Two to Obey

Chapter 19: Surrender

It was a terrible financial risk. Draco knew this. So did his solicitors, who were practically having kneazles at the notion that he was even considering the transaction. If things went badly, he could lose millions of galleons. But all the same, he was young and rich, and had within his grasp the possibility of living every young magical child's greatest dream: owning his very own professional Quidditch team.

Well...any young magical child's second greatest dream, after the dream of playing on a professional Quidditch team, preferably in a league championship where the game was on the line and they caught the snitch in a magnificent feat of daring...

Draco refocused on the financials in front of him, and the accompanying notes from his solicitors. The organization was leaking money left and right. Their attendance was the worst in the league and their marketing strategy was positively nineteenth century. They hadn't won a pennant since the last Goblin Rebellion and were a national joke.

Which is why the Chudley Cannons could be bought for a song. What to do with them afterwards - a feat no owner had managed for several hundred years - was to put them under decent management, draft a few good prospects and actually deliver a winning season. Every few seconds, Draco took a step back from the situation and wondered why he was even considering this. He was no fan of the Cannons; an opinion he shared with the majority of magical Britain. He was an Appleby fan, and spent every summer watching their games from the Malfoy box - a box he'd have to give up if he bought the Cannons. And the Cannons sucked beyond reason, to the point where they were considered more cursed than the Defense Against the Dark Arts job at Hogwarts.

Still, there was a desire he couldn't entirely quash. Not just to own his own Quidditch team - the very idea of which, when dwelled upon, had the capacity to give him a hard-on - but to make his own Quidditch team, to build it from the ground up.

It was entirely possible he'd end up failing miserably, but...well, it's not like that would be anything new. Surrendering to Potter had redefined his sense of risk, and the implications of the spell had redefined his sense of perspective. If he got kicked for a few million and ended up being the latest in a long line of owners to fail at resurrecting the Cannons, what did it really matter? He'd still be rich and gorgeous, assuming he was still alive. And if he wasn't, then it really didn't matter, did it?

Draco's ruminations were interrupted by a knock at the door leading to the Slytherin Common Room. Gritting his teeth in annoyance, he shoved the parchments into a folder and put them away. His interrupter was a little pissant second-year named Kim. Draco only knew his name because he'd returned a Martin Miggs book to the kid as a favor to Thera, and because...well, Slytherin House wasn't exactly overflowing with Asian kids.

"What is it?" he demanded, poised to slam the door.

Kim swallowed audibly, but didn't flee. "I need to talk to you," he whispered.

"I'm busy. Come back later." The door Draco slammed was stopped by the kid's shoe. As far as Unofficial Slytherin House Rules went - and a great many Slytherin House Rules were unofficial, because one of the Official House Rules was 'Never leave a trail of evidence' - such an action could get you a daily beating courtesy of Crabbe and Goyle for the rest of the year. As it was, the kid wasn't as stupid as he seemed. Sneaking around the door came a tiny little second year hand, holding a cheap gold chain. On the end of it dangled what Draco immediately identified as a Disillusionment Bauble.

It warmed his heart a little, to see the true Slytherin spirit live on in the younger generation. Draco could not be swayed by money - he had plenty of it - or silly trinkets. But a Disillusionment Bauble he couldn't pass up; it was almost as good as an Invisibility Cloak. The gift was rare and precious enough that he could bestow a favor on a mere second year with no wealth or important family connections without losing face, and yet not so rare and precious that he would be indebted to the kid for life by accepting it.

Draco felt a strange desire to ruffle the little fellow's hair. He refrained from doing so, but allowed the kid to enter, his mind churning with gleeful delight at the sort of shit he could pull with a Disillusionment Bauble. Gryffindor Common Room, here I come.

"So then," he said coolly, laying the Bauble on his desk as if he received rare magical objects out of the blue every day. "What did you need?"

Kim watched the door close. His eyes shifted around the room, and with a good deal of alacrity and skill for a second-year, he barred the outside doors and checked the room's anti-surveillance wards. The room was heavily warded against surveillance because Draco wasn't a complete moron, but he allowed the test to proceed without comment. It was the smart thing to do, after all.

"You were saying?" he prompted once the kid finished.

"My parents are missing," Kim said in a small voice.

That sounded like a rather thin claim. If they'd officially disappeared, Draco would be hearing this from Snape. "And you know this because...?"

"I haven't heard from them in over a week. They write me every Thursday. I didn't hear from them last week and I haven't heard from them this week, and I've sent at least five owls to them asking for a response. My aunt and uncle haven't heard from them either."

"I see," Draco said evenly. People generally didn't come to him with problems like this, largely because...well, aside from everything else, what the hell was he supposed to do about it? "Have you talked to Professor Snape?"

The kid ducked his head and Draco narrowed his eyes. A person couldn't walk into someone else's bedroom and check it for anti-surveillance wards and then try to play timid. "I tried to. He's not here," Kim answered. "And anyway, I thought that..."

"You thought what, exactly?" Draco asked, crossing his arms and staring down his nose at the little runt. There were some things that only got talked about in certain company. This kid was not a member of that company.

Kim chewed his lip, obviously trying to decide how far he was willing to take this. "Both of my parents are purebloods," he said defensively.

"So are mine," Draco reminded him. "Your point being...?"

The boy took a deep breath and looked up. "They deal in rare magical artifacts."

For the second time that night, Draco's attention was piqued. He actually hadn't given much thought to what the kid had been saying up until then, but now he did. And he'd almost missed it, just like he'd almost missed the turn the Slytherins seemed to be taking lately - one not approved by him. Draco reeled for a moment, wondering exactly how much he'd lost control over his own House due to inattention. Merlin, how could he have forgotten the first and most sacred dictum of totalitarian rule? Never, ever let them think for themselves. "How interesting," Draco said lamely, trying to buy time.

Kim seemed thrown off by that. "Er...yeah, I guess." He recovered quickly, though. "I was just thinking that the kind of knowledge they have might be awfully useful."

"To whom, exactly?" Draco asked, the wheels turning in his head.

"To anybody who wanted it," Kim said, watching him closely.

Rather than have this take all night, Draco decided to throw down the gauntlet. "You want to know if the Dark Lord has them, and if they're still alive," he stated. Gryffindor bluntness had the ability to elicit amusing facial expressions from Slytherins, if Kim's could be taken as an example. "What makes you think I'd know that?"

The facial expression that followed that question was even more priceless, along the lines of: 'Do I look stupid to you?' Draco sighed. Well, at least they could cut through the bullshit. "Right, then. I make no promises, and I'm going to need some more details before I proceed. When were they last seen?"

"Tuesday last week," Kim said, looking relieved. "My aunt and uncle met them for dinner in Diagon Alley. My parents were going to Hamburg the next day to see about..." The boy blushed and mumbled something inaudible.

Draco raised an eyebrow, channeling Lucius. "Sorry, I didn't catch that."

Kim seemed to force the words out. "Faustian Knots."

It came as little surprise that 'they deal in rare magical artifacts' actually meant 'they sell phony crap to any idiot dumb enough to buy it.' According to legend, a Faustian Knot could channel an evil spirit and contain it so that a person could - so to speak - make a deal with the devil. Or have a pleasant chat with it. Whatever suited. They were widely believed to be a load of crap, and fakes were circulated with abandon. Draco knew this for a fact. If a functional Faustian Knot actually existed, his family would've owned it.

Now fully reassured that Kim's parents had merely found themselves on the wrong end of a killing curse issued by some sleazy con artist in a back alley, and not a Death Eater or the Dark Lord, Draco searched around for his next words. In his mind, Kim's parents had more or less visited this upon themselves. He didn't know what kind of idiots would waste their time traveling to Hamburg to pick up so-called Faustian Knots, but he didn't see what he could possibly do about it.

Eventually the German authorities would find them. Or not. Either way, "Report them missing to the Ministry," he said simply. After a wrenching moment, he held out the Disillusionment Bauble, cursing Red and her bloody moralizing voice in his head. The things he could've done with that Bauble... "You might want to gloss over that part about hoodwinking people into buying false magical artifacts, though."

The kid ignored the offering, his jaw hardening. "They aren't hoodwinking anybody. They told me the guy who's buying them knows they aren't real. He just thinks they're funny; he's starting a collection or something. They've never had any trouble before."

"Nobody's perfect," Draco said evenly, not withdrawing the Bauble. "I can't help you."

Kim shook his head, his fists clenching, face stark with denial. "But what if..."

The teensy little spark of sympathy was immediately quashed. Slytherins didn't dole out sympathy, and they certainly didn't accept it. "I can't help you," Draco interrupted, his tone frigid. "Just take the fucking thing back, will you?"

Something unidentifiable crossed Kim's face. "It's broken anyway," he said coldly. Waving his wand, he removed the charms on Draco's room and left.

Draco tossed the Bauble in the trash and sat back down at his desk, picking up the parchments from his solicitors again. This whole thing was not his problem, he reminded himself. There was nothing he could do. Less than a minute later and without a single word registering in his brain, he set the parchments down. At least in a certain limited respect, it was his problem. Snape would need to know about Kim's situation. Draco didn't know if the man had returned yet from wherever he'd gone, but there was no harm in checking. All the better to wash his hands of the matter.

The Potions Master was in his office, and annoyed at the intrusion. Draco couldn't help but notice the Pensieve sitting on the corner of the desk. "Were you in earlier?" Draco asked cautiously, trying to see what was in the Pensieve without being obvious about it.

"No," Snape snapped, levitating the Pensieve into a cabinet, shutting the door, locking it and settling in behind his desk. "I had to renew some of the Dark Lord's potions stocks. Most can only be stored for a few months before they turn, so I have to replace them regularly, and I'm hardly about to brew them here."

With effort, Draco let the Pensieve go. "Fatal and illegal?" The best way to get Snape softened up was to get him talking about deadly and potentially harmful potions.

"Illegal," Snape said offhandedly, "but not fatal. The Dark Lord prefers fatalities to occur in the proper manner, at the end of a wand." His lip curled. "They're mostly for torture, though they seldom get used unless absolutely necessary."

The last part was infused with a good deal of scorn, not all of it stemming from Snape's sense of pride. Unlike curses, potions didn't leave a magical signature, were virtually untraceable and nearly impossible to counteract unless you knew which potion had been administered. The Dark Lord kept them in reserve in case he ever needed to torture someone important that he needed to be returned back to their daily life unharmed and untainted by curses, should the Aurors or Healers check for such a thing. Considering such a situation occurred...well, it never had as far as Draco was aware of, gallons worth of Stomach-Searing, Indigestion-Creating, Liver Irritating, Kidney-Compressing and Bowel Blowout Potions got poured out, unused, every few months, and had to be replaced. No wonder Snape was in a pissy mood.

Pissier than usual, that is.

"That's a shame, sir," Draco said loyally.

Snape was placated a little bit, but not much. "So to what do I owe the interruption?"

Taking a deep breath, Draco laid out the Kim situation for his Head of House. Snape listened, his expression growing increasingly darker and more annoyed. "Yet another rousing endorsement for the notion of survival of the fittest," he said dryly.

Draco was largely in agreement. "Nevertheless, sir..."

"Yes, I know," Snape said, pinching the bridge of his nose and suddenly looking in dire need of a stiff drink and a long nap. "I'll handle it, Malfoy. You may go."

Feeling less relieved than he'd thought he would, Draco did. Now, aside from everything else, he was torn between wondering what was in Snape's Pensieve and figuring that he should probably be glad he hadn't seen it.

*******

Voldemort's red eyes gleamed. "Prepare yourself, you little shit," he hissed. "I'm going to deal with you once and for all. Kiss your puny ass goodbye, Potter!" Throwing his head back, he let out a long, triumphant, supremely evil laugh.

Harry held his wand loosely in his hand, looking pained. "That's...um."

"It's not too over the top, is it?" Fox asked, her words a little slurred. She was used to having lips. "I thought over the top was his stock in trade."

"Oh, it is," Harry said. "Only...well, for one thing, I've never heard him curse." He tilted his head, surveying her Voldemort-esque appearance. "And I think he's a bit taller. You've got the voice down, though," he said encouragingly. "The voice is perfect."

Well, it ought to be. She'd studied countless hours of Snape's and Harry's Pensieve memories in order to get it that way. To get everything that way, from Voldemort's appearance to his stance to his fighting style to the slightly unnatural way he held his wand. Fox believed in real-world training.

The next time Harry faced down Voldemort, he was bloody well going to be prepared.

"I think the potion's wearing off," Amina said from the cage she'd been locked up in, which was hanging from the ceiling. Indeed, Hermione Granger's hair was slowly shortening, her skin turning darker, and with a few twitches and a lot of groaning, Amina turned back into Amina.

Waving her hand, Fox ennervated Gautham-as-Ron-Weasley, whose cage had been knocked down in the previous battle, in which he'd also been killed. Harry had not been pleased about that. Even knowing that it wasn't really Ron, and that he wasn't actually dead, seeing the cage fall and his friend unconscious on the floor had thrown him off.

When it came to the big dance, something like that could get him killed.

Gautham sat up, rubbing his elbow. "Ow," he said, before thrashing about as the polyjuice potion wore off and he turned back into himself.

"Please tell me we're not doing this again," Amina whined.

"If we do, can I be Hermione?" Gautham asked hopefully.

"Yes, we're doing it again," Fox said. "And no, you can't be Hermione."

"I can play a girl," Gautham argued.

"I'll bet you can," Amina muttered.

"You'll just sit there and play with her breasts," Fox snapped. "I need us all focused."

Gautham made an insulted sound. "I'd do no such thing. That's just sick."

"Then why do you want to be Hermione?" Amina asked pointedly.

He shifted a little bit. "I just...thought it would be interesting, is all."

"Just shut up, all of you," Harry said, with uncharacteristic irritability.

Fox looked back over at him - shoulders hunched, face drawn in a scowl, eyes directed away from them. Harry was in a mood. It had been a long day, especially for him. Fox relented. "Alright, guys. That's all for today. Thanks."

Amina and Gautham took their leave. Fox removed the Voldemort getup and turned her gaze on Harry, waiting for him to speak. It didn't take long.

"I'm fine, alright?" he said finally. "I don't need the talk again."

"Good, because I'm really not in the mood to give it again."

Harry looked down at his wand. "You're the all-knowing one. So tell me. Why does it have to be like this?"

Fox sighed and raised her eyes to the ceiling. There was no way to make a mortal understand, not really. They could barely wrap their minds around the power of being a Guardian, much less the powerlessness. "You and Snape need to start a fan club. I'm not a god, Harry. Just because I know more than you do doesn't mean I know everything."

"How do you know who you're working for, then?" he asked, looking up with a small smile. "Maybe there's another group higher up, pulling your strings."

"That's the thing. We don't know, not really."

"How do you that what you're doing is the right thing, then?"

"We don't," Fox admitted. "At least, not with perfect certainty. We go with our instincts, and historically, that's worked out pretty well. After all, we got your sorry asses this far, didn't we?"

