The Futile Facade

by murkybluematter

Harriet Potter is back for a fourth year of quietly masquerading as her pureblooded cousin in order to pursue her dream. There are those in the Wizarding World who refuse to see her fade into the background, however, and when the forces she's been ignoring conspire to bring her to the fore, it will take everything she has to see her artifice through. Alanna the Lioness take on HP4.

3. Chapter 3

A/N: Apparently this needs to be said: I have no plans to kill off Leo. Or anyone else who doesn't absolutely have to die for the sake of the plot. I really like my characters. I'm going to try keeping them around. Speculation is great, you guys, but try not to alarm people with random death predictions in the reviews if you can help it.

Now, onwards! This chapter covers the duration of the tournament, so expect a lot of the lower alleys and lengthy (read: very lengthy) fight scenes. I promise next chapter will have more of your favorite HP characters to get the plot back on track for the book four arc. That said, don't ignore the little things in this one—they definitely come back into play later on.

The Futile Façade:

Chapter 3:

She hadn't heard anything from Flint all summer and, while she didn't begrudge his mother a minute in the apartment on Dogwood Lane, she did want to know how long exactly she needed to keep Leo away from the place. After a lengthy deliberation, she decided it wouldn't be unusual for Harry to stop by and check in on Mrs. Flint. After all, they'd met during the semester and had grown into something like polite friendship during the week she'd imposed on the quiet woman. Perhaps she wouldn't mind telling Harry how her son's job hunt was going.

She left for the Leaky mid-morning, preferring to walk to Dogwood rather than surprise Mrs. Flint through the Floo. It was a beautiful summer day in Diagon; there was just enough breeze to keep smells from stagnating without having a wind strong enough to bring the ever-present dust to eye level. On her way toward Knockturn, she met the eyes of several people she recognized on sight as regular patrons of the Dancing Phoenix. A few waved or nodded, but most contented themselves with a swift, assessing glance that was neither hostile nor curious. It was the kind of look that said simply, I see you, and she received it often in the alleys. The community was close-knit, even in the shadiest areas, though the closeness wasn't necessarily friendly.

She had just turned onto Kyprioth Court when a child's giggling caught her attention. Her eyes moved automatically to the source and found the little girl with the blue ribbon fluttering her fingers at Harry from where she sat on a doorstep. Harry paused in her stroll to alter her course and came to stand before the child. "You again," she said, smiling down at the seven-year-old. The little girl dipped a half-curtsey from where she was seated with her patchwork skirt tucked daintily underneath her. "How's the flower-selling business these days?"

The girl's laughter sent her curly red hair aquiver in its ponytail. "Good, if you like bees," she said, smirking impishly. "Sometimes they follow me for ages."

"You must be brave, to put up with it," Harry praised her.

"You must be brave, to enter the tourney," the girl said. She picked up a long-stemmed tulip and held it up to Harry with a winning smile. "Flower for good luck?"

"That worried for me?" she asked, flipping the girl a couple coins in exchange for the flower, which she tucked through her belt loop like an ornamental sword.

"The King would be sad if anything happened to you," the girl said, grinning.

"The King should be more worried about himself," Harry said wryly. He was the one who had to win the whole thing, after all. She glanced about the court, then took a seat next to the girl with a mental shrug. "What's your name, young miss?"

"Margaret," the girl said at once. "Only, everyone calls me Margo."

"It's nice to meet you, Margo," she said, holding out a hand. The girl took it primly in something that was more like the shaking out of a handkerchief than a handshake.

"You, too," Margo said, smiling so wide Harry could see the gap where her left canine had recently fallen out. "Are you going to see the King today?"

"Not today," Harry said. "I'm visiting a friend."

"I'm visiting my friend today, too!" Margo exclaimed, obviously pleased at the coincidence. "She's at Maywell and I'm going to bring her a flower to cheer her up."

"That's a good idea," Harry said, smiling slightly. "Sick people really appreciate flowers."

Margo nodded solemnly. "Maybe I'll bring her lots of flowers, then. She's very ill."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Harry said, her smile falling.

"It's okay," Margo said earnestly. "Cora is super tough. She's a juggler, and she can do four knives at once! She goes to Maywell all the time when she messes up and gets cut. Or, she used to, at least."

Harry wasn't sure what to say to that. "It sounds very difficult," she offered.

"It is," Margo agreed, shrugging. "I'm no good at juggling. Or thieving. And I don't like to run anyway, so I sell flowers. Henry thinks flower-selling is for sissies, but Cora says Henry is jealous that he's not cute enough to sell anything so he has to thieve."

"Are… you all part of the Court of Rogues, then?" she asked.

"Oh yes," Margo said, nodding. "You should meet them—not Henry, he's mouthy, but the others. Cora would love to meet you. She almost never works in Diagon, so she doesn't catch a glimpse of you often. Jason—he sweeps up the bird-droppings at Eeylops—wants to meet you, too. He thinks you're pretty."

"I'm not, really," she said, feeling awkward and uncertain. The kids Leo used to keep tabs on her wanted to meet her? She supposed it was a natural curiosity.

"That's what I told him," Margo said proudly. "I said you're interesting-looking, and that's better than pretty."

"Thank you," she said, fighting a smile. "Well, I'd love to meet them. Next time they see me in the alley, tell them to introduce themselves."

"I will," Margo said, smiling brightly and setting her pulled-back hair to bobbing again as she nodded. The girl glanced up at the sky and said abruptly, "Ooh, I'm late! Bye, Harry. See you soon, okay?"

She nodded, waving as the little girl scrambled to heft her oversized basket and scurry in the direction of the Phoenix. Harry followed at a more sedate pace until she reached the alley that branched off from Kyprioth Court toward the residential districts beyond. She wound her way slowly toward her destination, taking in the smells of mobile vendors and the bright pops of color that signaled the arrival of summer in window boxes and in patches on the ground where the steady flow of pedestrian traffic hadn't quite beat the weeds that cropped up between doorways into submission.

Dogwood Lane was as tidy as ever; it looked as though the street-facing windows had recently all received a good cleaning, and several doorsteps were sporting freshly beaten welcome mats. She let herself into the small common area shared between numbers seven and eight with her spare key and climbed lightly up the stairs to the upper apartment. After she knocked, there was only a short pause before the door swung open readily—a far cry from the suspicious eye that had greeted her the last time she'd surprised Mrs. Flint with a visit.

"Harry," the woman said, stepping backwards immediately and beckoning her into the flat. "What a pleasant surprise. Come in."

"Hello, Merriam," Harry said, nodding her thanks as Mrs. Flint closed the door behind her. "Just thought I'd drop by and see how you were getting on. Is now a good time?"

She glanced into the living room and was surprised to see a handful of boxes lying in the center, most closed tight but one still open and half-full of newspapers. Mrs. Flint was dressed in practical working clothes and her dark hair was tied up in a kerchief. Was she in the middle of a project?

"Perfect timing, actually," the woman said, gesturing to the boxes. "I was just packing." She looked happy at the prospect and more than a little satisfied.

"You're moving out?" Harry blinked, surprised. She supposed she'd got the answer she came looking for, then. "Has Marcus managed to find a suitable position, then?"

Mrs. Flint adjusted the sleeves of her tunic somewhat nervously. "I… am not sure what Marcus's plans are. He has found a temporary position working as a… talent scout, I believe, for a Quidditch team. He plans to purchase his own flat, soon, with his inheritance, but I won't be joining him there."

"Oh?" Harry had been under the impression that Mrs. Flint joining her son was the end game to all of this.

"I like my independence," Merriam said, lifting her chin a fraction. "I like working at the clinic. I want to stay in the alleys, and Healer Hurst was kind enough to help me find a modest town house close to Maywell. I work full-time there, now, so it's within my means."

"That sounds lovely. Does Marcus know?" she asked, curious.

She nodded slowly. "He took some convincing. Marcus can visit whenever he likes, though, and it's better if my hus… if Marcus's father knows he lives alone and thinks he has no idea where I've gone. Marcus was prepared to cut all ties with his father, of course, but that man is… a dangerous enemy to have." She said the last in a whisper that was choked with worry for her son and fear for the specter of a man whose memory had not quite ceased to haunt her yet.

