Getting Closer to Fine

Fifteen

*

Tom was a very good innkeeper, Harry discovered. When famous guests appeared at his establishment in the wee hours with no luggage and looking distinctly worse for the wear, he asked no questions and offered no comments. He simply handled what needed to be handled, and managed to seem both friendly and completely uninterested whilst doing it.

Harry followed Tom up the creaky old stairs to a room on the second floor. It had been a bad idea to Apparate here, considering the state of his head, the kind of bad idea that could have taken him miles off-course, and brought about interestingly rearranged appendages. But he'd been tired and sick and unhappy and hadn't particularly cared. Now that he'd made it here, Harry was beginning to feel glad that he had made it here, with all parts in place and accounted for, even.

He leaned against the wall, only half watching as Tom readied the room, lighting lamps, turning down the bed, even starting a fire in the grate. The moment the door had closed behind Tom, Harry crossed to the bed and let himself fall across it. This was what he was here for - he'd wanted a bed, but hadn't wanted to go back to the flat. Ron might be there, and they would have to talk, and he wasn't up to that right now.

Hermione definitely wouldn't be there. For the first time in days, she wouldn't be there. He wasn't ready for that, either.

Harry took off his glasses, and, moving only an arm, put them as far from him on the bed as he could manage. He would sleep for eight hours - that magic number - and then he would get up, whether he felt like it or whether he didn't, and he would get on with things.

He went to sleep, and as had become usual, he didn't sleep well.

At some point in the night Harry got under the covers, but he never took off his shoes and he never turned out the lamp burning beside the bed. Which was good, because sometime in the night he woke up from a dream, bolt upright and sweating, and if the room had been dark it would've been that much worse until he'd realised where he was.

His body and his mind gave in, finally switching off and staying off for a sight more than eight hours.

*

The elves were in the kitchens. It was just after breakfast, and the huge room was full of small little bodies moving left, right, and everywhere. Dean stood in the doorway and thought mainly about sausages. Some of the best meals of his life had come out of this room. . . . He closed his eyes, breathing in. It would be unprofessional, wouldn't it, for his first words to Dobby to be on the subject of leftovers? Terribly unprofessional. But if he waited and brought it up at the end of the interview, surely everything would be cleared away. . . . With the feeling that this, indeed, was what it meant to be a grown-up, Dean shut the wonderful sizzly smell out of his brain and began looking intently at the elves, to see which was Dobby.

It didn't take very long. Dobby was the one wearing all the clothes, and oh, what clothes. Dean's eyes were dazzled by clashes of texture and colour and pattern. He crossed the room. "Dobby?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Hi. I'm Dean Thomas. I was in Gryffindor a couple years ago." Dobby nodded vigorously, as if he remembered. Dean was surprised, and a little pleased. "I'm an Auror now, I work with Harry Potter."

Dobby's entire body perked up at the name. "You is working with Master Harry?" The elf looked round Dean, as if hoping to find Harry hidden behind him.

"Yes. We need some information, and he told me you were just the elf to come to."

Dobby was obviously tremendously flattered, and - Dean would've thought it impossible - drew himself up even more. "Anything for Harry Potter and the associate of Harry Potter, sir."

Dean looked around. "Is there somewhere we can talk quietly?"

"Yes, sir!" Dobby indicated that Dean should follow him, and Dean did. They crossed the kitchen, busy elves navigating smoothly around them as they did so, and went out a door to the right of the great hearth. Dean had made his fair share of midnight food raids over the years, so he was familiar with the main kitchen, but now they were in a part of the house-elves' domain that he had never seen. The corridor was narrow and twisty, but well-lit by torches, and they passed a lot of closed doors, a room with alpine heaps of laundry, and finally went up a flight of stairs and out a small stone door.

Grey winter sky overhead, and beautiful spring-like warmth all around: Dobby had led him to a greenhouse.

"Is this suiting, sir?"

"It's perfect," Dean said, even though it wasn't. He would have preferred a smaller room, where he could see all four walls and be certain beyond a doubt that he and Dobby were alone. Here tomato plants and asparagus stalks grew tall enough to shadow a man, much less a house-elf - hell, one of those raspberry bushes could conceal a house-elf. "Thank you. I'll just do a distortion charm, too, to cover our conversation in case anyone happens to walk in."