Harry's smile grew a little. "With a few fits and starts, yeah."

"Smart-assed little mortal, aren't you?" Fox asked with a raised eyebrow. "Easy for you to say without any sense of historical progression."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It's a rather human characteristic to not value what you have until it's gone. Death, destruction, evil, taking one step forward and three steps back - the Guardians didn't do any of that. The mortals did. It's not our fault you're all slow learners."

"Well, why not make us faster ones, then?"

At least he was thinking. Fox gave him an apologetic smile. "That's not how it works."

"I thought you all made things happen. Couldn't you just make that happen?"

"We can't change human nature. And we don't make things happen, not directly. We don't choose who's going to win the war, or who's going to fall in love with whom, or what technological advances are going to sweep the globe. We can't even pick the Oscar winners with any great accuracy. We just set the stage. You all act out the play, and sometimes the script sucks and the ending is a letdown." Fox shrugged. "That's you."

Harry nodded, his eyebrows lowered in thought. "So why this, then? Why me and Voldemort? Why the prophecy? Did you all make the prophecy?"

Fox gave him the most honest answer she could. "Sometimes things just have to happen. It's like a volcano. The forces build up inside it until it explodes. Other times, it's just a random combination of events, some of which are set up by us, some of which just happen. A hummingbird flapping its wings on one side of the globe and causing a sandstorm on the other side. As for the prophecy..." she blew out a breath. "I don't know, honestly. Guardians have arranged for them in the past, when necessary. To try to prepare people, to let them know when something's going to happen, no matter what."

"Is this one of those times?"

Fox blew out a breath. She wondered, too. "I don't think any of the Guardians arranged for this prophecy. But I do still think it's inevitable. The fact that Voldemort acted to try and stop it and ended up falling farther into it pretty much proves that."

"If the Guardians didn't give the prophecy," Harry asked, "then who did?"

Fox gave a short laugh. "Your guess is as good as mine." She didn't add that it worried her, that the forces aligning on either side of this showdown were evenly split and inordinately powerful, that confrontations as weighted as this one tended to roll over mortals like they were children's sandcastles. She'd made a promise to herself, after all.

About Harry. Not about anybody else.

Frankly, she'd probably have her hands full just with Harry.

"You're not making me feel any better, you know," he told her.

"Not my job, kid. Sorry."

*******

Before each Sunday prefects meeting, it was standard procedure for the Head Boy and Head Girl to get together and compare notes, discuss the agenda and take care of the smaller administrative issues. One day in mid-February, Malfoy stomped into the Prefect's Lounge looking even more irritable than usual. "We have a crisis on our hands," he said darkly, throwing his bag into a chair and his body into the one beside it.

Hermione raised an eyebrow. Malfoy's hair was messy and the sleeves of his robes were wet from the elbows down. "Have an accident washing your hands?"

He fixed her with a glare. "No. I was pulling a Hufflepuff out of a toilet. It's the third one this week, and that isn't even counting the one's who've been..." he cleared his throat. "Well, the details aren't important. Suffice it to say that monetary compensation has been negotiated and no formal charges will be pressed."

Hermione dropped her quill. "No formal...what on earth are you talking about?"

"Oh, don't give me that look. I destroyed all the pictures."

Though it went against every single one of her Head Girl instincts, Hermione decided that she was probably better off not knowing. Things just went more smoothly when she didn't interfere with how Malfoy dealt with the Slytherins. It kept her from turning into McGonagall. It also kept her from being implicated as an accessory.

"So this would be the crisis you were talking about?" she asked in strained voice.

"No," he huffed. "These incidences are merely the results of it. The crisis is that the Slytherins are all bored to tears. And do you know what happens when Slytherins get bored to tears?" he asked, an urgent, almost confrontational look on his face.

"I shudder to think," Hermione said, more in honesty than sarcasm.

"Ha," he said triumphantly. "Nothing, because it never happens. Left without something immediate to distract their attention, they will automatically seek out other forms of entertainment, and I don't mean Gobstones. I'm not omnipotent; it's only a matter of time before one of the little snotrags gets expelled."

She raised an eyebrow. "I thought they all did whatever you said."

Malfoy sneered at her. "They do. I didn't realize this was going on, or I'd have put a stop to it earlier. As it is, I tried to put a stop to it today. Do you know what they did?"

"Dethroned you?" she guessed.

"As if," he snorted. "It's worse. They whined at me."

"How terrible."

"You have no idea," he said miserably. "'Draco, you have to do something. Draco, we're bored. Draco, duct tape was all we had and we didn't know he was that hairy...'"

"Oh, sweet Merlin," Hermione moaned, putting her face in her hands.

Malfoy harrumphed. "Exactly. And the disease is spreading. Before you know it, the Ravenclaws have finally finished their homework for the rest of the year and read every book in the library. The boys will turn juvenile delinquent and the girls will start giving out favors behind the greenhouses. It'll be...actually, now that I think about it..."

"Don't," she said warningly.

He brushed his hair out of his face. "It's funny, Granger. Every once in a while, I forget you're you. Of course," he smirked, "then you immediately set me straight."

Hermione closed her eyes briefly, trying to get back to the point. "So what do you propose we do? We already have Quidditch and the Dueling Club and the D.A."

"Yes, but it's obviously not enough," he said, holding up his drenched sleeves. "We need some bloody excitement around this place. We need a spectacle."

"We agreed: no dances," Hermione reminded him. It had been their first act as Head Boy and Head Girl, and she didn't care how much the female Prefects complained.

"Believe me," Malfoy said seriously, "I have even less desire than you do for another awful, tedious dance. Not only will I have to escort Pansy and her new breasts, but I'll be forced to watch Potter casually touch and dance badly in the vicinity of the woman I love. No, I'm thinking more along Tri-Wizard Tournament lines."

"You mean the Tri-Wizard Tournament that ended with the death of Cedric Diggory and the return of Voldemort?" she asked dubiously.

"Did I say 'Let's hold another Tri-Wizard Tournament?' No, I didn't. And I won't. I said that we should have something more along Tri-Wizard Tournament lines. By which I obviously meant something more exciting than a Dueling Club meet yet including neither the death of a student, nor the subsequent regeneration of evil."

"Okay," Hermione said. "Like what?"

A slow smile spread across Malfoy's face. "How much money do we have left in the entertainment budget?"

"A good portion of it. The only things we've spent money on this year are the food and decorations for Halloween and Christmas. Of course, there'd be a lot more if it hadn't been for the caviar, foie gras and imported fairies," she said pointedly.

"Christmas isn't Christmas without foie gras," he frowned. "And if you don't have Brazilian fairies on your tree, you might as well just decorate the thing with tinsel."

"Actually, for most people, tinsel..." Hermione gave up. "So what's your idea?"

He sat forward, looking positively gleeful. "A Quidditch match at Hogwarts."

Hermione failed to follow. "We already have Quidditch matches at Hogwarts."

"No, I mean a real Quidditch match," he said impatiently.

She stared at him, uncomprehending.

"A professional one," he finally explained. "The season starts in a little over a month."

"Oh, right," Hermione said, as if she knew that already. "But how is that something that will keep the students from being bored? I mean, it's just one match."

Malfoy gaped at her. "Are you nuts? A professional Quidditch match hasn't been held at Hogwarts since the Goblins attacked and burnt down the stands in..."

"1624," Hermione supplied automatically. "I read it in Hogwarts, A History."

"Who hasn't?" Malfoy shrugged. "So you realize that this is historical, then?"

Somewhere along the line, Draco Malfoy had grown from pointy-faced to rather attractive to breathtakingly beautiful. Prior to this year, she hadn't given much thought to the matter. Evil often came in pretty packages and all that. Of course, prior to this year, she'd stared at her own plain, unremarkable face thousands of times in the mirror and thought little more about it beyond the fact that it belonged to her, and was currently having its teeth brushed. Still, she felt an odd, uncharacteristic stab of anger at the fact that Malfoy was the closest thing in the student body to her intellectual equal.

It was just unfair on way too many levels.

And as decent as he'd been to her this year, she wasn't sure it wouldn't do him some good to be cursed with an unremovable facial boil curse.

"Granger?"

"Right," she answered. "I know."

"So I can make it happen," he said, leaning back and looking entirely too pleased with himself. "Between Hogwarts matches, or after our Quidditch season has finished."

Hermione stared at him. "But why on earth would this be exciting to the students? I mean, there's anticipation for it and all, I imagine, but it's not like there's anything else."

"Granger," Malfoy sighed. "You're completely missing the larger picture."

"Which is?"

"A spectacle," he said exasperatedly. "Did all of us compete in the sodding Tri-Wizard Tournament? No, of course not. But it was a spectacle, wasn't it?"

"Yes," Hermione allowed. "It just all seems very 'bread and circuses' to me."

"You mean using shallow amusements to distract the common folk from the shittiness of the world around them?" Malfoy asked. "Because that's exactly what I mean."

"It's insulting, Malfoy."

"It's entertainment, Granger."

"How are you going to make this happen anyway?" she felt the need to ask, feeling an even greater need to follow up, "It better not involve anything illegal."

"Yes, less than a year after my father dies with a Death Eater mask on his face and a great obvious Dark Mark on his arm, while the Ministry is watching me like a hawk, waiting for even the slightest hint of wrongdoing on my part so they can seize my assets and not have to get dragged over the coals by the Daily Prophet for this year's budget shortfall, I'm going to go right out and use illegal methods to arrange for a sodding Quidditch match at Hogwarts," Malfoy drawled.

Hermione blushed, feeling as if she'd just taken a shower in pure sarcasm. "I'm just making sure."

"It will all be above board, Granger. Want me to sign something to that effect?"

"No," she said coolly, recovering a bit. "Well, set it up then, I suppose."

"That's it?" Malfoy asked, looking surprised. "I expected more of a fight, or for you to at least demand that we hire the Hogsmeade Philharmonic to come bore the students."

"Yes, well," she said grudgingly. "I realize that just because I'd rather hear a symphony doesn't mean that everybody else would. So...Quidditch it is."

"Very wise of you," he said with an approving nod. "Especially since the Hogsmeade Philmarmonic is positively awful."

*******

"Mommy's all right.

Daddy's all right.

They just seem a little weird."

-Cheap Trick, "Surrender"

Thera was falling. It was one of those half-asleep dreams where all she had to do was jerk herself awake, and it would stop. She did so. It didn't stop.

Unable to see anything, she couldn't sense the ground rushing up to meet her, but she knew it was there somewhere. There was that old wives' tale about how if you hit the ground, you died. This thought went through her head. Then she hit the ground.

She landed on something relatively soft - at least compared to the what she'd been expecting to land on - and rolled, coming up on her hands and knees, finally scrambling unsteadily to her feet. She gasped for breath, spinning around in a circle, realizing that she didn't have the faintest clue where she was. It was sunny here, and she'd landed on a large, well-tended lawn in front of a little white cottage with yellow shutters.

A bark sounded , and a gigantic black dog ran towards her. It was not Toto. It was a grim. "Fuck no," Thera decided. She didn't know the land speed of the average canine omen of death, but considering her limited options at the moment, she figured she might as well run for it. This brilliant plan was successful for about five seconds.

The grim tackled her from behind and Thera landed face-in-grass with a whimper, covering her head. Wake up, wake up, please let me wake up.

"Sorry about that," a male voice said as the grim climbed off of her back.

Thera peeked through the gap in her arms and saw a hand being offered to her. Looking up, she saw that the hand was attached to a dark haired man, who was smiling apologetically. The man was Sirius Black. Only he wasn't the wild-eyed, insanely laughing Sirius Black you always saw in the 'Wanted' posters. He was the Sirius Black from Harry's pictures of his parents. And he was a right snackable piece, too.

Was it wrong to have a sex dream about Harry's godfather?

"I didn't know I was this imaginative," she muttered.

"I'm sorry?"

Thera peered up at Harry's godfather, willing his clothes to disappear. They remained in place, and she began to panic again. "What's going on here?"

Black looked uncomfortable. "It's a long story, actually. It's probably best if I let..."

"Sirius!" a sharp voice called out from behind them. Thera turned to see a pretty red-haired woman storming towards them. "What's going on out here? What did you do?"

"I didn't do anything!" Black sputtered. "I just..."

"Scared her half to death, I'm sure," the woman said, sounding exasperated. She finally looked at Thera, offering a hand to help her to her feet. Thera took it dazedly. "No pun intended," the woman continued with a little smile. "I apologize for him. He's not housebroken." Red hair, Harry's eyes. This is just bizarre.

Black scowled. "She didn't like Padfoot. How is that my fault?"

Lily Potter closed her eyes and gave a sigh, rubbing her temples. "It doesn't matter. We don't have time for this. We have to hurry." Opening her eyes, she put a hand on Thera's shoulder. "Come inside, please. I know this must be terribly confusing for you, but we'll explain it as best we can." She started pulling Thera towards the cottage.

Thera felt her legs start moving. Her mind was still working its way up to full speed. She looked around at the pristine yard, the pretty little cottage, the flawless blue sky. It was all too perfect, the colors too sharp, her brain too sluggish. With a sinking feeling, she realized that this was just like her little meetings with her father. "This isn't a dream," she concluded, her voice sounding dull.

"No, it's not," Lily Potter said, giving her a sidelong glance.

They reached the front door and Thera put on the breaks. "What is it, then?"

"Come inside and I'll explain, I promise," Harry's dead mother said in a voice obviously designed to calm her down. "We're not going to do anything to you."

Thera wasn't buying it. "Why would you want to talk to me?" she asked suspiciously, her gaze going back and forth between the two of them. "What do you want?" The two of them shared a look that made something cold and slimy crawl through Thera's stomach. "Oh, shit. I'm dead, aren't I?" she breathed.

Lily Potter started a little. "What? No, of course not."

"This is going to take a while," Black murmured.

Harry's mum kept her eyes on Thera, all wide and entreating the way Harry's got when he was being super-sincere. "We don't have a lot of time," she said in a soft, pleading voice. "If you'll just come inside, I'll explain everything."

Thera was not going to give in that easily, big earnest Harry-eyes or not. "Why do I have to come inside? Why not tell me out here?"

"Because it's not as safe out here," Lily said bluntly.

"Safe from what?"

The woman seemed to make a decision. "From your father."

Well, if that was the choice... "Right then," Thera said. "Inside we go."

Sirius Black touched her arm as she went through the door, an almost needy look on his face. "Tell Harry we're all okay, and to hang in there. Please?"

It was on the tip of her tongue to inform the guy that she was not a messenger service for the deceased, but Thera gritted her teeth and nodded, walking into the house. Lily paused at the door. "Just try to give us some warning," she said in a low voice to Black.

Thera didn't like the sound of that, but Black nodded and transformed into a dog, bounding down the front steps. Wondering when she'd set aside any doubt that all of this was real, Thera looked around, taking in the house around her. Harry would want to know what it looked like. There were two rooms on either side of the entryway - a cozy, messy sitting room on one side and a rather well-stocked library on the other. Lily slid past her, leading them down a short hallway. The walls were filled with pictures and Thera found herself pausing to look at them. Some of them Harry had shown her before: his parents' wedding, James holding his son on his shoulders while Harry slapped his hands against his dad's head, beaming toothlessly.

