Part I: it starts like this

Three days before her little brother's birthday, Anne Fairleigh leaves home, maybe for good. It's not because there's anything wrong with her home life, quite the contrary; it's because there isnothing wrong with it, because her mother and father and brother and sisters are the most important things she has in this world and she doesn't want to lose them. She takes, in reverse order of importance, her backpack, her wand, and her sister.

The reason she is leaving flies into her room at three twenty AM, in the coolest hours of an otherwise muggy August night. The weather has been unseasonable – fogs of despair, caused by Dementors; storms and floods and deaths. Anne lives with the daily fear that she and her family will be next. She hasn't heard from Theo in almost a month now, and she doesn't even let herself think about him. It hurts too much.

So she's more than a little startled when she's woken from her restless sleep by a hand clamping over her mouth. She bolts upright, prepared to shriek, only to find herself looking straight into Theo's face, dimly lit by the streetlight outside her window. The thin shadow that wasn't there before resolves into the handle of a broomstick, dropped against the windowsill.

"It's all right," he hisses urgently, "it's me, it's me, it's all right -"

He lets Anne pull his hand away from her face.

"What's the first piece of music you ever gave me?" she asks, unable to take her eyes off his face. He looks tired and terrified, and in desperate need of a shave, but it might not be him, it might be a Death Eater, there's no way –

"Mozart's third concerto for flute and piano, andantino," he replies promptly. "In the third music room on the left, after I bumped into you when that Quidditch game was going on, two years ago -"

"Yes, okay, yes, it is you," Anne says, and surprises herself by bursting into tears. She's been terrified ever since school ended, since that battle on the grounds, and now Theo's here it comes back to grip her. Theo, for his part, just holds her until she's got control. It doesn't take too long – she can feel Theo very clearly through her thin summer nightie, and she has to sit up straight and wipe her eyes, in case she loses control of other things.

"But what are you doing here?" she asks, once she can. "I haven't heard for a month, and everything's going wrong, and people are dying, and, Theo, what -"

"Running away," he interrupts her, smiling in a queer, twisted fashion. "It's war now, you know that. I had to pick a side. If I'd hung around at my aunt and uncle's any longer, there wouldn't have been much choice about it."

"Well,obviously," Anne shoots back, feeling unaccountably angry – at Theo, at his family, at the world, she's not sure – "obviously, but what are you doing here? It's three in the morning! I mean, I'm glad to see you, I really, really am." She doesn't want him to feel like he's not welcome here. He is, if she has anything to say about it. Always.

"Fetching you," Theo responds, shifting over to sit cross-legged on the bed. "Because it's been bad, this summer, you know that, especially for Muggle-borns. But it's about to get worse. A lot worse. It's only a matter of time before the Ministry's taken, and then what are you going to do? So I came to get you."

"I don't understand." And Anne doesn't, or maybe it's just the being woken up in the middle of the night that's making her slow. "Or, no, I get it, but not yet, it can't be that bad yet – I'm still trying to convince my parents to take a long trip to a nice safe country, we've got cousins in New Zealand, or France would do right now, but I haven't got them round yet -"

Theo nods, slowly. "All right. And we can try again, tomorrow – today – but if they aren't going to then you can't stay here, Anne. You or Terry. They might be all right if you just run. They won't if you're here."

It all feels like a horrible nightmare, and Anne can do nothing but shake her head helplessly. "I – I can't do that -"

"Yes, you can." Theo takes her hand and holds it tight. "Yes, you can, because if you don't you'll probably die, and so will they, and you don't want that to happen. And they won't let you go back to Hogwarts, not now; once they take the Ministry they'll have Hogwarts. So you have to leave here."

"And go where?" Anne says, feeling defeated, and lost, and like this really must be all a bad dream, brought on by the war and Theo's absence.

Theo shrugs. "I don't know yet. I can't even do magic without being caught, not until my birthday, and that's not for a couple of weeks yet. I just don't know. I've been running for – oh, since forever now, that's why I couldn't write to you, just in case someone found out, and I can't – I don't -"

He looks broken, and Anne still doesn't quite believe all of this is happening.

"Look," she says firmly, "it's three in the morning. If they haven't caught you for a month they're not going to yet, and you need to have some sleep."

Theo presses the heel of his hand to his forehead. "I don't disagree on that point."

"Then come on, lie down," Anne tells him, already feeling sleep claiming her back. "It'll all make sense in the morning."

Theo chuckles, like he gets something she doesn't, but he shucks off his shoes and lies down all the same, and Anne gets one last peaceful night – snuggled up with her boyfriend, even – before everything changes.


It does make sense in the morning, but not quite in the way Anne had hoped. She and Theo are woken up by the piercing shriek of Terry's voice.

"OH MY GOD, YOU -"

Anne is sitting bolt upright in a second, but Theo is quicker; Terry jumps backwards at his pointed wand, but, fortunately for everyone, stops shrieking, and responds to Theo's gestured command to close the door.

