Without Wand or Wire

When Draco awoke, he found himself in his vast canopy bed. His skin and hair had been washed, his hair had been cut (probably to get out the worst of the tangles), and someone had put him in his pajamas. He didn't wonder who had done it; while he hadn't needed their assistance in such a fashion in quite some time, the house elves had cared for him in such a capacity before, in his youth, and a few times after, when he was ill.

He turned on his side and glanced at the ornate clock on the bedside table. It was 2:30. In the morning? He rose stiffly from the bed and made his way over to the window, peeking out the curtain. He winced at the daylight. Afternoon, then.

His turned at the sound of his door creaking open, and spotted Peaky making a tentative entrance. She smiled hopefully when she saw Draco at the window.

"Does ... does master need anything?" she asked, wringing her hands.

Just "master" ... not "young master", Draco noted. Well, now that his father was gone. ... He banished the thought, swallowing hard as he turned his attention back to the window. "No, Peaky," he finally told her. He might have been harsher with the house-elf for intruding any other day, but he didn't seem to have any strength left to be angry right now.

Peaky was reluctant to leave, though. She had been Draco's nanny, after a fashion, when he was a child, and had never lost her attachment to him, no matter how cruel he had grown. "Miss Pansy is telling Peaky she would be coming by this evening, to be checking on master, " she offered, hoping that would cheer him up.

Draco jerked as if struck, staring at Peaky now with an unpleasantly shocked expression. He turned slowly back to the window, gripping the curtains tightly with a shaking hand. So he hadn't dreamt it. Pansy had come to see him. Why? Did she really care for him? Or had she seen him as he'd always seen her, a means to an end. A trophy, the best man with the best girl? His affection for her had been the same he'd felt for his racing broom -- a matter of pride with a possession. She was every bit the conniver, the status-seeker that he was. And now she had seen him at his most vulnerable. What would she do now? How might she decide to use his moment of weakness to her advantage?

Had he still been covered in his mother's blood when Pansy had found him, or with the mud of Narcissa's grave? Had she seen the Dark Mark? Was she loyal to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named? He couldn't decide if he wanted her to be or not. If she was, then he had to be wary of her; he certainly was not loyal to the Dark Lord himself, Dark Mark or no. And if she wasn't a Death Eater, did her allegiance lie with the dark wizard's enemies? Would she reveal him, not knowing how he intended to betray his new master?

He struggled to remember what he'd said to Pansy, and what she'd said in return.

"If nothing can grow here, maybe it's time to go where something can."

Had she really said that? Or had he dreamt it?

He could remember now, the warmth of her arms around him, and felt a swell of an unfamiliar emotion. It was an ache, but not an unpleasant one, tinged with sadness, but also something else. Draco, who had never known true, unconditional love in his life, could not recongise the stirrings of such a genuine emotion in his own heart, could not put a name to it. But he could still feel it.

She hadn't been playing any sort of game when she had comforted him, he was sure of it. Wasn't trying to ingratiate herself to him, or lure him into anything. She had simply offered solace to a man in pain. And he thought, for the first time, he might have seen the real Pansy. Not the mask that she and everyone in Slytherin wore. Not the role that she played in the great game the wizarding nobility referred to as "high society."

So this was what if felt like to feel gratitude. In his life of opulence, with everything handed to him just by asking for it, he'd never really learned not to take anything for granted.

He knew suddenly, and with great certainty, that he wanted, no, needed Pansy at his side. Needed to know whose side she was on, and how she felt about him. Because while he had already come to the conclusion that he would never willingly serve the Dark Lord, he had not seen any way out of servitude but the path his mother had chosen: death. But now, in light of Pansy's compassion towards him that morning, he was starting to see a ray of hope.

"Peaky?" he turned back to the house-elf.

"Yes master?" Her voice held the unmistakable note of an eagerness to please.

He flinched, struck unpleasantly by a similarity in the sound in Peaky's tone to what his own voice had sounded like when he'd addressed his father, once upon a not-so-long-ago time. It sickened him to remember how he'd sought his father's praise and affection, how he'd trembled in fear at his father's ire. Just like the house elves cowered before Draco himself, and did everything in their power to please him.

It was the first time since his infancy that he'd ever looked at a house-elf as a living, breathing being with feelings. He'd taken them for granted too, never considering why they were there, how they had become servants, or what they did when they weren't "living to serve." If he had been a Muggle, he might have likened the realisation to waking up to find your furniture and appliances could suddenly speak and feel. He felt that strange stirring again, but a little different than when he thought of Pansy: it was the memory of affections he had once felt for the elf when he was but a babe, and hadn't yet learned to see the world through a screen weaved of derision and ego.

