"Severus."

A silence. Then: "Yes, m’lord?"

"Hadrian Potter will be attending Hogwarts this year."

The shorter of the two men—although both were tall—paused momentarily. The hesitation in his stride was so slight that only one as trained as his companion in reading body language would have seen it.

"You wish me to explain how Hadrian Potter is alive." The taller man phrased it as a statement, brushing back the overgrown grass from a grave as he did so.

"Please, my lord."

The faint smile of one too grossly satisfied with himself distorted the features of the tall man’s otherwise handsome face. His pale hands spidered in pleasure over a tombstone’s lettering as he spoke.

"On the Samhain of 1984, Lily and James Potter left their son Hadrian with their secret-keeper, Peter Pettigrew, for the night while attending a meeting with the Order."

Severus did not acknowledge this. Generally his companion needed little to no encouragement in self-aggrandizing speeches. Generally his companion was too wrapped up in self-aggrandizing speeches to notice when his listeners’ attention wavered—unless, like Goyle, you were prone to flatulence after falling asleep. In which case listening skills would be reinforced with some unpleasant pinching hex.

Contrary to popular belief, the Dark Lord rarely used the Cruciatus, even for such major infractions as missing ‘Bowling for Muggles’. It took too much power and gave him a headache—and Severus had yet to learn how to brew a Headache Relief potion that was cherry-flavoured.

Of course, dark wizards were above such petty concerns as potion flavouring.

Certainly. And if Malfoy returned another Pepper-Up Potion again asking for banana flavouring, his restraint would be hardpressed to not point this out.

Yet some of this information was new, and Severus schooled his face out from a grimace and ignored the braggadocio of his master’s tone.

"Hadrian Potter and Neville Longbottom both matched the specifics for the prophecy you told me of. I sent Lestrange’s team after Longbottom, while I left personally for Potter. Pettigrew, their secret-keeper, had promised to hand him over to me without a fight. What I had not expected—they left Sirius Black with Pettigrew.

"With Black around, Pettigrew had a change of heart. I slaughtered them both, of course," the man smiled, and even Severus, though impatient for new information, echoed his expression, "but I decided to take a look at the boy’s aura before I killed him."

Severus averted his gaze to the gravesite the man had cleared to hide his curiosity. Aural readings? Unless you were charging against a magically shielded area, or trying to reveal a suspect’s identity—who would waste energy reading an aura? They changed constantly, and more often mapped potentials than personalities.

Unless your soul was branded with an ineffaceable mark, that patterned your magic and character into a certain mold, there were few ways of telling any given aura from another. Infants, with unlimited choices before them, were indistinguishable.

Or almost. Power potentials might show at a year, vague biases in fate towards one magic or another.

Extremely vague biases.

Severus risked the question. "Why did you look at his aura?"

"His great-grandfather, Charles Potter, was a worthy opponent and nearly revealed me to the ministry at a time when all of them, save Dumbledore, were snivelling at my feet." The man paused, green eyes glinting. "He almost killed me in a training duel. Using parselmagic".

"The Potters weren’t Parselmouths"

"Never. But Charles messed with illegal transformations, same as the whole clan." His lips quirked in rare humour. "For a light family, they were marvellously uninhibited. Charles’ skills rivalled mine. He was obsessed with changing his own line, heightening their magic, preserving ritually acquired skills from generation to generation—lengthening their lives, if possible. I have his notebooks. I’d to apply his methods, but I wanted to ensure their success beforehand. And unfortunately," a sad, sad smile, "I often am too focused on dispatching his descendents to read them."

"But you did with Hadrian Potter," Severus noted, withdrawing a jar from his robes and unscrewing the lid.

"I did. And none—or very few—of Charles’ experiments took. Negligible changes to lifespan. None of that veela-like attraction I’d always suspected in his father—"

Severus sneered in disdain.

"—or any of the nonhuman characteristics he’d hoped to import. Nothing, really, except animagus potential and parseltongue—and curiously, a very volatile aura."

"Common enough in teenagers, since their emotions and powers flare on a daily basis, though unusual in infants. For a prophesied child though, acceptable. Why didn’t you kill him?"

"He had a Black aura."

Severus’ brows raised in surprise. "A penchant for the Dark Arts then. Well, his mother isn’t clean either—I read her aura once when we were schoolchildren. Black and healer’s Green, with orange flaring the edges. Doesn’t mean he’ll be a dark wizard."

"With the proper schooling, he will be. Which is where you come in."

Severus stopped, unspeaking, though he was displeased. Though as far as his companion was concerned, Severus could keep on being displeased. While the younger man might be his intellectual equal, and morally complicated enough to keep him on his toes—Severus would turn traitor, if he hadn’t already—he gave the orders. Severus occasionally needed a reminder of this.

And Cruciatus was such a jejune means of asserting one’s authority. Really, a Dark Lord needed to be more inventive.

"I’ve never set much stock in divination. I marked the boy—ran up the odds. An inclination for dark magic, ambition, a temper, a skill for keeping silent—much like an usual christening present, but I added another gift—bound him with my blood."

"A vassal’s spell?"

"A variant. The Bastard’s spell. Used for claiming the child of another man as your own. Convenient with all those intrigues in the middle ages. As it doesn’t erase the natural father and simply gives the adoptive father a claim to the boy as well, it was a useful kind of insurance for a medieval witch to take. In this case, though, it gives me another prospect to spy on the Order’s general. Potter will accept his son and mine with open arms, the Light will rejoice that the child that drove off Voldemort for eleven years has returned." The man snorted. "Never mind that it was the duel with Black that depleted my powers. The auror analysts say one thing, the people say another, and the media confirms what the people already believe."

"Where is Hadrian Potter?" Severus questioned.

"At the moment, I haven’t the slightest clue." The older man sank from his crouch by the gravestone into a sitting position, twirling his wand thoughtlessly to raise the ground before the the stone, sifting the silt to remove a yellowed bit of bone. "I drew a liberal amount of blood from him to add to the scene, blew some things up, dosed the brat my own blood to replenish him, and called up the awful Children’s Services. I’d prefer he learnt exactly how muggles act firsthand. Added a few wards to make him untraceable by most magical means and some powerful notice-me-nots. Not even Dumbledore could find him now... of course, Dumbledore would still be searching for James Potters’ son. Hadrian Potter should be somewhere with Lily’s estranged sister, Petunia Evans—whose normal distaste of witches and wizards, coupled with my spells, should ensure Hadrian goes unnoticed."

"Even a squib would notice his surname."

"Squibs have residual magic that the Notice-me-not detects. Unless Dumbledore has finally learnt how to access a muggle database without blowing up the computer—which I assure you, he has not—he’s safely disregarded."

Severus handed his master the jar, which the youthful old man slipped the bone into, before shutting it tight and handing it back.

"My lord, what do you require of me in this?"

His master regarded him before answering.

"Conduct his orientation. My informing you of this has broken the Notice-me-not, the attendants will become aware of his enrollment at Hogwarts shortly. If possible, initiate him into the wizarding world yourself. Make sure the right books fall into his hands." The older man paused, a old distaste grooving the corners of his mouth into a frown. "Make sure you teach him how to defend himself. I was altogether certain his guardians would be... unready to take him on, and prepared to take it out on him. Growing up like that can toughen a boy if it doesn’t break him, teach him how muggles normally act."

"Yes master."

"The jar has the basic components of a tracking charm—bones from his primary bloodlines. Assuming the Notice spells take time to distingrate, use them to find him. Otherwise," Voldemort’s gaze was piercing, "return them."

Or else the jar will implode and burn the bones to ash if you try to use them for any other purpose, like thaumaturgy, against your master. Or it will suck you inside and turn into a miniature snow globe. Or any other of many unpleasant possibilities.

"Yes, master."

"Good." Voldemort nodded curtly, and rose, dusting off his long grey robes. "Now, go."

He watched his servant apparate, and then, breathing deeply, closed his eyes.

mmmmmmmmmm

Somewhere in Little Whinging, Surrey, a pair of identical green eyes opened.

It wasn’t at Number Four, Privet Drive.

More’s the pity for a particular horse-faced woman. Having ordered her beached whale of a son to fetch the mail for four times with no success, she had to leave her sentry point at the kitchen window (overlooking the neighbour’s vegetable garden, where said neighbour was industriously picking weeds and displaying an abnormally attractive plumber’s crack) to get it herself.

Bills, bills, offer for facelift (she set this aside thoughtlessly), renewal query from Penthouse (she’d lash her husband tonight once her son was in bed), bills—and—what’s this?

Parchment. Her lips parted in startled odium before she recovered, shredded the missive and sent it to the greenbox.

The recipient of the letter was meanwhile happily oblivious as to its fate, cloistered in the sauna room at the back of the local gym, reading a random math text. The denizens of Surrey were all too importantly busy to use the gym (hence their formidable girths), and the boy himself had no intention of using the exercise equipment. Most eleven-year-old boys are strangely disinterested getting buff, and this kid was similar to them in that respect. He was, however, unlike them in that he was failing summer school, and having had an unusual spurt of motivation (possibly due to his teacher’s threat to hold him back a grade, which would mean staying back from boarding school another year), he’d immured himself in the sauna. The neatly lettered sign "Out of Order" hung on the door to discourage any oddballs who did go to the gym.

The clean, cool room—for the sauna didn’t steam unless you turned a switch—had become an unusual sanctuary for him this summer. If he got up before his relatives and scarpered, he could have the whole day to himself. So long as he didn’t take any food, they couldn’t care where he went. Shoplifting candy bars for breakfast or digging into the crates destined for the grocery store before they were opened, he managed to get all the time he needed to work out the pesky sums and avoid his relations.

However… glancing at the perky Donald Duck clock on the side… it seemed that his free time was at an end. The crazy old cat lady across the road would want him until sundown to clean her house, and she paid well for it.

Harry Potter left, untacking the Out of Order sign from his sauna as he did so.

mmmmmmmmmm

When more letters arrived the next day in the eggs, Petunia Dursley—for, as none of us could guess, that was the horse-faced woman’s name—said nothing. Neither did her husband Vernon. Perhaps he cuffed his nephew a little harder when the miscreant came home late from loitering on the corner with the local punks—layabout just like his father! Well, he reckoned a little honest work wouldn’t hurt him—and laid down curfew while explaining that Harry would go to Grunnings Drill Company with him in the morning. He could at least sweep the floor and clean the restrooms. That’d help pay for his room and board.

Vernon gagged down some whiskey and went to sleep.

Harry, who had done the job before to the heckling of the fat millwrights and half-joking propositions of the more perverted men by the urinals, had no intention of going back there. He upped and left in the middle of the night, dodging the hobos in the park and broke into Sully’s treehouse. Sully wouldn’t mind. The teenage boy traded grub with Harry in exchange for help with breaking into the liquor store. Wiry little Harry could snick open any lock and squirm through any window. He was a well-paid accomplice.

mmmmmmmmmm

When Harry was busy at summer school the next day, a whole bag of letters downed through the chimney, like a sack from Santa Claus. Dudley, his cousin, began to cry about the freakishness of it all. Petunia began to seriously consider taking a trip to Majorca. Vernon, who missed work due to a hangover, was too busy dry-heaving and swearing out his worthless nephew for not being present to fetch his mineral water to care.

Wisely, Harry avoided going home that night. After seeing the crates of empties by the roadside—honestly, was Uncle Vernon too lazy to even try collecting them for a discount at the beer store—he figured he’d better stay away. Though he did tell Sully, and a few quiet teens fetched away the bottles after dark. Petunia went to a friend’s house for the evening. Dudley, who she’d been thoughtless enough to leave behind, became Vernon’s whipping boy for once.

Boy, was Harry ever going to get it when he got home.

mmmmmmmmmm

By now, the living room was plastered in letters. Vernon knew better than to call the cops, it was all his freakish wife’s freakish sister’s fault. He would take it out on his nephew, except his nephew was no where to be found. Neither was his wife, for that matter. And Dudley, whose animal sense of self preservation overrode his intellect to make him unusually intelligent for a change, was hiding at Piers’ place. So when he upped and left for the Orkney’s, boarding up the house, he really left nothing behind—except a bankrupt business and another case of empties.

mmmmmmmmmm

July 31st. Harry was sitting in the treehouse, huddled up to Sully and the boys, who were offering him a swig of beer and his first cigarette for his birthday. He’d declined the beer—watching Vernon made him wary of alcohol—but accepted the cigarette with a tacky sophistication not altogether inappropriate for an eleven-year-old bandit. Swilling in smoke with an ease that first-timers (eyes tearing, lungs burning) often lacked, he blew perfect rings to the applause of his cronies. They often tried to get them just like that, but they never could. You had to be a conjuror, a kind of Houdini like Harry to make perfect rings, they decided.

Harry grinned. Normally you had to brag for yourself, but their kind of magnanimity was acceptable on birthdays, or after the boys had a few shots down. They passed around the twinkies, found they’d brought a lighter but forgot the candles, and skinheaded Jules—who was a bit of a pervert, but Harry got on with him alright, so long as Sully was around—lit the lighter for Harry to blow out.

10…9… 8…

A scuffling sound at the foot of the ladder stopped the boys. Jules removed his thumb from the lighter, the torches went out.

Probably Mom, Sully mouthed in the almost-dark of the full moon.

Harry shook his head. Too heavy.

Who else would be out here? Hopefully not the older guys… they’d crashed one of Sully’s parties before, in ski masks, and forced the younger guys to humiliate themselves in a number of unspeakable ways that Harry intended to avoid. He could try getting up through the top and hiding in the higher branches—he’d done that before, but he’d been lighter. And it hadn’t been for a long period of time.

Nope, best to check out who it was—

Sully had come to the same conclusion. The boys grabbed the blanket. Harry fetched Jules’ abandoned lighter, and, at Sully’s gesture, scrabbled onto the roof to see who was climbing.

A lanky man shrouded in black… big, built in the shoulders, still, nothing the four of them couldn’t take. He stuck his head back in with an affirmative gesture, and scrabbled off the roof and into the side window—just as the man shoved his ugly head in, and the boys threw the blanket over his head.

"Auugg—oummph!" Egor, the third guy huffed as the man’s right hook drove the wind out of him, knocking him back against the wall. Dazed, he shook his head before scrabbling back into the thick of it as Sully squirmed out from a choke and tried to pin the man’s arms against his body. Harry flashed in as Jules felt at the man’s belt for a gun, getting kicked against the window as Egor came to replace him.

"Enough!" the man growled, and the boys flew backwards, Sully stopping short of flying out the door and down two stories to the ground. The blanket whipped back from the man’s bedraggled head—just in time for Harry to chuck the bottle of alcohol and a bit of flaming newspaper at the trespasser’s head. The man dodged, the bottle flew outside and the newspaper, by some gracious magic, snuffed itself. Squirming aside the man’s attack while Jules attempted again to pin the man’s arm—the guy was groping down his pocket for something, some long thing that could be a box cutter, a switchblade—Harry tried to think.

Newspaper, fabric, anything flammable—beer’s got too much water, doesn’t it? Hell, why not.

He snapped his fingers and closing his eyes, saw struck flint, pages angered scarlet with flame, logs wormed with campfire—crimson-winged and azure at the heart.

Fuego, ventifuego, burn, burn!

The man’s hand came free, Jules snapped to the side, and Houdini Harry drew scarves of flame from the air, dodging under the man’s grasping arm and dashing out the open door… two stories to the ground.

Harry landed, somersaulting only to see the man mysteriously unburned and looking grim as the devil himself. Crap. There went a year and half of practice. Who the hell said education pays?

Harry did the logical thing. Harry ran.

Some prickling sixth sense told him to duck, and he dashed behind Sully’s trash bin when a needle of white light flared into it. Guns.

Here, Harry thought some words that little boys, of course, never use since they aren’t supposed to know them. And waited, taking the trashbin lid in hand as he did so. The man ran closer.

Fuego, fuego, fuego!

The fire snapped off in the man’s face, followed by the trash lid. Temporarily blinded, the guy had an uncanny sense of where to shoot, and Harry had barely scrabbled over the fence before getting brained with something. He fell sideways, bonking his head against the asphalt on the way down. The man somehow passed through the gate, looking a little singed on the edges and hard-broiled at the eyes.

Harry, if he could have moved, might have gulped. But he seemed paralyzed for fear, which was strange, since he wasn’t afraid, and remained prone on the asphalt. Though if he could have moved, he also might have grinned at seeing the silhouettes creeping up behind the large man.

Without even turning around, the man froze the boys in place, looking even grimmer, if possible, and set him upright.

Movement was impossible. This was freaky stuff—the kind of hard-core stuff he could do sometimes, if he really wanted to—but not so often. A few flares, an open window, a little light. Kid stuff, he knew now.

Cause he was dead tired from pulling all the tricks he knew, and this guy kept coming.

The man paused, clamping a hand cold as the dead on his shoulder, and shook his head. Then, Harry must have blacked out, because he didn’t remember anything after that.

mmmmmmmmmm

Severus shook his head.

Only a son of Voldemort, James Potter and the infuriatingly clever Lily Evans could possibly have pulled what this brat just did.

mmmmmmmmmm

He awoke with a feeling much similar to what he imagined a hangover would feel like. He was in a bed, and raising his head, he could see he was fully dressed. Good. So it might not be some pervert who’d abducted him then. Well, he’d get out of here in either case. He tried to raise his back next, and found, to his annoyance, his shoulders were stuck.

The man came from where he’d stood by the large, dusty window back across the worn floorboards to where the boy struggled. With good timing. The kid ignited the bedsheets.

The guy snuffed the fire again, and the kid lay panting, glaring up at him with a face reminiscent enough of Potter’s to make him want to laugh—and with enough of Voldemort around the eyes to make him almost awkward.

"Quit it. You’ll waste your energy that way."

The kid remained silent, glaring up at him.

"I’m not going to hurt you."

The suspicion remained, and Severus could almost hear the long, sarcastic "Surrrreee" burring its way from a boy on Spinner’s End.

"No, really. You’ve been abducted because you’re—" The mysterious Hadrian Potter who was somehow mistakenly handed off to the Muggle’s Children’s Services, who came with the fire department on the scene of the crime before the Ministry of Magic arrived. And somehow, we didn’t check with the Muggle police before resigning Potter for dead. Right. Who the hell was going to buy that? Lily Potter’s hair was already in flames from bawling out the bureaucracy. Rather nifty trick that, one the Weasley matron had taught the young mothers in some seminar on "Raising Wizards without Losing Your Head" after silly Olive Perkins splinched hers in an attempt to buzz off to Madagascar—away from her three brats whose pleasure in pyrotechnics had unfortunately extended into adolescence. Really, he’d almost thought he’d seen the detention record to end all detention records from them… until the Weasley twins themselves came, and the reason for Molly Weasley’s expertise became apparent.

"Hadrian Potter. Because of some error we haven’t sorted out yet," which no one, especially Dumbledore, believes an accident, "you were placed with your aunt and uncle" and your parents mysteriously never checked in with them "after your guardians were killed and the house you lived in at the time burnt down. Your parents, Lily and James Potter, are still alive. James Potter will be arriving shortly to take you to your proper home." And I’ll be getting out of here to give my report, and hopefully won’t be stuck on dungeon duty for the next week for my failure to obtain more information. Really though, what more could Voldemort expect of him? The day James Potter allows me to give his son an orientation on the wizarding world will be the day both sides in this infernal war burn us for Midsummer wickermen, and toast marshmallows on our pyres.

"It’s Harry," the boy corrected. "And like I believe that."

The kid eyed him over, apparently decided resistance was futile, and settled back down again.

"My parents were drug addicts and died in a car crash," he muttered.

A laugh from the severe man surprised him.

"Drug addicts. Petunia was always inventive."

"You knew my aunt."

"Unfortunately, yes, I had the displeasure of her acquaintance. Your mother and I knew each other as children, and your aunt occasionally disgraced us with her presence," the man’s lip curled.

"Oh," was all Harry could think to say to this jarring critique. Most mature adults don’t criticize their ... peers before adolescents. Of course, Severus, with his boyhood grudges and sense of self-importance as a spy, could only be considered as mature as the man now knocking at the door of the old room.

Severus waved a hand. "Come in."

A grey-robed man entered, and anyone could see this was exactly what the boy would look like in fifteen years or so. Anyone, that is, except for Severus, who would have pointed out the gauntness in the boy’s limbs wasn’t just malnutrition, that he’d be considerably taller and lankier than his father, his face a tad more angular, his fingers long and knob-knuckled not unlike another wizard Severus knew.

Voldemort really had chosen Harry.

"Severus," the man began, then his glance caught the boy on the bed, and he forgot.

"Harry?"

As the esteemed readers might guess: The Slytherinish Harry was duly wary, and said "Who the hell are you? Dad’s dead."

"Harry, I’m—"

The boy relaxed, more because there was no other response available—and Severus saw the flame sputtered out at his hand as he conjured it. No more wandless magic. Even this little prodigy had to be burnt out after last night. "Explain, please." His eyes turned to Severus. "And please take this binding off me."

"Give me your oath you won’t run off."

Harry sighed extravagantly, as angsty little adolescents will, and resigned himself. "Fine. I won’t run off while you’re explaining things."

"Or afterwards," Severus glared as James Potter opened his mouth.

"Or right after you’re done," Harry hesitated.

Clever brat. Left himself a loophole—not RIGHT after we’re done, though it’s all in relative terms... but hopefully he’ll be satisfied by then, and if not, it’s not going to deplete me to keep petrifying him. "Fine. Finite Incantatem" Severus agreed easily, glancing to the other man. "Potter?"

Potter glanced uneasily at Severus, and back to his son. "Maybe you could go outside while we talk?"

"I promised Dumbledore" and Voldemort "personally that I would supervise you and the boy this afternoon. Dumbledore" rightly "believes Voldemort wants the boy for some purpose unknown as of yet and was involved with his original disappearance. I’m your guard for this afternoon."

James Potter could not be dismayed at this—he’d just found his firstborn son!—but all the same, couldn’t Dumbledore just assign another auror!

"Another auror would not have the same expertise as a reformed Death Eater in predicting how Voldemort might attack, General."

James shot a look at Severus, and Severus shrugged. Why use occlumency when it was so darn easy to guess what the man thought?

James Potter turned back to Harry. "So," he began, uneasily...

mmmmmmmmmm

mmmmmmmmmm

James Potter and Harry started down the street, with Severus trailing discreetly behind them and stopping every few strides to adjust his robes or sample the sugared beets pawned by a vendor.

