When Harry went down for dinner and sat at the Gryffindor table, a dozen hushed whispers halted in his wake. Between the Triwizard Tournament, the Heir of Slytherin business, and Cedric Diggory’s death, he found this almost comforting in its familiarity.It was better than wondering how many points a student garnered for sitting three seats away from famous Harry Potter.

“All right, Harry?” Ron said loudly.

Harry grinned. “Yeah. You?”

“You sure caused a stir today,” Neville said. “Professor Lupin stared after you for a minute, then re-paired everyone... but he looked...”

“Sick, Harry,” Hermione suddenly interjected. “He looked sick.”

Ron rolled his eyes and leaned noncommittally over his food, as though determined to weather out the coming storm.

“As am I,” Hermione continued angrily. “How... how dare you do something like that?!”

“It was only Malfoy,” Ron offered.

“Oh, I see, so that makes it all right, then?” Hermione shot back, whirling on Ron. “Ronald Weasley, you don’t understand anything!”

“Well, I guess I’m not so clever as a Ravenclaw,” Ron mused thoughtfully. “But then, we can’t all be, can we?”

Hermione had gone red in the face. “Maybe I ought to have been in Ravenclaw after all,” she managed, her voice clippedin her fury. “That way, I wouldn’t have to deal with two little boys who always insist on doing whatever pops to mind!” She stood, looking down at them with supreme disdain, and stormed away.

“Mental,” Ron repeated, staring after her. Then he turned his attention back to the table. “What really happened down there, Harry?” he asked in a small voice.

“Malfoy tried to cast the Cruciatus Curse on me,” Harry said.

“That makes sense,” Ron replied, some of the concern fading from his features. “Cruciatus, yeah... and so you had to–”

“No, I didn’t,” Harry replied. “Hermione’s right. I just didn’t think.”

Ron peered at him anxiously. “Don’t listen to her, mate, she just doesn’t understand that Malfoy’s not like her friend... Yolande-what’s-her-name. He’s going to become a Death Eater, he is. And one day he’ll try to murder you, or me, or the both of us.”

Harry blinked at this calm admission. “Yeah... s’pose so,” he returned, disquieted.

“What was it like, casting Imperius?” Neville inquired softly. He was seated just to Ron’s right, Harry realized, and couldn’t help having heard some, if not all, of the conversation.

Harry frowned, noting that the area around him had grown subtly quieter. “Well... er... not very pleasant,” he lied. “Really uncomfortable.”

Neville nodded, looking satisfied with the answer, but Ron kicked him lightly under the table. Harry wondered just how transparent he was when he was lying; he’d fooled Neville, but not Ron... then, it probably didn’t take much to fool Neville... Harry decided he’d have to ask an impartial observer, like Snape, to tell him how well he lied. If he could trust Snape not to lie to him.

“Honestly, Harry,” Neville said. “I thought we might not see you again.”

“I thought I’d be sent to Azkaban,” Harry confirmed.

“Azkaban?” Ron looked horrified, then incredulous. “Naw, mate, we thought you might be expelled, though.”

“Then they’d have to expel Malfoy, too,” Harry mused, “for casting Cruciatus. And they want him here. For that matter, they want me here as well.”

Neville considered this, then kept his peace.

“So what’s your punishment, then?” Ron wondered.

Harry sighed. He wasn’t certain how much he wanted to tell them, but then, they’d all know by tomorrow in any case. “I’m to obey Malfoy,” he mumbled.

“You’re to what?”

“Obey Malfoy,” Harry hissed between his teeth, suddenly all too aware of the sheer numbers listening in on his conversation.

“OBEY Malfoy?!” Ron shrieked, gaining everyone’s attention and making all of Harry’s efforts moot. “Are they mad?!”

“I said I won’t hurt myself or my friends or... well, you get the idea. Said I wouldn’t let him goad me into anything too dangerous, either.”

Ron looked horrified.

“Snape came up with it,” Harry added with a small smile.

Ron shrugged and set to, but when it came time to meander their way up to the Gryffindor Common Room, he pulled Harry aside and made for the Room of Requirement.

Ron obviously wanted peace and quiet, so Harry allowed him to focus rather than demanding answers as they strode once, twice, and three times past the blank wall that sometimes led to the D.A. practice room. On the third try, the door appeared. Harry glanced up and down the hall to be certain that no one was approaching, then opened the door and slipped inside.

He drew up short when he realized where the door now led: it was the Burrow.

A cheerful and homey scrubbed-wood table sat in the middle of the kitchen, the Weasley’s purple-and-gold braided hearth rug sitting by the fire. A kettle that was sitting on the stove was just beginning to whistle, and Crookshanks meandered up to Ron, who scooped the cat up in wonder.

“I think this is the best the room’s ever worked,” he said, patting the cat absently. “Who thought it could bring a real, live cat?”