"Mum and Dad are going to kill you," she tells both of them in a stage-whisper. "Skin and carve and -"

"That's not the problem," Theo tells her grimly. In the early morning light – by Anne's alarm clock, it's only seven thirty, and a Saturday to boot – he looks even more disreputable than he did last night. Earlier that morning. Whatever. "It really, really isn't."

"No, he's right, it's not, and you better not have woken them up," Anne adds, nudging Theo out of the way and standing up. The pit of her stomach is crawling, but she feels weirdly calm, like she knows what she has to do. Maybe waking up beside Theo has done that; not just the burst of joy that he's here, but the certain knowledge he could very easily not be, if something had gone just a little wrong. Too many people she knows from school have died or been sent to Azkaban for her to not realise that.

All three of them pause for a moment to listen for the sound of waking parents, but nothing stirs in the Fairleigh household.

"What are you doing here?" Terry addresses Theo, perching on Anne's dresser. "You haven't written for ages and Anne kept saying she didn't know where you were and all those Death Eaters are killing people and Cait's cousin got killedlast week and – are they coming here?" Her usually-perky face is pale. Terry has been just as emphatic as Anne in trying to persuade their parents that they are all in danger, but Terry's age and size and dramatic nature have made this more of a hindrance than a help. Anne has had to comfort a crying Terry more than once when she's been brushed off yet again.

Theo looks like he doesn't know where to start, so Anne does. "Theo thinks the Death Eaters are going to take the Ministry." Terry is only twelve, but it's her life that will be at stake here; she has a right to know, as far as Anne is concerned. "So we can't go back to Hogwarts. It won't be safe."

Terry folds her arms, and frowns. "Does that mean we have to go to Muggle school? That's going to be so boring."

Anne shakes her head. "It means…look, go and have breakfast or something, okay? Theo and I will be down in a minute." She can't bring herself to say to Terry what she knows is the truth: Theo is right. They have to leave. Every minute they stay puts their family in more danger. At three it seemed like a nightmare, but now it's real. Theo's silence drives it home. He's not a chatterbox like Terry, but he seems too disturbed to speak. Or too scared.

She's not sure which is worse.


Theo knows that Anne won't leave home without talking to her parents, as much as he considers this a risky course of action – the more they know, the more they can be forced to tell – but she is young, well, younger than him, a little bit, and she's still getting used to the idea that leaving is safer than staying. So he lets her push him into taking a shower in the strange Muggle bathroom, and shaving – his hands are shaking and he cuts himself twice – in order that her parents don't think he looks like he walked in off the street. Which, basically, he did, but that's no way to get Anne away from here. He's a Slytherin, he gets the importance of manipulation, especially this unspoken, visual kind. He can do this.

The shaving cuts make him look too young, but there's nothing to be done about that.

He did think about this before climbing on his broomstick one evening and leaving his family behind him for good. He did. He held out for a whole month on his own, basically camping out in the Pennines, before he came here. He'd wanted to make sure he wasn't just bringing Death Eaters down on Anne and her family, but he's pretty certain, by now, that he's not. One runaway son who hadn't even sworn his oath to the Dark Lord is not as interesting a target as, say, Potter, or the Weasleys, or the thousands of half-bloods and Muggle-borns the Ministry can't or won't protect. And no-one knows about him and Anne, no-one, he's sure of it. So she and Terry and her parents and Eddie and Nicola are in no more danger today than they were yesterday. But he heard enough about the Dark Lord's plans while he was still at his uncle and aunt's; he knows that they are this close to taking over the Ministry, that once they have, they will be shipping people like Anne off to Azkaban in scores, the ones who aren't just murdered outright. This is long enough. He couldn't leave it another day.

He's even willing to make some concessions to Anne's family, since he doesn't want her to have to break with her family in leaving – it's an ugly necessity, he won't make it uglier – so he puts on, not his robes, but some Muggle clothing he enchanted into existence while still at home, where underage magic would go unnoticed, because he was a Death Eater's son, and who cared? He'd had to hide it very carefully, but Charms had always been his best class and wards his favourite spells. He managed, like he managed a lot of things that month of June, pretending not to see or hear or be sick at everything going on around him. He managed, barely.

So when Anne's mother comes downstairs to make a cup of tea, she finds Anne, Theo, and Terry sitting at the kitchen table, all dressed and sparkling. Theo catches a glimpse of them reflected in the kitchen window. Terry looks barely ten. Anne is beautiful in the morning sunlight, as it brings out the blonde streaks in her fair hair and the structure of her face. Almost ethereal. She's stronger than she looks, Theo knows that. Even he looks better than he feels, clean-shaven and hair that's really too long these days back behind his ears. The Muggle clothing just looks strange on him, out of place, but it's a disguise of sorts and one he hopes will hold. He knows Anne's parents will not possibly appreciate the length he's gone to, but that doesn't matter, if it works.