Well, if he was determined not to walk down his father's path, this was as good a place as any to start.

Draco stepped over to his dresser and pulled open the top drawer. He took out a balled pair of socks and held it out to Peaky. "Here."

Peaky looked at the sock ball as if it were a snake, fell to her knees, and began to cry. "Please, master, no! Do not be dismissing Peaky! Peaky is a good elf! Peaky is doing anything for master!"

Draco looked at the sock ball and then back at Peaky, completely confused. Hadn't Granger been going on and on all this time about how house elves should be free? Isn't that what they wanted? At that moment, all Draco knew for certain was that he just wanted the crying to stop. He quelled his urge to yell at the creature to be silent, though; that was too much like what his father would have done.

He knelt beside the elf and awkwardly patted her on the back., "Er, all right Peaky, ah, you can stay, if that's what you really want."

Peaky gave Draco a teary smile and nodded. Then she titled her head, thoughtfully. "Master is different today. He is ..." her eyes widened with shock, and she ran to the door and started slamming it on her hand. "Bad Peaky, bad!!"

Alarmed at the sight, now that he could see the elf was more than just a quirky little creature, he rushed over to stop her. "Peaky, no!" He was shocked at her strength; despite leaning his weight into the hand he laid on the door, she managed to keep slamming it anyway. "Peaky, I order you to stop!"

She obeyed instantly, causing him to stumble out into the hall, now that she wasn't holding the door. He landed solidly on his shoulder, the wind knocked out of him. He turned over on his back, dazed for a moment. Peaky rushed to his side in alarm, tugging at him anxiously. To her astonishment, Draco began to laugh.

Still grinning, he pulled himself up into a sitting position with her help. Had he ever laughed like that before? Not snidely or at someone else's misfortune, but at himself? And not at some joke he'd made at someone else's expense, but at his own clumsiness? It felt strange to do so. It felt ... good. Honest. Real.

"Master is all right?" Peaky asked tentatively.

He smiled a kind of smile his face was unfamiliar with: a gentle, kind one. It turned a bit rueful as he realised how warily Peaky returned his gaze. Clearly she thought he'd suffered a blow to the head. "I'm fine, Peaky. For the first time in my life, maybe."

Her own smile was a but nervous at first, but became encouraging.

"Now Peaky, I want you to tell me something, and I don't want you to try hurting yourself when you answer. All right?"

The smile fell, and she looked contritely at the floor.

"What had you been about to say, before you started punishing yourself?"

She looked about the room, holding her hands clasped tightly before her, as she struggled with what her master had commanded, and how she had been programmed to behave. Finally, her desire to please him, which came as much from the desire of her own heart as any house elf imperative, won out over the need to punish herself for speaking ill, directly or implied, of her family.

"Peaky was ... going to say ... that master seems to have ... grown up, now."

Draco was surprised to find that the words of a being he had, until just moments ago, seen as little more than a lowly, dirty servant-creature, could give him a surge of pride to far outdo any praise his father had ever given him.

* * *

"--and for centuries, a rumor persisted that the boys had actually been allowed to live, under false identities. But a few years ago, they found the skeletons of two children in a chest under a staircase on the south side of the White Tower."

"Bloody hell Â…" Ron breathed. Hermione had just been telling them, as they stood under its arch, about two of the deaths that had helped to give the Bloody Tower its name: two young princes had been held prisoner there, presumably for their own safety, and "disappeared", thought to have been smothered in their sleep by their own uncle, or at least on his command. Ron could scarcely believe the tale at first, until he thought of You-Know-Who, and realised that the dark wizard would very likely do something like that -- or worse -- before he was finally stopped. "You know, Hermione, the more you tell me about Muggle history, the more I think it's a good thing there aren't more wizards in the world."

She glanced at him in astonishment. "Really? Why?"

"Well, think of all the people that were killed here, either by murder or execution! If their killers had been as powerful as You-Know-Who Â…" He shuddered.

Hermione thought of Hitler, of all the people that had been tortured and killed in the concentration camps, their bodies bulldozed into pits as if they were nothing more than loose dirt. Then she thought of what Hitler would have been like with Voldemort's power. She couldn't help but give a shudder herself, and prayed that Voldemort would never see his own power become that widespread.