Quite a few she'd never seen before. Harry bashing a pair of toy trucks together, a look of intense concentration on his face. Harry in the bath wearing a crown of soap bubbles, smearing handfuls of them all over his mother's blouse while she laughed, halfheartedly trying to defend herself. Harry eating, Harry sleeping, Harry reaching for a little golden snitch on the end of a string that his father was dangling over his crib.

It was practically a shrine, though in none of the pictures was he any older than...well, than he'd been when his parents had died.

Swallowing, she followed Lily down the hall into the kitchen. It was bright and warm, with white lace curtains on the windows and large, ancient oak table. Seated at the table, leaning back in a chair drumming his fingers on his knees, was James Potter.

His head snapped up when they walked in, and James sent his wife a sheepish little smile, pulling his feet off of the table, the two front legs of the chair hitting the floor with a definitive thunk. Then he turned his eyes to Thera, his expression cooling by degrees, until it was the very picture of Harry's Angry Face. With effort, Thera fought down the sudden desire to giggle.

"Have a seat," he said in falsely pleasant tones. "I'm afraid we're out of scotch at the moment. Would you care for some tea?"

"Don't." Lily's voice was like the crack of a whip.

Harry would have glowered, or clenched his jaw in frustration, but James just shot his wife an inscrutable look before directing his gaze to the table. "Sit, please."

It was a perfectly polite offer. Thera ignored it. "Why am I here? I mean, if you're doing this as some sort of 'meet the parents' thing, I'm really not..." She had no idea how to finish the sentence. All of them simultaneously shifted uncomfortably.

"That's not the reason we brought you here," James said, sounding as if he personally wished it had been the reason. Thera couldn't really blame him. She wasn't exactly parent-pleasing material, what with the alcoholism and the killing people and the...

Wait a second. "You brought me here?"

A silent and highly entertaining argument ensued between Harry's parents, largely involving glares, headshakes, and twitching eyebrows. James apparently lost. Heaving an impatient sigh, he turned to her. "Yes, we brought you here."

"But...how? Why? Where is here, anyway? What the fuck is going on?"

James paused a second before answering. "Here is the edge of the veil between the world of the living and what you might as well understand as the world of the dead. It's actually a lot more complicated than that, but we don't have a lot of time. As for the why and how..." He looked over at his wife. "This is your area."

"Sleep apnea," Lily supplied.

"I'm sorry?" Thera asked, wondering if she'd missed something.

"It's a common medical condition," Harry's mother explained, as if Thera had a scab on her knee. "You stop breathing when you sleep. Once your blood oxygen level gets low enough, your brain will signal you to breathe again."

Thera absorbed that, more than a little disturbed. "I'm not breathing?"

"Not at the moment. You'll start again. I've made it sound more dire than it is. Not that it's not dire," Lily qualified in a way Thera found not comforting in the least. "I mean, you could theoretically stop breathing permanently, and there are several long-term consequences: high blood pressure, increased risk of heart disease..."

"Time, Lily," James said pointedly.

The redheaded woman cut herself off. "Yes, well...you should ask Severus for a Somnius Respiratus potion; it'll clear the problem right up."

Thera searched for something to say in response, and came up with, "Okay." Then she finally pieced together a follow up. "So that's how I came to be...here?"

"Yes," James said at the same time that Lily answered, "Partially."

"Time, Lily," James groaned.

"This is as important as anything else," she said firmly. "She has to understand."

"You mean she won't trust us unless we explain every bloody thing," James grumbled.

"Would you?" Lily asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Couldn't you have worked this out ahead of time?" Thera snapped, not all that far away from panic. "I'm losing brain cells back there, you know."

"Time isn't the same there as it is here," Lily said, settling herself against the counter and taking a deep breath. "The circumstances of your physical body at the moment and your rather unique history have brought you close enough to the veil that we've been able to get in contact with you. We've been trying for nearly a year, actually, but you don't come this close to the veil very often, and your father's been able to cut us off at the pass more than once."

"Because of the whole soul-splitting thing," Thera figured.

Lily nodded shortly. "Bellatrix did it, too. And now that he has her with him, it's been all we can do just to block them, much less actually make contact with you."

Thera felt an odd clenching in her throat. She couldn't quite understand how it was possible to experience physical sensations when one's body was asleep and not fucking breathing, but there it was. "So both of them did it, then. Well, that's just bloody..." Let them think that she could still be shocked by the depths to which her father and Bellatrix were willing to sink. It was better than the truth.

She was not about to wonder why Harry's parents could be arsed to drag her into the afterlife for a chat and not her own fucking...Thera shook herself, shoving all of that away. This wasn't the time.

"It's difficult to do this," Lily said, watching her intently. "You have no idea. It takes all three of us giving everything we have just to..."

"Why me?" Thera interrupted coldly. She didn't want to hear it. "If this whole not breathing thing is so common and we're all skipping about at the edge of the veil, why drag me into this? Whatever you want, I'm hardly in a position to help at the moment."

"Because there aren't a bunch of you skipping about at the edge of the veil," James said. "The whole not breathing thing only gets you this close to the veil because you've been here before. Quite a few times. If it weren't for the spell, you'd be sitting all the way on the other side of it, like us." He held out his hands in an expansive gesture.

Thera snorted. "What, you mean all those times I've died that I don't remember?"

There was a long pause while they both looked at her pityingly. Thera gave a nervous little laugh. "You're kidding, right?" The looks got more pitying, and she realized they weren't. No matter how many times we dropped you off the balcony...

"So that really happened." It wasn't a question, because she's already pretty much accepted that it had. "How is it that I don't have a pancake for a head, then?"

"The spell," Lily said, watching her carefully. "All of you children share a life force to an extent. When necessary, you can draw on each other's, to heal yourselves. Of course, Voldemort was weak then, and you were all young, and...well, suffice it to say, that's why you have sleep apnea. Some things didn't heal completely. Like your medulla."

Thera didn't know exactly what that meant, but she'd read enough to know that a person should really have a fully functioning medulla. "I'm brain damaged?!" she half-shrieked, fighting for breath, which was stupid because she wasn't corporeal, and...

Like that was her biggest problem. Belatedly, Thera took the seat offered her, feeling ill.

"Oh, it's hardly what you're thinking," Lily said, wide-eyed. "That is, you're not mentally deficient or anything. The medulla regulates autonomic responses - breathing, salivating and so on - and it's only slightly inhibited. Though it is why you often react to stress by vomiting or laughing uncontrollably."

"Well, that just explains it all," Thera spat, anger building. "It's about time dead people started telling me something useful for a change. So who really killed JFK?"

James leaned forward, his face utterly serious. "Martians."

Thera gawked at him. "James, honestly," Lily scolded him, though there was a smile in her voice. "This isn't the time."

Time. Right. As in there wasn't much of it and her father would be coming for her soon with Bellatrix in tow and Merlin knew what they had planned to amuse themselves.

Unfortunately, the whole brain damaged shit was going to have to wait until later.

"Do you actually have something important to tell me, or should we have a nice long chat about my bowel movements?" she asked, feeling particularly bitchy at the moment.

"They'd be more regular if you'd stop drinking," Lily said, not quite under her breath.

"You can't let Harry fight him until the spell is undone," James said.

Thera blinked at that, questions whirling through her head. "Why? What'll happen?"

"It'll be bad," Lily summarized. "Prophecies aren't necessarily literal."

"But how am I supposed to stop him? How are we supposed to undo the spell?"

"Well, that's the thing," James said, wincing a little bit. "You can't."

"He's already completed it," Lily sighed. "For the most part, at least."

Were all dead people this aggravating? "Has he or hasn't he?" Thera demanded. Then she shook herself. "Wait a second. Of course he hasn't. We all know he hasn't."

"He has," Lily said firmly. "But he wasn't very happy with the consequences. He didn't get the kind of immortality he wanted. You see, both you and Voldemort made the same mistake - you interpreted the spell literally in spots were it wasn't meant to be literal."

Thera slammed her hand down on the table. "How the fuck did he complete it?! That's not possible! Ginny Weasley wasn't..."

"He didn't have to do what you thought he had to do to complete the spell," James said wearily. "There are a lot of ways to interpret 'plant his seed,' but that's not the point. The point is that Voldemort didn't get the kind of protection he wanted so that he could safely immanentize the eschaton. He's trying to find another way to achieve it. And I know this would shock your knickers off if you were wearing any, but he's planning on using Harry to get it."

Thera swore. "Alright, then. What do we do? Is there anything we can do?"

They shared another look. The shared looks were really starting to piss her off. "Technically, the only way to undo the spell is to kill Voldemort," Lily said. "But Harry can't kill Voldemort until the spell is undone. Are you beginning to see the problem?"

"So it's a Catch-22," Thera said dully. "Well, that's fucking wonderful. Thanks for letting me know." From outside the house, a dog began barking. Both Lily and James tensed. It took her a second to figure out why, at which point she tensed, too. Then she did what seemed to her to be the most rational thing to do when one's dead, evil father is coming to get them. She stood up and hauled ass in the opposite direction.

She was nearly at the back door when they caught her. Thera fought back as best she could, but there were two of them and they were bigger, and she was - quite literally - up against the wall. As a last resort, she aimed a knee at James' crotch, wishing he didn't look so much like Harry, because that made her feel a tad guilty. He squeaked and managed to dodge it. He did not manage to lose his grip on her arms, unfortunately.

"You have to listen to me," he said tightly, panting a little bit. "Tell Vivian to look in the bloody Sanguinitio again. The spell to keep the five of you from going with Voldemort if he dies is right in front of her bloody face. It's the one..."

"You have to undo the entailment," Lily was saying at the same time, eyes wide, face pale. "Tell Severus that Peter's got all the information about the..."

Outside, the wind was picking up and Thera started struggling harder.

"...inheritance. She'll know which one..."

"...and tell Remus to follow Greyback..."

The wind was howling now, ripping up the house.

"...entailment, for the love of Merlin..."

"...tunnels..."

Outside, the dog was barking frantically and then they were suddenly gone and she was falling again, just like before. Only this time, she landed on a sofa. Sitting in the chair across from her was her father. Lounging on the sofa next to her was Bellatrix, wearing nothing but a pout.

"I'm very angry at you for killing me," the woman said. "I thought we were friends."

Thera ignored her. She knew who the real threat was. He was smiling at her pleasantly, as if she'd just stopped in to say hello. "Lovely to see you again," her father said.

Feeling that the wisest course of action was to remain silent, she did.

Her father leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. "I apologize for that unfortunately little interlude. Those two have a long history of sticking their noses where they don't belong. I wouldn't entirely trust what they told you, by the way. Suffice it to say they do have certain interests in the matter, and your well-being isn't one of them."

He was - she hated to admit - probably right about that.

"They didn't tell the whole story," Bellatrix said, twirling a finger in her hair, a nasty smile on her face. "Would you like to hear the rest of it? If not, we could wrestle."

If those were her options, Thera felt the choice was rather easy. In any case, her father made it for her. "Bella," he said. His voice was soft, with no hint of rebuke, and he didn't even spare the woman a glance. Heaving a sigh, Bellatrix went back to pouting.

"You heard Severus. The only way to end the entailment is by you going through the veil," her father said. "Not just brushing the edge. Going through. Permanently."

Thera had not realized that, actually, though it occurred to her that he had just as much reason to lie to her as the Potters did, when it came down to it. Frankly, for all she knew, every single thing she'd been told throughout this entire messed up experience was a lie.

Suddenly, she wished for Reina. Not because her mother was any more trustworthy than the rest of them, but because...well, at least it would be an evil she knew.

Apparently when it came to Reina, dead people were capable of reading her mind. "And despite Lily Potter's kindly attempt to spare your feelings," her father said casually, leaning back, "if your mother wished to contact you, she could do so just as easily as they did. However - and rather characteristically - she has instead chosen to look after herself. It's only concern for the living that keeps us this close to the veil and lets us hover on the edge for brief periods of time. In life, your mother always was very good at spotting an opportunity to help herself out, and taking it. The afterlife is no different."

He could be lying about that, too. Though he probably wasn't.

"Speaking of the afterlife," she said at last, "it doesn't seem so bad, actually."

Her father and Bellatrix shared a chuckle at that. "This isn't the afterlife," her father informed her indulgently. "This is just the edge of the veil, what the living are allowed to see. A place for us to meet up. I assure you, the rest of it is far less pleasant."

Thera silently and fervently hoped that in his case, the rest of it involved lots of fire and being poked with sharp objects and having his salad tossed by horny giants. "I see."

"I can't wait until you get here," Bellatrix said, reaching out and trailing a finger down Thera's leg. For once, she wasn't wearing a wedding dress - just the t-shirt she'd fallen asleep in. That did little to quell her sudden desire to wash off her leg. "We'll have fun," the dead woman purred, giving Thera a look that would require more than a few showers to erase from her memory. She had a feeling 'we' didn't actually include her.

Assuming there was a hell, and Thera ended up there, she could see how serving time as Bellatrix LeStrange's sex slave would fit nicely into the overall motif. She then revised her life plan to include 'working tirelessly at a soup kitchen,' 'reading to the blind' and 'handing out teddy bears to war orphans.'

"If you're as intelligent as I believe you are, that won't be for a long while yet," her father said, studying her. "If ever," he added almost carelessly.

Thera was beginning to get an inkling as to why that might be a more appealing prospect than she'd previously thought. "The ramifications of this situation are larger than you can imagine," her father continued seriously. "Individuals tend to be easily crushed when those forces come into direct conflict, especially individuals as close to it as you are. You're playing a dangerous game, Thera, and believe me when I say that before this is over, you will end up paying for it. How much it costs is entirely up to you."

She fought off the desire to shiver, never taking her eyes away from him.

"Ah, well," her father said. "I'm afraid our time it up here. Until next time."

Thera awoke gasping for breath, Harry's voice calling her from the mirror. She stumbled out of bed and tripped over to the bathroom. The lights came on and she winced at her reflection in the mirror above the sink. Her face was a ghastly shade of white, her hair sticking out in every direction, her eyes wild. She looked like she'd just escaped from an insane asylum. A desperate, hysterical swell of laughter gathered in her throat. Lily Potter's words echoed in her head and Thera swallowed it down. She turned on the faucet with shaky hands and splashed some water on her face, trying to catch her breath.

Harry called her again and Thera swore. She couldn't talk to him, not like this. Drying off her face, she opened her eyes, meeting her own gaze in the mirror - black and a little glazed. Picking up a brush, she set about dealing with her hair, her mind whirling.

She had no idea what to tell Harry, much less how to go about doing it. Thera realized her free hand was gripping the edge of the countertop and forced it to relax, never breaking the staring contest she was currently having with her reflection.

Suddenly and belatedly, she understood why Harry and Draco hadn't wanted to tell her about Reina's treacherous little letter. It's not like it would have done her any harm if she'd never known about it. In fact, she'd probably have been better off.