“Probably it’s the real Crookshanks from the girls’ dorm,” Harry reminded him. Looking more closely at the furnishings revealed that one of the wooden tables lacked the large gouge that had been incurred when some of the Weasley boys made them duel in Harry’s fourth year at Hogwarts: it was not the same table, merely one that looked remarkably similar. The same went for the rug, Harry realized, the design of which was not quite the same as that of the one belonging to Mrs. Weasley. The entire scene had rather obviously been painstakingly re-created, but for all of that, it was not real.

Ron, however, was quite at home, already moving to the kettle and removing two cups from the cupboard.

“Am I in trouble?”

Ron eyed him, looking like he wanted to laugh, but the expression hardened. “That all depends. Are you all right?” he demanded, almost belligerently.

Harry wasn’t sure what that meant. “All right? I mean – yeah, sure, when am I not–”

“Because, besides your sudden fondness for Unforgivables, you haven’t so much as mentioned Sirius.”

“Mentioned him? What should we be talking about?”

Ron looked taken aback rather violently for a moment, but then he continued his bustling through the facsimile kitchen, pouring the hot water into both cups. “Because he’s dead? Because he died in front of you?”

Harry considered this. “Well... yeah, that’s true. But it’s not like talking would bring him back.”

Ron set a cup of steaming liquid in front of him and sat across from Harry. Ron’s dark blue eyes examined him closely. “How practical,” he finally replied, moving to the kitchen cabinet to remove tea bags.

“Look, screaming and crying about it isn’t really going to help anything, is it? It won’t change the fact that he’s dead and gone. Come to think of it, I never really had him in the first place,” Harry mused. “He was in Azkaban; then he was in hiding; now he’s dead. We’ve had maybe ten conversations, me and Sirius. I’m unhappy he’s gone–” and here Harry paused, because ‘unhappy’ didn’t seem quite the right word, somehow; “–but we weren’t close or anything.”

Ron, Harry noted, now looked genuinely disturbed. “All right,” he said quietly. “Moving past Sirius, for now. All this focus on your work.”

“What?”

“Hermione seems to think you’re growing up, as does Mum–”

“You talked to them about this?!”

“- but it’s not like you to obsess over essays and grades,” Ron completed as though Harry had not spoken. “I invited you to stay at the Burrow, and normally you’d jump at the chance–”

“I was busy!”

“With work,” Ron confirmed. “Bill missed you, by the way, asked how you were.”

Harry flushed, ashamed to admit he’d forgotten about Bill and his new wife entirely.

Ron took a sip of tea, looking supremely unconcerned, but Harry could tell Ron knew he’d scored a hit, and was waiting patiently for Harry to recover his equilibrium.

“I’m sorry I missed it. Really,” Harry said genuinely. “Work seemed... seemed important, at the time...”

“And your relatives,” Ron went on. “What about the Dursleys? Every summer I get reams of complaints, and Hermione too, about boredom, and anxiousness concerning Him, and What-Is-The-Order-Up-To, and that you’re ready to murder your aunt and uncle in their beds. This summer? Nothing.”

Harry frowned. “I couldn’t have said nothing about the Dursleys.”

“Oh, well, ‘I’ve finished painting the shed, today’, and ‘Did some more gardening this morning’ are not pressing issues. It sounds like you just soldiered through all they told you to.”

Harry supposed he had, at that. “Didn’t seem worth the trouble of an argument.”

Ron looked paradoxically more worried and more angry all at once. More importantly, he looked at a loss. “So you spent every day doing manual labor: gardening or setting up a new fence or repainting a room – and every night writing out essays and studying, until you dropped off?”

Harry thought that sounded about right, but didn’t reply.

“And this never struck you as a bit out of the ordinary?”

“I doubt that Voldemort is trying to strike at me through paint fumes or Potions essays,” Harry retorted sharply.

“Who said anything about that evil git?” Ron crossed his arms over his chest. “You’re right, it’s most likely nothing to do with him. Have some tea.”

Harry ignored the tea, which would probably be growing cold, soon. “Well – what, then? D’you think I’m cracking up, or something?”

Ron’s expression made it clear that was exactly what he thought. For a full minute, Harry stared, analyzing the fear and anguish in his best friend’s expression. Ron refused to look away, his features set in their most determined lines, his gaze challenging.

“You really believe that, don’t you?” Harry finally murmured.

“No one’d fault you,” Ron replied in what Harry supposed he must think was an understanding tone of voice. “Your parents, then Cedric, then your godfather... you’ve seen a lot. Not to mention what-all happens here every year, the stupid Tournament... look, that all seemed like a way to get you more glory at the time, but someone was only trying to kill you, like always. I don’t know I’d do so well if it was me,” he finished, sincere-sounding but his logic somewhat meandering. “All that Occlumency last term, and your scar killing you all the time... and you, Harry, you’re really very...”

“Very. What,” Harry said, keeping them as separate sentences so that he could keep both words level.