"I understand," she said, taking the older woman's hands in her own. "I think you're very selfless, protecting Fl—Marcus like that."

Merriam smiled tremulously at her. "My dear, it is you who are selfless. The chance to start over, to stand on my own feet—it's not something I dared to even hope for. I could not have managed it without your kindness."

"You would have managed it somehow," Harry said, smiling back. This was a much more lively version of Mrs. Flint than she'd met previously. She supposed she ought to stop referring to her as 'Mrs. Flint' in her head, in fact. Merriam was nothing like that shade of a person she'd led through the Floo over the holidays.

"Nevertheless, I thank you," Merriam said, leaning forward to embrace Harry warmly. Pulling back, she added, "Please send my regards to your cousin as well. I know it was some sort of favor between him and my son to put us in touch with you, but he was very kind about it."

"I'll make sure Rigel knows," she promised. "He's over in the Americas now, but I'll certainly tell him in my next letter."

"You two must be very close," Merriam mused, her eyes soft. "You look so alike. Almost like brothers. Marcus should have had a brother, only …" The woman sighed, a sad sound that was full of regret but free of defeat. "Well." With a determined grimace, the woman shook her head and turned toward the living room. "Here I am, prattling on, when there's work to be done."

"Would you like any help?" Harry offered automatically.

"Not much left to do," Merriam said. "I don't have much in the way of possessions: just what I've managed to accumulate recently. I admit I spent more of my earnings on patterned scarves than I ought to have, but he always said they were a gaudy—" She broke off, clearing her throat. Glancing apologetically at Harry, she said, "I'm getting better about that. Sometimes it just slips out."

"It's quite all right," Harry said. Casting about for a change of subject, she remarked, "You cut your hair, didn't you? I didn't notice at first with the headscarf covering it."

"I did," Merriam said, smiling proudly. Harry supposed this was probably something else she'd not been allowed to do previously, or perhaps she simply felt the need for a physical change.

"It suits you," Harry said. She tried to think of something else to say, but at that moment a blur of movement startled her into whirling toward the kitchen. A grey and white spotted cat streaked from the doorway into the living room, where it dove beneath the couch and stayed crouched there, luminous eyes blinking distrustfully up at her.

"That's Tatty," Merriam said, suddenly sounding a tad nervous. "I know you didn't say whether you minded me getting a pet, but I found it shivering in the rain one night and I didn't know how to contact you, so—"

"It's all right," she assured her. "I don't mind at all. I should have suggested it, in fact; I know how boring it is living by yourself." She'd only done it for a few weeks during the Great Polyjuice Fail that spring, and even that had been enough to drive her a bit mad.

There came a knock at the door, and Merriam glanced at her swiftly, smiling apologetically, before opening it. There was a man standing there with his hat in his hands, looking perfectly ordinary and only the slightest bit familiar. Had she seen him before? She couldn't be sure, but there was something about the middle-aged man that tugged on her memory.

"Harry, this is Mr. Adam Quincy," Merriam said, gesturing to the man, who nodded to her politely. "He delivers medical supplies to Maywell, and he's kindly offered me the use of his cart to move my things to my new address. Adam, Harry is the one who's been kind enough to let me stay here for so long."

Harry smiled in a friendly way. "It was nice of you to help Merriam out like that," she said.

Mr. Quincy's cheeks turned slightly mottled. "Well, when I heard her Floo wasn't connected yet, I couldn't let her haul all them boxes alone. What are co-workers for, after all?"

Merriam looked equal parts grateful and slightly suspicious at his reasoning, but nodded along nonetheless. "Shall we, then? I've just about finished the last box, but perhaps Harry wouldn't mind carrying the others down with you while I wrap the last few things...?"

Harry moved toward one of the boxes in response. Mr. Quincy hurried forward to heft one as well and they trailed down the stairs. When they reached the street, Harry's eyes lit on a simple, low-bearing cart waiting by the curb and stumbled slightly.

"It's you," she said, wonder in her voice at the complexity of coincidence that she seemed unceasingly to be a party to. "That day in the alley, when I caught up to the boy who took my purse—to Jack. It was your cart that stopped him."

"I'm surprised you remember an old cart horse in the face of all that excitement," Mr. Quincy said, chuckling as he moved forward to set his box down.

She followed suit and turned to face him once she'd relieved her own burden. "Well, I admit I thought you were a cauldron merchant at the time, not a general delivery person."

The middle-aged man winced as he rubbed his back exaggeratedly. "That was a tough job. My muscles remember it well."

She cut herself off from asking why he didn't use magic to lighten the load a bit by reminding herself sharply that the man who delivered supplies to the clinic was, according to Mrs. Hurst, a Squib. If he were that deliveryman, her question would be entirely ignorant and insensitive.

Mr. Quincy led the way back upstairs, where they each grabbed another box. "Should we—ah—leave room for the furniture?" he asked, looking about the apartment at all the items that were obviously not prepped to be moved.

"No, the furniture stays," Merriam said. "It's all Harry's." Harry started to open her mouth, ready to tell the woman to take anything she'd like, as it had all been a gift from Leo anyway, but Merriam cut her off. "No, it's all right. I've been saving all these months, you know. I'm quite looking forward to going shopping for the necessities."

"If you need someone to haul them home …" Quincy offered, a bit shyly.

"Thank you, Adam," Merriam said, smiling gratefully. A thought seemed to enter her head and her smile widened brightly. "Oh! One moment." She hurried to the kitchen to retrieve what looked like a basket full of various baked goods—muffins, biscuits, scones: that sort of thing. "Here, I made this for you—to thank you, I mean, for being so kind." She held the basket out to Mr. Quincy, who nearly dropped the box he held out of distraction as he reached for it.

"You didn't have to," he said, not looking at all sincere as he eyed the basket of goodies with happy anticipation.

"It was no trouble," Merriam said, waving off his thanks.

"Even so," Quincy said, hooking the basket carefully through one forearm and resituating the box in his hands. "I'll savor it."

He headed down the stairs once more, and Harry followed him, trying hard not to wonder what exactly the relationship was between the two of them. Should she tell Flint his mother had a potential suitor? She shook her head mentally. Aside from a suicidal inclination to see the look on Flint's face when she told him he might be getting a stepfather, there was no point to it. By the distrust in her eyes and the careful way she treated the man, Merriam wasn't ready for a romantic relationship in any case. Harry could sort of relate, though for different reasons, obviously. Who had time for it, really?

When the cart was loaded, Merriam handed the key she'd been given over to Harry, who used it to lock up the apartment before following the other two downstairs for the final time.

"Would you like to see the new place?" Merriam asked once they were ready to set out. Harry considered. She supposed she didn't have much else to do—nothing that couldn't wait, at least. It would be nice to know where the woman ended up settled, in case she wanted to visit again.

"Sure," she said, smiling. "Lead the way."

Merriam carried Tatty the cat in a makeshift sort of carrier while Mr. Quincy hefted the cart by its long handles until only the wheels touched the ground and set off at a steady pace behind her. The older man was stronger than he looked; he didn't appear to be straining himself at all, despite the fact that the cart alone must weigh a good amount for its size. Belatedly, Harry plucked one of the heavier boxes from the back of the cart, figuring that if she was walking over with them anyway, she might as well pitch in. She'd levitate the whole cart if she didn't think it would be incredibly insulting to a man who made his living hauling materials.

Her arms ached a bit by the time they reached their destination—a quiet little cul-de-sac tucked off of Pendragon Alley, not far at all from the intersection with Wormwood Row—but she'd carried heavier crates of potions farther.

The townhouse was a little rundown on the outside, but it was clean, and the interior appeared to be in good repair. It didn't take long to deposit Merriam's things in the empty kitchen. Harry helped her unpack her utensils while Mr. Quincy shifted somewhat awkwardly in the doorway, watching Merriam arrange the bowls and pans to her liking. The man had an uncertain look on his face, but his voice came out relatively even when he said, "Do you want to grab a bite once you've unpacked a bit? Since you haven't got much in the way of groceries yet, I mean. It'll be good to keep your strength up if you're going furniture shopping later."

Merriam stilled her movements and flicked her eyes his way without moving the rest of her head an iota. "I've taken up a fair amount of your time already, Adam."

"I don't mind," the man said, twisting his cap between his hands.