Dobby nodded, his giant green eyes solemn, while Dean performed the charm. He re-pocketed his wand, and snagged a small, dirty stool to sit on, so he wouldn't have to keep looking so far down to look the elf in the eyes.

"Can I get you a seat as well, Dobby?"

Dobby hesitated. "Dobby. . . Dobby will sit, sir, but Dobby will get his own seat." He bustled over to a stool that was easily as big as he was, brought it close to Dean, and climbed up on it.

Dean planned to take Dobby into full confidence, because Harry trusted Dobby unreservedly. That sort of trust from Harry was hard to come by, and worth something. He wondered if he would ever have it; if he and Harry would ever be that kind of team, if Harry would ever put himself utterly in Dean's hands.

He himself did the reverse every day, of course. Even when it didn't feel right, it somehow did, because Harry was Harry and it really couldn't be any other way. Like right now, today, when Harry was obviously sick, possibly poisoned, and off doing something outside of orders and surely dangerous, here Dean was, doing his part.

And Dobby was waiting. "There's an elf mixed up in some business that isn't very nice," Dean said. "We don't want any harm to come to him; we just want to know who he's working for."

"Many masters is using house-elves for bad things," Dobby said. He sighed, and his ears drooped. "And many house-elves is not caring."

"Because they love their masters?"

"Yes," Dobby said, nodding, his eyes sad and his squeaky little voice serious. "But some house-elves is too good at doing what they is told. And they is not seeing why they should care."

Dean understood. Every elf might have a master (well, almost), but every elf also had its own mind, and some elves were good and kind and some were not. Dean knew how much Dobby loved freedom; he thought, looking at him now, that the elf might love goodness even more. "We don't want any harm to come to this elf," Dean said. "We just want to know who he's working for. If I tell you his name, can you find out who his master is?"

"Dobby will find out," the elf said.

*

Dean had never been in this room back when it had been Dumbledore's office, but he felt safe in assuming there hadn't been quite this much plaid about the place then. But perhaps nothing else had changed; there were all sorts of shiny silvery gadgets around the room that didn't make him think of Professor McGonagall, somehow, and the wall was covered in paintings that had surely been there forever.

He settled into a tartan-upholstered chair. "Thank you for seeing me, Professor McGonagall," he said. "And for allowing me to see Dobby."

She waved a hand. "Not at all. It makes me happy to see my former students gainfully employed. Biscuit?"

"Thanks," Dean said, reaching a hand into the tin. The house-elves had indeed cleared breakfast away by the time he and Dobby had got done talking, and while Dobby had pressed food on him afterward, it had just been tea and scones, and who could fill up properly without at least a little protein? Of course this wasn't a sausage either, but it was food, and how many people kept sausages in their offices?

Not enough, he decided, nearly cracking a tooth on a Ginger Newt.

Pleased to see him or not, the Headmistress wasn't one for spending a lot of time on chit-chat. "What can I do for you, Mr. Thomas?"

Dean hesitated. He'd come up here on a whim. He wanted to speak with the Care of Magical Creatures teacher, or the Potions Master, or the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. . . at least, he thought he did. He didn't know who any of those people even were, anymore. Professor McGonagall could see to introductions, of course, but still. . . a person wasn't trustworthy just by virtue of working at Hogwarts. That was a fact.

But it couldn't hurt to at least find out. . . ."Professor?" he asked. "Who's teaching Care of Magical Creatures now?"

McGonagall sighed. "Well that you should ask that question, Thomas. After Professor Grubbly-Plank was taken from us so suddenly -"

"Oh no," Dean said. He remembered her, she'd been an all right sort. "Was it one of the animals?"

"No, no," the professor shook her head, "a friend of hers came into some money, I believe, and they've gone to the West Indies to study the effects of Shrake on local fishing or some such."

Or the effects of fruity rum drinks and steel band music on elderly witches, Dean thought with a grin.

"As I was saying, we were left with a vacancy that's only just been filled. I suspect his family doesn't even know yet." The Headmistress smiled. "Our newest member of faculty is another Gryffindor - Charlie Weasley."

*

Bundled up, Dean crossed the grounds to the caretaker's cottage with a bounce in his step. This was the best sort of coincidence, the sort that only happened occasionally in this job but made you feel like things were really falling into place when it did. He'd never actually met Charlie Weasley, but it was hard to share a House with Ron and Ginny and Fred and George and Percy without feeling like you knew all of the Weasleys quite well.