"So," James began, "what do you do for fun?"

Harry shrugged. He doubted James really wanted to hear about his entrepreneurial pursuits, ‘specially as his old man turned out to be in law enforcement. "Hang out with the guys, I guess." He thought for a moment, and gave a wicked little grin. "Give magic shows to the kids on the block."

Now that, Harry really could do. His illicit sideshow accompanied every circus or carnaval in town. He’d spat fire, unlocked doors, juggled balls and vanished ten pound notes each year since he was seven, ending the act with a disappearance from outraged patrons or the cops.

No one could say he wasn’t the real thing, anyways.

"Wow. So I guess you’re really good at wandless magic then."

Harry shrugged, disinclined to answer. "I guess."

"Anything you’re really good at?"

Break and enter. "Not really. It was all slight of hand."

They’d entered a musty old wand shop, while Severus picked up a potions periodical in the waiting room and began to read. James glanced significantly.

"He’ll be all day anyways."

"You don’t know that," James argued in a whisper, "and the longer we’re here, the more of a chance someone will show up—"

"It’s Ollivander’s. Death Eaters need wands too" Severus explained with an acuity of boredom innate to the very intelligent or very preoccupied. He flipped back to his periodical, read about methods of pickling children’s toe parings, and was lost to the world.

James turned back just in time to hear the beginning of Ollivander’s entrance—"it was just yesterday, it seems to me, that your father was here buying his first wand..."

He took Harry’s hand in his, and James noted, painfully, the lines of white scars hemming the palm. He’d have to ask about them later.

"Yes, your father’s hands—he had yew, fourteen inches, phoenix feather..."

James Potter coughed.

"It was mahogany and unicorn’s tail."

Ollivander’s eyes condescended to his introjection.

"Of course, of course... well, try this..."

Severus had been correct. After sitting through three hours and fourteen minutes of minor explosions spaced with James’ enthused monologues on his own years at Hogwarts-- together with his less than successful attempts to extract more than three words from Harry—they settled with a nice rowan and dragon heartstring wand, thirteen inches.

"Not a perfect fit, not a perfect fit..." muttered Ollivander distractedly, "but I’ll see you in a few years for your match."

James grinned as they left the shop. "Not every day that Ollivander gets such a tricky customer. Mark that you’ll be a great wizard, kid. They say Dumbledore spent five hours in the shop before he came out with something that would scratch it for him... even then, he burnt out the wand in two years and had to buy another. So, what’ve we got left? Books?"

Harry, normally a reluctant student, took an unusual interest in the bookstore. The herbology and potions didn’t interest him in the least, but the transformation and defense books looked handy. His father grinned at his obvious interest, and grabbed another book from the top racks. "Don’t tell your mother about this, but read it from front to back."

The Animagus Transformation.

Harry had no idea as to what an animagus was—but free loot was free loot, and he wasn’t about to look askance on his father’s enthused generosity. As far as James was concerned, whatever Harry wanted today was his.

Severus emerged from the store after them with his own bundle of books.

"Now..." and James halted for a moment. "You’ve just had a birthday, haven’t you!" he declared. "How’d you like a familiar? Toads are kind of useless, but owls carry mail and all that, and cats can be useful for watching your back."

Severus’ unusually good hearing caught this. As you’d know. I swear your blasted Tabby would have stalked Lily and I to hell before I mailed it off to the Muggle Humane Society. And then the blasted thing came back and clawed my leg off... so much for scratch balms, I still have the scars...

Harry’s responses somewhat daunted James for their lack of enthusiasm, but hey, the kid had to be disoriented.

"Sure... could I just, well, look at the kinds of familiars available?"

"Right on, boy." James patted Harry on the shoulder, and the kid stiffened reflexively. "Right this way."

The Magical Menagerie housed a number of kittens, including a rather disgruntled golden kneazle. Yet despite James’ nudgings towards a pretty black kitten, Harry turned towards the back of the shop and the dirty reptile cages. One, in particular, housed a rather tiny silver snake.

The reptile glanced at him, and suddenly, Harry knew exactly what he wanted.

"Hey, umm, Dad," he began, trying out the name for the first time, to a sudden brightness in his father’s eyes. "Could I get..." he gestured at the little snake.

If it had been any of his other children, James later reflected, he would have said no. It wasn’t as though Death Eaters could speak with snakes, or as though the Dark Lord had time to gossip with any old reptile—but snakes simply weren’t kept by light wizards. Usually. Unless you were a nutter like Xenophon Lovegood or Aberforth Dumbledore, but even then, there’d be talk.

But Harry had already removed the little snake, and it was wound lovingly about his arm, and Severus didn’t seem alarmed, so the General duly paid for the creature... and was only slightly upset upon learning of its origins...

"Oy, yeah. Glad someone took the wee beastie." The shopkeeper took a long draw from his pipe, and set it down in the tin ashtray. "Mite was confiscated last week from an illegal operation on Knockturn Alley—they found Borgin and Burkes was trafficking in the dark arts. Betcha know, sir General, about the Auror raid," his voice lowered. "They had some nasty critters there—an amphibaena, of all things, and a few hydra. This though, and some of the kittens—" he indicated a bandy-legged gold cat—"were normal, abused critters, so they handed them onto me."

James didn’t know what to say to this, but fortunately, they were on their way out, and Harry was cooing at the snake and acting less like a startled crow than a normal boy—so he wisely decided not to say anything at all.

mmmmmmmmmm

"Lily will want you to come home for supper," James offered with less of his usual reluctance to Severus.

"I apologize that I must refuse," Severus responded, mechanically tacit. "However..."

he drew out a packet from his cloak, and handed the parcel to Harry. Mystified, the boy took it, and looked questioningly at the tough old man.

"Boy—" Severus scowled, "while I did not enjoy our earlier encounter, I must approve of your caution regarding unknown persons. If I had been an abductor—and given who your father is, there may be plenty of difficulty with those—your skills might have bought you a few seconds of time—but at present, they are insufficient. Read those books, and maybe you’ll survive for longer than two minutes if you find yourself in any real trouble."

James glanced back at him.

"If you haven’t forgotten, Potter, Lily appointed me godfather to Sirius and Elspeth after Black’s death. I consider my duties to extend to Hadrian as well."

The man turned on his heel and disapparated.

Harry watched him disappear with a certain awe. The guy moved like the Grim Reaper. Sooo cool.

And, now he was getting sent to some cheesy domestic scene with his grinning clone of a father and a rather bored snake.

Yeah, Sully had sent him on an acid trip alright.

Lead the way.

Severus had long learnt to sit silently and look thoughtful while his Masters tried to predict one another.

Usually, this was a difficult thing. After all, he didn’t like or agree with either of them.

To be fair, Dumbledore was relatively harmless—at least when he was wandless and wasn’t behind the pulpit of the Wizengamot. He’d push hard to achieve his ends, but never at the expense of human life or dignity. He could care less about the Integration Issue—the merging of muggle and wizard society meant nothing to him except so far as it affected his students. He cared about Hogwarts. Keep his school supplied, protect his students, and he’d never leave.

A bit foolish, really. His disinterest in economy meant he ignored the rising taxation of wizarding products manufactured from imported Muggle goods and growing costs for Ministry safety examinations of spells placed on houses in muggle areas, for a few examples. The expense drove more wizards to buy wizarding products—which only siphoned more money into their investors, the old families. Dumbledore himself, an eighth generation wizard, might well profit by it—but the more likely candidates were the Malfoys and Lestranges.

But as a warrior, Dumbledore was to be feared. Although Voldemort had kept his head low for the past ten years, for God knew what reason—always on the run from Dumbledore—the few times they’d squared off in the past war, all the other wizards cleared off. Together, they’d demolished a whole suburb of London—though Dumbledore had thoughtfully sent ‘Flood Warnings’ to the Muggle inhabitants in advance that summer to clear them out. And as Generalissimus Maximus, he could usually match Voldemort wit for wit.

For that matter, so could Severus.

But he wasn’t a Great Wizard—only slightly above average power, really—so he tried to stay out of major conflicts and read what everyone was planning.

In this case, he was stumped as Dumbledore.

Dumbledore tinkered with a smoking silver instrument, watching as the fumes coalesced into a snake, writhing and undulating in the air.

"Al-Jarab’s Lamp," he mused, stroking his long white beard. "Burn a lock of hair, a bit of skin, anything you have of a person, really, and it’ll show their soul."

"Whose is that?" Severus watched in interest.

Dumbledore’s lips drew a thin white line. "Voldemort’s".

Severus blinked, and declined the pipe Dumbledore offered him, staring bemusedly at the serpent. "So?"

Dumbledore shrugged, twiddling his long, turned back thumbs, smoking a pipe at the corner of his mouth. "Voldemort should, by all rights, have a split soul. The murders he’s committed. The atrocities of the last war. His soul’s ragged at the edges, and more... thinned out, than it should be, certainly. But this..." he looked again. "It doesn’t make any sense."

"Souls regenerate," Severus pointed out, unnecessarily.

"Yes, but never to this extent. We had proof that Voldemort had at least one horcrux and was manufacturing others. A horcrux permanently damages the soul. Look—" he noted the smoke tearing away at the base of the lamp. "One horcrux. The old one. He’s otherwise healthy."

"Ten years in Hawaii with Bellatrix Lestrange could do that to a guy," Severus remarked wryly. "And giving up the dangerous ritual magic. And allowing his magical reserves to replenish for ten years."

"If I allowed my reserves to replenish for ten years, even after the injuries he sustained from Black and Pettigrew..." Albus paused. "It’s not inconceivable that his injuries forced him to be absent. And he’s secured his foothold in the Ministry—we have no sense of anyone’s loyalties anymore. Some of our younger generation joined up with the Wizarding Independence Party, some of theirs are on Order’s side. If he decided to move now, I don’t know who we could or couldn’t trust."

Severus shrugged. "He has all the clout he wants with Malfoy and Lestrange. He’s game to abduct Muggleborns and place them with pureblood families, but he’s actually been suppressing his radicals." He glanced out the window to see McGonagall below, congratulating Filch on his "squishy kitty" while cuddling Mrs. Norris. He shuddered. "Maybe he’ll be content to just have the WIP fight politically."

"Never," Dumbledore shook his head. "If it were simply Voldemort, I’d say maybe. But his principal backers are the old Dark families, and they still have the feudal mentality. Take what you want by force. Growing Integration threatens their entire lifestyle—their wealth, privilege, politics, culture. They’ve been steaming for a fight for generations."

Severus stared. And then inhaled Dumbledore’s sweet second-hand smoke. "They’re powerless. They can’t strangle the economy—despite their taxation, most of us know how to use Muggle Markets and aren’t afraid to do it. They can’t abduct Muggleborns—there’s too many first or second generation wizards now, and they’d raise hell." He shook his head. "Remember when Lily Potter set a demon on Black for asking her if she’d like to be adopted?"

Dumbledore fought a smile. Sort of. "Yes, I remember. But their loss of power is exactly why they’ll want to strike—now—before they lose strength completely. And at this point—" his pipe steamed, "Voldemort can either harness their strength for his own ends, or be crushed by it. Which brings us to the issue of Hadrian Potter."

Severus sat tight.

"He’s cast some form of claiming spell on him. I didn’t have the heart to tell James. And I suspect," Dumbledore blew a white bird across the room, "Hadrian’s our missing horcrux."

Severus blinked. And then...

"Who would be fool enough to create a living Horcrux?"

"Think, Severus. Who wouldn’t be fool enough?" Dumbledore, agitated from his rest, stood up and paced before the window. "It makes perfect sense. I could kill an innocent, for the sake of ending this war—" he looked pained, "—but it’s the Boy-Who-Lived. The media knows all about it. And now that he’s returned, and it’s been trumpeted to all corners of the earth, any suspicious accidents will be thoroughly looked into by Voldemort’s wizards, who you can bet will ferret out the killer. If he dies, the whole world will seize upon whoever did it.

"I could do send someone to do it. Someone could act on their own initiative. I probably will attempt it, but you can bet that Voldemort won’t leave his Horcrux undefended. He’s likely being followed. And worst—" Dumbledore’s eyes blazed, "I can’t attempt it at Hogwarts. The Founders set charms to guard their descendents against anything in the castle, and while they’re too old to prevent injuries, they’ll prevent death. He’s Voldemort’s—set him in the castle, and it’ll read him as Slytherin’s Heir."

Severus was quiet, and then--"Why not injure him fatally and ship him out to St. Mungo’s. Have a healer finish the job?"

"It could work." Dumbledore paused. "And yet, I suspect we might have more barriers than even I can anticipate."

mmmmmmmmmm

Lily Potter pulled a casserole from the oven, as Elspeth giggled over her homework at the counter and Sirius blasted heavy metal from his room. The song: "Drink of Death".

Given the propensity of wizarding children to take after their namesakes, she knew they should have named him something different. Silencius, maybe.

If she caught him playing subversive, Neo-Nazi Death Eater rock one more time, that kid was grounded for life and spending some quality time cleaning after Abraxan horses with ‘Uncle’ Hagrid. That much dung had to subdue even Sirius Potter.

The door opened, and Lily stopped herself automatically, though Elspeth continued colouring. Since that fateful Samhain, they'd had one raid. Its consequence? Early labour. It was a wonder Elspeth survived at six months, though wizarding doctors could work miracles. Since then, she never ran for the door, always tensed a little, testing her charms.

It was James though, they informed her—James, and someone the wards recognized, though they weren’t as permeable to the newcomer as they’d be to the rest of the family.

She looked down the stairs to the foyer, and caught a first glimpse of her son.

Much like James, her eyes—though they had that certain shiftiness ‘Uncle’ Severus possessed—knobby joints, a lean famished look to him that contrasted sharply with the rest of her brood—oh, someone was going to be tall in the family, finally—a tiny snake curled at his neck, and a sacket of books in his hand.

He glanced up at her, and strangely, she reflexively didn’t run to him as James did. She ran her eyes over him, he did the same to her, and finally, he ascended the stairs.

"So." He said this matter of factly. "You’re my mother."

"Supper’s on the table," she announced, turning away.

He took this in stride and followed her to appropriate Sirius’ place at the table, when Elspeth froze.

"Who are you?" she glared at him.

Harry grinned cheekily. "Question for a question. Who are you?"

Elspeth shook her head. "You first."

"Hadrian James Potter. Your brother. Pleased to meetcha."

Elspeth would have responded to this overture by kicking the ‘imposter’ in the balls, except for the fact that he’d already earnt the trust of her parents, who couldn’t be relied upon to understand when she was acting in their defense. So, she said nothing, and kept colouring.

"What’s that?" Harry asked ignorantly.

Elspeth ignored him.

"Oh, fine," Harry responded, giving up.

"Sirius! We’re about to eat!"

A curly-headed boy with black hair and big brown eyes thumped down the stairs, dressed Muggle ghetto style—a look common enough in new punk bands— complete with jeans that sagged to his knees, a wife-beater and chainlink necklace. He slumped to the chair set up beside Harry, who’d already begun to munch, and said nothing.

"Sirius, this is your new brother."

"Yo."

"Hi," Harry managed in between mouthfuls.

"Harry, you’ll be getting the spare room," James began. "Lily will be tutoring you to make sure you’re ready for Hogwarts, and—"

Harry, as bored with these preliminaries as the readers assuredly are, continued to mow down his casserole and flick fire from his fingers under the table. The snake, dubbed Silver, slipped down his sleeve and onto the dinner table. Only James seemed perturbed, but he almost ignored it until Elspeth started hissing at it.

"Elspeth—"

"What?"

"We’ve been over this before. No parseltongue in public or while we’re eating."

"Oh, give her a break James," Lily chided him. "It’s one thing to be hissing curses in another language at your parents, it’s quite another to carry on a conversation." She turned from James who had begun to mumble something about his crazy grandfather to Harry. "Are you a Parselmouth?"

Harry swallowed. "Yeah." And kept on eating.

mmmmmmmmmm

The Order’s little secret.

The wife of First General James Potter—their golden leader, second only to the Wizards of Hogwarts—was a Dark Witch.

Yes, Muggleborns turned out Dark Witches, but far less regularly than the old families due to Ministry regulated education that nipped any use of Blood magic in the bud before they chanced to explore it. Illegal experimentation. Covens. Animal sacrifice. Necromancy. Thaumaturgy. Anything sketchy was safely out of bounds.

But of course, a few enterprising Muggleborns learnt anyways. Severus Snape and Lily Evans as a case in point.

Lily Evans was like Severus Snape, in between the safely defined systems and in many ways, outcast from them. The Ministry, despite its positive stance on the Integration Issue, would never accept someone with her skills. And the WIP would never accept someone with her bloodlines. Even the Order, while liking and respected her, treated her with a measure of caution.The only people who would accept her for herself were her husband, and Severus.

Because she and Severus were on their own side, really. And what her old friend would not tell the Order, he would tell her.

So, he found her at midnight, leaning on the fencepost at the corner of her little yard in Hogsmeade, the place they’d moved after Godric’s Hollow. Even Potter could figure there was some security to be had in numbers. But now, the main street was silent save for his footsteps, and the muted breathing of the witch.

She watched him come like a cat, one slim leg bent up against the post, the second taut below her Muggle jeans. The cloak concealed the paunch that had come to her belly and chest after three pregnancies, but the exposed face remained angular—its lines drawn more harshly from ten years tension. Her hair curled fire by the lamplight.

She didn’t move, not even when he took her hand, silent, still silent, and set his lips reverently to her chapped fingers, the scratched wedding band, the thin silver loop spun round her thumb.

He set down her hand with a reverence long since distracted to respect, and waited upon her.

She arched her shoulders, tilted her head, eyes languorous, dreamy. She knew how to display herself, after all, though such games had been forever beyond their intimate friendship. Perhaps, he wondered, with a sting of old jealousy, she’s cooling down from an evening with Potter. His envy faded with the tension easing from the woman’s shoulders, and she spoke.

"So," she half-smiled, voice arch, setting her fingertips to Severus’ clavicle. "What has Severus to say to me tonight?"

His face remained dispassionate. "The same thing I would say to you every night."

She laughed with a violence only subdued by the hour, and crushed him to her, crying, laughing, at his neck. His hands didn’t move from her shoulderblades—though they’d long memorized her heartbeat, the slight tug of muscles, the sound of breath and gurgle at her belly. She held him tightly, until he thought he must throw her away from him, and spoke, unexpectedly. "Are you encouraging me to start an affair?" she chuffed into his throat.

"I wasn’t aware encouragement was necessary."

She laughed, and released him. His face remained composed, though she must know she unsettled him. Or did she? He used to think her innocuous, this witch, of her effect on him—that her blase comments were girlish teasings, the bywords of some teenage argot he’d never been privy to. Since boyhood, since initiation into the Death Eaters, offers from their sluts and sly flirtations of their Mudblood mistresses, he’d wondered. Lily Potter offered no clues, only more questions.

He often wondered how as straight-forward a man as Potter was happily wed to the witch. He’d come by for dinner often after 1984, and not always at Lily’s sole request. Without Black and Pettigrew, and following Lupin’s incarceration on manslaughter charges the following year, Potter was a man adrift. He threw himself into his work. Severus had spent hours—useful hours, no less—strategizing with Potter, duelling, studying. Lily, content to parody an old-fashioned domesticity, had watched, cooking stew with Elspeth on her hip, content to smoke a cocky victor with a well-placed Stinging Hex when he wasn’t looking.

Really, she didn’t act this way with James. She was almost... mundane with him. Normal.

And somehow, Severus preferred her this way. Maybe she knew. She squeezed his hand, they interlocked arms, and the two swished their way along the street, casting a quick Muffliato against eavesdroppers.

"So," Lily demanded of him as they neared the outskirts of the village. "About my boy."

Severus groaned. "Your son."

"Of course, my son, your godson, my boy. A parselmouth, like Elspeth—though that’s a welcome and not unexpected surprise. But my wards almost rattled off when he came in, the way they strain when you enter the door. He’s marked in some way by Voldemort."

"First," Severus began, "let me express my sincere admiration that you can even detect Voldemort’s traces, as this seems beyond the powers of the Ministry and most of the Order—"

A snicker teased from her lips, low and throaty. "Ha! The Ministry refuses to use blood magic and most of the young riffraff of the Order don’t have time for delicate work—and are likewise squeamish with blood magic. I used the blood off the dagger James knifed him with in ’79. Most of it was taken as a sample to the DOM, but Dumbledore provided him with a couple drops to use in thaumaturgy, and James nicked me a small vial for a rainy day. The security system’s rigged in that ugly teapot Petunia gave me for my wedding."

Severus nodded, pleased. "I would be honoured if you’d allow me to look over your notes for those spells. I’ve been behind on my anthropomancy for the past few months."

"Raids?" she enquired, anxiously.

He shrugged, unwilling to divulge an answer. They slipped into a trail that went through a woodlot. "Back to Harry," she pressed.

"He’s his father’s son," he responded without hesitation. "Resourceful, quick-witted and utterly lacking in respect for his own welfare or that of others."

She giggled at little at this—an odd response in a mature woman, for the Wizarding World, but for not the first time, Severus thanked the Muggles for their obsession with youth. With her vitality, Lily could be eternally seventeen—and forget the traditionally staid, solid matrons of the Potter clan.

"What else?"

"An adept with wandless magic, though like most children, he’s oriented to only one spell—the ever predictable incendio. Nearly burnt my hair off," he said, glancing accusingly at his companion.

"Severus, that was only one time. Surely you won’t hold it against me for—"

"Never." He gave a thin-lipped smile. "All the misdemeanors of my students make your childhood sin seem like sainthood."

"Then I’ll pray my adult offences black out that small failure."

"Woman, the Weasley children will outmatch anything you do, and if you don’t agree—"

"I’ve watched the children for Molly. Once." She said this quickly. "Consider yourself to have won the argument. So, why did Harry tick off the wards? I need all my energy for work, and I can’t very well haul him in for the Aural Medical Scanner if it’s something like the Mark."

"Similar, I think. It’s rooted in his scar, but you’ll be able to pass that off as residue from the curse Voldemort was supposed to have hit him with. In reality... you recall that Horcrux Professor Dumbledore was searching for."

"My God." She stopped mistride, setting her hand against the nearby bole of an elm to steady her, turning to him. "You don’t mean—"

"Worse. He used a medieval binding spell on him, an adoption spell—actually a precursor to the one they use for therapy on genetic diseases. The Bastard’s Spell."

Lily sucked in a breath, and he could see her running to conclusions. "Dumbledore plans to kill him."