Mary Fairleigh is apparently not at her best first thing in the morning, because it takes her two glances to notice that her two eldest daughters are ridiculously scrubbed and awake for nine am on a summer Saturday, and that there is a strange boy sitting at her kitchen table. When she does notice, she nearly drops the e-lec-tric kettle she's holding. (Terry has told him what it was ten minutes earlier, when Anne boiled it to make tea. Theo thought it was fascinating, how Muggles came up with the strangest solutions to their handicap.)

"Mum, this is Theodore Nott, um, Theo," Anne says hastily, before her mother can speak. "He goes to school with me and Terry."

"Really." Her mother raises an eyebrow. "Your friend Theo who plays the piano, is it?"

Theo nods. "Yes, Mrs. Fairleigh. I'm sorry to disturb your household so early, but it was urgent."

"He says we can't go back to Hogwarts," Terry bursts in, evidently unable to hold it back a second longer. "It's not fair, I don'twant to not go back. I'll have to do maths and stuff if I go to Muggle school."

Anne's mother frowns. "And why would that be?"

Anne spares her sister only a short glare for bringing up the topic they'd hope to work up to slowly. "Mum, you, um…you might want to sit down."

Her mother tenses, stress in every line of her. Theo guesses that Anne's steady warnings may have hit closer than Anne had thought. "Is this something your father should be hearing, as well?"

"Yes, definitely," Anne says soberly, and "Yes," chimes in Theo. "It's…it's very important. For all of you."

"Then I'll go get him," Anne's mother says, and walks out of the kitchen.

"This is going…better than I'd expected," says Anne, after a moment of silence as Terry gapes at the door.

"She didn't even ask when you got here," mutters Terry, impressed. "When did you get here?"

"Witching hour." Theo lets his mouth quirk in a smile, and gets an eyeroll from Terry. It's something. He hates to see her so frightened.


It's an odd conference they hold, the Fairleighs in their pyjamas, Anne and Terry perched on the edge of their seats, and Theo relaxed back in his chair like he's actually got some authority, although Anne can tell that it's a cover, because all the worry she saw last night hasn't gone away. But it works, a little, and the Muggle clothing he thought to bring stops her parents freaking out right off, and they – she and Theo, with the occasional interjection from Terry – explain.

"There is a war out there," Theo begins bluntly. "I'm sure Anne and Terry have told you that. It's true. All those bursting gas mains and storms and car accidents? They're not. Wizards and witches are killing each other, and a lot of innocent bystanders into the bargain, all over the British isles, and it's not going to stop, not until – I don't know when. You probably feel safe here. You're not."

"And why is that?" Jonathan Fairleigh asks, with all the asperity of a man who has been forced out of bed early. "We haven't done anything to anyone."

"Because it doesn't matter, Dad," Anne continues, reaching for Theo's hand under the table. It helps. "Because there are a whole lot of people out there who want to kill me and Terry – and you and Ed and Nic as well, and not just kill, they – worse, okay? Not because we've done something, but because we're alive. Because you don't have magic and Terry and I do, and in their eyes, that makes us – they think we make the world worse just by being here. And Theo's pretty sure that they're going to get control of Hogwarts, soon enough."

Her parents' faces are showing the first signs of alarm. She feels a vague sense of guilt – it's her fault, after all, her birth that's putting them in this position – but they won't be any better off if Voldemort takes over completely.

Theo looks them both in the eye. "I have it on very good authority – the best – that the Dark Lord and his followers are within weeks of taking over the Ministry of Magic. Maybe less. They take the Ministry, they take Hogwarts. If they do that, then it is over for all the Muggle-borns who can be found. They will be rounded up and they will be trialled and sentenced and taken to Azkaban, and, believe me, that's hell on earth. The ones who aren't killed out of hand, of course. And if Anne and Terry are still where they're expected to be by that point – if they are going to Hogwarts at the end of the month, if they are here – they will be captured. The only safe thing for them to do is to get out now."

"You never said out of home," Terry complains, crossing her arms. "We can't do that."

"Out?" repeats Anne's mum, who has now progressed to fully stunned. "Out of where?"

"Well, England, preferably, like I've been telling you all summer," Anne says. "But it's probably a bit late for that. Anywhere, I guess." Her parents look so horrified she feels compelled to add, "I don'tlike it, but I don't know what else to do. I can't stay and put you in danger."

"This is ridiculous," splutters her father. "Totally. Dark Lord? I know some bad things have been going on, I've read that strange magic paper you get, and your Headmaster did die, but you can't just leave home, you're sixteen, for God's sake. Where are you going to do and who are you going to go to and – Anne, if you can't go to Hogwarts any more, we can get you transferred to Ed's school. I know it's not what you'd want, but that should be safe enough, if these people see you're not a threat -"

"It doesn't matter," said Terry, hunched miserably in her chair. "Dad, it doesn't matter. Elise down the road wasn't a threat. They killed her."

