Two to Obey

Chapter 17: Memory and Forgetting

"All profound changes in consciousness, by their very nature, bring with them characteristic amnesias. Out of such oblivions, in specific historical circumstances, spring narratives."

-Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities.

*******

Though revered by the magical community to which she belonged, the old woman lived in a one-room hut indistinguishable from any other in the village. Each morning she could be seen making a slow, shuffling circuit of the market, nodding at those who greeted her, dark eyes glinting almost mischievously in her ancient face, knobbly hand gripping her ever-present walking stick - a stick, it was rumored, that could pull the lightning down from the sky, wrap it around a demon and sent it back screaming into the depths of hell, where it belonged.

The older ones even claimed she had done this once, the act itself now draped with the mysterious veil of history, retold in so many different fashions that it held a firm place in local mythology, if a fanciful one. It was rumored that she carried the secrets of life itself within the folds of her cloak. Among the villagers, she was known by many different names: the old one, the wise one, the lightning-bearer. When approached for insight or information, she was unfailingly helpful...in a roundabout sort of way. She never gave any outright answer to any question, but she always had something to say, and those who came to her listened avidly, even if they usually didn't understand what she told them.

To her face, she preferred to be addressed as Fatima, mostly because that was her name.

Fatima knew the moment Dumbledore arrived in the village and cackled a bit to herself over her morning tea, imagining the shocked expressions on the faces of her magical brethren as an old white wizard in spangly robes with a long beard and half-moon glasses strode through the marketplace and knocked on her door. It was a shame none of them would ever question her about it, as she would have gotten even greater amusement at their expressions if she'd hinted broadly at a romantic entanglement. Wouldn't the tongues wag at the idea of Old Fatima having a good roll in the hay?

She tapped the kettle to fill it back up with water, then tapped it again to set it boiling. Pulling a mug down from the shelf, she prepared another cup of tea for her visitor - real tea, not that weak, watery British filth that didn't even deserve the name.

"Come in," she called at the knock, the English words forming uncomfortably in her mouth. She hadn't spoken it in over fifty years, since the last time she'd seen him.

Dumbledore entered, ducking a little so his pointed cap wouldn't be knocked off by the low doorway. "Fatima," he greeted her warmly. "The years have kept you well."

His Arabic was correct, if ungraceful. English speakers never could quite manage Arabic. They could learn the language - the pronunciations and the verb conjugations - but they could never achieve the musicality of it. They'd spent too many centuries suppressing their mystical soul in favor of the illusion of rationality, forgotten too quickly their heritage as earth-worshippers, dancing naked through the forests.

As she was on her home turf, Fatima accepted his gift of conducting the discussion in her native language. She'd lived these customs for several hundreds of years, and was now in control in every way possible. Another gift from Dumbledore, one she'd do well to return in kind. "And you, as well. Welcome to my home. Please sit and allow me to serve you as an honored guest. May I offer you some tea?"

"I would accept it with humblest gratitude."

Fatima smiled a little. A proper response, one she appreciated greatly. Finishing up her preparations, she handed him the steaming mug, conjuring up a tray with a small pitcher of cream and a bowl of sugar. Sitting down across from him with her own mug, she eyed him covertly. The cream and sugar were an overture to him, a polite acceptance of his culture. No local would dare use them; it was a direct insult to one's host to adulterate tea in such a way, an implication that it wasn't well prepared. Dumbledore added a small measure of each, accepting her gesture, entirely cognizant of its meaning.

She was willing to be his ally, but she had her own thoughts on the matter and her own strategy for handling things. Pleased that the groundwork had been so easily laid, Fatima rose to prepare them a plate full of sugared nuts. A small, tentative sign of their alliance, easily revoked yet cautiously hopeful. Dumbledore thanked her properly, and Fatima replied in kind, sitting across from him and weaving the necessary web of carefully crafted questions and conversational topics meant to bind them together, to lay the groundwork for formal alliance. They talked for hours, tea being put aside in favor of almond brine and then coffee, sugared nuts being banished to allow room for a hearty lunch of lamb stew and lentils.

Fatima admired Dumbledore's patience, and valued his knowledge of the old customs. The alliance was his to propose, the topic his to broach, but such things were inappropriate to talk about bluntly, or immediately, before a bond of understanding could be reached. She would not trust him until she'd weighed his responses to her casual questions on seemingly unimportant topics. Knowing that, he was willing to put forward the effort few Westerners were, in order to gain an ally as valuable as herself.

Once darkness was upon them, Fatima lit the hearth, gathering her walking stick. "The air is invigorating at night, and the village peaceful. None dare venture out after dark."

It was a cue - one Dumbledore picked up on immediately, rising to escort her out to the door. The pleasantries had been observed, and now it was time to talk business.

"The stories have reached this far, then? Of the disappearances?"

"It isn't so far," Fatima said, enjoying the cool dry air, the slow uncoiling of her muscles as she shuffled along, the carefully suppressed potential in them. Old bag of bones or not, she could dodge a curse and return one as quickly as she could three hundred years ago, and almost looked forward to the opportunity to do so. Her time to leave this earth was coming soon - every decent Guardian knew when the next journey must begin - but it would be amusing to have one last battle, perhaps the most important of them all.

"I certainly hope none of your townspeople have been taken?"

Fatima chuckled. "The bringers of the apocalypse are smart enough to give me wide berth. Not that the villagers know that."

"Ah. They don't see fit to extend me the same courtesy."

"A matter of circumstance," she said mildly. "You always seem to attract attention."

"My own choice," Dumbledore said with a tight smile, "perhaps as foolish as any they've made, but mine nonetheless. A wise individual can understand both sides of a conflict, but that doesn't mean that he or she is incapable of choosing one over the other."

"But it isn't a choice, is it? Not in this case, at least. The others play around, baiting Voldemort, amusing themselves with him. You dislike their tactics, but they're meaningless in the end - nothing more than the cruel taunts of schoolyard bullies."

"Three times we've protected the mortals from the consequences of immanentizing the eschaton," Dumbledore said, his voice rising slightly. "Shall we desert them now?"

"The others aren't deserting them," Fatima said conversationally. "They're merely carrying out their duties as they see them. The world has changed, and the Guardians have changed with it. They're tired of this eternal war of attrition, of merely keeping the forces that could tear this world apart at bay. They want to face them, and fight."

"And win?"

"Ah, well," she sighed, lifting her head and squinting up at the stars in which so many mortals searched for answers, and so few found any. "That remains to be seen. But I am not yet departed from this earth. I'm meant to play my part in this, should it come to us making our fourth stand, even if it should be our last. Perhaps the others are right, and it can't be stopped, or shouldn't be. But either way, I'll fight beside you, as I have before."

Dumbledore patted her arm, laughing a bit. "I always regretted taking sole credit for Grindelwald, no matter how much it impressed the mortals."

Fatima smirked. "I prefer to act behind the scenes."

"As always. Still, I am eternally grateful for your help, then as well as now. There is not enough gold in creation to repay your kindness."

The return back to the old customs made her collect herself. "I would give it gladly a million more times," she said automatically. "What of the boy? Is he prepared?"

"As much as he can be at this point," Dumbledore said, his expression remote.

Fatima hummed to herself thoughtfully. "He is your charge to guide, of course."

"I see no point in preparing him for eventualities that may never come to be."

His voice was slightly stiff. Fatima filed that information away for future reference. "Of course not. If he's necessary, he'll have the necessary skills, the necessary power."

"Right," Dumbledore said with a small smile. "Odd the amount of power he has right now. More than Voldemort gave him and certainly more than I ever gave him."

"I'm the oldest living being on the planet," she shrugged. "I've seen this world torn down and rebuilt many times over. I know that we Guardians are destined to work in conflict as much as we're destined to work in concert. And while I know very well that even I can still be surprised, I've also learned a thing or two about hedging my bets."

*******

Harry lay on his back and gazed distantly at the ceiling, a warm weight on his chest, soft hair weaving through his fingers. Thera raised her head and he lifted his a little bit so he could see her. "So that's it, then?" she asked, a look on her face he found familiar, one that said clearly, 'put up or shut up.'

"What else is there?" he returned, feeling drowsy and warm and relaxed.

"All five acts," she whispered, pushing herself up a little to nibble at his chin.

"Oh...uh..." His mouth went dry. "That would be nice," he said, his voice strained.

She snorted. "Nice? Don't insult me. This shit is mindblowing."

"Okay," he said, his voice sounding faint as she kissed her way down his belly. She paused for a moment, and then she felt her mouth on him, warm and wet and soft and utterly perfect, and he knew there wasn't a chance of him lasting all five acts. He arched a little and moaned, his hands moving down to encourage her.

And then everything shook and broke apart and there was a firm hand on his shoulder.

"Merlin, Harry. Are you okay?"

Ron's voice. Ron's hand on his shoulder. Peeling his face off of the textbook it had become stuck to, Harry opened his eyes. "Huh?"

His friend's worried face appeared in front of him, half of it blurred because his glasses had slipped. "Were you having a nightmare, mate? You were making funny noises."

Sitting up abruptly, Harry scrubbed a hand against his cheek, where it had rested against the edge of the textbook. "Did I fall asleep?"

Ron nodded, eyeing him strangely. "Go to bed, Harry. Seriously."

Yawning and gathering up his books, Harry decided to do just that. He hadn't finished his Potions reading, but he doubted it would matter. When Snape decided to ignore a person, he dedicated himself to it thoroughly. He hadn't called on Harry in class since fifth year. It was unlikely he was planning to start again tomorrow.

Doing up his robes so that the entire common room wouldn't figure out what he'd actually been dreaming about, Harry headed up to the dormitory. Dean and Seamus were already asleep and Neville was just climbing into bed. After taking care of matters in the loo, Harry put on his pajamas and crawled under the covers, placing his glasses and his wand on the edge of the nightstand where he always did, so he could find them quickly if he needed to. Closing the curtains around his bed, he snuggled in, sighing.

He was about halfway back to sleep when he heard Thera calling his name. And not the way she had in his dream earlier. Groaning a little, he contemplated not picking up the mirror. He hadn't talked to her since they'd met up, and didn't particularly want to until he got things figured out. He wasn't avoiding her or anything.

Pushing himself up, he put on his glasses, lit his wand and dug the mirror out of his bag. Walking into the bathroom, he warded it so his roommates couldn't hear him talking to himself and sat down on the toilet.

"What did you need?" he asked, still blinking a little in the bright light of the bathroom.

Thera looked like she'd just come from one hell of a party. She was wearing a large assortment of Carnival beads and streamers in her hair, enchanted to dance around her head. "Sorry. I didn't mean to wake you up."

"I wasn't asleep," he said. "Did you get ambushed by a parade or something?"

"Bachelorette party," she said, brushing a wayward streamer out of her face. "Tomorrow's the big day, after all. I can't seem to get them off. A little joke, I'm sure. It was nothing compared to what I've heard about Draco's stag party. Apparently it was staffed entirely by vixens from a magi-sensual house and the Weird Sisters performed."

"I wouldn't know. What did you need?"

"Well, it's like this," she said, pulling up her feet to sit cross-legged. "You have your sexual freedom. The entailment doesn't impede that for you at all. But it sort of does for me, and it's putting a bit of a damper in my social life. Chastity bond. It's a bitch, really. And it's completely my own fault, because I forgot to ask you to release me from it when we were together, and I think we might have to actually be together for it to work, but I figured it would be worth a try if you could just release me from it right now. Okay?"

She sent him a bright smile. She was also nigh on to babbling there at the end. "You want me to release you from the chastity bond," he gathered.

"Well, it's only fair," she said wide-eyed, looking as innocent as a newborn babe. "It's a positively archaic practice."

Harry stared at her for a moment. It's not as if he didn't agree with her. He did. But he also didn't like the idea of Thera flitting back out to screw people for information. What he liked more was the idea of reaching through the mirror and shaking some self-respect into her. Short of that, she really needed a good talking-to.

"Thera, listen," he sighed, reaching up underneath his glasses to rub his eyes. "I'm not sure where exactly you got the idea that your purpose on earth is to have sex with every male who wanders across your path or that sex is the only tool you have for getting by in life, but it's not true. You're..."

"I know it's not true," she cut in sharply. "My purpose on earth is to play pretty little puppet for the Dark Lord, and sex is only one of the many weapons in my arsenal for getting by in life. And I only have so many blow jobs in me, so if you wouldn't mind..."

"I do mind," he snapped. "And before you go on a big sarcastic rant about how it's only because I'm jealous, it isn't." There were plenty of other reasons. "If you want to whore yourself out for information, I'm not going to stop you. I think it's awful, and I think no matter what you say about having to do it, you mostly do it because you want to for some twisted reason. I have the power to stop you doing it. I know that. But I'm not going to, because it's not my fucking choice to make. However, I do think I get to tell you how much I don't like feeling..." he searched for the right word. "...complicit in all of this, like I'm giving you the green light or telling you it's okay. That's all."

"You sound like you just stepped out a self-help book," she murmured.

"Do you think pissing me off is the way to get me to do what you want me to?"

Thera sank back on the bed, trapping the streamers as well as she could under her head so they wouldn't flutter into her face. "Well, you already said you'd do it, and that was a bit much there. Thanks for the concern and all, but no thanks. We've already had this discussion, and I doubt either of us has changed our opinion since then."

Sometimes she took on a particularly patronizing tone that got under his skin like nothing else. When she wanted to, Thera could be the most aggravating individual on earth.

"Sorry, I forgot," he said flatly. "What do I have to do to release you from the horrendously burdensome requirement of not fucking anyone that happens across your path and might know a secret way into the dungeons? I'd hate to stand in your way."

"I knew you were going to be difficult about this," she muttered.

And this was exactly why he hadn't wanted to talk to her, because he'd just known this argument would come up again, and he'd just known he'd react like this, and she'd react like this, and if he weren't still feeling moderately guilty about the whole entailment thing. "I'm not trying to be difficult," he said, in the most reasonable tone he could manage. "It's just...you don't have to do this. Really, you don't."

"Listen, Harry," Thera said, taking a moment to gather her thoughts, her serious and thoughtful face completely ruined by the festive streamers still waving merrily around her head. "I understand that sex is a big deal to you, and I'm not making fun of you for it or anything. Your life is your life. Sex is a big deal to you. I accept that. On the other hand, my life is my life. And it's really not a big deal to me."

"Meaningless," Harry supplied. "Yeah, I kind of got that."

She looked at him, an odd expression on her face. "I'm not a fucking moron, Harry. I'm well aware of the fact that I don't behave like your average teenage girl. On the other hand, I happen to be unfortunately wrapped up in a high stakes shitstorm at the moment. War is not the time for therapy and in-depth self-evaluation. It's a time for doing whatever the fuck you have to do to win. And as much as you find my sexual proclivities distasteful, and as much they're likely not the healthiest, they work for me right now."

Harry was already shaking his head before she even finished. "See, that's what you don't get," he said, gripping the mirror in frustration. "The whole thing about it being pointless to beat them if we end up turning into them in the meantime."

Thera rose up on her elbow, her eyes blazing briefly. "And that's what you don't get, Harry. I am them. The best I can do is use it to our advantage. That whole spiel about staying true to your beliefs is for you and your friends, and that's the way it should be. Somebody's got to keep the torch burning and all that. It's not that way for me. They're willing to die for you. I'm willing to kill for you. And you're going to need all of us to win. I'm not trying to make you my bloody disciple. I'm just trying to do my part."

"I know that," he said, louder than he intended. Harry couldn't have said why her words angered him so much, why they made him feel hollow and restless. He was so sick of sitting back and watching everything happen, or having serious conversations about what to do. He just wanted everyone to shut up and let him do something already. "I know that," he said in a more reasonable tone of voice, forcibly reining in his emotions.

Her eyes snapped to his, her face blank. "You already said you'd do it."

"Yeah, I did," he said, wanting suddenly to kick something. He felt out towards her, trying to feel the warmth he remembered, but it wasn't there. Assuming he hadn't just imagined it, she was too far away to feel it now. "I also said I didn't like it."

"We're separate from the entailment," she said evenly, still locked up tight, giving nothing away. "Aren't we separate from this, too?"

As if a wave had crashed over him, Harry felt his earlier weariness overtake him. It didn't matter how much he hated it. She'd hated giving him the entailment. He owed her this much, even if he hated even more what he knew she was planning to do with it. Suddenly and keenly, he wished he was the sort of person who didn't care, who could give his okay, get up tomorrow, pick out a girl, nail her and go about his merry life without ever spending another moment mulling over Thera Castelar's state of mind.

Unfortunately, he wasn't. "Yeah, we are," he conceded, trying to convince himself that it was true, because the only thing keeping it from being true was him.

She nodded, looking away and shrugging up her shoulders a little bit. "So...right, then."

"Er...what am I supposed to do, exactly?"