"Of course. Voldemort expects it, and though he hopes your son will survive to become a Dark Wizard, at the very least, he’s prepared to use him as a tool for forging an expose on Dumbledore. I’ve been detailed by both Voldemort and Dumbledore to track his movements. Voldemort would prefer I protected him, but at the very least," his lip curled, "I’m to find and source any assassins, successful or otherwise. Dumbledore can’t attack an innocent boy openly—mentioning the horcruxes would start a world-wide panic that neither side wants--in any case, your repute and James’ would prevent the people from calling out for his blood."

"James," Lily’s eyes disfocused. "Is Harry at risk from him?"

Severus held out his hands. "You can only be the judge of that. James has been informed that there is a risk surrounding his son, that his son is tainted and possesses a Black Aura—one of the strongest Dumbledore has seen since Voldemort."

Lily looked down, pensive. "The Black Aura wouldn’t make a difference to James—not since Sirius had it, not since he found out about my magic and started turning a blind eye to it. The Bastard’s Spell wouldn’t make a difference either—the boy’s still his, and even if he wasn’t, he’s discussed adopting a war orphan from that conflict between the indigeonous Australian shamans and the urban wizards. The horcrux is another matter entirely. What happens when you insert an adult soul in a child?"

"Dumbledore believes the fragment to have been active—despite his odd former supposition that Voldemort was too injured after raiding Godric’s Hollow to recall the Horcrux or influence Harry."

Lily pursed her lips. "Yes. Injured. You know, that would explain the anonymous note I received five years back in Bellatrix’s handwriting, thanking me for those Love Potions I enhanced with Muggle aphrodiasiacs. Continue."

"I have little doubt that if he’d allow Harry to live and fulfill that sham prophecy if he thought that fragment was dormant, or if he believed Voldemort was unaware of having made a horcrux. Given that it was active, and Voldemort obviously knew what he was doing?" Severus spread his hands. "Voldemort’s rise to power was too unexpected. Dumbledore blames himself for not having seen past the lies. He considers Harry to be no better than a vessel for Voldemort, a kind of inferior copy. If I suggest otherwise, he’ll probably consider me to have been taken in by him, like so many wizards before. And I can’t simply do aural scans to prove the boy’s light. Even if I believed in auras determining a person’s character, which I decidedly do not, the boy’s aura should be almost a dead match for Voldemort’s in terms of magical potential."

Lily flowed down the path, her black slippers dew-damp and dusty from the trail. "You’ve told me what Dumbledore thinks. Tell me what you think. Is my boy just a horcrux?"

"I doubt it," Severus responded bluntly. "There’s no historical record for this, of course, but if the soul’s active after entering the recipient’s consciousness, I think there’s only danger for adult recipients. An adult would polarize himself into an original self and the new entity and suffer from disorders similar to MPD. But a child? An infant doesn’t have a strong sense of self. I doubt he, or an entity disoriented from fracture, could distinguish themselves apart as easily."

They’d gained the meadow, and sat down on their favourite rocks, Severus weaving a clover wreath with his long dextrous fingers, Lily picking at grass in agitation.

"So they simply bonded? What if they dissociate?"

"Lily, Lily. Please, attempt to forget all the rubbish Occidental psychology, ruled by outdated philosophers and Muggle pharmaceutical companies, has taught you. Souls are not stable, predetermined entities, and they don’t get stuck to eachother like two billard balls hashed by an imcompetent pool shark. They’re continuously in flux, build on themselves as one thought responds to another, one motive competes with the next. The entity would have brought its own memories and will. So what? If it were stupid—and Voldemort is rarely stupid, though those rare times are a spectacle—it would have suppressed its host and taken over the body. A dormant fragment can fully dominate its receptacle, but a living one? Souls have great capacity for recharging themselves, but a fraction that size would be too unstable to recover without other resources."

Lily brushed back her hair obligingly as Severus crowned her with the clover wreath, and he flushed and glared, not at all menacingly, as she smiled primly and started weaving clover through his hair. It was a means for her to distract herself, he knew. He continued.

"It could go dormant, but the entity would continuously be pulling the host towards an active source in an instinctive attempt to regain enough sustenance to become active—which could also cause the host discomfort, possible mental disorders, and attract attention. Asides, if the source, Voldemort, was aware of the entity’s attempts to interact with it and rejoin—and if he didn’t want it—he could simply close himself off to it via occlumency."

"Which leaves...?" Lily left a braid hanging limp with white blossoms.

"What happens when you graft a raspberry onto a rose, or more appropriately—what happens when two dissolved compounds combine to crystallize? Depending on the molecular size of each crystal, their structures adapt to one another in any multitude of ways to form a new alloy. A rough analogy, but true. Dumbledore may know my views on the matter and disagree as he will, but he’s not another Voldemort by any means. The entity may or may not have given Harry Voldemort’s memories or predispositions. While Voldemort hoped to give him the latter, preventing such a fracture from being debilitating would have demanded such control that it’s impossible to predict exactly what skills the boy will have taken. A boost in power? Possibly, but more likely from the Bastard’s Spell. We’ll learn from how he acclimates himself to the Wizarding World in the years ahead, I suppose—but his future is largely unwritten." He regarded her levelly. "So. Will you allow him to live?"

Her eyes enveloped his, dilated as the midnight ringed above by treetops, and his long, sallow fingers quivered in his pockets. "Is that even a question?"

And Severus led her back, back to the white house with the wide deck, back to the screen door that snicked shut on her skinny hips and padded ribs. He watched her slip her cloak from her shoulders and saw her float up the stairs, and he knew she was going up to Sirius’ room to chew the kids out for staying up so late. He closed his eyes, and saw her breezing back downstairs to the master bedroom, where James slept soundly, hoarding the covers, assured that his wife was safe with Severus Snape, and wondered at the injustice of it all.

mmmmmmmmmm

In the first week, Harry learnt a couple things.

The Potter’s house rocked. He was expected to do a tenth of the chores forced on him at the Dursley’s, and he was allowed to use magic for them if he could manage it. Yet even though everyone else pitched in with chores, the house was always comfortably messy, a state that would have set Aunt Petunia at nerve’s end. Mom and Dad were rarely home and never seemed to care much about it. And even though they made a remarkable effort the first week to stay around for ‘family time’, they were always On-call for work. More than once, Sirius lobbed a lunch bag to the frantic First General as he raced out the door to apprehend violent demonstrators at the Ministry or disband a Dark Wizarding Gang. Lily was worse. Her talents stuck her with the intensive care patients, and she could go skidding off in the middle of the night to check up on a CF patient—or apparate to Order Headquarters to check on a case of poisoning with Alastor Moody from a vigilante raid.

Little supervision, lots of crazy things going on, easy-going parents. What more could a kid ask for?

Well, he had it. Sirius.

His brother was two years younger than him, but cool with anything. Ask the kid about music, and he’d sneak out with you one night to a nearby Muggle bar for some local rock. Never mind that the bouncer hauled them out by the ear to hand off to an indignant Lily Potter—who of course knew the moment they left from the wards, but was too busy at work to chase them down until then. Ask the kid about fireworks, he’d drag you to Zonko’s Joke Shop and be an admirable help in outwitting the anti-theft surveillance. Ask him about the black market, and he’d tell you straight—he had no clue—but a lot of stuff was confiscated from Knockturn Alley, and that, they promised each other, would be the first place they’d go soon as they could nick some Floo Powder.

And ask the kid to duel, and he’d be honest. He didn’t know any wandless magic, and he didn’t have a wand.

"C’mon," Harry nagged him. "They’ve got to have spare wands around here somewhere. Can’t you just nick Dad’s?"

"Freaking sick, dude! The old homie hasn’t got a wand, he hasn’t gotta ass at work," Sirius stressed. "No wand, and some dark wizard zaps him. Bye-bye, buds."

"Alright, so not Mom’s or Dad’s. You can’t be telling me that they don’t have spares though? Or like, whatever happened to your grandparent’s wands? It’s not as though they burn them at death or something?"

"It’s so like that, bro," Sirius told him in his nine-year-old attempt at gutter slang. "Kick the can and kiss the devil, they’ll bury you or burn you with your wand. There’s almost no market for second-hand wands. There’s a lot of mojo about the wand being part of your soul."

"That’s stupid. It’s just a tool, like a gun or something. So, the only old wands are six feet under. Right." Harry disappeared from Sirius’ room, and Sirius, with a brother’s uncanny intuition, could tell where this was going.

"Far out! Hold on, Harry—" Sirius banged into Harry’s room, his own knapsack already atop his back. "You aren’t going to—"

"Damn right I am!" Harry grinned, and Sirius felt himself grinning back by way of response.

"We’ll have to watch out for wards," Sirius warned unnecessarily, throwing some useful implements into his knapsack—mostly potions he’d cobbled together, or some that had come as useful birthday presents from Uncle Severus. Harry, who was only marginally taller than his brother, laughed recklessly at the chunkier boy. "Wards? Sure. Is there that much of a problem with graverobbers?"

Sirius was almost too interested to bother with his ghetto talk. "Right on, homie. Wizards can bury all sorts of arcane objects with them that you wouldn’t want a Death Eater getting a hold of."

"Magic lamps? Rings that make you disappear? Wands?"

"Sure," Sirius began, "my Dad actually caught a few recent escapees from the local jail once who were without wands and tried to scoop some from the cemetary—"

"Harry!" a beligerant Elspeth shrieked, hauling herself upstairs. "You’re not leaving anywhere."

"It’s alright, Elspeth," Harry smiled indulgently, while running through several expletives in his mind. "We’re not leaving anywhere."

The little girl with the cute brown curls narrowed her sweet little eyes in suspicion, a look not dissimilar to her Uncle Severus’. "No Jedi Mind tricks," she demanded. "Mommy said you aren’t going anywhere."

"Aww, Elspeth," Sirius groaned. They didn’t need to be caught again! Harry had lived at Swinetrail for all of four weeks, and already the two of them were grounded from television, movie outings and assigned kitchen duty for the remainder of Harry’s stay—a punishment Lily was initially hesitant to assign, given the nausea experienced by the whole family the last time Sirius did the cooking. With Harry in the house though, he’d swear Mom was almost delighted at their disobedience.

Heck, he’d break the rules 24/7 if it meant he’d never have to eat another tuna casserole.

But they were already on kitchen duty, and the next privilege to be rescinded was his CD set. And no one was touching his death metal!

"C’mon, kid. We’ll bring you back some Honeyduke’s candy," Harry wheedled. Elspeth considered this for a moment, and then shook her head.

"I want to come with you."

Shit. "Elspeth, it could be dangerous, and you can’t run away as quickly as we can."

"Running away wouldn’t matter if I had a wand. Then I could protect myself!" She looked at them stubbornly. "I won’t tell Mom or go with you if you bring me back a wand."

They glanced at each other helplessly.

"So..." Harry started. "A wand it is. Just, you can’t tell Mom about it after you get it, and you can only use it if you’re sure they’re not in the house, and if I’m around, okay?"

"Why just when you’re around?"

"So you don’t fry yourself, kid! Ever see those pics of magic gone wrong in that freaky ‘Ripley’s Believe-It-Or-Not’ book? Scary. Do you really want to look like that hag with her face half-melted off?"

Strangely enough, it took his sister half a moment to consider this, and then she shook her head. "Okay. Pinky-swear me that you’ll bring me back a wand."

Harry smiled a little, failing to see Sirius’ horrified expression behind his back as he pinky-swore his little sister, and swung his knapsack on. "Right-o, we’re off. Els, hand me Silver, will you? Sirius—"

Later, his brother mouthed.

Harry shrugged, and only when they were out the door did Sirius explain.

"You pinky-swore."

"So? Muggles do it all the time!"

"Muggles are, heck, muggles!"

"What’s the difference?" Harry asked, walking along to the graveyard. "It’s not as though she’ll bite my pinky off or do anything if we can’t get the wands for some reason."

"Harry, that’s EXACTLY what she’ll do."

Harry laughed, and then turned to meet Sirius’ grim expression. "You’re kidding me, right?" he pressed, as they turned onto the lane past the Shrieking Shack.

"Not a wit. It’s no urban myth or anything. Swearing’s serious among wizards. Backlash on breaking an oath depends on the kids who make it, but seriously—I’ve seen some kids lose their fingers for weeks after a pinky-swear, and you can damn well bet that Mom won’t turn a blind eye to that!"

Harry snorted, breaking off a half-ripe apple from a tree on the pathway, and biting into it—only to spit it out. "Eww, gross."

"They aren’t ripe until September around here. Haven’t you ever been in the country?"

"Naw. Give me a city sidewalk anyday. But really, it’s Elspeth we’re talking about. How much magical backlash could she give?"

Sirius shuddered.

"Your cute little Elspeth is the most freaking sadistic little witch in the beat. That kid, Tommy Hewitt down the road? Yeah. He crossed his heart and hoped to die after promising her a Valentine’s day card—didn’t add ‘stick a thousand needles in my eye," at least—and you know what happened, doncha? Unconscious for three days when he forgot. The muggle girls at her school? She clapped a "Peter, peter, pumpkin-eater on one." The next time the girl cheated, she turned orange and they had to get the Department for Reversal of Accidental Magic in. The kid’s a demon!"

Harry turned green.

"Oh. Well," he said brightly, despite his sudden discomfort. "We’d better get the kid a wand then." He paused. "Anything else about Els I should know?"

Sirius shrugged. "Nursery rhymes are deadly poison. Dad’s banned her from reading them. Since then, she’s been perusing the Latin-English dictionary since Mom won’t let her in a real spellbook until she’s nine."

"Alright. Run for the hills if you hear Humpty-Dumpty."

"We were falling off fences for a week after that."

Harry shuddered. Some talented sister.

They arrived at a graveyard pleasantly overgrown with brambles and pine, and Harry began to read over the headstones while Sirius dug through his sackel.

"You didn’t bring anything but a garden spade? The graves have to be at least six feet deep! I hope you know some kind of spell."

"No, actually, though that’d be useful. I figured we’d just break into the sexton’s closet," Harry indicated the tiny kirk at the centre of the yard. Sirius retrieved the lockpicks from the bag and vials of grease, and set to opening up the church while Harry looked for a likely grave. Though Sirius was nowhere near as skilled as Harry with locks, the lock on the church was old and rusty, and it took little effort to slip it open. A quick Alohomora with Harry’s wand—which had been generously shared between the two of them thus far—and the kirk was open.

Sirius dragged out the shovels to where his brother stood decided at a couple of graves, and then gawped a little at what he had chosen.

"Here lies Charles Elgin Potter and Philomela Potter, nee Black. 1864—1901, 1864—1943. Geesh. And I thought all our relatives were in Godric’s Hollow. Philomela Potter was a war hero."

"Well," Harry responded practically, "she won’t be needing her wand now, anyhow, and I bet you that the grave isn’t warded against family. Hand me that shovel, will ya?"

Years later, Sirius Potter would reflect that it made no sense how easily two eleven-year-old boys dug up coffins buried supposedly six feet under. It was about three feet of hard digging between the two of them before they hit the first, and less to reach the second.

Harry nodded at the large maple overgrowing the tombstones. "The roots on this thing must have pushed the coffins up. Odd though, wood’s not even rotted."

"Preservation charms," Sirius announced glibly, trying to ignore the crawling sensation at the pit of his stomach. Let’s hurry up and open these things."

"Right-o," Harry said, all bravado as he received his wand back from Sirius, and stowed it in his jeans. "So, muggle methods first—" he fumbled with the ancient leather buckles that had dried taut, and cracked one in his effort. "Aha! So one’s undone, now for the other—"

A sudden hiss from Silver at his wrist was his only warning. He withdrew his hand a scant second before spikes slashed out from the edges. Sirius swallowed.

"Umm hmm." Harry murmured, trying to keep his cool in front of his kid brother. "So, let’s go for the more traditional approach. Alohomora."

The coffin remained stubborned shut. Harry sighed.

"Get the tongs out from that shed, will you? And the pruning shears, if there is any?"

Sirius complied, running quickly as he could and completely disregarding Lily’s oft-emphasized warning that you DID NOT run with sharp objects.

"Here you go."

Harry opened the rusty shears and cut through the second and third buckles, wiping away a bead of sweat as he finished. "Not so bad. Now for the crowbar?"

"Check."

Harry took the proffered object, jammed it between lid and coffin, and started to apply pressure. A sensation like burning hit his hand, and he dropped the crowbar in shock. It fell sideways.

Sirius touched it before Harry could say otherwise.

It was cool.

"It’s an illusion," Sirius offered. Harry looked back at him with all the grim bravery of an eleven-year-old punk, and Sirius decided being tough and stupid was the in-thing. He set the crow-bar back in himself, and yanked.

"Oww, oww—oww," he moaned, clutching his hand as the lid popped off. The palm, of course, was unburnt.

"Ugh. You’ve got some guts, kid."

"Thanks." A little breathless, Sirius beamed at the approval nonetheless.

"So, what have we here..." they glanced in at the desiccated remains of what had no doubt once been a woman in a fancy velvet dress.

"Gross," they decided unanimously.

"There’s the wand."

"No way I’m touching that thing," Sirius told him.

"No need. Wingardium Leviosa."

The wand remained stuck.

"Alright, so maybe we need something else. Tongs?"

Sirius handed them off, and took up the crowbar to open Charles’ coffin, which lacked any buckles. He’d only set the point into the coffin when he heard Harry.

"Help! Quick!"

His eyes bulged. The skeleton had Harry’s hand locked in it’s own and was altogether violently dragging it towards its bared teeth, which ground in its mouth.

Sirius used a four-letter word Harry had taught him within a day of his residence at Swinetrail, and grabbed the hammer. With remarkable presence of mind for a nine-year-old, he bashed in the skull’s teeth first, before dodging its other hand and breaking the wrist. Harry reeled backwards, the hand still clamped into his wrist and digging into it now, and Sirius imagined the bones spearing his brother’s arm—

He tugged at them, but they held firm and pinched ever more firmly, until the yellowed ivory of each fingerbone was tipped in blood—

Abruptly, the hand fell loose, and Harry laughed, a little more from nerves than triumph this time. His other hand opened to reveal Philomela’s wand. He proferred it to his brother, who accepted it, trying to stop his hands from shaking as he did so.

"See? What’d I tell you? Nothing to it! There’s failsafes to make sure family don’t get injured. Probably works like Mom’s wards." He shucked off his shirt, and Sirius envied his cool scars almost as much as his sang froid. Wrapping it as a makeshift bandage about his arm, he grabbed the crowbar with the other hand. "Now for Elspeth’s wand."

Silver, who had become dislodged during the struggle with the hand, coiled about Sirius’ foot, and even though Sirius didn’t speak parseltongue, he had the strange intuition something was wrong. He scooped up the snake, and though Silver generally didn’t like him, the tiny serpent coiled tight to his wrist.

"Harry?"

"What?" Harry hissed, pumping open the coffin and trying to ignore the jarring vibrations shuddering up the crowbar’s length as he did so.

"I think we’ve got company," he whispered.

The yard had gone silent except for the popping up of the lid, the odd hiss as Harry, already bleeding, opened Charles’ coffin effortlessly. Sirius moved the snake to his neck before bending over to shove Philomela back to her last resting place. Silver clenched tight suddenly, and he ducked out of reflex, the high whistling of a spell streaked over his head and tore into the foliage.

"F***, down!" he yelled, dodging the next spell and jumping behind the tree.

"Not without the bloody wand," Harry argued, grabbing it—with the hand that wasn’t currently bleeding. Charle’s bony wrist caught hold of Harry, and squeezed.

"Frick—" Harry jumped backwards into the grave, a brilliant red spell crashing overhead and splintering the bole of a tree. "Rinse and repeat," he gritted his teeth, unwrapping the bandage to rub some blood against the bone. It loosened abruptly, and he raised the wand.

"Can you get your butt out of there?" demanded Sirius, throwing a quick incendio in the general direction of their attacker—which did nothing but set the dry summer foliage afire.

"F*** no. Too loose—give me a boost?"

"Hell—" Sirius saw a piece of the scenery moving, and automatically blasted incendio. A flash of red fabric tore apart from the trees before dissolving again into the background, and on sudden genius, he grabbed one of Philomela’s hands and, before it could grasp him, lobbed it at the attacker.

"Eat this, a**hole!" he cheered, picking up another, chucking it at the man. The hands tore at the guy’s invisibility cloak, raking open its camoflage to expose red robes. He flailed, his spell-casting erratic as Sirius pulled Harry out of the hole, almost slipping into it himself.

"Run," Sirius urged, as Harry stopped, an odd smile on his face as he saw the man tumbling, the hands grasping for his throat.

"And risk an opportunity like this?" He pointed Charles Potter’s wand. "Expelliarmus! Incendio"

The man’s wand came shooting obediently in their direction, and he began writhing and rolling to put out the flames. Sirius plucked it mid-air and wrinkled his nose in distaste. "Alright. Points for the overkill. Can we go?"

"No so fast—" Harry began, and then was interrupted by Silver’s hissing. "Change of plans. Run!"

They beat it the forest, Sirius so careless that his foot almost caught in the giant sundew, and didn’t quit running until they reached the laneway. Once there, they tried to look nonchalant and blend in with the rest of the street—normally not a simple task as they were the only people NOT running in the direction of the graveyard. Harry, using his shirt like a cheap muff, might have gotten a lot of strange looks. But under normal circumstances, everyone had the time to notice these anomalies. Today, they didn’t.

They snuck in the back door, locked themselves in the washroom, and used every antiseptic on hand and a few of Sirius’ homebrews to treat Harry’s wounds. The latter had the unpleasant aftereffect of making Harry throw up all over the washroom. Wisely, Sirius left this on the floor, fetched his long-sleeved flannel pajamas, and told his brother to go to bed for the evening. But before Harry shut the door, he had Sirius summon up Els to the bedside.

"This," he pronounced solemnly, "is for you." He gave her the wand, and she started jumping for joy, bouncing on the bed and giving him a big squishy hug, which prompted him to vomit again—this time, thankfully in the wastebasket.

"Now remember what I told you," he reminded her as sternly as one can with a mouth full of toothpaste and the aftertaste of vomit. "Only when Mom and Dad aren’t home. And only when I’m around."

"Sure..." she answered absent-mindedly, swishing the eleven inches of willow and unicorn’s tail absent-mindedly.

"Or I’ll bite off your pinky," Harry told her, fixing her eyes grimly.

She froze a little, and looked down, all too conveniently, in the direction of the wastebasket. There was blood there.