"Well, I do need to eat something," Merriam said slowly. Her eyes came to rest on Harry, who was both pretending not to listen and keenly waiting for the first opportunity to casually excuse herself. "Harry, are you hungry?"

"I had a big breakfast," Harry lied, smiling gratefully. "I also wanted to stop in and see Healer Hurst before she leaves for lunch, so I'd better be heading out, actually. It was great to see your new place, Merriam. I'm sure you'll be very happy here."

Merriam folded her into a quick hug and said, "Thank you for all of your help, Harry. Would you mind doing me one more favor?"

"Name it," Harry said easily. She liked Merriam a lot, and it wasn't as though she was actually going to the clinic.

"I made muffins for Healer Hurst to thank her for helping me find a place to rent," Merriam said, digging in one of the boxes to pull out a basket, the contents of which were covered with a tartan cloth. "I was going to take them in tomorrow for my shift, but I'm worried they'll be stale by then. Since you're going there anyway, would you mind… ?"

Harry smiled ruefully at her luck. It looked as though she'd be visiting Mrs. Hurst after all. "Of course," she said, taking the basket. "It's no trouble at all."

She bid Merriam and Mr. Quincy a quick farewell and let herself out into the street. She had taken only a couple of steps toward the mouth of the cul-de-sac when she spotted an entirely obvious figure loitering by Quincy's empty cart. "Seriously?" she said, affecting an exasperated grimace that threatened to turn into a grin at the innocent smile that was flashed in her direction.

"Well, fancy meeting you here," Leo said, entirely disingenuous. She wondered which of his ears had seen her on the way over. Then again, they weren't far from Pendragon Alley, where construction for the tournament was steadily increasing in scale. He might have spotted her himself, if he was in the area. "Didn't know you were in the market for a second place. Trying to buy up all the real estate in the alleys, are you?"

"You got me," she deadpanned. "I'm planning on building my palace complex here, and once I have all the land in a five-mile radius I can make the entire area unplottable and live out my days the sultan to an invisible kingdom. I might even get a harem." She had no idea why those words were coming out of her mouth. Perhaps the Dominion Jewel was a bad influence on her mental processes.

"Let me know when you start taking applications," Leo said, amused.

"Girls only." She sniffed, brushing past him with her basket of muffins held primly before her.

He fell into step beside her, peering at her haul curiously. "What's in there? Kittens?"

She gave him an odd look. "Why would I be carrying a basket of kittens?"

"It's no less valid than any other guess," Leo said, grinning sideways at her. "Come on, don't leave me in suspense. Is it flowers?"

"I doubt Margo would appreciate the competition," she said, rolling her eyes. "They're muffins, if you must know. I'm taking them to your mother at the clinic."

Leo's eyebrows shot upwards. He gave her a long, somewhat fascinated look, then said, "You bake."

She spluttered. "No. I don't. They're not from me."

"They'd be from the mysterious brunette whose boxes you were carrying, then?" he asked, smirking at the annoyed flush that adorned her cheeks.

"She's not mysterious," Harry said. "She's nice."

"Funny that I've never met her before," Leo said idly.

"She keeps to herself."

"She seems to know Quincy pretty well," Leo pointed out. "You, too, which is odd considering how rarely you come this far into the alleys."

"She works at the clinic." Harry sighed. There was really no point hiding anything from Leo. He always found out eventually, and since Merriam's identity had been well established at that point, she didn't need to hide her presence anymore.

Leo's bright hazel eyes lit up in realization. "I knew Ma was keeping something from me. She's been shifty when I drop by Maywell of late. Imagine, keeping an employee secret from her own son. I'd accuse her of trying to cheat on her taxes if the clinic wasn't exempt from tithing."

Though he didn't sound seriously put out by it, she still felt it necessary to exonerate his mother from the accusation of dishonesty. "I asked her to keep Merriam's presence there quiet," she told Leo, glancing away from his intrigued expression to adjust the muffin basket. They were heavier than she thought muffins ought to be. Perhaps they were of the denser variety, like pumpkin.

"I see," Leo said, his voice a sly, musing drawl. "Would this Merriam also be the reason I've been barred from your apartment for the last six months? I noticed your cart of boxes was traveling from that direction instead of from the upper alleys."

She resigned herself to Leo being entirely smug the rest of the afternoon. His sense of superiority was always worst when he figured out the answer to something that had been puzzling him. "She's my aunt. I got her a job at the clinic and let her stay in my apartment until she had enough saved to live on her own."

"Your aunt is a Muggle, not a Squib," Leo said archly.

She didn't know how he knew about Lily's sister. Or how he knew Merriam was a Squib. Perhaps his magic had told him. Sometimes Leo just knew things about people from glancing at them—something that was likely related to his mother's ability to identify a lie the moment it was told in her vicinity, she suspected.

"As far as it concerns you," she said pointedly, "she is my Aunt Merriam and she is utterly unremarkable in every way."

"She's in trouble," Leo surmised, speaking quietly—almost to himself. "Ma kept her from me because she knew I'd be interested in a woman living in your apartment and didn't want me drawing attention to her with my curiosity. You could have just told me, of course, and I'd have left her alone."

"It isn't any of your business," she said sternly. "Merriam needed complete anonymity to feel safe. We didn't know who might be looking for her or how hard they would search. The fewer people aware of her, the better."

"We?" Now Leo's look was pointedly questioning.

"Don't worry about it," she said, smiling in a way she knew would annoy him. He just hated not knowing things.

"Fine," Leo sighed. Then he brightened. "This means your flat is free game again, right?"

"Why do you have such a fascination with my flat?" she asked, pausing before the door to Maywell clinic and raising an eyebrow imperiously until Leo opened the door obligingly.

"It's not the flat that interests me," Leo said, an odd smirk on his face that caused her to frown momentarily as she attempted to place the emotion that had prompted it.

She opened her mouth to ask for him to clarify his comment, but shut it once more as the tense atmosphere of the lobby they'd walked into registered in her subconscious. She looked around, but didn't see anything immediately out of place. There were no patients bleeding out on the floor, just a handful of Healers collected grimly around a door on the far side of the room—the one that led to Healer Hurst's office, in fact.

Leo started forward, wariness fighting with concern in his eyes, but Janice, who stood closest to the office door, with an ear cocked toward the crack, held up a hand to forestall any questions. Harry turned her ear toward the sounds coming through the door and made out Healer Hurst's voice ranting in an agitated manner that didn't speak well of whomever she addressed herself to.

"—must be something you can do. She's late-stage, for pity's sake, she can't wait that long," Mrs. Hurst was saying, her voice a cocktail of anger and stringent disgust, laced with acute desperation. "I put her name on the list months ago. Don't tell me you haven't had any come in since then."

The voice that answered her was edged with the distinctively disembodied quality that accompanied transmission via Floo. "You have to understand, Healer Hurst; your clinic is an outreach of this hospital, and while the work you're doing is important, it doesn't contribute to the hospital as a whole. The patients here in our wards have to be given priority—"

"That's bollocks," Mrs. Hurst hissed. "Whether or not a patient can pay doesn't determine what medicines they need to live. Now I have an eight-year-old girl about to die of a curable disease because you gave the potion she needs to someone whose case could have waited the four months you're telling me it's going to take to get another dose in."

"That's not the—"

"Tell me which part of that is incorrect, Healer?" Mrs. Hurst snapped.

There was a distorted sigh, and then the voice said, a little quieter. "I'm sorry, Healer Hurst. It's hospital policy to prioritize patients in-house over those being treated elsewhere."

"It's a hospital!" Mrs. Hurst exploded. "The only policy should be saving people's lives."

"I'm sorry," the voice said again. Whoever it was sounded a little sorry, but mostly they just sounded tired. "Look, have you tried contacting Burke? I know he has sources that can procure the potion in couple of weeks or so."

"If we could afford to buy the potion from the likes of Horace Burke we wouldn't need the hospital's subsidy," Mrs. Hurst said. "I'd try brewing it myself if I could afford the bloody ingredients."

"That potion requires a license to—"

"You think I don't know that?" Mrs. Hurst shot back. She took a deep, audible breath before saying, quieter, "There must be something. Appeal to one of the big donors. Tell them there's a little girl who desperately needs an expensive potion. Tell them they could save a life. Someone will be charitable."

