For a while after Professor Snape (Harry just couldn't manage to think of the man as his father) left, Harry sat staring at the door. The locks and hinges were both on the other side of it. He wondered if he could cut through the hasps from this side, if he had a plumber's saw. Finally, he got up and looked. The doorjamb had an inset that made the hasps unreachable. Harry wandered over to the windows. Getting out that way would be easy -- he could pry off the blocks, or just break the glass, and drop. That left him outside, though, without access to his trunk, and Harry knew he could not leave his trunk at the Dursleys, even for a day. Once they knew he was gone, they might throw it out, or even destroy everything in it. Besides, he'd need his wand to call the Knight Bus, unless whoever was guarding him these days intervened.

His thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of a furious Uncle Vernon. Apparently, it was all Harry's fault that wizard freaks showed up to berate him. Actually, Harry supposed it was, in a way. After ten minutes of Harry mildly agreeing to every insult his uncle could derive for Snape, and most of those his uncle produced for him, Uncle Vernon finally gave up, slammed the door, set the locks, and informed Harry, through the cat flap, that he was not getting any dinner, and he would not get to use the bathroom, that evening. Nodding numbly, Harry lay down. Hunger and emotional unrest had nothing on sheer lack of energy. He slept.

Harry awoke with an idea. The hasps, even if he could reach them, would take painful hours to cut through, and he would almost certainly be caught. The door around them, on the other hand, was a modern, hollow core piece -- a quick hole and less than an hour with a saw would cut most of the door free of the part that was locked and bolted.

This wasn't an idea he could use immediately. He needed to smuggle two or three tools up to his room, and he needed a few hours when the Dursleys would be out of the house, so he could make the cut, then break into the cupboard and get his trunk, then get the trunk out to the curb, then call the Knight Bus, all without being caught. Still, it was an idea. Harry knew it was time to prepare and wait.

Severus Snape's visit, Harry mused, two days later, had made an already bad summer worse. The Dursleys had kept him confined for most of July, and had fed him even less than previous years, but he had been pretty much left to his books and letters. Now, however, Vernon was angry at the intrusion by a wizard, and Petunia angry at the reminder of her dead sister, and Dudley angry that the man had looked in his room. They were too cautious to hurt Harry directly, but Snape's indifference to Harry had bolstered their courage for indirect harm. Aunt Petunia reverted to her usual methods of torturing Harry: she gave him lists of tasks too long to finish, so she could tell him he was lazy and punish him for his failure by withholding the following meals, and she gave him tasks that he was likely to hurt himself doing. After a day of weeding that Harry was sure she had planned so he could never be in the shade, Harry found himself severely sunburned and contemplating today's job -- pruning heavy overhead branches from a tree.

Harry gazed up at the first marked branch and thoughtlessly rubbed the back of his sunburned neck. The resultant slash of hot pain stopped him instantly. Harry put his hands down by his sides and looked back at the branch. He hadn't eaten since lunch, yesterday, and was feeling rather dim.

If I cut there, and jump to the left ... assuming I move in time ... if I can.... He stared at it a while longer. Aunt Petunia leaned her head out the kitchen door.

"If you don't get it done by lunch time, you'll be going without!" she called out to him, in gleeful malice.

Harry slouched wearily off to the garden shed.

In the blessedly cool darkness, he collected the saw and pruning shears. He nicked a cigarette from the stash Dudley kept behind the flower pots and pulled down the smoke as quickly as possible. He was relieved to feel the wooziness recede slightly.

"A little more alert, anyway," he muttered. "Food would be better." He wondered vaguely if his cousin ever noticed that he went through more of the things than he should.

Harry upended a bucket near the tree and stood on it to make his cuts. He set the lower cut at an angle, so the branch (he hoped) would fall to the right, where it had a low side branch. When the upper cut started to creak dangerously, he jumped from the bucket and ran to the left. He successfully avoided both the first fall, to the right, and the subsequent roll to the left. It was strangely exhilarating. He smiled for what felt like the first time in days.

"One down, one to go!"

When he came in for lunch, the Dursleys were nearly finished.

"We've already started," Aunt Petunia informed him nastily.

"But you're not finished," Harry pleaded. "Please may I have some?" He felt himself swaying, but tried to look politely focused.

Aunt Petunia frowned at him, then sneered in disgust. "If you must. Take the rest of the chicken and eat it outside. You're too dirty to sit in my kitchen."

