After that night, life moves at so fast a pace it seems to pass Harry by in a blur.

The next morning, he wakes in his own bed at Sirius' apartment on Argyle Street, staring up at the canopy of his bed. Sun is shining in through the windows, brightly and warmly, and leaving a patch of Harry's leg hotter than the rest of him. He shifts forwards, going for the window and pushing it open. Immediately, a snowy figure alights on the sill: Hedwig, with a pack of letters tied about her left ankle, and a mouse dangling from her mouth.

"That for me?" With a seeming relish, she takes the thing into her mouth, beginning to loudly and bloodily chew it, and Harry laughs. It's very early, still, the London streets outside not yet having reached a bustle, and Harry takes off his clothes from the night previous, which are cold and stained with sweat. He remembers no dreams, having fallen into a very deep and sound unconsciousness, and he glances through the stack of envelopes. He recognizes the tight, fancy handwriting of Augusta Longbottom, the curt script of Amelia Bones, and then handwriting he doesn't recognize.

"Mr. Harry Potter," the letter declares, with a sense of class. The handwriting is in a nice, feminine hand, with curled edges to the letters as if the writer might once have been a calligrapher, and he sets the other post aside, splitting open the envelope and drawing out the letter itself. He scans directly from the Dear Harry to the end before he reads it, and now he sees her signature, it all makes sense: "With love, Narcissa."

For the first time, Harry is abruptly aware that he has never received a letter written by Narcissa. Although he has been received dozens, perhaps even a hundred or more, letters from the Malfoys, signed "Lucius & Narcissa", or "Mr and Mrs Malfoy," or "Your friends, the Malfoys," at Christmas time, they'd always been written in Lucius' attractive, authoritative handwriting. Harry thinks of the two of them sat by their fire place, talking quietly and with genteel manners over glasses of wine as Lucius writes his letters of an evening, perhaps with Narcissa's feet in his lap, and noting down Narcissa's thoughts in equal measure with his, mingled together like the convergence of two streams.

What must it feel like for her now he's gone, Harry thinks, when for so long her and Lucius had been two halves of something as much as they were separate pieces?

He feels slightly sick, and sets the letter aside. He'll read the body of it later.

When he goes out into the kitchen, flicking on the pot to boil on the hob, and he leans into the hall: Sirius' coat is missing from the coatrack, his business shoes missing from the neat lines of shoes beside the door, but Remus' coat and shoes are still there. Harry takes out two mugs, pouring himself a cup of coffee and making a cup of tea for Remus. He takes it sweet, way too sweet for Harry's liking, but Remus has a disgusting sweet tooth. He holds both of the mugs, knocking on Remus and Sirius' bedroom door with his elbow.

"Come in," Remus calls, and Harry flicks the door open, coming inside. Sitting straight-backed on a stool beside the window, Remus is bent over an architect's desk, and Harry places the new mug of steaming tea beside the empty one on the windowsill. Remus smiles at him, softly, and Harry leans over his shoulder, looking at the parchment page upon the desk. Remus is working with watercolours on the large square of canvas, and Harry sees the tall figure of a woman with braided red hair, in the process of being transformed into some sort of huge bird.

"I didn't know you painted," Harry murmurs. He'd seen the desk in the corner of the room, while dropping something into Sirius or Remus, or walking past when the door was open, but he'd never realized Remus was actually good. The woman is wearing a white chiffon woven with flowers and blooms, her head thrown back, her mouth open as it turns black and morphs into a beak, feathers falling on the ground around her feet. "Is this a curse?"

"Yes," Remus says, quietly. "This is Blodeuwedd - she's one of the figures in the Mabinogi."

"That's the Welsh mythology, right?" Remus nods his head, glancing over the tortured figure of the woman in the woods.

"Peter used to tell us stories around the fireplace at night. His mother died when he was a child, so it was just his dad that raised him. He was very strict - very strict - and Peter... When we met him, he was an absolute wreck. He'd get so nervous just saying hello that he'd stammer for twenty minutes before he could get the word out, and he could barely spit out a spell. It wasn't until we were fifteen or so that he was able to cast incantations like the rest of us, and by then he'd just started to cast non-verbally." Remus shakes his head slightly, chuckles, and murmurs, "He actually did better on his charms exams than any of us." He seems genuinely fond as he reminisces, and Harry doesn't speak up to interrupt him. He never does, when Sirius or Remus do this about Pettigrew. "Anyway... The first time he ever managed to talk to the three of us in paragraphs, with a stammer that was sort of manageable, he told us a story. It was a little mangled - his first language was Welsh, of course - but it was a good story. Blodeuwedd tried to kill her husband so she could be with her lover, so some magicians cursed her. They turned her into an owl. The bird all of the others shun."