True, she wouldn't be telling Harry something awful about his parents, or destroying any illusions he had about them. She'd just be letting him know that she'd talked to them.

And that he hadn't, and never would. Thera sighed. She'd have to tell him the important stuff, or at least the parts that made sense. But would it be kinder to tell him about his parents and his godfather, or not to? Not having a great deal of experience in matters of kindness, she honestly didn't know. And that was assuming he'd even believe her.

Which he might not, and she wouldn't blame him at all for it.

Harry called again and Thera made her decision. She'd tell him, just not now. It wasn't the time. There were more important things to deal with first. Feeling much calmer, she rubbed her face with the towel to put some color in it and returned to her room.

*******

The incident was - Harry decided later - entirely the Pensieve's fault. Or Fox's, depending on how you looked at it, since the Pensieve had been her idea in the first place. Harry had not been happy with the idea of sharing his memories of Voldemort with someone else, but he'd seen the rationale behind it. Fox knew battle tactics. Seeing Voldemort's could help her prepare Harry to face them. He'd seen the rationale, and he'd dutifully served up his worst memories in the Pensieve.

He hadn't slept well since.

The clanging started while he was still asleep, entering his dream - such as it was - and distracting him. Something was wrong, he realized. Thera.

Harry awoke and tried to extricate himself from his sheets, but that only seemed to get him more entangled. With a frustrated noise, he finally threw himself out of bed, landing hard on the floor, his hand reaching for the bedside table, for his wand and glasses. They jumped into his outstretched hand and he put his glasses on, using his wand to cut himself out of his blankets. Finally free, he dove for the mirror in his schoolbag.

The clanging continued in his head, slow and dull, not fast and urgent like it had been the last time. Not Cruciatus again, then, but something was definitely wrong. Harry didn't know what, but his loud return to consciousness had aroused his dormmates.

"Whassa...? Unh...." Dean grumbled.

"Mumhrph...whack off mrphrmrph loo, mrphh?" Neville contributed, rolling over.

"Harry?" Ron asked blearily, a pale hand waving around, trying to part his curtains. Finally his face appeared in the gap, creased and sleepy. "Izeverythingokay?"

"Yeah," Harry said. "I was just off to the loo and got my feet tangled," he said, gesturing. Ron made an assenting noise and his face disappeared.

Harry waited until his roommates' snores started up again. His head was still clanging, a slow deep thud like a large church bell. After a few moments, it tapered off, just as the snores became rhythmic. Digging in his bag for the mirror, Harry headed for the loo. "Thera," he whispered. There wasn't any answer, and he didn't particularly expect one.

Sighing, he sat on the toilet and put his chin in his hand, dozing a little, waiting a few minutes and then calling Thera again. It took him several tries before she answered, looking serene, making him wonder if the clanging had just been his imagination.

"Did something happen?" he asked, beginning to get confused.

She nodded slowly. "I learned a few things just now."

Maybe his mind wasn't completely awake yet, because as far as Harry could tell, that statement made no sense whatsoever. "What things? What are you talking about?"

Thera set her chin in her hand, studying him. "Harry, you know I wouldn't bullshit you, right? Not about something important. You do trust me that much, don't you?"

"Yeah," he said. He was beginning to grow worried, and it took him a second to figure out why. Thera was never this calm. Even when she was asleep, she wasn't this calm. Something was very, very wrong about this whole thing. "What's going on?"

Looking away, she muttered something under her breath that included the words 'shit' and 'fan.' Harry was not reassured. "The Dark Lord's kind of...well, mostly, I suppose...completed the spell," she finally said. "Only it didn't work out as he'd planned, so now he's trying to do something - unfortunately I never got the details of it - so that it'll actually give him outright immortality instead of the contingent sort of immortality he has right now, and...wow, I really sound like a fucking idiot," she mused. "No wonder they didn't make much sense. The whole thing doesn't make sense."

Harry realized that he was staring at her open-mouthed, trying to find something informative in that little speech and failing. "Are you drunk?"

Thera looked thoughtful for a moment. "Not anymore."

"Okay," he said, reaching up under his glasses to rub his eyes. "Let's start at the beginning. Voldemort didn't complete the spell, right?"

"Actually, he did," Thera said, looking away. "It's just that he thought he'd be getting something more out of it than he actually did."

Harry shook his head. "But he didn't complete the spell."

"Yes, he did," she said dully.

"No, he didn't," he argued. "Last I checked, Ginny wasn't pregnant."

Thera began twirling a strand of hair between her fingers, still staring somewhere off to his left. "Well, she wouldn't be. It's rather funny, actually. Every language has its idiosyncrasies, its little untranslatable phrases, its pitfalls. High Argorathic's even worse than most. Every phrase has a thousand meanings depending on the context, and..."

"What are you saying?" Harry interrupted, partially to stop her from going on all night and partially because his worry had morphed into a dawning sense of horror. He'd been disturbed by Thera's calmness. He was even more disturbed now that it was gone.

"We interpreted the spell wrong," she said heavily. "He didn't have to knock her up."

"What?" Harry breathed, unable to come up with anything else to say. Voldemort couldn't have completed the spell. He couldn't have. His stomach clenched.

"Planting his seed," Thera said, moving the mirror around, pulling her legs up, wrapping her arms around them. "It didn't mean knocking her up; it meant...well, I don't know what it meant, really. But it didn't mean knocking her up."

"And...he did this, then? At Little Hangleton?" he asked, still reeling.

She hunched her shoulders up a little bit. "He completed the spell, yeah. Only it wasn't what he thought it would be. It didn't get him all the immortality he wanted or something. He's going with Plan B."

Harry stared at her. "And Plan B would be?"

"We didn't so much get to that part," Thera said distractedly, playing with her hair. "It wasn't exactly the most organized transfer of information."

"Where exactly did you get this information?" he couldn't help but ask. "I'm assuming you didn't leave the Manor, because Malfoy's alarm would have gone off..."

"Oh, right," she grumbled. "The tracking charm. Little bastard."

"You did bug his dad's office," Harry couldn't help but point out, marveling at the fact that he was actually defending Malfoy. To Thera. He must be really tired.

"Yeah, well..." she said, waving a hand. "We worked that out. He's still a little bastard, regardless. In any case, that's not terribly important at the moment, because..."

"You never answered the question," he reminded her.

Thera made an aggravated noise. "It's a long story, okay? Anyway...where the fuck was I? Voldemort completed the spell, but it didn't work properly or something, so he's trying to find another way to get enough power to immanentize the eschaton, and it involves you. Big surprise there. Also, we have to undo the entailment. Apparently Wormtail knows how and Snape needs to talk to him about it. Or torture him to death. If the latter happens, shall I arrange to have it videotaped for your enjoyment?"

Something occurred to Harry. "Your father didn't tell you this, did he?"

"No," she said without missing a beat. "But the whole point of the thing is that you can't kill him until the spell is undone, or at least parts of it. Or something. Unfortunately, the spell can't be undone unless you kill him. Um, Professor Wellbourne needs to look back in the Sanguinitio again, something about inheritance, maybe? That'll keep us unfortunate individuals in the spell from getting killed with Voldemort. And there was something in there about tunnels..."

Harry had been listening and cataloguing what he said with one half of his brain while the other whirled around crazily. How on earth could Voldemort have completed the spell?

Plant his seed.

"Soul-splitting," he realized, sitting up and clapping a hand over his mouth.

Thera blinked at the interruption. "What, now?"

"The spell. Maybe Voldemort split off a piece of his soul and put it in Ginny," he said, the full weight of it finally hitting him, "like your dad and Bellatrix did with you."

Belatedly, it occurred to him that he'd never quite got around to telling Thera about that.

She looked like a Muggle photograph of herself in the mirror; she was utterly still, her face expressionless. "You know about that?" Her lips barely moved.

"Fox told me," he admitted before he could stop himself, wondering if he'd somehow lost the ability to think before speaking.

"Oh," she said, tensing her shoulders, drawing them in on herself a little bit. It was a childlike, defensive sort of gesture that made something in his chest catch. If Thera had been thrown off-kilter enough to unconsciously display vulnerability like that, even for a few seconds, even just in front of him, some serious shit must have gone down tonight.

He just wished he had the first idea what it had been.

"Thera," he began, not even knowing what he was planning to say beyond that. As it turned out, he didn't have to. The sound was enough to make her come back to herself.

"Bit kinky when you think about it, isn't it?" she asked, her face curling into a filthy smile. "You really don't ever know who you're screwing, do you?"

It was a rather predictable response, actually. Sex was Thera's main line of defense.

Harry kind of wished his offense was as effective. "Where did you learn all of this?"

"I told you. It's a long story," she said dismissively. "Did you get everything I've told you so far? Not just about the spell, but about the Sanguinitio and..."

"Yeah, I got it," Harry bit out, feeling unaccountably annoyed with her. "And I'll just take it all on faith, I guess, since you don't feel the need to tell me how on earth you learned about all of this. Assuming it's even true," he tacked on.

"It's worth looking into, isn't it? Do you want to risk it?"

No, he didn't, but that wasn't the point. "I just don't see why you can't tell me."

"When were you planning on telling me about my father and Bellatrix splitting off their souls and preserving them in me?" she asked slowly, carefully enunciating every syllable.

Harry looked away, shifting uncomfortably. "You already knew."

"You didn't know that."

"I didn't know how to tell you, okay?" he burst out, more frustrated than angry. "I mean, how the hell do you tell somebody something like that?"

"I don't know," Thera said, leaning forward, eyes boring into him. "And I understand. See, that's kind of the same situation I'm in right now."

"You can just tell me, you know," he tried again.

Thera raised her eyebrows. "Like you could've just told me?"

Harry let out an exasperated breath. "What, it's worse than telling me that Voldemort's completed the spell?"

"No," she murmured. "It's not. Just more complicated."

He squeezed his eyes shut. "You're driving me crazy. I'm serious. Insane. Barmy."

"I'm not trying to. Just trust me, okay? This isn't the time to talk about it."

He let out a short laugh. "But it's the perfect time to tell me all the rest of it, of course."

Thera sighed. "I'm well aware of the fact that this all sounds ridiculous. I'm sitting here listening to myself reciting this shit, knowing that it sounds ridiculous. I'm not even sure what to make of it, and if I were in your position, I'd write me off as full of shit. But you're not me. For a good reason, probably."

"So you're asking me to trust you," Harry concluded dully.

"It's not like you're risking anything," she shot back.

"No," he conceded. "I just...this is all so fucked up, if it's true. And if it's not, then you're the White Rabbit, leading me down the rabbit hole, and I'm just following..."

Thera's head snapped up. "Remus," she said.

"Huh?" Harry managed, thrown off.

"I forgot. I didn't get all of it, but Remus has to follow Greyback."

It took a few seconds for that to sink into Harry's head, at which point he felt like he had when he'd stumbled into the strange golden mist in the maze during the third task of the Tri-Wizard Tournament - as if he'd fall off the face of the earth if he took another step.

So far as he knew, the only people who knew about Remus' assignment - aside from Remus, obviously - were himself, Dumbledore and Professor Wellbourne. A few of the other Order members may have guessed, based upon Remus' sudden absence and the circumstances at hand, but none of them were outside the Order's inner circle, and none of them had the ability to contact Thera.

But what made the hairs raise up on the back of his neck was the fact that as far as he knew, Thera didn't even know Remus existed, much less that Harry was acquainted with him, or that he was a member of the Order. He'd never even spoken the name to her.

"Remus? I don't understand," he said, mostly to gauge her reaction.

Thera shrugged. "Fuck if I know. But if you run into him, tell him to follow Greyback."

"Right," Harry said vaguely. The hairs were still standing up on the back of his neck. He ran a hand over them, absorbing Thera's statement. "That's all there was?"

"That's all I got." She was silent for a moment. "Harry?"

He looked up at her. "What?"

Something almost imperceptible softened in her face. "You look like shit. Go to bed."

One had to understand 'soft' as a matter of degree with Thera. "You, too," he said.

"Fuck off," she said, almost as a matter of course. "This isn't good, any of it. I'm sorry."

"It might be useful." Harry reached up under his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "I don't know. I'll pass it on. It's something, I guess." His brain was too fuzzy to deal with it right now. "Are you using the stone I gave you?"

"Yeah," she said, the characteristic half-smile almost too fleeting to see.

"Keeping the things that go bump in the night from bumping?"

She snorted a little. "Not as well as I'd like."

"Sorry," he said, wondering why he'd felt the need to ask the question, why he even cared, why he'd even bought the thing in the first place.

*******

For about the millionth time, Balder weighed his love for his mother against the tediousness of the sodding charity event she'd dragged him to and decided that he should probably stay for a few more minutes. The wind on the outer deck of the yacht was unseasonably and magically pleasant, if nothing else, and the champagne was exquisite.

He was tired, but not exhausted. Exhausted had been chasing down leads that went nowhere. Tired was chasing down leads that led to more leads and more leads, until a vague picture began to form in his head of Voldemort's plans abroad, followed by an even vaguer plan about what might be done to stop them. He'd already made progress in mainland Europe and Latin America, and the knowledge of that progress heartened him for the first time since he'd been named to his position in the Ministry. It also gave him even less desire to waste his time at pointless society gatherings like this one.

"Is the party so boring?" a voice asked from behind him. Balder started, and a rustle of silk revealed Narcissa Malfoy. She wore an exquisitely tailored gown in light blue that showed off her figure in a tasteful manner and matched her eyes perfectly. Her hair was unbound and minimally styled, as per the latest spring fashion among high society pureblood women. "So tiresome that we've forced you to flee?"

Balder momentarily considered lying, then decided there wasn't much point in it. "Yes."

"I apologize," she said, leaning against the railing, her eyes appraising him. She must have been on the steering committee for the event, he supposed, not particularly surprised that Narcissa Malfoy would be on the board of the Sisters of Cliodna. It was one of many pureblood women's societies, most of which directed their money to the Death Eaters. Not that he could prove it. At least not with the Sisters of Cliodna. Yet.

"I expected it to be boring when I came," he said dryly. "Although to your credit, I'll admit that it's more the company than the party itself."

"Death Eaters and Death Eater sympathizers, you mean?" she asked, looking up at him through her lashes. "It's well known that you object to such loyalties."

"I do," he said, taking in every one of her movements as she leaned an elbow against the railing, giving him a fantastic view of her cleavage. "But not enough to leave."

She smiled faintly, tossing her hair, the moon and the lights from the yacht casting almost perfectly rehearsed shadows across her face. Balder was not about to forget the fact that he was talking to a half-veela. "Then what do you object to enough to leave?"

"Boring conversation," he said shortly, turning back to the rail.

She hummed a non-committal response, mirroring his movement while keeping her eyes on him. "Would you consider this a boring conversation?"

Balder could still see no reason to eschew honesty. "Yes."