"Yes Harry," she squeaked, and skittered from the washroom.

Harry sighed. And after reminding Sirius to burn the trash, he went back to bed.

Barty Crouch laughed fit to bursting, caught his breath, and laughed again. Damn spunky, these kids. He’d almost intervened when the auror had come along, but the little brats had fried the guy almost effortlessly—and took a member of the Order out of the action for a while to boot! He’d like to prosecute the guy for attempting Hadrian’s life, but the boys had already framed him conveniently, and he hated to undo a job well done.

A short popping noise, and Barty Crouch was gone.

mmmmmmmmmm

That night, Dad clattered in more late than usual, and he heard his father slump against a chair. Mom rushed immediately to his side, and he could see her brushing back his father’s unruly black bangs.

"Oh, honey. What the heck happened to you?"

Dad said one terse word. "Whiskey."

The crystal clanked, and the chairs creaked, and they settled down, and Mom repeated the question. Dad groaned.

"Hell’s bells, Lily-heart. Do you ever hear the news, witch? It’s been over the radios all day. " He put up his feet. "Remember Timon Prewett?"

"The new member of the Order," Lily answered instantly, snapping her fingers. "One of your auror trainees, wasn’t he? Joined up right after Hogwarts. Not a bad chap, although a little too brash if you’d ask me. What about him?"

James’ voice raised in incredulity. "What about him? Lily-girl!"

"Well I’ve been working with the ER patients from that awful illegal dragon farm by Cambridge, not to mention the goblins who were torn apart by whatever was trying to break into Gringotts a few weeks back. And then Severus needed my input on some new wards he’s adapting for Spinner’s End. And then—"

"Oh, girl, will you ever change?" he muttered in exasperation. "Magical Law Enforcement caught Timon Prewett raiding the graves of Charles and Philomela Potter!"

"What a foolish thing for an auror to be caught at. What was he doing there? I thought he was on business for Dumbledore up in the Orkneys this week!"

"Apparently not. Foolish indeed—the man didn’t even know the simple counters to skeletal animations, even though they’ve been in the books now for thirty years. He’d been messing with the graves, obviously. They found him with Philomela’s hands wound about his throat and tools scattered all around the gravesite. The MLE has the area roped off to check for clues. Not as if it’s going to help them though. Whoever tipped them off must have told the rest of Hogsmeade too, ‘cause I swear the whole village tracked through everything—the grave, the coffins, we even had to tear a foot bone off some teenager with sticky fingers who tried to get at a toering. I swear, this has been the most humiliating day of my life."

"Do you think it was really Timon?"

"No idea. He claimed some teenagers were raiding the graves, and he caught them while visiting his cousins’ graves. Doesn’t explain though why the teenagers didn’t have those hands hung round their necks though. And scared teens don’t throw bones and set aurors on fire. They run like hell." Dad knocked back the liquor. "Pretty nasty teens if they were that. I’d say more like someone was after something, and Timon was in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"What could they possibly be after?"

"The only thing missing were the wands—Timon’s, and my great-grandparents’. They weren’t worth anything though—powerful wands, sure, but wands being so individualized, what teenager wouldn’t just buy his own? Even if he was strapped for funds! I don’t know one parent who wouldn’t provide his child with a wand if it was needed! Damn pity though—no wand, no evidence. We can’t verify what Tim was throwing at them. Heck though, I thought an auror of mine could handle a couple of kids anyday."

Harry had heard enough. He willed his arms to heal, and settled down to sleep.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

It was a short two weeks before the start of term. Harry and Sirius squared off with their wands at every available moment. Elspeth was altogether too eager to watch and offer advice, all which went unheeded. The Potter boys also started up a small business smuggling wizard booze out to the Muggles, for which they gained a few dollars to stuff away for sundry stuff. Sirius, in particular, was looking forward to using his share on a book of homemade explosives at the bookshop. Harry, less adept with potions and busy with the books he already owned, had nothing in particular to spend it on and hoarded it at the bottom of his chest.

Another useful source of income came from their burgeoning skill as team in break and enter and pickpocketing. Along with Bernie Montague, a rather rumpled little squib who had a knack for going unseen in a crowd, they could fleece a fair with admirable speed. Out of caution, they always avoided the red-robed Aurors or the Order’s Grey Cloaks, and usually avoided trouble this way.

Though they had one unfortunate incident.

A week after their grave-robbery came the Corn Festival, a fair held out near Ottery St. Catchpole. Dad and Mom considered this an excellent opportunity for family bonding and excited the kids with promises of cotton candy, chocolate frogs and pony rides for a whole week. Dad and Mom didn’t reckon that by the time a whole week passed, they’d have another job tacked onto their busy schedule. Dad and Mom screwed up.

Though Harry and Sirius could care less (they hoped to systematically rob every business in Hogsmeade, progressing from the easiest to the most difficult, and were avidly plotting a raid on the Hog’s Head), Elspeth was mad. Elspeth had a first class tantrum, and only her solemn promise to Harry NEVER to show the wand mitigated the damage. Though Sirius rarely had accidental magic, Els tended to blow up half the house in a rage. The nursery was in shambles by the end, and like any well-meaning but hapless parents, James and Lily rewarded her by promising to send her off with her brothers and Uncle Severus.

Mom, unfortunately, forgot to inform Uncle Severus—much to the boys’ delight. Their uncle might kick ass, but he was way more in the know than Mom would ever be and supervised them scrupulously when asked.

Perhaps his careful attention was merited given what he’d seen during his surveillance duty. Then, he did his best to quietly discourage the boys without allowing them to know he knew about their illicit activities. When they arrived at Hogwarts, his territory, he could intimate absolute knowledge of their whereabouts—as he did with other troublemakers—to persuade them to discontinue. Now? Let Harry even suspect he was being followed, and the brat would try to manoevre around his guard. The kid liked his privacy.

Although, the other Death Eaters on detail would probably enjoy the challenge...

Voldemort didn’t dare tell his followers that he’d essentially made himself an heir, since assassination from ambitious Dark wizards would assuredly follow. He’d told the truth solely to Severus and Barty. The others had a watered down version—Harry’s scar was a modified Dark Mark, Voldemort was quietly influencing the boy and they hoped to use him to eliminate the First General or at least generate some familial discord. Since the First General was universally hated amongst the Death Eaters, accordingly, this plan, and Harry, were universally loved. Headquarters at Little Hangleton had a board (in front of the cubicles as you entered the Nursery, or Department of Covert Operations) dedicated to Harry. Cheerful declarations of "Harry Potter defeats Voldemort!" and "First General’s Son, Found!’ featured prominently, along with the odd snapshots they’d managed to take while on-duty. These latter never stayed on the board long, however, as they were coveted as personal desk decor. Only after using a permanent sticking charm to his photos of Sirius, who had also become popular with the Death Eaters, did Severus quit losing his photos.

His lips had twisted wry to the memory of seeing Bellatrix pasting pictures of Elspeth Potter flicking sparks at her brothers. Ah, the irony... she who had started snarling at the birth of another Potter bitch to hunt down had turned almost an maternal eye on Elspeth’s knack for blackmail and began to wonder if she’d be available for apprenticing in a few years...

Given then, the kids’ sudden celebrity among the Death Eaters, to James’ shock Lily was quite unperturbed at allowing them off to the fairgrounds alone upon learning their uncle unavailable. Of course, Lily had been thoroughly informed of the situation in Little Hangleton, since Severus couldn’t enjoy the irony with anyone else. And while Lily herself had a rather touchy relationship with the Dark witches (attempting to kill each other while sharing love spells can strain the best of friendships), she saw no reason her children shouldn’t benefit from it.

After all, Bellatrix Lestrange was a respectable public figure, a competent through erstwhile defence instructor and a deft foreign negotiator, even if she did have that nasty habit of hunting muggles by nights. If it weren’t for her occasional stays in the Mental Health Ward of St. Mungo’s, she might have considered Elspeth’s apprenticeship more seriously...

So, she packed them off to the fair under the dubious care of unseen and unknown Death Eaters, with a few knuts each for fun, and told them to be back for supper.

Harry, who saw this as a wonderful opportunity for adding to their nest egg, figured they’d leave Elspeth with the ponies and try some pockets. Elspeth would have none of it.

Thankfully, Molly Weasley had come along. Upon their earnest explanation that they wanted to go to a Mugglesque patriotic slide show on the First War barred to children under seven, they’d left a fuming Elspeth behind. Molly, had of course seen them to the tent—but after wasting three knuts to admission, they made it back from pilfering a purse or two left unattended. Though there was one edgy instant where anti-theft teeth nearly bit off Sirius' fingers, Silver slipped into the sackel’s mouth and became a rigid silver ring. In retribution for the near miss, Sirius swiped half of what was in there before beckoning the snake back to his hand. The boys crawled out under tent flaps before the show ended, certain their marks hadn’t seen their faces in the dark, and decided to try the crowd.

They started a game of trying to up the ante every time they had a successful snatch. Start with the drunken boor coming from the cider shed, and move onto that fine witch with the pouch tucked inside her belt. They’d grabbed the pouch after jostling her in a crowd by the live theatre production of the Muggle classic "Sex in the City", and were currently eyeing up a middle-aged man with scruffy blond hair and a rather careless expression on his face. He didn’t really seem to know what he wanted to do, and was inspecting a brochere and glancing up every two seconds, as though waiting for someone.

Not a good mark, Harry could say that. He was too aware of what was going on and the people weren’t dense enough here. Still, if Sirius were game to try it...

"Tag, you’re it!" Sirius whooped, screaming as he ran away, Harry in pursuit. He turned his head back as he ran, as though not really sure where he was going... and ran smack into the man. He listened for the jingling of coin—there was something in the guy’s vest pocket. Frick. No way he was going to get at that. He signalled the location to Harry anyways, twice shaking his head right.

"Easy, boy—" the man started, and then hissed a word, drawing his wand and driving forwards, throwing Sirius sideways. Harry, bent on his mark and watching for Sirius’ signal, missed the knife that seemed to come from nowhere...

Their mark hit the knife, slapping it out of the way, and barked irately to the knifethrower.

"What the hell do you think you’re up to, Pringle?"

Harry, shielded for a moment by the man’s body, made to get up, his hands brushing into the half-open shirt. His hands felt metal and tugged something loose a moment before the man stood to face the knifethrower, incensed as a teased rottweiler.

"Sorry about that, Barty," the knifethrower said, a little abashed. "Bit of a mistake, you know. Showing off my hobby to all these fine young gents and gels, and—"

"Tried to make it clear how in practice you were by skinning the eyes off this kid, eh?" He put Harry forward, glaring at the man, and then looked at Harry, eyes piercing. The kid did the smart thing and slipped back behind the guy.

"Well, it wasn’t exactly intentional or anything like that—"

"Pringle," Barty cut the man off. "I’ve known you for, what, since fifth form? And since then, how many times have you accidentally hit the wrong thing?"

The man stayed silent, his playful demeanor gone watchful.

"Once." Barty answered for him. "When you were using that idiot Fielder for a dummy and thought’d be fun to lop off his balls."

Harry turned green as Barty went forward to seize the man by the neck collar. Though shorter than the other guy, he was built square and strong.

"You’re going to go with me to the Ministry, and you’re going to explain why you were practicing here today without a license."

"But Barty, that’s a minor fine—is there any reason, really—"

"Or you can get taken in for reckless use of ritual weapons—those daggers are 10 carat silver, are they not—"

The man straightened, and suddenly looked dangerous.

"Do that," he growled, "and I’ll show all of them exactly what’s on your left arm," he whispered—too low for anyone to hear, except for the little snake thoughtfully lisping verbatim into Harry’s ear.

Barty let go of the man, smiling unpleasantly.

"You wouldn’t do that, because then we’d have to act openly," he murmured, "and there’s just as many who’d side with WIP as with the Ministry and Order."

"Might as well be open," the man muttered, more loudly now. "Everyone knows what you are."

The onlookers had started to whisper amongst themselves, and Harry awaited with interest the rest of the conversation, when he was aware of someone approaching. He turned to find Molly Weasley, accompanied by her red-haired children.

"There you are!" she began triumphantly. "I’ve been looking all over for you, I thought I told you to find us girls over at the ponies right after the show was done—oh, by the way, children, this is Harry and Sirius—"

"Hi," the boys responded weakly.

"—boys, this is Ginny, Ron, Fred—George? George??? Good heavens, where have those boys—"

A fireball from the swordswallower’s display derailed this train of thought as she glanced to see the twins spit salamanders to the crowd’s accolades. Barty, observing the boys closely shepherded by that arch-fiend Weasley witch, gave them no more thought as he squared off with the young Phoenix, before disapparating to Headquarters.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

"... And I swear those boys have a death wish," Barty finished to the applause of his cronies, who topped up his shotglass. "Honest, though, I wouldn’t have interfered if it hadn’t have definitely been a lethal strike," he muttered, examining the vodka in the lamplight. "A little more caution would do the idiots some good. Never thought Dumbledore would try three strikes in a month—good show, by the way Amycus, on getting that poisoned letter that we were supposed to have sent—"

Amycus Carrow grinned his thanks.

"Still, they did well for themselves today! Can’t believe how negligent that Lily is though—given all the trouble they get up to, surely she must want to keep a better eye on them..."

"She knows what we’re up to," Elias Pince responded, tipping back a glass. "Severus can’t keep his mouth shut around her. But who’s she going to tell anyways? She’d die for those kids, and she’s dark anyways. Really, someone’s been letting slip with recruitment."

"We’ve been over that. No Mudbloods, ‘cept for pleasure," grumbled Yatesley.

"Which is why your Mudblood goes to bed and Muggle-baiting with you."

"She’s dedicated," Yatesley swigged back another shot. "Predictable. Not like the Potter witch."

"We’re getting aside. We can’t keep as good an eye on the kid in Hogwarts. Severus says the old wards in the castle minimize damage to the brats, but how many times have we caught them sneaking out this summer? Harry will get into the Forbidden Forest, mark me, and it’d be way too easy for Dumbledore to set a centaur on him. We need someone to track him while he’s in school—"

"Which is where I come in," came a tired voice. "No. Absolutely not."

"Regulus, you knew you’d be required to make certain compromises when you joined. Consider this one of those compromises."

"I can’t—"

"Sure you can."

"I can’t show my face."

"Who said anything about your face? You’re an animagus, aren’t you?"

Regulus squirmed uncomfortably. "Only under pressure. What if I have to change back in a hurry?"

"So we tell Severus you’re around, and he’ll change you back when necessary."

Regulus, who had only become accustomed with his animagus form when his older brother decided to victimize him, was noticeably less than happy with this. Sure, he could keep his cool as a cat. Which couldn’t be said of Severus, who made a nasty shrike, or Yatesley, the lascivious monkey, both changed as a punishment during the past few decades. But transforming back and forth was entirely beyond him! Asides, what about...

"McGonagall?" he offered as a weak excuse.

"McGonagall won’t even see you. You’ll be in the dorms, mostly. Now," Barty put his hand to his vest, "I need to give Lord Voldemort back the key to the Order’s vault so that Quirrell can slip it back into Dumbledore’s office before its absence is noticed..."

He felt for it. A conspicuous absence.

And recalled sheltering Harry against the wizards.

"Damn it!"

And they all drank another round to sneaky young wizards, while Barty tried to figure out how to ask Severus to retrieve the key for vault 913 and avoid becoming the laughingstock of his department.

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Harry stood at the platform with Sirius. Both boys were slouching and scowling a la Uncle Snape.

Why were they doing this?

Because for some reason the Venerable, Aged Author does not deign to understand, teens think this is cool. So do stressed academics, avid fans of Silverstein and old men who have read one too many detective stories. What this says about the mental age of these subgroups of the population is something the V.A.A. will not conjecture.

They also had another reason though. Summer term was over, and they both had to go back to school. While Harry was kind of excited about going to Wizarding School, he wasn’t that thrilled about getting more equations jammed into his head. And he was even less happy about leaving Sirius. The kid had potential. Sort of.

While Sirius couldn’t light a fire wandlessly like Harry, and had never smashed up a room pulling a tantrum like Elspeth, he had guts. If Harry swiped a suger quill under the clerk’s nose, Sirius would try to snick a sickle from the till. If Harry lit him on fire during a duel (out in the Forbidden Forest, while Alecto Carrow hung in a tree vaping mosquitoes with her wand), Sirius would work for hours at ‘Aguamente’. If Harry stole Dad’s broomstick and snuck out at midnight, Sirius was right behind him.

What resulted from the friendly competition was for the first time in his life, Harry wasn’t slacking and Sirius was doing more than listening to emo rock. Lily and James, only seeing their younger son increasingly ‘studious’ (a byword used when children are hiding in their room, making no noise, and no mess is to be seen afterwards, regardless of what they were actually doing), decided Harry was a good influence. In consequence, they increased curfew to 9:00 PM (a needless gesture, since they snuck out the window

on a nightly basis), and told the boys to enjoy themselves.

All this freedom to be exchanged for the dubious joys of a boarding school known for its strict adherence to academic excellence (trans. no free time) and large faculty (maximal supervision).

Still, Harry gave a gloomy goodbye to Sirius and boarded the train with the Weasley boys. They were alright, but all they could talk about was the stupid war. I mean, Harry was as interested in Grey Cloaks and Death Eaters as the next kid, but he’d heard enough of it during attempts to eavesdrop on his parents. These were always aborted, more due to boredom than necessity.

And, since there are many people who haven’t read Harry Potter on this site, I have to tell you that they passed an unremarkable train ride, although Harry did punch out some blond prat who’d called his mother a slutty nightshade. From Sirius’ debriefings, he knew this meant a ‘prurient healer of dubious magical affinities and skills’. He’d gotten the definition from some old book he’d ‘borrowed’ from Dad’s school stuff. This encouraged them as to Hogwarts’ educational agenda, though he was displeased the words had been applied to his sweet, oblivious Mom.

Upon reaching the school, Harry disembarked and attempted to sneak off to his room as to beat the crowds, before a giant of a man caught him and pronounced him Hadrian Potter. Anonymity removed, Harry stared back expressionlessly at anyone who gaped. Pity he didn’t have eyes in the back of his head.

And then, the endless Sorting. Really, why wasn’t his last name Abercrombie so that he could just go to the tables and sit down after a whole day of walking. He was on the point of sitting on the ground when his name was called.

"Potter, Hadrian."

"Hufflepuff!"

He took the hat off, slouched to his table next to a shy, smiling girl, and proceeded to eat his meal in silence.

The responses to this news in the following days may be predicted by the reader:

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"He’s in Hufflepuff?" James started, looking at the letter Harry had written. Sirius shrugged, refusing to lose his cool, just like his Uncle Severus. Like, whatever. You had to go somewhere, right? And unfortunately, that somewhere was twelve miles of carnivorous trees between home and Hogwarts.

"Your mother was in Hufflepuff," Lily commented mildly, looking up from her knitting. She’d heard the news and immediately approved it, indulging a rare spurt of domesticity. Though James had bought wool in Gryfinndor colours in false anticipation, she had plenty of black on hand to work with the gold. Which left the problem of what to do with the red. Though James favoured the colour from a juvenile House loyalty, wearing scarlet was like painting a target sign on your forehead. Having no idea why they retained that shade for the regular aurors, she burnt all James’ red the day he achieved Grey Cloak.

"I fail to comprehend why his Sorting matters at all," Severus interjected drily, privately a little miffed that the Hat shuffled the boy to Hufflepuff. It would be just that much more difficult to keep an eye on the kid. He’d walk all over Pomona Sprout. The motherly old witch wouldn’t even notice.

But really, maybe he should be thankful. The Hufflepuffs were uniformly so good-natured and rule-abiding, maybe they’d be a good influence on Harry, induce him to "Save the Giant Land Crab", "Stop Ogrecide", and—

Yeah. Like that’d ever happen.

Well, at least the Ravenclaw-Hufflepuff classes wouldn’t be as uniformly boring as usual.

Returning to matters at hand though, James was indignant at his nonchalence. "Why sorting matters? He’ll meet all his friends for the next, I don’t know how many years in there..."

Severus tuned this out. He’d already heard various interpretations of Harry’s Sorting, ranging from Albus’ essential "He TRICKED the hat—OMG, it’s Voldemort’s Mini-Me! Where’s my assassins?" to Voldemort’s "Excellent. He tricked the hat. Carry on as before," to Minerva’s joking "YOU tricked the hat so that he wouldn’t be in my house!" Honestly, he didn’t understand what the big deal was. Except, maybe that Harry’d be in considerably nicer living quarters than the Slytherin dungeons. Hufflepuff House was on the south side of campus and unusually sunny. The dungeons, despite all of Severus’ attempts to refurbish them with UV lights to prevent SAD and other consequences of living underground, remained unpleasant. He’d been campaigning for his 17 years as professor for a change in location, but to no avail. The old purebloods would not have it.

He mentally penned a note of congratulations to Harry on his excellent location, and started figuring out how he’d phrase his next request to move Slytherin House. Perhaps a flood in the dungeons was in order...

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Hogwarts sucked.

Granted, Harry hadn’t expected boarding school to be as great as Swinetrail, but he’d hoped for better. But his first month had been nothing but detention after detention.

Professor Sprout, despite the facade of charming obliviousness she displayed before the other professors, was more student-savvy than she seemed. No sooner did he arrive in the Common Room than she whisked out of her bedroom, ample figure stuffed into a fuzzy bathrobe, and whapped him upside the head with a scroll containing his schedule and list of detentions to date.

He couldn’t seem to avoid the profs. They were everywhere. No sooner had he beaned this overgrown gorilla of a boy for taking a swipe at him than Uncle Severus had taken them both aside for detention. Whenever he thought he’d finally get a chance to practice some magic not taught in classes—reading through medieval lore on the Wickerman spell, for instance, a rather nasty-looking offensive fire that burnt only human flesh, or teasing lightning between his fingers for ‘Fulminatio’—Dumbledore would come in to politely interfere, or he’d be dodging Sprout again.

Even with Sprout residing in Hufflepuff House—something apparently none of the other Heads did—he’d expected some privacy in his room for ‘independent studies’.

He hadn’t expected Ernie MacMillan, Alan Devries and Justin Finch-Fletchley.

The other Hufflepuff boys were insufferable. Ernie called the prefect on him for just staying up past lights out the first night, when he knew for a fact Ron Weasley had been up half the night with the Gryfinndor guys. Chumming with Weasley was made more difficult since they were in different houses, and the Hufflepuffs had way less classes with the Gryfinndors. The Ravenclaws he usually paired with were too busy for any fun.