The voice sounded skeptical. "I'm sorry, Healer Hurst, but we don't generally approach our sponsors on individual cases. Even if we did… she's nobody, don't you see? No one is going to sponsor a nameless orphan—there's just no prestige in it."

"She's not nameless, you—you—" Mrs. Hurst sounded close to tears. "Her name is Cora. She has blonde hair and green eyes and she's brave—"

"Healer Hurst, I'm sorry but I need to get back to my station," the voice said. They sounded awfully uncomfortable. "I will contact you immediately if something changes in the wait list or the status of the backorder."

There was the sound of a frustrated growl and then silence for several long minutes. Harry, Leo, and the clinic staff slowly left their vigil by the door and drifted toward the front desk with varying expressions of disappointment and anger.

At the other end of the lobby, a door creaked open slowly and a head of red curls tied up with a blue ribbon peeked out at them, blinking wide eyes curiously. It was Margo. Harry forced a smile for the little girl, who smiled back and slipped across the room to stand among them. "What did the supply lady say?" she asked, looking up at them all with the sort of inexplicable hope that came to the young without reason. "Are they gonna bring Cora her potion?"

"Not today, Margo," one of the Healers said, summoning a brave smile for the girl.

Margo frowned in a way that was both assessing and confused. "They better bring it soon. Cora can't move so much anymore." She heaved a small sigh and shook her head back and forth. "Grown-ups never do anything fast enough." She left them to re-enter the room she'd stepped out of, the one her friend Cora was laid up in, Harry supposed.

Once the door was closed behind her, Harry turned to the Healers with a frown. "What's wrong with Cora?"

"Seifer's Syndrome," one of them said. The tone was bleak.

She winced. She had read about it only once in one of Archie's schoolbooks, but the description stuck with her, horrible even in a sea of similarly horrifying descriptions of magical diseases. Seifer's Syndrome, named for the man who first contracted it, wasn't common in adults, as it was caused by a mutation in the development of a magical core. In those it afflicted, the magical core developed fully in terms of power and stability but failed to become self-contained. Instead of remaining in a concentrated sphere as a healthy core would, the mutated core spilled its magic into the patient's physical body, in some cases, or into their mental landscape in others. Rarely, it could spill over in both the physical and mental realms, but those cases did not generally survive long enough to be diagnosed and treated.

Over time, the saturation of magic into the muscles and sinews degenerated their physical structure, resulting in the slow loss of mobility and finally in the dissolution of major organ systems. It was fatal, if left untreated, but there was a cure. A potion existed which, once introduced to the drinker's system, swept the body and collected all traces of magic from the physical cells, bonding to the magic and drawing it together into the form it ought to take naturally. The potion acted as an attractant that kept the magic consolidated once it had cohered, bringing the magic back to the core like a magnet attracting filaments each time thereafter that the patient drew the magic out to use it. She knew it acted in the mind similarly, which probably made the potion incredibly difficult to brew. Potions that affected the mind were always more complex than those that affected only the physical realm.

From what she knew of Seifer's Syndrome, the fact that Cora had already begun to lose mobility was not good. If the magic had progressed that far… she didn't have long if they wanted to save her heart and lungs. The worst part of Seifer's Syndrome was that magic saturated the patient's body to the extent that adding any additional magic—like Healing magic—only accelerated the degenerative process.

When Mrs. Hurst came out into the lobby, she had the look of someone who was consciously stopping themselves from doing something they might regret. Harry couldn't blame the woman; she was angry, too.

"What do we do?" Janice asked. "Is that it?"

"No," Mrs. Hurst said sharply. "We find another way."

"She doesn't have much longer," another Healer, Carol, said quietly.

"I know that," Mrs. Hurst said. She frowned deeply, then said, "I'll have to contact my husband. He doesn't have a license for it, but if I ask him to he'll brew it for me. Perhaps he can convince the Guild to sponsor the ingredients without telling them what he needs them for."

"I'll donate the cost of the ingredients," Leo said, his tone brooking no argument. "It'll come from the Court's funds. We're going to turn a good profit on the tournament. We can spare the gold."

Mrs. Hurst sent her son a grateful smile. "That's a huge help, Leo, thank you."

Harry wasn't sure she should speak up—she didn't know how the potion was brewed or what techniques it might call for, and she didn't want to give anyone false hope—but she felt she owed it to her conscience to at least try. "Do you have the recipe?" she asked.

Mrs. Hurst looked regretfully at her. "We don't. I'm sorry, Harry, but I don't think you can brew this one. It's supposed to be incredibly complicated; its production is strictly limited to those masters licensed for it. I've heard it's unusually volatile and very easy to get wrong."

She nodded thoughtfully. Her reservations made sense, but on the other hand… the same could be said of Aconite's Alleviation, which she had unofficially experimented with for several months in her second year. Volatile potions could be made less so by the addition of more magic, which she had in plenty. That, combined with her unusually advanced capability in wandless brewing techniques, meant she thought it unlikely that the potion would prove impossible for her to attempt. "I'd like to try," she said, setting her chin firmly. "I'll look through the guild's archives and see if I can't find the recipe. If it looks too difficult, I won't attempt it, but if I think I can manage, I'll give it a shot. I have a series of failsafes built into my lab," she assured the Healer, who looked doubtful. "I won't be in any danger. If it doesn't work, you still have Master Hurst."

"You'll get in trouble if anyone finds out you brewed it without a license," Mrs. Hurst said, looking troubled.

"Not as much trouble as your husband would," she said, smiling a bit wryly. "They can't strip me of a mastership I don't have, and they can't revoke a guild membership I don't have. The most they can do is fine me under the Unlicensed Distribution Act, and that's assuming they find out."

The Healer sighed, her eyes softening a bit. "It's admirable of you to want to help, Harry," she said. After a long moment of consideration, she added, "I suppose I can't stop you if you want to try. Please, be careful."

"I will," she promised. "I'll go to the guild now, and owl you with the estimated completion date if I find a viable recipe." She really hoped it wasn't something like Polyjuice, which had to brew a month before it was effective. She didn't think Cora had that long.

She left immediately, Leo on her heels.

"Do you really think you can do this?" he asked, looking equal parts hopeful and concerned.

"I won't know until I see the recipe," she said.

They fell into a solemn silence as they walked up toward the upper alleys. They passed the tournament site, where construction seemed to be well underway, but Harry didn't spare the preparations a glance. All her thoughts were focused on how she was going to get the potion completed. If she couldn't do it, could she contact Professor Snape and beg him to attempt it? Would he be willing to go to so much trouble for her at this early point in their relationship? Perhaps she could approach him via letter as Rigel, and say she needed the potion for a friend. She could also try contacting Madam Pomfrey at Hogwarts, to see if she knew any Healers who had access to the potion. She could even get Krait to set up a meeting with Horace Burke and pay for the potion outright, no matter that she could imagine the outrageous price such a potion would no doubt come at after Burke's significant 'convenience fee' was taken into consideration. Then again, the voice from the Floo had intimated that it would take upwards of a week for Burke to get hold of one. If she could brew it herself, Cora would get it all the quicker.

There were a handful of people moving about in the foyer, probably on their way back from lunch. She and Leo tried to look unobtrusive as they navigated the guild's corridors; it was lucky that academics tended to ignore things that didn't relate in some way to their own pursuits, as no one looked twice at the dusty teenagers who slipped into the guild's library with innocent expressions.

The archivist was at his desk, but they simply waved him off when he asked in a bored voice if they needed help finding anything. She'd spent plenty of time in the library during her internship and knew well enough how it was organized.

The potion they were looking for was called, unimaginatively, Seifer's Solution. Potioneers did love their simplistic alliterations, she thought, almost fondly. It would be filed alphabetically under the subheading of Medical Potions, so she crouched down near the S's and ran her finger along the row impatiently.

Sand-skin Smoother… Scooner's Remedy… Shrinking Solution? Annoyed, she glanced down the rest of the row. They weren't out of order; the recipe she was looking for simply wasn't there.

She stood and gave Leo a worried look. "They don't have a copy."

"Impossible," Leo said, shaking his head. "They have everything, even rare and highly restricted… oh. It must be classified as restricted material. It'll be locked in a case behind the archivist's desk."

She groaned. "I suppose you have to be a member of the guild to retrieve restricted material."