"I don't know," she said, frowning. "Try saying 'I dissolve the chastity bond' or something. Maybe say it three times." She glared at him. "Like you mean it."

Rolling his eyes a little, he did, going through a few different wordings as they tried to cover all the bases. "Do you feel any different?" he asked her once they ran out of ideas.

She looked thoughtful. "No. Do you?"

He shook his head. "How do we know if it worked or not?"

Thera smirked. "Give me fifteen minutes." Her face disappeared and Harry threw down the mirror, snarling. She was beyond impossible.

Much less than fifteen minutes later, she returned, looking annoyed. "It didn't work."

Harry told himself that he was not pleased to hear that. "What happened?"

"Sort of the same thing that happened when I tried to punch you. Only it was...well. I thought it was funny. The male stripper didn't. So I made a little, 'Oh my girlfriends and their little jokes' excuse and fled while he was still hopping around yelping. We're going to have to meet up again."

"I don't think that's going to happen," he said carefully. "Fox wasn't...suffice it to say she's not going to help me sneak out again. And she'd know the minute I tried."

"Fuck," she said fervently. "What am I going to do now? How the bloody hell could I forget something like that?"

Harry smiled. "You were still dazed by my incredible oral sex skills."

"Ah," Thera said, narrowing her eyes at him. "So it's your fault, then."

"I take full responsibility," he said happily.

"This sucks," she sighed, flopping back on the bed. "Although it might not matter. I'm not sure how many Death Eaters are brave enough to screw around with Draco Malfoy's wife. Scratch that - horny enough. Bravery's a rarity among Death Eaters."

"I'm sure you'll survive."

Thera stuck her tongue out at him. "I'm not you, Harry. I wasn't meant to channel my sexual frustration into covert wanking."

"Maybe you were. Fate seems to keep setting it up that way, after all," he pointed out.

She snorted. "My father keeps setting it up that way, you mean."

Funny, he'd forgotten. "Any fallout from our night of wild passion?" he asked lightly.

"Not yet," she said, scrubbing a fist against her eyes. "I'm sure he'd just biding his time, the lousy bastard. Waiting until I least expect it. Snape's been helping me out, though."

"Snape?" Harry asked.

"Yeah, you know. Potions Master, sexy in a greasy kind of way."

Harry shuddered. "Don't ever talk about Snape like that."

Thera widened her eyes innocently. "You mean you don't think it's just adorable the way his nostrils flare when he..."

A horrible thought occurred to him, making him shudder again. "You haven't slept with Snape, have you? Because if you have, there isn't enough soap in the world..."

"Merlin, no," she said eyeing him strangely. "Why would I sleep with Snape, of all people? He can't tell me anything I don't already know."

Harry was strangely not comforted by that answer. "You mean you would if he did?"

She made a face. "Believe it or not, I've screwed worse. You have no idea. If I get out of this without a prison sentence, I think I deserve an Order of Merlin."

"I really hate when you talk like that, you know," he hissed, his anger returning.

"Sometimes I wonder what you make of me," she said thoughtfully, unperturbed, "in that upright Gryffindor mind of yours. What part I play in the story of Harry Potter. By all rights, I should be the evil seductress, and maybe I am. But I'm helping you out, and what's more, you've fucked me yourself, by your own choosing. The hero's not supposed to do that, you realize. He's only supposed to fuck the evil seductress if she manages to bewitch him, like Odysseus fucked Circe. So what am I, exactly?"

"I haven't the faintest idea," he said coldly.

"Maybe I'm the damsel in distress," she said, blinking up at him, dewy-eyed. "Maybe that's why you get so bloody worked up about all of this. After all, just as the hero isn't supposed to fuck the evil seductress, the damsel in distress certainly isn't supposed to fuck half the hero's enemies, much less the hero himself - at least, not until after he manages his daring rescue. That's what 'happily ever after' really means: 'they went off and screwed their tiny little brains out.' So tell me, Harry. I'm curious."

It was a strange feeling. It didn't come from the empathy he'd gotten from the entailment - or at least he couldn't see he it possibly could have - but he suddenly saw this little charade for what it was. Thera was utterly terrified. There was no evidence for it, but he knew, somehow. "Is it the chastity bond that's making you act like this, or your impending farce of a marriage?" he asked, fairly certain it was a pointless endeavor. Thera didn't respond well to direct questions.

She raised her eyebrows. "Act like what?"

Harry opened his mouth, then shut it. What was he supposed to say anyway? He couldn't do anything to help. "Nothing," he said finally. "Never mind. I should get to bed, and so should you. Big day tomorrow, after all."

"Yes, shame you can't make the ceremony. We'll be sure to take lots of pictures."

"You do that."

She paused for a moment, as if she were about to say something else, then seemed to think the better of it. "Take care of yourself."

He nodded, smiling a little. "You, too."

She smiled back, briefly. "I always do."

Setting down the mirror, Harry let out a long breath, sinking his head into his hands. Remus had been right all those months ago, after the infamous Lucy Wexler break-up. Relationships only did get more complicated as life went on. Getting slapped with a restraining order wasn't anything compared to this.

*******

Worrying about Harry was not quite the avid pastime for Ron that it was for Hermione. So far as he could tell, it was obvious when Harry was upset, and there was no need to comb through everything he did for signs of trouble when he wasn't. Hermione'd never shared a room with Harry. She didn't know that even when things were calm, he didn't sleep well, or that something as stressful as an exam could put him off food for a day.

Holing up in the bathroom seemed to be a new tactic. Ron took his time changing into his pajamas, but still no sound issued from the loo, and he began to get worried.

"Harry?" he whispered loudly, knocking on the door. "Are you in there?"

It was a dumb question, since Harry's bed was the only one empty. But one learned to observe such niceties when one grew up in a large family with one bathroom.

A moment later, Harry opened the door, pulling Ron inside before shutting it and putting up wards. "Sorry," he said, looking gaunt under the bright yellowish lights in the loo. "I was talking to Thera."

"Oh," Ron said with a little knowing smile, leaning up against the sink.

Harry gave him a look. "Not like that."

"Like how, then?"

His friend sank down on the toilet, running an absentminded hand through his hair. "I'm not sure, actually," he admitted. "What do you do with a girl who thinks monogamy's a quaint, mildly amusing concept created by Hufflepuffs?"

"Have fun with her while you can," Ron shrugged, repeating out loud what he'd been repeating to himself several times a day since he'd started dating Mandy Brocklehurst. It was a variation on the twins' motto: 'Women are like the Knight Bus - just hold out your wand and one'll happen along soon enough.'

Mandy hadn't happened along, really. They had Herbology together. He had always sort of thought she was cute. He'd asked her to work with him on their latest assignment. They'd ended up snogging. It had been astonishingly easy, for all of his apprehensions. Much easier than it had been with Hermione, largely because he didn't spend the entire time trying to impress her, trying not to push her, trying to be...

Something he bloody well wasn't. Ron forcibly wiped Hermione from his thoughts.

"Have you thought at all about what you want to do after Hogwarts?" he asked.

Harry gave him a wry look. "I figured I'd work on surviving until graduation and then look at my options."

Ron shrugged a little. "I'm not trying to be McGonagall or anything. It's just that applications for the Auror Training program are due in before Christmas. I didn't know if you were planning on..."

"I don't know," Harry said, watching him. "Are you?"

Ron felt the blush creep up his neck, the way it always did. "I figured I might as well. My dad's a cabinet member now, and they've relaxed the standards because of the war, so I figured the worst they can do is reject me."

"True. I don't know what I'm going to do yet. I still like the idea, but I think I might wait until next year to apply," Harry said blandly, looking away.

"You could play professional Quidditch, you know. And not just on the practice squad, either. There are scouts who come to the Hogwarts games in the spring. You could play for the Chudley Cannons," he said, warming to the topic. "They've got a new coach this year - Bryson, from Wimbourne - he's a defensive genius. I think this is their year."

"I don't know about Chudley," Harry said, smiling. "I hate losing."

"But with you, they wouldn't lose."

"Not if the rest of the team's shite. Their Seeker caught the snitch in half the games last season, and they still lost them all." Harry looked over at him, something akin to pain in his face. "Of course we nearly did the same thing, didn't we?"

Ron sighed. "It was my fault. I didn't figure out what Malfoy's scheme was until they were already kicking our arses, and then I was so messed up..."

"I don't mean that, Ron. It wasn't your fault, or the Chasers. It was me."

"You caught the snitch didn't you? You won the game," Ron said, hoping to avoid a highly uncomfortable discussion about Harry's coaching skills.

"That's not what I mean," Harry said dully. "We should've changed our strategy much earlier. I just...I'm not really used to paying close attention to the rest of the game when I'm Seeking. And frankly, I couldn't have told you what Slytherin was doing that was messing us up so badly, much less what we would have to do to defend against it."

"Oh," Ron said, clenching his teeth together to keep from telling him exactly what had happened and how they could've fixed it. "Well, you'll get better."

"No, I won't," Harry said, turning disturbingly penetrating green eyes on him. "I don't know Quidditch strategy well enough. But you do."

"I...um..." The blush returned. "Not really. We can talk it over in the morning. We need to start planning for Hufflepuff anyway..."

"Ron."

"...because they've got a pair of tough Beaters..."

"Ron!"

He gulped. "Yeah?"

"Stop fucking around. You should be Quidditch Captain and we both know it."

Ron crossed his arms. "Don't be an ass, Harry."

His friend gave a short, humorless laugh. "Think I'm joking?"

"I can't give speeches like the ones you give. You're the leader the team."

"That doesn't mean I should be Captain."

"Doesn't it?"

"No, it doesn't," Ron spat, the shifting tension inside of him suddenly shooting up into something very close to panic. First year, he'd looked into The Mirror of Erised and seen himself as Head Boy and Quidditch Captain, adoring fans cheering him, his family looking on proudly. And now he was a Seventh Year Prefect, which was nearly Head Boy, and Harry was holding out the possibility of being Quidditch Captain, and he couldn't stand it. He wasn't certain whether he was more afraid that the rest of it wouldn't follow, or that it would. But worst of all was knowing what Harry'd seen in the mirror. First Year, Ron hadn't even conceived of achieving anything he'd seen himself achieving, but that had largely been self-doubt and pessimism. He knew he theoretically could achieve it. He'd just assumed he wouldn't be able to. But Harry would never get what he wanted. Not because he wasn't talented at Quidditch or good in school, but because it was completely impossible.

Every time Ron saw the image of himself holding up the Quidditch Cup with his Captain badge pinned on his robes, it just made him remember Harry during Christmas Holidays first year. He'd been shaky and distracted with circles under his eyes from not sleeping, moving through the day like a zombie and catching cat naps here and there so that he could get out his Dad's invisibility cloak and sneak back up to the Mirror, to look at what he wanted more than anything else in the world and could never, ever have.

"Ron, don't be an idiot," Harry said with a touch of exasperation in his voice.

"Let's just talk about it in the morning." Pushing off from the sink, Ron headed for the door, only to be stopped by Harry grabbing his arm.

"I'm not upset or anything," he bit out. "It's the right choice. If I didn't do this, it'd just be me getting Quidditch Captain because I'm Harry Potter."

"You have seniority. That's why you got it."

"I have seniority as a Seeker. I don't know nearly as much as you do about the rest of the game. Hell, I probably don't know as much as half the people in the stands."

"I'll help you with the strategy, then," Ron proposed. "But you should stay Captain."

"Ron," Harry said, drooping a little bit. "I really don't want to be the Gryffindor figurehead. If I don't have the skills or the knowledge to be Captain, I shouldn't be."

"No offense mate," Ron informed him, "but you already are the Gryffindor figurehead."

"Well, I don't want to be it for Quidditch, then," Harry cried, throwing his arms up. "Maybe McGonagall made me Captain because I have seniority, but you know it doesn't matter to me. So long as you're better at it, I only have it because I'm Harry Potter. And if that's the case, then I don't bloody well want it."

"You're still the leader," Ron said stubbornly. "That's the most important part."

"So I'll still give the speeches or whatever. I haven't any business running practice."

Ron dropped his head back against the door of the loo. He was beginning to see how Harry had managed to defeat You-Know-You so many times. Sheer bloody-mindedness. "Fine. We'll be Co-Captains. Can you handle that without it keeping you up nights?"

Harry absorbed that, taking a moment before answering. "Yeah, I guess."

"Then we're fine," Ron announced, half wanting to skip out of the loo at the prospect of Captaining the Gryffindor Quidditch team and half wanting to punch himself for accepting at all. "So...." he said, trying to work in the rest of his point in seeking Harry out in the first place and not entirely certain how to do it. "I'm dating Mandy Brocklehurst," he blurted out, for no particular reason than to buy a few more minutes.

Harry grinned. "Are you? Since when?"

"Last night," Ron said, feeling suddenly stupid. Who on earth announced that they were dating someone the day after they had a random snog with them? "It's not serious."

"I'm not going to tell anyone," Harry said easily, taking a step back and crossing his arms, still smiling. "Unless you want me to."

"Not yet," he said. "I don't know if it...well if it is at all, frankly."

Harry's smile dimmed slightly. "Does Hermione know?"

"No," Ron said, unable to hold back a wince. "I suppose she will eventually. If it's anything at all, I mean. Which it might not be. I mean...you know..."

Harry nodded a bit, almost to himself. "Good for you. She's very pretty. Smart, too."

Ron couldn't hold back a snicker. "Don't I know it. She's helping me in Herbology."

"Shameless," Harry said, shaking his head slowly. "You'll snog anyone who'll do your homework for you, won't you?"

Ron snorted. "Right. Like half of them would have me. I'm not the sex god you are."

"Yes, I'm famous, and you're still my best friend. You know they're all schemers. I figured the sneaky ones would come after you eventually."

"Shithead," Ron said, giving him a sound punch in the shoulder.

Harry held his hands up in front of him, grinning. "I'm just saying if they're in the market for my balls and yours get in the way, why not...what was it you said? 'Have fun with her while you can?' I hereby bestow my harem upon you."

"Bloody git," Ron grumbled. "Most of 'em are twelve."

"Yes, well," Harry said, sighing. "I can't really help that."

"Mandy's not like that," he felt the need to say.

Harry blinked. "I didn't say she was."

"Yeah, I know," Ron said. "That's kind of why I like her. She's been in classes with us for seven years, so it's not like she's in awe of you. She had Charms with you. She knows what a wonk you can be."

"Still bitter about that overdone cheering charm, are you?"

"I kept trying to hug Professor Flitwick. He was all weird around me from then on."

Harry's laugh was interrupted by a jaw-cracking yawn. "Go to sleep," Ron told him.

"Okay, Mum," Harry shot back. Glowering at him, Ron opened the door and ushered Harry through, lighting his wand so they could find the way to their beds. Harry went through his usual ritual, putting his glasses and wand on the bedside table, shifting around a few times until he got comfortable. Putting his hands behind his head, Ron waited until Harry's breathing evened out in sleep before turning over and seeking it out himself.

*******

"We lived happily forever

So the story goes.

But somehow we missed out

On the pot of gold.

But we'll try best that we can

To carry on."

-Styx, "Come Sail Away"

Remus was surprised at the knock on the door of the study at Number Twelve. Not just because people rarely knocked, but because he hadn't heard anybody come into the house. Once he thought about it, the smell was there just at the edge of his sense, the way it always seemed to be with Dumbledore. Only usually he smelled more of books and lemon drops, and less of spice and foreignness. "Come in," he said, automatically shuffling his books and notes into a neat pile. The Headmaster must have just arrived in the country, yet he didn't smell of Hogwarts. It gave Remus pause, and not a little worry.

Dumbledore had sought him out first thing. Remus doubted it was a good sign.

The Headmaster entered with a distracted air. Then his eyes fell upon Remus and warmed slightly. Some part of him would always be moved by that look, the way it had when he was eleven and his Hogwarts acceptance letter had opened up a floodgate of owls from the Board of Governors. His parents had conducted tense late-night discussions when they thought he was asleep and couldn't hear. Eventually, he'd had an audience with the Headmaster. Remus remembered his father taking him by the shoulders and telling him to just be honest, that Albus Dumbledore was a good man, that he'd understand. Remus had nodded, having at least some notion of the task that had been set in front of him. The Board of Governors didn't want boys like him at Hogwarts. Dumbledore might be able to change their minds.

Entering the Headmaster's office had been an intimidating experience, and Albus Dumbledore even more so - the Supreme Mugwump, the man who'd defeated Grindelwald - yet all Remus had encountered was a kindly old wizard who offered him a lemon drop. They'd talked about school and the future and Remus had made sure to stress that he was very good at making up his schoolwork, and that his parents had a cage with locks on it strong enough to keep a full-grown werewolf at bay. And then Dumbledore had turned that look on him and leaned forward a bit, surveying him over the top of his half-moon glasses. "I think you're a very bright and imaginative boy," he'd said. "And I like to think I'm a fairly bright and imaginative Headmaster. When such a pair of bright and imaginative minds works together, a great many wonderful things are possible...such as convincing the Board of Governors to let you attend Hogwarts."