Amazed at his good fortune, Harry took the remaining chicken (three limp, cold, wings and a lump of skin) outside, and ate it as slowly as he could manage. Then he put away the shears and saw. For once it was an advantage that his trousers were ridiculously big. In the cover of the shed, he strapped a smaller, covered saw to his thigh, and walked with it toward his room. The Dursleys were still at the table, talking about a movie that Dudley wanted to see.

"And then the guy's friend gets killed, see?" Dudley said. "But he's got to carry the body, because --"

Harry walked up the stairs as quickly as possible, remembering Cedric's corpse heavy in his arms, but not so heavy as his guilt and his fear and his horror -- sadness and regret like a blanket of lead....

"Big thrill," he muttered.

He hid the saw under the floor. Mission accomplished. Now he just needed a hammer and awl, or hammer and screwdriver, or, in a pinch, just a hammer, and he was ready when his chance came.

"Tomorrow, a hammer," he muttered absently. He heard himself and grinned. "The next day, the world!"

On Friday, nearly a week after Professor Snape's visit, Harry got his chance. He had just finished doing the lunch dishes, when his aunt ordered him up to his room.

"We'll be going to a movie this evening," she said, "and I want to make sure you stay out of trouble."

"Could I get another one of my school books?" Harry asked. He thought it best not to look too enthusiastic about being locked in his room.

"I'm not letting you near your ... things. Not without Vernon here to help me."

"The newspaper, then?"

"Why would you want the newspaper?"

"It has a crossword puzzle."

"Oh, very well!" Aunt Petunia let Harry grab the paper from the table in the living room, then escorted him up to his room. Harry listened to the padlocks snapping shut, then waited for the sounds of the front door, and the car starting. Nothing happened. Apparently, they were not leaving immediately. Harry began to assemble the items to pack once he got his trunk. He set out his birthday gifts, Fred and George's tricks, and the two school books he had up in his room. When he neatened the pile of summer letters, the thick red envelope caught his eye. He'd read the main letter many times, and the description of the Paternity charm twice, but had not been able to bring himself to read "Severus and the Marauders". He better, he decided, if he was going to face Snape in a few hours. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, then opened his eyes again, and picked up the letter.

To start out with, a bit about me. As you know, the Potters are a pureblood family dating back to the fifteenth century, however, my parents were liberal sorts. They had, in theory, nothing against Muggle-borns and mixed-bloods, they just happened not to know any, not being in those sorts of circles. (I'm sorry you won't ever get to meet them -- they really were wonderful people. Your grandfather died in the Rowensley Massacre, and your grandmother was killed in a targeted Death Eater attack, two months later.) We had a lot of money and beautiful ancestral lands and homes. (I'm down to one, now, having donated Calbright Manor, which we hardly ever used, for refugee resettlement, last year. They're turning the estate into a village, with the manor house as a meeting hall. You should go visit.) Anything I wanted, I got. In return, I had obligations of time and behavior. I could greet and converse with adult guests properly by the age of seven, and was adept at assuming leadership of the children they brought with them. My mother imbued me with two balanced passions, flying and singing, so that I had admirable skills both in the house and out of it.

Harry found he was picturing a sort of dark-haired Draco Malfoy. It was rather disturbing. He shook his head and continued.

When I went to Hogwarts, it was something of a shock for me. I had never before been in the company of children substantially less privileged than myself, except for deferential servants' children. Suddenly I was in a noisy crowd of wild boys and girls, many of them, crude, ill-dressed, or outlandish, and none of them deferring to me at all. And I was lost, but not about to ask any of these ... hooligans for help. While I was searching through the train for someone I knew, or a place to sit that wasn't near someone objectionable, I came across a boy who was in a compartment all by himself. He was tiny and skinny and hunched over, his clothes were dirty and patched, and he looked like he hadn't bathed all week. When he looked up, I saw that his face had a foreign look -- vaguely Arabic -- and that he had been crying.

I hated him immediately. I walked in and ordered him to leave. "Why?" he asked me, and I told him I wanted this compartment. He pointed out there was plenty of room, and I told him he stank, and I needed him out so I could clean his stench from the place. At that point, someone laughed, and I turned to see Sirius Black in the doorway. I'd only met Sirius twice, and that over the previous four years, but I felt rescued. Here was someone I knew, who was properly dressed, who was civilized. I was afraid he would try to defend the waif, but he just sauntered in and said, "James told you to get out, Snivellus." They'd already encountered each other, you see. The boy stood up, stared at us for a moment, then ran away, crying again.

