Hogsmeade is busy. Students are rushing back and forth between the different stores, all of which have their doors wide open. For February, it is an uncommonly warm and pleasant day, and for the time being everyone has managed to abandon their scarves and woollen hats. It's nice to walk without the encumberment of heavy coats, and Harry walks alongside Hermione with his hands in his pockets. He'd barely slept the night before, instead focusing on his Occlumency the whole night through, so focused on remaining detached and controlled that he couldn't fall asleep. He just couldn't.

Stalls line the wider streets of Hogsmeade, selling gifts and cards for St. Valentine's Day tomorrow, but Harry ignores them, moving past the earnest salespeople with his shoulders down and his gaze on the ground. Neither he or Hermione have said anything since they walked down to the village together, and now they are quiet.

Likely given instruction from Dumbledore, there are more members of staff than Harry would usually expect lingering around Hogsmeade, on corners or benches, feigning a casually watchful eye, but Harry is too aware of his surroundings to pretend it's normal.

Professor Binns is lingering underneath the sign for Zonko's, and that's not something Harry can pretend is normal.

"That's Tonks," Hermione murmurs, nodding her head in Binns' direction. A man is stood with Binns. He has dark grey stubble and is wearing a deep green coat over plain, blue robes. "I recognize the boots." Harry's eyes flit down, and he sees them - where the robes are blown upwards by a sudden breeze, he sees the patterned leather of the shoes there. "Drom showed them to us in the summer, remember? She told us she was getting them for her, for Christmas."

Harry doesn't remember. Through the black haze around his mind, keeping him suspended in the darkness, he searches for the memory, but he doesn't find it.

"We should pass it on to Moody," he says, and his voice comes out harder than he means it to. "She shouldn't have anything on her that reveals who she is, Metamorphagus or no." He feels Hermione's gaze on the side of his face, quietly concerned, and he ignores it. "Let's go to the Hog's Head."

"The Hog's Head?" Hermione asks. Harry thinks for a second that she's going to argue and insist on the cosy, bright interior of the busy Three Broomsticks instead, but she doesn't. She just walks a little faster, and she turns into the alley toward the pub before he does.

The Hog's Head is not as empty as it usually is. Around a table in the corner of the room are a crew of six or seven wizards still wearing their cloaks, though no one is sat at the bar. When Harry and Hermione step over the threshold, Harry hears the whip of the barman's head towards the two of them before he sees it, and he takes a step forwards, towards the bar. He hesitates, but he's not wearing his Hogwarts robes this morning, and he straightens his back as he looks to the bartender.

"A Butterbeer for her," he says quietly, "And an Irish coffee for me, please." The barman has blue eyes that make Harry think of Dumbledore, but his beard is thick and grey and dirty, and there isn't that much further resemblance. He arches an eyebrow, his lips quirking, but he leans back, flicking his wand to a kettle on the back counter and reaching for a bottle of firewhiskey.

"They'll have two Butterbeers," says an arch voice from the table, and when Lucius Malfoy raises his head, the hood of his cloak falls gracefully away from his sleek, silver hair. "Come here." Harry feels like he should feel panic, or shame, or something, when he looks closely at the table's members. Hadn't he just been thinking of how aware of his surroundings he is? Lucius is sat beside Arthur Weasley, and around the table Harry sees Mad-Eye Moody, Ted Tonks, Kingsley Shacklebolt... Beside him, he hears Hermione let out a quiet exhalation. The bartender smirks even more.

"Come on, Hermione, let's go somewhere else," Harry murmurs.

"Take my seat, Ms Granger," Lucius says, standing up straight. Usually, his general expression towards Hermione is almost a snarl, but he gives her a polite nod, and when the barman hands Hermione her glass, she takes it, taking the invitation.

"Thanks, Mr Malfoy," she murmurs, and Harry sees that he's wearing leather gloves when he gently touches her shoulder to pass her by. Harry wants to linger and listen to the conversation, because it must be to do with the Order, but Lucius' gloved hand comes tightly to Harry's shoulder, and he guides Harry forwards and outside as if he expects Harry to run off at any second. Harry is stiff as he walks outside with Lucius, letting the other man lead him towards the woods.

Harry tries to shrug the older man's grip away, but Lucius holds him tighter, his perfectly-manicured nails digging into the flesh of Harry's shoulder. Only once they're into the woods and ought of sight of the village does Lucius let Harry go. Harry presses his lips together, walking with his hands in his pockets once again and taking a few steps away from him so that they're not so close together.

