"You can't be serious." Harry looked from Lupin to Snape, then back again. "You want me to go right now?"

"Hogwarts was not this morning's only target," Lupin said. "Several of your friends will be arriving at Hogwarts. I thought you would want to be there when they do."

"But... is it safe?"

Snape snorted. "Safe? As much as anything is safe. Go, Potter. You have one hour."

Still not believing this was happening, Harry moved toward the fireplace. "What do I need to say?"

"'Professor Lupin's office' will do," Lupin said. He smiled encouragingly. "Go on, Harry. You deserve this. Have fun."

Harry stepped into the fireplace, but he couldn't help looking back suspiciously one last time. He had learned, especially over the last two weeks, that things were rarely done for his enjoyment. "What should I tell them?"

"That you're safe," Lupin said. "That you can't come to Hogwarts right now."

He wanted to go. It almost didn't matter why he was being sent, when it seemed so risky after everything that had just happened. Besides, they wouldn't tell him the truth anyway. He could see it in the forced smile Lupin had plastered on his face. They wanted him to go, and they expected him to pretend he believed it was being done because he deserved it.

Harry took a pinch of Floo powder and tossed it at his feet. "Professor Lupin's office!"

A spot had been cleared among the mess on Lupin's desk, and there stood the two familiar goblets of potions, one bronze and one silver, next to Harry's old clothes, shoes, and glasses.

He changed quickly, not bothering to fold the clothes he took off. His vision blurred as soon as he put on his glasses, but cleared again a few moments after he drank the first potion. He removed the watch Lupin had given him, laying it carefully on the desk. There had been a Muggle wristwatch lying on the table next to his clothes, and he put it on.

He checked the time.

One hour. A little less, really, because he had to be back in Lupin's office before time ran out, and because it would take time to get to the seventh floor.

Even though he had been told the castle was secure, his heart sped up at every corner. He half expected to run into an Auror who had stayed behind just waiting for him to come out of hiding.

"Harry!"

Harry spun around, only to be knocked back, almost into a wall, by Ron.

"Harry! They actually let you come!"

Harry felt himself grinning like a loon.

"Everyone's waiting," Ron said, finally letting go of him. "Come on, it's this way."

They ran down the corridor together, Ron pulling Harry by the sleeve.

"The Room of Requirement?" Harry asked, suddenly realizing where Ron was taking him. "Is that where you're staying?"

"It's great! No one can get in unless they know exactly what to ask for."

They stopped in front of an empty section of wall.

Ron gave Harry an apologetic look. "Sorry mate, you're going to have to turn around and close your eyes."

Harry shrugged and did so. He could hear Ron pacing behind him.

"HARRY!"

Harry was nearly knocked off his feet again, this time by nearly the entire Weasley family. He found himself grinning and hugging and shaking hands over and over, not able to get a word in edgewise but not caring at all.

"Come in!" Mrs. Weasley said, dragging him away from Fred and George. "The hallway is no place... oh, Fred, let him alone!"

The Room of Requirement had turned itself into something that half resembled the Gryffindor common room and half the Burrow. Harry hardly knew where to look first.

It was a while before Ron was able to pull him aside.

"Tell me you're here to stay."

Harry had known it was coming. Ron had been trying to get him alone for the previous ten minutes.

He shook his head. "Sorry, Ron, I have to get back soon. They only let me come to see that you were all safe."

Ron's face fell. "But it's safe here. Can't you tell them that... wait, who's them, anyway?"

"Sorry, Ron," Harry repeated, looking down. "I can't say. We're all safer that way."

He expected Ron to argue, but when he looked up, Ron only nodded.

"We're safer if we're not all in one place," Harry said, as if Ron had argued. "They're looking for me, I think... mostly."

Ron's shoulders jerked and fell defeatedly. "It's just... they said to expect someone, and I thought... I guess they meant Luna. She came this morning."

Harry, suddenly remembering, turned to look around the room, but Luna was not there. "Where is she? Is she all right?"

"She's in Ginny's bunk. Sleeping, I think. Snape gave her some potions and she's been out since." Ron stopped, frowning. "I don't know, Harry. She's pretty bad. I don't know what they did to her."

Harry swallowed.

"Mum says --"

But Harry did not get to hear what Mrs. Weasley had said.

Ginny sped past them, grabbing them by the arms and hauling them up. "Come on!"

"Ginny -- what?"

Harry, getting rather used to being grabbed and pulled along, simply ran after her.

"They're here!" Ginny said over her shoulder, as if that explained everything.

The door of the Room of Requirement opened before they reached it, and Ginny dragged them down the corridor.

"Who is here?" Ron demanded.

"Hermione and Neville, of course! Didn't you listen to anything McGonagall said?"

Harry tripped and almost fell; Ron grabbed him by the arm.

The next few moments were complete chaos. They couldn't seem to get straight whom they had already hugged, and so Harry ended up hugging everyone, including Ron and Ginny, at least a dozen times each before they were done with it.

"I don't believe it," Hermione said, pressing her hands to her mouth and looking like she might cry. "I don't believe it -- Harry! Ron! Ginny! I had no idea you were here! They wouldn't tell us anything!"

Harry felt his grin slip. "I'm only visiting." Hastily, he added, "Ron's whole family's here though, and Luna, too."

Hermione was still looking at them like she thought they might all vanish in a plume of smoke any moment. Her eyes were very bright. "I'm so glad you're all safe. They wouldn't tell us. They wouldn't tell us anything."