He was bored out of his freaking wits.

The only bright point had been Defense against the Dark Arts. Quirrell allowed him to stay after class and, with a patience unusual even in a prof, tutored him through some more advanced techniques. He had a natural gift for curses, Quirrell said. His office, and the defense classroom, were always open to Harry, and here, at least, no one interfered.

Here, he was busily looking up escape techniques when he was interrupted—

"Huilei muler!"

"Expelliarmus—"

He turned into the hallway, ducking back into classroom to dodge a spell, and then nearly was turned over by a girl hustling into him. Another hex followed on her heels, and Harry didn’t bite back the curse that came to his lips as he slammed the door in the faces of these unexpected assailants. He hissed a few locking spells on the door, knocked on it approvingly, and then turned to the girl, who was hyperventilating by the walrus skeleton.

"Beg pardon," he said, half-bowing and taking the girl’s hand to kiss. Good thing she was too stunned to react, or she might have slapped him out of his chivalry from some feminist reflex. "I am afraid I haven’t had the pleasure of your acquaintance as of yet, for I feel certain I would have recalled so lovely a face as your own."

The girl, whose face, a very unlovely blotchy shade of pink, began to fester over with zits from a hex, burst into tears. The stupid black cat that Harry couldn’t seem to get rid of came to her heels and started purring. She methodically picked it up and began to stroke it, crying all the while, while Harry helped her into a chair.

"So, tell me. What’s wrong with you?"

She kept crying, and Harry, bewildered at all men are at this response, figured persistance was key.

"No, really, I want to help. Were those guys trying to jump you or what?"

More sobs.

Frick.

He removed her wand from her listless hand, and tried a Priori Incantatem. Nice to finally have an oppotunity for that spell, anyways. He glanced over the smoke dispelling from her wand, and whistled approvingly. She stopped sobbing, and looked with interest.

"Priori incantatem."

"Yeah. Wow. You know some awesome spells."

"Sort of," she sniffed. "But it didn’t help. They hit me with more than I hit them with."

"Sure..." Harry started, dubiously, before glancing at her saggy chest. "Oh f***."

"Yeah," she laughed, a little too upset to do anything else. "You could say that."

"That’s, like, dirty though. Almost dark. They could totally get smoked for that. Who was it? Malfoy and his ponces?"

"Yeah," she hiccomphed, "he’s been after me these past couple of months..."

She briefly summarized her past month at Hogwarts. Little wonder Harry hadn’t met her before. Mione Granger was a studybug, spent all her time in the library and didn’t come out except to eat or sleep. From what he could figure, reading between the lines, she’d started out as a prude, alienated all her fellow Gryfinndors—to the point where even laid-back Ron was fed up with her—and attracted the malice of the Slytherins.

A Gryfinndor Mudblood was an easy target.

A certain amount of suspicion surrounded any newcomers to the Wizarding World. When you were an insular society, and everyone knew everyone’s cousin, that happened. However progressive families like the Weasleys were, Mudbloods would just seem out of the loop, or weird, or awkward to begin with. Being in an ostensibly ‘progressive’ house didn’t make matters better, because with their ‘accepting’ attitude, they failed to see how pressing it was to teach Muggleborns about a culture that had barely changed, in essence, since feudal times.

So, she’d tick off Draco Malfoy by telling Quirrell about him lighting Parvati Patil’s hair on fire, and then ask why all of Slytherin House was on her back. Gods, woman, you didn’t just insult the son of head of WIP, leading candidate for Minister of Magic Lucius Malfoy unless you were really looking for a fight.

Which Harry always was. But he was the son of First General Potter, and that made him almost Malfoy’s equal in the boys’ eyes. He’d been squabbling good-naturedly with the Slytherins since first week, and they shared a sense of mutual respect—with the notable except of Malfoy.

Mione didn’t have the credentials, the looks or the social sense to get her through the boarding school. But from the looks of those spells, she had the brains, and could get down and dirty if need be.

"Why don’t we just go see Madam Pomfrey, and she’ll fix you up?" he said gently, handing her a handkerchief (filched from Filch’s office during detention and thoughtfully cleaned by the houseelves).

She sniffled. "She’ll ask questions."

"And you can just tell her that Malfoy’s been bothering you again, just like you’ve told her and every prof a million other times," Harry said, exasperated.

"But... this isn’t like other times..."

"Why not?" Her silence confirmed him as he pressed on, "Do you think they haven’t ever seen an Etiolation Hex before?"

She sniffed harder, staring at him. "You know about that?"

"Etiolation Hex," he recited dutifully. "A dated spell that depletes the magical resources or life force of a living being in order to feed itself. Similar symptoms to the Albanian flu or magical parasites like lampies. Originally created as a weedkiller, later used in the North African Wars in 1899 in conjunction with malaria to weaken enemy troups," he sat back on his chair, and put his feet on the desk almost gleefully. "Use on humans is outlawed in Great Britain and Australia. Penal sentences vary on the length of the curse’s placement. How long did you date that one for?"

Mione squirmed uncomfortably. "I was aiming for a few years," she admitted.

"Gosh," he said admiringly. "That could almost kill the bugger. Unless you did that funky little modification to the hex that allows you to siphon off power that would normally feed back into the spell structure?"

"There’s a modification?" she sat up with interest.

"Yeah. And I don’t know it. Etiolation hexes are like, fifth year work. How the heck did you figure it out?"

"Actually, the Slytherin Prefect showed me."

"Crap."

"She seemed really sympathetic."

"Mione, Camilla Barth is like, the most vicious b**** in the school. And she hates your guts."

"I didn’t—"

"Ah, heck," Harry started, losing patience. "Listen. We’ll get you to Pomfrey to get your chest fixed first of all. Then we’ve got to get that spell off Malfoy before they catch you."

"But I don’t know how to remove it."

"Damn it," Harry swore. And damn my Damsel-In-Distress syndrome. "Alright, Plan B. You get your butt off to Pomfrey, and don’t get fried on your way there. I’ll take care of Malfoy. Your wand’s clean anyways... I wiped the spells."

"Thanks."

"Don’t mention it."

"Is this your cat?"

"Nope. He only thinks he is."

"Can I take him with me?"

"Keep him," Harry waved her off, thinking rapidly of what he’d need to outwit Malfoy.

"What’s his name?"

"Tickles. Begone, witch."

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Now, Harry Potter didn’t have a damn clue how to work an Etiolation Hex, much less remove one—which was infallibly the more difficult half of the spell. And he was far less interested in advanced spell techniques than his disgruntled peers (who’d tired of removing his ‘Shut-the-hell-up’ spells on Ernie after the first week) would ever believe. Although he supposed Quirrell could be pressed into showing him how to modify the hexes, he supposed there was a quicker way.

"Camiillla?" he drawled, leaning against the cold stone of the corridor wall, awaiting the gaggle of Slytherin girls en route to Potions.

Camilla Barth barely stopped to glance at him as she shifted by, then did a double take. "Oh. My," she laughed, "it’s Potty-wee-Potter," she affected Peeves’ nickname, and Harry pretended not to notice. "My beaux are getting bittier by the day. Sorry, loverling, I’ve got a date tonight." She turned to move off, when Harry let drop from his palm a slender silver chain with three keys tinkling at the end. She turned, smiling, and then made a furious lunge for it. He dodged under her arm, towards the center of the hallway, and felt for his wand tucked in his sleeve.

"Not so fast, Cam."

"Give it here," she growled, stalking up on him to the tittering of her friends ("Someone’s getting feist-y!"—"Whoa, Cam, I knew you liked younger men, but isn’t this illegal?").

Harry smiled pleasantly. While Camilla didn’t appreciate this gesture now, she’d welcome an identical smile in the future as gracious forewarning of imminent catastrophe. But this was many years down the road, and for now, Camilla Barth was simply furious with the boy who’d dare to steal the keys to her diary, house and secret stash of liquor and sundry other articles.

"Now, Camilla," he began, fingering a small silver key. "I have a very interesting diary in my possession, with rather compromising information inside."

"You wouldn’t," she grit her teeth, eying him like a hawk on a snake.

"Because of all the lovely hexes on it? A charming challenge to take out. Yes, I would. I especially liked that section detailing how you and Branwell Higglebottom made out underneath the Great Table last full moon. Very romantic, though difficult to keep clean, given all the small beer spilt under Hagrid’s place—"

"Silencio—"

It had worked though, and Camilla Barth, baddest chick in school, was at a loss for words as he continued.

"—not to mention the time you and your girlfriends got a little horny after drinking, and decided to get off on each other in the caved in passageway—"

Her mouth worked furiously, and she seemed prepared to tackle him, but he wasn’t quite through.

"Or the time you stole Swishweed from Professor Snape’s closet to try to make yourself an invisibility cloak for getting into the forbidden fourth floor—"

She pointed her wand at herself, and Harry readied himself to dodge in case she pointed it at him. The fifth year finally managed to undo the Silencio—wordlessly, no less.

"I never wrote any of that, you liar!"

"Involuntary impressions," Harry said suavely, "left upon the pages. You’ve covered magical articles, haven’t you? You’re constantly leaking memories. Anyone with the right skill set could read anything you’ve touched."

She looked scornfully at him, a little uneasy now. "You’re not a Reader, kid. Hack off. There’s only been, like, two natural readers in all of history, and they were both mentally retarded. You aren’t stupid," and her eyes sneered over him, "or else I’m giving you more credit than you deserve."

Harry continued to smile pleasantly. Harry was enjoying himself. "Of course I’m not a Reader. What about that time when you tried to sneak into the guys’ showerrooms to get a glimpse of Snape—"

"Shut up, shut up," she glared, glancing balefully at her girlfriends, who had fallen silent. "Fine. Fine. I don’t know how the hell you got the hexes off my diary, but sure. I’ll do anything. Just give me back the key, and the diary."

"I’ll consider it," Harry said. "Just one little thing."

"Anything. And quick. I’m already late for class, Snape is going to kill me."

"I just need you to modify a little Etiolation Hex for me."

"Malfoy’s. Sure, whatever. What do you need?"

Harry smiled. Camilla listened, heart sinking hell-ward. Harry still smiled.

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The next day, a very sunny Wednesday, Harry slipped over to the Ravenclaw table at breakfast and triumphantly drew forth a bunch of dandelion and dill blooms from thin air for Miss Mione Granger. Mione, now partially recovered from her involuntary cosmetic enhancement, received them delightedly, and Harry sat himself primly at her side.

He managed to get her chatting about the info Pomfrey had fed her on mediwitches, and glanced attentively at the door.

Right on cue. They switched voices mid sentence. Harry barely saw the look of shock cross Mione Granger’s face, before the witch stormed from the table, drew her wand, and started blasting an equally angry Malfoy quicker than he could see. Bleary-eyed Trelawny, the sole prof in the hall, seemed too hungover from last night’s stargazing to notice the action. Harry grinned at Camilla Barth, who astonishingly enough, grinned right back at him.

Minerva McGonagall swooped in.

"Students? Fighting? For shame—"

She separated them in high dudgeon. The voice-switching spell, originally expected as a mere prank, became very difficult to remove when she recognized it as being powered by an Etiolation Hex deep-rooted in Mr. Malfoy. Such a hex, she lectured, although not fatal, would surely make him a squib in a year. Although neither of the first years could possibly be expected to know such advanced spellwork, she checked their wands anyways. Clean. She threatened detention, Malfoy threatened Hermione, and Mione, mostly unmoved, murmured something about how she’d heard Camilla Barth might know something about the removal of hexes.

McGonagall checked Barth’s wand.

Barth was stripped of prefect privileges and suspended until after Christmas.

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Harry, home at Lily’s request, told Sirius all about this.

Sirius was duly awed.

"You’re really a Reader though?"

"Hells no."

"Then how..."

"Bluffed my way through it. Everyone in the school knows about Branwell and Camilla making out—they just don’t mention it in front of them, since Camilla could vape anyone without a word. The other stuff?" Harry’s hand went to his snake affectionately, and she coiled about his hand, purring and undulating like a kitten. "Silver’s smart. She gets the gossip off the castle rats before she eats them. Probably knows more about what’s going on than the professors."

"Does she ever eat anyone else’s pets?"

Harry shrugged. "I think she’d eat Mione’s cat if he was big enough, and I’m pretty sure Ernie’s toad was a casualty, but when I told her not to eat any other pets, she quit."

"Wow." Sirius’ hand went to Silver, and she coiled about his hand automatically, and she purled about his fingers. "Wish I could speak Parseltongue."

Harry shrugged. "I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t. I mean, you can learn French, even if you aren’t a native speaker. And you’ve got more parselmouths on hand to practice with than most people meet in their lives."

"Yeah, but you’re never home, and Elspeth—"

"Elspeth wants to learn big evil magic, doesn’t she? Bribe her," Harry told him, and that was the end of that. Harry kicked back his heels and relaxed. Sirius, slightly less easy, started igniting fuzzy globes of dandelion seed with his wand.

"Did you even open Camilla’s diary?"

"Nope. Granger’s not the first one Camilla’s peeved. She’s been harassing a half blood in her house, Tracey Davies, since day one. I told Trace that Camilla had been fighting with her boyfriend over his possessiveness, and she’d probably break up with him if some personal article—say, her diary--was found in his possession. Oh, and that I’d personally guarantee at least a month free of Camilla if she helped. She’s thrilled with me now," Harry grinned. "Her mother’s related to the owner of Flourish and Blott’s. I’m privy to all their special offers and get an exclusive membership."

"Frick," Sirius was openly in awe now. "We might have to quit swiping from there."

"Of course. It’s not polite to do so to fellow halfbloods."

"Just one thing—Aren’t you afraid of Camilla figuring things out and coming after you when she gets back?"

Harry shrugged. "Life’s too short to worry, and Camilla’s too smart to not figure things out."

"So you’re screwed in three months."

"Essentially, yes. Hand over that book of defensive spells, will ya?"

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

‘Tickles’, out on a limb overhanging the two boys, nettled his fur irascibly before primly settling to clean under his armpits. He always retained a distinct smell of human B.O.—thanks to Sirius’ idea of a joke?—when he transformed, and as deodorant was quite difficult to apply in this form, he’d make do as he could. Normally, his mudblood mistress (his cat smile arched at the expression) would keep him shined and polished, but one, of course, could not expect any useful help from the boys.

Harry’s first two months had been dull. No attacks.

How splendidly boring. With due luck, perhaps he could live out the rest of the oncoming war as Tickles. No discussions of mass warfare. No Yatesley trying to peer pressure him into recreational magic mushrooms. No Muggle-baiting—ah, that was a pity, really. He’d hoped to get himself a bastard son by a Mudblood mistress, as Rodolphus and Yatesley had done, and the usual method—if outright seduction didn’t work—would be make them vulnerable. Allow their subnormal relations to die tragically in a car crash. Offer them comfort, gifts, financial assistance when they oh-so-unfortunately lost their positions in the Ministry due to WIP’s new insistence on cultural qualifications for employment.

Yet Number 12 Grimmauld Place, his Mudblood Mistress (he arched his back and purred at the thought of Liesel Wolfreys, a sleek blonde, joining him at the manor) and his humanity could wait.

The Mark had burnt continuously this month. Cuddled against Mione’s chest, he’d scanned the papers with her. No violent action in Britain—that would have been premature. But small changes were taking place. A Bosnian Monastery that had trained white wizards for ages—destroyed overnight, supposedly by Anton Levitsky, a nationalist of the Eastern European covens who had resorted to terrorist tactics in the past to prevent Magical or Muggle intervention in his territory. American academies closed due to the outbreak of magical illness in large urban centres. It was suggested the Quebec Shamanic Centre, the heart of Canadian wizardry, would take years to recover after the Abraxian Flu decimated the staff.

Strangely, only the pureblooded English had survived the outbreaks.

He didn’t want to go there. He wanted to squiggle back through the undergrowth the whole twelve miles, avoiding acromantulas and centaurs intent on cat stew and the lonely old hag in her gingerbread hut, and cuddle up to his Mudblood, and shred the Gryfinndor couches one seam at a time.

Voldemort could go to hell (well, he probably could without Regulus’ permission, but he was offering it nonetheless). Acting as Mione’s professional companion (yeah, that sounded messed up) beat being a Death Eater anyday.

With that, Regulus slunk back through the trees, and sometime after two A.M., and Goyle’s last stint of guard duty (he accidentally himself out on an overhanging tree limb and was nearly discovered by his large feet peeping out from an invisibility cloak), Lily dragged the boys in by their ears. They mutually decided Goyle’s feet had been splinched off some guy apparating, and decided not to tell Mom so that they could use them for Sirius’ potion stores. Human flesh was pretty hard to come by.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

"Can I—"

"No."

"Can I, can I please?????"

"No, Elspeth!" Lily finalized, ears smoking, hair sparking. Elspeth, unfazed by her mother’s fireworks since she was three, remained unmoved and waited patiently for her mother to recognize the error of her ways.

"Why not? Ginny Weasley always gets to go, and her father’s not even—"

Elspeth’s attempt to reason with her mother was lost.

"Ginny just lost her big brother Charlie, and her Mom wants to keep her close by for awhile." Lily brandished the ladle as she meant to whack it expressively on the counter, but then remembered the cake batter clinging to it. Normally, she’d offer it to Elspeth, but today she wasn’t in a fit state of mind to sacrifice the yummy, calorie-ridden goo to her mouthy minx. She licked at the ladle.

Paying no attention, Elspeth chewed her lower lip thoughtfully. "If Harry or Sirius get lost, can I go to Headquarters?"

"No. And quit being difficult. I mean that Charlie died, and this is no laughing matter."

"I’m not laughing. But why did Charlie die?"

"Well, Honey, maybe we should go to Church—"

"I didn’t mean it that way," Elspeth said seriously, "and Mom, I lost my faith three months ago. What I mean to say, is, why did You-Know-Who target Charlie and not the rest of the Weasleys?"

Lily, twisting lips wry at Elspeth precocious atheism, made a mental note to censor Sirius’ reading material again. She didn’t so much care if he was reading about religion—but if she caught Elspeth bad-mouthing her father one more time for his odd Anglicanisms, the kid was going to suffer through some serious Vacation Bible School. See if some time with Snookie the Smiling Jesus-Saurus would teach her respect.

Or... Lily cast a fond glance at her brat ... she could forego the bills to the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad now, and bribe her into good behaviour with books from the Christian bookstore. She was young enough that she might even not notice the saccharine quality of the writing.

Or James would finally take her advice and grow a beard. Anything could happen, after all.

"Charlie was in Romania, on an internship to work with dragons. Although the official report calls what happened an accident, it’s pretty certain that Voldemort’s wizards killed him. Eastern Europe is more of a wilderness than Britain. Voldemort’s troups can actually take open action there."

Open action. Huh. That was one way of explaining it to a kid, but as much as Lily hated watering down anything for her children, there were some things she didn’t want Elspeth knowing for a few years. Sirius either. Harry, now—he’d learn it sooner or later, and he could handle anything.

The realization came suddenly, but when it did, she was unsurprised. She wasn’t worried about the boy. Even with her no-nonsense mothering attitude, she’d expected to be worried, but she wasn’t. He’d died for her eleven years ago—this extra time was something beyond clumsy piety or gratitude, or motherly preoccupation.

He was handsome, and quick, and something of his lean, famished look and the death light cornering his eyes reminded Lily of the illustrations of Fae in the books of extinct races. The Fae survived only in the veins of the wizarding peoples of the Welsh mountains, although some crackpots claimed they ran off to another planet and started a colony after the black market for their eyes hit an all-time high. Pickled Faery eyes, preserved from the 1400s, could still fetch a fortune on the market. Lily’s eyes, whatever a love-garbled James or Severus might say, were NOT fae. Harry’s, however—

Well, she thought, slightly miffed and turning the cake batter into the pan, the Slytherins were famed for interracial breeding, whatever their insistence on blood purity might have been.

"Mom!!!!!" the screen door banged open, and Lily didn’t look up from the oven to automatically remind them, "SHUT THE DOOR! Were you raised in a barn—"

"I guess that would make Mom a cow—"

"Mmm-hmm, Elspeth..."

"Mom! Harry’s hurt—"

"F***". She dropped the cake-pan and dashed out the back door.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Blood. Everywhere.

Fortunately, none of it seemed to be leaking from Harry, although the groaning and harsh breaths from the boy caught her aback. A glimpse of a black cloak caught the corner of her eye, she turned to snipe a barely legal curse automatically. The watcher gave a casual grin and side-stepped. And curtesied. And with that, Cendrella Greengrass was gone, and Lily was left to figure out what the hell happened there.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

"Two broken legs. Not bad." Bellatrix opined, doing the same to the Muggle she was torturing. The kid gasped and squealed, and then the Venerable Aged Author got squeamish and relocated Bellatrix and her conversation to a more child-friendly premise than the torture room.

"I’ll say," The Venerable Aged Author murmured, not assenting. "How can you torture and interrogate all day and still coo about how wonderful the Potter kids are and how you can’t wait to train them..."

"Because I’ll be training them in torture, and the best way to teach is to try it on yourself! Have a go, it’s marvelous!"

"No thanks. I’m bored today, but not that bored. So, what’s happening next?"

"Well, we spend the next five years massacring all the Mudbloods in Eastern Europe, leaving death and carnage in our wake, and things get a lot less funny."

"Check," coughs the Venerable Aged Author, scribbling down her notes frantically, whilst trying her best not to sit back on the chair, whose seat was stained a familiar shade of red. "Lot... less... funny. You know, that’s going to be a bit of an issue," she complained, brushing back her bushy grey-brown hair while trying at the same time, and unsuccessfully, to clean out her ears unseen. Bellatrix crinkled her blood-bespattered nose in disgust and conjured a pack of Q-tips. Although these were similarly smeared with blood (like most of Bella’s personal articles), the V.A.A. accepted one graciously. Refusals of Bella’s assistance often started messy little duels, and you could find yourself ‘all over the place’ at the end of them. Quite literally.

"I really prefer comedy."

"Certainly, dearest. And what could be more amusing than these fools’ silly strategies to foil the Dark Lord’s plan?"

"Absolutely nothing," the V.A.A. deadpanned, sick with ennui, English midterms and too much time reading Baudelaire.

"Excellent. Now, come have a cuppa hemlock, and enchant those dear readers with some awful story about how Harry became a devilish Dark Wizard, and don’t forget to apply the Eye-Hex to the hypertext."

