, in anticipation of the next stop. The lights flickered out momentarily, as they so often do in trains. When they came back on, Cody had gone ghost-white, his eyes veritable dinner saucers in his head.

"What's wrong?"

"He's laughing," Cody said incredulously, as though he couldn't believe the words coming out of his own mouth. "The operator...he's laughing at us." He dropped the phone as though it had been electrified.

"Jesus Christ," whispered Sergei, his bright blue eyes shining with electric fear, like two pools of reflective ice. There was a long, suffocating pause.

"We can't go to a hospital," said Bryan, "Too risky."

"Well, we've got to do something," shrieked Sergei, nearly to himself. "Robert saw this coming all along...remember? He said there was an insider. He said disaster was coming...two years ago."

"Shut up, Sergei," Bryan said forcefully, "There are more important issues at hand."

"Can't you take someone with you if you Apparate?" asked Cody, squeezing the bridge of his nose. Bryan shot him a look of disbelief, and he and Sergei exchanged a worried glance. Harry realized the Cruciatus Curse had in fact taken a very serious toll on Cody's train of thought.

"Of course you can Cody, you can take one person along. But Sergei and T. aren't legal. Only you, Robert, and I can Disapparate, and I think its clear he's not going anywhere. And I'll be damned if we're leaving Sergei behind."

"Never leave your wounded and never split up," Robert mumbled dreamily. The three conscious men looked fearfully in his direction.

"We're running out of time."

"I know," Bryan answered, "We've got three options. One, we go to a hospital and risk questions. Lots of unnecessary questions that I'm no position to answer. We also risk the muggle doctors fucking up the job."

"That's out," gritted Sergei, smoothing the hair out of Tate's wide and staring eyes. It plastered thickly against her forehead in wet clumps.

"Two, we ride the train back to King's Cross and take the Hogwarts Express to Scotland, and pray Albus Dumbledore stays at Hogwarts over summer. That's a three hour trip though...half an hour if we speed up the train... and neither of them are going to last that long. Well, T. probably will, but I think she'd like to have her legs when this is over." Cody drew his brows together tightly.

"Just how in the hell did she sustain six gunshots to the legs? That doesn't make any sense."

"She magnetized herself," Sergei said shortly, looking away from Cody whose eyes grew huge.

"She what??" Before Sergei could reply, Bryan cut in angrily.

"Option three. We pray that Unforgivable didn't cause you any major damage," he locked eyes with Cody, "And you perform surgery right now."

"Go to Dumbledore," cried Harry furiously. Of course, no one paid any attention to him. Cody was staring incredulously at Bryan.

"I'm not qualified for this."

"Bollocks," spat Bryan, "You could do it with your eyes closed."

"I'm not qualified to operate on my brothers. It's too personal - that's one of the first rules in the medical profession."

"Oh, fuck the medical profession," shouted Sergei, "This is about us!"

"They need blood," Cody said mechanically, "You can't transfigure that. I'd say two, maybe three pints each at the least."

"Then we'll all give them some," Sergei promised. Cody looked stricken and terrified.

"There's no other way, Cody," Bryan put in gently. "Robert's already in shock. There's no time - he has a damaged artery and I give it ten minutes before he goes into cardiac arrest. If we go to a public hospital, we risk blowing everything Niels has worked so hard to keep under wraps for the past fifteen years. We're also putting the lives of our brothers in someone else's hands. I'd rather put them in yours. I trust you, Cody."

"Me too," whispered Sergei.

"Me too," croaked Tate. Her eyes were wide and glassy, staring at the ceiling.

"Me -," Robert choked over his vote of confidence, earning himself a bright sheen of blood on his upper lip. Harry swallowed a mouthful of vomit. Everything was getting to be too much.

Cody stood up immediately, and pulled the Emergency Stop cord. The train came screeching to an abrupt halt, and Harry flew forward, out of Tate's memories.

*** *** ***

An ocean away, the Burrow was quiet, surrounded by the pleasant sounds of evening.

Draco Malfoy jerked out of his slumber abruptly, and with enough force to scrape the rails of his rickety bed across the floor. His head was pounding, and his eyes felt strangely hot and dry, while his body was coated in an icy sweat that further irritated the already present goose bumps. In his sleepy haze, he couldn't escape a gasping moan of exhaustion. He pressed his hands against his eyes, willing the brilliant shocks of a receding electric force away.

What the hell was that? It certainly wasn't a nightmare. Nightmares didn't pulse through your veins like poison. Blood was roaring in his ears, and he forced his eyes open. A slight creak in the doorframe sent his senses reeling, and he whipped his head around blindly for the source of the noise. Draco strained against the darkness, but he couldn't make out anything beyond moonlit, amorphous shapes.

"Draco? Are you all right?"

