It's one of his kind, Vernon Dursley thinks, watching the fat little man scurry down the street. Potter's sort. The man is squat and his hair is tatty. His clothes are long and mud-colored and he looks as if he's never seen a good dentist in his life. He's carrying some sort of tin can, the metallic sheen of it glinting in the light of the fading sun. Figures, he muses, that their sort would be reduced to begging. He reads his newspaper in his favorite chair, waiting for Petunia to finish the pasta and sausages that she's making for supper. She's got the recipe off of her favorite show, and Vernon wanted a roast with oniony bits and lentils, but Dudley needs to bulk up for the coming season, so carbs and protein it is. There's a ghastly bit in the paper about some tacky little town somewhere going up in flames, terrorists or something like that, and Vernon skims it quickly so he can make the required, "Oh, read about that in the papers. Yeah, how terrible. Great loss of life, that," sentiments at the water cooler tomorrow. He glances over the edge of his paper to see the grotty man staring at him through the window, his hand cupped around a leering face. Vernon jumps slightly, but puffs his shoulders up and stares back evenly. With a calm exterior, he folds his paper and rests it on the table next to the lamp.
Standing, Vernon turns to the kitchen to see if Petunia's got dinner ready yet. As he passes the boot cupboard, the door creaks open slowly, and he grabs the handle to close it again. The grate is open, and as he slams it closed, Vernon is sure he can see that boy's eyes inside. It's that awful article, he thinks, shrugging his collar against the hairs prickling on the back of his neck. Got everyone in a tizzy. It's that crazy man standing on the front lawn got him all upset. As he steps into the kitchen, he hears the comforting sound of Petunia giving Dudley his pre-dinner snack, and the dark fuzzing in at the corners of his mind recedes a bit.
::
"What do you mean, you found him?" Harry had asked. He has been sitting on the edge of his bed for three hours now, trying to answer himself. Snape, the bastard. The murderer, murdered. Just the thought makes Harry's insides shake with righteous rage, and he feels ill with regret that he wasn't the one to do it. No, he wasn't, but he suspects he knows who did.
He's been a coward, he suspects. All he's done this summer is think about himself. He lied, lied straight to Ron's face, and Hermione and Molly, Arthur, Bill, Fleur and Ginny. He's lied more these past three months than he suspects he ever has before in his life. He's hidden himself away and pretended that the world could just keep spinning around him. Apparently they couldn't manage even that.
Remus told him about the catastrophes in Oxford, Devon, Wiltshire. Ottery St. Catchpole in flames. Something sharp rolls in his stomach at this, and he presses a fist against it to make it stop. The Weasleys—all of them, including new and almost-Weasleys—were put in hiding, and Remus refused to tell him where. It's for his own good, of course.
For their own good, too, Harry muses. If anyone knows, he does: the anti-Midas is Harry's curse. All that glimmers turns to ash in his hand. The weight of his touch crushes hopes, the fog of his breath tarnishes gold. The most casual flick of his eyes causes whole buildings to combust. This is a curse that no finite could end.
Harry is tired. Hopelessly tired of the world and war and Voldemort, that serpentine motherfucker who can't just do his job and kill a teenage boy. He wonders aimlessly what he would do if that bogeyman were to walk into his room right now.
"I'd tell him to fuck off," Harry's voice is clear and slightly startling in the room where no voices have been heard in days. He smirks, closing his eyes against the candle light. One hand drifts down and he finds his fingers tugging sharply at the curls at the base of his cock. This, he sighs and burrows deeper into the pillows beneath him, is really why he left the Dursleys. Fuck them and their slave labor, he ran away so he could wank in peace.
He shoves his hand into his pants, sliding his fingers under his cock and feeling his pulse dance on his fingertips. "I'd…fuck—" his breath catches as he grips slightly, "Maybe I'd tell him to suck me. Can't die a virgin, can I?" His hand moves faster, slipping slightly in the precome pooling in his belly button. "I'll," he moans, long and slow, "I'll make you put it in your mouth. I'll hold your head so you can't get away. I'll," a gasp, frenzied panting for air through clenched teeth, "I'll make you fucking choke on it! And when it's over, I'll paint you with my come." Harry's eyes fly open with the force of the vision that this statement brings. His back arches and his calves cramp, knees locking and toes splaying, then curling, rhythmically. "Oh, fuck, Malfoy!" his scream is torn so violently from him that it sounds more like a sob.