Anne knows her parents remember the Martins dying last summer, with only their toddler surviving, and that a stroke of luck. "Like Terry says. It doesn't matter who we are."

Anne's mother folds her arms. "All right. Say this is true. What are you planning to do, precisely?"

Theo looks, for just a second, terrifyingly bemused. "Not die?"

Anne's mother is not impressed with this answer. "No. Exactly, what will you do. Where are you going to go? Is there anyone who can help you? How long will you have to hide? Have you got a plan?"

Her father looks thoughtful now. Anne finds this terrifying in and of itself. "Good questions. Well, young man?"

Theo took a deep breath. "I don't know, precisely. Hiding out in the Muggle world will probably work for a while, and Anne and Terry would be fine, but I'd stick out like a sore thumb – and you can be lost in a crowd, but you can just as easily run into someone by accident in one. Most major cities have wizarding areas. I've basically been camping out in the Pennines for a month, which is about as much fun as it sounds."

"We can't camp out for a year," Anne objected, even though she was fairly certain Theo wasn't considering it, "especially not for Terry."

"No," Theo agreed. "And not Yorkshire, or Wales, or Scotland, or London; they're all far too dangerous, or I have relatives there."

"How long are you going to need to hide for?" Anne's mother asked. "A week, a month – what?"

Anne was intensely glad her parents were trying to take this seriously, although her father was still looking dubious. "We don't know. However long it might be, until the Dark Lord's defeated."

"I can't believe there's someone running around getting people to call him the 'Dark Lord'," her father muttered, "he must be totally off his rocker."

"Worse," Theo said tightly. "Or, no, he is, but not in…not in any way that makes him vulnerable. That would be…easy."

"You sound like you know him quite well," says Anne's mother, in a tone obviously intended to break the mood, but Theo's grip on Anne's hand tightens like a vise.

"No, actually, I haven't had the pleasure," he bites out, and Anne remembers that Theo has talked about the last month, but he has not talked about what went on between Dumbledore's funeral and his decision to cut his losses and leave his family behind. There hasn't been time, and she hasn't had the courage to ask.

"Who's fighting him?" That question comes from Anne's father. "If there's a war, who's on the other side, apart from a lot of innocent victims?"

"Not very many people," Anne says, quietly. "Not very many people at all." It strikes her for the first time, what if they lose? It's never seemed like a real proposition before, but now, suddenly, with Theo sitting at her kitchen table telling her parents that she has to leave home or die, it does. It does.

What if there's nothing to be done? What if we're just biding time? Buying days?

"What about your family?" asks Anne's father. "Would Anne and Terry be safe with them? Do they even know you're here?"

Terry begins to giggle, quietly, hopelessly; Anne leans her elbows on the table and puts her face in her hands, totally unable to cope with the situation any more, the sheer ridiculousness of it. Theo, like Terry, laughs, but the edge of hysteria is clearly audible in his voice.

"No, oh, no, I hope to hell they don't," he manages to say once he sobers, "because then we are all so very dead, Mr. Fairleigh, all of us, right now, and it would be my fault. My family, my family…" he trails off.

Anne's parents are staring, now, really scared for the first time. Theo leans forward, slightly, as if to drive home his words. "I think you deserve the truth about this, Mr. Fairleigh, Mrs. Fairleigh. And the truth is: I am here, right now, because the other option was being one of the Dark Lord's good little soldiers and killing and torturing people for him. People like you. And, Merlin help me, I am far too much of a coward to try and seek out the other side, not now, not when everything is on the knife-edge – but I am, fortunately, maybe, enough of not one to want my…my friends out of danger. And that's it. That's all I can do."

Anne's mother tilts her head, as if considering. "How old are you, Theodore?"

Theo looks off-balance, Anne notes; it's clearly not the response he was expecting. "Seventeen, nearly."

"Not for a couple of weeks yet," Anne objects, "you're not that much older than me."

Something in that, in the revelation of Theo's age, seems to bring all this finally home to Anne's parents. They both slump back in their chairs, as if stunned.

"Nearly seventeen," repeats Anne's father. "Jesus."

"I don't see how my daughters will be any safer with you than by themselves or with us," Anne's father points out.

"We will 'cause Theo's nearly seventeen," Terry interrupts. "And when you're seventeen you can do magic legally outside Hogwarts. I can't and Anne can't and it won't be safe for us by ourselves, 'cause if we do have to use magic, we'll be in trouble."

"Surely in a war situation -" begins their father, but Anne cuts him off. "No, Dad, because if the Ministry has been taken over by the Death Eaters, they can track us down if we do magic underage, there's – it's like a tracking spell, on us. It breaks when we're seventeen. So I can't protect myself without being caught, unless it's life or death, but Theo can. And he can do wards and stuff, so we can't be seen and heard or – oh, lots of things."

"But there must be someone else, someone who could look after you, someadult," Anne's mother says desperately. "Someone…"

Theo shakes his head. "No. Because, and I will be blunt, as far as the Ministry is concerned you and your daughters and your whole family are eminently expendable. There is no one else coming. Except the Death Eaters, maybe. If there was someone…" His face tightened. "If I thought there was someone I could go to, I'd go to them."