"Anyone could see you out here," Harry says. "People could be walking this direction and see your face. Vold-"

"Be quiet," Lucius orders, cleanly and crisply, so suddenly and sharply that it makes Harry jump. Harry bites his tongue to keep from snapping something back. Lucius grasps his cane in his left hand, the leather of his glove crinkling around its handle, and the steps of his dragonhide boots are quiet and purposeful on the wet dirt of the path. "If you would allow me the privilege, Harry, I will worry about my own safety. For the time being, explain."

"What?" Harry asks, succinctly.

"Explain. Elucidate. Make clear your state of mind." Harry grits his teeth, pressing his hands further into his pockets. His state of mind is less organized than he would like, and he's continuously aware of the potential influence of that spider's web of Voldemort's. After all, if he had been thrust so completely and entirely into Voldemort's body, couldn't Voldemort possess him in just the same way? "Do you think fourteen is an acceptable age to drink coffee?"

"And here I was thinking it was the whiskey you had a problem with," Harry mutters. He expects Lucius to smack him upside the head, braces himself for it, but it doesn't come. It's something Harry's grown used to in Slytherin over four years - it's not something the other houses seem to engage in, much, the light forms of corporal punishment, but Harry doesn't think it's something new.

"I ought assure you," Lucius says, his voice ringing cleanly in Harry's ears, "that we have been made aware of your... Condition. Your link, that is, with the Dark Lord. Within the Order, that is." Harry glances away, breathing in quietly. "Is this about what you saw?"

"No," Harry says stoutly. "I'm connected to him, somehow, and I can't get away from him. It's sick. You don't know what it's like. "

"Don't I?" Lucius asks coolly, and Harry shoots him a glare.

"I didn't choose this. You did." Lucius' white lips thin, but he doesn't argue, and for the barest second, Harry feels an unpleasant triumph. It fades away like every other feeling he's had in the past day and night, given a moment's pause. "Do you know Occlumency?"

"No," Lucius says quietly. Even when he speaks at the barest volume, the sound seems to ring in the air, completely clear. Harry wonders if Lucius took lessons in elocution when he was a child, or if he just learned it naturally. "It's not a magic I've ever been able to pursue. It is a magic that requires careful training, however. Just as one might struggle and leave oneself too open, one might easily do the opposite and close off oneself entirely."

"Wouldn't you?" Harry asks. "If he- if he just took me over, he could- I could kill-"

"Do you think the Dark Lord fidgets in the dark, Harry, desperately wishing he could come to a school and murder some children? Do you truly believe his ambitions are so elementary?" Harry furrows his brow, and Lucius says sharply, "You aren't important. You mean nothing except that you are a symbol, one that might mean much to the world once you have been struck down. Do you understand that? The Dark Lord doesn't worry about your coming to him, or defeating him. He considers you a plaything, as he considers us all."

"That's not true. I'm not being arrogant, Lucius, but he wants me dead, specifically, and-"

"The list of people the Dark Lord specifically wants dead could fill several books," Lucius says. "The only power he wants from you is that which saved you from the Killing Curse, and that was no skill. It was luck, or blood, or otherwise, but it does not mean you could best him in a duel, does it?"

"I did once," Harry says. "And I was only-"

"You bested Quirrell." Harry furrows his brow, the distinction hitting him hard, and he clenches his fists at his sides. "Are you under the impression, Harry, that all of this will end in some great battle between you and him? Are you truly so arrogant?" He bites the inside of his lip, and he stares forward, stopping short for a few moments. He stands with his feet apart on the ground, his hands in his pockets. When he looks to Lucius, the other man is watching him, silently, seriously.

"Dumbledore said he'd train me in Occlumency," Harry says in barely a whisper. "I'll focus on that. You think I'm stupid?"

"I think you've an inflated sense of your own importance," Lucius says quietly. "It's a complaint Severus often makes of you, but I don't believe he considers the damage it might do you, and the undue worry. The defeat of the Dark Lord, boy, is not your responsibility and yours alone. The world will not shatter because you cease to hold it aloft."

"Lucius-" Harry hesitates, and then he says, "Thanks. I'm guessing this is you trying to be comforting, right?" Lucius arches a silver brow.

"Trying?" he repeats. Harry les out a short, stunted laugh.

"Thanks," Harry repeats, and Lucius reaches out, touching his shoulder. It's a gentle, almost paternal touch, and Harry doesn't pull away this time. "Are you like this with Draco?"

"I needn't assure my son he isn't the centre of the universe, Harry. He knows very well that he is." Harry sniggers quietly, and for the moment he walks back with Lucius towards the village.