Dean knew a few things about Charlie: he was a good Quidditch player, he knew a lot about dragons, and Ron worshipped him just a little bit less than he did his brother Bill. (This last bit he'd got from Ginny.) He was as trustworthy a magical creatures expert as Dean could hope to find, then, and if Dean weren't a six-foot-something grown-up, he might just have found himself skipping on his way across the grass.

It wasn't until after Dean knocked on the cottage door that he thought, oh Christ. He'd got so used to being around Ron, whom Ginny had thoroughly schooled into staying out of her love life, that he'd forgot her other brothers might see him first and foremost as someone who'd dated their little sister, and not made her terribly happy.

But that was okay. That was what made his luck here today real, and kept all of this from being the sort of thing he'd shortly wake up from.

The person who opened the door was one-hundred-percent Weasley, hair and freckles and all. Dean introduced himself, mentioning his name, his job, Harry Potter, Gryffindor, and Charlie's youngest brother, and leaving Charlie's sister completely out of it.

"Nice to meet you," Charlie said. "Step over the Diricawl, and come on in."

The room was littered with boxes. Charlie said that he had a teakettle, somewhere, he was sure, but Dean told him not to worry about it. "I only need a minute, really, I'd just like to get your opinion on something."

Charlie gave him a 'go on' gesture.

"Dragon's blood has come up lately in a case we're on, and I was wondering - if someone had a lot of it, I mean a lot of it, what would you guess they'd want to do with it?"

"Hmmm," Charlie said, tapping table with a finger. "There's tonnes of things they might want it for, I should think."

Dean nodded. "Yeah, that's the problem. We've looked through all these books, and the possibilities just go on and on. That's why I thought, if I could just ask someone knowledgeable, get their opinion, you know, gut reaction, maybe it would help."

"No pressure, eh? Let's see then. . . my first thought is, someone could use it to kick off an explosion. A big one. Or they could power any of a thousand spells, make 'em self-sustaining, even." Charlie thought a bit more, tapping that finger again. "I don't think there's a creature alive with more magic in it. Those dragons back in Romania probably have more magic in their front claws than we could ever dream of." He gave Dean a lopsided grin. "Well, me and you, anyway. That partner of yours, now. . . ."

"Yeah," Dean said, smiling a little back.

"It doesn't generally take a lot of dragon's blood to do anything. So I think. . . I think you need to be thinking big."

Something cold skittered up Dean's spine. When he left a few minutes later, he was in no danger of skipping.

*

Harry had never seen the village by the light of day, but he didn't have any trouble finding his way. There was no chance of mistaking the house; it sat on its hill, still lofty and imposing, despite all the work done by time and decay. And he knew where the church and its graveyard would be, just at the bottom of that hill, so Harry began to walk, letting the dead house guide him.

It would be dusk, soon.

He had Apparated from one pub to another - or technically, to a spot behind another - because he knew that magic would only get him so close. The Ministry owned the house now, and while the graves in their yard were still the property of the Church of England, he knew that they too would be well protected.

As they should be. If Voldemort had will and means, if he had created or borrowed flesh, if he was a spirit on the air, he would come to this place, sooner or later. And if he had what Harry was afraid he had, the stone that had once been Nagini's (and if Voldemort didn't have it, where was it? Not in the jar where it should have been, and Harry couldn't make himself believe that phoenix flame could turn rock to ash, he simply couldn't), he would come here to try to work one of his perverted miracles. Again.

Harry didn't have a strategy and he hadn't worked out any tactics, but that was all right; he'd got by without them before. Often. His life had allowed for very little in terms of forward planning. And this time, at least, he wasn't dragging anyone else into anything. No-one would get hurt if things went wrong.

He curled his hands in his pockets. No, he did have a plan, and it was clear and succinct. Go, see if anyone's been mucking about, deal with it if they have.

No outline points, no charts, no timetables, no diagrams. She might not count it a plan, but it was good enough for him.