"Are they all from Welsh stories?" Harry asks, reaching for the next page and bringing it down. The canvas is transparent, with block text appearing in line with Blodeuwedd's calves: "And poor Blodeuwedd cried, and cried: "Gwydion! You-- You-- You--," but she never finished her curse, for the spell overtook her, and her words became "Hoo! Hoo!" as she was transformed.

"This is for a book?" Harry says, feeling the surprise show on his face, and Remus leans forwards, pulling forwards a box that leans against the wall. He pulls out three little books, each with painted watercolour illustrations. Harry had assumed that the painting of Blodeuwedd was unfinished, but none of the illustrations are magically animated. They're Muggle books: Matholwch's Cauldron, Rhiannon Fair and the last book, which is darker than the others: The Warlock's Hairy Heart. "This is a wizarding story." He says it quietly, drawing his fingers over the dark, shadowy image of the wizard's heart, with hair growing from the muscled tendons. In a little gold medal at the corner of the cover, it declares, CARNEGIE PRIZE WINNER, 1994. Harry traces over the looping text at the base of the cover that declares, Written and illustrated, with love, by R.J. Lupin.

"It's the first one I published. Celia Hayworth, she saw a painting of mine that I'd done for Minerva McGonagall. Put me in touch with a Muggle publishing house, run by a Squib she knows from back in Ireland... You didn't think I just lived on Sirius' money, did you?" Remus expression is teasing, and Harry feels stupid at the way his tongue freezes in his mouth, the way he goes entirely silent for a moment or two. Remus breaks the momentary silence with his laughter, chuckling as he takes the books back and neatly sets them aside. "It's alright, Harry. You don't think of these things." What is that supposed to mean? Harry wants to demand, but he doesn't holding his tongue a few seconds more: Remus isn't having a go at him, after all.

Harry hears the front door open, and he leans back on the bed, watching the door. When Sirius enters, Harry feels his mouth fall open.

Sirius is wearing a traditional business robe, a sort of tunic with loose sleeves, a high collar and a flowing skirt, a vest tightly fastened over top. The vest is black and embroidered in gold with vines and flowers, and the chain of his watch blends in with it very artfully. Gold shines at the hems of his skirt and sleeves, too, and around his neck, Sirius wears a chain of silver with a silver W emblazoned on a sort of medal.

"I didn't know we'd be getting the costume, too," Remus says, dryly.

"Shut up, Moony," Sirius says, sharply, and he walks past the both of them, going to a chest of drawers and rifling through it. Harry sees the hurt that flashes over Remus' face, but Sirius just ignores him entirely, rummaging until he finds a stack of papers, muttering to himself as he sorts through them. "You want to come with us?"

"I think it's best that I don't," Remus says, delicately. "I wouldn't want to undermine your message." Sirius turns, opening his mouth, his brows furrowed, but then he hesitates, and he sighs softly.

"What's going on?" Harry asks.

"This morning, I reclaimed the Black seat on the Wizengamot," Sirius says, flicking his wand in the direction of the hall. A box flies into the room, gliding neatly to place itself upon Remus' lap, and Harry looks inside as he opens up the box, seeing the plum-coloured fabric. "Hereditary seats aren't common any more: most of the families that had them, the Ancient ones, have died off or given up their seats."

"Do the Potters have a seat?" Harry asks, more out of curiosity than any wish to get onto the Wizengamot, and Sirius distractedly shakes his head as he looks through the papers in his hands. He's stiff as a board, but his hands are shaking slightly, and Harry watches him very carefully. He's never seen Sirius like this, so abruptly driven and throwing himself into something like politics... Harry's surprised.

"No," Sirius mutters. "Your granddad, and your great aunt Martha, they had some seats for services to the wizarding world, but they were lifetime seats..."

"I never knew you were interested in politics," Harry says, softly.

Sirius lets out a sudden snarl of sound, throwing the papers aside, and Harry feels himself flinch back; beside him, Remus is utterly unmoved, and silently waves his wand, beginning to draw up the papers again. Sirius stands in the middle of the room, his fists clenched, his teeth gritted, and Harry is reminded of a trapped animal. "I'm not," Sirius says finally, with bitterness sticking to the words. "But Narcissa is taking up the Malfoy mantel, and I... Nobody else can do it, Harry. And if Voldemort is back, then we have to. You don't understand, you couldn't understand, what it was like, during the war. He infiltrated everything, everything! The papers, the Ministry, everything from the local post office to the Essex Quidditch Team. We need to act as much as he does."