Harry, who suddenly remembered what Lupin had told him, stepped back so he could see both Hermione and Neville. Neither of them looked nearly as bad as Luna or Malfoy, but he was sickened to realize that Hermione had grown painfully thin, while Neville, who had always been plump, had lost so much weight that his clothes hung oddly.

"What?" Hermione asked, frowning slightly as she saw him staring.

"I heard you were detained."

There was a collective silence.

"Come on," Ron said, his voice suddenly hushed. "Let's get back. Mum will be on us for making all this noise out here."

Silently, they walked together back to the Room of Requirement.

There was another joyful scene, but this time Harry and Ron hung back, talking in low voices.

"What did you hear?"

"Just what I said. They're not telling me much either, Ron."

"It's so..."

"Frustrating, I know," Harry said, feeling like he wanted to punch a wall as he watched Ginny and Hermione disappear up a short, spiral staircase at one end of the Room of Requirement. "It's our friends this is happening to!"

"Shh," Ron warned. "Mum's looking at us."

Though Mrs. Weasley continued to shoot concerned looks their way, Harry, Ron, Ginny, Hermione, and Neville gathered at a small table in the corner of the room and continued to exchange information in low tones.

"Neville and I've hardly stayed in one place longer than a day," Hermione said. She had been pale and agitated ever since she had come back down from Ginny's room, and Harry gathered Luna's condition had been as shocking to her as it had been to him. "This morning we had to leave so quickly I had to choose between Crookshanks and my trunk..." She trailed off, biting her lower lip, which was trembling.

Harry exchanged a look with Ron.

"They're just books and clothes, I know," Hermione said, shaking her head so that her hair tumbled into her eyes. "It doesn't matter."

"Where is Crookshanks?" Ron asked, looking like he rather feared what the answer might be. When they had met her, Hermione had not been carrying the basket.

"Kitchens," Hermione said, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand. "McGonagall took him for me."

Harry and Ron exchanged another look, this time in relief.

"I'm sorry," Hermione said. She swiped furiously at her eyes again, obviously frustrated with herself. "I'm sorry, it's just that it feels like we haven't been safe since we left school. I hardly got home before they came for me."

Ginny patted Hermione's hand and looked helplessly at Ron and Harry. None of them seemed capable of speaking. Harry's mouth was bone dry.

"I didn't think they would ever let me go."

"That's... horrible," Ginny said, her voice breaking. "And we didn't even know."

"I was alone at first. It's awful how you lose track of time when you're alone and there's no way to tell time. After a while they put others in my cell with me. Neville was one of them."

"They let me go first," Neville said, picking up the story. "I didn't want to leave Hermione, but..."

"There was no choice about it," Hermione said firmly. "None at all."

"I couldn't stay with my Gran. Then, one night, Hermione and I ended up at the same place again, somehow, and we managed to stay together after that."

"It's..." Hermione paused, pursing her lips. "It's a sort of network of safe houses, and no one knows who else is part of it. When we had to leave one place we would go by portkey and then someone would come to take us to another place."

"Sometimes we stayed with Muggles," Neville said. "And I'm sure one night we were in the cellar of a shop in Hogsmeade."

"One time," Hermione continued, "the portkey took us to a forest, and it was two days before anyone came for us."

Hermione and Neville lapsed into silence, as if the memory of that incident made it too hard to continue.

"What about you, Harry?" Ron asked. "Is that what you've been doing, too? Moving from place to place?"

Harry hesitated, feeling that Lupin really should have given him better instructions. "Not exactly like that, but yes." And then, remembering, he looked at his watch. "I have to get back soon."

"Oh no," Ginny said, grabbing his hand. "You just got here. We have so much to tell you!"

"They'll let me come again," Harry said, trying to sound more sure of it than he felt. "Really soon, Ginny."

All four of them were looking at him glumly as he stood up from the table.

He couldn't even manage a smile. "I'll see you soon."

"See you, Harry," Hermione said softly. "Be careful."

"Stay safe, Harry," Neville echoed.

"Bye, Harry."

"Ask if you can come stay with us," Ron said, setting his jaw stubbornly. "I still say it's safer here than anywhere else."

"I'll try, Ron," Harry said. "Take care of yourselves."

He said his good-byes to the rest of the Weasleys. None of them tried to talk him into staying longer. Mr. Weasley let him out into the corridor and walked with him as far as the main staircase.

"Be careful, Harry," he said, putting a hand on Harry's shoulder. "Do what you're told. Keep your wits about you, and your head down."

"I will."

And then, with Mr. Weasley watching over him with his wand still drawn and held at the ready, Harry started the long walk back to Lupin's office.

He got there with a few minutes to spare.

Everything was exactly as he had left it. He changed his clothes, this time folding what he took off. The Muggle wristwatch and his glasses he laid on top of the pile of clothes.

He stopped and frowned. With his glasses off, the room should have been far blurrier than it was.

Quickly, he reached for the potion in the bronze goblet, but it was too late. The creepy feeling of his skin stretching and warping over his flesh was already coming over him.

After a few uncomfortable moments it was over.

He looked down at the still full goblet. Shrugging, he emptied it into a pot of wilted plants, where the parched dirt sucked up the liquid quickly.

He took one last look around to make sure he hadn't forgotten anything. Then, bracing himself for whatever he might have to face when he got back to the dungeons, he left Lupin's office.