"I thought technology and magic didn’t mix!"

"Well, you know Sirius Potter. Severus put it into his mind that he could do almost anything, and now..."

"Enjoying some quality time with Madam Pomfrey? One on one?" leered Fred Weasley through the open infirmary door.

Harry might have glared, but instead, he smiled. "Why, of course. Notwithstanding her ample charms, her presence lends one other assets."

Weasley, almost as precocious as Harry in these matters (thanks to Bill, who was not as circumspect as he might be in informing his younger brothers), grinned wider, and gestured. "Do elaborate."

Harry beckoned him closer, and Fred whisked eagerly to the bedside.

"Number one," Harry intoned, "she often feels the need to consult anatomical texts illustrating crucial regions of the human body. These are left for the patient to consult if curious."

"Are you freaking kidding? I’d heard from Shu Mulan that she was liberal with the conception potions, but—"

"Hush, you’ll bring her running," Harry rebuked him, sitting higher up against a mound of pillows stuffed between his back and the wall. He punched them firmly as to fluff them up, and smoothed them back again. The old bed groaned and squeaked at the motion. "Number two, her liberality is only exceeded by her experience with human physiology."

Fred’s leer deepened, if that were possible. "And the magic number three?"

Harry smiled to match him. "She’s very possessive of those in her care. In fact—MADAM POMFREY!!!!!!!!!" he screamed. Fred, who would suffer an everlasting chagrin for the next two weeks in remembering this incident, leapt and squealed. It was an inordinately high-pitched squeal, almost girlish, and Harry nearly burst out laughing. Pity he’d forgotten the magical recorder Mione had juryrigged. But others were depending on him, and he continued screaming. Madam Pomfrey, disturbed from a rather dull study of the vascular system, rushed into the main room, bonnet askew, wrinkled face flush. She took in the room at an instant, seeing only the retreating flicker of a cape.

"OUT!" she screeched, redundantly, flicking bats from her willow wand. They screamed in her voice, all the way down the hallway and into the Great hall, and further, down the shortcut where Peeves would sing in accompaniment his corny Wheezy Weasley song, and further still, into the Gryffinndor tower, where everyone would wonder (and bet) on how the twins infuriated the nurse this time.

"Now, Harry," she addressed her hyperventilating patient delicately, "tell me what’s wrong..."

A long, frantic explanation later—followed by a brave refusal of Calming Draught—the witch left unsatisfied, yet ignorant of the culprit who’d woken Harry up in the middle of a peaceful slumber. Someone had intimated to the boy that he was Snape’s son—of all things!—and was fated to turn into some half-serpentine thrall of Voldemort, AND would grow poison fangs! Good heavens, what more ridiculous?

Had Pomfrey been Muggleborn like the V.A.A., she might have smiled at the Vaderesque image of Voldemort intoning "I AM YOUR FATHER" to Hadrian Potter, before dismissing it with the other improbable notions. As it was, she felt no small degree of relief when Harry concluded it was a nightmare, brought on by the stress of the most recent attack. While that didn’t explain the unknown visitor, Pomfrey grudgingly accepted this as an explanation. Some paranoia and anxiety could be expected after all that had happened.

Good heavens.

Chance inflicted more injury on the boy than the Order had ever done on Voldemort. If she didn’t know any better, she’d say someone had it in for him.

Two broken legs from the attack at the end of October. Easily regrown by Lily Potter. Then the concussion gained from the scuffle with the troll in the library during Halloween. Also easily fixed. And now, mid-November... his broom hexed during a flying lesson, despite it having been kept in a secure storage shed. Had not Quirrell barely managed a cushioning charm on the ground—had the Weasley boy not fumbled a decent levitation charm on the falling boy—well, the results might have been worse.

As it was, picking Envenomed Briar out of wounds never had been pleasant. Why, why did Hooch have to hold the lessons in the overgrown lots by the Forbidden Forest? Couldn’t she have waited for the Ravenclaw Quidditch team to finish their practice, for Heaven’s sake? Honestly, she was taking that childish House loyalty of hers further than Pomfrey had ever seen.

Once Pomfrey had checked him for confounding charms and dream damage, murmuring to herself about fixing the Hospital Wards and analyzing his meds, Harry sat up. Again, the bed groaned, this time, more in relief than pain, and a second later, Ron Weasley poked out from behind the pillows. Mione Granger and Tracey Davies, the former shocked and a little secretly pleased at her bout of rule-breaking, the latter disgruntled, rolled out under the bed. Seamus Finnegan poked his head out of the closet, and his legs followed after.

"Whew. That was a close one," Ron gasped for breath. "Prat. Did you have to punch me?"

"You almost dislodged the pillows," Harry defended himself. "Would you really want Fred to catch you here with his map?"

"You actually managed to get it? That’s it?" Trace demanded, looking at the rather rough flap of parchment in Ron’s hand.

"That’s it?" Finnegan said incredulously. "Blimey, witch, it’s probably old as Hogwarts. For all we know, the Founders’ first apprentices could have charmed this thing."

Trace sniffed dubiously. "I think the Founder’s Apprentices would have had access to better preservation charms."

"Oh, quit arguing, mates," Harry waved them off. "The twins won’t be anywhere near here for awhile, and Pomfrey’s nodded off from the Sleeping Draught I snuck into her iced tea." Hopefully Sirius’ latest batch wouldn’t also act as a saliva replenisher. It had taken Mione ages to get the drool smell from her pillows after borrowing a couple vials. Fortunately, it had the desired effect—for the first time in her life, she managed five hours sleep before a midterm exam. "How do we work the map?"

"No idea." Ron responded, point-blank. "The few times I caught them with it, they were, like, talking to it."

"Didn’t you say Professor Snape confiscated it once?" Harry asked, frowning and pointing at the parchment. "Maybe someone could weasel it out of him how to make it work."

"And maybe muggles could fly," Ron countered. "Weasel it out of Snape? I’d bet you a galleon if I had one that you couldn’t."

"I never said I could," Harry retorted smugly, "but I’ll bet a galleon to your new Chudley Cannons poster that I can get my sister to!"

"You’re on," Ron clasped his hand.

"Boys," Tracey prompted impatiently. "The map?"

"Oh, sorry," Ron responded, stepping back as Harry made an elaborate gesture, invocating "REVEAL THY SECRET!"

They looked on in bewilderment and dismay as a spiky script came out upon the page.

Harry set the map down on the bed. "Well that was useful—ack!" he sputtered as the map scrolled itself abruptly and bonked him upside the head. He swatted it, although this only seemed to encourage it. He aimed a quick reducto at the blasted thing, and it deftly evaded it.

"And this is the kid who’s supposed to save us from Voldemort?" Tracey remarked scornfully, watching the map deliver three sound smacks to Harry’s backside while Weasley stood by laughing. Harry ducked as the paper darted forward, and grabbed a poker from the fireplace to parry it aside. He overextended himself, and the paper darted in, crinkling in glee.

"Well, the pen is mightier than the sword," Mione mused, "and someone had to write a lot of magic into that scroll."

"Check," Tracey turned disdainfully, scowling delightedly as Harry, eyes intent only on the bedevilled parchment, retreated hastily towards the fire. "The power the Dark Lord knows not is pen and parchment. Do you think Harry could knock him off by sending him a Bible over the break?"

"You could kill anyone with that book," Harry panted, stepping backwards. "Boredom’s a more powerful soporific than the Draught of Living Death. Augh!"

This last was delivered as the fool set his foot in the fire. The parchment, fluttering in satisfaction, zipped over to Weasley and folded itself neatly in his lap. Harry limped over to the paper—in the intent of ‘tearing into it’ for the punishment he’d just received—when some parting words shimmered over its surface.

"I didn’t accept anything, you blasted—"

"Potter! Weasley, Finnegan, Misses—oh, for Heaven’s sake, is this an infirmary or a zoo? Out, out all of you!"

"So you thought you’d bring a tournament into the infirmary," Pomfrey concluded, lips a thin white line. "Ten points from Hufflepuff for reckless behaviour—and—Potter! Is that another injury?"

Harry gave a sheepish smile, and, tucking his wand back into his sleeve, lifted up his foot. He revealed the heel, blistered an unnatural red-black, and someone choked beside him. "Sorry, ma’am. Our aim’s a little off."

"Who fired that, might I ask?"

Mione, loyal as a Hufflepuff, shyly lifted her hand, and Pomfrey shook her head. "Well, this is what comes of allowing children access to advanced spells. I’ll be having a word with your head of houses over this, mind you I shall! Out, all of you—second degree burns from an incendio, my word!"

The others filed out reluctantly—save for Ron Weasley, who choked and coughed next to the bed. Pomfrey turned, and gaped in disbelief.

"A vomiting hex? Do you first years know any bounds? What in heavens is that Quirrell teaching them... and a rather messy hex at that! Why did he think it was on the list of hexes the Health Board doesn’t allow--Well, it’s easy to use and impossible to remove, and only a potion will work for that, and plenty of bed rest. Stay seated, Weasley, while I fetch the antidote."

Ron’s eyes glared murder, before he ducked to vomit again. Harry casually removed the cosmetic colour charm from his foot while the boy’s attention was otherwise occupied, leaving only the minor blistering beneath. Honestly... the ‘injury’ wouldn’t have stood closer scrutiny than Pomfrey’s first scandalized accessment. He thanked his stars that Flitwick had brushed over Colour Change Charms a week past, in response to Ron’s desire to change his pet rat yellow.

Pomfrey whisked in and briskly poured the potion down Ron’s throat, before vanishing the vomit and floating him into bed.

"Now then, what can I do—" she looked at Harry’s foot in shock, then suspicion.

Harry offered no explanation, and she asked for none. Heaving a sigh, she set to work.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Ron Weasley heaved a snore. Harry, sleeping on his side and turned away from the entrance, felt the light dim before his lidded eyes as the door shut. He listened for Pomfrey’s retreating footsteps, then leaned over and nudged Weasley. Hard.

"Bloody hell, what did you do that for?" Weasley groaned, sitting up in bed and rubbing his eyes. "I’d just barely gotten to sleep. No thanks at all to that vomiting hex—I ought to curse you into next week—"

He punctuated this assertion with a quick prod of his wand and an awkward incantation. Harry batted it aside and grinned cheekily.

"Later, mate. And we’ll work on your wandwork while we’re at it—if that’s how you fight, good thing Malfoy didn’t show up to that duel. So," Harry asked, business-like, "about those brooms you found in the third-floor corridor?"

Ron reluctantly put down his wand. "Yeah—about that. Finnegan, Longbottom and I got into the corridor when we were hiding from Filch, and there was this gigantic three-headed dog—I swear it was going to eat us—when Peeves came by and started chanting that stupid Wheezy Weasel song. The dog fell asleep then."

"Why didn’t you run out?"

"Filch was at the door! And in a terrible mood too—you know, his cat’s been missing all week..."

Harry nodded, surprised. He’d have thought Uncle Severus would have found the tabby by now, but then again, he didn’t use live potions ingredients that often. Ah well, give it another week or two, and if the cat wasn’t found... well, she’d lived with good purpose. His spells were now animal-tested.

Yeah, and if he let Hermione know about this, she’d probably start up a wizarding branch of PETA. He shuddered, and then continued listening.

"... so Filch was about to get through that Longbottom’s Alohomora—"

"The one that jams doors?"

"—and there was only one way to go. We ended up on top of this plant Neville’s dying to go back and see—just about killed us—and then," Ron’s eyes gleamed, "we found—"

"The broomsticks," Harry scrambled up. "What sort are they? Think we can borrow them for awhile? I’ve tried getting past the unlocking charms on ALL the quidditch sheds, but it’s hopeless. I swear, I’ve even tried a fifth year counterspell—not sure I got it right—but it didn’t work!"

"They say some old headmaster charmed them so that only the players can access them—but it doesn’t matter! The brooms are old—not much better than the junk they have us riding for lessons—but they’d be ours, if you’ll help me get one out!"

"If you’ll play Quidditch with me, deal’s a deal!" Harry spat into his palm and proffered it. Ron looked disgusted, then shrugged and shook Harry’s hand. Harry looked pointedly askance.

"What?"

"You didn’t spit."

"Why should I spit?"

Harry shrugged in return. "Deal’s not a deal ‘less you spit."

"Who says?"

"Sully. Bloke from my hometown." Harry didn’t offer further details. Weasley was alright, but a bit nervous when it came to rule-breaking. He’d threatened a duel before Harry returned Neville’s Remembrall, after the thief had swiped it and then drawn it out from his nose. The blonde prat took it next—leading to a lovely little scuffle during which Harry took the pansy’s pocketbook for keeps.

Or, at least until he stepped home to Hufflepuff Tower, and Dumbledore shot him with Finder’s Fire, rattling the gold-leafed account book from his pockets. A curt "Thieving is not allowed at Hogwarts", two detentions and twenty points less later, Harry hustled back.

Really. He needed to work on his strategy in this place. He was getting caught WAY too often.

Ron spat. That closed it. They drew apart their hands.

"Eww."

Harry shrugged. "Aguamenti." The jet of water missed Ron’s hands, and hit his face instead. The ensuing mayhem visited upon the Hospital Wing needs no explanation. Unlike Muggles, wizards don’t have to reload for water fights.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

The long, supple fingers holding one armrest, stained and callused at the tips and knuckles, lifted to pick up the parchment on the table. The man’s eyes ran down the page, calculating, awaiting the orders of his master seated at the head of the table.

"What is your opinion, Severus?"

Severus set down the sheets, and bowed his head before speaking.

"My master, I am sorry for what I must say, and certainly one of your greatness deserves a better truth than that I must tell—"

"You will dispense with apologies. A great leader of any skill does not punish his subordinates for just criticism of his actions—or, at least he will not if he desires their loyalty and the solidarity of his party. I am not a two-bit terrorist to crucify you for honesty." Voldemort paused, took a sip from his mug of hot chocolate, and fixed Severus’ glance again. "Continue."

Severus nodded, still uncertain, and in the absurd sensitivity of stress, was terribly aware of the chafing of his ankles against the heels of his well-worn dress shoes, where the padding had worn away. He shifted and sat up, moving his hair aside as he did so, brushing a chain at his neck. Beneath his shirt, a pendant hanging from it caught and tangled in his chest hair for a moment, then hung loose once more.

"You cannot hope to recruit the necessary forces in Britain for conquering through Austria, for two reasons. First and foremost, since Grindelwald and that Muggle dictator arose from that relative area, their Ministry has become far more strict than the advisors of your younger years remember it. Your generation grew up during the wars—but the wars presented as much of a chance for trafficking in illegal indulgences as a risk for injury. My lord," Severus’ voice lowered cautiously, "this is not the 1960s, and we can no more conquer by force through Austria than finance our party from black market stocks in the area." His lips twisted wryly. "Unless, of course, you want to bootleg? I understand Leipzig’s still trying to all abolish magic and moonshine."

Voldemort laughed a little, and drank deeper. "Puritans. No, quick insertions in the Ministry, or worse, open warfare, would be detected too quickly. Their privacy acts are different than ours—they register all wands, auras, lineage and what-have-you with law enforcement the moment you set foot on their land. They relie on bureaucracy to an incredible degree, actually, out of paranoia." He swirled his drink, and swallowed again. "Which is what we need."

"You plan on—"

"Infighting, yes. They seem fairly content with their current Minister for Magic. He is young, charismatic, and exceedingly vulnerable during the European Wizarding Summits. I know for a fact that the member of the Ministry most qualified to replace him—his aide, in fact—was his dormmate at Durmstrang. They ran against each other in the last election. The Summit’s this week at the Romanian Dragon Preserve. I have already arranged some things. We may have had minor leaks in intelligence, but the informant was killed."

Severus swallowed, holding a teacup between his chilled hands, and considered how the defence teachers might have been too easy with Charlie Weasley.

"You expressed a second reason for the implausibility of conquering Austria?"

"Infighting certainly will work. But not with British recruits. Not even when it is conquered. The Roman Empire of old survived in part because of its ability to compromise on trivial issues and retain command on the important points. Appoint competent regional commanders and manage reasonable trade policies. Allow yourself to delegate. Although it is difficult to trust any wizards’ loyalty to not waver at a distance, you might ensure it by keeping their wands pointed to each other’s heads and not your own. Baron Von Trap and Lord Spiegelman hate one another. Advance the latter’s business prospects, and ensure he has the support necessary to be an adequate rival to Von Trap. When the time is right, have them killed and replaced with several regional commanders. Never allow too much power consolidated in one place. Only give the people figureheads when they can be displaced by yourself."

"True advice. Ideas on the recruitment rates?"

"Two hundred new British Death Eaters this year? Almost half of Hogwarts, isn’t that? A high estimate, but possibly attainable, if we do not allow them to ascend as quickly through the ranks as to weed out possible spies. It is too much to ask to have twoscore competent duellists among them," Severus’ lip curled. "With the poor Defense curriculum these many years, the people are utterly unprepared for war. One would almost say it was necessary to join you to learn anything of use."

Voldemort smiled thinly, and looked regretfully at the bottom of his mug. "A score then of duellists."

"I’ll go through my lists of old students who showed potential. There are a few likely ones in sixth and seventh year, but I don’t think this has progressed enough for the recruitment of teenagers."

"I don’t believe my patience has progressed enough either. Brief me on the most likely ones of the past few years."

Severus shut his eyes in memory. "Nymphadora Tonks. Half-blood—Bellatrix’s niece, actually. Superb duellist, excellent metamorphmagus, yet lacks the subtlety and finesse to use her talents in spying, and her clumsiness could get her killed in a fight. No interest in the Dark Arts. She did have an aural reading once, at nine, during a medical scan. Traces of the Black Aura."

"A decent witch, but nothing extraordinary," Voldemort waved a hand dismissively. "Her peculiar talents would recommend her as a spy or assassin, but from your words, she doesn’t have the mind to match them."

"Like many magicians of family, she doesn’t need a mind. The power gradient in that reading suggests she’d be a match for Rabastan by now."

"Intriguing, yet it is difficult to see how she might be swayed—"

"Simpler than you think. She had a dormant Devil’s Eye in her aura—no doubt inherited from her mother, who has been... indisposed these past years."

Voldemort stopped drinking, and set the cup down.

While the propriety of the current administration demanded the public stay tight-lipped over the differences between Pureblood and Mudblood magic, the old families knew every asset of their traditions. And while the Muggleborns sneered at the Purebloods’ close intermarrying, it remained a fact that inbreeding had made the old families more powerful. Magical potential increased, and rare recessive traits—so seldom seen among Muggleborns—were passed on. Miss. Tonks was lucky to have her gift, given her father’s background, and Severus suspected a squib in Ted Tonks’ lineage. Talents like hers rarely passed to half-bloods.

Neither did genetic diseases.

Every reward had its risks, and in exchange for powerful, talented heirs, the purebloods risked physical, mental and magical deformities. Their midwives, a close-lipped lot, trundled out a dead baby for every one live one they delivered. No one spoke of the abortions, unless as a fact of life in their world.

Those without critical impairments survived: Half-wits such as MacNair or Goyle, with enough magical to use an Unforgivable and barely the mind to point the wand. Useful as soldiers, and not much else. Emotionally unstable witches like his Bellatrix, who had to be kept half-drugged and under control at all times—unless he wanted a Berserker loose in his office. Viral illnesses from fools who frequented the same wenches as werewolves or vampires or hags turned out half-breeds. And then—

There were degenerative diseases.

Devil’s Eye. With that, she could be considered essentially fatherless, a pureblood, whatever her records might say. For a half-blood like Tonks to even be a carrier of Devil’s Eye—let alone a metamorphagous—her Black lineage would have to have dominated her Mudblood breeding, a happenstance rare, though not unheard of, among crossbreeds. But half-bloods were impossible to predict. Though vast majority were barely stronger than Mudbloods, a small percentage numbered prominently amongst the most powerful wizards of all time—wizards like Grindelwald himself. And these wizards were as vulnerable to their own genetics as the purebloods.

Devil’s Eye affected the amygdala, the almond-shaped organ in the centre of the brain controlling emotion, producing warped thoughts, delusions of grandeur and increasingly violent behaviour, devolving into homicidal tendencies and insanity. The only visible symptoms showed themselves late in the disorder, through the crimson eyes and pale skin of the victim. Originally the result of a familial curse placed on a Black ancestor, the last recorded cases had been—

"Yesss," Voldemort responded, his affirmative long and pleased. "Yes, Severus. A clever means to lure our new recruit. I could certainly force Andromeda Black’s condition into dormancy as I did my own, easily enough. For a price."

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

He felt uneasy in his cleanness. Normally, he wore sweat like a second skin, the tang of herbs and salt passing off his body like smoke from a cauldron. He’d pared his nails to the pink and scoured his hands raw. His dark hair, now clipped just past his ears, hung stiff as drying flax. His scalp stung from the lye he’d used. With the removal of the grease, his complexion seemed more exotic than sallow—the last testament to an East Indian grandmother in the Snape lineage. He did not bother to knock at this office. Rather, he walked in without explanation, and slammed and spelled the door shut once inside, and the tired woman within brightened.

"Severus! Make yourself comfortable, of course," she ordered him, unnecessarily, for Severus had already appropriated the cushy black office chair across from her desk. "I see you’re enjoying your day. Tell me, what’s the good news? Or," Lily Potter leaned across her desk, pertly lifting her brows, lowering her voice to a husky whisper. "Is it a secret?"

"Since when could anyone keep secrets from you?" He was too tired for it, too tired for her laughing eyes and lily-white hands, and too tired to even tell her this. So he remained silent, until she settled up straight and came around the desk. She tapped the teapot and poured him a cuppa, and then set her left hand against his shoulder, her right hand guiding the rim against her lips. He allowed her this. She rubbed his back, crooning nonsense as she did so, as carefully as though he had been her son. He leaned into it, holding her carefully about the waist. They remained there, for sometime—not speaking, and hands silent as their mouths, reading only the muscles taut below their unmoving palms.

Then, when the tension had not entirely eased from his shoulders and the cup had run dry, she turned away from his eyes and their undecided intimacy. Brisk behind her desk once more, she smiled thinly. "A difficult day then. What happened in your meetings?"

Severus grimaced, interlacing his fingers and stretching languidly before him before allowing them to fall limp on his legs. "First meeting of the day—Voldemort’s recruitment strategies for the next year and a half."

"Hell’s Bells, brother. Should we be discussing this here?"