Remus had never in his life thanked Albus for that, mostly because he'd never been able to think of a way to do it that didn't cheapen the risks the Headmaster had taken for him. He'd tried to repay it through service and loyalty, but that was far more complicated than it seemed. It had been relatively easy during the first war, at least until his sympathies had come under question. It had been a great deal harder during his year of teaching, with Sirius at large. Regardless of how things had turned out, Remus knew he should have told Dumbledore immediately about Sirius' animagus form, and the secret passageways into Hogwarts, and he knew hadn't because he was a coward. At that point, he'd known the lengths he would go to in order to retain some small portion of Dumbledore's respect, even if it was based on a lie.

It was odd to think of how he'd been then, after years upon years of occasional menial work and tiny crumbling flats. He'd looked forward to having Sunday dinner with his parents because it meant good food and brightness and joking, even if it was a shadow of what it had been in the past. He'd accepted that at the time, largely because everything was a shadow of what it had been in the past. And it had seemed natural in a way, because the farther he got away from that past, the more it seemed like a wonderful dream, something that never could've existed in reality, that never could have been true.

But it had been, and he'd come to the point now where even if he had to look back on it with bitterness, he still liked to be able to look back on it. And as much as he'd like to think he'd have achieved that much on his own, he knew very well that he hadn't. Part of it was Harry, and the desire to parse through those memories and give him some sense of where he'd come from, of who his parents had been. A good part of it was Vivian, not just because she knew all of the old stories and was often a part of them, but because even when Sirius had still been around, their relationship had largely been based on the past. With Vivian, despite what they faced now, it was based on the future, and...Remus honestly couldn't remember the last time he'd thought about the future and actually anticipated it. And part of it was Dumbledore, the tiny glowing pride Remus couldn't help but feel, of someone looking at him - whether he was eleven or thirty-eight - and seeing some sort of potential he'd never quite been able to see.

"Sir?" he asked, sitting down as Albus did. "How did it go?"

"As expected, I suppose," Dumbledore said, looking down briefly. "The other Guardians are rather set on their path, but they are not unaware of our threat any longer, and we are not without allies. The Guardians are split," he said, narrowing his eyes at the wall behind Remus' head. "Evenly. Such things rarely bode well."

Remus' breath caught. "The eschaton?"

Dumbledore's eyes nearly burned into him, and he nodded slightly, as if making a decision. "It may not yet be inevitable. There are still steps we can take. In the meantime, I must ask if you are willing to take on a potentially dangerous assignment."

"Of course I am," he said, without hesitation, something thrilling at the idea despite his realistic opinion of matters as they stood. Aside from a good fast wand, heightened senses and stronger resilience against curses, all he had to offer the Order was a fair understanding of Arithmancy and ancient spells, and his status as a social pariah, or - more precisely - the fellowship of his kind.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Remus realized, he'd almost been waiting for this.

Dumbledore made no movement of assent. "You're sure?"

"I'm a member of the Order," Remus said, a tad defensively. Thus betraying the fact that he hadn't felt like much of one lately. "I promised to do whatever I had to. Twice, in fact. If I can help in any way, I will." Odd how he sounded so bloody tired at the end.

"You understand what I'm asking of you," the Headmaster said. It was not a question. "I would accept your statement on its own, but...ah..." he stroked his beard, piercing Remus with a look. "I can't claim to have any experience with wives, but you may want to discuss this with yours before you make a final decision. I imagine she'll have a few things to say on the subject."

"That she will," Remus admitted. "But once she finishes yelling at me, I imagine she'll see the wisdom in it."

"I'm sure she will," Dumbledore said with a slight smile.

Suddenly remembering, Remus put his face in his hands. "Damn, I promised Harry I'd be here for Christmas, for his parents' memorial. I suppose we'll have to move it up." He wouldn't leave until he'd fulfilled his obligations to Harry. The thought didn't make him feel any less guilty. The last thing Harry needed was another adult in his life putting the needs of the war ahead of his. "I don't suppose it could wait, could it?"

Dumbledore tilted his head a little. "It would be risky," he acceded. "There are only a few others left who haven't yet answered the call. Those who changed in St. Mungo's last month have disappeared. So have thousands of their remaining compatriots around the world. The wards here are apparently strong enough to negate it for the most part, but if you ever left the house, you would answer the call, too. I fear that arriving much later would raise questions about how you managed to ignore the call for so long."

Thereby making him utterly useless as a spy. They'd already be suspicious of him. Remus sighed. "Point taken. I'll talk to Harry, too, then. We'll work something out." Then he looked up. "Answered the call? How exactly are they managing to call us?"

"They aren't. The circumstances are. The eschaton is nearing, and at their core, all dark creatures are connected to it. As I've recently managed to learn, the information we received from Yuri Dashkin was slightly misinterpreted. The beast required to complete the eschaton is not singular; it is plural - it means all dark creatures. Once Voldemort gained access to the site of the final battle, he was able to call his armies to him."

"Oh." Remus absorbed that. "But isn't the beast supposed to be marked?"

"And you are, all of you. Magically, at least. The average witch or wizard may not be able to sense it, but Guardians can, as can dark creatures themselves. You know another werewolf when you come upon one, or a vampire." Dumbledore looked away, thoughtful, speaking almost to himself. "It is a tendency of the Good Side to interpret things literally. The Dark Side plots. We try to unravel those plots and stop them. It gives us the mindset of investigators; we prefer facts and evidence. Sometimes, unfortunately, we allow ourselves to rely on them too much, to use them at the expense of our own intuition. Facts and evidence can be manipulated. We can use them as shields, to blind ourselves to an unpleasant truth..."

He trailed off, one hand tightening on the arm of his chair. For some reason, Remus felt a thrill of uneasiness. "Albus?" he asked.

The Headmaster shook himself and stood. "I'll send Vivian along then, shall I?"

"Actually, it might be better to tell her right before I leave. Less time to think and all..." he trailed off at Dumbledore's look, swallowing the remainder of his cowardice. "I'll expect her in a few minutes, then." This wasn't going to be a pleasant conversation.

He took the time before Vivian's arrival to think up a good way to go about this. He didn't manage it by the time she showed up.

"Dumbledore said you needed to talk to me," she said breathlessly, as if she'd hurried over here. Her hair was a bit windblown and her cheeks were pink. "Did you find something, then?" she asked, gesturing towards the books he'd been working through prior to the Headmaster's arrival.

Remus shook his head, hesitating for a brief moment and fixing this image in his head. He didn't know how long he'd be gone - possibly for the rest of the war - but he'd rather be able to picture her with her eyes glowing in anticipation, rather than shadowed with worry the way they'd been since he'd fallen ill, since the call had first gone out.

Merlin, he loved her. He opened his mouth to give his explanation, trying to find a way to explain things without starting a fight, and finally just stepped forward, pulled her against him as tightly as he could without snapping her spine, and kissed her breathless.

It was a blur, and over too quickly, the way things always were when you were trying to hold onto to them as hard as you could. There was her smell, and her arms around him, and her lips kissing him back and her breasts smashed against him and her nose pressed against his cheek, her hand in his hair, her shaky laugh when he finally let her go.

"Whatever you found, it must be bloody amazing," she whispered, smiling up at him.

Remus shook his head a little. He'd always scoffed good-naturedly at his mother's affinity for old romance movies, all full of torrid plotlines and desperate kisses and flowery speeches. Nobody's life is like that, he'd thought. Nobody talks like that.

He suddenly wanted to, though. Not just because he did a rather good impression of Cary Grant, but because he could finally kind of understand where cheesy dialogue came from. It was moments like this. When words were your only buffer against circumstance, there wasn't any combination of them you could use that wouldn't cheapen the situation.

"You are," he said, leaning down once more to kiss her gently and briefly, "the best thing that ever happened to me."

Vivian's eyes widened. "You are dying," she breathed.

Remus dropped his forehead down to hers. "No, I'm not." On the other hand, if that's what she'd assumed, him announcing that he was turning spy might not seem like that big a deal. "I'm going to join the other dark creatures."

She stepped away, staring at him owlishly. "You're what?"

"The Guardians have been calling them all to the nexus. That's why I was ill. It's not so bad now, because most of the dark creatures are already there, but if I left here, I'd feel it. I'd have to go. So my choices are to stay in here for the rest of the war, or answer the call. At least this way, I might be able to learn something."

Vivian's expression hadn't changed during his explanation. "You're kidding, right?" Remus shook his head and her hand twitched a little bit. "You can't," she said flatly.

"I have to. This is our only chance to find out what's going on."

"David's there," she said in a hard voice. "He'll recognize you."

"I'll have to change my appearance, obviously."

"How? With polyjuice? And you'll just drag in a few tons of hair with you? You can't even do it with charms; it's too risky that they'd wear off."

"I was thinking I'd do it the Muggle way, with hair dye and contacts. I always thought I'd look good as a blonde."

"Don't joke," she said harshly. "This is insane, Remus. You can't honestly be thinking of doing this. If you got caught, we'd have no way to get you out."

"I'll take a portkey with me."

But she was already shaking her head. "You'd be gone for Merlin knows how long, and we need you here."

"I'm hardly much use here if I can't leave this bloody house."

"I need your help on the spell."

"I think trying to stop the end of the world as we know it trumps the spell, Vivian."

She gave a disbelieving little laugh. "Merlin, you're actually going to do this."

"I have to. And frankly, I want to. Everyone else is doing their part. I haven't been. I haven't been able to. And now I can."

"So what, then? You're doing this to prove something?"

"No," Remus said, gritting his teeth. "I'm doing it because it needs to be done."

"Of course you are," she said caustically, her eyes blazing. "That's all any of us ever does - what's right and good, and necessary. We stand up and fight and everybody else cowers, and our only reward is losing everything that matters. I mean, I know you were just thrilled with how things stood at the end of the last war, with James, Lily and Peter dead, Sirius in Azkaban, and Harry shuffled off to a pack of Muggles so they could lock him up in a cupboard. Is that what we were all fighting for? Is that the better world we risked our lives to bring about?"

Remus sighed. "Don't, Vivian."

"Don't what?" she spat. "Don't get angry about it? Well, that's your philosophy, Remus. Not mine. I'm sick of sacrificing for the greater good."

"We promised to. We took an oath."

Vivian let out a sound that was halfway between a snort and a sob. "Merlin's arse, Remus. We were children when we took that oath. We didn't have the first clue what we were giving up. Not until afterwards, when everybody who kept their heads down and stayed out of it went back to their happy little lives, and the few of us who were left standing had to pick up the pieces. We fought a hopeless war for years, and it ended up coming down to a showdown between Voldemort and a baby. So what was the point of fighting, then? What the fuck good did it do? All it did was kill us all."

She was crying in earnest by the time she was finished, her arms wrapped around herself as if she were cold. It made his heart twist in his chest horribly, but he kept his distance. She deserved her say. "Are you finished now?" he asked softly. She nodded slightly and he stepped forward, pulling her against him. Vivian grabbed onto his shirt, clinging fiercely. He pressed his face into her hair. "I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize," she said, her voice dull. "It's...oh, bloody hell. You're right. It will be invaluable for us to have a spy among the dark creatures, right at the center of the action. But I can't help it. I just want us to pack up and go somewhere and have it not be our problem anymore. Only there isn't anywhere to go, and it'll never not be our problem. And I hate it. I fucking hate it so much."

"I hate it, too," he admitted. "Not just leaving you for a good, long period of time, but all of it. I want it to be over just as much as you do."

"I know." Her hands wrapped around his waist tightly. "Poor Harry, though. He seemed so excited about Christmas. He's going to be disappointed you can't be there. Although maybe it's better for him to put off his parents' memorial until after the war."

Remus shoved aside his guilt over circumstances he couldn't change and focused on what little he could do before he left. "I thought maybe we could do it this weekend, actually."

Vivian pulled back, looking up at him. "Go to Godric's Hollow, you mean? Leave Number Twelve, where the wards are the only thing keeping you from being dragged off to other dark creatures?"

"I hadn't thought of that," Remus admitted.

"Well, thinking's my job. You're just supposed to stand around and look pretty."

"Me? Merlin, no. Even first thing in the morning, you're still a better sight than I am on my best days. So if you're the smart one and the good-looking one, what do I bring to the relationship?"

"Good question," she said frowning. "What am I doing with a loser like you?"

"I knew this day would come," he sighed. "The starry-eyed romantic phase is over and now you've woken up, looked around and realized in horror, 'I married that?'"

"Wonderful man," she said, smiling softly. "Best guy in the world. Pick of the litter."

Remus groaned. "Please tell me the pun was intentional."

"It was entirely intentional. You think I'd marry just any old werewolf?"

"Old? That was uncalled for."

"Just a saying," she said blithely, the worried look settling back over her face slowly. "What are you going to tell Harry, then?"

"The truth, I guess," he said, his voice heavy. "Maybe Dumbledore can put up the same wards he has here at Godric's Hollow, and I can apparate directly there or something."

"I meant about the rest of it."

"Same answer."

Vivian nodded. "You're leaving Saturday, then?"

"Looks that way," he said, trying for a smile and not quite making it.

"Then Friday night is mine," she said bluntly. "And I don't want any bloody interruptions. I don't care if we have to put a big sign up over the floo..."

The smile came easier this time. "If this mansion's a-rockin', don't come a-knockin'?"

"...but I want you to myself," she said, smiling briefly before settling into a full-on leer. "And I want to spend the entire night have the most passionate, earth-shaking, I'm-heading-off-into-danger-and-might-never-see-you-again sex the world has ever seen."

"So, like...twice in one night? I'll have to see what I can do..."

Vivian grabbed him by the shirt, pulling his face down to hers, brimming nearly over the top with a fierce sort of hunger that had as much to do with him leaving as it did excitement over a long night of crazy lovemaking. "Months, Remus," she said shakily. "This is going to have to last us months, or maybe even for the rest of our bloody lives, and I don't know about you, but even if we both come out of this perfectly fine, I want to look back on Friday night years from now and still get wet knickers. Got me?"

Remus cleared his dry throat. "Three times."

*******

"Split fifty-fifty, eh?" Fox said, executing a tidy spin move, faking a slash and jabbing her invisible and nonexistent opponent in the throat. "I'm pretty sure I can guess who's on what side. Though I would've loved to have been a fly on the wall during your interview with Sakura."

"It was...interesting," Dumbledore conceded, watching her calmly from the opposite side of the practice room, hands folded in front of him. "I haven't seen go-go boots employed that skillfully in thirty years. As for the lollipop...well, suffice it to say I don't feel entirely right offering them to students anymore."

Fox snorted. "What about Gloss?"

"He hissed at me for several minutes, then made what I suppose is a lewd hand gesture. I was unable to discern its exact meaning, but I the gist came through rather clearly."

She turned to look at him. "What was the gesture?"

After a thoughtful moment, Dumbledore recreated it to the best of his ability.

"Go fuck yourself," Fox translated for him.

He frowned at his hands. "I don't see how...oh, right, because...now I understand."

"It's been sweeping the school lately. I suppose he thought you'd know what it meant."

"I would be supremely unsurprised to learn that he had a hand in its recent popularity."

"Well, nobody ever said we couldn't have fun at our jobs."

A knock sounded on the door and Fox allowed herself a small smile. Speaking of fun...

Dumbledore raised his eyebrows. "Are you expecting a visitor?"

"Yes," she said, lowering her sword. "Enter!"

A tall, thin boy with silver-blonde hair stepped into the room uncertainly. His eyes fell on the Headmaster. "Sir. I didn't expect to see you here."

"I was just leaving, actually," Dumbledore said, glancing at her, obviously amused. "Good day to you both." With an irrepressible twinkle in his eye, he left.

The boy looked her up and down, his eyes stopping and widening as he noticed her sword. "Nice Hanzo knockoff."

Fox raised an eyebrow. "It's not a knockoff."

"That's impossible," he scoffed. "There are only twelve in existence, and last I heard, they were all accounted for."

It was probably the nicest way he could think of to say, 'There's no way in hell someone like you could have a sword like that.'

"They still are. I don't own it. I just use it."

"You expect me to believe that someone who owns one of the finest swords ever made by the finest sword-maker the world has ever seen - who only made twelve in his entire lifetime - just let you borrow one of them?"

"I did the guy a favor. He gave me the sword to use."

"That must have been one hell of a favor."

"It was."

"What did you do?"

"I let him live," Fox said with a humorless smile. Tossing the sword up, she caught it near the tip and held it out to him, smirking inwardly when he flinched a little at the sudden movement. "Check the hilt yourself if you want. It's real."

Any lesser sword would bend slightly when held in such a way, but not a Hanzo. It was a perfectly designed weapon, made to be used in any way possible, including picking it up by the tip and bonking your opponent on the head with the hilt. In such a desperate situation, the last thing you'd want is for your aim to be off.