"You must know someone who's not…" Anne's mother waved a hand to signify, one of them.

"Just Anne and Terry," Theo said. "Who actually like me and wouldn't think I was a Death Eater spy, that is."

"How can we trust you?"

And it's a fair question, coming from her father, who's never met Theo before in his life, but it still makes Anne angry.

"Because you can," she says, "because he's here, because I do."

"Me too," says Terry gravely. "He pulled me out of the swamp at Hogwarts once."

"Swamp?" echo both parents in chorus.

"Just a little one." Terry looks slightly guilty. "Really. A little one."

"Which doesn't actually matter if you're neck deep in it," snapped back Theo, rubbing the back of Anne's now-bloodless hand with his thumb before letting go, "like I seem to remember you were."

"Yes, but not on purpose," Terry offers.

Anne's mother sighs and puts her head in her hands. "I think this is all absolutely insane, not that you're asking my opinion, but…"

"But…?" Anne prompts.

"If we tell you it's nonsense and ask Theodore to leave and send you to your room, what happens?" asks her mother, looking her straight in the eye. And Anne does her a favour and tells the perfect truth, because there is no more room for lies.

"I pack a bag and pull out my broomstick and leave this house. With Terry. I won't stick around to make you all a target, I can't -" and now she's about to cry, this is terrible, "and I won't. I'm sorry."

"That was reasonably obvious," her father admits.

Theo reaches for her hand again, and she holds it tight.

"In that case," says her mother, "I have an idea."

Everyone stares at her.

"What is it?" asks Theo finally.


Theo can't believe that Mrs. Fairleigh is actually being helpful about this – he expected to basically have to drag Anne and Terry out of the house at wandpoint, and was fully prepared to do so if he had to. Instead, Anne's mother is bustling around finding out the location of a camping hut some friends of hers have in the Lake District, which, according to her, is not far enough from Muggle towns that there will be a large wizarding population (Theo confirms this for her – there are far too many tourists in the area for there to be many wizarding villages) but far enough from large towns to avoid running into wizards and witches by accident.

"I wouldn't call it well-built, exactly," she admits dubiously, "mostly it just gets used by people going on walks. But it's standing and there's even electricity, sometimes, and I'd far rather I knew where you were."

The last is addressed to Anne and Terry. Anne says what Theo's thinking, which surprises him no end.

"I wouldn't rather. It'd be safer if…"

She trails off under her mother's look – something between confusion, worry, and the still-present trace of disbelief. Personally, Theo thinks that Fairleighs are nothing short of astonishing in the way they've handled today's revelations, let alone the last six years of discovery that the world just does not work the way they thought it did. He's barely been able to cope with working out that Muggles are normal people, or, okay, Muggle-borns are definitely normal people and Muggles must be, too, or pretty close, because they produced Anne and Terry, didn't they, and not being able to use magic doesn't make them inferior, just…different. And while he has a niggling suspicion that sense of difference isn't going away any time soon, he's managed to meet Anne's Muggle family without inadvertently insulting them, which is, probably, given the first fifteen years of his life, something of a victory.

He tunes back in to Mrs. Fairleigh's continued explanation of this place she thinks they'll be safe just before Terry kicks him in the ankle. He can tell because of the way her leg twitched. Gryffindors are so violent.

"…there isn't a phone, but -"

"Phone?" Theo frowns. He knows Anne has mentioned it, some sort of communication device.

The bewilderment on Mrs. Fairleigh's face is something to behold. "A phone…it's…you don't have phones? That's – you know, I feel like every time I think I'm getting a grip on the wizarding world, it slips away from me."

"They're sort of like Floo," Terry rattles off at high pace, "but you can't travel by them, you just talk through them and hear the other person's voice. They use electricity. I think. Don't they?"

"Not exactly," Anne corrects her, "but pretty close. Like Floo, yeah."

"I wouldn't trust the Floo network right now anyway," Theo informs her, "there's too many spies in the Ministry."

"Well, it's not like we're hooked up," Anne shrugs, "they don't, you know. Muggle houses. Even with us here."

"Floo?" Mrs. Fairleigh looks like she lost track of this conversation some time ago.

"You sort of…" Anne waves a hand, as if that will explain everything. "Like phones. Um. But you put some magic powder on the fire and then you can talk to people through the fire, or travel through it. I've only used it that once when I went to stay with Sarah for a week and we visited Gabby, year before last."

Mrs. Fairleigh just shakes her head. "I think we'll just leave that for the moment. The cabin doesn't have a phone -"

"I'll show you how to use one later," Anne mutters in Theo's ear – she's sitting next to him on the couch.

"- but there's a payphone down at the village, it's about forty minutes' walk away, so you can use that. I expect weekly calls." Mrs. Fairleigh smiles sadly. "It'll be almost better than having you at Hogwarts: you can't call home from there."