Remus hands the papers over, and then says, "If you're looking for your birth certificate, it's in the documents drawer in the kitchen. Same place as mine and Harry's." Remus' voice is measured and quiet, his dark eyes soulful. Sirius closes his eyes for a moment or two, mutters something that is close to an apology, and then leaves the room. "Go with him, Harry. Grimmauld Place is where the action is today anyway."

Remus is right.

A half hour or so later, when Harry crosses the threshold into Grimmauld Place, the whole building is bustling, a flurry of owls coming in and out of the window in the hall. Many of them bear Ministry crests on the harnesses around their chests, and others are broad-winged owls with bright plumages or shining eyes: well-bred owls, used by the upper classes. One of them stops short, tiredly alighting on Harry's shoulder, and he strokes her chest gently.

Hedone is an eagle owl, named for a Greek goddess of pleasure, and according to Lucius, he'd received her when he was ten or so. For being thirty years old, she doesn't look very old, though she's very muscular, and subsequently something of a weight on Harry's shoulder. Sirius stalks past, opening a door to the drawing room: Harry only needs to the see the flurry of documents on the air inside to be put off, and he makes his way up the stairs. He stops at one of the doors, and knocks.

"Come in." The reply is terse, and Harry pushes the door open. Immediately, Hedone takes off from Harry's shoulder and drops into bed with Draco instead. The other boy is lying in bed, only wearing a set of pyjama bottoms and tangled in his shirts, his head on the pillow. Harry sees no evidence of a book or something to do, but he can tell from Draco's expression that he's been awake and thinking for a while. Hedone drops her weight upon Draco's neck, flapping her wings and nipping playfully at his ears, and Draco's laughs are soft and slightly hoarse, as if he's unused to laughing.

Draco's room is sparsely decorated. He had told Harry once, in a fit of pique, that he didn't really believe in excess - rich, coming from a boy with silver-plated door knobs - but now that he sees Draco's bedroom, he really believes it. Several blankets are neatly folded on the table beside his chair, and there's a painting of a Greek temple above his writing desk, but other than that, there are no posters, no toys, no messy things about the place. There are framed photographs of his parents on his desk, a few books, and that's all. "You know, if I told people you were a minimalist, they wouldn't believe me."

Draco says nothing, just smiling slightly and shifting in his bed. It's a king-sized mattress, and Draco looks tiny in the middle of it; the older they get, the more Draco seems to take after Narcissa. Both Narcissa and Lucius always struck Harry as unusually tall, but Draco is willowy and thin like his mother is, with wider hips and a dancer's form, soft edges and high cheek bones. A fleeting thought runs through his head, and Harry wonders if Draco regrets that more, now that his father is dead.

"How're you keeping?"

"I don't think I am," Draco says. He doesn't look at Harry; instead, his icy-blue eyes stare into the space before him, searching the clouded thoughts that Harry can't see. "Mother can... She used to study Occlumency, a kind of mind magic. She can do that. She can just... Just keep going. I can't do that."

"Occlumency isn't so hard," Harry murmurs quietly. He comes further into the room, settling himself on the edge of Draco's bed: he makes sure the distance between them is still enough, not wanting to touch the other boy without his permission. Not when he's like this. "I could teach you, or Professor Snape..." Draco minutely shakes his head. "Do you want to talk? I imagine talking to Narcissa is hard right now."

"It just feels so unfair," Draco murmurs. "She keeps asking me to tell her how I feel, but how can I do that to her, Harry? She's mourning too. And Severus... He says the same, but Father once said to me, he once said he almost thought of Severus as like a son to him. Can you imagine that? There's only six years between them." Severus. Harry looks down at Draco, watching him with a quiet care, and he decides not to speak. The silence draws on, for a little while, but then Draco continues, "I never thought he'd-- Perhaps this is stupid, but I never thought my parents would die, either of them. I always thought that somehow, I'd die before they did. That's selfish, isn't it?"

"Nah," Harry says, shaking his head vehemently. "It's not selfish, mate. People don't exactly think about this stuff, as a rule." Draco brings his knees up, closer to his chest. He looks pale, and pallid, and around his eyes there's the pink puffiness that's been raised there with a lack of sleep and too much crying. Harry guesses Draco isn't getting much to eat, either, and he crawls forwards, slowly lying down in mirror to Draco. Hedone, cruelly dislodged from her place on the other pillow, flaps over to the windowsill, and Harry meets Draco's gaze as he puts his head on the pillow. "What you have to think about, I guess, is that he really loved you, you know? And even though he's gone, you got to know him for fifteen years, right? Fifteen years of love. That's a lot." Draco's face crumples, and Harry sees the shine of the tears on his cheeks, staining the pillow. "Draco... Lucius wouldn't have wanted you to just stay in bed forever."