Stepping forward, Malfoy studied the marking on the edge of the hilt - the Japanese character for wind - and the giveaway thumb notch that marked it as a Hanzo.

"I don't suppose I could..." he asked, glancing up at her.

"You can touch it," she said. "You just can't wield it. I wouldn't recommend trying."

One of the greatest perks of the Hanzo swords was the unknown spell on them of Hanzo's own design that kept them from being used against their owner...by promptly beheading anyone who tried. The only reason Fox could use this one was because the owner had willingly bestowed it upon her. Under duress, but still willingly. He could have chosen to die. She wouldn't have minded.

The spell was one of the main reasons she didn't use the sword very often, and almost never in battle. It just wasn't as much fun. She'd taken it out as a test, to see if he'd recognize it, to see if he actually knew what he was talking about.

Reaching out with a careful hand, Malfoy ran his fingers over the hilt and down the blade, testing the balance and flow, the sharpness of the edge. "Merlin," he breathed. "It's absolutely perfect."

"Do you fight?"

His eyes turned wary. "I've been taught."

"Are you any good?"

"I'm not going to fight against this, if that's what you're asking."

"Of course not," she said, pulling the sword back and sending it up to her storage rack, removing a pair of standard training swords. She handed one to him.

He swung it a few times, getting a feel for it. Fox let him go for about a second, then attacked. It was the sort of trap that Harry still occasionally let himself fall into - being taken by surprise. The Malfoy boy wasn't, showing the value of his training. The moment weapons were introduced into a situation, you never ever took your focus off of the other guy holding one.

He blocked the attack and returned with one of his own, a variation on the Flemish maneuver, intended to feel out your opponent's strengths and weaknesses. Fox instinctively countered with a defense of her own that created the illusion of weakness in a certain spot so that she'd know where his next attack would come.

She fully expected Malfoy to fall into the trap, but he didn't. Instead he switched to an odd mixture of quick jabs coupled with completely nonstandard footwork, designed to throw her off. For the first time in a long time, Fox found herself enjoying a sword fight that didn't just involve hacking things to bits.

Physically, she could swing his ass around the planet and launch it into space, and he knew that. She had the undeniable edge in terms of strength, endurance and reaction time, and - as they were more or less the same height - roughly the same reach. He couldn't best her physically, so he was trying to do it mentally. And he had a few tricks up his sleeve she hadn't seen before.

Fox let him go for a few more seconds to see if she could figure out his strategy, then decided to shake things up. Blocking a jab to her side up over her head, she ducked underneath their swords and stomped hard on his foot, then shoved him backwards.

He went down swearing viciously, but rolled out of it with his sword up, ready to block her attack with a desperation move that allowed him to regain his feet. His face was tight with concentration as he allowed himself a few seconds' rest by going on the defensive.

It was a mistake - the first real one she'd seen him make so far. He was trying to preserve his energy for a prolonged fight, to summon up the strength for another attack while maintaining enough to defend himself. And anyone who was forced to rely on that tactic had pretty much already lost the sword fight unless they got lucky.

It was the one concept she'd never had to teach Harry: when you're in a fight for your life, you don't get to take a breather. If you don't treat every move as your last, then it will be. Malfoy was a much better swordfighter than Harry. He was taller, well trained, and a great deal more knowledgeable of the ins and outs of the battle. It would be interesting to see the two of them fight, to see what philosophy ruled the day: knowledge, skill and determination; or utter focus and a complete inability to admit defeat.

Fox went in on a lightning-fast Qlin variation that was almost impossible to block. Malfoy did his best, but was disarmed quickly. He dropped his head, catching his breath.

"You're good," she told him, banishing their swords and conjuring up a pair of comfy couches, the likes of which always made Harry groan about therapy sessions.

Malfoy shook his head. "I lost my focus. I got tired."

"You were fighting a Guardian with thirty years more training than you," she said, plopping down on one of the couches. "Frankly, I'm embarrassed that it took me so long to kick your ass. Where'd you learn that footwork stunt?"

"My father," he said, carefully sitting down on the other couch, his eyes never leaving her, his voice deceptively mild. "One of his own creations."

"Pumpkin juice?" she offered.

He shook his head. "I could use some water, though." Fox conjured up a pitcher and a glass. Malfoy poured some and sipped it, eyeing her. "So, did I pass?"

Fox had to hand it to the Slytherins. They were astoundingly sensitive to the tiniest gesture, the tiniest turn of phrase, always parsing it for hidden meaning. In that way, Malfoy and Snape were remarkably alike. In a lot of ways, they were alike, she supposed. Though Snape's moral code bore little relation to the standard person's definition of one, it did exist, and he adhered to it like a nun to a chastity vow. Malfoy was still figuring his out, but once he did, he'd likely do the same. Assuming such a thing were even possible for him. The backbone of Snape's philosophy of life was a full acceptance of his own powerlessness, no matter how much he detested it and fought against it. Malfoy was only just beginning to learn that lesson.

And he likely wouldn't learn it completely. Not the way Snape had, coming up to it from the bottom. Whether it was easier or not to fall from the top, Fox couldn't say. But it was generally a hell of a lot less trustworthy.

"That test, you passed," she said.

Malfoy sat back with the comfortable grace of an aristocrat in his mansion. "So there will be others." It wasn't a question. "Well, I expected as much."

"You're teaching my charge dark magic," she reminded him. "Do you really think I'm just going to stand by without figuring out if you know what you're talking about?"

"Of course not," he said, taking a sip of his water. He wasn't back in control, but he was doing his damndest to act like it. "It would be highly incompetent of you."

Fox gave him a deliberately uninterpretable look. "What have you taught them so far?"

"Nothing terrible. Just basic dark hexes. They're a pile of Gryffindors. They need to learn how to use the intention behind it more than anything else."

"How far are you planning to go? All the way up to the Unforgivables?"

Malfoy smiled faintly. "That's one path. My father always used to call it the uncreative one. The Unforgivables are useful, but they lack subtlety. I suppose it's necessary to learn them, or at least the most useful one. But if Potter and his minions manage to get to the point where I think they can handle it, it makes more sense to take the creative path."

Fox smiled into her glass of pumpkin juice. "How creative?" she asked.

"As creative as you'll allow," he smirked.

"I wouldn't recommend invoking a demon in this place, if that's what you're getting at."

"I wouldn't with that crew, anyway. Demons are tricksters, and they're not exactly the hardest individuals to trick. I ought to know. I screwed with them for years."

"You'll keep me informed of your lessons plans," Fox stated.

"Of course."

"What are your lesson plans, exactly?"

Malfoy cocked his head thoughtfully. "Now that they're starting to get the hang of how to cast offensive spells, I figured it was probably time to get them started on how to defend against them, deflect them, reflect them, stuff like that. Maybe after the holidays I'll start in with the nastier things - how to conjure up and control magical beasts, how to siphon power off of your opponent..."

"How are you planning to practice how to do this without killing each other?"

"I'm not entirely sure," he said, frowning. "Over Christmas I planned to look through some of my father's papers. I know when he was teaching me, there was a complicated sort of buffer shield he used that kept the spells from being fatal. Until then, I figured it would be wise to stick to spells that aren't. Or at least, that aren't in the hands of a normal person. Potter's capable of killing someone with a disarming spell." He scowled. "Isn't part of your job to teach him control?"

"Believe me, I'm trying," she said flatly. "It doesn't exactly come naturally to the kid."

Malfoy rolled his eyes. "Don't I know it? Although maybe between the two of us, we can give the little snotrag a decent chance. I'd rather not spend the rest of my life enslaved to evil because the Dark Lord insulted Potter's mother."

"Yes, he is a tad sensitive about the Mudblood whore, isn't he?"

Fox was rewarded with a very slow blink from the boy. "Er..."

"I'll let it continue," she said, rising. He immediately shot to his feet, also. "For now, at least. Mostly because I don't think you know anything dangerous enough to worry me."

His eyes flashed briefly but he nodded in assent. Fox waved him over to the door, waiting until he was halfway there before striking. "Excalvare," she whispered.

Malfoy whipped around, wand already out, and deflected the scalping hex back at her double-strength. Fox grinned as it hit her right between the eyes. "Nice reflexes."

One side of his mouth lifted. "Passed again."

*******

"Who's gonna tell you when it's too late?

Who's gonna tell you things aren't so great?

You can't go on thinking nothing's wrong..."

-The Cars, 'Drive'

Thera's wedding day dawned bright and cold. She knew, because she saw it dawn. The charm had finally worn off of the streamers in her hair and they hung lankly around her shoulders. Actually, pretty much all of her was hanging lankly at that point.

Draco had chosen her wedding robes, unveiling them the night before with a satisfied smirk. They were tasteful, demure, and the purest white. They'd both had a good laugh about it. They'd had a good laugh about a lot of things, including the marriage itself. What the hell else were they going to do?

It stayed with her, that vague amusement at the ridiculousness of it all, the giddy desire to find everything much funnier than it really was, like a preteen who'd just gotten the sex talk. By the time the house elves arrived to get her dressed, the only thing keeping her from bursting out into peals of uncontrollable laughter was the fact that she was half drunk, and even that couldn't stop it when she finally saw herself in the mirror.

Her wedding day. Aside from the fact that the marriage had been arranged by an evil, megalomaniacal psychopath, it was every little girl's dream.

By the time Draco arrived to escort her downstairs, she'd achieved a fragile sort of calm, largely via an overindulgence of calming draughts. She was practically drooling.

Draco was clad in his finest dress robes and looked beautiful and perfect and bored, the way he pretty much always did. Thera had the sudden desire to smear mud in his hair. "If I didn't know any better, I'd actually buy you in that get-up," he said.

Thera closed her eyes against another upwelling of hysteria. "I can't believe we're actually fucking doing this."

"Believe it," he sighed.

The Dark Lord was the only other person who would be present for the ceremony. Thera had no idea how this set up had been arranged, or why, but she had to dig her fingernails into the palms of her hands when they arrived in the arena under Shirag Castle to find him already present and awaiting them, draped in a set of diaphanous white robes.

She was going to have to have a word with Snape about his calming draughts not lasting as long as they should.

"Doesn't he know the bride's supposed to be the prettiest one in the room?" she muttered to Draco. His lips squeezed shut, his face pinking slightly as he fought his hardest not to laugh in front of the Dark Lord.

"I hate you," he finally managed in a choked whisper.

"Likewise," she hissed back as they both pasted on an identical pair of dreamy smiles and took their positions in front of the Dark Lord. He gazed down at them proudly, his red eyes glittering. Thera and Draco went through the standard magical marriage ceremony - all thirty seconds of it - and sealed the deal with a closed-mouth kiss that would have been perfectly acceptable between a pair of siblings.

Draco's hands were always cold, Thera noted as they turned to face the Dark Lord. He extended his arms until he had a hand on each of their shoulders' and began muttering in a language that most definitely wasn't Latin. Thera forced herself not to glance over at Draco, though his hand tightened around hers, showing her that this turn of events was just as surprising to him as it was to her. And surprising was bad.

It just occurred to her that the Dark Lord was speaking in High Argorathic - though it was too low for her to make out the words - when his hand tightened on her shoulder. Thera got the feeling something was supposed to happen. Nothing did.

Rage suffused the Dark Lord's features, and suddenly his hand was wrapped around her neck, his grip surprisingly strong given how thin and frail his fingers looked. Taken by surprise, it took Thera a moment to even begin struggling. She tried to pry his hand away and get some air, but she couldn't. Something's very wrong here, she thought vaguely.

"Who?" he roared. "Who took the entailment? Tell me who it was!"

Even if she had a ready answer for that, she wasn't exactly capable of giving it to him at the moment. There wasn't enough oxygen getting to her brain for her to cook up a good lie, either. Thera settled for choking.

Draco stepped forward and said something she couldn't hear past the blood pounding in her ears. The Dark Lord's face twisted into a contemptuous snarl and he let her go. Thera fell in a heap, sucking in great gulps of air through her abused windpipe.

Someone kicked her onto her back and she looked up to see Draco standing over her with his wand out, his eyes telling her to let him handle it. Considering her current state, Thera was more than happy to. "I know who it was," he sneered. "O'Riordan."

It was a brilliant response, really, impossible to refute now that the man was dead. Her respect for Draco ratcheted up a few notches.

The Dark Lord narrowed his eyes at her. "Is this true?"

Feeling his presence prying into her head, Thera quickly cobbled together a series of nauseating sexual adventures starring Patrick O'Riordan and nodded meekly.

He gazed at her for a few suspicious moments, then looked over at Draco. "She is your wife now. As you requested, I'll allow you to punish her for her indiscretion."

"Thank you, Milord," Draco said, his face blank. He raised his wand and Thera braced herself. Things were about to get a lot worse.

Though most people didn't realize it, there was a strategy to handling Cruciatus without being reduced to a drooling vegetable, though enough of it at one time would make you one regardless. A person's instinct was to try to fight off the pain, but long experience had taught Thera that this was not only impossible, but actually just made it even worse. The best thing to do was give in, scream your head off and wait for it to end.

Draco gave her a few good long ones to please the audience, then yanked her off the ground, more or less holding her up. "If it pleases you, Milord, I'd prefer to continue in private. It is, after all, our honeymoon."

"By all means," the Dark Lord said, shooting her a look that was far too close to a leer for comfort. Thera shuddered, for several reasons. "No mercy, young Malfoy. Ensure that it is a mistake she does not dare make again."

"I shall, Milord."

The Dark Lord's face stretched into a nasty smile. "Enjoy your honeymoon."

Smirking, Draco pulled her against him and apparated them away. They arrived in a bedroom in the Palace of Versailles, if the nauseating amount of Louis XIV décor surrounding them was any indication.

Draco sat her down on the bed and took a step back. "Are you okay?"

Thera nodded. It seemed like the polite answer, even if she secretly wanted to cringe from the creepily staring eyes of the stylized cupids painted on the ceiling and simultaneously pound his pasty, aristocratic face in. Yes, he'd saved her ass. She didn't particularly care at the moment, and likely wouldn't until the shaking subsided and her left leg stopped randomly kicking out.

"I imagine you'd like a drink?"

"Yeah," Thera said, her voice sounding like it was coming out of a rock tumbler. "Where are we, anyway?"

"Malfoy Chateau," he said, glancing around. "Haven't been here for..."

"Malfoy! Fuck, where are you?!" Harry's muffled voice sounded. Either it was coming from one of the mirrors, or Harry was currently trapped in the bedside table.

Draco sighed. "Leave it to Potter to ruin a man's honeymoon." Striding over to the table, he opened a drawer. "Well, at least the house elves remembered to bring everything I asked for," he said, lifting out his mirror. "Calling to congratulate us? How terribly kind of you. The wedding was lovely, thanks. Shame you couldn't make it."

"Malfoy," Harry said urgently. "Where's Thera? Something's happened. I don't..."

"Thera's right here," Draco interrupted.

"What? Where? Let me see her."

Rolling his eyes, Draco held the mirror out towards her. Unprepared for the sudden appearance of Harry's surprised face suddenly hovering in front of her, Thera gave him a sickly smile and waved a little bit. Then it was gone. "As you can see, she's fine."

"But she was...I mean...what the hell happened?" Harry sputtered.

"Hit a bit of a snag with the Dark Lord," Draco said, sinking down next to her on the bed.

"How did you know something was wrong?" she asked hoarsely.

Harry shifted a bit. "Um...the entailment. I just...I knew you were in trouble. Suddenly all these alarm bells started going off in my head."

She glanced over at Draco, who didn't look remotely surprised to hear that. "You knew that was part of the entailment, didn't you?"

"I suspected," he shrugged. She glared at him. He looked offended. "What? I consider it an added bonus. Merlin knows you need a bloody keeper."

She glared at him harder. "No, I don't. What else is there?"

"How the hell am I supposed to know? We'll just have to take it as it comes."

"You still haven't told me what happened," Harry snapped.

"The Dark Lord knows the entailment's gone," Thera grated out.

"He was rather unhappy about it," Draco added.

Harry's face went hard. "What did he do?" he asked her in his dangerous voice. What did Harry think he was going to do about it? Send the Dark Lord a Howler?

She sighed. "Same thing he always does. The Dark Lord's unimaginative." Funny how she and Draco had managed a completely unspoken agreement to keep his role out of it.

"He really is, isn't he?" Draco commented, scratching his jaw. "One would think he'd have picked up a few things from my father over the years."

"Seriously," she agreed. "If that had been Reina pissed off in there, I'd have a leg sticking out of my back charmed to kick me in the arse for the rest of the day."

"Uh...guys?"

"Oh, I hated that one," Draco said, with a delicate shiver.

"GUYS!"

Breaking off their conversation, they both turned to look at Harry in the mirror.

"How did Voldemort even know that the entailment was reinstated?" he asked.

That gave them both pause. "Well, I didn't tell him," Draco said a little weakly, turning to her. "Did you?"