He reached the foot of the hill, and the church. It was small, stone, and old. It seemed larger in his memory, but maybe that was just an illusion brought on by fear and dark and shadow. Harry walked around the building, through the gravelled, empty carpark, and stepped out onto short winter grass. The cemetery was bare and almost golden in the late afternoon sun; the yew trees were still there, still dark and forbidding, but the grass and the vines that had been tall and thick were now dead and dry.

It made it easier. It was a graveyard, but it no longer looked liked a place where someone had died.

He opened the heavy, rusty gate and stepped through. It closed behind him with a clank, and something moved at the back of his mind, an urgent insistent little thought that wanted to push itself to the front and take up all the space in his brain, if only he'd let it. You don't want to be here. You want to be somewhere else.

Harry pushed it aside, and kept walking. That belonged to the Ministry, he was sure.

It was easy to spot the Riddles' headstones. Theirs were the tallest, six feet of solid marble each, and by far the most ostentatious. Harry walked towards them quickly, weaving around graves, and then it hit him.

He'd been expecting something else, he'd known that Ministry mind-trick wouldn't be all, but still, it took him by surprise. Not a tickle this time, but a pounding, and not just his head, but everywhere, his blood, his limbs, his heart. . . . He had to go. Ron needed him, needed him right now. He had to go. Hermione needed him. . . .

Harry shook his head, hard. He'd actually started to leave - he'd taken himself almost to the gate. He would have to do better than this. Back to Tom Riddle, Sr's grave he went, slowly this time, shouting down the thoughts that didn't belong inside his head until they were simply quiet background chatter, indecipherable and able to be ignored. Beside the headstone, Harry pushed himself to his knees. It was a little like moving through water.

Time to think. What else would the Ministry have done? Probably not much, Harry decided, at least, not much aimed at the general public. They wouldn't need to. He knew what he was dealing with, and how to handle it, and he was still having to actively push down the desire to get the hell out of here. Anything more - anything really enthusiastic - would be more specific, more targeted. Probably triggered only by a Dark Mark.

All the same, Harry was careful to stay just outside the imaginary line running from headstone to footstone. He wouldn't physically cross onto the grave itself unless he absolutely had to.

He didn't expect to find evidence of a great bloody cauldron being dragged about, because nothing ever really happened the same way twice. But then when it came right down to it, he probably wasn't going to find so much as a muddy bootprint - spirits tended not to leave those, and figments of his paranoid imagination definitely didn't.

And that's what he should want this to be, wasn't it? That's what he should want to find. Nothing. Nothing physical, nothing magical, nothing at all. He should be hoping against hope for it, but if he didn't find anything, what would he do? Keep on going, keep on looking, wherever he could think to look?

Probably. That was the problem with things that were all in your head. There was no way to know when to stop.

"Lovely day, isn't it?"

Harry whipped his head round. Standing at the cemetery gate was an old man with thick, white hair and a long, black coat. Slowly, warily, a hand curling around the wand in his pocket, Harry stood.

"Yes," he said, and then added feelingly, "but cold."

"We get very few visitors," the man said, and even though he wasn't close enough to read his expression, Harry could hear the curiosity plain in his voice, "it's good to see someone paying their respects."

The only reply Harry could think of was an 'mmm,' but it was fairly impossible to make that carry halfway across a graveyard. He didn't want to move, and run the risk of undoing the work he'd done in getting here; neither was the man was making any effort to open the gate and come closer. Because he knew better, knew the cemetery would mess with his head? Harry would have thought Muggles wouldn't consciously recognise the effects of the Ministry's spells, and would therefore never realise the need to be wary.

"I'm just on my way to open up the church - I'm the vicar, forgot to say - you're welcome to come inside and warm up, if you like." There was a pause. "When you're ready, of course."

"Thank you," Harry said, polite and noncommittal. The man waved a hand in farewell, and headed down the short path towards the church.

Maybe he was the vicar, and maybe he wasn't. Harry supposed that if any Muggle would realise there was something funny about the place, it would be the man in charge of it. But even if he really was the vicar, that didn't necessarily mean he was in possession of his own mind. . . . Didn't vicars usually go around quoting scripture? Didn't they mention God at least once in every conversation? Harry hadn't met all that many, but he thought they probably did.

Harry turned back to the grave, wondering if he were being spied on through stained glass. He knelt, the ground cold through his jeans, and began searching the ground with eyes only, not touching anything. He moved along the outside of the grave, from head to foot, looking, looking, looking -

There was nothing to see. Nothing but dead winter grass, brown and ugly.