This was not as hard to imagine as Harry would have liked. He had an image of a younger Severus crying, from when he invaded Snape's mind during practice, and one of a slightly older James and Sirius, tormenting Severus, from the memory Snape put in the pensieve to keep from him. He could picture James, poised and carelessly cruel, with Sirius taking up a stance slightly behind him, as muscle and back-up and audience.

We were pleased with ourselves, getting this fine, private compartment, and we sat down and got better acquainted, talking mostly about Quidditch, and rumors we'd heard about the Sorting. (My family was mostly Gryffindor and Ravenclaw, his mostly Slytherin and Ravenclaw.) Remus Lupin came by and introduced himself. He wasn't well-dressed, but he was clean, well-mannered, and politely deferential (just enough -- not some disgusting amount) when he asked if we would mind him sitting with us. We gave him permission, and his few, quiet contributions to the conversation were intelligent and humorous. I decided I liked him. When the tea trolley came around, we bought far too many sweets (as first years often do) and ate all of it. An hour later, the boy (Severus, as you have certainly guessed) came back, opened the door, and leveled his wand at Sirius. He said something, and Sirius doubled up. I had just got out of my seat when he did the same to me. "I hope you ruin your fancy clothes with your fancy shit," he said, and left. (And yes, that's exactly what he said. At eleven years old.)

We were so sick. He'd given us squitters like you wouldn't believe, and Sirius did end up washing his pants in the bathroom sink, while I stood guard for him. Remus got all wide-eyed and said that was Dark Arts, and Sirius growled that he'd seen plenty of Dark Arts and that was a stupid baby trick. Everything was out by the time we got to Hogwarts, so we were at least able to go through our own Sorting without embarrassing ourselves, but neither of us dared eat. Sirius was rather surprised (and I think a bit frightened) when he was sorted into Gryffindor, but I was pleased. I was rather less pleased when the hat tried to say something about where I belonged. With the confidence of the utterly spoiled, I told it I belonged in Gryffindor, and it would not be impudent with me. I was sorted into Gryffindor, with Sirius and Remus, and all was well, but I do wonder, sometimes, what the hat would have said, had I let it.

For his part, Harry, wondered how often the hat actually put people where it thought best.

Over the next few months, I learned that not everybody was able to buy nice clothes. (Imagine that!) Remus, for example, was relieved to be in school robes, constantly, so his poor wardrobe would not be noticed. It took a while to get my head around this idea, but once I did, I learned to be gracious about it. Sirius and I figured out ways to buy Remus things without it being obvious we were always paying.

Sirius got a Howler (!) for being placed in Gryffindor. He responded by becoming almost embarrassingly anti-Slytherin. (I visited his home a few times -- scary place.) He learned not to mention Dark Arts that he had seen at home, or some of the things his family owned. He, Remus, and I were all stunningly good students. We played many pranks, but most of them were harmless (making the Slytherin Quidditch robes flash a gold lion biting a serpent, for example), and the teachers generally liked us. We got away with things, perhaps more than we should have.

You might think that when I had socialized to this wider range of people that I would feel sorry about how I treated Severus. What you may not understand is that Severus made himself stunningly easy to hate. He was so dirty and ill-mannered as to be practically feral, and so foul-mouthed as to get stares from the seventh years. He knew more about Dark Arts than Sirius, and derided the idea of eschewing them. He threw screaming tantrums in classes, and if you were nasty enough to him, you could get him to cry, though it was half rage. And he knew a hundred ways to hex you in revenge.

Our feud ramped gradually through our first year, but was still in normal school proportions at the end of it. We generally came out the better in direct conflicts, being three against one (Remus wouldn't help, except on a few special occasions of direct vengeance or protection, but another boy, Peter, had joined us by then), but Severus often got us on the sneak attacks.