Anne nods. "Of course, as often as we can." She turns to look at Theo. "That is, if you think it'll be safe…"

Theo assents immediately; this, at least, he can give them. "Yes, of course, no reason why it won't be. I doubt there's more than one or two Death Eaters who even know what a phone is, and they're not exactly going to be advertising the knowledge. Them tracking you through it would be like…well, I suppose, your parents finding someone using the Floo network."

He wins a small smile from Anne, at that, at the price of a bland expression from her mother, like she's wondering if that was an insult of sorts. It wasn't, it was a direct comparison. Two worlds, one small island, such a vast gulf. He wonders how they've been able to maintain it all those years, really – especially with people like Anne, crossing the border every term. Or what about Roberta Martin, Anne's neighbour – a Muggle like Eddie or Nicola, knowing the wizarding world from her sibling. She'd crossed, permanently, and died for it. And now here he is, Theodore Nott, from a family that's been stuck believing the wizarding world is the only real one since pretty much the Dark Ages (ignoring theunpleasant spots on the family tree) and he's crossing the other way. Sixty million people in the British Isles; once you leave the familiar confines of the world he knows, Hogwarts and Diagon Alley, all those hidden places connected by Floo and Apparition and broomstick, it's a very big place to get lost in. He's just brushing the edges.

The reason those worlds have stayed separate, he knows, is because once Muggle-borns find their magic, they don't go back. They go to Hogwarts, like Anne and Terry, and then they marry wizards and witches and work with them and play Quidditch and listen to their radio, and pretty soon, he imagines, they've lost everything they had in common with the Muggle families and friends, the ones who don't know and the ones who do. And then there they are, if there's no Dark wizard rising to single them out, and in a few generations, no-one remembers. That'll save a lot of the half-blood families out there in this terror; the fragility of memory, of history. Maybe that can happen the other way; maybe, if they work this right, if they hide among the Muggles and don't draw attention to themselves and look and sound and live like them (to some extent, okay, he doesn't know how not to use magic every day, he's been counting down the days 'till he's seventeen and it's safe like a mantra, because he doesn't know anything else), maybe then they'll be safe. Maybe he can absorb into this new world that's opening up as seamlessly as Anne and Terry and all the others before them have absorbed intohis.

The thought terrifies him. It's like contemplating losing a part of himself. But he's lost so many bits already, the bits that said I am a Slytherin, and a pure-blood, and a Nott, and these are the most important things in the world; the bits that said Mudblood and blood-traitor and who'd want to be like them, they're practically animals. He misplaced them, or maybe Transfigured them, somewhere between running into Anne in a corridor and sitting here, now, in her living room, counting the hours he's been in this house and wondering how much more time he can afford before it will have been too long in one undefended place. He's given up so many things already to get to this point, the one where saving Anne and her sister is the only real goal he's got left, that a few more just don't matter. There isn't anything else, except walking back and taking his punishment, risking possible death and certain torture to be allowed the privilege of inflicting them on other people, ones who mostly have no idea what they've done (because they haven't done anything.) He didn't realise that he had such clearly defined limits, two years ago when he befriended Anne. But he does, apparently. He won't be broken and he won't break anyone, because that would mean the same thing. Typical selfish Slytherin thinking, in the end;this is mine, and you can't have it. That it's his sense of self-worth and his girlfriend and her annoying sister he's being so possessive about is irrelevant, really.


They discuss train tickets and packing and whether Theo and Anne areabsolutely certain this is the best idea. They are, they know, she was confused last night but Theo barely had to give her one look this morning and she understood. Even bright brave Terry understands in her own way, having lived the last year at Hogwarts. They talked about this, all three of them, one quiet Sunday morning in the music room after Anne had laid down her flute and Terry had bounded in. Anne asked him, what if, what if it gets worse, and Theo told her, quietly, what he thought. He tried not to scare Terry too much but her sharp brown eyes were challenging and in the end he gave up, and it was only when he noticed how close she was huddling to Anne that he remembered she was not quite twelve and words like "they'll torture you and then they'll kill you and they'll take as long as they can about it, which is why you need to get your parents to leave the country if it gets worse" were maybe not what she should be hearing. Definitely not.

Unfortunately, they were true words, as evidenced by his presence here now, so Terry is just as certain as they are, in her own brash way, and he thinks it's that that brings Mrs. Fairleigh around as much as his own perfectly rational logic. Then again, the sight of an almost-twelve year old girl gritting her teeth and saying "Mum, I want to go because I don't want to die, and I don't want you to die," should, Theo thinks, be enough to stir any parent's heart.

Part of him wonders, deep down, if his mother would have kept him safe, kept him separate from everything his father has – has been involved in. He doesn't think so. The Jugsons were every bit as much a proud old pureblood family as the Notts.

It's a nice dream, even so.