Petunia had looked decidedly paler at the suggestion as well, Hermione noted. It still seemed odd to think of the woman as knowing about Voldemort, or indeed anything at all about their world. Or to think that she would voluntarily spend a day with her nephew! She desperately wanted to ask Harry about it, but there really wasn't a polite way to do that while the woman was with them.

And Harry seemed rather unresponsive anyway. She imagined it was because he didn't want to say anything that would set Petunia off, but, his blank stare gave Hermione the willies, as did his pale and gaunt features.

Ron seemed to have noticed it too. When both Petunia and Harry's back was turned, he whispered in her ear, "Do you think she's brainwashed him or something?"

Momentarily knocked for a loop by the warmth of his breath on her neck and the brush of his lips on her ear, all she could manage in reply was, "Good question. Â…"

They left the Bloody Tower and headed toward the Chapel of St. Peter Ad Vincula, Hermione pointing things out as they went. She and Ron seemed to drop back a bit from Harry and his aunt.

"Thanks for showing me all this stuff, Hermione," Ron said as they neared the Tudor-style cathedral.

She smiled, shyly. "Well, I've learned so much about wizarding history at Hogwarts, I thought I could use a good refresher dose of Muggle history as well. I usually spend a few days each summer sightseeing like this -- I'm glad you could come with me this time, though. I love my parents, but they aren't so interested in this sort of thing. It gets sort of lonely, wandering around by myself."

"To be honest, I wouldn't have thought I would enjoy being here so much myself - you know I'm not all that fond of history, wizarding or otherwise. But you've made it really interesting!"

She blushed a shade of red that would do a Weasley proud. "Thanks. Even if you don't really mean it."

"Why wouldn't I mean it?" he asked, stopping in his tracks and scowling a little in his befuddlement.

She stopped and faced him, but couldn't look him in the eye. "Well Â… you have always complained whenever I go on about something I've read in Hogwarts: a History."

He laughed, looking at the ground, slightly embarrassed himself. "Yeah, well Â… a fellow can grow up, can't he? "

She smiled thoughtfully.

"And anyway," he went on, "I may not know it well, but I grew up with wizarding history. Hearing about the Muggle history is sort of like Â… like hearing about a whole new world! Your world. I figure if I knew more about it Â…" he shrugged awkwardly. Dear god, I sound just like Dad! he realized with no little amount of horror.

Hermione's breath caught fast. You'd know more about me? Is that what you were going to say?

A child started screaming, startling them both. They watched as the boy's mother kept lifting him up by the arm, trying to get him to stand up, but every time she set him down again, he would sink to his knees. She began shaking the child's arm, tossing him about, practically snarling at him. It was rather like a train wreck; neither teen could seem to pry their eyes off the scene.

"Oh, honestly!" Hermione muttered, even as she was a little relieved at the intrusion.

Ron took the interruption in good humor, glad her anger was directed elsewhere. "Look, Harry and his aunt are way ahead of us!" And he started walking towards the chapel again.

Harry had hurried ahead on purpose. His reason was twofold. The first, and the only reason he acknowledged, was to give the two would-be lovebirds some time alone. He had a feeling they had spent the summer like this, sightseeing together, and if they didn't see what was right in front of their noses soon, something would need to be done; the least he could do was stay out of their way while they tried to sort it all out. The second reason, the one he shrugged off, sort of tied in to the first: jealousy. Oh, not towards Ron over Hermione, or even towards Hermione over Ron, but rather that they had been able to spend the entire summer together, and he hadn't been able to be with either of them.

He wouldn't let himself brood on the times the three of them might have had together, seeing London, though. He firmly told himself that they were better off without him for a few months. Not only had his virtual exile allowed them to get closer, but it had kept them safer. In fact, if he cared about them at all, he would continue to maintain his distance. He needed to banish any sense of jealousy, or loneliness, or fondness he felt towards them, or anyone else. His hand slipped into his opposite sleeve, brushing against the lines and bumps of the many scars he'd given himself as reminders. Physical pain to drown out emotional feeling. While "Professor" Moody had been false, one of the codes he'd had maintained were truly worth heeding: Constant vigilance!

He walked into the chapel without a single glance backwards for his friends. But that didn't mean he had really been watching where he was going, either; he passed right through one of a pair of spectral figures that were exiting the building. He was so cold inside these days, he took no notice of the typical chill one got in the presence of the disincarnate.

Oddly enough, it was the spirit that gave a shudder. "I thought they stopped doing torture ages ago. ..." she remarked to her companion, glancing back at Harry as they floated onward, into the yard, "but if I didn't know better, I'd swear that boy had seen more than his share of it. ..." Ghosts might not be able to feel things physically, like poltergeists, but the emotional anguish of other's physical pain was somehow more palpable to them than it was to the living, as if they were touching the ghostly echoes of torment.