Her laughter tinkled. "Perhaps I can rectify that." Her hand skimmed across his shoulder blade as she leaned into him, and he got the faint scent of expensive perfume as her lips grazed his cheek and slid up to his ear. "The new Indonesian regime hasn't been as friendly to the Dark Lord as they'd promised," she whispered. "They could be cheaply bought - tariff concessions on potions ingredients is a good place to start."

With a chilly smile, Narcissa turned away to rejoin the party. It took Balder a moment to put it all together, and another to get over his shock. The informant, the one who'd been giving him information all this time - information without which he'd never have been able to make any headway abroad against Voldemort's influence - the one that Dumbledore himself had put Balder in contact with was Narcissa fucking Malfoy?

It couldn't be true, he decided. It had to be a trick. Two steps allowed him to catch up with her. Grabbing an arm, he spun her around. "What are you playing at?" he hissed.

She gazed up at him in amusement. "I wouldn't do that if I were you."

A wand poked rather obviously into his stomach, and Balder let go, wondering where on earth she'd had the thing hidden to be able to draw it so quickly. "What is this?"

Narcissa raised an eyebrow. "In my circles, it's called a tactical maneuver."

She could kill him before he ever even got his wand in his hand. His own fault, really. He should have viewed her as a threat the moment he saw her.

Dumbledore should have also, he thought darkly, the stupid, overly trusting, doddering old fool. "What do you want?"

He'd never thought much of Narcissa Black in school, and on the rare occasions he had, he'd figured her to be a bit dim, actually. At Hogwarts, she'd been the resident ice princess, haughty and untouchable, never as vocal in her beliefs as the other Slytherins of her generation, but also never implying in any way that she disagreed with those beliefs.

Nobody had been surprised when she'd married Lucius Malfoy. The society pages had gushed for weeks over the wedding. There hadn't been the merest hint of suspicion against her after the first war, and not just because Lucius had pled Imperius. Every Death Eater who'd turned Ministry's evidence had painted her as flighty, self-centered, vain and quick to engage in screeching veela-level rages. In other words, too untrustworthy for the inner circle. Which had contained Bellatrix LeStrange.

This was not, Balder decided, his most shining moment.

"I'm sure I should be insulted by the look on your face," she said, backing away a step and lowering her wand. "But I'm well aware of the fact that it's warranted."

He stared at her, finally processing the fact that she wasn't going to kill him - at least not just then - and tried to gather himself. "And what on earth makes you think..." he glanced around to make sure nobody was around to hear their conversation.

"We're alone," Narcissa shrugged. "Variations on Muggle-repelling charms. They make anybody approaching one of the doors to the outer deck suddenly feel an urgent desire for a restroom. We're also warded against any surveillance charms. One doesn't spend several years of one's life around Death Eaters without picking up a few tricks."

Considering any conversation they could have would implicate her more than him, Balder accepted that. "What do you want, then?"

"Oh, my wants have never changed," she said breezily. "Circumstances have, however. I don't want my family dragged through another embarrassing trial. I don't want my son to follow in the footsteps of his father and end up dead, in Azkaban, or the Dark Lord's mindless puppet for the rest of his life. He's a Malfoy and a Black. It's unseemly."

"To say the least," Balder sneered, though he could see her motivations...to a point. "But why give yourself away to me, then?"

"As I said, it's a tactical maneuver." Her voice was cold and logical, entirely at odds with her soft, perfect features and her hair tossing slightly in the breeze. "Not that I don't find the intrigue amusing, but I think the time is right for us to take our partnership out in the open. All the better to hide it, don't you think? After all, I've spent a great deal of time over the past few months making a courtship between us seem believable, undoing the public damage that Lucius managed to inflict with his ill-timed demise. You have no idea how many of these horrid events I've had to sit through."

Balder raised an eyebrow. "Believable to both sides?"

Narcissa smiled blandly. "It's hardly a desirable partnership if I can't keep up my end of the bargain, is it? I've made vague statements to my colleagues within about ensuring that the proper information reaches the proper ears. Of course, it won't be anything useful, but then nobody will expect it to be. You're no fool, and I'm a silly, vain half-veela. They'd find it more amusing than anything else, I assure you."

The possibilities it offered made him put aside his instinctive and completely understandable distrust for a moment. Narcissa was not the sort of insider that Thera Castelar had been before being blackballed. She couldn't provide tactical information on Death Eater activity. But she could provide the sort of information that she'd been providing all along - facts and details kept carefully guarded among the elite pureblood aristocracy, ways that he could attack the soft underbelly of the Death Eater organization and its members without anyone ever suspecting a spy in their midst.

For undoubtedly the first time in his life, Balder eyed Narcissa Malfoy with a modicum of respect. It didn't make him trust her one single iota more than he ever had, but it did make him consider her offer. "How do I know you weren't ordered to do this?"

She laughed, just loud enough to make her point, but not loud enough to stray outside the boundaries of ladylike. "Such paranoia. If I truly worked for the Dark Lord, I'd have delivered you to him by now. It would've been easy enough. Nobody saw me leave the party, and even if they had, nobody would ever suspect me of arranging for your disappearance. Narcissa Malfoy, get her hands dirty? Utterly preposterous."

Balder shook his head slowly, still more disbelieving than anything else. "I'm not giving you an answer until I talk to Dumbledore."

"I'd expect nothing less," Narcissa said, waving a hand. "Let him know your decision, then. He'll get in touch with me."

"If you think for a moment that this will stop me from prosecuting you or your son if I find evidence of wrongdoing on your parts..."

"Dear me," she said, her eyes wide. "Apparently one can play a part too well, if you imagine I'd have even conceived of approaching you unless I made sure there wasn't any to be found. I haven't spent the entirety of the last few months at charity balls."

"Your son is a known Death Eater, even if he's not marked." He said it more to judge her reaction than for any other reason. He wanted to know how much she knew.

Narcissa stepped forward. She was a tall woman, her face nearly even with his. "Is he?" she asked in a light tone. "I think you'd be hard pressed to find any witnesses."

"Or at least, any witnesses who'd live to testify against him," Balder concluded.

She gave a demure little shrug. "Accidents happen."

"I recall several happening just before your husband's trial after the First War - the few individuals who'd survived his attacks. They'd have ruined his Imperius defense."

"Really?" she asked, frowning a bit, her features turning slightly vague. "I honestly don't remember. So long ago, and I was terribly distraught, as you can imagine. My own husband on trial for such horrible crimes, and me all alone with a small child to care for." She closed her eyes and touched her fingertips to her temples, the very picture of feminine vulnerability. "I don't like remembering those times."

Balder was more frightened of Narcissa Malfoy in that moment than he had been when she'd had a wand poking into his belly. Were all women this devious? "Merlin."

Raising her head, Narcissa brushed a brief kiss across his lips before drawing back, looking entirely composed. "Forgive my hasty departure, darling, but I believe the auction's about to start," she said pleasantly, turning to go back inside.

Stumbling a little, Balder made his way back over to the railing and took several deep breaths, trying to force the world to make sense again.

*******

Ron had thought that being in a relationship with Hermione Granger when he was in love with her and she wasn't in love with him had been bad. He was finally beginning to realize that being in a relationship with somebody else in the hopes of forgetting that he was in love with Hermione Granger - and maybe, just a little, in the hopes of making her jealous - was even worse. Love had grown into near obsession, and while Mandy Brocklehurst was pretty and smart and a good kisser and had recently let him feel up under her bra in the back corner of the library, she was losing a battle that she wasn't even aware existed. And the sad thing was that the real Hermione Granger wasn't even winning the battle; the mere idea of her was.

Never in his life had he wished so fervently that he could be like the twins, falling in and out of short relationships with no hard feelings, sexing it up all over the place with no strings attached and nobody hurt.

Unfortunately, he was not like the twins. And no matter how hard he tried, or how hot and heavy he and Mandy had gotten the night before, every morning at breakfast, Ron Weasley found himself in the same seat, across from Hermione Granger, watching her alternately work through a N.E.W.T. study guide and read the paper, falling hopelessly in love with her all over again. He spent five minutes alone enjoying the way her nose wrinkled and a little crease appeared between her eyebrows when she read something she didn't like. He nearly got a hard-on watching her drink pumpkin juice.

He was - in a word - pathetic.

Mandy walked into the Great Hall and spotted him, grinning. Ron smiled back and gave a little wave, repressing a sigh as she made her way over to him.

"Good morning," she said, kissing his cheek and sitting down next to him. She greeted Harry and Hermione, both of whom returned the greeting with the same bland smile.

"Do you want to work on the Herbology essay with me after dinner?" Mandy asked. The look in her eye told him quite plainly that he would be well rewarded if he did.

Ah, yes. That was the other problem. He was seventeen and male. Ron wanted to have sex with Mandy. A lot. Or at least his body did. His mind was alternately convinced that this would finally exorcise the ideal of Hermione Granger once and for all, or that it would firmly lock her into position as an unreachable standard that no girl he dated could ever fulfill. At which point his pathetic-ness would become permanent and incurable.

"Um..." he said, trying to make his mouth form the word 'yes' and not quite managing.

Harry came to his rescue. "You can't, Ron. Quidditch practice, remember?"

"Oh, right," Ron said. "Quidditch practice. Sorry."

"It's okay," Mandy shrugged. "I'll let you borrow my outline, if you want to."

From the corner of his eye, he saw Hermione roll her eyes.

There were certain perks to dating a Ravenclaw. Mandy's honor wouldn't let him cheat off of her outright, but she wasn't above helping him out a whole hell of a lot. "Thanks."

"No problem," she said, kissing him on the cheek again and moving over to her table.

Her spot was shortly thereafter taken by Ginny, who nearly collapsed into it. "Blurgh."

"What's wrong?" Harry asked.

"I forgot about Quidditch practice," Ginny mumbled, grabbing for the coffeepot and pouring herself half a cup. She topped it off with pumpkin juice - an old trick of his dad's to cool the stuff off for immediate consumption that Ron personally found disgusting - and downed it with a grimace. "I remembered the stuff we have to do tomorrow night," she added, referring to their regular meetings with Malfoy to learn Dark Arts, "and the D.A. on Thursday. I'd just settled in and was half asleep when I remembered Quidditch practice was tonight, and I realized I wouldn't have time to write my Defense Against the Dark Arts essay anywhere in there. How do you all do this?"

"Take three courses," Ron said, at the same time Harry answered, "Slacking off," and Hermione said, "Pepper-Up and No-Doz."

"And here all I have is the cocktail of champions," Ginny said, toasting them with her next half-coffee, half-pumpkin juice mixture before tossing it back. "I'll have to look into the Pepper-Up and No-Doz solution, since I'm already well into slacking. Can I have Sports and Society?" she asked Hermione. This was a regular morning ritual. Hermione never read the Sports or Society sections. Ginny only read the Sports and Society sections. Ron waited until after breakfast and got the Sports section from his sister to read in class. Harry preferred to avoid reading the Daily Prophet at all.

It worked for everybody. Well, it usually did. Today, the Sports section had a lot more to say than it usually did.

"Oh, shit," Ron heard Ginny say under her breath. "What the hell was he thinking?"

"What?" he asked distractedly, getting some more bacon to tide him over.

Ginny quickly closed the paper, turning to look at him, biting her lip.

"What?" he repeated, the bottom dropping out of his stomach. "The Cannons went under, didn't they?" he asked, finally giving voice to his worst fear. The Quidditch analysts had been warning that it was coming, that the team might move to Birmingham, who had been wooing them with promises of a new stadium. No more Cannons; they'd rename them something stupid, too. The Broomhandlers or the Billywigs or something...

"No," she said, patting his hand. "They didn't go under."

"Well, what happened, then?" he asked desperately. "Did we get fined over that business with the illegal bets? Did we lose our draft pick? For Merlin's sake what?"

She was his little sister. That was the only reason that he didn't pick her up by the front of her robes and try to shake the information out of her.

"It's nothing like that," Ginny said, eyes wide. "They got bought out."

Ron blinked at her. "Oh." Well, that was hardly a surprise. "By who?"

Ginny glanced over to her left, across the room. Ron followed her gaze, but couldn't quite figure out what it meant. There was a crowd gathered around Malfoy at the Slytherin table, he noticed, frowning a bit, wondering what the git was up to now...

Oh.

Oh, fuck no.

"Tell me it's not Malfoy," he said in a voice he didn't even recognize as his own.

Ginny looked back at him. "I could," she said unsteadily. "It would be a lie, though."

"Malfoy bought the Cannons," Ron said, more to see what the words felt like in his mouth than out of any acceptance of its reality.

His sister poured herself another horrible coffee-and-pumpkin-juice cup of sludge and nodded. Nodded. As in: yes. Affirmative. True.

For one brief moment, Ron Weasley hated Draco Malfoy more than he ever had in his entire life, the slimy fuck. Malfoy had bought his team, and now he was going to run them into the ground just to rub Ron's face in it, just because he could, and...

At which point the rage burnt itself out, and Ron almost laughed at himself. What, was Malfoy going to make the Cannons suck more? That wasn't even possible. They hadn't won a game since Ron's parents had been alive. Which is to say that - if nothing else - Malfoy was not about to waste millions of galleons just to rub Ron's face in the fact that his team sucked. Everybody knew his team sucked, including him.

So why had he bought them, then? As a fan, Ron understood. He'd dreamed about it, even: buying the Cannons, turning them around, making them into a contender for the League Championship. He'd never seriously thought about doing it, because he'd never been able to imagine having the money to. But Malfoy did.

And as much as he detested the little fuck, and as much as the jealousy was threatening to tear him into several enraged pieces, some tiny part of him that never gave up hope on the Cannons couldn't help but feel a bit glad. Malfoys were not known for making unwise investments. That was how they'd got so fucking rich in the first place.

Well, that and screwing people over left and right, but Ron doubted this was one of those times. The Cannons continuing to suck wouldn't do Malfoy any good.

He didn't want to call it hope. He really hated to call it hope, but it kind of was.

Then, it occurred to Ron that the new owner of the team he'd loved since childhood was sitting on the other side of the room from him. He stood up.

Ginny latched onto his wrist, brown eyes wild. "Oh, Merlin, Ron. Don't kill him."

He stared down at her, wondering where she'd gotten the impression that he was so unbalanced that he'd murder Malfoy right in the middle of the Great Hall.

Well...yes, he might've desired to once or twice, but still.

And there was the time last year when he'd attacked the little shit, of course...

And the time the year before that, and...

Ron shook his head. "I'm not going to kill him," he informed her, pulling his wrist free. "I'm just going to give him a piece of my mind."

Ginny did not look relieved in the least.

Striding across the Great Hall, Ron felt the eyes turn towards him, the whispers start up. His issues with Malfoy were fairly well known, and their physical expression even more so. The crowd around Malfoy split and retreated to a safe distance as he approached.

The blonde git's eyes lit upon him and his eyebrows rose. "Weasley," he said evenly.

"Malfoy," Ron returned, with slightly more spite. He was not a saint, after all.

"Come to congratulate me?" the Slytherin asked, trying to size up the situation. "I recommend you do. Snape's half out of his seat as we speak."