"That, or the son of a very lazy Aldermaster who notoriously hates fetching things for himself," Leo said, grinning slyly.

"I knew I brought you for a reason," Harry said, grinning back.

"You didn't bring me, I accompanied you," Leo corrected her.

"You can win the argument if you get us that recipe," she said, nudging him toward the end of the aisle.

Leo pasted on his most ingratiating expression and approached the archivist with a self-deprecating smile. "It looks like I need your help after all," he said, affecting a conspiratorial grin. "My father sent me to procure a copy of a recipe, but I can't find it in the general stacks."

"Which one?" the archivist asked, blinking eyes that looked as if they'd spent too many hours straining in low lighting.

"Seifer's Solution," Leo said, managing to sound both confidently informed and utterly uninterested at the same time. "He's researching the socio-economic impact of using cost-ineffective ingredients in vital medical cures and realized he doesn't know the exact quantities of ingredients needed for this one—I reckon it's pretty notorious for being expensive, cause Dad says his survey would be incomplete without it."

"He's right, it's well known for its costly preparation," the archivist sniffed. "The recipe is restricted, however. I can't give it to non-guild members."

Leo raised an eyebrow and spoke slowly, as though he questioned the archivist's intelligence. "It's not for me. It's for my father. The Aldermaster. He's in the middle of a very important experiment that absolutely cannot be left unattended."

The archivist frowned. "Even so, it's not protocol to release restricted materials to unaffiliated people."

"You're not releasing it to me," Leo said patiently, "You're releasing it to him. I'm just carrying it. You can release restricted material via owl post if a master currently abroad requests it, can you not?"

"Well, yes," the archivist said.

"Well, it's the same," Leo said, his expression clearly conveying how obvious he found the situation. "I'm just the owl this time. He's authorized me to sign in his name and everything, so your records won't even be wrong."

They would, in fact, be wrong, but the archivist didn't know that and he looked a little reassured at the prospect. "I suppose… if he really can't be interrupted from his experiment… "

"You know how he is," Leo sighed. "Always working. The number of times I've had to come in here and fetch his documents… well, I suppose allowances must be made for genius."

The archivist smiled in a way that said he commiserated with Leo's situation. "That's true. You're a very supportive son, Mr. Hurst."

"Just Leo," he said, now affecting a sheepish shrug. "I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot more of each other by the time Father's project is complete."

"No doubt," the man said, reaching into his belt pouch for a set of keys.

Not five minutes later, they walked out of the library with a copy of the potion tucked safely in Harry's bag. She couldn't quite believe that had worked, but Leo, the cocky player, was whistling as they exited the guild.

"Stop that," she said, swatting him in annoyance. "That's the most cliché sign of wrongdoing ever."

"What was that?" Leo cupped a hand to his ear. "Did I hear a 'thank you, Leo'?"

She had to smile at that. "Thank you, Leo."

"You're welcome, Harry," he said. He glanced around them, then ducked into a little side alley before they reached the junction with Diagon. "Shall we see what the fuss is about, then?"

She pulled out the parchment and unrolled it, grimacing when it revealed itself to be much longer than the average recipe. She could see a diagram toward the middle of the text that depicted a cauldron divided into three distinct horizontal levels. Layered brewing meant Indirect Stirring—no wonder it was considered difficult. She scanned down a few more paragraphs and saw yet another cauldron divided into two separate parts. She frowned, skimming to the final few steps where there were instructions for combining the two cauldrons into a larger cauldron before the last step. "Simultaneous brewing," she said, feeling like whistling herself. That was not something she'd seen before. She flattered herself that she was relatively experienced at brewing multiple potions simultaneously, as she found it maximized her time in the lab, but there was no doubt she would have to memorize the steps and timing verbatim before even attempting it. There would be no time to double-check the recipe once she began this monstrosity.

"Bicorn horn," Leo groaned. "Dragon's teeth, a phoenix feather? Does this make a potion or a wand?"

Her eyes flicked up to the ingredients, grimacing as she read the first few and began mentally calculating cost. "I suppose the potion requires a large concentration of magically saturated ingredients in order to make the potion even close to brewable for the average wizard. The alchemical equation they reference for calculating imbuing durations has one of the highest coefficients I've seen outside of complex transfigurations."

"I'm not going to pretend I understand what that means," Leo said, eyeing her sidelong. "I understand this, though." He pointed a tanned finger to the last ingredient listed and her heart skipped a beat.

Basilisk scale. The potion called for a basilisk scale. No wonder it was on backorder. Even with the immense influx of basilisk parts recently on the market, they were still hoarded jealously in the knowledge that it might well be the last influx this century. The guild had what scales they'd decided to purchase at her discounted rate a year ago, but she doubted they passed them out like confetti at a parade. She didn't even know how many they had purchased, in fact. She hadn't ever asked Snape, who had been put in charge of the allocations.

"My da says there are some basilisk parts set aside at the guild for experimental use, but there's a lengthy application process for masters to get access to them," Leo said.

"It's okay," she said. "I have one."

Leo frowned, but then his eyes lit up with remembrance and landed on her hands. "The ring… "

"It's a full scale, so it will work," she assured him, fingering the place it rested through her gloves. She didn't need it anymore, she told herself. She had begun wearing it to remind her of the price of prideful magic, but now she had a demented megalomaniacal rock living in her head—she didn't think she was liable to forget anytime soon. It would do more good in this potion than it did on her finger.

"We just have to get the rest of the ingredients, then," Leo said, taking a deep breath. "It says it takes thirteen hours to complete. Can you work that long?"

"Sure," she said, steeling herself. She hadn't ever brewed so many hours in a row, not even using the time-turner. She could stay awake much longer than thirteen hours, however, so she told herself she could do this, too. A lot of the time would probably be monitoring the potions as they simmered, in any case. It wasn't impossible.

Leo looked at her determined expression and smiled fondly. "I'll help." At her surprised look, he huffed a laugh. "My father is the Aldermaster, Harry. I do know a thing or two about potions. Even if this one is hideously complicated, I can at least chop and shred and take direction."

"A second set of eyes would be great," she admitted, already imagining the difficulty she was going to have in monitoring two unfamiliar brews at once. If she made a mistake, she could ask Snape as Rigel for a couple of the basilisk scales he'd set aside for her—or ask to use one of the scales he'd been given for experimentation, even. It would be a costly delay, however; she'd rather get the thing right the first time.

"Let's track down the ingredients today, then, and after a good night's sleep we can tackle the potion tomorrow," Leo said, his eyes swiftly tracing the ingredient list in a way that told her he was memorizing it.

She nodded. As much as she wanted to jump into the potion as soon as possible for Cora's sake, she knew it was irresponsible. She needed to be fully charged if she was going to set her mind to something for so many hours without break.

They set off for Tate's apothecary, though Harry was not optimistic enough to assume that would be their only stop that afternoon. The list of ingredients was as varied as it was extensive. There was no way Tate could have everything they needed, especially as a couple of the ingredients—such as mermaid tail skin—were decidedly uncommon in strictly savory shops.

It was a long afternoon by the time they finished chasing down unlikely ingredients in the seediest of Knockturn Alley's supply stores. They got all they needed, in the end, though Harry was still wincing at the prices on some of the items. She was certain the acromantula fang was overpriced even considering the danger involved in procuring it.

Harry went home to begin familiarizing herself with the convoluted recipe while Leo took off toward the lower alleys to make sure the right people knew he would be unavailable for most of the following day. Things could proceed apace without his direct involvement, but only as long as the key members of the Court of the Rogue's inner circle were well informed in his absence.

She told her parents over dinner that night that she was going to be working on a project in her potions lab with a friend tomorrow and that it was very important they were not disturbed.

James eyed her with all the suspicion of a career Auror and said sharply, "What friend would that be?"

"Leo," she said between hurried bites of green beans. "It's a potions project, and we think it'll take about thirteen hours to finish, so I could really use his help."

"Oh, you're just going to be spending thirteen hours alone in the basement with an older boy, is that all, Harry?" James asked, the sarcasm not saving his almost terrified expression.

"You can come watch if you want, Dad," she said, a bit cruelly. "Oh, wait. You'll be at work. I reckon you'll miss all the fun, then."