"The last time I left my bed was your birthday party," Draco says, meeting Harry's gaze. His eyes shine. "And look what happened there. You could have died too, Harry, I could have lost-- I could have lost you too. Or Mother." Draco's fear shows in his voice, which comes with a tremulous note to it, and Harry feels an aching melancholy settle in his belly. What can he possibly do? What could he possibly say? "The only death I ever knew was my grandfather, and I was too young to really understand it." And, Harry thinks, Lucius probably killed Abraxas anyway, according to Augusta Longbottom, Mad-Eye Moody and four or five other people.

Harry stays lying down with Draco, watching his face, and he says quietly, "It'll stop feeling this raw, soon. It won't stop, but it will hurt less." He thinks, anyway. He hopes, anyway.

"Will you stay here? For a while?" There's so much desperation in Draco's voice, cracking it up the middle, that Harry feels a pang inside himself, and he slowly nods his head.

b04; b02; b09; ~ a90; c1; a89; ~ THE LERNAEAN HYDRA ~ a90; c1; a89; ~ b09; b02; b04;

Draco takes several hours to fall asleep that time. The next time, a few days later, it takes him an hour. The seventh time, two weeks later, Harry walks into Grimmauld Place, and Draco isn't in his bedroom. Harry finds him in the small gymnasium, practising a complex wizarding acrobatics that Harry could never hope to attempt: he watches Draco move on bars high above his head, the muscles in his legs stark and corded under the fabric of his leggings, his expression focused and his gaze solid. Harry is awed as he watches Draco swing and jump and shift, and even when he messes up a twist in the air, and falls, Harry finds himself utterly spellbound.

Wizarding sports are often complex and violent, but wizarding dances and athletics never fail to amaze him - and throughout it all, Draco doesn't seem to even notice his existence. His single-minded concentration, his focus, is actually good to see.

When Harry walks down the stairs an hour or so later, he walks into a flurry of messenger birds, and Harry opens the drawing room door to allow the dozen of them inside. Sirius and Narcissa are each sat at different desks, writing letters in flowing scripts of green ink, and the owls neatly place their envelopes and rolled up parchments in boxes that say INCOMING. The two of them have been going into the Ministry every single day since they started doing their work there two weeks ago, with Sirius working at least six to eight hours in the Wizengamot every day. Every day, he seems to gain a little more traction, understanding it a little better; he's getting less irritable at home, too, and some nights, he and Remus will sit in the living room with a bottle of wine between them, Sirius talking about his day as Remus paints. Blodeuwedd was finished three days ago, and sent off to a delighted publisher: now, he is beginning work on The Fountain Of Fair Fortune.

Harry closes the door, and walks into the dining room. Lindon Sartorius is engaged in a tense game of chess with Dedalus Diggle, who has gone so far as to take off his top hat to better concentrate. Fred and George are playing Exploding Snap with Ted Tonks, Dorian Keats and Sturgis Podmore, and all five of them have the same inhuman concentration as the chess-players, or as Draco upstairs, and Harry lacks the heart to disturb them. He keeps walking, into the kitchen, where he finds Arthur Weasley hurriedly eating toast over the sink.

The Weasley patriarch looks more tired than Harry has ever seen him, seeming ready to drop on his feet, and Harry watches him. It's nearing seven o'clock, and the Order Of The Phoenix is meeting at 7:30. From Arthur's harried expression and pallid features, Harry would guess he hasn't eaten since he left the Burrow that morning, and he frowns slightly. In fourteen days, there has been an unprecedented number of attacks and strange coincidences across the Wizarding World: cases of arson, sabotage (such as grindylows being released in less than six Muggle swimming pools), graffiti in most of the main wizarding villages, and even people's pets going missing and being somehow violently returned. There haven't been any cases of murder yet, but Harry knows they'll come, and from what he's heard from Sirius, the Ministry is tense.

"It's been a harsh fortnight, Harry," Arthur says, brushing crumbs from his collar and into the sink, clapping his hands together to get rid of the last of it. "There's been stuff I've not seen in thirty years, all released at once, left in Muggle charity shops or village halls, the sort of nasty magic you'd never even have heard of. And this, this is just the start of it - this isn't even practice. This is a warm-up for the practice."

"Yes, sir," Harry agrees, leaning against the counter and watching the taller man for a moment. "What's the atmosphere like in the Ministry?"