Second year started off much the same, but then we had a scuffle in the Entrance Hall, on Halloween. Severus got off a nasty hex at me, and Sirius was pounding him when we got caught by the Head Boy, Lucius Malfoy. Now, Lucius was someone both Sirius and I knew through our parents -- his family was the equal of ours, and he was a cousin of Sirius -- but he was five years older, and very scary. Everyone was certain he practiced Dark Arts. He apparently liked Severus's talent, because after he sent me and Sirius and Peter off with detention (with Peter whining that he had just been watching), he took Severus on as a sort of personal servant. For the rest of the year, Severus was almost constantly with the seventh-year Slytherin boys. They treated him horribly, but let no one else at him, and he seemed to take it as a fair exchange. Severus took advantage of the situation to attack us at every opportunity. We had to learn to be sneakier to get him back even part of the time.

Third year, after Malfoy graduated, was much like the first, only more so, as was the fourth, except that Severus became a Slytherin Chaser (I had made it on the Gryffindor team my second year) giving us another area of rivalry. I was better than him, of course. I was better than everybody, on the pitch. (I am not being arrogant, or sarcastic, this time. It's just true.)

At the beginning of fifth year, something happened. I was walking with Remus, who had been made a prefect, down the aisle of the Hogwarts Express, and we came across three first-year boys who were jeering and howling about another's worn clothes and home-cut hair. Remus stepped in, practically shaking with fury, and told all of them off. ("As difficult as you may find this to believe, most people do not wear patched clothes in order to offend you, and it is not your virtue that your parents have money. You are going to school, where you will be judged on your intelligence, your willingness to work, and your ability to adapt to changing demands...." and so on.) I was redder than the first-years by the time he had finished. I continued to walk along with Remus, listening to him talk, and thinking dear, sweet, mischievous Remus would never have given me the time of day if he'd met me half-an-hour earlier.

That made me want to go apologize to Severus, and I actually tried. When I found him, though, he had a box full of mice (wild ones -- I think he'd caught them himself) and was demonstrating spells to take out their eyes and other horrible things. When he saw me, he picked one up and threw it, and made it explode in the air in front of me. I ended up in the toilet washing mouse guts off my clothes, which effectively destroyed any desire I had to apologize to him.

I'd always been popular, but became even more so, that year. That was when girls started to notice me, or perhaps when I started to notice them noticing. I thought your mother was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen, but she, of all of them, treated me like an annoyance, and the more I showed off for her, the more she disliked me. I found it completely incomprehensible, that this one girl -- Muggle born, yet, which I was completely willing to overlook -- didn't want to be the girlfriend of the handsome, talented, well-born, powerful Quidditch star that most of her girlfriends couldn't keep their eyes (and sometimes hands) off of. Sirius said it was because she thought I was conceited. (What? You think? Damn!) Remus said that perhaps if I was nicer, the girl would like me better. (Now that might have been worth considering too.) Peter said she was too stupid to know a good thing when she saw it. I went with Peter's explanation, basked in everyone else's attention, and occasionally attacked Severus, just to show I could still beat him. After all, you need someone to show off on, and no one I cared about liked Severus, so he was a good target.

In our sixth year, Remus gave up on getting me and Sirius to not torment Severus. Instead, he took another tack and made friends with Severus himself. I think he had some logical, but mistaken, idea that if Severus were cleaner and better dressed, Sirius and I would go easier on him. Of course, this just meant we had to find other things to attack him for, which was fairly easy. He and Remus, however (with Lily, who was Remus's best friend, then), spent quite a bit of time together, much to our distress. Severus and Lily even started to get close, though Severus was no less hostile to Muggle-born students in general. I was attempting a "friends" approach with her at that point, and told her I thought he would revert to form, but she said she could be a 'good influence' on him. We agreed that eventually he would either need to stop being friends with her, or to drop some of his bigotry.

The latter wasn't likely, considering some of his other friends. Lucius Malfoy came back for a weekend visit, that year, and apparently decided, much like Remus, that his former servant needed raising up in the world. Lucius seemed to be embarrassed to have a pureblood advocate of such low class. From what we could deduce, Severus provided Lucius with potions (the Potions master was so impressed with Severus that Severus was allowed unsupervised lab time, starting that year. He brewed some interesting things), and Lucius provided with Severus with clothes, money, and lessons in how to sneer politely.