Harry rocked back on his heels. So, on to stage two. Ha. Stage two: maybe he did have outline points, after all. There were a few ways of testing for evidence of magic that were standard practise among Aurors; he was partial to a particular sensing spell, one he knew to be thorough.

Keeping his wand in his pocket, out of sight, Harry closed his eyes, and did the spell. Inside his head was a steady loud hum of information; there was nothing in the world for him but this plot of earth and the things that moved on it, within it, through it. Insects, worms, the occasional small animal. . . .

And nothing that didn't belong. Harry did the spell again.

And again.

Nothing.

Harry steadied himself, slowed his breathing, and said the words and waved his wand one last time. He put everything he had into it; when he stopped, he felt like a twisted-out dishrag, and he couldn't see anything but stars.

But he didn't have to see to know. There was something there, and it was ugly.

Of course there is, Harry thought, stamping down on the little thrill running through him. Some pretty unpleasant Dark Magic had been worked on this spot, seven or eight years ago. That was the one thing he should've been expecting to find a trace of today. All those years had simply made it very hard to sense.

Or was this something else, something newer? Something made so hard to sense by being very well hidden?

Tired, very, very tired, Harry leaned back against a neighboring stone. After a moment he shifted, bringing his head to his knees. So which was it? Clue, or red herring?

In his head, a voice that wasn't his said very sensibly, Well, Harry, maybe it would help to think about the reasons you're here, and whether they're good ones.

All right, he thought back, all right.

So why was he here?

Because a stone snake had spoken to him, and told him that what was supposed to be over wasn't over.

Because idiots were wandering around with things that had once belonged to someone very dangerous, and somebody smart had wanted them caught and out of their hair.

Because people were buying something powerfully magical in the name of the Dark Mark, and he had no idea why.

Because he didn't feel right in his head these days, and if he'd learned one thing in his life, it was that when things didn't feel right, they usually weren't.

Right.

Harry clambered to his feet, one hand on a tombstone for balance. To the voice in his head, he thought, Thanks.

*

Hermione had very definite views on when it was and was not acceptable for one's friends to enter one's place of employment. If one's friend was bearing a missive from the Queen, the Prime Minister, the Minister for Magic, or one's mother?

Acceptable.

If one's friend wandered in with no apparent purpose, sat upon one's desk, and inexpertly began turning one's inkwell into a pepperpot?

Unacceptable, obviously.

Hermione made an annoyed sound, and moved various parchments to safety. Ron elevated the pepperpot, and shook pepper out into his hand. It squelched.

"What do you want, Ron?" She was only allowing his continued presence because it was five-thirty, and her boss had gone home. But she was meeting Roger and Sally-Ann and everyone at six, for a dinner-and-work session that would probably last well into hours of the night when she ought to be in bed, so if Ron actually had a point, it was time he got to it.

"Oh, that's friendly," Ron said.

"But apt," Hermione said. "What is it?"

"Harry," he said. "Is he at your place?"

Hermione schooled her face, keeping it very normal and very, very uninterested. "Why would he be?" Bother, she didn't do nearly as well with her voice - too high, too much emphasis on the 'why.'

Unsurprisingly, though, really, Ron didn't seem to notice. "Because I was hoping he was kipping down with you."

"Excuse me?" Hermione said, higher still, as her world spun crazily and tried to settle itself into one where Ron wanted she and Harry sharing a bed. If she hadn't been a bit sensitive on the subject at the moment, she would've realised that wasn't exactly what he meant.

Ron sighed. "I haven't seen him in two days, and he didn't leave under the best circumstances." He put down her new pepperpot, and wiped his hands on his trousers, leaving two dark smudges. "So if he's not with you -"

"What do you mean, not the best circumstances?"

Ron told her.

"Oh, no," Hermione whispered. Everything felt tight, too tight, and her hands shook with it. She'd spent the past two days pointedly not dialing their flat, pointedly not stopping by, and - with a little less success - pointedly not waiting for her own phone to ring or for Hedwig to swoop through her window. And this, what she'd missed was this.

She wanted to blame Ron, for being with Sarah and setting the whole thing in motion - and he looked like he expected her to, like he blamed himself. But that wasn't fair, and she wouldn't.