Draco froze. "Ginny?" There was a soft pattering of light footsteps across the floorboards, and the weight of a body settled itself on his bed.

"Yeah, it's me," she said softly. "Are you all right?"

"Of course," Draco said stiffly, "Why wouldn't I be." His eyes were adjusting at a painfully slow pace. A glint of moonlight tinged with red was the only indication that Ginny was real.

"Well, I heard you cry out," she whispered, "And I thought something might be wrong."

"Cry out," asked Draco incredulously. "Me? Draco doesn't cry out. He's a man of -" Whatever had snapped Draco out of his sleep hit him again and drowned whatever he had planned to say. He gripped and twisted the bed sheets in a convulsive, pained fashion

Ginny's night eyes were much better than his, though she felt a severe imbalance of sorts, and she watched in mute terror as his eyes rolled into the back of his head until only the whites showed. His mouth hung open in a silent scream.

Everything...and at the same time, nothing...washed over him. He felt the presence of a far off soul probing at his mind, depositing memories and taking some away. A mix of enlightenment and distinct violation rolled into one breathtaking seizure. Draco groped at the receding tidal wave, passing his hands through imaginary water that rushed away from him, deep into recesses of his mind (where, coincidentally, it was always three o clock in the morning). He briefly felt the presence of the implanted, foreign memories...but as he came back to reality, they were driven from his thoughts.

Draco shook violently for a few moments, unable to control it, which infuriated him...and scared him more than a little. During his convulsion, Ginny had bolted to his edge of the bed and taken him in her arms. Although he didn't remember returning the gesture, his left arm was thrown over her shoulder, his right curled around her waist. As he came back to reality, he became aware of feathery light heat strokes that coursed through his entire body. Instinctively, he dismissed the sensations as an aftershock.

Ginny gently stroked his hair as his shaking began to slow. Molly Weasley usually employed that tactic whenever Ginny had a nightmare as a child, and it came naturally to her as a method of comfort.

Draco, still trembling, clutched at her back to steady himself. It was strangely comforting...this whole hugging routine. Never in his life had anyone comforted him so maternally before, not even when he was a child. Ginny was rocking him slightly - and to his great amazement, the chilling prickles of pain and fear began to fade away. With their departure, Draco was able to push away the overwhelming sense of urgency that had been flooding through his blood. Something important had happened - he knew this...but at the moment, he lacked the strength to care. The world around him ceased to exist.

And there was only Ginny. Ginny who'd cared enough to come up to his room when she'd heard him cry out. Ginny, who defended him against her brothers. Ginny who helped him in his ridiculous little side projects passed down from Tate. Since they'd met - really met, less than a month ago, Ginny had never judged him. She'd wiped his slate clean, and begun again from scratch. She never mentioned his family, never brought up any of his past cruelties.

Despite all these good points, Draco had never been able to pen her name down in his book of friends - a book that held only two names: Severus Snape, and Tate. For some reason, he didn't see fit to put Ginny in their category.

And in a heated rush, he realized why. In a flash, all thoughts of the previous seizure vacated his mind. The foreign memories that beckoned to him were put on hold. All that mattered was his skin in contact with hers. He could feel the life pulsing from her, the tiny rush of blood through her veins. His head rested in the crook of her neck, and he turned his face into her collarbone and breathed deeply. His heart skipped two, maybe even three beats when his body resonated with the shiver that lit up Ginny's backbone.

He didn't think. His conscience didn't interrupt him. He drew his face up, lightly brushing his lips upon the delicate framework of her throat.

"Ginny..." Her eyes were closed, lips trembling. Draco slid his left hand up to cup the back of her neck, and kissed her before he lost his nerve.

It was more than he ever expected. Liquid fire replaced his blood and shot through his veins at lightening speed. Her skin was silk, and he couldn't get enough of it. He crushed her to his own body, wrapping his arms around her in possessive claim, and his senses leaped another fifteen notches when she did the same. His lungs were bursting for breath, but he didn't care. Air wasn't what he needed.

The perfect moment lasted all of twenty six perfect seconds.

By the eighteenth second, Draco had successfully buried any remembrance of the pre-kiss occurrence.

By the twenty fifth second, Draco's mind had rejected the burial. Sensing a serious disturbance, Ginny pulled away from Draco in time to see his eyes roll back in his head. He shuddered violently, jaw slackened, only the whites of his eyes showing.

His convulsion only lasted a moment. His body jerked, rocking his head forward to rest on his chest. The entirety of the embedded memories washed over him. He saw everything in the space of a millisecond, yet it all made perfect, immediate sense.

"Draco..." whispered Ginny carefully. His head came up slowly.

"Oh Jesus," he whispered...and that was all he could say for the next twenty minutes.

"Oh Jesus."