Severus's knowledge of Dark Arts had already attracted the attention of the circle of Voldemort-supports at Hogwarts -- Nott, Avery, McNair, Goyle (Slytherin), Maitland, Holt (Gryffindor), LeStrange (Ravenclaw), and Crabbe (Hufflepuff). (There were more Slytherins and Ravenclaws than that, but those are the ones whose names I remember.) However, Lucius's blessing increased his status in that group tremendously. Sirius and Peter and I were horrified to watch Remus waiting on the sidelines of the "Future Death Eaters" (as we called them) for Severus to have time for him, and to hear Lily saying that of course she didn't approve of Severus studying Dark Arts, but some of the theories, especially of the Steering Curses (a class of spells of emotional manipulation) were fascinating. (Mind you, Lily didn't say this to me; Lily still didn't really talk to me in those days. I heard her say that to Sabrina Leott.)

I tried every sane thing I could think of to get Remus away from Severus. Sirius and I went so far as to try to get them to suspect each other of tricks we played on one or the other of them. I went into Slytherin in my invisibility cloak, and stole Dark artifacts and books from his room and brought them back to show Remus. He turned very pale, returned them, and didn't talk to me for days. (I had stolen Severus's journal, as well, but I had looked at it, to see if it could properly be used against him -- or so I told myself. It was a mess of potions theories, bigoted crap ("Lily is a Mudblood, how can she be beautiful and intelligent, sometimes I want her, but she's dirty with Muggle blood, she must have some sort of mutation, because Mudbloods are just animals, maybe her mother had an affair with a wizard and she's really a half-blood, but doesn't know..."), and "Remus is sweet and Remus is wonderful and Remus is perfect," and after reading enough of it to start feeling sick, I broke into Slytherin again and put it back.)

Sirius went further. Severus always got very jealous when Remus wouldn't see him (I'd warned Remus this was a bad sign) and sometimes spied on him. He saw Madam Pomfrey leading Remus to the Shrieking Shack, and demanded that Sirius tell him what was wrong. Sirius told him how to get past the Whomping Willow, so he could see.

Fortunately, Sirius thought this had been impressively sly, and bragged about it to me and Peter. I was horrified. I pointed out that Remus, not being in his right mind, that night, would likely kill Severus, and Sirius just nodded and said that would solve our problem, wouldn't it?

I didn't want to solve 'our problem' by killing somebody, and certainly not by making Remus a murderer -- Remus was sweeter than the rest of us put together, even counting Lily -- kind and gentle and forgiving -- to anyone but himself. If he killed his friend it would destroy him. I ran down to the Shrieking Shack and just managed to pull Severus out.

Severus, as you can imagine, hated Sirius even more, after that. I finally had to admit he had cause. I was angry at Sirius, as well, and we were barely talking for months. That had a silver lining -- Lily began to treat me like a worthwhile person ... partially for saving Severus, but more for admitting that Sirius had done something horrible. Sirius sulked and acted like it was just another prank and we were all being unfair.

Less reasonably, Severus hated Remus after that, and Remus was miserable. He lived in the library the rest of the spring, coming back exactly at curfew and speaking to me rarely and Sirius not at all. Sirius complained, and I told him this would have been much worse if he'd caused Remus to kill. Months later, Sirius finally got it through his head that driving Severus away had not brought Remus back, and he began to try to make amends. Neither of us could ever withstand Sirius when he was remorseful, so we were all friends, again, by the end of term.

Lily, meanwhile, had tried to patch things up between Severus and Remus, but failed miserably. Severus didn't reject her, though, and they began to date. I tried to argue with her, pointing out that Severus was deeply prejudiced against Muggle-borns, but she pointed out that he was unlikely to get any better about it if they all avoided him. I had to agree, though I still thought the odds were against her. Between that and being ashamed of what Sirius had done, I started trying to be civil to Severus when I encountered him with Lily. Soon, I started to see why Remus and Lily liked him. He was tremendously intelligent, creative, and driven. In ways, he was a lot like Sirius, but with foresight. I still thought he was kind of creepy, but I sometimes enjoyed listening to him expound on this or that, as long as this or that wasn't inherently offensive.

Still, he was ever more in the Death Eater's club, and I could see, though Lily didn't agree, that he was becoming less open about his affection for her. His friends treated her like dirt. In June, she fought with him, and he countered by proposing to her. She came back to Gryffindor with a ring that he could only have bought with Malfoy's money, or Augustus's, and she yelled at me when I told her that. When we all went home, the Marauders were reunited, albeit on somewhat shaky terms; Lily was again not speaking to any of us, even Remus; Lily was engaged to Severus; and Severus was on his way to Malfoy manor. Repeat after me: "incipient disaster."