"I cleared your office two days ago, and you sweep it every morning. Your wards can keep monsters and Death Eaters out of Swinetrail—and more impressively, can usually keep your children in. Comparatively, I feel safer here than at Order Headquarters, where Professor Dumbledore sees fit to allow in all the rabble."

"I suppose I can see where you’re coming from. Does he really think we can trust Mundungus?"

"I would not presume to know what he thinks," Severus scowled. "If I did, I doubt I would ever return to Headquarters again, much less feel comfortable in his employ."

"Hush. He’s better than Voldemort."

The man snorted then, summoning a stool to set his feet atop. "Sometimes, I wonder. Great wizards are all alike—all massive egotists, certain of their schemes—and never so much as when they feign doubt." Restless again for the familiar motion of striding deserted corridors, the nostalgic solace of his castle by night, he thumbed the stubble on his chin irritably. "The more consultations and concessions they make with you, the less you can trust their regard."

"Well, someone’s become philosophic lately," Lily filled a brief silence. "So, back to the start. What’s going on? Who’s he recruiting?"

Severus leaned back. "Watch your Healing interns for the next year or so. And work on pressing that Healers’ Union through with the Ministry, even their policies do force you out of a job. I’ll never understand why wizarding healers aren’t required to take a binding Hippocratic Oath, and I doubt it will make a difference in the next war—but in the long term, casualties on both sides might be decreased if we can trust healers not to be assassins."

Lily shrugged noncommitally. "It grows out of our historical occupations as indentured apothecaries and hack surgeons and—oh, potions masters. Feudal lords used us as assets. Kill one lord’s healers, and that side was much weakened if yours remained alive. End of discussion. If Voldemort has any healing candidates, we’ll take them if I can push this Union through." She sighed. "But if it’s pushed through, I’ll never fight again. I can quit being a soldier. I can’t quit healing."

"We need healers more than soldiers in this war." Severus exhaled harshly. "Which leads us to my next piece of news, both good and bad. I may have access to a cure for one of your patients’ conditions."

Lily’s eyes immediately brightened, and his heart stilled. "Which one?"

"Andromeda Tonks."

"But she’s—"

"The Dark Lord once had Devil’s Eye. Ask me no more, I only know he spent the bulk of his school years working out the means to force his condition into dormancy or excise it. He is willing to work on Andromeda—yet expects something from the daughter in return."

Her hand flew up to her mouth, and her quill fell from her hand. "Dora, a Death Eater?"

"He alone knows." Severus fixed Lily with a hard glance. "Lily, do not inform Professor Dumbledore of this—"

"Whyever not?"

"Voldemort has other, less difficult prospects for recruitment than Nymphadora Tonks, and may likely abandon this venue of converting her if it proves too difficult to access Andromeda. If you want your patient cured, I would suggest—"

"that I allow these events to unfold," Lily filled in for him, slowly. "Agreed, Severus, but I will my eye on Andromeda, and I will not allow her outside her room. If he is manipulating you and plans something else, I will not have a Devil’s Eye loose in my hospital. Restraining her is currently difficult enough."

"Agreed," Severus exhaled, and then smiled, a little.

"And speaking of restraint, that brings me to the second half of my day so far."

"Oh?"

"Your son featured prominently in the latest staff meeting..."

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"Well, if that’s all we have to discuss about the merits and difficulties with the curriculum," Dumblebore’s eyes singled out Snape, who refused to budge, "are there any of our students who need particular attention?"

"Harry Potter," Pomfrey asserted, and several staff members groaned in response.

"And what, may I ask, has my godson done to earn your displeasure this time?" Severus deadpanned.

"The Hospital Wing! Visitors when none were allowed, using and teaching dangerous curses—he hit Weasley with a Vomiting Hex, for gods’ sake! One would almost think he’d read up on the first-year spells struck from the curriculum somewhere—"

"They hardly public information, after all..." Snape mused sarcastically.

"And after I finally walked out, in the assurance that they were gone to bed for the night—they flooded the Hospital Wing! I stepped in at six in the morning, and everything, save their beds, was floating in three inches of water!" Pomfrey, shaking in frustration, sat on the edge of her chair. "And when I asked them how it got there, they meekly responded that they were getting a head-start on your class."

The condemned man, one Filius Flitwick, blinked and tried not to seem pleased. "Although this is somewhat ahead of schedule, perhaps it’s not wise to penalize them for initiative."

"Initiative? Initiative???" repeated Pomfrey, beside herself now. "I certainly made them take initiative. I taught them a Drying Charm, and they can practice it for as long as it takes to evaporate all the water away."

"Relieve them? If they’re still around by supper, certainly I shall."

It would have piqued Pomfrey’s ire even more to realize Harry had blackmailed a couple of seventh years, (whom Silver had caught sneaking into Snape’s storeroom) to banish the water away. Snape, however, would be relieved to know Mrs. Norris no longer resided in his closet, having been released by the cat-loving trespassers. Filch would encounter her right after the meeting, slightly burgundy and no worse the wear for all that.

"Indeed, Mr. Potter seems to be taking initiative on many accounts," Dumbledore said, folding his hands atop his desk. "With thievery, no less."

"You have no proof of that," Severus defended. "While I do not enjoy speaking poorly of Mr. Malfoy, surely you have noticed his tendency to, ah, flaunt his wealth before the other students. He himself claimed to have given the pocketbook to Potter for his casual perusal."

"Which would explain their rather heated duel afterwards." Dumbledore sighed. "Needless to say, I was not born yesterday, Severus, and all signs point to your godson being rather too lawless for Hogwarts."

"Lawless?" Sprout began. "One of my students?"

"Pomona, surely you’ve noticed the hexes he’s used since he came here. How a student can barely scrape by in all his classes and notably excel in Defence and Charms is beyond me, but it does suggest a disturbing proclivity for violence—"

"Violence?" huffed Pomona. "Of all the rubbish—"

Severus silently cheered her on.

"None of my Hufflepuffs have ever shown interest in your flashier subjects, and as soon as one them applies the hard work and dedication characteristic of my house to Defence, trust a Gryffindor to rebuke them for it."

"Pomona, this has nothing to do with House loyalties..."

"Oh? Then what about the nonsense all the Weasley twins have done? We spend two hours a week or more tracking them down and fixing their accidents, not to mention all the time Pomfrey wastes curing their fake ailments when they skive! And one of my students decides to simply practice course material—"

"A Vomiting Hex is not course material!"

"It was, once, and I think Harry should be congratulated for taking the extra time to learn about it."

"And if he dabbles into the Dark Arts?"

"Oh, come now, Albus. A Vomiting Hex is almost identical to the Slug-Vomiting Hex, and it’s far, far from the Dark Arts. Harry is a sweet boy, and I hardly think such a thing possible." She had cooled down now, and delivered her next point gently. "After all, while I know you feel responsible for whatever they learn—it’s not fair to Harry, or any of the students, that they learn less because we’re afraid of the dangers."

"Dangers?"

Pomona shrugged, turning to the window to watch some third years chasing each other on brooms about the turrets of the castle. One scooted past their window so fast they couldn’t even make out his features. "Albus, we know you feel responsible for the current situation of our world. You taught nearly all of them—Voldemort, Lucius Malfoy, the Lestranges and Blacks. But watering down the curriculum isn’t going to lessen the war that’s coming. It will make them less educated on the responsibilities of their actions, if the first time they use a hex is on an enemy and not a friend. It will make them more likely to injure themselves in defense if the only way they can learn a lethal spell is through a book. Albus, the seventh years today are graduating with only a fraction of their parents’ education."

"I cannot condone the teaching of Dark Arts to minors."

"Dark Arts? No," Quirrell agreed quietly, from where he’d been sitting quietly in the corner. "But more advanced, more dangerous spellwork?"

"They’ll learn it anyways," Sinistra opined, and Dumbledore looked at her askance, for he was accustomed to her taking the part of the senior teachers in these discussions, despite her being in her mid-seventies. She saw a similar expression on McGonagall’s face. "Minerva, it is the truth. Every once in a long while, some students come to the school that are a little smarter or stronger than the norm, and they throw the whole castle on end as their teachers and peers try to keep up with them. Tom Riddle, the Prewett brothers, the Marauders—and now, Harry Potter and his little friends. And truthfully, it’s better for the school. They’ll all work harder if a sneaky little first-year keeps showing them up." She scratched her head. "We might even get some decent Defense marks in a few years, though it’s too much to ask that they take Astronomy seriously."

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"Harry, a thief? Really, what do you think, Severus?"

"Mm. No idea. Do you honestly suppose I don’t have better things to do than track my godson’s whereabouts every second of the day."

"Yes."

"The Malfoy brat is a braggart, and well, Albus is a bit obsessive over anything Harry does. I doubt it was more than a childish prank." Despite his faint misgivings, he neglected to tell Lily about the key Harry had taken from Crouch. "He’s a very competent thief, but you should tell him—and Sirius—to desist. I’d hate to imagine the issues with Magical Law Enforcement if they learnt the General’s son was a petty bandit."

"He taught Sirius?" Lily’s eyes widened, and in that moment, Severus knew that however she might protect Harry—and whatever Harry might mean to the world as the Boy-Who-Lived—Sirius would always be her little son, where Harry was a stranger under her protection. "Gods, I’ll tell him, and thank you, Severus."

"Anytime." Severus accepted another cup of tea from Lily—laced with the wine she kept stashed in her trick drawer—and drank deeply before continuing. "While I need not know or say everything your son is involved in, this I will say—he is singlehandedly improving the other students’ education. An entire list of spells, struck from the first years’ curriculum as too dangerous, despite the ease of the magic, was reinstated after a spate of their use in the corridors." He smiled a little. "Why ban the students from learning it in class when they’ll teach themselves out of class anyways?"

Lily looked at him again, and seemed to notice something for the first time.

"Severus, you’re clean."

"I usually strive to maintain the dignity of my profession by being so, yes."

"No, but you’re—" she sputtered. "What’s the occasion?" she managed at last.

"Polyjuice potion. Any residue from the brewer will contaminate it."

Lily tried not to smile. "I knew there had to be a good reason."

Chapter 5:

"Come," the man mouthed, and despite herself, the red-eyed woman forced herself up to follow him, staggering up uneasily as he unlocked the restraints on her bed. She stood up, and nearly fell over. With a mildness one would not have expected from his expression, he was beside her at once, taking most of her weight on his shoulders, and they eased their way from the psychiatric ward of St. Mungo's. The hall was mostly silent, at this hour, and if a few orderlies glanced askance at them, they quickly turned away. Morgan Llewellyn being famed as the most effective mind-healer at St. Mungo's, it was not the place of lowly practical nurses--many recruited from the Muggles, at that--to question him, even if he was removing a Class-F patient from warded confinement.

The pair ducked into the Floo room, where another man waited nervously, fiddling impatiently with the tatty hems of his black scrubs.

"Come milady, there isn't that much time--"

"Not a word," growled the man, deftly disentangling himself from the woman. Pinching the floo powder into the flames, he sent the woman before him. Then, fixing the orderly with another glare, he reminded him. "Not a word."

And with that, a polyjuiced Bellatrix Lestrange retrieved her sister from the highest security Medical Ward of St. Mungo's.

Strangely, the security wards had already been disabled.

In another office, dim figures played about the surface of a crystal ball. The object was currently in use as a paperweight on a stack of patient histories.

Lily Potter watched, and did nothing.

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Bellatrix, back to her usual form, entered the Dark Lord's chambers unannounced. He looked up from his current project--a review of the Muggle munitions factories in Germany--and regarded her with a slow smile. It was better than praise, and Bella silently bowed in acknowledgement, silently willing her sister to do the same.

"Leave us," Voldemort said gently.

Another soldierly bow, and the lady left, Voldemort's regretful glance following her passage. Bellatrix half-turned her head, with her odd feminine prescience, and questioned with a half-quirked brow what would be impolitic to say aloud.

Enjoying the view?

He shook his head, though not at all in disagreement, and her smile deepened subtly, the red rim of her cracked lips opening as though to breathe a single, unspeakable word--love? die? Who could tell with that woman?--and she turned back to rush through the door.

He shook himself, again, from those thoughts, and turned to the woman before him.

Andromeda could have been Bellatrix's twin, dressed in her sister's spare robes and with the Devil's Eye arching her body into a sensuality he hadn't remembered little Dromeda to possess. He snapped his fingers and broke the imperio, holding her glazed gaze as he did so, and forced his way into her mind.

"What will you be having me do with her, milord?" Severus asked, unseen in the shadows of the office.

Voldemort grunted. "A moment."

Severus waited as a moment became an minute and a minute became an hour, and continued waiting, though his attention lagged in the first thirty seconds and he began to run through an alphabetical inventory of cruel and unusual punishments after the first five minutes. Thus occupied, he had barely considered 'bloodletting' and suitable ways to administer it to the Weasley twins--disguise as a blood drive? Necessary collection for his Replenishing Potions?--before a startled gasp roused him from reverie.

Andromeda staggered up, eyes gone dim and brown, and Voldemort cautioned Snape back to the shadows with a wave of his hand.

She dry-heaved, coughing, and Voldemort came to her again, and with almost a paternal air, began to rub her back.

"You," she wheezed. "You--you--"

He said nothing. She caught her breath finally, and was still, slumped against the wall, resigned.

"You saved my life," she hissed.

Voldemort inclined his head.

"Why," she demanded suddenly. "Why a life debt--from me?"

Voldemort regarded her evenly. "My dear Andromeda. It was the least I could do for my lady's sister."

Andromeda laughed violently, and Snape was forcefully reminded of her cousin, Sirius. They said that before the Blacks came through France, they were of Spartan extraction, gladiators bred by the Latinate wizards from their most vicious foes in the continent. Numian oracles and Picti warlocks, Scythian demidemons and Irish kelpies--every uncivilized race distilled into a single line, bred true generation to generation through consistent inbreeding.

It had been easy to forget that, that frumpy, dumpy Andromeda Tonks could be--was-- of the same race.

In a moment, the choking old housewitch had gone again, become somehow more predatory in her renewed sanity than in the arch sensuality of her madness.

"My Lord Voldemort," she said slowly. "I would ask of you, as no Black takes what she cannot repay--how may I repay my debt?"

He came upon her now, swiftly and smoothly, seizing her hand, and baring her forearm, stroked the soft, cinder-white skin at the inside of the elbow, pocked from injections. She looked at him, repulsed, and he sighed a little.

"No," he supposed. "I would much rather mark you as my willing servant, if you would. But if you would not--I have no current use for you here. I ask in repayment only that you never tell what has transpired here. Please, go forth."

Bewildered, but unwilling to press her luck, she gave him a single shocked glance, and rustled out the door, nearly tripping on her skirts in haste.

"I am sorry, my lord--but what happened there?"

Voldemort smiled. "A good many things."

"Why cure her Devil's Eye at all if not to gain the third of the Sisters in your service?"

Voldemort's smile widened.

"Who says I cured her?"

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"Damn!" Lily Potter swore, teacups shattering at her outburst, and turned to Snape, voice low and deadly. "You are going to die for this."

He nodded slowly. "I certainly hope so. As a Death Eater, I eat up that sort of treatment. But as you're a healer..." he frowned slightly. "well, I suppose that works with the Hypocritic Oath."

She stared. And slapped him.

He felt oddly disengaged, absolved from guilt by the absurd hilarity of the situation. I pass the night playing Dr. Mengele, directing the collection of Muggle corpses for research. I thwart a former students' plot to assassinate me as a means of climbing through the ranks. I get my mind scrounged by Voldemort to ensure I'm not a spy, spend the night brewing bombs, and on top of that, I haven't eaten in nine hours or slept for twenty. And this is routine.

And this, he eyed the livid woman before him, and stifled a laugh, is the Axis Mundi. Gods, I need to get a life, and against himself, he burst out laughing, and the sound was so unfamiliar to them both, the woman started back and almost blurted a curse.

"Severus--are you--"

He laughed harder, laughed to crying, and laughed again.

"I'm fine--"

"No--" Lily said, now drawing her wand with increasing alarm, and whispering a few quick diagnostic charms, "What I mean to say is--are you sane?"

He shook his head, laughing more quietly now, and gasped for breath.

"Gods, man." Lily Potter rubbed her brow. "I release one of the most dangerous cases on my ward--on your intelligence--because you insist a notorious terrorist can cure her--and you claim that he may or may not have fixed the problem, and might have placed some kind of ticking timebomb in her head?" She brandished the Daily Prophet, and helplessly, he chuffed.

"Look at this, you prat," she growled. The headline: Dark Wins Albanian Civil War; Refugees loose. "This is what happened. Say what they want about international affairs and noninvolvement--you can't say he wasn't in this--Bellatrix Lestrange was the British peacekeeper in that mess, and look how it ended up! Hundreds, dead! Narcissa Malfoy--campaigning for policies that will set up Muggleborn integration years! And you're willing to potentially loose Andromeda Tonks?" She glared at him. "A Berserker like her would be worth a dozen ordinary soldiers in open combat."

"Lily, please," he said calmly. "I cannot hope to decipher Voldemort's motives. It's possible he even put the cure in question in the hopes of manipulating you through me--which would suggest we assume the opposite of what he hopes we'll assume. She seems fine--"

"Right, which is exactly why I can't get her in for testing. Especially because I signed her exit papers, knowing very well that it wasn't Llewellyn there. And when she blows a fuse, it'll be my signature all over this mess. "

"We don't know that's going to happen right now."

"It could."

"It's more likely to come from any number of Dark deals you've made in the past, and it's time we talked about those I think."

Lily went still, absolutely still, while Severus remained immovable, and they faced off like this for a moment's eternity.

"Why were you exchanging potions and charms research with Lestrange? Why are you so blase about Harry being a potential horcrux? Pray tell--" he leaned in, and sibilicated the last "when are you going to tell your husband about all this?"

"James knows," she said flatly.

"James knows," he mocked her. "James knows--about what? About your paralytics and aphrodiasiacs and poisons, your petty contraception charms and obesity curses on your sister's son?" Her mouth opened, but he pressed on. "Tell me, girl, does he know perhaps about the weekend you spent at your 'cousin's', sacrificing the fertility of seven fields--and a farmer's livelihood--for the life of your lastborn? Or the dead unicorn--"

Her eyes flashed. "That, Severus, was none of your business, and--"

"It was as necessary as every other act you have committed with a mother's wrath," he nodded with exaggerated solemnity. "As necessary, perhaps," and he leaned over, eyes black and blank as slates, "as our trysts?"

She started, and her mouth worked.

"Does James know of that?"

"Nothing happened," she began, angrily.

"Of course not," he agreed. "Nothing ever happens, and again," he smiled, self-deprecating, "nothing ever will." He glanced at her once more, her stunned expression. "Lily Potter," he nodded once, and kissed her hand. "You have chosen your place, as I have mine."

"You choose him," she whispered vehemently.

"I chose you. No one," he breathed, "Not even Dumbledore, has a clearer vantage point of the war than we two. You through the Healers, I through my Masters." He glanced back at her again, and found her expression as inscrutable as his own.

"Whatever happens, I promise you, Lily, your family will get through this alive--be it at the cost of our own souls."

She nodded, once.

The complete exhaustion that only comes from confession settled upon him then; he'd spoken his mind more in the past five minutes than he had in the last fifteen years.

"If you would direct James to push Albus towards, oh, hiring Andromeda on as Defence teacher next year, or giving her an assistant teaching position, I will do my best to keep an eye on her. That is the extent to which I may assist in this case."

She blinked, incredulous. "You expect me to advise Albus to allow a former mental patient to teach children, when I'm afraid of a relapse? Severus--I wanted not to be implicated in this matter, not to be sued for malpractice when some Muggleborn gets hit."

"Well, I'll ask Professor Dumbledore to hire her then--and you may rest assured that McGonagall will set the condition that she receives a full medical examination from the real Llewellyn, complete with legilimency and aural scanning, before she's allowed to take a post. It would allow you to review her without seeming involved, and it seems perfectly reasonable--actually, I'm surprised Dromeda hasn't been coerced in already. Several of your examiners have been clamouring for the past week to see her, haven't they? A recovered Devil's Eye patient..." Snape mused. "The administrator of the hospital where they found a cure to the disease might well be renowned."

"That doesn't work on me, Severus." She scratched her chin.

"Well, at least consider it, and don't strike me down if I have her hired. Whatever Voldemort's planning, I think it's more connected with Dromeda's daughter than Dromeda herself. If we wait until the girl graduates..." Severus shook his hand. "No. I'd rather see all cards played at once, where we can keep an eye on the game."

"Do as you please," she dismissed, not raising her head from the patient history she was seemingly perusing.

Severus thought of a snide comment--if you haven't finished that case history in the past year, you surely won't now--but refrained. With a bow of his head, less respect than love, he left to find the rest of his family.

Predictably enough, he found them. In trouble.

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Typically, broom lessons lasted from late September until either early April, or such time as all the first years demonstrated an acceptable level of proficiency.

For Madam Hooch's sanity, she fervently hoped this year would be the latter case.

She'd expected the typical chaos of the first Gryffindor-Slytherin lesson. Routine bickering. The odd hex to be dispelled. Perhaps a cheerful game of quidditch, appropriating the smallest member of the opposite house as the quaffle.

But this...

Hell's bells. She'd have almost taken her mutinous class from her first year here (an oddly coordinated band of Slytherins and Gryffs who'd locked her in a broom closet full of doxies before going off on a three-day jaunt) than these students.

The jarring thing was, it wasn't that they were such bad kids--

They all simply seemed to hate each other.

Never mind Pomfrey's disapproving air as she'd brought in Neville with a broken arm. Now, she had a total of sixteen students with minor injuries, and she hadn't the least clue how it might have happened...

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It began with Neville's Remembrall. A couple of comments, and Weasley and Malfoy had set aside their wands to brawl like Muggles. The rest of the class had merrily joined in, wands or otherwise, and in five minutes, Minerva (watching attentively from a window) could have sworn she was seeing the Second Battle of Hogsmeade.

Little Hermione Granger, not having shut up for a second about nonviolence, marshalled her troups to the broomshed, where she'd cast a surprisingly decent shield. The rest of her group blithely ignored her lecture, and concentrated on covering Ron Weasley--who'd finally disentangled himself from Malfoy and was now dodging aerial bombardment from a couple airborne Slytherins.

"We can't just let the Slytherins block us in the shed!" Dean groaned. He'd have rather been out with Seamus, the only Gryffindor to nab a broom before Hermione had somehow ordered them all under cover.

Hermione ducked as a silver curse flew over the top of the shield. "We can't fight them either!"

"They started it."