He choked and coughed into his potatoes for at least two minutes, which was well worth the spluttering demands to know what had happened to his innocent little fawn that poured from his end of the table for the rest of dinner.

"Add and I will check on them throughout the day," Remus said, not seeming too concerned. "Just to make sure they eat and drink," he added at Harry's unimpressed look.

She smiled and shrugged. "As long as you don't interrupt the brewing process," she allowed.

"Is that what they're calling it these days?" Sirius muttered into his pork.

That, of course, set James off again and Harry had to wonder why her family was made up of such dramatic idiots. Gryffindors, she supposed, pushing the remainder of her vegetables into her mouth thoughtfully. She swallowed, wiped her mouth with a napkin, then stood. "I've got to finish memorizing all the steps tonight," she said, picking up her plate to take it to the kitchen. "Thanks for dinner, Mum, Sirius."

She hurried up to her room and got back to work, making extensive notations on a spare piece of parchment about what order she ought to prep ingredients in and how she ought to stage the two cauldrons so that the entire process could be streamlined efficiently. It was a tedious task, but by the time she turned out the lights she felt as least reasonably confident that she wouldn't get lost in the recipe the next day. It might take all of her impressive powers of concentration and every hard-earned skill she had under her belt, but she would complete this potion to perfection. Nothing else was tolerable.

-0

[HpHpHp]

-0

Leo Flooed into her house at seven am sharp, dressed for the first time that she could recall in actual brewing robes complete with gloves, sleeve-catchers, and a face mask dangling from his belt—in case the whole thing quite literally blew up in their faces, she supposed.

"Are those fire-retardant boots?" she asked, looking down at his feet with approval.

"I just asked the store clerk which brand Harriet Potter prefers," Leo said modestly.

"Very funny," she said with a half-grin. "Come on, I'll show you the setup. I've arranged everything in a double-assembly-line fashion so that we won't be stepping on one another's toes while moving ingredients from workspace to cauldron. I'll go over the process with you in detail before we begin, but basically I'm just going to be testily ordering you to do things all day, so sorry in advance for that. I've been told I become very single-minded while brewing, and I don't want you to take offense if I seem terse."

Leo chuckled. "You won't scare me off, lass. Just make sure to yell at me before I mess up—I'd rather my ego be bruised than the potion be jeopardized."

She smiled gratefully. "Thanks. It's right this way."

They passed James on their way to the basement stairs. He was on his way to the kitchen for breakfast, but he paused to eye them forbiddingly as they descended. "Be careful," he called after them.

"We will," she called back. "You can check in when you get home from work—I don't doubt we'll still be at it."

James mumbled something about her saying such things on purpose before sulking his way into the kitchen. She sometimes wondered how her father had become an Auror when he was just a giant child, but then she thought maybe he played up his childish nature on purpose when he was at home. Perhaps it was a form of relaxation therapy after eight or nine hours of complete seriousness at his job.

Refocusing her attention on the task at hand, she ushered Leo into the basement and closed the door to minimize potential distractions. The last thing she wanted to do was upend something by mistake because Addy or Remus had made a loud noise upstairs.

"Your dad doesn't seem to like me much," Leo commented.

"He doesn't like any boys who are friends with me," she said, waving off his concern. "Unfortunately you're the only one besides Archie, so far, so you bear all of that protective animosity squarely. I'm sure he'll like you better once I make other male friends."

Leo sent her a look that was hard to decipher, but didn't comment. Instead, he cast his eyes around the room to note the placement of everything she'd set up. "Shall we get started then?"

She explained everything that was going to happen and which order it needed to happen in, so that he would have at least some idea as to what the potions should be looking like at various stages. She had to explain what the tubes affixed to the insides of the cauldrons were, as Leo had apparently not progressed far enough in his studies with the Aldermaster to have learned about layered potions, but he picked up the concept quickly enough. She had already cast the transparency charms over the outsides of the cauldrons, so that they'd be able to monitor all five layers—two in one cauldron, three in the other—without difficulty. She thought wryly that it was a good thing she had so much linseed oil on hand. Honestly, who'd ever heard of a five-layered potion before?

With a prolonged Tempus Charm hanging in the air above the cauldrons, they began. At first it was the same as any other potion; she whipped up the base and added ingredients at an easy rhythm, keeping an eye on the clock but otherwise unstressed. Once she was a ways into the first potion, she began the second, adjusting the heat on each cauldron as necessary and calling out the next ingredient to Leo as she went. He supplied her smoothly with everything she asked for and even anticipated the switching of stirring implements where necessary.

As she began building the layers, however, things became more challenging. While the two cauldrons were within easy reaching distance of one another, the stages that required both cauldrons to be Indirectly Stirred at the same moment were still incredibly awkward. It took a ridiculous amount of concentration to focus the wandless magic in her left hand in a clockwise motion while making the layer she was affecting with her right hand move anti-clockwise. If she hadn't spent a good half-hour practicing that exact feat the night before with a couple of bowls of water, she was certain she would have messed it up royally.

Apart from the stirring issues, keeping the layers straight in her head was more difficult than she thought. It would help if the layers were a significantly different color from one another, but they all ended up a greenish-greyish haze despite the linseed oil keeping them from mixing. If she ever annotated the recipe in her own compendium, she would suggest brewers add a harmless food coloring to the different layers in order to make the mental compartmentalization easier. As it was, she had to stop herself twice from putting ingredients into the wrong tube in the three-layered cauldron. In retrospect she ought to have labeled the tubes with the color corresponding to the food coloring she ought to have added to the layers so that she didn't almost accidently add the fairy wings to the middle layer instead of the bottom layer.

Leo was a lifesaver. He adjusted the heat underneath the cauldrons a dozen times over in between handling ingredients, and without him there to provide emergency warming or cooling charms she didn't know how she'd have been able to adjust the speed at which the different layers were evolving so that their reactions all came to a close within the same fifteen-minute window.

They worked until their arms and fingers ached, and then they kept working. Remus came down to feed them lunch at some point, but Harry barely remembered eating a sandwich mindlessly out of someone's hand as she feverishly counted the pulses of wandless magic she was sending into the bottom and middle layers of the cauldron before her. She only remembered how her neck ached as she craned it awkwardly away from the cauldron while she chewed, acutely aware that one accidental drop of her spittle in the cauldron meant the entire process had been a waste.

At the nine-hour mark, she slowed her briskly robotic motions and allowed herself to breathe deeply, blinking the cauldron smoke from her green contacts. "We're out of ingredients," Leo said. She looked over to see him leaning tiredly against a stool.

She smiled, equally exhausted. "That's it," she said, stepping back from the cauldrons almost regretfully—like a mother stepping away from her child at its first play date. "The potions are entirely in synch now. They have to be kept at constant heat for the next two hours, then the layers are dissolved and they simmer another hour, then the two cauldrons finally get combined. After an hour of letting the mixture fully evolve, it gets taken off the fire and the brewing process is officially ended. It has to set up overnight until it congeals, so as long as everything is smooth sailing from here, it should be ready to drink at about eight o'clock tomorrow morning."

Leo smiled slowly. "You did it."

"We did it," Harry corrected him. Nevertheless he was right. The hard part was over. It was just a matter of monitoring things from there on out. She stretched her arms and shoulders, then cracked her neck and back with a grimace. "I can see why no one ever brews this thing. It's a monster. I'd charge a fortune for it, too, if it wasn't a life-saving cure to a disease that affects children."

"Don't worry about that now," Leo told her. "You did it. Cora is going to be fine."

She still scowled unhappily at the idea that other kids could die of something curable just because the treatment was difficult to make. She understood on some level that the Ministry couldn't just force all the talented potions brewers to spend their days making grueling potions like this for the betterment of society—no one would aspire to become a skilled brewer, if that was their fate—but on another level she found it very sad. When she had recovered from the ordeal of making Seifer's Solution, she would do research on what other potions were hard to come by simply because they were difficult to make. Maybe she couldn't force other Potions masters into slaving away over a cauldron for charity, but she could certainly do her part. She had promised, after all, that she would try to make more of a difference in the world.

Speaking of… "Leo, I was serious about teaching the alley kids Potions, you know," she said, glancing over at him again.