"I've come to give you some advice," Ron bit out.

The crowd around them took another step back.

"I see," Malfoy said warily. "And that would be?"

Ron's mouth curled into a smile. There was nobody on this planet - Malfoy included - that could talk Cannons like he could. "The whole management team needs to go," he said. "And all of the Chasers except for Campbell. She's fast and has good defensive instincts; she's just been surrounded by shit for the past three years. You need to draft a Keeper first, though, top pick and all. I know everyone's creaming over Clemenceau because he's got great stats, but we was playing against French Chasers. They couldn't sink a Quaffle in the Black Lake. Go for Gerard, out of Toronto. He's got a 35 second lap time and a 42-inch reach. You'd be an idiot not to take him."

"Campbell's good," Malfoy said offhandedly, cocking his head. "But some say that Gerard hasn't had much more competition against him than Clemenceau."

"That's old bias," Ron scoffed. "Everyone knows that the Canadian Intercollegiate's far more competitive than the Beaxbatons Interhouse. Canadian Seekers still suck," he allowed, because it was largely true, "but a Keeper who held Quebec scoreless every time he played them? Two of their Chasers went pro last year, one with Puddlemere..."

"...and one with Madrid," Malfoy filled in. "Yes, I know."

"So are you taking him?"

Malfoy shrugged, grinning. "Guess you'll have to wait and find out."

Ron gritted his teeth, but remained calm. "Yeah, well. Dixon's contract with Pride of Portree is up. He worked miracles with Wimbourne when he was there..."

"...and then chafed under Old Lady Jones's tendency to treat her management team like house elves at Portree," Malfoy cut him off. "I read Quidditch Weekly too, Weasley. But Dixon came on with Wimbourne when they had a nearly unbeatable team. Who's to say he's capable of translating that success to a team that has yet to win this century?"

"For the first time ever, the Cannons have unlimited funds," Ron said, rolling his eyes, "and you know profit-sharing and new salary cap requirements are just a few years down the road, the way things have been going. Merlin, hire him for a three year contract and see what happens. It's not like you can't afford it."

"Maybe I will," Malfoy said cagily, "if I think he can do the job."

"Yes, well," Ron replied stiffly, suddenly clueing in on the fact that quite a few people were all standing in a circle around them, open-mouthed. One or two seemed to be taking notes. "Just make sure we don't suck this year."

Malfoy raised an eyebrow. "That's my job, isn't it?"

Some latent instinct in him still kind of wanted to pound Malfoy's face in, but the rest of him created a buffer, much more easily built up after several months spent learning Dark Arts from the kid, who - probably for Ginny's sake - seemed to go out of his way to not be an asshole during those times. If love and Quidditch could be mutually exclusive, after all, why couldn't hate and Quidditch? Ron chose not to explore the limits of what he was willing to do to get his Cannons a winning season. Instead, he gave Malfoy a short nod and returned to his table to finish his eggs, ignoring the open-mouthed stares he got along the way, including those from his best friends.

*******

Bernadette Fudge wasn't buying it for a second. "Narcissa Malfoy," she intoned, yet again. Her nephew looked decidedly put out.

"Yes," he said, shrugging a little. "I don't see what the huge deal is. We're just seeing each other. We're not getting married, for Merlin's sake."

"You don't see what the huge deal is?" she asked. "Where do you want me to start?"

Balder scowled, cutting into his cod with far more force than necessary. "She is - surprisingly enough - not the female embodiment of Lucius Malfoy, Aunt Bernadette."

"No," she allowed, "but only because she's more unbalanced, and a phenomenal twit."

Her nephew gave her brief smile. "What makes you think that isn't part of the appeal?"

Bernadette studied him for a moment. "You're just trying to get information out of her, aren't you?"

"Fine," he said, putting down his silverware. "You caught me. I'm only dating her to try to get information out of her. Happy?"

"What on earth makes you think she knows anything?"

He raised his eyebrows. "What on earth makes you think she doesn't?"

Bernadette made a disapproving sound. "I don't like this."

Balder smiled briefly. "I didn't really expect you to."

"Well, be careful. Just because she seems harmless doesn't mean she really is."

Her nephew snorted. "Believe me, I know."

*******

"Solutions are not the answer."

-Richard Nixon

Vivian had never understood people who dealt with stress by not eating. Having enlarged her clothes for the second time since Remus' departure, she'd managed to deduce that stress had a seriously detrimental effect on her nutritional habits. Chocolate was no replacement for sex, nor was it an acceptable alternative to a mate. However, when one's mate was several hundred miles away and in constant mortal danger for an unspecified amount of time, it was...well, it was something to stuff your face with.

She really wished she had something to stuff her face with at the moment.

"How do we know any of this is reliable?" Bill Weasley asked, staring at Harry as if he'd grown a second head. Actually most of the Order was staring at Harry as if he'd grown a second head. "She didn't even tell you how she learned it."

"No, she didn't," Harry said sourly. "But I can't imagine she'd feed me a bunch of lies. She doesn't have any reason to."

"Well, you can't discount the fact that whoever told her this might have a reason to," Minerva said.

"That's the thing," Harry said, frowning. "I can't see how anybody did tell her. Nobody can get into Malfoy Manor except for Malfoy, and if he had any information, he'd just give it directly to me. Plus, he's got a tracking charm on her. He says she never left."

"Oh, it's easy enough to get out of a tracking charm once you learn how," Fred said, waving a hand. "Mum used to put them on us all the time."

Molly Weasley turned and fixed a glare on him.

"Nice one, Fred," his twin said pleasantly.

"The Cardinal's people put it on her," Vivian supplied. "I imagine it's fairly reliable."

"Why are The Cardinal's people putting tracking charms on anybody who isn't Harry?" Arthur asked. "Isn't that what they're at Hogwarts for?"

"I'm guessing Malfoy bought it," Hermione said.

"Well, it doesn't really matter anyway, right?" Tonks said from her seat at the end of the table, where she was trying to feed Charlotte a bottle. The baby seemed far more interested in trying to knock her mother's water goblet off the table. "I mean, shouldn't we be talking about what she said? If he's really completed the spell, then..."

"He couldn't have," Ron said, shaking his head. "Everyone said he hadn't."

"And it's not like we can be certain that the information is reliable," Hestia Jones added, "if we don't even know where it came from."

"The last time she gave us information," Severus said in a silky voice, "it was accurate."

"That doesn't mean all the information she gives us is," Angelina Johnson pointed out.

"And this isn't like all of the other information she's given us," Vivian said. "I mean, it's all so vague. 'Look in the Sanguinitio for an inheritance spell.' There are at least fifty inheritance spells in the Sanguinitio. None that involve tunnels, though."

"Yeah, I'm not sure what that part was about," Harry admitted. "But there are other things she said that make me think it might be real." His eyes skittered briefly to her, then away. "And I think I might know where she got the information."

"Where, then?" Molly prompted him.

Harry winced. "She'd kill me if she knew I was telling you all about it."

"She'd do a lot worse than that to you, mate," George muttered.

"Uh...considering what we heard her doing on the recordings from the Symposium of World Evil last year," Fred said, "I don't think she's the shy type, if that's what you're worried about."

"What did you hear her doing?" Mundungus asked, with great interest.

"It's not something you'd talk about in polite company," George said.

"But we'd be happy to tell you about it after the meeting," Fred said brightly.

Ron Weasley was staring at his brothers, his eyes were as wide as saucers. He blinked and looked over at Harry. "Do you mean the dead father dreams thing?"

"The what now?" Bill asked, taking Charlotte from Tonks in the apparent hope that a change of scenery would allow for some progress with the feeding of the baby.

Vivian finally got a look at the expression on Harry's face and sighed. She'd seen that expression before. James used to get it whenever he saw another male get touchy-feely with Lily. Harry looked like he wanted to kill something, preferably with his bare hands.

Oh, we are in for a world of shit with that relationship.

They really needed Remus back.

"It's a bit more than that," Harry bit out, picking up his water goblet and looking more like he was about to crush the thing than drink from it.

"Soul-splitting," Severus said. Like Vivian, he was eyeing Harry with undisguised dread.

Harry finished his drink of water. It didn't look like it had helped him much. "Her father. And Bellatrix. Both of them. Split souls. Kept them in her. She has dreams about her father, I know. He's told her things. They've turned out to be true."

"So let me get this straight," Molly Weasley said in the tone of a mother who has heard just about every creative variation on the amusing series of events that culminated in the lamp being broken without it being the fault of anybody in the room at the time. "This girl is not only You-Know-Who's puppet, but also has the undead souls of Bellatrix LeStrange and Atreus Castelar housed inside of her, and we've given her a mirror through which she can contact Harry whenever it pleases her. Am I correct?"

"You actually talk to her through that mirror thing?" Fred asked Harry, wide-eyed.

George let out a low whistle. "You really are brave."

"I am putting my foot down about this," Molly said in a voice shaking with outrage. "I tried to the first time we talked about those mirrors, but I'm really doing it this time."

"They have actually come in very helpful," Hermione said, eyeing Harry worriedly.

"When, exactly?" Minerva asked, looking not at all pleased with this situation.

"We had a problem to solve," Hermione explained as vaguely as possible. "And we couldn't have possibly solved it without the mirrors."

Minerva raised an eyebrow. "And this problem would be?"

Vivian could practically see Hermione Granger's rather formidable brain working overtime to try to churn out an answer to that. The girl was saved, however, by Dumbledore. "I believe we've gotten off-topic," he said. His voice was mild but his gaze was on Harry, and it was turned up to full blast. "Harry, you were saying?"

Molly appealed to him. "Albus, you can't possibly..."

"I believe when initially we discussed the matter of the mirrors, Harry informed us all that he was, in fact, an adult. That has not changed that I am aware of."

"You honestly think that the Castelar girl got this information from her father?" Severus intervened, undoubtedly to head Molly off at the next pass.

"I don't know how else she could've gotten it," Harry said, jaw still clenched.

"A seventeen-year-old is not an adult," Molly grumbled, mostly to herself.

"There is only one minor problem with your conclusion, Mr. Potter," Severus sneered. "Why on earth would Atreus Castelar give his daughter useful information that he knew would be passed on to the Order?" He sat forward. "Either the information is false, or it didn't come from Atreus Castelar."

"Well, who did it come from, then?" Cho Chang asked, looking lost. She'd landed a prize internship in the Minister of Magic's office, and did some modeling on the side to make money. She must've just come from a job, because she was made up to the hilt. Or maybe she just went about like that all the time. "I mean, that's the real question, isn't it? We can't decide whether or not to trust it until we find out where it came from."

Like most Order meetings, it had taken ten minutes of discussion to get back around to the first argument that had been made about a subject.

"Harry?" the Headmaster asked, raising his eyebrows.

"I already asked," Harry said shortly. "She wouldn't tell me."

Albus' gaze settled on Severus, who did not look pleased to be next in line. "I'll speak to Malfoy," he said, with a malicious little glance at Harry. "She often tells him things."

It was not a nice thing to do, Vivian knew. But in the absence of Remus, somebody needed to stand up for Harry. "Actually, it would be most useful if you could persuade him to let you go to the Manor yourself and speak to her," she said innocently.

Severus sent her a glare that should have reduced her to cinders.

"I'd like to know if she's had any progress on the research she's been doing," she explained to the table at large, wondering if getting on the bad side of a potions expert wouldn't result in a nice, long bout of diarrhea. If she was lucky.

Albus looked unaccountably amused. "Yes, I think that would be a very good idea."

Something glinted in Severus' eyes that made Vivian suddenly wish she'd kept her mouth shut. "Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with her research," he said blandly. "Not the way that you are, at least. I'm afraid my ignorance would compromise any findings she has to pass on. I think the most reasonable solution is for you to go to the Manor."

"I don't know her as well as you do," Vivian said. "She's far more likely to talk to you."

"Why don't you both just go?" Elphias Doge suggested irritably. It was well past his bedtime, and he never was one for pussyfooting around.

"I think that's the best solution," Albus said, smiling.

Vivian closed her eyes and nodded her defeat. Her and her big fat mouth.

*******

"Stop looking at me like that," Harry said without looking up from his Transfiguration textbook. Hermione was a lot of things. Subtle was not one of them.

"Like what?" Hermione asked innocently. Ron glanced over at them, realized what was coming, and sought about trying to make himself invisible.

"Like you think I'm suddenly going to throw down my book and set fire to the school."

"Well, you haven't said anything since we got back."

Sighing, he closed his book and looked up at her. "What am I supposed to say, exactly?"

"I don't know," she said, exasperated. "It's just that I get worried about you when you go all quiet, because I know you're stewing. And I know what you stewing long enough generally results in."

"I'm not stewing," he said defensively.

She merely raised an eyebrow. Harry gave up. "Fine, I'm stewing. So? I'll get over it. I just found out that my ostensible girlfriend sucked nine cocks in one night. Evil cocks, too. And I know we weren't even together at the time, and I know that we're not even really together now, and I know that getting jealous over Thera's sexual escapades is pointless, because for all I know, nine isn't even a record for her, but it's still not a very pleasant thing to hear about from Fred and George, who have it all on tape, okay?!"

Hermione's face stretched into a smile as he panted to catch his breath at the end of his little speech. "See? You just needed to get it all out? Feel better now?"

Harry thought about it for a second. "I feel slightly less crappy," he mumbled.

"At least she didn't have sex with them," Ron pointed out, figuring it was safe to talk. "And that tape is property of the Order. It's not like they've been passing it around."

"You mean, they haven't been passing it around to anyone who isn't in the Order," Harry said sourly. "Lee certainly seemed capable of quoting it by heart."

"Yeah, but that's just Lee..." Ron tried to explain.

"That's not even the point," Harry said, waving his friend off. "The point is...oh, for Merlin's sake. How the hell do I get myself into these kinds of situations?"

"Does it bother you?" Hermione asked evenly.

"Of course it bothers me," he snapped. "Not even that she did it, because it's not like I didn't know..." he broke off with a frustrated sound, unable to make the words 'my girlfriend's the world's biggest slut' come out of his mouth. "Did she have to leave behind auditory evidence, for crying out loud? I mean," he appealed to Ron, "imagine you found out someone had Mandy on tape giving the entire Ravenclaw Quidditch team blow jobs. Wouldn't that bother you, even if it happened before you met her?"

"It would have up until yesterday," Ron said, a little too casually.

Hermione's head snapped to look at him. "Why? What happened yesterday?"

"We broke up," he shrugged, directing his eyes back to his reading.

"Oh, Ron," Harry sighed, forgetting momentarily about what Thera sucking off a Ukrainian mobster might sound like. "I'm sorry, mate."

"It's okay," Ron said. "I broke up with her, actually. I mean, don't get me wrong. Mandy's a great girl and all. She's just a little bit...boring, I guess. Plus, she's leaving to take a fellowship in India after graduation."

"And she wasn't going to have sex with you before she left," Harry deduced.

Ron went bright red. "That had nothing to do with it," he said.