She wouldn't blame herself, either, for fighting with Harry earlier on that day. She wouldn't accuse herself of lighting the touchpaper. She wouldn't.

"Piers Polkiss," she said, "is a prat of the first order."

Ron made no argument.

"And the way the Ministry handles Muggle relations, the way it sweeps every mess under the rug -" Hermione stopped, unable to focus long enough to say everything that could be said on that. She looked up at Ron; he was looking down at his hands, one thumb fiddling against the other. "Ron?" She hesitated: this was her other best friend, she could tell him why Harry hadn't been at her place, why he hadn't contacted her and why he wouldn't. She could tell him, and she probably should if they were going to do anything about this, develop any sort of plan . . . .

"Ron, is Sarah all right?"

Ron didn't look up, didn't meet her eyes. "Yeah. We found Piers down at his pub, and she took care of everything. I couldn't decide whether a memory charm would be the best thing I could do or the absolute worst. . . didn't know what she was thinking. . . . But Sarah knew what to do." He smiled briefly. "She told Piers exactly what she would tell their parents about him if he so much as looked like he was going to open his mouth, and what she would tell his flatmate, too. And then she pointed at me and said that I had my own ideas, and she nodded at me, like, 'go ahead, pull out your wand,' and Piers just crumpled. I didn't even have my hand in my pocket yet."

"Good," Hermione said, "that's good."

"Yeah," Ron said, still not looking at her.

He was keeping something back, too, and she wondered what it was. Hermione didn't ask if he and Sarah were all right, because that was not her business (even if sometimes - like now - she had to remind herself that things did not necessarily become her business merely by involving Ron or Harry in some way). Hermione didn't ask if it had all come as a shock to Sarah, or if he had prepared her as he should have, because that wasn't her business either. She asked, instead, a question she very much wished she knew how to answer herself.

"What do we do about Harry?"

"You haven't seen him either? At all?"

Hermione shook her head.

Ron shrugged. "Reckon he's at work?"

"For forty-eight hours straight?"

"It's possible," Ron pointed out.

It was, very. Hermione sighed. And how would he do his job in that frame of mind? How much attention would he pay to trying to keep himself safe? What would he do when it was time to stop, time to pull back, time to rest? Keep going, and going, and going?

"He's got Dean," Ron said.

"He does," Hermione said, and felt a bit better.

*

Ron climbed the stairs of Sarah's building, one nervous foot after another. He and Sarah had sorted out Piers together, yes, they had, but when Piers had gone. . . . They'd stood on the pavement outside the pub, the city noisy and fast around them. She'd been quiet and he'd been quiet, and finally, Ron had said, "Where do you want. . .?"

And Sarah had her arms hugged round herself, and kept them there as she said, "My place. But not tonight. Is that all right?"

"Whatever you want," he'd said.

So now, two days later, Sarah was making dinner, and Ron was bringing wine. And truth. He hoped that he had right amounts and the right sorts of each to turn this into a good evening.

Outside Sarah's door, Ron knocked straight away. No hanging about. He'd had two days of that, two days of waiting and worrying and wondering what he should do, and what he should say, and whether or not he had cocked this up beyond all hope of repair. And while he wished to Merlin he could be doing anything else right now, he didn't want another minute to go by with this left undone.

As the door swung open Ron realized that that, in and of itself, was something pretty extraordinary.

Their hellos were awkward. Ron had decided, earlier, that he would greet her with a kiss on the cheek. Quicker than a hug, assuming less than a kiss on the lips, it offered less opportunity for uncomfortableness all round. He felt large and clumsy as he leaned in, but she didn't pull away, and that was good.

In the kitchen, dinner was in the early, unrecognisable stages, just a little row of spice jars, a heap of vegetables, and a cutting board. Ron deposited the two bottles of red he'd brought on the counter (nine pounds each; going by price and taking current pound-to-Galleon conversion rates into effect, twice as good as any wine he'd ever purchased in his life), and looked consideringly at the bright pink plastic cups in the dish drain.

Sarah followed his eyes, opened a cupboard, and pulled down two wineglasses. "No telling where the corkscrew is," she said, her tone almost-but-not-quite casual. "You'll have to take care of it."