Of course, it didn't feel like a disaster to me, when it happened. Severus fulfilled my expectations by becoming a Death Eater. (There, didn't I tell you? I despised him because I was perceptive, not because I was a conceited git. (Your mother is editing again.)) He dumped her on the Hogwarts Express in September, telling her she wasn't worthy of him, and he'd as soon marry a monkey. It took all of us to calm her down, and it reaffirmed our shaky bonds to do so. Late in the trip, I left her with the others, and went and attacked Severus, leaving him petrified and covered in tentacles. It was worth starting the school with a week of detentions. McGonagall went easier on me than she could have, once she heard what had happened.

So, in my self-centered little view, my seventh year was fine. Sirius, Remus, Peter, and I were again inseparable; Lily finally began to return my affections, and, by year's end, had agreed to marry me; and I could once again torment Severus with impunity (though I was more discreet than I had been, for fear of antagonizing Lily), which I usually did in tandem with Sirius. We always enjoyed it more together. I suppose, alone, I had time to recognize that I was being hateful and cruel as he was, but when Sirius was with me, it was all just one grand joke.

Severus just got stranger and darker and more haunted as the year went on. By winter, the younger Slytherins were in terror of him, and the classmates who had tormented him in earlier years regarded him with nothing short of awe. It was rumored that he, Lucius, and Augustus had a running contest for number of kills. Some people claimed there were bonus points for things like getting an entire family. Looking in his eyes, you could believe it. He stalked about the school in a cloud of power and death. By January, Sirius and I had had enough close calls that we were very careful about how we went after him. Clearly, living meant nothing to him.

All the Marauders, and Lily, joined a secret order that Dumbledore had formed to fight Voldemort. (I don't want to tell you more, in case it is still relevant. Ask Dumbledore if you want to know.) A few months after school ended, Severus showed up at one of these meetings. I still don't know what had happened, but he was quiet, almost cowed. He had come to Dumbledore to turn himself in, and Dumbledore had asked him to become our spy, instead. He had agreed.

It took a couple of meetings before Lily and I managed to interact with him, even in that formal context, but it became easier as time went on. Shortly after Lily and I married, Lily announced that she wanted to invite him over for dinner. I didn't like the idea. We argued. In the end, Lily got her way. (Lily always gets her way, when she actually cares.)

Severus came over, we all behaved like mature adults, and the evening was not a disaster. I was astonished. Out of curiosity, I agreed to repeat the experiment. Eventually, I became accustomed to the idea of Severus as a regular guest. By now, I count him as a friend, though, to be completely honest, I can still find him rather creepy, at times.

I wonder, sometimes, what would have happened had I walked into that train compartment and said "What's wrong? Would you like a toffee?" but, honestly, I wasn't capable of it. Nothing in my life had prepared me for the chaos of the Hogwarts Express, and I was overwhelmed and frightened and disgusted by everything, and he was the worst of it. More realistically, I wonder about the other times I could have stopped the conflict, or at least stopped contributing to it. How much did I push him to become what I despised? But that's all water under the bridge, now.

Reading over this account, I am frightened by what a horrible view it gives you of all of us (well, at least him, and me, and Sirius, who may well be your guardian, now, if you got this letter directly). Please understand that this is all of us at our worst, that Sirius and I, at least, treated no one else so badly. I can't speak for Severus, who I am certain did (and does) terrible things in service to Voldemort, but I think this should at least make you understand that he never had much of a chance to be better, and that he is now allied with us is more improvement then I ever expected.

Lily has read this over too, and says she would like to say more about Severus (good things), but she is uneasy, and would like to send these letters now, just in case. She will write another when she has time, and you should get them at the same time.

The last page ended with the little messy-haired smiley face and a little sketch of a daylily.

For a few minutes, Harry sat and stared at the sheets of paper. He wished Lily had been able to write her letter -- the two images of Severus that stayed with him were the one of a dirty child being bullied out his refuge on the train, and the one of a deliberately cruel teenager blowing up a mouse. He needed some balance for those. He also wished Lupin were there, to tell him good things about James and Sirius. He spent a while deliberately remembering Sirius's cheer and affection.

Finally, he heard the front door open and close. His aunt and cousin were on their way to the movies. As soon as he heard the car engine start, Harry took out his hammer.