::
Where to go when you've got nowhere else, Draco muses, is one of life's greatest conundrums. He knows most people will never have to worry about this sort of thing. People like Weasley, they'll never have to wonder where they'll put their hat next. There will always be some hovel, some hole in the wall labeled clearly "home." Hell, Draco admits after brief consideration, there are probably Weasleys scattered to the four winds, and just as many "homes."
Potter likely won't ever have to search for a safe place to sleep, either, he thinks. Between the Weasels and the werewolf, various and sundry professors to hole up with, not to mention the vast array of Aurors seemingly at his beck and call, Draco doubts there's a house in Britain that Potter couldn't sleep comfortably in. Not like Draco, who stands under a disillusionment cloak, staring up at the sign for the Leaky Cauldron with wide, nervous eyes.
Right now, Draco thinks he would give just about anything to not be standing in the mud with rain pelting down on him. He is soaked to the skin, his messy hair dripping fat drops of water on his nose. There is mud slimed halfway up his tall dragon hide boots from walking in the filthy streets and his pants and shirt cling to his skin uncomfortably. The glamour on his hair is poorly done without a mirror and streaks of silver blond show through the mousy, greasy mess on his forehead, making him look almost as greyed as a younger Professor Lupin, he imagines. He feels disgusting, anyway, and cannot help but hope that he will be allowed to bathe at the inn.
The check in goes better than he dared to dream and Draco carefully counts out four of his last seven galleons. It's only enough for room and board for a month, but just this minute, he isn't terribly certain what will happen in the next minute. He is led up to a small room on the fourth floor and left there alone, a key in hand and his cloak bundled under his arm. There is the satisfying snick of the lock unbolting and the door swings open to reveal the most beautiful thing that Draco has ever seen: a bed, with real pillows, blankets, towels, and a bathrobe. Barely suppressing a whoop of joy, it is all he can do not to hurl himself at the bed and bury himself inside.
::
A friend in need and all that, Ron thinks to himself as he sprawls on the cot he's been loaned by the twins, is complete bullshit. It is his last day at the shop; soon he'll be packing up and heading to Order headquarters. He really hates number twelve, Grimmauld Place, he thinks, because of the doxies. And Harry. And Kreacher. And Harry. And that portrait of Mrs. Black. And Harry. Honestly, right now Ron thinks that he could open today's edition of the Daily Prophet to an article detailing Harry's death at the beaks of enraged hippogriffs and he wouldn't care. Well, maybe not much. He'd be concerned at least a little for the poor hippogriffs. Hermione seems altogether too worried about Harry, really. The prat deliberately skipped Bill and Fleur's wedding, after all, and then to top things off hasn't even bothered coming back to comfort Ginny. He wasn't there to calm Hermione down, or help get Mum to bed after she sat in the chair and sobbed all day.
He hadn't been there when no one could find Bill and Fleur, or when their hotel said they'd never arrived, or when their bodies were found three days later by a pair of Muggle hikers. The bodies had been in such terrible shape, the pain of the fire too sharp and fresh, that Fred isn't planning on telling everyone until things have calmed down. The only reason Ron knows is he was there when the solicitor called and Fred swooned. He'd caught his brother and clung to him as they both shook and cried.
The solicitor said that the bodies had been flayed alive. Layers of muscle were shaved back to expose raw nerves, little bundles of string so delicate that breath caused agony. They'd been burned over and over again with hot needles stuck in them. Bill's scars had bled fresh where they'd been traced with a knife and Fleur's pretty blue eyes had been decimated by a fine tipped tool. According to reports, there had been more blood on the ground around them than in their veins.