"Yeah, bit rude of him to walk through you like that, though," her companion sniffed.

"Oh, when are you going to stop getting so bent out of shape over that?" the first spirit chuckled. "I mean, honestly, you've been dead how many centuries now? I'd think you'd be used to Muggles walking right through us! It's not their fault we're invisible to them!"

"Well, she can see us!"

The second ghost pointed to a girl standing before them, mouth agape. The young lady knelt before them, much to the consternation of her male companion.

"Hermione, what the bloody hell are you doing?!" he hissed, and tried to yank her up by the arm. "There are Muggles watching, they'll think you've gone crackers!" So the boy was a wizard too.

"Watch your language, Ron!" Hermione snapped, refusing to stand. She bowed her head as the ghosts came to float before them. "Your Majesties," she murmured.

The ghosts shared a smile. "Your young fellow is right, my dear, there's no need to draw attention to yourself," the first spirit said kindly. "My cousin and I stopped being queens when we each were tried and executed for treason to our king!"

Hermione flinched, and stood up, her head still bowed. The living never really could tolerate the disincarnate speaking so offhandedly about their own deaths -- especially when they had died brutally.

"Tell me, are you Hogwarts students?" asked the second ghost, with a grin.

"Yeah!" Ron said, clearly proud to be a student there.

"Ooooh, perhaps he knows Sir Nicholas!" she squealed to her cousin. "Anne here rather fancies him, you know, and we haven't seen him since his 500th death-day celebration!" she informed the young pair.

"Catherine!" Anne look scandalized; if Ron didn't know better, he'd say the ghost was blushing. But of course she was still white as a sheet.

[Catherine, Anne, Ron, and Hermione.]

"Yeah, we know Sir Nicholas," Ron told them, looking very pleased. "He's the ghost for our House, Gryffindor."

"Oh, you're Gryffindors! How delightful! I was a Gryffindors as well! Sir Nicholas was always so nice, it's no wonder Anne --"

"Catherine!" Anne hissed through her teeth. "Anyway, I attended Beauxbatons, myself -- I didn't meet Sir Nicholas until after I died."

Hermione spoke up. "You both went to magic schools?" she asked, puzzled. "But the Muggle history books say that you, Lady Anne, spent your formative years in the courts, in service to Mary Tudor, Queen Claude, and Katharine of Aragon! And that you, Lady Catherine, were raised at Norfolk by you grandmother--"

"--because her father didn't want to have to deal with the expense of raising her," Anne finished. "A convenient excuse, isn't it? Having your daughter 'sent away' somewhere of little consequence, while she attends magic school? Don't believe everything a Muggle book says, my dear. Wizards have to fudge things now and again. I mean, we couldn't just come out and say we went to schools for wizards and witches, now could we? Especially not back then!"

Catherine nodded sagely. "Yeah, I dare say that if our dear husband hadn't had us cleanly beheaded, we might have had a far worse fate at the hands of Inquisitors or something."

"Your husbands had you beheaded?" Ron goggled.

"Only one husband," Catherine corrected. "She married him first, he had her executed; later I married him, and he did the same to me."

"Yes, my cousin here was never very bright." Anne narrowed her eyes at Catherine. "Although I still wonder --"

"Oh you're not going to start that again, are you?" Catherine faced Anne, hands on hips. "I'm telling you, I didn't have anything to do with your getting executed! I was only fifteen when you died, for crying out loud, and I didn't even meet Henry until about four years later!"

"So you say, but you still could have plotted it all, hoping to get into his graces later! Or else you were just incredibly stupid for marrying the man after what he'd done to me,!" Anne spat.

"Well, I'd thought you'd had a good idea, I just assumed you'd messed up a love potion or something!"

"I'm telling you, I didn't use one! And I've always been better at Potions than you, anyway, so if you thought I had used one on Henry and failed, what made you think you could do it?"

"What makes you so sure you're better than me at potions?! We didn't go to school together! I'm not even sure we ever even met when we were alive!!"

"Ladies, ladies! You'll wake up Fawkes!" protested a third ghost, a man this time, who was floating towards them in a hurry.

"Fawkes?" Ron shot the newcomer a puzzled look. "Dumbledore's phoenix? Is Dumbledore here?"

"Not that Fawkes," Hermione explained offhandedly while she took in the newcomer. "He's talking about Guy Fawkes, who was also executed here. And I bet this is Sir Walter Raleigh!"