"I think Fudge'll resign soon," Arthur says, immediately, as if he's desperate to talk about it, and hasn't really been given the chance. Judging by the terse nature of Molly Weasley's letters in the past few weeks, she'd rather pretend none of this is happening, and as stupid as it is, Harry can't really blame her. Arthur looks to Harry, and then looks past him, to the door. "Sirius, and Nar- Narcissa. They're trying to work things out. But today..." Arthur shakes his head, and Harry frowns.

"What? Today, what?"

"Men in black robes and silver masks were seen in Calais, in the magical port, and then in The Gold District of Paris. A crew of them were also seen in Mars, the all-magical town outside Lyon, a group of them on the Swiss equivalent of Diagon Alley - I can't pronounce the name - and a contingent was in Ireland too, in Galway City. The entrance to their magical is on the canal, very subtle, but there were four of them hanging around the Spanish Arch. The Treoiracha - a bit like Irish Aurors - didn't know what to do with themselves. They weren't even doing anything, just in their masks, having loud conversations, but keeping them vague enough about magic that the Treoiracha couldn't step in. They never realized they were Death Eaters until after they'd left."

"Public appearances, then," Harry murmurs. "Raise the awareness that Voldemort's back." Arthur flinches, and then slowly nods his head. Harry curls his lip, and he makes his way out of the kitchen, stepping into the dining room. It's beginning to fill up now, with all of the members of the Order, but nobody looks their best: even Mundungus Fletcher looks twitchy and exhausted, hanging off to the side of the room with his filthy knees drawn up to his chest. Harry steps into Narcissa and Sirius' office, and stares at Narcissa; Sirius is leaning in at her side, and the two of them are talking into the speaker of an old-fashioned telephone, the sort of thing Harry expects as popular in the '20s. It's in rapid French, and Harry doesn't catch too much of it, but both Sirius and Narcissa seem to relax a little some way into the conversation, each letting out breaths of air, and when Narcissa puts the receiver down, she slumps in her chair.

"Who was that?" Harry asks.

"Lucius' uncle Guillaume," Narcissa says, softly. "The Richelieus have already started their own information network, and are already lobbying the French government to have the Death Eaters declared a terrorist group, so that they may not appear in public."

"Frank's family, yeah?"

"Yes, Francois' grandparents," Narcissa confirms, and she pulls herself to stand. Narcissa is the only person in the house that doesn't look tired, but Harry wonders how many minutes she spends in front of her mirror in the morning, carefully creating a politician's face, with no imperfections at all. "Are you coming to the meeting?"

"For the first hour, and then Sirius is going to catch me up," Harry says. "I've got to meet a friend." Narcissa frowns slightly, glancing between Sirius and Harry, but Sirius' expression is calculatedly blank, and he just gives a nod of his head. The meeting is full of information, and half of it seems to just be people listing horrible events and happenings and linking them back to the Death Eaters.

"My source within the Death Eaters," Dumbledore says, quietly, "Tells me that Lord Voldemort wishes to sow the seeds of chaos across the United Kingdom: he has no desire to appear himself yet. These appearances by the Death Eaters and these strange occurrences, they're beacon calls to those who might wish to follow him again, and warnings to those who might not. He is angry that his attempt on Mr Potter's life was unsuccessful, and he has wish to draw together what power he might in the meantime." He lets these words hang in the air, and then says, quietly, "Let us break for a few moments. Then, we'll begin discussing our further plans - Narcissa and Sirius tell me they're bringing a bill before the Wizengamot at midnight tonight."

Harry stands from the table, going to the corridor, and he pulls on his cloak.

"Going somewhere, Potter?"

"I have a meeting, Professor Snape," Harry says, quietly. Snape is dressed as he ever is, his hair tied back behind his neck, and on the side of his jaw there's a thick cloud of bruising, but everybody has bruises these days. A lank lock of hair is a little too short to be tied back with the rest, and it follows the line of Snape's stark temple and sallow cheekbone, framing his face in a way that looks almost posed, as if he's readying himself for a Muggle photograph. "I'll be within earshot of the house."

Snape watches him for a long few seconds, his black eyes concentrated on Harry's face, and then he gives a nod of his head, and he walks off down the corridor. Harry opens the front door, buckling his cloak closed as he steps out onto the doorstep, and then he moves out into the street. There's a light wind in the street, and he makes his way to the grassy embankment across from the house.

"Adrian," he says, and when Adrian waves from a bench, standing up and throwing his arms around Harry. Harry hugs the other boy back, tightly.

"Where've you been? Seems like you've dropped off the face of the Earth!"

"Something's been... Happening, that's all. Let's talk."