It's agreed, finally, after Mrs. Fairleigh calls her friend to talk about the cabin and Mr. Fairleigh digs out some old camping gear that Theo is absolutely certain they will have no need for (a thought he doesn't voice, seeing as Mr. Fairleigh is clearly determined to make a material contribution to his daughters' continued survival and Theo cannot possibly fault that, in fact, is deeply envious of it) that they will leave the next day. Theo wants it to be today, or rather, right this minute, but he settles, because he's still pretty sure he hasn't been tracked here (the lack of blood and screaming and death is a good clue). In an attempt to be – something, he's not sure what – he peels potatoes for dinner and does his best to actually talk to Eddie Fairleigh (mostly by letting Eddie explain the rules of cricket to him, the third Fairleigh to do so and easily the least comprehensible). Anne goes and makes up the couch for him before either of her parents even mentions it, in a suspiciously meek manner. Theo has known Anne for two years now and she is quiet, considerate, and occasionally remote, but never meek. He's pretty sure it's a pre-emptive strike on her parents, who did notice that Theo's bag and broomstick were in Anne's room and probably drew the appropriate conclusions about his time and method of arrival, but thankfully didn't say anything. They just looked at him. Hence the potato-peeling and cricket conversation. He is so astoundingly grateful, by this point, that they are not being as unreasonable as they have every right to be (perhaps the Muggle clothing worked?) that he doesn't want to muck it up, and that just could have. Luckily for everyone, Terry can keep her mouth shut when requested or threatened, so nothing further comes of it.

Before they all go to bed Theo double-checks the wards that Priam Martin placed on this house a year ago – adequate, but not likely to stop Death Eaters for long – and kisses Anne on the landing at the top of the stairs, where he can hear her family safely in the kitchen. He holds her very tightly, burying his face in her hair, and tries to tell himself that everything is going to go right and the Order of the Phoenix and Harry bloody Potter will, miraculously, save the day, and Anne will be able to come back to this house and her family and all will be well.

He knows that even in that unlikely situation he will still not have any family to go to, a lot of people will still be dead, and judging by Potter's track record they can't hope for any sort of respite until May at the earliest, which is a very long time away. So instead of dragging Anne back to her room (to hold and talk, her parents are in the house, he's not stupid) he kisses her once more on the forehead and they go back downstairs.

He tries not to notice that she's been crying. So has he. He's just so damn scared, and tired, and…everything, really. Everything.


The train is nothing like the Hogwarts Express, or it'd be on time, but Anne can't help feeling, as they drive to the station, that maybe this is all a very bad dream and she's actually going back to school, with Terry and Theo. One look at her mother's carefully composed expression and Nic's edgy quiet dispels that illusion. So does the fact that it's three backpacks in the boot of the car, not three school trunks – Theo's bag turns out to be enchanted and holds the contents of approximately a small house, which came in very handy when packing – and the fact that Theo ishere, in acar, and looking around as they travel in a way that is both bemused, delighted, and just a bit concerned.

"It just doesn't feel very safe," Theo confides to her.

She pats his arm. "It's fine, it's much safer than a broomstick, I bet."

"Then why is the Ministry passing off so many deaths as "car accidents", if it's so safe?" That's said with a quirk of the eyebrow that is so inexpressibly Theo she can't help smiling, because he's here and he's alive and they're all right, just for now.

At the station, it gets a lot worse. Theo is pretty much okay, doesn't need watching or things explained to him every five seconds, because he gets the concept of "train" in a way that he does not so many other things. (It's strange, being the knowledgeable one. Anne likes it, or would if it wasn't so weird.)

Her family decidedly aren't. Terry is bright and chatty in a tone that means she's going to explode any minute, her parents are grim, Eddie is just grunting in response to everything, which is normal Eddie behaviour for this summer but very difficult right now when she's about to leave home to hide from Death Eaters, and Nic is in outright tears.

"It's okay," Anne says, crouching down to hug her, "Terry and I are just going away, it's like school, we'll be back as soon as we can, maybe sooner than when we go to school. Maybe for Christmas. It's fine. Practice the piano lots while we're gone, Theo says you played really well for him." When she'd gone down this morning she'd found Nic perched on the piano stool and Theo watching her, letting himself be taken away by the sight of music – awkward nine-year-old music, but music nonetheless. She'd packed her flute, out of habit. Even Theo's bag couldn't fit a piano, or Terry's 'cello. She wished it could. That would be a familiar comfort.

Nic's big brown eyes are filled with tears. "Promise? You promise Christmas, like normal?"

Anne says yes, feeling guilty because it's probably a lie, but it gets Nic to stop crying for a little while. She hugs her parents and Eddie, who mutters "come back safe" in her ear, and now she's about to cry, but she doesn't. Theo gets a big hug from her mother, which startles him – the look on his face is hilarious, even in this moment – and manly handshakes from her father and Eddie. Nic sort of sniffles at him, which is pretty good for Nic, who reacts to Terry's constant chatter by being the quietest of them all.