Thera was beginning to feel a bit uneasy. "Of course not."

"Then how did he find out?" Harry asked, his voice rising.

She sucked in a breath as it dawned on her. "My father must've told him. He's the only person who knew about it who would have."

Draco sank his head into his hand. "Oh, for the love of Merlin," he muttered.

"Do you have a better explanation?" she asked him, a slight edge of hysteria in her voice.

"Thera," he said patiently, looking up at her, "your father isn't a person. He's a figment of your imagination. A figment of your imagination can't rat you out to the Dark Lord."

"Then who did?"

"Who says anybody did?" he asked, throwing up his hands in exasperation. "The wedding was coming up. Maybe he's completely insulated from Death Eater gossip and doesn't know how you spend most of your time, so he checked to see if you're a virgin. There are spells he could've cast without your knowledge. Upon learning you were, he figured the entailment was safe. Then he found out it wasn't. It made him angry. Case closed."

The explanation made sense, but it didn't make her feel any less uneasy. "I just...I don't like this," she said. "I think something's going on."

Draco gave Harry a significant look. "And you call me a drama queen."

Harry ignored him. "It does make sense, Thera," he said, a bit grudgingly. "If your father knew and was clueing Voldemort in on what you were up to, it wouldn't have come as a surprise. And he wouldn't have known...uh...I'm just hazarding a guess that he doesn't know you gave it to me."

"No, we gave him a different - conveniently dead - culprit," Draco breezed.

"Well, that's...handy," Harry said lamely.

Thera squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed them. "It just feels like something's wrong here." Something was wrong. She was missing something. She was certain of it. She just didn't know what it was. "Where's my drink, Draco?"

He made an aggravated noise. "I'm not a bloody house elf," he grumbled, but he got up and made her one. She took it from him, downed it and handed it back to him for a refill.

Grumbling much louder this time, he made her another. "Thanks," she said, downing it.

"Shall I just bring the bottle over?" he asked dryly.

"There's an idea." Merlin, she was tired. Not tired, really. She wanted to curl up in a little ball and pull the covers over her head and forget that the rest of the world existed for a while. And she wasn't anywhere near drunk enough for that to be possible.

Not even bothering to grumble, but instead voicing his opinion of this treatment at full volume, Draco picked up the bottle, stalked over and thrust it at her. "Happy now?"

She grunted, putting the glass on the floor and opening the floodgates with the bottle.

"Ther-a," she heard Harry say disapprovingly. She ignored him. Sighing, he appealed to Draco. "Stop her, honestly. This is ridiculous."

"Shut up, Potter," he said in a bored voice.

Finishing up, she wiped her mouth and set the bottle down. "Where were we?"

"This isn't good," Draco said, running a hand through his hair.

"I don't know if it really matters," Thera said, crawling onto the bed and curling up. "Sure, the Dark Lord's pissed off at me right now, but it's hardly like he thinks there's a conspiracy going on. And he won't even be pissed off all that long. Despite his big, bad image, the Dark Lord is surprisingly forgiving. I mean, look at how many times he let your father off the hook."

"They'll be watching you, though. Me, too."

"They're always watching us," she said tiredly, pulling the covers around her until she was a nice warm Thera Burrito. "We're really fucking entertaining. What can I say?"

"I think she's done talking for the night," Draco said. "I'll have to think about all of this. What it means, what we can do. We'll talk tomorrow when I get back to Hogwarts."

"All right. Fine," Harry sighed. "In the meantime, keep her out of trouble, will you? The entailment isn't exactly subtle. I fell out of my seat in the middle of dinner."

"So you had another fit? Happens all the time. I doubt anyone thought anything of it."

Thera couldn't see what face Harry made in response to that, but verbally, at least, he chose to ignore it. "Goodnight, Thera. Happy birthday."

"Thanks," she said, burrowing in a bit deeper. She waited until he was gone before wriggling her head and arm out and reclaiming the bottle of scotch.

"This is always how I pictured my wedding night, you know," Draco mused, stretching out next to her. "A drunken seventeen-year-old wife I can't have sex with and Potter."

"Harbinger of things to come, I'm sure."

"Merlin, I hope not."

*******

There were some things Red did that annoyed Draco endlessly, like cracking her knuckles, or the way she chewed on the end of her quill until it was a tattered, soggy mess. On the other hand, there were also things she did that he enjoyed, that made him feel oddly content, that soothed something inside of him. He liked watching her eat in the Great Hall, head down, cutting everything into neat, precise little pieces and then methodically working her way around the plate, eating some of this thing, then some of that thing, then some of the next, giving them all equal treatment. He liked the way she gestured, the way her hands moved with something far too honest to be grace - the Weasley equivalent, he supposed. He'd spent fifteen of the happiest minutes of his life last week watching her sit naked and cross-legged on his bed, brushing her hair. Oh, yes. He liked her hair, too.

There were plenty of other things, too. Less sappy things. Less shallow things. He disliked the lengths she was willing to go to in order to secure her family's approval. On the other hand, he liked her almost Slytherin ability to see right to the heart of a matter.

He even liked her freckles, the way they looked dusted on, as if they'd rub off on his fingers if he brushed them across her skin.

And he especially liked sleeping with her. She was an extremely pleasant person to sleep with. She didn't hog the covers or snore or talk in her sleep, unlike his undesired wife, who had the blankets pulled over her head and changed position every five bloody minutes. Thera was not an extremely pleasant person to sleep with, especially when the occasional ice-cold foot made contact with his leg.

Draco waited until the boredom was nearly ready to kill him before waking Thera. She protested, as usual. "We should get to Malfoy Manor," he said. "I'd like to get back to Hogwarts soon and it's going to take a while to reset the wards for you."

"Why do we have to reset the wards?" she asked drowsily, wincing as she peeked out from underneath the blankets. "Fuck, it's bright."

"Only to the hungover," he said, swinging his legs over to the side of the bed. "And we need to reset the wards so that they'll respond to the new Mistress of the Manor."

That woke her up. "I'm going to be living at Malfoy Manor? Since when?"

"Since the Dark Lord figured out you screwed Patrick O'Riordan," he said flatly. "You realize I'm supposed to have spent the night visiting horrible punishments on you. Instead I let you get drunk and pass out, and I might add that I have yet to be thanked for it. However, I can hardly let you keep gallivanting around Shirag Castle. He wouldn't let me, anyway."

"You're fucking kidding me," she said, her eyes going wide with horror. "You're going to lock me up in that bloody mausoleum with only house elves for company? It'll be The Shining inside of two weeks. I'll go stark, raving mad."

"Do you have a better idea?"

"There has to be something. I'm useless at Malfoy Manor. Everything that's happening is happening at Shirag Castle. Not just with the Death Eaters, but...I was going to put in a swimming pool." She glanced at him hopefully. "Does the Manor have a pool?"

"No." The spells and potions required for upkeep were absolute murder on one's hair.

"Can we put one in?" she wheedled.

Draco let out an exasperated sigh and gestured for her to get moving. "Can't you wait until we get there before you start asking for things?"

Grumbling, Thera got dressed and he apparated them both to one of the sitting rooms at Malfoy Manor and began calling the wards to him, splitting a portion of each one off to encompass Thera...for the time being. It was a pretty time-consuming process, and she quickly grew bored, finally stretching out on one of the settees.

"Don't fall asleep," he told her distractedly. "You have to be awake for this to work."

Thera turned away from him. "So it's not like having sex with you, then?"

Draco decided it was probably best to just ignore her. Once he finished, she rolled over and sat up, a slow, decidedly evil smile crossing her face. "Does this mean I can get into Lucius' office?"

"Not without my permission, you can't."

She sagged a little. "How about his closet?"

"Well, it's my office and my closet now, so...what do you think?"

Thera blew out the breath. "I have access to the liquor cabinet, right?"

"So long as you don't clean the whole thing out in the first week."

"Well, that's something," she said, leaning back and sending him a considering look. "So what now? Swimming pool?"

"Maybe if you're good, Father Christmas will bring you one," he said dryly.

"See, that was always the problem with Father Christmas," she mused. "Any kid that an adult classifies as 'good' is really just a smarmy, ass-kissing snitch. Where's the holiday figure for the rest of us, who used to beat up the good kids and take their stuff?"

"Petty Criminal Pete?"

"There you go. Father Christmas' juvenile delinquent little brother." Draco hummed, glancing at his watch. "Oh, just go already," Thera sighed. "I'll find something to do."

"I'll have your stuff brought over," he said, rolling his eyes. "Including the Ferrari."

She gave him a brief smile. "You're a peach."

"Better than having to listen to you bitch all the time, isn't it?"

"From your perspective? Probably. Now that bitching's all I have left, I would like to indulge in it every once in a while. It's no fun bitching to myself."

Draco scratched his jaw, his face stretching into his old, familiar smirk. "There is another perk to being here, as opposed to Shirag Castle."

"Classier dungeons?"

He shook his head. "The floo isn't tracked by the Dark Lord."

Thera matched his smirk. "That's twice in two days you've thought up something intelligent. Don't make it a habit or I might have to change my opinion about you."

"It would be a shame, I know."

"We could wreak some serious havoc," Thera said, rubbing her hands together. "Might even be worth being imprisoned in this fucking place again. Can I redecorate?"

"No," he said firmly, walking over to the fireplace.

"Can you?"

"Yes." He grabbed a handful of floo powder.

"Will you?"

"No."

"Not even to put in a bowling alley?"

"Absolutely not."

"Ice skating rink?"

"Let it go, Thera."

"Honestly, Malfoy, what's the point of being rich if you don't have..."

Throwing down the powder, Draco flooed back to Hogwarts.

*******

"'Cause life takes from us the things we love,

And it robs us of the special ones,

And it puts them high where we can't climb,

And we only miss them all the time.

And we sing:

Life is shit. Life is shit.

The world is shit. The world is shit.

This is life as I know it."

-Dead Milkmen, 'Life is Shit'

It occurred to Harry as Remus pointed out all the places he had to sign on his will and all of the supporting documentation that he didn't have a signature. The only thing he'd signed before was his contract with Yolanda, and even then, he'd just written his name. He didn't have a signature, but he supposed he should probably have one. It should say something about him, and be unique, and...it was something he really didn't have the imagination to develop on the spot, so Harry just ended up writing his name.

Remus gathered up the parchments and tied them together. "Well, that's that," he said with the same false brightness he'd employed with Harry since he'd broken the news of his imminent departure. Harry wasn't sure what to make of it, or whether he was angry about it or not. He wasn't sure what he felt, really, aside from a dull ache in his stomach that might have just as much to do with not eating breakfast as it did with Remus leaving.

"Don't I have to get it notarized or something?" Harry asked as he took the scroll, putting it into his pocket.

"Your lawyers will do that once they verify everything. Then they'll send you a copy for your records."

Harry stifled a laugh at that. "I have records?"

With a thin smile, Remus reached into his pockets and handed Harry a small wooden box and two golden keys that he recognized as vault keys from Gringott's. "In there," he said, nodding at the box. "Your property deeds, your Gringott's statements - new ones will appear in there magically at the end of each month - your stock portfolio, too."

"Oh," Harry said, adding the box to his pocket. The keys were thankfully labeled 'Black' and 'Potter' so he could tell them apart. "Should I keep these with me, or...?"

"You can if you want. It's safe; nobody can take them away from you now that they're in your possession."

"Only now?" Harry asked, shooting his former professor a wry glance as he conjured up a serviceable chain so he could wear the keys around his neck. "Been embezzling my inheritance, have you?"

Remus sent him a wolfish grin. "Executor's privilege. I've been spending it all on wine and women. Or I would have, but I'm only allowed to pay necessary estate expenses out of it, and no matter how I tried to explain it to the goblins, they just wouldn't see eye to eye with me on the definition of 'necessary.' Just as well, I guess. My wife knows some decidedly nasty and irreversible ancient curses."

"Yeah, she reminds us of that quite a bit," Harry said, fumbling a little with the clasp on the chain, finally bringing it around to the front so he could see what he was doing. "I suppose that's why nobody ever acts up in her class."

Remus hummed, finally reaching across the table to link the clasp himself. Harry put his hands in his lap, where they twisted together. They weren't necessarily shaking, but they weren't exactly at their steadiest, either. He'd been dreading this day all week.

"What's this?" Remus asked, picking up the medal that Harry rarely went anywhere without. In fact, the only time he'd taken it off since he'd put it on was when he'd gone to meet Thera, largely because he hadn't wanted to get into it with her.

"Mrs. Polkiss gave it to me. It's St. Michael the Archangel."

He hadn't actually expected that to mean anything to Remus, but from the way the older man's face drooped, Harry could tell he could tell that it did. "Fitting," Remus said, letting go of the medal, his hand coming up to smooth down Harry's hair. "Guess it doesn't hurt to have God on your side."

Harry half-smiled, half-grimaced. "I'll take what I can get."

Remus' hand dropped to his shoulder, squeezing. "Ready to go?"

No, he thought automatically, gulping. "Yeah."

They stood in unison, though Harry wasn't sure what to do next. He knew that the plan was for him to apparate both of them to Godric's Hollow, since Remus couldn't leave the wards to go outside and Harry was the only one who could reliably apparate through them. He'd never done it with another person, though, and it didn't seem right to just stand up and go. It seemed like they should at least go up to the entry hall or something.

Remus sent him a questioning glance. "Uh...why don't we do it from upstairs?" Harry asked. The other man accepted that silently, and Harry followed him up to the entryway.

"Not that I don't trust you," Remus said, hesitantly. "But you're okay to do this, right?"

"I've never done it with someone else before," Harry admitted. "But Fox said it's no different. I just have to think of you as an extension of myself."

"Don't think too hard on it," Remus said with a small smile, "or we'll end up splinched."

"I've never splinched myself," Harry said, partially to reassure his passenger and partially to reassure himself. "I take it you have?"

"Exactly like that, even," the older man said, wincing. "After we all got our licenses, Sirius invented the concept of 'Apparation Tag,' and...well, suffice it to say your father and I spent a few hours as one in a way that isn't possible in nature. No matter what anyone says, two heads are certainly not better than one, and if you add four legs and four arms to the mix..." he shook his head. "We really were a passel of idiots."

Harry bit down on his lip until his throat unclenched. He really did need to focus for this. Reaching out, he took Remus' hand, holding it tightly and taking a deep breath, then letting it out. Closing his eyes, he let out his magic bit by bit, careful not to let the whole of it come roaring out and destroy the place. He sent feelers out the way Fox had taught him to, reaching out with a mental hand, fingers brushing against the wards around him, imagining them as threads, wrapped around Number Twelve, binding it.

He searched out openings between the threads, parting them to create tiny gaps that he and Remus could slip through, focusing on Godric's Hollow, fixing it in his mind's eye. Once he could see it clearly, see how he needed to manipulate them to get there, he held on to it, letting out a bit more of his power, widening the path he'd created so they could get them both there safely. Then he waved his wand and apparated them.

The landing wasn't perfect, but they did arrive together and as two separate people, so Harry counted it as a success. Ignoring the ruined foundation off to his left and their purpose in coming here for a moment, Harry grinned up at his former professor.

"Good job," he said proudly, grinning back.

Harry felt his face warm, half-embarrassed at the brief little spurt of happiness those words of praise evoked in him. It was stupid that it should mean so much. He wasn't a third year trying to conquer a boggart anymore, after all. But it wasn't so much different, either. Some part of him would never really stop seeking out Remus' approval.

The ache in his stomach intensified to a stabbing pain, wiping the happiness away. It wasn't until Remus squeezed his hand that Harry realized he'd never go after they'd apparated. Suddenly uncomfortable, he pulled away, taking a step back, nearly tripping over one of the uneven stones of the walkway up to the ruined house. Remus reached out automatically to steady him, but pulled back almost immediately as Harry regained his footing, stuffing his hands in his pockets and turning his head to stare at the stone steps that had once led up to the front porch.

Harry looked around, as much to remind himself of everything as to search for something to say. The day was gray and cold, and he shivered a little bit, casting a warming spell on himself more or less out of habit. There wasn't even a hint of a breeze, and while the silence should have been oppressive, it wasn't. Both of them needed this, he supposed. A few moments of peace, alone together with their thoughts.

The urge rose up in him again, to rebuild the house, to clean up the overgrown lawn and replant his mother's vegetable garden. Maybe in the Spring, over Easter holidays. He liked the idea of it, of coming here and working on something that was his, bringing it back to life, the way it had been when his parents had lived here.

And him, too, Harry reminded himself. Even if he didn't remember it, this was his home. He couldn't see it clearly yet. The images still fluttered on the edge of his mind, frustratingly unreachable when he tried to examine them closely, but he thought he could recreate it. And this was really his first step in that, wasn't it? Marking the past, memorializing those who'd lived here before. Then he could build it again.