"Anne started it, Walter!" Catherine protested.

"Thought so," Hermione whispered, looking smug.

Raleigh sighed. "Honestly, haven't you two argued this to death? No pun intended," he added to Ron and Hermione with a wink. "And really, isn't being dead really better than being married to that tub of lard?"

Anne shrugged, her eyes downcast. "I suppose." She glanced at Catherine and gave her a small, conspiratorial grin. "He was rather disgusting."

Catherine tittered. "God, the way he used to fart! I had to carry a handkerchief scented with lavender just so I could breathe!"

"Oh! That was a brilliant idea! Wish I'd thought of it! ..."

The cousins linked arms and started to float away, Sir Raleigh drifting alongside them. They waved farewell to the young couple.

Anne stopped a moment and turned back to the pair. "Oh, tell Sir Nicholas that I -- I mean, we should be happy to have him over for tea sometime! Not all the members of the Headless Hunt are so stuck-up as Sir Patrick!" And she floated on.

"So ... that was ..." Ron seemed to be struggling with something, "Anne Boleyn and Catherine ... Howard, right? Two of Henry the ... Eighth's wives?"

Hermione nodded, pleasantly surprised. Apparently Ron was paying attention.

"Oh ... there you are," Harry said as he and Petunia came back out of the chapel, looking almost disappointed to run into them again. "Didn't want to see the inside?" he asked as his eyes fell on their own linked arms.

Hermione blushed as they pulled apart. When had that happened?

"Nah, things were a bit more interesting out here," Ron told him.

Harry raised his brows in the biggest show of expression they -- or Petunia -- had seen from him all day. Realising how his last statement must have sounded, Ron quickly told Harry, in low tones so as not to draw attention from passing Muggles, about the ghosts they'd met.

Petunia listened in, torn between fascination and feeling rather unsettled. There were ghosts floating about? There had been wizarding folk among the monarchy? It seemed magic was a far more ordinary occurrence than she'd ever realised. She felt all the more foolish for her behavior toward Lily and Harry, and resolved to learn all she could.

A bark of laughter from her nephew made her smile. She vowed to do whatever she could to keep him from retreating into himself again. She hadn't found him only to lose him now. ...

* * *

As Ginny sat on her bed, absently thumbing through the worn pages of her hand-me-down copy of The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 5, she half-listened to the Muggle radio, which she'd filched from the kitchen and set on her windowsill. Or rather, she listened until a certain B*Witched song started playing. Â…

Oh Mr. Postman
Give me a sign (gotta give a sign)
Tell me you've a letter
To make me feel fine
Oh, don't you know
I am waiting here for you
Tell me it will be here tonight

She flicked her wand at the wireless in disgust, shutting it off, and knocking it over in the process. If her mother had been in the room, she'd have had kittens -- although, with six older brothers, one should think it was perfectly understandable and forgivable for Ginny to have turned out a little rough-and-tumble.

Except that this time she'd almost hit Hedwig in the process of venting her frustration.

Hedwig wasn't angry, though; quite the opposite. She landed on the bed next to Ginny, and started chewing on the girl's pant-leg affectionately. Ginny, for her part, was a bit crestfallen. There was no sign of a letter from Harry.

Then her stomach did a flip-flop.

"Hedwig! Is Harry all right?!"

Hedwig let out what seemed a sad little hoot, but didn't appear distressed. Oddly, Ginny felt she knew exactly what the owl meant.

"Well, if he's feeling so low, why doesn't he write to us? And more than this 'I'm fine, how are you?' bullocks!"

Hedwig nipped Ginny's fingers fondly. She trilled, sounding placating.

Ginny sighed. "All right, all right, twist my arm already!" She stood up and got a bit of parchment, and inkwell, and a quill out of a drawer, then resettled herself at the table. Hedwig watched her expectantly.

Ginny scowled at the bit of parchment in front of her. What should she say? She wanted to yell at Harry, send him a Howler for not writing her and barely writing his best friends. But after Sirius Â… well, she couldn't blame him for not wanting to talk. The problem was that not talking was probably the worst thing he could do now, though. So how to get him to open up without getting scared off? Or seeming too eager?

Ginny Weasley! Are you a Gryffindor or not?! Taking a deep breath in an effort to bolster her resolve, she dipped her quill in the inkwell and began to write.

* * *

As they walked through the White Tower, a rustle of wings caught Hermione's attention. There was a raven, perched atop a display case! "Well, hello there!" She said with a bit of a laugh. "And how did you get in here?"