Leo favored her with a grateful look. "I thought you might be. I've talked with the ones who've shown an interest, and I thought after the tournament was over we could set up a class at the Phoenix. Nothing fancy, just an informational session to anyone who's interested in learning some good-to-have knowledge about potions in general. You may get some adults there, too."

"Sounds good," she said, nodding. "Just give me a time and place." She looked over the cauldrons once more, adjusted the fire slightly on one of them, then nodded again, this time to herself. "Leo, I think I can take it from here." When he looked ready to protest, she held up a hand. "No, I mean it. I know you have things to take care of in the alleys this close to the tournament. I'll finish up the tedious parts and bring the potion down to the clinic tomorrow morning, first thing."

Leo looked torn, but he could see the sense in her words. There was no reason for both of them to waste their time doing what one person could do well enough. "All right. Thank you, Harry. I'll see you tomorrow morning at Maywell."

He picked up his mask and gloves from where they had been discarded early on and headed for the stairs. "Sorry I can't see you out," she called. She wasn't so confident that she'd risk leaving her cauldrons unattended.

"I remember where the Floo is," he said. Looking back over his shoulder, he added, "If you hear a scream, though, just assume I met your dad on the way out."

She chuckled after him, but it was interrupted by a fierce yawn. Time for a Pepperup Potion, it seemed. She downed one from her personal stash, claimed a stool, and sat, watching the cauldrons simmer with a sort of bored attention for an hour or so. Footsteps on the stairs made her look over and smile when she saw her dad coming down with a plate of food.

"Brought you some dinner," he said, looking curiously around at the mess they'd made. She supposed she should have been cleaning some of the workspaces while she waited, but she was tired. "Your friend leave already?"

She smiled. "You only brought one plate when you thought he was still here?"

James grinned. "I don't know what you mean. So, how'd it go, then? Save the world?"

"Something like that," she said, grinning proudly. "It's not finished yet, but in my expert opinion it qualifies as a success."

"Is it another one you invented?" James asked, peering at the two cauldrons with a distant sort of interest. "I've never seen someone do two cauldrons at once—do you really need so much of it?"

"I didn't invent this one. I'm making it for a friend. And it's actually two different potions at the moment," Harry said, shaking her head. "They're just similar in color. You have to make the layers separately, then add them together at the end."

"Like when you make spaghetti," James said, nodding seriously. "So which is the noodles and which is the sauce?"

She laughed. "I'll let you know when I figure that out."

"All right, well, I won't disturb your important work," James said, setting down the plate. He fished in his pocket for a moment and came out with a letter. "This came for you while you were down here. In case you have a spare second to give it a read. I think it's from that friend of yours—the Muggleborn."

"Hermione," she murmured, accepting the letter with a frown. "Thanks, Dad. I'll write a reply once I'm finished down here." She supposed it must be an answer to the letter she'd sent agreeing to meet up with the girl.

He left her to her work, and Harry checked on the cauldrons once more before tearing open the letter with her fingers.

Dear Harry,

I'm so glad you got my last letter. You took longer than usual to reply, so I wasn't sure. I think meeting up in Diagon Alley is a fantastic idea; I don't very often make the trip, and when I do it's primarily for school supplies. It would be lovely to just explore the shops at a leisurely pace and see what we find.

How's tomorrow at eleven o'clock? I know you mentioned getting ice cream, but I thought we could walk around a while first and then get lunch. I'll meet you at Fortescue's all the same if you aren't busy.

Your friend,

Hermione

Harry sighed as she folded the letter and tucked it away. She had suggested meeting in Diagon for ice cream as a sort of neutral activity that wouldn't involve anyone's parents or family—the fewer people she had to act like Archie around, the better. Although Archie had suggested distracting his friend with Addy, Harry wasn't quite ready to stoop to using her baby sister as a social shield.

She debated writing and telling Hermione that tomorrow wasn't a good day, but she honestly wanted to get the meeting over with. She was dropping off the potion tomorrow at nine, anyway, so she'd have plenty of time before eleven to psych herself up for the appointment. She mentally composed a quick note of acceptance while she scarfed down her dinner. She wondered briefly if she ought to warn Leo that she would be meeting a friend in Diagon tomorrow, but, really, why should she? Her friends were her own business, and just because he'd seemed a bit put out at her having lunch with Lestrange without telling him first didn't mean she had to give him a heads up whenever she was in the alleys for any reason. It was a public space, after all.

She turned her attention back to the potions, noting that it was about time to dissolve the linseed layers. She just hoped, idly, and in an unacknowledged part of her mind, that the location of their meeting didn't come back to bite her in the arse. She had enough problems at the moment without Leo deciding to become curious about Archie's friend Hermione as well.

-0

[HpHpHp]

-0

The potion had turned out perfectly. It was unappetizing as anything to look at, but that didn't stop her eyeing the sludge as though it was a brick of gold as she bottled it. After clearing her station and stowing the bottles safely in her bag, she was ready to go. It was about eight thirty, so her parents had both left for work by the time she ducked into the kitchen to grab a roll and an apple to munch on on her way to the clinic.

She didn't hear Addy's distinctive and increasingly incessant babbling from the other rooms, so she assumed Remus was watching the one-year-old at his place that morning. She felt a mild disappointment that there was no one there to share her success with, but she supposed that was for the best; she couldn't explain what the potion she'd been working on was for without explaining that she was venturing much farther from the upper alleys than her parents suspected. She was certain they assumed she spent most of her time at the Potions Guild or near to it. It was thanks to the discretion and understanding of Master Hurst that they were not disabused of this notion, and for that she could forgive the Aldermaster for his well-intentioned tongue wagging in the presence of Master Snape.

The alley was bustling as always in the morning, but Harry scarcely noticed the people pushing past and around her as she walked. She was in too good a mood to care about other people's impatience, and her thoughts were utterly occupied with pride and a kind of smug satisfaction that she hoped she could be forgiven for, considering what she had achieved the day before. No longer would she say that Wolfsbane was the most difficult potion she had ever participated in brewing. Seifer's Solution made Wolfsbane look like a NEWT potion.

If she hadn't been so caught up in self-congratulation, she might have paid more attention to her surroundings. She might have noticed the girl with curly brown hair who stopped and turned as Harry walked by the bookshop. She might even have been able to give the girl the slip before she caught up with her in the crowd—if she had seen her in time to manage any sort of avoidance whatsoever. As it was, the small hand that caught her by the elbow also caught her completely by surprise.

She turned and blinked into large, brown eyes that were just a shade too dark to be called honey. The rest of the girl's face was rather overwhelmed by the riot of brunette curls that cascaded over her shoulders where they were not held precariously back from her cheeks with a light blue headband.

"Harry," the girl said, looking into her eyes with so much familiarity that she could only be one person.

"'Mione," Harry said, letting her face relax into a smile even as her brain whirled with confusion. "What are you doing here so early?" She made a show of looking up at the sky, if only to escape the girl's firmly assessing gaze, which slid over her in a way that was more like a Healer cataloguing a patient's condition than a girl reacquainting herself with a friend she hadn't seen in a while.

"I had some errands to run that I thought you'd probably find boring, and then I was going to spend an hour or so at Flourish and Blotts," Hermione said, shifting her weight from one foot to the other even as her head cocked curiously at Harry. "What are you doing here already?"

"Same," she confessed, affecting Archie's sheepish grin with the ease of long practice.

The brown-eyed girl looked fondly at her, and even though Harry knew she was seeing Archie-as-Harry, not her, it was still a bit unsettling. Was this how her cousin felt when he played Rigel at the gala? She felt as though she were an understudy unexpectedly asked to perform a part she'd memorized but never truly played before. "How alike we are. I've really missed you, Harry. How has your summer been? You look so different I almost didn't recognize you. Have you outgrown all of your robes in the last month?"

"Just about," she said, seizing on the explanation as to why she was wearing soft breeches and a tunic rather than true Wizarding robes. "It seemed wasteful to order new ones until I had to in the fall."

Hermione looked a little surprised. "That's surprisingly economical of you. Usually you say something like 'Even a robe worn only once is worth buying it if it's beautiful.'"

Harry fought a grimace. That sounded exactly like something Archie would say; he was every bit the fashionably wasteful heir his father had raised. "Reckon you're rubbing off on me, 'Mione. Anyway, there's no one to see me looking stunning over the holidays, so it seems a wasted effort." She sighed in a slightly melancholy way that she knew embodied her cousin's sense of drama perfectly.