It took a second, but Ron got the point, and he liked it. "No problem," he said, and uncorked the wine with a spell. He poured them each a half-glass. "What're we eating?"

Sarah nodded towards a cookbook on the counter. "It's one of Jamie Oliver's."

Ron reached around Sarah and picked it up. The cover promised an intriguing blend of food and pornography, but, upon further investigation, the book did not deliver. The pork chops looked dead tasty, though.

Leaning against the counter, Sarah sipped the wine and, to Ron's relief, didn't make a face. "How's Harry?" she asked.

"He's. . ." Ron didn't know what to say. After your brother accused him of murder and he lost control and exploded all our lights, he did a runner and hasn't been seen since. But don't worry, he's really innocent, and not violent or dangerous or insane, and you're safe being around us, honest? But editing truth had got them into this mess in the first place. "I don't know," Ron said. "He hasn't been home."

"Has Hermione-"

"Nope."

"Right," Sarah said, with a decisive nod, "Piers is really for it now."

"So. . . you believe Harry, and all?"

"Of course," Sarah said. Putting her wineglass down, she turned to the cutting board, and started on a pepper. "I've no doubt Piers has hold of the wrong end of the stick. He's very, very good at believing only what he wants to. Then, that's easy to do, isn't it, when you only have part of the story."

She said it lightly, without accusation, but Ron knew what she meant. He was getting good - no, not good, but at least fair-to-middling at this stuff.

"Sarah -"

"Do you remember before?" she interrupted. "When I said that you didn't have to tell me anything that was too hard?" Ron nodded, even though she couldn't see it with her back to him. "That was meant to make me sound understanding, and respectful of your personal space," Sarah went on. She shot him a grin over her shoulder. "How'd I do?"

"Very well," Ron assured her.

"Ta," she said. She went quiet, and Ron wondered if it was his turn. He was afraid to take it, if it was; with her in charge of the conversation, things were going better than he'd expected. "But of course," Sarah said, after a moment of silence, "it was pretty self-serving, too."

She was slicing some leafy herb into thin, neat strips, and Ron watched her for a minute. Her hair was tied back in a neat brown ponytail, and her eyes were firmly on her work. "Because you didn't really want to know?" he asked.

"Right." Sarah sighed. "I think it's brilliant that you can do magic. That there's really such a thing as magic, that you lot have this world right beside ours that I get to see."

But, Ron thought.

"But it's scary, thinking about people being able to do things that I can't. All kinds of things, things I probably can't even imagine. Not you," she said, waving her knife briefly in his direction, "but people I don't know." She sighed, and he watched her shoulders rise and fall. "So yeah. You didn't want to say it, and I didn't want to hear it. Can't be too cross with you, can I?"

Ron liked the sound of that, he very much did. He realised that he'd just assumed this would be a fight. Probably because if it had been he and Hermione, they would have turned it into a shouting match days ago.

"I should've told you anyway," Ron said. "I knew -" he hesitated. "Well. I knew that you really needed to know."

"You knew that I knew people who'd died." Sarah said the words calmly, matter-of-factly. She was chopping something else now, still with her back to him, and he wished he could've seen her face, seen how well it matched her voice. This was what mattered more than anything: if she felt safe enough to stay.

"Yes," he said quietly. He took a breath. "I should start at the beginning-"

"No, skip to the end, please." She turned to face him then, her eyes very intent. "Is everything over?"

"Yes," Ron said. "The war's been over more than a year now, and He's gone." He realised she didn't know what he meant by that, and clarified, "No-one's after Harry anymore."

"Good," she said. She took a breath, looked away. "Good."

"Sarah -" He stepped forward and took her hands. "Nobody's going to hurt you. I promise you."

"I'm not worried about me," she said, moving closer. "Well, okay, a little. But it's you I've been worrying about."

"Me?"

"You're Harry's family," she pointed out.

And he wouldn't have it any other way. "Yeah," Ron said.

They stood there together, her head on his chest, his cheek on her hair, and as the seconds ticked by Ron let himself believe for the first time in days that things were going to be all right.

Sarah spoke, after a while. "So the wizard who was after Harry," she said, "was he just. . .somebody on the other side?"

"Erm. He. . . he sort of was the other side."

"Okay," Sarah said, with nervous laugh, "okay. I reckon you can go back to the beginning now."

Ron took a breath, and did.

*