"Well, he probably just flew in, didn't he?" Ron offered, only mildly interested.

Petunia had already started to go down the stairs, and Harry moved to follow, apparently even less interested than Ron in the question of ravenly habits.

"But the ravens of the Tower have their wings clipped!" she pointed out. "They can't fly about so easily, and I would think it would be even harder indoors!"

Ron sighed. "Look, 'Mione, we've still got a lot to see, and Harry and his aunt are already going. Now do you want to play Twenty Questions with a bird-brain, or do you want to get more sight-seeing in?" He thought about what he'd said for a moment. "Never mind, don't answer that." And he turned to the stairwell.

Reluctantly, Hermione followed, stealing a glance back at the majestic bird before she made her way down the stairs.

Hermione just missed seeing Hedwig swoop in, letter in beak, and confront her fellow avian, as well as the amazing thing that the raven did in response.

* * *

Albus Dumbledore didn't look up from his work when Severus Snape entered his office, nor did he waste time on pleasantries as he informed the former Potions Master of what his other double-agent had reported just moments ago.

"Draco has been given the Dark Mark." Dumbledore couldn't see Snape's reaction, but he'd heard the sharp intake of breath, and the new tension in the man was palpable enough to feel. "Sit down, Severus," Albus ordered gently, as his quill continued to scratch away. "We knew this would happen, but it will relieve you to know that it seems very likely that the Mark was given by force. Draco, I'm afraid, is in a very fragile state right now; not only has he lost his father, but his mother has apparently taken her own life."

Snape, who'd slouched in his chair and put a hand to his brow, bolted upright in alarm. He'd harbored little affection for Narcissa these days, but they had once been good friends, just as he and Lucius had been. Nonetheless, it surprised him how much the news of her death pained him, even if at least some of that grief was for Draco.

"Go to your godson, Severus. With both his parents gone, you are his legal guardian; whether he likes it or not, he's coming to live here, at Hogwarts." Dumbledore did a quick-drying spell over the parchment, rolled and sealed it, and handed it to his new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. "In case anyone at the Ministry gives you trouble about it, this document grants Draco asylum here, for his own safety. Now that his father has been murdered by Voldemort after being revealed as a Death Eater, I think it's safe to say Draco's life is in danger on all fronts. I trust you have the documents that prove you are his godfather, and therefore in charge of his well-being?"

Snape nodded, his features grim as he stepped over to the fireplace and took a handful of Floo Powder.

* * *

Petunia shook her head and stared in awe, as Hermione rattled off yet another barrage of facts at them. "How do you remember all that, Hermione? I bet you must be at the top of your class!"

"Oh! Well, I don't know for sure. ..." Poor Hermione felt more than a little awkward, not just for the compliment, but for the fact that it was coming from a woman who, until that afternoon, she'd thought pretty poorly of.

Ron laughed. "Probably top of the school, truth be told. She's mad genius, she is!" he told the woman proudly

While Hermione enjoyed the praise, particularly from him, it also increased her feeling of awkwardness. She also envied Ron's apparent ability to take strange new developments in stride; he now acted like he'd never heard Harry speak a coarse word about his aunt.

"So what about you two?" Petunia asked. She sounded embarrassed, and rightfully so -- she'd certainly never cared to enquire about her nephew's grades before.

Hermione couldn't resist the opportunity. "Yes, Harry, you never did tell me what you got on your O.W.L.s!"

"Hermione!" Ron hissed through gritted teeth.

Harry just shrugged. "Dunno."

Ron's irritation was quickly traded for concern, as he shared a look with Hermione and Petunia. "What, you never got your scores?!" he asked.

Harry shrugged again as he walked away.

Ron moved to press the issue, but Hermione stayed him with a hand, shaking her head. Ron nodded and held his tongue. He knew by now that pushing Harry to speak when he didn't want to only made him bottle up more. He glanced at Petunia, and felt a stab of pity; she looked like she was about to cry as she watched her nephew walk away. Then realised that own eyes stung a bit, and a rock seemed to have lodged in his throat.

Something was terribly wrong with one of his best friends, and he had no idea how to help him.

* * *

"I'm glad we had this little talk," a woman with long black tresses was telling Hedwig on the top floor of the White Tower. "Now, we better get back outside before they leave, 'ey?"

The owl hooted an affirmative, then flew out the window.

The woman pocketed both a small looking glass and an envelope bearing the name "Harry Potter" in her voluminous skirts, before she too bid a hasty departure through the window.