Of course he can't tell his mum. How do you tell someone their baby, the one you'd just seen get married, the one that was supposed to live happily ever is now so much destroyed, spoiled meat? How can he tell Ginny that the closest thing she's ever had to a sister was blinded and vivisected while her husband of two hours was forced to watch? It's a hard secret to keep, though. When Ginny and Hermione talk about happy times—like the wedding—and they gush over Fleur's pretty silk dress, Ron feels like it's his own nerves that have been exposed to the harsh sun. He's snapped at Ginny and made her cry four times in as many days, and he's stormed out of three discussions with Hermione, all of them about Harry. When his mum goes watery about how at least, wherever they are, Bill and Fleur missed the carnage at Ottery St. Catchpole, his gorge rises and it's all he can do not to vomit. Rom has never felt as ill in his life as he did at dinner the night before, between Mum reminiscing on their childhoods and how Ron had always seemed to take after Bill and Dad assuring her that they were fine, surely, and perhaps they'd had to change hotels but were too busy to call? The slightly forced wolfish wink at the "men-folk" at the word busy had made Ron retch. When Hermione started talking about how gorgeous Ireland must be at this time of year, with all that green, and how she would ask Fleur how it looked—mightn't she and Ron take their honeymoon in Wicklow, too? She asked, a pretty blush tinting her cheeks—Ron had to leave. He was violently ill and felt weak as a newborn when he finally stood up. His knees shook and knocked so hard that he'd have fallen if Fred hadn't been there to catch him.
"I know it's hard, Ron," Fred had muttered under his breath, "but you were always off in your own world. You didn't even really know them. Imagine how hard this would be for Mum or Ginny." Ron still doesn't know if it was the statement or the sentiment, but Fred is still trying to get the vomit stains out of his shirt.
::
It takes Harry a week, because of his odd sleeping habits, to realize that he is no longer the only one living on his floor. His first clue is quite sudden—a wet towel, wrapped around a slim pair of hips currently attached to a young man standing in front of him. Eyes, a strange color that seems somewhere between brown and green but occasionally shift suddenly to almost grey, peer at him in amusement from behind a fringe of greying brown hair.
"Can I help you?" the boy asks, and his voice sounds smooth, with a slight lilt.
"Er," Harry supplies hopefully, and he feels his cheeks flush as the boy laughs quietly. "Who are you, and why are you naked?"
"Alexandre," the boy offers, clutching his towel with one hand and offering his other. His chest is streaked with angry looking pink scars. "I'm trying to hunt down the house elves. They've got my clothes."
"Alexandre?" Harry's tongue feels thick as he tries to wrap it around the unfamiliar syllables.
"Yes," the boy supplies, the lilt cementing itself in Harry's mind as a very faint French accent that sounded nothing at all like Fleur, really. "I'm visiting from Nantes, and this place seemed to be the cheapest inn in town."
"Er, yes," Harry blushes as he notices the towel slipping further. "Well, I'll just…um."
"Wait." Alexandre's eyes harden slightly, and Harry is certain he sees them go completely grey before they meet his own. "You haven't shaken my hand yet. That's not very nice. After all, I'm the one standing here naked with my hand out. All you have to do is take it."
Harry feels suddenly odd, like déjà vu or like he's dreaming through Voldemort's eyes. Smiling uneasily, he grips Alexandre's hand in his own. It is cool, slightly damp, and buzzing with magical energy.
::
This is the way it happened: Narcissa Black Malfoy woke up one day, and then the next she didn't. It wasn't hard to figure out what had happened, with the corpse smelling like bitter almonds and her brittle nails broken off, bleeding at the cuticles. Her hair was dull and ugly, broken and snarled, her skin greyed and scaly looking, and her eyes wide and white.
No, the question isn't what had happened to her but why the corpse was covered in pennyroyal and daisy petals, that was the puzzle. It's hard to understand, and between this case and the Snape case, it certainly seems to Tonks that the Death Eaters are really claiming their own. She's slightly concerned that this case has ended up on her desk, but not terribly. She finds that even if she wracks her mind, she can't find a single positive memory of this distant aunt of hers, whose corpse was found only a month after that of the man who owned the house she was found in. In fact, the only memory Nymphadora Tonks has of her aunt is her cousin's birth announcement and the way Narcissa Black Malfoy had managed to look at her as if she were a bug to be stepped on, all the way from Wiltshire.