Hermione shook her head. "All men are swine, honestly."

"I already said that had nothing to do with it," Ron argued.

"Sure it didn't," Hermione said, a very unpleasant smile on her face. Ron muttered something he couldn't hear and looked away, and Hermione turned to Harry. "So are you going to break up with her?"

Harry blinked, thrown off by that little exchange. "Uh...I don't know."

"Are you going to tell her about it?"

Sometimes, Harry was a little frightened of Hermione. When she wanted to freeze a person out, she was extremely good at it. "I don't know," he repeated, not sure whether that was the right answer or not, and what Hermione would do to him if it wasn't.

She crossed her arms and looked disappointed in him, which wasn't new. "You should."

"How, exactly? 'Oh, hey, Thera, by the way - remember that weekend you spent orally pleasuring all of Voldemort's evil associates? Well, funny thing. The Order has a recording of it. I haven't listened to it myself, but apparently it's hilarious.'"

Hermione looked thoughtful. "Actually, you probably don't have to tell her. She planted the listening devices, right? So I'm guessing she already knows."

"See, there you go," Harry said, feeling inordinately relieved to hear that. "I don't have to tell her. She already knows. In fact, now I can just pretend like I never even found out about it in the first place. I think that'll be the best course of action."

The more he thought about that, the more he liked that strategy. After all, if they talked about it, they'd only end up fighting about it.

Hermione gave him a pitying look. "Oh, Harry."

"What?" he said, picking up his Transfiguration book and putting it in his bag. "You ready to go up, Ron?"

"Me? I don't know," his friend said breezily. "Are the swine allowed to go to bed?"

"Oh, for the..." Hermione ran a hand down her face. "Yes. Go. It's late."

"Thanks for your permission," Ron said with a cheeky little smile as he gathered up his things. "I'll try not to oink too much on my way through the common room."

Rolling his eyes, Harry opened the door. Behind him, Ron paused and Harry turned around to see Hermione touching his friend's sleeve, looking contrite.

"I'm really sorry about you and Mandy," she said, sounding as if she actually meant it.

"Thanks," Ron said, ducking his head. Harry didn't have to look over at his friend to know that he was grinning all the way up to the dormitory.

It begins, he thought a bit wearily. Again.

*******

"Hiding in my room,

Safe within my womb,

I touch no-one and no-one touches me."

-Simon and Garfunkel, 'I Am A Rock'

Most people were unaware of the fact that Severus Snape had a nightly routine, but he did. When not bothered by Death Eater meetings or Order meetings or the petty problems of the students in his house, he kept himself to a very strict schedule.

Upon returning from dinner, he listened to music for an hour. Usually it was The Banshee Cult to keep him feeling suitably alienated, but occasionally it was something lighter, like The Skreaky Deathmunchers or Lethifold and the Black Surge, or the early albums of The Weird Sisters, before they'd sold out and gone mainstream.

These made up the soundtrack of his life before he'd become a Death Eater. This is not to say that Severus listened to them for the sake of nostalgia. He mostly listened to them because the fact that he knew all the words and chord progressions gave him a sense of relaxation he couldn't find any other way. It was a stop-gap measure. One of many.

After this, he would grade papers, which probably wasn't an enjoyable activity to anybody but Severus Snape. Much like hearing the opening riff of "Spells of a Sort" off of the Skreaky Deathmunchers' second album, reading the opening sentence of an obviously muffed Potions essay imbued him with a sense of order in the universe. Dark Lords may come and go, spies may be found out and killed, but there would always be idiots around who didn't know a Draught of Peace from a Draught of Living Death.

Such was the way of the world, and it was his job to insult and intimidate them to such an incisive and confidence-destroying degree that they were frightened away from N.E.W.T. Potions, thus protecting the world from their incompetence - at least in terms of Potions.

As far as the rest of it went, he had little power.

Frankly, when it came down to it, he had little power at all, least of all over his own life. Which is how he found himself with his routine nighttime activities interrupted not by the Dark Lord, or Dumbledore, but by the fact that a brainless teenage girl had decided to suddenly get cagey with her equally brainless male counterpart regarding her sources.

And standing around his fireplace with Draco Malfoy, waiting for the ever-late Vivian Wellbourne. Ten minutes after they'd planned to leave, she came bursting in, looking flustered. "Sorry," she said, levitating a bag behind her. "I just thought if the Castelar girl had found anything, I should probably bring all of my important books for quick reference, if possible. I mean, who knows when we'll be able to do this again, right?"

This not being Severus' show, he just stared at her.

"We all have to floo together," Malfoy said, eyeing the overstuffed bag of books. "That's the only way I can get you two in without changing the wards, and I'd rather not have to change the wards at this point, if you don't mind."

"Oh," Vivian said, shrinking the bag down and stuffing it in her pocket. "Okay. Ready."

Multiple flooing was an experience Severus detested, and given the skittishness of his two partners as they scrunched into his fireplace, neither of them were any more enamored of it than he was. They all had to be touching one another - rather intimately, unless they all wanted their knees and elbows knocked by every fireplace that went past. Nobody seemed to want to be the first one to break this particular seal.

"I'm the woman," Vivian said finally. "I'll take the middle. Huddle around."

As the adult, Severus felt he should take the front, tucking his elbows in and trying not to pay attention to his colleague smashed up against him. Taking the back, Malfoy seemed to be trying to ignore the fact that the body part his groin was now pressed against belonged to a person who might someday have to write him a letter of recommendation.

"Are you sure you don't want to rethink your decision about the wards?" Vivian asked, gathering up some floo powder.

"I already am," Draco said, shuddering and screwing his eyes shut.

"Well, let's make it quick, then," she said, throwing down the powder.

Severus heard "Malfoy Manor" faintly spoken, then the usual spinning of floo travel, with the disorientation multiplied due to the fact that he wasn't the one guiding them.

They reached Malfoy Manor, or Severus assumed that they did, since Draco launched the three of them out of the fireplace. They broke contact long before hitting the floor.

Standing up, they brushed themselves off, all trying to act casual and failing miserably.

"Well, that seemed cozy," another voice said.

Pausing, they all looked up and shot Thera Castelar scowls in degrees ranging from moderately intimidating to utterly terrifying. "I've got tea and scones in the parlor," she said, beckoning them to follow her. "Well, for you all, at least, and have at them, because I certainly won't. Due to our mutual boredom, and the fact that I fucking hate both tea and scones, the house elves and I have expanded the Malfoy Menu a bit. So I'll be having Turkish coffee and flan. Feel free to partake, if you wish, though I doubt any of you will. I have this whole theory that the English don't possess taste buds."

Severus couldn't hold back a little smirk. With her hair styled to high class standards, and her dress robes of impeccable worth and fashion, Thera Castelar could've passed herself off easily as a Malfoy wife. The speech, however, was pure Reina.

"Please, sit," she said, bowing her head and gesturing elegantly with a red-gloved hand.

Malfoy did so, looking as if he wished the earth would swallow him up whole.

Severus and Vivian did mostly to see what would happen next.

Thera joined them last, at which point - as promised - the scones and tea appeared, as well as the Turkish coffee and flan. "So, how was your trip?" she asked.

"Lovely," Severus said, taking a scone. "Where did you learn the information?"

"I can't possibly talk business until I've seen you all fed," Thera said firmly. "Eat, please. Merlin knows the house elves nearly go mad with boredom with just me..."

"Oh, for the love of Merlin," Malfoy burst out, rolling his eyes. "This isn't a social gathering, you ghetto-raised twat. We're only here to..."

"I know why you're here," the Castelar girl said pleasantly, patting her mouth with a napkin. "Does that mean we all have to all act like inelegant boors? That we can't observe even the most basic of social niceties? That we can't have a nice tea before..."

"You are," Malfoy informed her, "so utterly full of it."

Severus glanced over at Vivian. Her scone was gone, which probably accounted for her silence for the past few minutes, and she appeared to be following the conversation.

Thera Castelar slowly set aside her coffee. "How completely selfish of me," she said coolly, "to think that - after months with no human contact - I might be able to enjoy a few moments of conversation before we all got down to business, so to speak." Her gaze touched all three of them briefly. "Business unlike traveling by floo together, I mean."

Enough was enough. "Is the purpose of our visit so sensitive a topic that you have to put on this elaborate a production in the hopes of distracting us from it?" Severus asked.

A silly Gryffindor would've scowled at him for being caught so red-handed. His best Slytherin would've given him a look of supreme innocence, or - if they had something to back it up with - would have merely raised a Lucius Malfoy-inspired eyebrow.

As if he hadn't spoken, Thera Castelar politely offered him more tea.

Severus declined. "Where did you get the information?"

"Is it that big an issue?" she asked, ignoring his refusal and pouring him tea anyway.

"They won't believe the information you've given unless they're assured that it came from a reliable source," Vivian said. "Your word of honor isn't a reliable source."

Another refreshing thing about the girl was that she knew when to back down. Exactly when. She never did it too early or too late, and never backed any farther than she had to go. "I see," she said. "What if the source isn't reliable?"

"Then the information will be disregarded," Severus said.

"All of it?" the Castelar girl asked, raising her eyebrows at him.

"All of it," he confirmed flatly.

"You know, I don't think it will be. That's the problem with having Harry as a front-man," she said matter-of-factly. "He's a shitty liar. And he already believes it."

"It's possible he did," Vivian said, sitting back. "Maybe he still does, even after he learned about certain recordings taken during Voldemort's summit this past summer. The rest of the Order, however, is a bit less trusting."

If the girl was fazed by this piece of information, she didn't show it. "The Good Side's idea of illicit entertainment is so quaint," she said, shaking her head. "You do realize that most people get off by watching underage girls suck cock, right?"

"Castelar," Severus snapped.

"Honestly, Snape," she said. "It's not like I'm the one who broached the topic."

"I seriously cannot wait until we get divorced," Malfoy muttered.

Severus had no idea how a sodding seventeen-year-old girl had managed to take control of the situation, but he was going to put it to an end.

"The Good Side is above using Veritaserum and torture to get the information they need," he said mildly. "I, however, am not."

"For Merlin's sake, Severus," Vivian said, sounding appalled, sliding effortlessly into her role. "I hardly think..."

She stopped talking when Thera Castelar held out her cup to him. "Dose me up, then. As we're all among friends here, I don't think the torture will be necessary. If you're so bloody interested in the truth, I'll tell you. I still don't think you'll believe me, though."

For a second, he thought that perhaps she was under the impression that she was calling his bluff, that he wouldn't really do it. The fact that she smirked at him as he pulled out the bottle of Veritaserum that he carried on him at all times - one never knew, after all, when one might need it - and put three drops into her coffee pretty much dispelled the notion. Which begged the question: what the hell was she doing, then?

They waited a few minutes for the potion to take effect. The Castelar girl played with her hair. Vivian shifted around uncomfortably, shooting him loaded glances that he ignored. Malfoy simply sat there looking as if Christmas had come early.

Once the time was up, Severus cleared his throat. "Who gave you the information?"

Thera Castelar smiled at him serenely. "James and Lily Potter."

Vivian jerked a little bit. Severus just stared at the girl.

"The Veritaserum didn't work," Vivian whispered. "That's not possible."

"Of course it worked," Severus said, almost distractedly. "I made it."

"Really?" Vivian argued. "Last I checked, James and Lily Potter were dead."

"They still are," Castelar supplied.

Perhaps he should test it out. It was a tricky situation, however. Veritaserum didn't force a person to answer a question, and the only way to test whether it was working or not was to ask a question the subject would normally lie about, and coax them into answering.

He had a feeling that wasn't going to work in this situation.

Which meant he'd have to trick her into it.

"Were you ever, at any time, even remotely attracted to Patrick O'Riordan?" he asked.

"In a sick sort of way, yes," the Castelar girl answered. Her eyes widened and Severus smirked. That had obviously not been what she'd intended to come out of her mouth. "Fuck this," she said, standing up from the table. Severus stood with her.

"Who gave you the information?" Now, he was in his element.

"James and Lily Potter," she said, backing away from them, her eyes wild. "I already fucking told you that."

So it's true, then, Severus thought with a sense of unreality.

"How did they pass the information on to you?"

The Castelar girl shook her head and turned to leave, then seemed to think the better of it. Turning back, she collected herself before answering. "I talked to them. I thought it was a dream, but it wasn't. They told me the stuff that I passed on to Harry."

"The hell?" Vivian breathed from beside him.

"You're sure it was James and Lily Potter?" he asked.

"Yes," the girl said, once more looking surprised at her answer.

"How?"

"Freed souls can't hide who they are. Oh, this is just getting creepy." Thera Castelar looked ill, but made no further move to flee, for which he was glad. Severus had no idea what on earth was going on here, but he fully intended to find out.

"How do you know that?" he asked.

She seemed torn between sharing his desire to get to the bottom of this and fearing what would come out of her mouth next. "Because I'm supposed to be free. I know the rules."

"And what are the rules?"

The words came out rapid-fire, as if she was reciting from rote memorization. "The rules cannot be spoken of in the world of the living. Oh, that's a fucking cop-out."

Severus rather agreed. "What the Potters told you, was it was true?"

"They believed it was." The face that Thera Castelar made after speaking those words was priceless.

"Was the information intended to help the Order win the war?" he tried.

"It was intended to help Harry."

"Has the spell truly been completed?"

"Yes."

Severus reigned in his automatic emotional response to that answer. "How does Voldemort seek to obtain the power he didn't get from the completion of the spell?"

"I don't know."

"Does the entailment have to be undone before the final battle?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"It depends on what happens."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that it depends on what happens." Castelar seemed to find this amusing.

Severus figured it was worth a try. "Does Potter win in the end?"

"I don't know."

Well, that obviously wasn't going anywhere. "Why should Remus follow Greyback?"

"Because Greyback knows the way to the tunnels," she said, looking slightly impressed with herself. "Well, at least my subconscious heard that part."

"What tunnels do you mean?"

"I don't know."

"Which inheritance spell do I need to look up in the Sanguinitio?" Vivian asked.

"You know which one," Castelar said helplessly.

Vivian wilted. "No, I really don't, actually," she grumbled.

"I thought this would be a lot more entertaining," Malfoy commented.

"My apologies," Severus said dryly. "What does Wormtail know about the entailment?"

"He knows everything about it," Castelar said, looking confused. "Only he doesn't know that knows it, whatever the hell that means."

"Can I get the information out of him, though?"

"If you know when to ask, you can."

"If I know when to ask," Severus repeated, trying to figure that out.

Castelar shrugged. "Don't look at me. This shit just comes out on its own."

Something occurred to him. "Do I really live through the war?"

The girl took a moment before answering. "How the hell should I know?" Severus looked up at her. She was frowning. "Draco's ugly. Snape's hair is luxurious. Harry Potter is an evil bastard." She looked up at him. "Veritaserum's worn off."

Severus sighed. Damn.

********

Even after receiving the latest information from the Order, and going on the lookout, Remus was - to say the least - entirely unprepared to encounter Fenrir Greyback so suddenly after so many years. All he'd been expecting was lunch. Instead, he got the bane of his existence, the Voldemort-following werewolf who had bitten him as a child.