But where should he mark the past, anyway? Despite all of his research into the matter of magical memorials in the past few days and the sleepless nights he'd spent mulling over what he wanted them to look like, it hadn't occurred to him to decide where he should put them. It seemed garish to just stick them right in the front yard, and he looked around the property with a different set of eyes. They should be somewhere peaceful, not right out in the open where anyone could gawk at them. And - frankly - he didn't want them in view of the house, once he rebuilt it. The house itself would be a memorial to them as much as what he and Remus had come here today to accomplish. Harry didn't think he could take the idea of looking out the window and catching a glimpse of what were - for lack of a better term - the gravestones of people he'd loved.

"Are the woods part of the property, too?" he asked, finally breaking the silence.

Remus turned his head to look at him, appearing almost relieved at the question. "Roughly an acre in each direction, if I recall. I didn't bring the property maps..."

Harry shook his head. "I'm not asking about that. I just...do you know the woods well?"

"I did," Remus said carefully. "But it's been a long time. They've changed, surely."

"I don't want it to be right here, is all," Harry said, shifting a little. "I thought there might be a nice place nearby."

"There's a little stream not too far from here," Remus said after a brief hesitation, squinting at the line of trees marking the edge of the backyard. "There was a clearing beside it. We used to go there quite often, to picnic and push each other in the water. The path is likely overgrown now, but I think I can still find it."

Harry nodded and followed Remus as he set off trudging through the weeds, skirting the foundation of the house as if it were still there. A pair of tall, solid oaks stood at the rear of the yard. "The entrance was here," the older man murmured to himself, peering through the undergrowth. "And then it turned there, and...yes, I remember."

They had to duck beneath the limbs of the oak trees to enter. Remus took the lead, clearing off the sometimes knee-high plants that had sprung up after almost two decades without human feet constantly treading on them. The path twisted and turned and the going was slow, with Remus occasionally stopping to look around, frowning for a few moments before moving on, making sure they were going in the right direction.

Finally, they reached a fallen tree, hollowed out and covered entirely with moss. Some parts had collapsed in on itself, and a few of the ones that remained even had small trees growing on top of it. "Your father knocked this down," Remus said, almost wonderingly, reaching out to touch the thick layer of moss. "Shortly before you were born. It was rotted through and he was convinced it was going to fall into the clearing and flatten somebody. We made fun of him endlessly about it, of course. 'Forget Voldemort; we should all be focusing on the threat posed by potentially murderous trees.'"

He made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh and dropped his hand. "It's just up here."

They rounded the fallen tree, Harry reaching out to touch it briefly, the moist, rotting bark crumbling underneath his fingers. The ostensible clearing didn't really exist any longer. Near as it was to the stream, the growth here was much thicker and had grown much faster than the rest of the woods. Without a word, Remus went to work, making the larger trees scoot back to the forest line and banishing the undergrowth.

Harry stood behind him, his mind going over the decisions he'd made about the memorials, how he wanted them to look, what he wanted them to say, what spells he would need to make them. It took him a second to realize that Remus had spoken.

"Huh?" he asked, looking up.

Remus was watching him with a remote expression on his face, his wand held loosely in his hand. "This is what it looked like. Or this is how I remember it, at least."

Harry glanced around, taking it all in. The stream was a low murmur in the background, calming in its way, highlighting the hushed quiet of the clearing that was somehow different than outright silence. There were tiny sounds of distant movement from the woods - leaves rustling, limbs creaking - but it seemed tempered, barely perceptible. It made the place peaceful instead of lonely and isolated. Tilting his head back, Harry looked up at the thick canopy that arched above them, allowing in broken, brief patches of gray sky, filtering the weak sunlight into shafts that shifted and flickered in a way that seemed almost playfully magical.

"It's brilliant," he said, feeling his mouth stretch into a smile. "It's perfect."

Remus returned the smile, coming over to place a light hand on his shoulder. "So what did you want to do?"

"It's up to you, too," Harry said quickly. "Your opinion matters as much as mine."

"Actually, I was hoping you'd come up with something," Remus admitted, chuckling a little. "I was never able to. Not anything that was meaningful, at least."

"Neither was I," Harry sighed. "Not just because I didn't know them - well, my parents, at least - but just...I don't know. I finally gave up on trying to be showy about it. It seemed wrong. Whatever meaning there is, it should just be for us. I like it that way. I don't want it to be about what they stood for or what they symbolize or anything like that. I just wanted it to be about my Mum and Dad, and Sirius, I guess," he finished lamely.

"I think they'd like that," Remus said, bending down to search on the ground for a rock. Finding a pale, rounded one, he held it up for Harry's approval. "It's a good start, at least. Native material's the best to transfigure with for these sorts of things."

Harry nodded and Remus placed the rock on the ground, halfway between the woods and the stream. He went through the transfiguration spells he was already familiar with - enlarging it, lightening the color and forming the edges into corners. Then he started in on the ones he'd just looked up, cutting away portions and carving the words he'd chosen into the stone, all of his concentration on the task at hand. Finally, he cast a preservation spell and took a few steps back to admire his work.

The stone was roughly waist high, the top half separated into three different markers, one each for his Mum, Dad and Sirius. The markers had no dates, but simply listed their names and the roles they'd played, or at least the ones that had mattered - Beloved wife, mother and friend; Beloved husband, father and friend; Beloved godfather and friend - as well as their membership in the Order. On the bottom section where they all joined together, he had chosen to inscribe only two words: Never Forgotten.

Finishing up, he glanced back at Remus, who had a small, wavering smile on his face. "What do you think?"

"Just...just one change, if you don't mind." Harry shook his head and Remus waved his hand, adding 'Marauder' to his dad's marker, then Sirius'. "They just wouldn't seem complete without it."

"They did earn the title, after all."

Remus laughed a little, a sound like the wind over dry leaves. "That they did."

"If you want to add the rest of Sirius' names, you can. I just don't know them all."

"No, it's okay. He wouldn't have wanted them up there anyway."

They stood for several minutes in companionable silence, both of them unable to take their eyes off of the pale stone memorial in front of them. Finally Harry shivered - his warming charm must have worn off - and Remus looked over at him.

"Do you want to go?"

"Yeah," Harry said, taking one last look before following his old professor along the path back to the ruined house, feeling less sad than he'd thought he would. It calmed him somehow, just to know the memorial existed, that he could come and look at it whenever he wanted. "So you're leaving now?" he asked as they approached the front walkway, even though he already knew the answer.

"Yeah." Remus stopped and turned around to look at him. "I'll be in touch if I can. The Order's communications devices are nigh on untraceable, but I'm not sure..."

Harry nodded. "I understand. It's okay."

The other man opened his mouth as if he were about to say something else, then closed it. He stepped forward and pulled Harry into a rib-crushing hug. For once, for real, Harry hugged back. "They'd be so proud of you, Harry. I know I am."

The ache in his stomach intensified into something so piercing it hurt to breathe. Prickling started behind his eyes and he squeezed them shut, gritting his teeth and shoving the ache back down. He was not going to cry all over Remus like a big baby.

"They'd be proud of you, too," he managed. "Not just for what you're doing, but for looking out for me and everything. Thanks for that."

"Anytime. I like to, as much as I can. You know..." Remus cleared his throat and tried again. "I'd have taken you in after your parents and Sirius if the Ministry would have allowed it. And Ministry aside, if I'd known about the Dursleys, I'd have whisked you off to Trinidad in a bloody heartbeat."

Considering all the time he'd spent in his cupboard imagining such a thing happening, it seemed ridiculously funny in retrospect to know that it actually could have. "Trinidad?"

"Tolerant of dark creatures with a long history of refusing extradition," Remus explained.

"Well, now I know where to find you if you ever run afoul of the Ministry."

"My secret backup plan. Don't tell anyone."

"I won't."

Remus let him go, stepping back reluctantly. "Are you going to be okay?"

Biting his lip hard, Harry just nodded.

"I'll see you as soon as I can, then. Take care. Not just with respect to dark lords, either. Don't neglect your studies. N.E.W.T.s are coming up."

Harry rolled his eyes. "Like Hermione'd ever let me forget."

Remus reached up and ruffled his hair once more. "Are you going back?"

"In a little bit," Harry said. Squeezing his shoulder once more, Remus stepped back and apparated away. Letting out a breath, Harry wrapped his arms around himself as the chill sunk in. Pulling out his wand, he cast another warming spell, then stood for a good long time staring across the bleak landscape of Godric's Hollow. Slowly, his mind chugged up to speed, scoping it out, making plans. The house here would take work, but it would have to wait. Christmas was coming up, and he still needed to get the house on the French Riviera fixed up for visitors, and Harry didn't think Willy the house elf, teetering on the edge of death, was quite up to the task. He'd have to talk to Dobby, see if he had any ideas. Maybe he'd even help out, if Harry got him some colorful new socks.

His mind nearly full to bursting, Harry weaved his way through the wards around Hogwarts, smiling a little as he managed to hit his mark exactly.

*******

"Trust everybody, but cut the cards."

-Finley Peter Dunne

Ginny tensed as her two remaining dormmates put away their homework and sat forward on the edge of their beds the moment she entered the dormitory. Her relationship with Mary and Carrie had been a bit tenser this year. They'd been more watchful now that she was officially dating Harry Potter. From her unfortunate run-in with Tom Riddle's diary up until the beginning of this year, she and her dormmates had existed in a tentative cease-fire; they pretended like she didn't exist, and she, in turn, did her best to act the same way whenever they were around.

The loss of Sherry this summer had dealt the two of them a blow, but not a large one. Sherry and Carrie had always been followers, and when left to their own devices, had no problem being pleasant to her. Mary had always been the ringleader of the Ginny Weasley is Beneath our Notice Society.

It would have been easier to view them all as brainless, personality-deficient twits, but they weren't, really. Sherry had been the most bookish of them all; Ginny had always figured the girl would get Prefect, since she'd had the best marks. Sherry had gained a bit of notoriety third year because she was Cedric Diggory's cousin, and her mother had worked in the Department of Magical Creatures, and once or twice Ginny'd had civil conversations with her about Ministry business. And now Sherry was dead, killed by the Death Eaters over the summer, and sometimes Ginny found herself staring absently at the empty space in their dormitory that had once housed Sherry's bed. She couldn't say she honestly grieved for her classmate; she'd hardly known the girl. But having lost one of her own brothers in the same manner, it sometimes seemed all of a piece. Those who lost, lost. There didn't seem much point in weighing the differences between them.

Mary and Carrie probably looked at that empty space and felt the same hollowness she felt whenever she suddenly jolted out of making her Christmas list, realizing that she didn't have to get anything for Charlie this year, because there wasn't a Charlie anymore.

Carrie was a pretty blonde Muggleborn, and Ginny got the feeling she'd only palled up with Mary in the first place because she'd needed some sort of anchor to cling to in this strange new world, and as a pureblood, Mary could more than provide the necessary information. Carrie seemed nice enough on her own, and didn't appear to derive any actual sense of enjoyment from freezing Ginny out. She wasn't particularly intelligent and didn't get very good marks, and was highly sensitive about both of these facts. Carrie was rather famous for bursting into tears whenever she got an exam back in class.

Mary Scrimgeour had once been the bane of Ginny's existence. She was the granddaughter of Rufus Scrimgeour, Head of Magical Law Enforcement, and her family was ruthlessly Good, extremely old and embarrassingly wealthy. Ginny had heard her own brothers complain plenty of times about their family being poor, and had - in retrospect - seen blatant indications of this throughout her entire life. But she'd never really felt poor until she'd been faced with Mary Scrimgeour, who vacationed in Sydney and Prague and Rio de Janeiro and had more clothes than Ginny's entire family put together. The really annoying thing was that Mary wasn't a prissy bitch about this; she never rubbed it in. She merely seemed surprised at the fact that the rest of the world didn't live this way. And though she'd been the driving force behind cutting Ginny out of their tight little circle, she hadn't even done that out of bitchiness. She'd merely informed Ginny at the beginning of second year that her family was dedicated to the Good Side, and that she didn't feel comfortable associating with someone who'd just spent a year being possessed by Voldemort. No offense.

So Ginny found it more than a little disconcerting to be suddenly ambushed by a pair of individuals who regularly acknowledged her entrance into the dormitory by pointedly not acknowledging it at all.

"That Transfiguration essay is a complete bitch, isn't it?" Mary asked, taking the lead as always. Ginny fought off the desire to roll her eyes. If they were looking to cheat, they had about six years worth of kissing up to do.

"Yeah, it's a right ball-chewer," she said, hoping to head off that particular attack.

"So," Carrie said with such a heaping of false Gryffindor casualness that Ginny felt a wave of annoyance at her own house for being so bloody obvious about everything. "You and Harry Potter."

"If you want his bloody autograph, you can ask for it yourselves," she said coldly.

The two girls shared a look. "It's hardly that," Mary said in an almost condescending manner, implying without saying that if she wanted that - or anything else - she could get it without Ginny's help. "It's just that he's obviously in the center of all of this, and you're obviously very close with him, and we just wonder what his plans are."

"Beyond defeating You-Know-Who, you mean?" Ginny shot back.

"Does he really expect to do that?" Carrie asked, with a significant glance at Mary.

A creepy-crawly sensation started up the back of Ginny's neck at the question, and the pair of penetrating stares that took in her reaction to it. "Why wouldn't he?"

"We're understandably worried," Mary said smoothly. "My family's historically sided with the Light, and Carrie's Muggleborn. It's hardly out of line for us to want to know what the Savior of the Wizarding World is planning to do to protect us all."

Ginny felt her jaw nearly drop at the gall of them. Or likely not even them. Mary, at least, had likely been put up to this by her family. "Why don't you ask him, then? Or Dumbledore, for that matter? I guess you can't do that, though, can you? It's a lot less risky for Minister Diggory to go through your grandfather to you, then from me to Dumbledore, in order to get a sense of what he's planning. I don't know about you," she said, sitting back and crossing her arms, "but I'd rather they all just stopped acting like a bunch of babies and sorted it out themselves."

Mary tossed her hair and leaned forward. "They're politicians. They can't do that. It's much easier to skirt around the issue in an easily-deniable way."

"Like this, you mean?" Mary shrugged, leaving her to take whatever she chose to from that statement. Ginny peered at her. "What do you want?"

Her dormmate sized her up before giving up her façade, letting it drop to reveal her shrewd negotiating side. "Certain members of my family aren't quite as firmly tied to the Ministry as others. They're willing to seek out other avenues, but they'd like to know as much about them before making a final decision. That's all."

"What do you have to offer?" Ginny asked bluntly.

"Sanctuary," Mary said, resting her head in her hand, studying her nails, making it appear to anyone else in the common room that they were having a completely frivolous conversation. "Like I said, our family's old. We have defenses against evil that were in place long before You-Know-Who happened along. He's never taken anyone in our family, and never will. That protection could be extended to those in need of protection."

Ginny gawked at her. "Why on earth are you talking to me about this?"

Mary smiled slightly. "Just putting out some feelers, is all."

Snapping back to herself, Ginny sized up the situation. Mary had given her some information that may be useful, without demanding anything of like value in return. So far as she could tell - no matter how sneaky Mary likely thought she was being about the whole thing - it seemed to Ginny like the other girl was offering an alliance.

Or at least making the first tentative overtures towards one. Not having been raised to act as a diplomat in any way, shape or form, Ginny found herself at a bit of a loss. Why were a pair of teenage girls talking about this in the Gryffindor common room, anyway?

Because that way nobody who matters stands to lose anything. At this point, anything that was passed between them could easily be refuted as the ramblings of a couple of silly teenage girls. It was brilliant, really.

But it was also the tentative beginnings of a truce, and one that could prove quite favorable to the Good Side. Having the Scrimgeours firmly on their side would be invaluable. It would gain them not on the Ministry, but also the pureblooded families who had chosen to side against You-Know-Who, but not with Dumbledore.

"I can't give you details," she said, looking away. "I'm still in school. I don't have access to that kind of information."

"I'm quite squarely in the same boat," Mary said, watching her. "I'm still just a schoolgirl, etcetera, etcetera. From what I can see, You-Know-Who doesn't seem to differentiate, but then I'm sure the adults know best, right?"

They shared a pair of brief, grim smiles. "I'll think about it," Ginny said finally.

Mary nodded, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a handful of flesh-colored strings that Ginny immediately recognized as Extendable Ears. "My parents have a Christmas Party every year. All the important people in the Ministry will be there. I imagine these will come in quite handy." She held them up in a little salute. "Tell your brothers thanks for inventing them."

The message wasn't lost on Ginny. "I will," she said, turning away and busying herself getting ready for bed. Mary and Carrie began discussing the relative merits of a guy named Paul, and it almost seemed as if the conversation had never happened.