And then they're on the train, and she's looking back at her family – just like the Express, only not, so very not – and she looks just as hard as she can, because she needs to preserve this in her mind, just in case.

Just in case she never sees them again. Then she turns and looks at Terry, who waited until they were seated to burst into sobs and is now muffling them in Theo's t-shirt (Anne quite likes the look of him in Muggle clothing, but hasn't found the right moment to mention it). Sets of four seats, paired facing each other, so she's facing her sister and her boyfriend, and it hits her, then, this is it. Her family is back there and she misses them already, so much, but this has to be her family right now, these two people, just like at Hogwarts: because Terry has to be protected and she needs Theo to protect her. Less than a year 'till she's seventeen, but it feels like a lifetime. Only a few days, for Theo. It will have to be soon enough. If they're attacked, there will be no point not fighting, but until then…just Theo, between her and Terry and everything bearing down on them. Add in her ability to be a Muggle, blend in, and it's not a lot going for them. It will have to be enough. Just forty-eight hours ago it was a normal summer morning and she was contemplating maybe going for a walk, or pulling out her flute. Now…now this. She's known it was coming, in a funny buried way, but it still seems dream-like.

She reaches across the gap and takes Theo's hand, and Terry's, holds them both tight, like a promise.

Just us, now. No more games. There's a war on.

We'll have to be enough.


It's not a short train-ride to the Lake District, and it's mid-afternoon by the time they're disembarking, bags on their backs. Theo's looking around again, but it's not the look of wow-Muggles-how-do-they-do-all-this she's become used to in the last two days; it's caution, wariness. He's on the alert.

So is Anne. Her wand is in her pocket. She won't be caught unarmed.

"So how far is it?" Theo asks, as she absent-mindedly checks Terry's backpack so as to avoid complaints on the walk.

"About forty minutes' walk, I think," she replies. "See, there's the payphone Mum talked about. But lunch first, I think."

"Yes please," says Terry immediately, "can I have a milkshake?"

Terry gets her milkshake because it's hot and Anne thinks she deserves the treat for not being the howling mess Anne wants to be, apart from that little crying jag on the train. She's being awfully quiet for Terry, too. Anne and Theo have juice and sandwiches. They buy them at a little Muggle café – Anne barely notices the way she describes things now, "Muggle" this, "Muggle" that, how she'll blend back in this year the way they need to she doesn't know – and eat them on a bench overlooking the lake. The cabin is up in the hills, not too far. No view, Anne understands, which is why it's not a prime spot. As soon as they've eaten, Theo stands, clearly unable to take sitting still.

"Come on, let's go."

Terry hasn't finished her milkshake and walks along making awful slurping noises, which Theo threatens to hex her horribly for. She stops, for a bit. The sun is bright and the birds are singing and the Lake District is very lovely, Anne's never been here before. She wishes it was just her and Theo on a holiday, maybe, enjoying each other's company and the chance to be out together in public without Theo having to worry about being disowned forever by his family.

The fact that this is essentially what's happened, that's the price of this pleasant walk, is mostly subsumed by everything other reason they're here. Anne knows she's not the reason Theo left aunt and uncle's house. He would have without her. He has that much integrity, she knows, that much sense of himself.

She can't help feeling like it's her fault, just a bit. Terry, thank God, is far too young and self-involved to consider this, and so is as happy as it is possible to be in this moment.

Anne squeezes Theo's hand, and he squeezes back. They hold on. They've got this moment in the sun, before the storm. Even with Terry's awful milkshake noises, it's almost a perfect one.

The cabin is not as dilapidated as her mother claimed, when they step into the clearing; it looks quite sturdy. There's a well, and one power line, apparently, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't, and a chimney. There's a porch outside. There's a clearing, which gets Theo muttering about lines of attack and wards and where to put them. Anne remembers that she tossed a couple of packs of seeds she found in the shed into her bag, and wonders if there might be room to plant some silverbeet or something. They might be here long enough for it to grow, and it'll be something to do. She's brought her schoolbooks, they all have, but practical magic is the core of it all; theory gets dry.

"So we're staying here, until it's safe," Terry says, dubious. "Really?"

"Really," Anne tells her. "It's a bit exciting, don't you think? Like the Famous Five or something."

"Who?" Theo says, then shakes his head. "Never mind, tell me later. I want to look around."

Terry beats him in, giggling, and Anne follows them both. Until it's safe. Let that be not too long, please, and long enough that we are. Especially Terry. And my family. Let them all be safe.

"You okay?" Theo asks quietly, looking back at her.

"I'll do for now," she says, meeting his eyes. "Come on; we need to unpack, and then I promised my mother I'd write, as soon as I could." Muggle post should be safe enough. Gwaihir and Bronwyn have been told to fly here. Anne hopes they make it.

"I wouldn't want to keep your mother waiting," Theo grins, and gestures her to precede him. Terry's voice is already filling the cabin, light and laughing.

Let it be enough, all of it.

They go inside.