"Ron started it."

"Malfoy was the first one to pick up a wand," Thomas pointed out. "And unless you've noticed--" her shield stuttered for a moment, and hex splashed through to splinter a jar of polish--"we're going to get creamed in a moment."

"But the rules--" Hermione began anxiously, as the shield sputtered out, and the Slytherins yelled for blood.

"Hang the rules! They're coming!" Ron shouted, diving into the shed and rummaging for the brooms. He chucked them to the bewildered girls.

"What am I supposed to do with it?" demanded Hermione.

Ron, already afloat, gaped. "Ride it."

"But I don't know--"

"Oh for Merlin's Beard," he muttered, hovering closer. "Get on," he demanded, holding a hand out to her as Malfoy swivelled in through a window.

"But--"

"Are you a witch or not? Get on, woman!"

With a deep breath, she swung astride behind him, gripping his waist for dear life as he rushed out, Malfoy in hot pursuit. She shut her eyes tight.

"How many do we got on us?" he demanded.

She forced her eyes open.

"Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle," she breathed. "Hundred metres under us. But we're outrunning them..." her voice trailed off, and Ron turned back to grin at her, as they narrowly dodged a disarming spell. "Ron, these are the Slytherin team brooms! Do you have any idea how expensive these are?"

"Nope," he grinned. "But I reckon this is the first and last time I'll ever get my hands on one." An abrupt scream came from below, and he flipped the broom around so quickly she almost fell. "Dean!"

The other Muggleborn had been knocked down by Bulstrode and Nott, and Seamus was furiously racing to catch him, break his fall, anything--

Malfoy saw it just as Ron did, and abruptly turned to rush towards Seamus--presumeably to knock him down like Dean--when a bolt of putrid green blasted out from behind Ron, and nailed Malfoy between the shoulders. The blond-haired boy abruptly doubled over on his broom, choking, and Ron glanced back in surprise.

"A slug-vomiting hex? Hermione," he started, in shocked admiration--

She grinned back, tentatively. "Mind your own business, flyboy, and let me man the guns."

"Guns?"

"Muggle reference. Just go. Go-go-go--oh Dean..." they winced as one. Dean fell belly-first into the Great Lake. Everyone paused abruptly, watching in horror.

He resurfaced, afloat in the water, still as death. Sickened, Malfoy willed his broom nearer--only to get blasted as Dean neatly bludgeoned him with a hex. He yelped, tottering unexpectedly, and found himself knocked sideways from his broom, and into the water.

"Merlin's--" swore Ron, whooping, as Dean laughed, punching his arms upwards, and Draco Malfoy began screaming. "Don't tell me the blighter can't swim!"

"Should we help him?" asked Hermione anxiously.

"Nah, reckon that Dean's got this--and incoming!"

Nott, Greengrass and Davies swooped in, closely followed by a very wet Seamus, who had managed to nab his broom out of the lake. Crabbe and Goyle looked torn between helping Malfoy--who was currently enjoying a friendly diving lesson, courtesy of Dean--and aiding their friends. A sudden curse from above decided them, and Hermione glanced to the side.

"Harry?"

Harry was deliriously happy. He'd never imagined there could be anything like this. Anything. Definitely worth breaking into the broomshed for. He corkscrewed around them, Ron whooping to follow in his wake. Hermione closed her eyes and dreamt of Gravol, never lifting her shield.

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Madam Pomfrey had been gone from the practice grounds a total of ten minutes. She returned to find Parvati, Lavender, Pansy and Millicent doing a fair approximation of a judo tournament, and the shed in shambles. Sighing, she sent her falcon patronus to summon McGonagall, who guarded the miscreants as Hooch set out to find her class.

It took her another twenty minutes to track them down to the lake. Fortunately, another Professor seemed to have them in hand.

"Hadrian James Potter! Come out of that water at once, or detention until midwinter, and I'll tell your mother!"

Perhaps splashing the potions master wasn't the brightest response.

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The staff gathered to commiserate in the lounge .

"First years," McGonagall groused. "Using real, active hexes--however minor-- on broomsticks. Coordinating attacks. Dismounting each-other--why, I haven't seen such violence since the jousting tournament at the Medieval Fair--thank Merlin they were over the lake when it happened!" She paused to take a sip of tea and nibble at a biscuit. "I would never have believed it if I hadn't seen it. Why, they haven't been taught half as much magic as they used out there! Did you ask them the incantations they used at all, Ramona?"

Ramona Hooch regarded her incredulously. "Ask them the incantations? I was less interested in the spells they'd used than why they did it at all. And as for coordinating attacks, I didn't get there until the tail-end of it, so I don't know--"

Several staff members became curiously still, and directed their attention elsewhere.

"You were watching the whole time?"

Professor McGonagall shrugged pleasantly. "As a matter of fact, yes. Quirrell, Flitwick and I were discussing how formidably useless the defense curriculum seems to have become in recent years, and we were fortunate enough to see the problem doesn't lay in the potential of our students."

"What's to be done with them though?" Ramona pressed.

McGonagall pursed her lips. "Were it any individual breaking the rules, I would advocate suspension. Being as we can hardly suspend the entire year of two houses and hope to have them all keep up with classes, I suppose we'll simply have to assign detention to the wrongdoers and extra homework to all, and hope it's enough to keep them out of trouble.

Snape snorted.

McGonagall turned to him, brows raised. "You had an opinion to express, Severus?"

"With all respect, Professor," he began slowly, "You would need more than a little extra homework and detention to stop my godson."

She sighed, then smiled.

"You're right. They'll start with you. A few months as Potions Assistants can work wonders on the most recalcitrant teens--wouldn't you agree, Severus?"

Anyone else he would have fixed with one of his patented glares and that'd been the end of it. McGonagall, he deigned to stare at flatly.

"I? I spend my free time supervising a band of miscreants too lackwitted to restrain themselves during their second month of schooling? Professor, if anything, the duty should fall upon the Professor who failed to control them in the first place." He glared pointedly at Hooch now, and Ramona remembered, uneasily, the number of times she'd turned a blind eye to Potter Senior and Black hexing his broom in her classes. Snape paused a moment. "Or perhaps, given the number of miscreants involved this time, we should consider finally hiring extra help."

"I thought Argus Filch was doing an admirable job with their detentions," McGonagall put in.

"Yes, he is an excellent deterrent--however, I doubt the merits of knowing seven non-magical means to clean a china chamberbowl. Several parents have complained that we use our students' time not as efficiently as we might--spending too much time in Quidditch, or insisting on useless, menial punishments. Hence why we've become less competitive with Durmstrang in recent years."

"So you'd suggest a Taskmaster then?" Quirrell interjected. Yes, yes, yes, you couldn't be more correct if you wanted to be, Snape exulted. "A Taskmaster," Quirrell continued, as though lecturing offhand, "such as are present in much of the German schools and the small Old Scholae. To educate such students who desire it in the basics of practical disciplines--rituals, weavings, potions, and other artifact preparations--or focused supplementary training in another core fields of academia. To enforce such training upon such students who cannot be relied upon to use their free time constructively." Quirrell blinked, and set his own quarterly down. "Hogwarts does have a set salary for a Taskmaster, does it not?"

"Professor Dippet disbanded the position in 1929 after Argot Montrose came before the Wizengamot on charges of abusing his position and endangering minors," McGonagall offered.

Professor Flitwick shut his eyes, reminiscing. "I remember that. They accused him of causing the mental breakdown of multiple students, by pushing them too hard in their studies, particularly some unfortunate girl who in the course of her studies, had gotten stuck in her animagus form for several weeks."

McGonagall pinked delicately. "Ahem. Well, that was all some time ago."

"Of course," Severus smiled.

"A Taskmaster, however--I will certainly ask Albus about it, and it's not as though we haven't enough in the operating budget for it," McGonagall mused. "In advance, any candidates for it?"

Severus almost had to bite his tongue from saying anything in the ensuing silence.

"Gilderoy Lockhart has applied multiple years for a post at Hogwarts," offered Pomfrey, "perhaps--"

"No," several staff members pronounced flatly. Thankfully, not everyone in this school is too besotted with stupidity to notice its existence... Snape thought irately.

"Moody?"

"Do you want the students to be alive after this or not? 'Sides, isn't he retired?"

"Yes, however I'm certain he could be recalled, and there's no question he's as well-rounded as any of us would like, and certainly wouldn't put up with any impudence from the students."

"Or," Severus suggested, "Andromeda Tonks."

McGonagall started. "Dromeda? She's been incapacitated for the last five years."

"Oh? Narcissa Malfoy had informed me otherwise."

McGonagall straightened and adjusted her glasses to catch Severus in a gimlet-eyed stare. "Otherwise? But the Devil's Eye?"

Snape shrugged. "I would not presume to know the details with the acuity of a medical examiner nor the intrusiveness of family. I simply heard Narcissa Malfoy in a high snit about the difficulty finding employment for his sister, particularly given her history of mental health problems--cured or otherwise, I believe Mrs. Tonks will be hard-pressed to find a job."

"And with the debts they incurred for medical care..." McGonagall began, but then shook her head. "All the same, whatever Dromeda's qualifications, what of the danger of a relapse?"

"Professor Dumbledore has made other dubious appointments," Snape stated drily. McGonagall followed his glance out the window towards the North Tower. "Asides, I'm not certain he'd have a choice. The Ministry has pushed for increased involvement at Hogwarts for years, and the only thing barring their way is that most of the positions are occupied by tenured faculty." Not to mention the curse on the DADA post. "Give them an opening, and they'll jump. Unless we want an idiot like Umbridge or Dawlish sent our way, it would be in our best interests to find a candidate palatable to the both parties."

"And a former resident of the insane asylum is preferable to a trigger-happy ex-Auror because--" frowned Hooch. "Oh, right. Lucius Malfoy is her brother-in-law. Wasn't she burned off the family tree for marrying a Muggle-born?"

"She was reinstated when Lucius learnt Tonks was a Metamorphamagus."

"Correct." McGonagall glanced out the window again, and then leaned further over, squinting at something on the ground. "Well, I was willing to recommend her for the Defense post five years ago before she was admitted to St. Mungo's--I'll mention her to Albus, though if anyone comes up with some more... stable candidates, by all means tell."

The staff murmured assent, and McGonagall squinted further out the window, into the deepening twilight, and abruptly stood up.

"And from the looks of the grounds, perhaps our urgence for a taskmaster is greater than I feared."

"Why?" Severus strode over to the window, then groaned. "I do not recall giving permission for a bonfire tonight." He frowned at the sudden flashes of light. "Nor a duelling tournament..." he strode past McGonagall, and stormed out the door.

"The Weasley twins?"

McGonagall pursed her lips once more. "Who else?"

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

After a round verbal thrashing of a group of third and fourth years caught duelling on the back lawn--Snape skulked down to his labs to check the progress of his experimental munitions. As a mixture of Muggle technology and magic, this was a classified project for Voldemort--the WIP would probably reject to it on general principle, at least until they saw it in combat. Though Snape hardly wanted to be working on the Manhattan project of this war, if it wasn't him, it would be someone else--and at least he could add failsafe spells to ensure the Order could disarm them, if it came to that.

A quick stir added slivered Devil's Snare to a photosensitive explosive, intended to detonate when exposed to sunlight. Or, Snape's lips twisted, any impurities at all. One flake of ash from one of the Weasley Twin's dratted fireworks, and I spend days--days--repairing the dungeons.

He shook his head, set the burner on low to simmer for the next twenty hours, and stalked from the dungeons to complete his last task for the evening. McGonagall had succeeded as well in finding the perpetrator as she would in a food fight. No one could remember who started it.

Of course, Snape would not give McGonagall the satisfaction of another comment on his wayward godson by pointing out the duel had occurred directly below the Hufflepuff dorms.

All in all, however, he hoped more than he'd realized to see a Taskmaster here--before someone blew up the school.

In the meantime, however, he'd have to do.

Tapping politely at the door of Hufflepuff House--a large window that seemingly overlooked the Quidditch Pitch--only experience with the castle prevented him from feeling disoriented as it opened on the warm obscurity of Hufflepuff House. A girl, long black hair combed to her waist and heavily kohled eyes, regarded him with surprise.

"Professor Snape!" she announced cheerfully, opening the window wider. "What can I do--arggghhh."

It was testament to Tonks' clumsiness that none of her peers arrived to look for the source of the kafuffle. In opening the window, she'd somehow unbalanced herself and tripped over the ledge. Snape caught her awkwardly, and set her on her feet. The girl would be less gawky if she weren't forever changing her physique, he groused. Young metamorphagi were notoriously uncoordinated, second only to new animagi. They altered their forms too frequently for their minds to adjust to the change.

Still, he supposed, glancing at the long legs emerging from her artfully ripped uniform, likely easier to coordinate longer legs than Lily's high heels. Elspeth could keep on threatening to tell James Potter about playing dress-up with Uncle Severus. It never happened. Never.

Still, it almost warmed a micrometer of permafrost from the Antarctica of his heart to hear little Elspeth threatening blackmail. Why, they grew up so fast.

"Is Mr. Potter in?" he demanded. Tonks looked inside uncertainly, and that was all the encouragement Snape needed.

"Where?" he pressed, climbing through the window.

"Umm..." Tonks began helpfully.

The laughter by the fireplace directed him. Morcant Butcher, a rather talented charms students, was busily enspelling origami puppets of Hogwarts professors, to the eager delight of his audience. It disgruntled Snape to recognize his paper avatar at work with a napkin Trelawney.

"And, HAHAHA," Lester Gray began in an entirely appropriate cackle. "Thou petty denizens of Hufflepuff! Thou hast foiled our plots for deathly divinations and endless detentions for the last time. Prepare to meet thy doom!"

As good a prompt as I can hope for, Snape supposed.

"Ten points from Hufflepuff, Mr. Gray, Mr. Butcher, for disrespect of your betters. I will be confiscating those--" he flicked his wand once to summon the puppets, twice to dispell them, and set them down. "And now, if Harry is present--"

"Begging your pardon, sir. It's Mr. Potter."

Severus smiled, as though indulgently, and then took the impudent young rip by the ear and began to haul him out--

"Severus!" came a voice, and Snape groaned internally as Pomona Sprout appeared from her room, stuffed into her oversized bathrobe and idly curling her hair with her wand. "What in heavens are you doing with my student?"

"Your student?" he raised his eyebrows. "Your student, Professor, is my godson, and as such, it is my jurisdiction to punish him as I see fit in addition to whatever disciplines are set forth by the school."

She glared. "Section IV, paragraph 3, Hogwarts Code of Conduct. On school grounds, students may not be punished for misdemeanors committed therein by relations up to the third degree, excepting those directly committed against such a person in authority." She smiled sunshine at him. "I believe, Professor, the rule was made for such instances as these to ensure the student isn't punished twice for a single misdemeanor. Now," she smiled wider. "Let the poor boy enjoy some time with his classmates."

Harry exchanged glances with several of the upper years. They nodded or smiled. The significance was lost on Snape.

"Oh, and do please stop by my office some time for tea, and--" Sprout paused, "I've been meaning to tell you, but I keep forgetting. The samples of Devil's Snare I sent you? The whole batch, contaminated. Ruined. I'm sorry to have not said anything earlier."

"Quite all right," Snape assured drily. "Problems of this nature are to be altogether expected in our professions." He turned irately and stalked out the open window with dignity and slammed it shut behind him, before breaking into a flat-out run.

Given time, he could, of course, bully the Hufflepuff head into letting him take his godson in hand. It was just a matter of whether he could do this without getting the silent treatment from the entire faculty for injuring the old woman's delicate feelings. And really, he had more pressing matters at hand than that.

Such as exploding cauldrons.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Snape needn't have tried to conceal his haste before the Hufflepuffs. In his panic--or rather, what passed for it in Head of Slytherin--he'd neglected to notice a crucial defect in his concealed retreat.

The door to Hufflepuff was a one-way window.

The Hufflepuffs watched in open hilarity as Snape broke into flat run, cloak blown out behind like great wings. A Muggleborn began to hum the theme to Batman. Professor Sprout allowed the laughter to continue until Wayne Hopkins started hyperventilating, then cast a Hushing Hex on the lot of them.

"Now, now," she smiled. "That was very entertaining, I'm sure, wasn't it?"

"Yes, Professor," they chimed indulgently.

"Very good," she smiled ear to ear. "And what are we going to say about this little incident?"

"Absolutely nothing, Professor."

"And if," she glared, "any of us mention a word of this to another House, what will we do to him or her?"

"Use him for practicing human transfiguration and lock the results in McGonagall's office," they recited dutifully.

Sprout beamed. Let none say her Hufflepuffs weren't loyal!

"Excellent!" she declared ebulliently. "Now, Potter, if you would please follow me... I have something for you," she enthused.

"But I'm enjoying time with my classmates..." he protested half-heartedly, and then caught her glance.

He flinched.

Begrudgingly, Harry followed her into the Round Room, where she shut the door. It was, unfortunately, not soundproof, and from his short experience, he knew his fellow students were intended to hear everything that went on.

She turned on him, smile dissipated in a second, leaving in its wake a thunderous ire.

"Hadrian James Potter!" she bellowed. "Can you NOT stay out of trouble for longer than two minutes? Is that too much to ask?"

He shrugged nonchalantly, willing himself to breathe evenly. Sprout noticed. Sprout disapproved. She swooped in and nabbed his ear.

"And don't you give me that I'm not hearing you bit, boy," she twisted, "I'm quite certain you know exactly what's going on here."

"Ow, ow, ow..." Harry winced. "What is it with the ear today? Can't you find some other way to get my attention? Like, a simple listen-up?"

"None of your lip, Potter! Breaking into the Third-Floor Corridor! Salting my Devil's Snare--what gave you and that Weasley boy the idea--"

"Umm, it was kind of trying to kill us at the time--"

"Starting duels nearly every single day--"

"Begging your pardon, ma'am, but the thing with the brooms wasn't exactly a duel, and I just blundered into it because I was worried about Dean. He looked like he was going to fall, and--"

"You thought you'd watch him fall, and fling off a few hexes while you were at it, hmm?" fumed Sprout. "I wasn't born yesterday, Potter." She caught sight of her face , graying and weathered, in the hall mirror, and pursed her lips ruefully. "Obviously."

"Why, you're as ravishing as ever," Harry jumped in. "Now, milady, if that will be all for the evening--"

"Why, you're the young gallant. Sit down!" she snapped, and Harry--fearless Harry--actually jumped for a second, then scrambled for the chair.

She squatted down to his eye level.

"Now, my little gentleman, let us understand some things," she growled. "Number one. Hufflepuffs do not start fights. They simper and sing and when the fights start, they run for the nearest broom closet... usually with a pretty girl in tow," she mused as an aside. "Speaking of which," she raised her voice for the benefit of the eavesdroppers, "Eloise and Martin are next."

Muffled whispers at the door followed this juicy tidbit. Harry had neither the interest or time to think on this though.

"Number two," she snapped. "Hufflepuffs do not participate in fights. They scream like girls and run for the nearest teacher, who conveniently happens to be their Head of House, who takes a hundred points from the other House. Three..." she leaned in closer, so that Harry couldn't avoid her bald glare.

"Three, if we do, we don't--ever--get caught. Now, tell me," she said, standing up and dispersing the Doomgloom charms she'd set for an appropriately dark ambiance, "What's the difference between a Hufflepuff and a Slytherin?"

Harry caught his breath. "Everyone can trust a Hufflepuff, but a Slytherin's too sly to understand."

"Exactly," Sprout smiled. "And we'll leave it at that, shan't we?" she continued pointedly. "Now, as for your detention," she bustled about and retrieved a couple of heavy tomes, handing them to Harry. He staggered under their weight.

"Go into the first carrel," she directed him, pointing to one of the small spaces off the main room. "You'll be here every weeknight from after supper until lights-out, and if I as much as find you trying to sneak out, I'll place you under the supervision of the house-elves. Do you hear me, Mr. Potter?"

"Yes, ma'am," he responded diligently, squinting to make out the title on the cover in the yet dim light.

"Good! And ensure you pay those books good mind," she continued, "as you'll be tested on the top one every two weeks. Your detentions will end once you've learned it to my satisfaction."

"Yes, Professor," he grumbled, knowing it was pointless to argue. He stumped into the small carrel, shutting the door upon the sound of Eloise's interrogation behind him. And stared at the first book.

"A Contemporary Compendium of Magical Law. Bartemius Crouch." He flipped through the first few pages. From the vocabulary, he was certain this had to be the restricted book that burnt out your eyes. He rubbed his forehead, and lifted it, hoping the book beneath it would be slightly more encouraging.

"A Complete Dictionary of Modern English." Of course.

Well, hang that.

He got up to try the door. It didn't budge.

"Alohomora."

No such luck.

He sighed, and resigned himself to the next few weeks.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Pomona Sprout, having set her students to work, withdrew to her own room, lighting a candle with a word, and sprawled her formidable figure across her tiny bed. She wriggled into the worn duvet, and once comfortable, allowed herself a tiny smirk.

Pomona Sprout was the perfect Hufflepuff.

Never mind the foolish expectations held about her house--she was certainly loyal and hardworking to a fault. She just didn't see the point of working hard at unnecessary tasks that could be delegated elsewhere--enabling her to devote her considerable energies towards other more important things.

Like dragon dung.

It was so difficult to find a proper fertilizer nowadays.

Hence, with no feigned gratitude she allowed Severus and Minerva to take most of her detentions--excepting the odd case where the miscreant knew his way around a Greenhouse, or continued offenses by a member of her House.

And they wondered why they had no spare time!

The Sorting Hat did not lie about the Houses. Hufflepuffs were honest--primarily because they had no reason to lie, and occasionally, as in her case, because they could out-equivocate a Jesuit. Hufflepuffs were loyal, because it made everyone more cheerful and, you know, their peers might use them for target practice otherwise. And Hufflepuffs worked damn hard and stayed out of trouble--or else Professor Sprout, or a Prefect, or even just an upper year student, would drag them into the Round Room, and set them to work for several hours.

An onlooker might express astonishment that how this Durmstrang-like set of affairs remained intact without the knowledge of the other houses. Certainly, it was quietly known among all the upper-years that Sprout was a formidable force and not to be crossed--but they discounted whereby her power was truly derived--the love and loyalty of her students, well-earned through her constant concern for their welfare and happiness.

Which was why Harry--her clever, thieving Harry-- would find himself studying Magical Law four hours a night--and reviewing it every spare minute--for a long, long time to come.

Love hurts.