*******

Much like the first note she'd received from the private investigator she'd hired, the second not Hermione received was short and to the point. Taking out a piece of parchment, she wrote a letter to Gringott's to arrange for the remainder of his balance, then tied it to the owl's leg and sat still for a moment, contemplating the ramifications of her actions. She'd saved up every cent she'd gotten from relatives on her birthday and at Christmas since she could remember. And now it was all gone.

It made her feel very much like a young, inexperienced trapeze artist working without a net. If this didn't work out, she had no idea what she was going to do. Go crawling to her parents, probably.

"Everything okay?" Harry asked, eyeing her over his pumpkin juice.

"Of course," she said, stabbing at her eggs with a fork, feeling a bit stupid for her worry. At least she had parents to crawl back to.

Classes went by in a blur, the way they always seemed to lately. Something about knowing her days at Hogwarts were numbered made them pass all that much faster. Her instinct was to squeeze as much knowledge as she could out of each class, and it frustrated her that they didn't seem to want to hold still long enough for her to do that.

Just like everything else, knowledge seemed to be slipping through her fingers no matter how hard she tried to hold onto it. Pushing her hair out of her face, Hermione headed for her favorite table in the back of the library, trying to order her thoughts. She had to work on her Transfiguration Essay and do her reading for History of Magic and look over her Arithmancy homework for tomorrow and do at least one N.E.W.T. exercise and...

Hermione froze in her tracks as she rounded the corner of the stacks. Ron was sitting at her table, snogging Mandy Brocklehurst, and his hands were roving around her body as if her robes were on fire and he was trying to put it out.

She must have made a sound, because Ron raised his head. Hermione dove behind the stacks, pressing herself against the bookshelf, holding both hands over her mouth to keep from giving herself away.

"What?" Mandy asked.

Ron gave a little half-laugh. "Sorry. Thought I heard something."

"I didn't hear anything," she said. "Anyway, barely anyone comes back here."

"Except Ravenclaws," Ron said. Hermione could practically hear him smiling. A series of rather descriptive noises told her without a doubt that they'd resumed snogging.

Not that she cared. Okay, she did care. But it didn't matter. She and Ron had tried to be a couple. It hadn't worked. They weren't any good together. So while it was completely understandable that she'd be upset by this situation, Ron was perfectly within his rights to move on. It's not as if they'd broken up yesterday. Yes, it was upsetting, but it wasn't surprising. Or at least, it shouldn't have been surprising. What, had she expected him to moon over her memory forever? That was a terrible thing to ask of another person. Ron wasn't doing anything wrong.

Just because it felt like he was doing something wrong didn't mean he was.

And considering she'd attempted to seduce Harry within an hour of their breakup, she wasn't exactly in a position to judge.

Still, it hit her hard. Not just Ron and Mandy, but...the fact that they'd looked so comfortable together, so normal. She and Ron had never been like that.

And she wanted that, more than she'd realized. She didn't want it as much as she wanted a good N.E.W.T. score, or to win this job in the Department of Mysteries, but she still wanted it. Or - more precisely - she wanted to know how to be like Mandy Brocklehurst, to just be comfortable and natural and slutty and let her boyfriend feel her up right in the middle of the library like a Knockturn Alley...

Shaking herself, Hermione tiptoed away, deep in thought. Mandy was a nice girl, and very smart, and Hermione liked her quite a bit and she wasn't going to turn shrewish just because Mandy was with Ron. It was petty, and small and...hopelessly pathetic.

Especially because this didn't have anything to do with Mandy. She was just tired of womanhood being this frustrating mystery she couldn't quite figure out. Sure, it was ridiculous for Lavender and Parvati to spend hours fixing their hair and getting their makeup just right, but wasn't she just as ridiculous? It was one thing to not put a great deal of effort into how one looked, or to not care. It was another thing entirely to have shirts you refused to wear because they were too tight around the bosom and showed off more cleavage than you were comfortable with - which was any - and to hide behind your school robes, completely afraid of attempting to look remotely sexy because...

Because why? What was she really so frightened of? Raising her head, her decision made, Hermione strode down to the dungeons, to the one person who wouldn't just pat her on the head and tell her of course she was pretty, or that it didn't matter.

Draco Malfoy. She knocked on his door. He answered it, looking distracted, holding his Charms textbook. Upon seeing her, his expression turned decidedly harassed.

"What firstie is crying for home now?"

"You said you wanted to fix my hair. Well here I am," she said. "Fix it."

With only a tiny movement of his head, Malfoy sprang into awareness, like a cat that just spotted a canary. "Come in," he said, stepping back and flourishing his textbook.

Hermione stepped inside and put her bag down, uncertain what to do next.

Malfoy was practically brimming. "You're serious, right?" he asked urgently, tossing his book onto the bed. "Because if you're teasing me, Granger, that's just cruel."

"I'm serious," she said, gathering up her resolve.

Grinning madly, Malfoy threw himself into his desk chair and opened the bottom drawer, pulling out a collection of vials. "I've been planning for this," he said, studying the labels on them, putting some on his desk and tossing the other ones back into the drawer. "I bought a bottle of Frizz-Killer just in case. I mean, Merlin knows I don't need it."

Hermione tugged at a strand of her hair, worrying her bottom lip. "Do you think my hair is my only problem?" she asked tentatively, by way of asking what else she could do.

"Decidedly not," he said firmly. "A little makeup wouldn't kill you. Looking pale and washed out isn't ever going to be in style, you know. And do you own anything besides cardigans? It's heinous, the way you dress. I'll admit it made for a grand unveiling at the Yule Ball fourth year, but I don't see where you think impersonating someone's grandmother is going to get you." Pulling out his desk chair, he gestured for her to sit.

She did, strangely not offended by anything he'd said, mostly because it wasn't anything she hadn't thought about herself before, numerous times. She just hadn't cared enough to do anything about it. "So you thought I looked good at the Yule Ball?" she couldn't help but ask. It was strange to think he'd noticed, or noticed in any way that wasn't hateful.

"Sure I did. At least until I figured out it was you," he said easily, waving his wand. Hermione gasped as her entire head of hair suddenly became dripping wet.

"Malfoy!"

"I have to start at the beginning," he shrugged, handing her a large vial of gray, viscous potion. "Go on. Rub it in. Use this in the shower daily in place of whatever shampoo you've been using, which should be immediately flushed down the toilet."

"It's going to get all over my clothes," she argued.

Malfoy looked as if he didn't exactly think that would be a bad thing. "Muggleborns. Are you aware that magic exists and can be used for minor tasks like cleaning up one's clothing? If you think I'm going to let you use my shower, you're barking. Aside from the fact that I'm married now, I guarantee my mistress Red would choose that exact moment to pay a surprise visit, and I really don't want to have to try to explain. The girl's got a bit of a temper."

Scowling at him, she began working up a lather. "You just don't want a filthy Mudblood in there, befouling the place with my unnaturalness."

"That, too," he smirked. "I'm letting you sit on my chair, though, aren't I?"

"How kind of you," she said dryly. "Be sure to disinfect it after I leave."

"I can't," he sighed. "It's impossible to cleanse Mudblood germs. I'll have to burn it."

"You really are a snot," she growled at him.

"Granger," he said, leveling silver eyes at her, "it was a joke."

"Oh," she said, feeling a bit stupid, which wasn't helped by the fact that she had a head full of foam at the moment.

"I wouldn't have let you in here if I were that fastidious," he said, waving a hand. "And you must admit I've grown by leaps and bounds. I've been a very good boy lately."

"Yes, you've admitted that Muggleborns deserve to live. Your Order of Merlin's in the post."

"You could cut me some slack," he said, pouting a little, waving his wand to rinse out her hair, leaving it doused and dripping. Hermione wondered vaguely how much he was enjoying this. "You know who my father was. I didn't clap eyes on a Muggleborn until I was eight years old. I was shocked to find out they didn't have horns and a tail."

In spite of herself, she laughed at that. "Poor, sheltered Malfoy."

"I was gently reared, as befits my station," he sniffed, handing her another vial. "Use this every other day in the winter and every day in the summer when the humidity's high. I have another emergency measure for you to use if things get desperate."

She worked it in, studying him. It's not as if she'd never seen this side of Draco Malfoy before. When he finally stopped rolling his eyes and complaining about the pointlessness of Head Boy duties and actually worked with her to plan out the student budget or put together talking points for their weekly meeting with the faculty, he was much like this. Pompous and arrogant, but at least not a complete nightmare. Frankly, when it came to completing a task, she preferred working with him over Harry or Ron. Unlike her friends, he had an attention span longer than three minutes, was willing to work straight through until the task was finished, and was nearly as ruthlessly organized as she was.

"I thought it would be unbearable having you as Head Boy," she admitted. "But it really hasn't been. If you'd just stop whining every time we have to do something..."

"I don't whine," he said, glaring at her. "I merely restate my - entirely correct - opinion that the majority of my responsibilities as Head Boy are a ridiculous waste of my time. Planning the menu for the Halloween feast was not a task of monumental importance. Studying for my courses is. Working on the spell is. Covering up for my Slytherins who step out of line is. It's a bit difficult for me to get worked up over whether or not we're going to have enough pumpkin pasties to go around."

"If you think it's such a waste of your time, why don't you step down?"

Rinsing out her hair again, he flourished his wand to cast a drying spell on it. "Because none of the other idiots in our year could do it half as well as I do," he said, tilting his head and tapping a finger against his lips, apparently deciding what to do to her next. "The menu for the Halloween feast was exquisite, after all. Was it not?"

"The escargots were a bit much. Nobody at my table would even touch them."

"That's because they have palates like Neanderthals and absolutely no appreciation for haute cuisine. I suppose I should have known my audience a bit better. Next feast, I'll just have the house elves throw a side of raw beef on the Gryffindor table and let you all tear into it with your bare hands. Is that more your speed?"

Once more, against her will, Hermione laughed at that. Well, more at the images it invoked than anything else. She'd seen what Ron could do to a drumstick.

"I'll arrange for it then," he said with a brief smirk. "I aim to please, after all." He bustled around her for a moment, muttering to himself. Finally, he spritzed her whole head with something that smelled like berries and smoothed her hair down, his eyebrows drawn together in concentration. He stepped back again and nodded firmly. "You're a hopeless case in your present state, Granger. You need a bloody haircut."

Hermione threw her arms over her head. "You're not cutting my hair, Malfoy."

"It has no style," he argued. "It just...hangs there. It's all the same length, and I don't know what misguided individual chose to give you a fringe, but it doesn't work at all with the shape of your face. Your hair wasn't intended to be worn this long. It's all weighed down. It's depressing me, actively, as we speak. I'm contemplating suicide."

"What do you want to do?" she asked warily, not letting her arms down.

"Granger, you don't trust me," Malfoy said, holding up his hands. "That much is obvious. But at least trust my aesthetic ego. Your head of hair is my project, and I'm not about to let it walk around looking anything less than perfect. It's my work, after all."

And if she didn't like it, she could always change it back. "Okay," she said, lowering her arms. "But if I end up bald, I'm going to..."

"If you end up bald, I'll just obliviate you," he smirked. "Now hold still."

Clenching her hands together in her lap, Hermione closed her eyes and let Malfoy go about his business. He was obviously in his element, walking about her muttering to himself, occasionally playing with her hair, occasionally cutting some of it off with the same spell they'd used in his first training session. The same one she hadn't been able to perform effectively at all. It was a failure, and it was one that rankled even more because everyone else had been able to do it. She hadn't failed like that since her unstable, barely passable broomstick skills had been put on display first year. But that was different, or at least she'd always seen it that way. Riding a broomstick wasn't something she cared much about mastering, much like she hadn't cared much in primary school about mastering the art of dodgeball. She was not an athlete. She never had been. But this was...she should have been able to do it, and it frustrated her endlessly that she couldn't.

"If I ask you something, will you promise not to be a jerk about it?"

"I don't make promises I can't keep."

Funny, for a moment there she'd forgotten she was talking to Malfoy. "Will you try?"

"I don't know what you're going to ask," he said in a patient voice. "It might be something about which I'm entirely compelled to be a jerk. I know my limitations."

She had half a mind to give up, but...well, as far as Hermione Granger was concerned, the desire for knowledge outweighed pride by quite a bit. "Why can't I do the hex?"

He took a moment before answering and she felt his fingers on her forehead, toying with her fringe, brushing it one way, then the other. "Don't you have a natural part anywhere?" he asked with a touch of exasperation.

Hermione opened her eyes. "Malfoy," she said, her tone matching his exasperation.

"Oh, fine," he said, stepping back, crossing his arms and pinning her with a look. "Who do you hate most in the entire world?"

She blinked at him. "I don't hate anybody."

He raised an eyebrow. "Not even me?"

"No."

"Right," he snorted. "Not even when I went out of my way to insult you at every turn?"

Hermione shook her head slowly. "I thought you were a foul little rodent who could use a good swift kick in the behind, but I certainly didn't hate you."

Malfoy smirked, obviously not believing her. "Not even when I tried to have your precious attempted murderer Hippogriff executed?"

"No, I didn't," she said. "Though I guess that's the closest I came to it."

His eyes flashed in challenge, as if he were throwing down a gauntlet. "Okay, what about my father, then? The one who got your chum Hagrid thrown in Azkaban and Dumbledore kicked out of Hogwarts? Who was responsible for you getting petrified and Red and Potter nearly getting killed? Who helped orchestrate the whole mess in the Department of Mysteries that had you laid up in the Hospital Wing, half cooked from the inside out? He'd have been thrilled as anything if that curse had managed to kill you. Believe me. You're telling me you didn't hate him?"

He honestly couldn't understand it, she realized. "No, I didn't," she said. "He didn't deserve that much from me. Hatred takes from you. My parents always taught me that. And - Muggles though they may be - I think they're right in that belief. All hatred does is make the person you hate more important than your own ideals. It makes destroying them more important than anything else, and it takes anything noble in you and makes it selfish. There are people who are evil, and who need to be stopped, and I want them to be stopped, and I want them to be punished for what they've done. But I'm not about to hate them for it. They're not worth what I'd lose because of it, and I'm not going to give them that kind of power over me."

Malfoy stared at her for a brief, shocked moment. Then he threw his head back and burst out laughing. Hermione gritted her teeth and decided that she really didn't need this. "Thanks for the advice," she said tightly, stalking over to get her bag.

"Don't go," he said, gasping. "I'm not finished."

"I think we're quite finished," she said, opening the door. Still in the throes of hilarity, Malfoy pushed it shut, his other hand pulling the bag off of her shoulder. "Stop it," she hissed, refusing to relinquish the bag. "If you think I won't slap you again..."

"Please...please don't," he choked out through his laughter as they engaged in a game of tug of war over her schoolbag. "Seriously. I'm...I'm not laughing at you, Granger. It's just...bwaa-ha-haaaa."

She kicked him in the shin, making him tumble backwards, swearing and yet still laughing. Having regained control of her schoolbag, she opened the door to leave.

"I'm laughing at myself," he managed in between giggles.

Hermione paused, glancing over her shoulder. "What do you mean?"

He lay back on the floor, his arms stretched out on either side, his face twisted in something that combined amusement and bitterness to an almost frightening degree. "It's a good thing I've sworn off pride," he said a bit unsteadily, "or else I'd have to kill myself for honestly contemplating telling you this, of all people. Of course I can't die," he mused, "so that would be a fairly pointless endeavor, wouldn't it?"

"What on earth are you going on about?"

He raised his head a little, looking at her, smiling a tad insanely. "Granger, whatever else I think of you, I know your deep well of moral righteousness won't allow you to use this as Malfoy-mocking fodder. I think I trust you more than I trust people I actually like."

Closing the door, Hermione turned around. "Thanks," she said sarcastically.

"You're so touchy," he said, sitting up on his elbows. "That was a compliment, you know. And I gave it straight-faced while you only have half your head styled."

Repressing the urge to find a mirror and see what had been done to her hair, Hermione looked down her nose at him. And then the dumbest thing possible came out of her mouth. "You're ruining your slacks by rolling around on the ground like that."

"Magic, Granger," he said, staring balefully at her as he uncurled himself from the floor. "It means there's no such thing as ruining your slacks. In most circumstances, at least."

Hermione pressed her lips together briefly. "What did you mean?"

"By what?" he asked distractedly, using his wand to clean himself up.

"You know I'm not stupid, Malfoy," she said, crossing her arms. "What did you mean?"

He glanced up at her from underneath his fringe, which had to be far too long for Hogwarts regulations. Trust Malfoy to be able to get away with it. "I just...I finally got it, is all. Not your entire little love-fest speech there, because that was largely incoherent softhearted blithering, but...I got it. Not just why Potter beat me, but why it was inevitable that he would. I never had a chance," he said, shrugging a shoulder and looking down again. "I hated him more, and all that did was give him more power. What happened was inevitable."