To say the least, it put him off of his stew.

"...those who have oppressed us and denigrated us for so long," Greyback railed, to the supportive cheers of his lupine brethren.

"Am we alone in finding it hard to believe that Voldemort can't abide Muggleborns, yet has absolutely no problem embracing the werewolf cause?" Nasser muttered to him.

"Propaganda moves mountains," Remus muttered back. "And generally gets a lot of people killed in the process, which is probably the plan."

"Meeting afterwards?" Nasser whispered.

Remus gave a brief nod, turning a mildly interested face back to Greyback, his mind drifting as he listened with half an ear to his fellow werewolves get whipped into a froth. Right now, at Hogwarts, Vivian was probably still sleeping. She'd probably fallen asleep reading, as she often did when he wasn't there. She probably still had her glasses on, knocked askew at some point, making red marks on the bridge of her nose. If he were there, he'd take them off, folding them up and setting them aside. He'd try to shake her awake and only get a sleepy, annoyed grunt in response. Finally, he'd half-lift her from the chair and she'd make a plaintive sound against being roused from her slumber.

"Come on. Get in bed, if you're going to sleep," he'd say, and she'd finally heave a sigh and give in, blinking up at him drowsily, one hand wrapping around his waist, the other rising to push her hair out of her face. The low-burning candles would turn her hair the color of honey and she'd lean her face into his chest and yawn lustily and he'd smile a little to himself, hugging her closer, feeling that familiar swell of love and protection.

She needed him, and he was here. Listening to Fenrir Greyback spewing crap, trying to tamp down his rage at the man himself and the idiots around him, who were lapping this shit up. And trying even harder to tamp down on his rage at the fact that they were werewolves at all, much less werewolves who had been systematically stripped of their humanity in every way imaginable just short of the point where they were forced to line up in front of the Ministry to get tags staples to their ears like animals in the wild...

Remus shook himself a little bit and took a bite of his stew. He needed to keep some perspective, though it was difficult. He understood why they all yelled, why they didn't ask questions, why they stayed, why they didn't try to leave. What did the world have to offer the likes of them?

Their resistance group hadn't grown much, suffice it to say.

Greyback finished up and Remus stood with the rest of his kind to applaud, his eyes following the man's departure out the side door of the cafeteria, his mind on his mission. He needed to follow, to see where Greyback went. "Get the others," he said to Nasser out of the side of his mouth. "I'll meet you in a few minutes."

Without seeing the other man's nod, Remus wove his way through the crowd and out the back door. Stealing around the side of the building, he watched Greyback walk into the woods. Glancing around to make sure they others were all still inside, he dashed across the clearing after the man, for once thankful for the gift of dark creature speed.

Stepping into the forest, he initially thought he'd lost his erstwhile nemesis, but then he spotted Greyback in the woods, about fifteen yards in front of him. Occasionally, being an ex-Marauder paid off, in that Remus was quite good at moving through forests without making a sound, usually in even worse conditions than this. How many times had they snuck out of the castle and prowled around the Forbidden Forest in search of quadripeds?

And - not finding any - instead thrown pinecones at centaurs and then run like hell?

Smiling a bit to himself, Remus wove through the trees, keeping Greyback within sight, always aware of a nearby hiding place. Unfortunately, hiding places had been a lot easier to come by when he'd been sixteen. Being thin for thirty-eight still meant that a person could no longer be entirely certain that the trunk of a pine tree could provide cover, no matter how you arranged yourself. So when Greyback suddenly stopped and turned around to make sure he was alone, Remus dropped to the ground as silently as he could.

Which meant he couldn't see Greyback. When he risked a glance, the man was gone.

Swearing mightily, Remus walked over to where he'd last seen the old werewolf. He wasn't about to risk pulling on branches to try to follow; landing in Voldemort's clutches was not a particularly good move to make. He pulled out his wand, then hesitated. There were ways to booby-trap a passageway so that nasty things happened to anyone who tried to locate it. And while he might know quite a few tricks, he didn't know them all.

The same problem might arise with a beacon charm, too. Remus glanced around him, trying to find a way to distinguish this tree from its neighbors, but though his internal compass allowed him to approximate his distance from the compound, the tree itself was unremarkable.

He sniffed around for clues, but the tree held no magic that set it apart from any other tree, aside from Greyback's smell, which would diminish to nothing in a few hours. They'd need to find this tree again, and Remus sought about for a way to make sure.

A method that would provide good cover, if nothing else. A rather obvious one occurred to him. It wasn't the most sophisticated, but Remus figured it was as good as any, and would last for several days, at least to his nose. Sighing, he moved to the tree directly to the right of the one Greyback had used, unzipped his trousers and pissed all over it.

Crude, but it would work. Remus mentally added it to the growing list of things he'd done in the past few months that nobody else ever needed to hear about. Especially his wife. "And then I bravely pissed on a tree..." didn't show up in many war stories.

Finishing up, he made his way back through the forest, eventually finding the group clustered just out of sight of the barracks along a small, winding creek. They never met in the same place twice, and swapped out people who attended the meeting.

The rest of the werewolves didn't seem to notice their absences, but you never knew.

"I might have something for us," Remus said, wondering if he wasn't doing more harm than good by building their hopes up. For all he knew, he'd found nothing, and Greyback had merely been walking through the forest for a while before using a portkey.

"You followed Greyback?" Nasser asked, who hopefully would've been the only one to notice. By not pairing up, the whole flying under the radar strategy had been pretty much shot to hell. Remus knew that people were still suspicious of him.

"Yes. He left by the forest. I wasn't able to see how, but I marked the location. We should probably look into it, but we'll have to be careful. If it's a passageway, Merlin knows what kind of protections have been put on it. Anybody a Cursebreaker here?"

It wasn't really a serious question. In fact, Remus was all set to propose a brainstorming session when a young Laotian woman named Hathavan stepped forward.

"Curse breaker?" she asked...sort of. It was quite obvious that she spoke little English.

She waved her wand for a translation charm. They all hesitated to speak, because the volume of translation charms were difficult to control and the group's secrecy was hard enough to protect as it was. Finally, Remus stepped forward and tried to speak quietly.

"You're a Cursebreaker?" Echoes of his voice in Laotian made everybody wince.

The woman cringed a bit at the noise, but nodded. She whispered back, the translation of her words echoing harshly through the woods, but one stood out for Remus: "Xem."

Xem was the Southeast-Asian version of Gringotts. Right in front of him was a Laotian Bill Weasley. A Cursebreaker who unfortunately didn't speak English.

Risking a bit more, Remus asked another question. "Can you get us in? Are you familiar with dark curses and protections of secret passageways?"

Wincing at the echoing translation, Hathavan nodded, then waved her hands around to - he hoped - illustrate that she dealt with this sort of thing all the time.

Remus waved off the spell and put his hands on her shoulders, staring her down. Can you really do this? he asked with his face, as much as he could.

I think so, her expression said, before turning a bit wry. Do you have a better idea?

A resigned shake of his head provided her the answer to that question.

*******

Ginny set her Transfiguration textbook down on her crossed legs and rubbed her temples in a futile attempt to alleviate the pounding in her head. It never seemed to completely go away anymore, and she was more or less dragging herself towards Easter Holidays.

"Headache again?" Draco asked, his voice far too casual for the heavy, watchful gaze that accompanied it.

Ginny gave up on trying to make her headache go away, picking up her textbook. "I'm fine," she said shortly. The last thing she needed was Draco mothering her.

During naked homework sessions, their main source of distraction was usually the other person, and the distraction was purely sexual in nature. Ginny was perfectly fine with that. She didn't mind the fact that though Draco picked up his book, he didn't even pretend to read it, instead choosing to stare at her. She did mind the fact he wasn't staring at the parts of her he generally did before books were thrown aside and sex commenced. She minded even more that he wasn't bothering to hide it.

Slamming her book shut, Ginny set it down and glared at him. "What?"

Draco looked unperturbed. "Have they gotten worse?"

"I told you. I'm fine," she grumbled, picking her book back up. Draco kept staring. Ginny ignored him. She was an expert at ignoring people; it astonished her sometimes, the numerous ways in which growing up with Fred and George shaped the behavior of their siblings on a daily basis. Ginny couldn't remember the last time she'd sat down on a toilet without first giving it a thorough inspection. Well, actually she could - vividly - which was why thorough inspections had become a necessary in the first place.

"Um...Red?"

Draco was done staring, apparently. "Yes?" she asked without looking up.

"Has Granger talked to you at all about the headaches?"

Ginny ground her teeth together. "Why are you so bloody interested in my headaches?"

"So...no, then."

"Draco," she sighed, tossing the book away. "Oh, sod it. Let's just have sex, okay?"

His lips twitched with amusement. "Not going to use the 'I have a headache' excuse?"

Oh, for the love of Merlin. "Lay off, will you? I've already got a Mum, and she's rather good at the motherly business of fussing and harping. She doesn't need an assistant."

"Well, she can't be that good at her job," he said, "or you wouldn't be here with me."

"Believe me," she said dryly, "my relationship with you is entirely my own fault."

"I cherish and worship you," Draco said in mournful tones, gray eyes wide and wounded, "and this is what I get for my efforts. Well, fine then. I'll treat you like shit from now on. Have you put on weight? Your ass looks bigger than usual. I sincerely hope you're just premenstrual and retaining water, because while I object to having a fat girlfriend, I absolutely refuse to stomach pink-haired offspring."

Ginny sent him a quelling look. "Do you honestly think that after all this time, I haven't figured out when you're using one your little diversionary tactics?"

His face tightened, all humor suddenly gone from it. It was a sober expression, one she'd seen more than once in the past few months. It was the stress of the war, Ginny had figured. They were all feeling it. But now she wondered if that was really the case. They'd both been more distant this year. Not disturbingly so - they were both busier, more distracted. It was to be expected, or so she'd thought. He sat up, crossing his legs, matching her position. "I just want to know if they're getting worse."

"Why did you think Hermione would have talked to me about them?"

Draco's eyes cut to her. After a great deal of administrative hectoring, he'd cut his hair, but just enough to squeak by. A piece slid in front of his eyes, caught in his eyelashes, twitching when he blinked. She reached up automatically to brush it out of the way. He caught her hand, pressing it between his own, lowering his gaze and playing with her fingers. "All this time, and it never bloody occurred to you to talk to somebody about them?" he asked, his tone accusatory, in contrast to his gentle movements.

Ginny inhaled sharply as his fingertips brushed against the sensitive skin at the inside of her wrist. Without even meaning to, Draco could make holding hands into foreplay.

It was nice, and she had...seriously lost track of the discussion. Erm," she said, stalling.

"How unsurprising," he said flatly. "Is that a Gryffindor thing, or just a you thing?"

Should she admit she hadn't really been listening, or try and fake it? "Erm." Or there was that route...

Draco made a face at their joined hands. "You know how it pisses you off when people keep information from you?"

It was more the way he said the words than the words themselves that snapped her to attention. She knew that falsely casual tone all too well. "Yes," she said warningly, a bit of the Weasley ire beginning to gather in her chest.

"Well, I expect you're about to get pissed off," he said, wincing a little. "Especially after what I learned last night."

Pissed off and then some. Because he wouldn't hold back something stupid and meaningless from her. He'd hold back something big and important, because she couldn't handle it, of course. Merlin, when did it fucking end?

Actually, she wasn't even pissed off about that, but about the fact that it was coming from Draco. She was well used to her family shushing up important discussions when she walked into the room and dragging love way too far into the realm of the overprotective. They were too close to the situation to see how pointless it was, that they were just as often acting out of their own sense of powerlessness. They couldn't protect her from Voldemort, not really. They hadn't managed it yet, and leaving her in the dark just left her all that much more unprotected. She'd thought that Draco understood that.

Apparently she'd been wrong.

"Why?" Ginny asked, pulling her hand back.

Draco seemed taken aback by the question. "What?"

"I'll get to the 'what' in a minute," she bit out. "First, I'd like to know the 'why.' As in: whatever it is, why did you keep it from me?"

He seemed taken even more aback by that question. "I...fuck. Red, listen..."

Draco was off-balance. Ginny had every intention of keeping him that way. Springing forward, she pinned him to the bed and straddled his stomach, leaning down until their noses brushed. "Because I might get upset?" she asked coolly. "Merlin forbid."

His hands came up automatically, his fingers stroking her lower back. "That's not it."

"Then why?" she bit out, her hands tightening, her nails digging into his upper arms.

Silver eyes met hers, still thrown off, not quite back up to his usual standards. "I didn't know all the facts, okay?"

"Until when?"

"Do you want me to tell you or not?" he snarled, pushing her off of him.

Ginny rolled from the bed and stood up, crossing her arms. "Yes, I do. But first, I want you to tell me why you kept it from me in the first place."

He sat up on the edge of the bed, his head dropping, his shoulders slumping, his fingers gripping the edge of the mattress. "Because I'm a fucking idiot. Satisfied?"

Closer to the truth, but not the whole truth, not yet. If Ginny had learned one thing in the past year, it was that Draco Malfoy required an inordinate amount of patience. "No."

"I didn't want it to be true. I thought it might not be," he mumbled. "And I didn't want you throwing a big tantrum over mere suspicion, so I didn't tell you. How's that?"

Her jaw dropped. Did he really think she wasn't clever enough to figure out what was going on? "This is about the headaches," she clarified.

Draco nodded.

"And the nightmares."

Another nod.

"Classic symptoms of a strong memory charm, in other words," she said dryly.

Ginny would have been gratified by the astonished look on his face if she hadn't been so caught up in the fact that everybody around her seemed convinced that she couldn't find her own ass in the dark with wandlight and a map.

"It's funny," Ginny said coolly. "There's this place in Hogwarts called the library, where one can find books. You'll be surprised to learn that there's also this class called Charms in which we learn about the dangers of memory modification..."

"You figured it out?" he asked, standing, eyes blazing.

"Of course I did," she scoffed. "I don't remember Little Hangleton, and I suddenly start having headaches and nightmares? It doesn't take a genius. I'll admit I didn't realize what was going on until the incident with the Instant Recall potion, but it must be a rather strong memory charm to be doing all of this, I imagine."

Draco's gaze hardened to a glare. "And so you decided not to say anything," he stated. "Bloody smart of you, that was."

"I figured everyone already knew!" she cried. "Not you, but Dumbledore and the Order, at least. I assumed they just didn't want to tell me about it, because it would go away once Voldemort was dead. That's how memory charms work."

Something crossed his face, an expression she couldn't quite identify. "It's not a memory charm," he said in a soft, emotionless voice.

Ginny tensed slightly, wondering somewhere in the back of her mind if this was another convenient lie. "Of course it is. What else could it be?"

"It's not. It's..." he swore under his breath and stepped away. "Sit down," he said tiredly. "This is going to take a while."

*******

NOTES: So there it is, at long last. Sorry it took so long. I imagine you can see why.