What concerns her is the strong feeling that these cases are related, and an even stronger feeling that she's missing an important factor here. But she's already spent too many late nights on the Snape case, so much time that she can't honestly remember the color of Remus's favorite shoes or the color of the front door at number twelve. The whole Weasley brood has moved in with them, now, and she knows that Remus hasn't gotten the nerve to tell them that he's found Harry, but she's not had the time to scold him properly for it.
When Younger, the energetic young intern, comes bustling in with a thick packet of papers, she is so lost in her thoughts that he has to cough twice, progressively louder, for her to notice. "It's another D.E. attack," he says, pronouncing each letter, dee-ee, with a pause in between, "Worse than any before." He coughs importantly, but when she stares at him, changing her eye color rapidly between yellow, green, purple, and orange, he takes the hint and leaves with a huff. Tonks leans back in her chair and opens the file. Surely it can't be the wo—
The first words in the folder are: "This morning at approximately two a.m., number four Privet Drive was blown up."
::
When Dudley Dursley leaves the house at midnight, slipping out to go sneaking into the naughty pink films with Piers Polkiss, he does not imagine that pornography will save his life. He only knows that when he watches the rhythmic movement on the screen and hears the pants and moans, he gets a woody, and sometimes if he presses that woody against the palm of his hand, it feels really good. Piers calls this jerking off, but Dudley only knows it's brilliant, and when he says so, Piers laughs and says it's that, too.
Dudley isn't thinking on his walk home that the dark smear of smoke on the horizon is his house. All he can think of is how after the film he has this enormous burst of energy in him and how he wants to use this energy to beat someone up. He wishes that Evans kid were around this time of night, because he cries so nicely after a few good punches, or even Harry, though Dudley is a little afraid of Harry now that he seems to have snapped. When he left almost two months ago, Harry took out his wand and waved it in Dad's face, and Harry said, "Oh, you bastard," and, "I'm leaving forever!" and, "If I never see you again it'll be too soon!" He shouted ugly things at Mum, too, about her awful sister and how embarrassed Granddad and Grandmum must be, just turning somersaults in their graves. Somersaults, he said, because of what a shoddy aunt Mum had been, and then Mum had cried and Dudley had wanted to just kill him, that nasty boy. But Harry had turned that pointy stick on him and all he could remember was that feeling…that awful feeling like nothing would be alright again. He'd backed into the wall then, and he and Dad and Mum had watched as the nasty Potter boy walked down the stairs and out of their lives.
Piers is clinging to Dudley's arm and he is about to make a funny comment about Piers and, "Oh, I never realized you felt that way," when he sees what Piers sees before them. There, standing tall against the burning ruin of most of Privet Drive, is a whole stand of bogeymen, their grinning skulls peeking out from tall hats and dark, black clothes. He sees shadows dancing in the fire and realizes that they are awfully close to the fire, but are not a bit too warm. In fact, Dudley feels more than a bit too cool, and then the bad thoughts come back. Piers has frozen in place, staring at the grinning skulls as they walk closer. One of them in the back has begun to laugh, a high, terrifying laugh, and Dudley finds he cannot move. The embers from the fire are beginning to pop, like corn, and one hits him in the thigh. This is all that is needed to wake him up, and he grabs for Piers, but the other boy will not move. Piers' eyes are glazed slightly and his eyes reflect the fire as if he were a doll. Even Dudley tugging with all his might cannot budge him, and Piers throws him away from his arm with what seems little more than a casual twitch of his hand.
Dudley watches in terror as Piers moves forward slowly, stepping into the fire. He cannot help but stare as his best friend is consumed in flames. Piers says nothing, and Dudley thinks how terribly brave he seems. As Piers's hair burns, the stench of burned flesh fills Dudley's nose and he has to swallow reflexively to keep from throwing up all over himself. When Piers's face begins to melt, Dudley can take no more and he runs away, as fast as he can go. At the end of Magnolia Crescent, he doubles over in the bushes and up comes Mum's dinner of cabbage rolls and pork. He is sick until his chest aches and nothing else can come up. His fingers shake and he drips sweat, tears, spittle and stomach acid. He's never imagined anything as horrible as Piers's silence as the flames licked at his blistered lips, while his glassy eyes reflect nothing.