It was a momentary urge, disturbingly similar to the ones she often got towards Harry, to take his hand and help hold him up and tell him everything would be okay. The fact that she felt it for Malfoy was more than a little weird, because even in his most human moments, he was not a terribly sympathetic individual. It just added to the blow. She'd expected the war to bring death in its wake, but she hadn't been prepared for the way it broke people down on a daily basis. The way Harry's face shuttered closed every time there was a story in the Prophet, taking on an expression that made him almost unrecognizable to her. The feral, enraged gleam in Ron's eye whenever something made him think about what had happened to Charlie. Neville coming up and quietly thanking her for killing Bellatrix LeStrange, his eyes cold, "She won't be hurting anyone else."

Somewhere in all of this, she'd relied on Malfoy to some degree. In that she'd relied on him to be the same Malfoy she'd known for the past six years. All other simple truths had been destroyed, but she'd always imagined that one would hold true. And it hadn't.

Merlin, no wonder Harry had been all freaked out by Malfoy's surrender and loyalty oath. She was half freaked out herself, and Hermione did not freak out easily.

Uncertain what else to do, she set down her bag. "You're probably right," she said gently. "Are you going to finish this?" she asked, her voice turning businesslike as she gestured towards her head. "Because if you've got an artistic vision..."

His head snapped up, glaring. "Of course I do. Sit down, Granger. Honestly. I'm appalled at the idea that you're willing to walk around the school looking like that."

"I don't know what I look like," she pointed out. "I haven't seen what you've done."

"Half of a masterpiece," he breezed, picking up his wand and acting as if nothing had happened. Getting the impression that he needed that, Hermione went along with it.

And...well, she would prefer to have him finish what he'd started.

They both remained silent as he continued, deep in concentration, occasionally stepping back and surveying her for minutes on end, rubbing his jaw and sighing to himself. It occurred to Hermione that he enjoyed acting out the process as much as he enjoyed the idea of his final product. Which had better look good, or she would hex him senseless.

"There," he said finally, nodding. Then he hauled her out of the chair and hurried her into the bathroom. "It's absolutely perfect. You're as attractive as I can get you without makeup, pasty as you are. Here," he said, opening the bathroom mirror to reveal the medicine cabinet behind it before she could even get a glimpse of herself. "I think Red left some in a peachy shade that might almost suit your coloring. Ah, here we are," he said triumphantly, handing her a tube of gooey lip stuff of the sort that Hermione particularly hated. "It might be a bit bright for you, but try it out and we'll see."

"I'll never wear this," she informed him. "All it does is make me taste lip gloss all day."

"Stop chewing your lip, Granger," he scolded. "It's a disgusting habit, anyway."

Hermione drew back at that. "I don't chew my lip."

"Yes, you do," he said definitively, giving her a look. "And it must stop. Put it on."

"How would you know I do?" she asked, waxing her lips with the horrible stuff.

"Because you do it all the bloody time. I have several amusing drawings on the subject. You also chew on your hair and have the other disgusting habit of twisting it all together in a mess and sticking a quill through it, and if I see you ruining my work with such egregious behavior, I will kill you," he said, stepping back and surveying her. "You need eye makeup. Talk to Red; she has good judgement about such things. Do not by any means seek advice from your twitty female compatriots in Gryffindor. No individual with blue eyes should ever be caught dead wearing blue eyeliner. It's a crime against nature." He leaned in closer, squinting. "Do you even have eyelashes?"

Hermione pushed him back, recoiling. "Of course I do."

"Well, I'd highly recommend making them known to the rest of the world. If they exist."

"Can I see my hair now, please?" she bit out, running out of patience.

"Just trying to help," he said, silver eyes wide. He shut the medicine cabinet.

Her first response was to quail at the loss of so much hair. The longest portions barely even touched her shoulders. She hadn't had hair this short since she'd had hair.

Lifting up her hands, she pulled it back to the nape of her neck in what was her usual ponytail to keep it out of her face. The front pieces slipped through, brushing her chin.

"I can't study with this," she said flatly. "It'll just get in the way."

"So tuck it behind your ears," he said without an ounce of sympathy. "It looks fantastic, Granger. Or didn't you notice that while you were mourning the loss of your standard bun-with-a-quill-through-it look?"

Lifting her head, Hermione grudgingly admitted that it did look good. What had once been a bushy array around her head was now smooth, with order to it, layers falling in a sort of artistic coherence she'd never be able to achieve once her hair was turned back over to her own power. Even her fringe made sense, brushed to one side behind her ear, making her face look far less lost in a bird's nest than it usually did.

"Tomorrow morning I'm going to take a shower and it's not going to look anything like this," she said, feeling a stab of regret. Hermione knew for a fact that she'd never factor an extra hour into her daily regimen, no matter how good the end product might be.

"Of course it will," he said, looking at her oddly. "I just gave you a haircut. Why would it go changing around that quickly?" It occurred to Hermione that magical haircuts were probably not like Muggle ones. She kept this observation to herself. She'd rather look it up in the library than give Malfoy yet another excuse to complain about her Muggleness. "And as long as you use the products I give you as directed, it'll remain perfect. No thanks are necessary. The knowledge that I've rid the school of a bad head of hair is reward enough. Now if I could only get Snape to agree..."

Hermione snorted. "Fat chance."

"Yes, I know," he said sadly. "It's one thing to be born with unfortunately greasy hair. It's quite another thing to revel in it. I'll never understand the man."

"It's simple, really," she shrugged. "It puts people off. He likes that."

He made a face. "That beak of his is enough to do that. It hardly needs help."

Hermione shook her head a little. "You're astonishingly shallow, Malfoy."

"The entire world is shallow, Granger," he said conversationally, escorting her out of the bathroom so she could gather her bag. "Everybody judges everybody else based upon their looks. You can't possibly tell me that you get better marks than I do and yet still haven't figured that out after seventeen years."

"Of course I have. I just don't think people should judge each other on appearance."

"Whether they should or not is irrelevant," he said. "The fact is that they do."

"That doesn't make it right. We should all aspire to be better than we are."

"You are your 'shoulds,'" he said, rolling his eyes. "It would be nice to live in the same dream world you do, Granger, if it weren't full of ugly people."

Hermione pressed her lips together. She would not laugh. It would only encourage him. "What are you doing for your Defense paper?" she asked, by way of completely changing the subject.

"I'm not," he said loftily. "I'm doing an outside assignment for Professor Wellbourne."

She felt her mouth drop at the unfairness of it. "You can't do that," she spluttered.

"Of course I can. I presented on my topic to her. She was satisfied. We made a deal."

Slytherins. Hermione seethed. "I never took you for a slacker before."

He fixed her with a glare. "I'm not. It is simply another notch in my philanthropic belt. I'm doing extra work on the spell and trying to organize her bloody disaster of an office."

Hermione opened her mouth, then closed it. She could hardly argue with him doing extra work on the spell. She raised an eyebrow. "Philanthropic belt?"

Malfoy smirked a little, looking entirely pleased with himself. "I thought it might be politically advantageous to have the public associate the Malfoy name with something other than service to the Dark Lord. Hence the hefty grant I'll be giving St. Mungo's for research on complex curse reversal. I thought about donating a woodchuck sanctuary in your name, but I couldn't find a decent plot of land. Plus, Professor Snape noted - and I rather agreed - that it wasn't nearly as funny now that your teeth are normal."

She felt something between them fall apart with that. "Thanks," she said flatly.

He looked at her, wide-eyed and deceptively innocent. "Again, Granger. It was a joke."

"And someday, when I'm filthy rich and open the Draco Malfoy Ferret Refuge, just know that I'll only mean that as a joke, too."

"It's a bit much to equate a teacher physically abusing a student with bad dental genes," he said, frowning. "Even you have to admit that your front teeth were enormous."

"Even you have to admit that something like that isn't a character flaw."

"No," he admitted. "But I disliked you, and it was funny. Still kind of is, actually. You've bloody fucking outscored me in every bloody fucking course we've ever taken, Granger. Once upon a time, you were bucktoothed. I have to have something."

"Something to what?" she practically sneered. "Assuage your ego?"

"Yes," he said, as if this should be perfectly obvious. "Do you have any idea how much shit I got from my father about you? About getting outscored by a Mudblood? Dear Merlin. The man wouldn't shut up about it. Every letter I got from him and every visit home was an opportunity for him to crawl up my ass because of you."

"Stop cursing," she said automatically, and akin to nothing. It's not as if she'd ever laughed up her sleeve about outscoring Malfoy. She outscored everybody. She was Hermione Granger; that's what she did. "And you can't say that was my fault."

"I didn't say it was your fault. I'm saying it was one of the numerous reasons why I hated you."

Hated, past tense. Hermione eyed him. "Is that your way of apologizing?"

"Malfoys don't apologize," he smirked. Shaking her head a little, she left.

*******

"Teachers, are my lessons done?

I cannot do another one.

They laughed and laughed and said,

'Well, child, are your lessons done?'"

-Leonard Cohen, 'Teachers'

It took Severus weeks to find an opportunity to have a little chat with Potter. He didn't mind; he was a patient man. Finally, the heroic Boy Who Lived dropped a beaker while trying to carry too many supplies back from the cabinet.

"Potter!" he snapped, glowering down at the surprised face of the boy in front of him, who had likely grown so used to being invisible during Potions that he was beginning to contemplate whether or not he actually existed. "Twenty points from Gryffindor for gross negligence, and detention with me tonight. These cauldrons will need scrubbing."

The green eyes flashed briefly with defiance, but Potter merely nodded and cleaned up his mess. Severus swept away, growling at the rest of them to get back to work, ignoring the Gryffindors' hissing whispers to each other about this unfair punishment. So far as Severus was concerned, the little snot deserved detention simply for breathing, but that was neither here nor there.

Potter was already waiting by the door of the classroom when Severus returned from dinner. "My office. Now," he hissed, unlocking the door. The boy trailed after him sullenly, already prepared for a chewing out by the time he sat down.

"Sir, if this is about Halloween..."

"Of course it is, you idiot. Now shut up."

"Fox knew I was leaving, sir," Potter protested. "She was there."

"The details of your sexual exploits, and who you allow to partake in them are hardly my concern," Severus said flatly. That shut the kid up. "I am well aware of Fox's role in your little...excursion. You were most likely not in any danger - not that I believe for a moment you'd care if you were, or if others ended up being put in danger because of your actions. Which brings me to the purpose of our meeting."

"Which is?" Potter asked rudely. Adding, "Sir?" a few moments too late.

"Miss Castelar could very easily have been caught. Did that ever occur to you?"

The Gryffindor let out a long breath. "Yes, sir. It did. But she said..."

"She is as big an idiot as you are," Severus cut him off. "I don't care what justification the two of you had, or what illusion of safety you created for yourselves, but I assure you that if the Dark Lord had gotten even the merest inkling of where Miss Castelar was on Halloween, much less who she was with, we wouldn't be having this discussion, because I would be dead. So would a great many of your friends, most likely. She would have been interrogated, and the Dark Lord would now know every single thing she knows."

Potter gulped audibly.

"Now I realize," he drawled, "that what she knows would only have the barest effect on your eventual battle with the Dark Lord, given that the prophecy doesn't give any concrete clues as to how one of you is going to be able to defeat the other one. And that's all that matters, right? It's only the others who'd be targeted, who would have their relationships with you manipulated by the Dark Lord until they each walk willingly into the traps he sets for them. And as for the fates of myself, Miss Castelar and Mr. Malfoy, suffice it to say the Good Side would be suddenly and rather damagingly without a single spy among the Death Eaters. But then, what's all that weighed against Harry Potter's desire to have a night of fun right under the Dark Lord's nose?"

The boy shot up from his seat. "You make it sound like I forced her do it or something, and I didn't! It was her bloody idea, and believe me, I wish I'd never gone through with it! So if you want to yell at somebody..."

"I've already spoken to Miss Castelar," Severus replied icily. "And right now, I'm speaking to you. So sit down and be quiet, or you'll be serving out detentions for the rest of the term. Do I make myself clear, Potter?"

Grumbling, the boy sat, his jaw clenched in anger, his fingers gripping the arms of the chair. "I am actually expecting an answer," Severus said dryly.

"Yes, sir," Potter bit out.

"As distasteful as I find it, you and I have one certain, extremely specific thing in common," the Potions Master continued, steepling his fingers and watching his student keenly. "Both of us may very well give our lives to win this war." Even as the words came out of his mouth, he heard Fox's voice in his head. No matter what happens, you live through it. The words should be comforting, but they weren't. They only made Snape wonder exactly what was in store for him that he'd need to know that.

"Assuming you give yours," he said, brushing the thoughts aside, "I'm sure it will be in a blaze of sacrificial glory that will be recounted in detail for generations to come. If I give mine, it will likely be due to the fallout of a foolish, self-serving action like this one. I have made an oath to sacrifice my position or my life if necessary. But I'm rather touchy about the 'if necessary' part of it. Should I need to, I will gladly sign my own death warrant to bring about a world without the Dark Lord in it. I am somewhat less inclined to do so in order to cover up for a star-crossed teenage romance. I would prefer to not have my death be a punch-line. Can you possibly understand that?"

Looking off to the side, Potter nodded jerkily.

Severus leaned forward, until their faces were mere inches apart. "Good. Because if either of you pulls such a ridiculous stunt again, I will make sure that I survive this war, and that the two of you do, also. I will move heaven and earth to ensure not only your victory, but that you both live through it. I will do this for the sole reason of having the two of you alive and well so that I can exact my revenge upon you."

He waited a moment for his words to sink in, then sat back, picked up a quill and pulled an essay off the top of the neat stack on the corner of his desk. "The cauldrons are stacked up in the corner. You may not use magic."

Potter gathered his bag and stood, then paused. "Sir?"

Severus didn't look up. "Shall I explain the instructions again using smaller words?"

"No, sir. I just wondered...Thera said you were helping her. With her father."

"I believe that matter is between Miss Castelar and myself."

"I know, sir. I just wondered if it was doing any good."

Severus made a slash through a sentence so egregiously misguided he wondered if the student who'd written the essay was even taking Potions. "As I said, that matter is between Miss Castelar and myself. If she feels the need to divulge any information to you, I'm sure she will. Those cauldrons are not going to clean themselves, Potter."

"Yes, sir," the boy said flatly, thankfully moving on to his detention. Pleased that he'd finally gotten that off his chest, Severus turned his attention to his essays, feeling particularly malicious towards his students and enjoying it immensely.

*******

The meeting was - Fox supposed - long overdue. Following the sensuously slinking redheaded assistant, she ordered her thoughts in preparation for The Cardinal.

He disliked questions. She had more than a few, more with Dumbledore's return.

This was going to be interesting.

The redhead introduced her, stepping aside and holding the door open in a way that forced Fox to brush up against the woman in order to enter. Knowing now what she did, Fox was rather appalled that she hadn't figured out they were all lesbians years earlier.

The Cardinal was at his desk, writing. He glanced up briefly as she entered. "I'll be with you in just a moment," he said. He penned a few more lines, then whisked the parchment away with a flourish. It promptly disappeared, so that it could be encoded and delivered. "Now then," he said, pinning her down with laser-blue eyes as he resettled himself, leaning on his elbows and folding his hands. "To what to I owe the pleasure?"

"I have obligations beyond you, sir. You've known that since you took me on."

"Of course," he said easily. "Do you find them a problem now?"

"You assigned me to protect Harry Potter," she said. "I accepted that job in good faith."

He raised his eyebrows. "Do you not believe it was given in good faith?"

Fox dropped her head, rubbing the back of her neck. "I don't know your plans, sir."

"And you worry what they might be," he murmured.

"The Guardians are split," she said in a monotone. "I merely wonder what side you're on. I don't relish the idea of turning against you."

He nearly smiled at that. "Your loyalty is encouraging," he said in a way that didn't tell her which loyalty he was referring to, much less whether he was being sarcastic or not.

Fox stared him down. "If they want me gone, I will be. I can't stop them."

"There is no greater fool than one who imagines The Guardians know everything," The Cardinal said with a faint smile. "Not everything is as it seems, Fox. I assigned you to Harry Potter because I want him alive."

"What about the Nexus? And the eschaton?" she asked, figuring that what she was facing held a great deal more weight than The Cardinal's wrath.

"I provide services to the Guardians - fresh meat for their little gang of dark creatures - and am well paid in return. That's all. Like you, I am also incapable of either bringing about or stopping the eschaton."

"Somehow I doubt that, sir," she murmured.

The Cardinal shrugged, an almost impish air about him. "Just because I have powerful friends doesn't mean they always listen to me. In fact, most of the time they don't."

"Somehow I doubt that, too, sir."

He leaned forward, folding his hands together and resting his chin on top of them. "Fox, do you want some advice?"

"If you have some to give, sir."

"Don't worry about all of this. Keep on as you've been doing. The game has already been set up. All of the pieces are in place. The only thing left is for the game to be played, and the only two players that matter are Harry Potter and the Dark Lord."

Fox dropped her head and sighed, not sure whether he was brushing her aside or telling her the truth. And seriously hoping that it was the former.