Ron looked afraid, but kept going. “You don’t speak to anyone, not even Dumbledore, anymore. You could be on the verge of – of something terrible, but you’d never say. In fact,” he added in an even smaller voice, “you’d probably keep on sending me and Hermione letters telling us that it was all fine, only without any details: ‘the Dursleys are beating me, and have locked me up in a hole. Oh, wait. I mean – summer’s going great, I’ve finished all my assignments already. Incidentally, it’s because I’ve been locked up in a hole...’

Harry declined to be amused.

“I didn’t know what to do about it. Hermione has this skill, doesn’t she, for dropping these little truths when it’s time to hear them. But I’m not her, so I figured I’d just say it all straight out, and hope for the best,” Ron said. “Look, you were doing great last year, you really were, with the D.A. and getting over Cho and coaching Quidditch and that toad Umbridge. I wasn’t ever more pleased I was your friend,” Ron went on, each sentence more hurried than the last. “I mean, you did great with Umbridge on your own – don’t glare like that Harry, really you did – but you just kept letting her hurt you over and over, didn’t you, and you didn’t say a word to anyone. And Occlumency – you never told me how bad that got–”

“What? If I never told you how bad it got, how would you know?”

“Well, it only got worse, the thing with your scar, and you’d wake me all times of night, screaming. Not to mention this one time you came out of the Potions lab and Professor Snape right behind you, and you looked awful and he looked livid, but then he calmed down when he saw me and said, Mister Weasley, keep an eye on Mister Potter this evening... and if he was worried, of course I was as well.”

“You never told me that,” Harry said suspiciously.

“Well of course I didn’t say Snape wanted me to keep an eye on you! You were twitchy enough as it was–”

“So I’m twitchy now?”

“Yes, you’re considerably twitchy!” Ron shot back. “And I’m trying to be helpful, here, trying to get you to open up a bit and tell me what’s bothering you, and it doesn’t help that I’m horrible at this sort of thing!”

“Nothing’s bothering me,” Harry returned, “except for you.”

“Fine. Great,” Ron replied. “I’ll be at Gryffindor Tower if you’re interested in chatting.”

“I like to chat with those who consider me stable, thanks,” Harry returned coldly.

“Fine,” Ron repeated, his jaw jutting slightly. “See you ‘round, Harry.” The door slammed behind him.

Harry didn’t follow. Instead, he sat at the table, turning to face the fireplace, amusing himself by imagining that Mrs. Weasley was about to bustle in any moment, or Ginny pound down the stairs, or even that Ron might come in from de-gnoming the garden. Crookshanks curled up on his lap and butted his hand for pats. Harry took off his glasses and lay his head down on the table, smoothing the ginger cat’s fur with one hand as he stared unblinkingly into the flames.

Harry dreamed that Sirius’s head was sitting in the fireplace. “Oh, hello,” Harry said amicably, pulling himself into a seated position while Crookshanks purred expansively.“You watched him die,” Ron commented beside him.

“Oh, yeah,” Harry realized. “He can’t be here.” Sure enough, when Harry turned to face the flames, his godfather was gone.

“And it doesn’t bother you one bit,” Ron confirmed.

Harry shook his head, then shrugged his shoulders. “It should?”

“Watch yourself, Harry,” Ron warned sadly. “Numb yourself completely and you become just like–”

“- the Dark Lord,” Snape was saying at the front of the Potions classroom, “is a wily foe. He will try to gain mastery of you, try to control what you see and even how you view it.” Sunshine was illuminating the normally-dank dungeons, and Snape strode through it, sunlight casting shifting ribbons over his dark, oily hair.

“He can change how I view things?” Harry asked. “If he can do that, he should already be ruling the world.”

Snape smiled, a bare quirk of the lips. “Ah, the same way you viewed Occlumency as ‘mind reading’, you view the Dark Lord’s measure of control as a complete alteration of your perceptions. You must, Mister Potter, move yourself beyond this all-or-nothing mindset...”

“Yes sir,” Harry said impatiently, “but then what can he con–”

“-trol,” Snape was suddenly intoning, and now he was facing Harry at the front of the room. “Legilimens!”

“Protego!”

“Not good enough, Potter!” Snape growled. “Must I take you everywhere, lead you by the nose to every conclusion? You cannot handle this on your own, do you understand me, you foolish brat? Wake up!”

Harry jerked upright, then groaned, straightening his neck. It took him a full minute to gaze about, wonder why he was at the Weasley’s, realize he was not at the Weasley’s and place why he should have fallen asleep in the Room of Requirement.

Harry stood, running a hand through his hair, and cast about, still gathering his wits. After a moment he snatched his glasses from the wooden table and placed them on his nose.

Harry had walked down three hallways before he was fully awake. The inside of his mouth felt like cotton, and he couldn’t help but wonder how late it was. Still, he decided he ought to go to the Great Hall in case there was still time for breakfast.

It was all coming back to him from the evening before: his cursing Draco with Imperio; getting immediately caught and sent to Dumbledore; Snape’s punishment... Harry groaned.

Starting now, he was to obey Draco Malfoy’s every whim.