"Well, since we're here, should we just run our errands together?" Hermione asked, flashing very white teeth in excitement. "I won't mind going with you if you don't mind coming with me."

Harry was abruptly torn. She had very strict instructions to do nothing that would offend, annoy, or raise the suspicions of Miss Granger, but the potion for Cora felt like a lead weight in her bag, reminding her that she'd promised Leo and Mrs. Hurst to be at the clinic that morning. "I don't mind accompanying you, 'Mione, but can we meet up in about forty minutes? There's something I have to take care of really quick and then I'm free for the rest of the day."

"Well, what is it?" the other girl asked, smiling a bit exasperatedly. "I'll just come with you."

"It's… " she honestly had no idea what to say. "It's just a personal errand, that's all. It won't take too long."

Hermione frowned at her. "What's wrong, Harry? Is it embarrassing? Because I've seen you sing along to the Weird Sisters, so I rather think we're past all that. If it's a shop you don't want me to come in, I'll just wait outside."

Harry supposed the girl thought she needed to go underwear shopping or something. She started to open her mouth, even though she had no idea what words were going to come out, but was interrupted by a soft tug on the side of her breeches. She looked down to see the boy who sometimes worked at Eeylops—Jason, the cook's son—looking up at her with thinly contained excitement and impatience.

"Hi!" he chirped, smiling a bit shyly at Hermione before turning back to Harry with an expression of fierce hope. "I'm Jason. Margo said it's okay if I say hi now. Do you have the medicine for Cora? Margo said you're gonna save her."

Harry fought the urge to close her eyes as she saw Hermione's gaze sharpen in her periphery. She leaned down so the boy didn't have to crane his neck up at her and said, very solemnly, "Can you keep a secret, Jason?" He nodded vigorously, hands twisting in his shirt with the nervous energy of a child. "Well, I have Cora's medicine right here," she told him, patting her bag gently. "Would you like to help me take it to her?"

She was tempted to just give him the bag and tell him to run it to the clinic, but as mature as she was sure the waifs of the Rogue were, she wasn't prepared to turn over a potion that had taken her the better part of a day and a month's worth of wages from Krait to brew to a kid. Even if taking it there herself did mean rousing Hermione's curiosity. She couldn't even be annoyed at the boy for coming up to her while she was with Hermione; she had told Margo specifically that it would be okay if the kids who kept eyes on her introduced themselves next time they saw her.

"You have medicine for someone?" Hermione asked, looking incredibly interested—and why wouldn't she be, training in the Healing track as she was? "Is that the errand you have to run?"

She nodded, attempting to look apologetic. "I told them I'd bring it by first thing, so I really have to get it done now. I promise I'll find you as soon as I'm back, though."

The curly-haired girl looked taken aback for a moment before her face set into an expression of stubborn insistence. "Can't I come with you? I had no idea you were delivering medicines in your free time, Harry. Do you work at an apothecary?"

"Sort of," she said, wishing she were anywhere else at that moment. Why did everything have to be complicated? She was supposed to drop off the medicine and meet Hermione at eleven. Trust Archie to make such a troublesome friend. "You don't need to come, though. It's some way from here, and—"

"Why don't you want me to come?" Hermione asked bluntly. She seemed the type to cut straight through nonsense to the heart of a matter. On second thought, she could see exactly why Archie needed a friend like that.

Harry firmed her expression. "It isn't in a good part of the alleys, Hermione. I'd feel better if you stayed here."

"All the more reason for me to come with you," Hermione said, frowning now. "You know I'm better than you in Defense class. What is this, misplaced chivalry?"

"I just don't think your parents would be happy with me taking you where I'm going," she tried.

"If you're going, I'm going," she said stoutly. "My parents don't have to know."

"She'll be okay," Jason piped up, looking between the two of them somewhat impatiently. "I'm Leo's, and so are you. Nobody is gonna bother us—'specially not with the sun out."

Hermione was looking very intrigued, now. Harry tried, but she was having trouble coming up with an argument that didn't amount to 'I just don't want you to come.' Noticing her struggle, Hermione said, "What's really wrong, Harry? Are you hiding something from me?" She didn't look hurt, exactly, more resigned, and Harry felt a familiar pang of guilt. It was the same way Draco sometimes looked at Rigel: as though she'd slammed a door in his face.

"Of course not," she said, realizing that this was only going to end one way. "Come if you want; I just think it'll be boring for you."

Looking eminently satisfied, Hermione smiled kindly down at Jason. "Lead the way, young sir."

Laughing, the boy scurried off through the crowd, only the occasional flash of his red shirt indicating that he hadn't abandoned them completely. He wasn't exactly the best of guides, but he likely knew Harry could get there without his help.

When they turned down Knockturn Alley, Hermione shrank imperceptibly closer to her side and whispered, "You weren't kidding. Who are you taking it to? They really live down here?"

She shook her head and took Hermione's hand gently, so that anyone who caught sight of them would know unmistakably that the girl was under her, and therefore Leo's, protection. "It's quite a trek, actually. This is just the only way to get there from the main alleys."

Brown eyes turned her way with unsuppressed curiosity, and Harry thought she could see what Archie liked so much about the girl. "Does the Wizarding part of London extend so far? I knew there were a couple of alleys that intersected with Diagon, like Craftsmen and Knockturn, but I didn't think there were alleys that led off from them, too."

Harry smiled. "I had the same reaction when I first came here. The alleys are much bigger than most people realize. The upper alleys, as most folk around here call them, are just the commercial district, really. It extends a fair way past Craftsmen Alley, since that's where almost all the English guilds reside, but that's nothing compared to how far the alleys extend in this direction."

They reached the end of Knockturn and turned down Kyprioth Court, where they spotted Jason waiting with pent-up energy for them to catch up. He led them at a fair distance through the patchwork of small back alleys that led from the cul-de-sac to the residential district beyond. When they turned down the first well-kept street, Hermione gasped. "It's a whole community," she said wonderingly, looking around at everything with rapt attention. "With market stalls and neighborhoods and—how many people live here?"

"More than live in Hogsmeade, if that gives you some clue," she said. She wasn't sure of the exact population, herself, but she could make some guesses.

"So what sort of medicine is it?" Hermione asked, linking her hands together behind her as she walked. "Am I allowed to ask, or does it fall under patient/junior-Healer confidentiality?"

"It's a potion," she said, not sure how much to tell her. She didn't know Cora, so she couldn't say whether the child would mind her illness being discussed, but if Hermione was coming with her she'd see soon enough anyway. "I'm not the girl's Healer, so I suppose I can tell you. She has Seifer's Syndrome."

Hermione gave a little "oh" of dismay. "Is it… progressed?"

"Very," Harry said, grimacing. "The potion is going to cure her, though."

"Seifer's Solution," Hermione said, nodding seriously. "That's an extremely difficult potion to make, isn't it? Did you get it from St. Mungo's? Is that who you work for?"

"Not exactly," Harry said. She sighed, then paused in walking to give the other girl a searching look. "I know you've said that you would keep my secrets, but I need to know how far that promise goes, 'Mione."

Hermione frowned at her with a searching look of her own. "What are you talking about, Harry? This isn't like you. You know I'll always keep your secrets."

"I broke a law to procure this potion," she said gently. "I know how strong your moral code is, so I have to ask: are you okay being a party to this? I can take you back the Diagon and meet up with you afterwards, if you'd rather not be involved."

"This is why you didn't want me to come," she guessed, eyes widening. "Harry, what did you do? Did you… did you steal it?"

Harry kept her gaze level. She wasn't going to admit to a specific crime without an assurance, no matter how much Archie trusted this girl. "Hermione, tell me now. Are you willing to tolerate my secrets even when they stray from the north of your moral compass? This isn't like keeping quiet about my being a girl. I broke the law, and I need to know if you trust me enough to look the other way."

Hermione's eyes flashed, and when she spoke her voice was hot and choked with indignation. "I certainly won't look the other way, you idiot! If I'm not looking, I can't help you." As Harry's eyebrows rose with surprise, Hermione threw her arms around her in a fierce hug. "I can't promise to keep my mouth shut if I disagree with you, Harry, but I will never betray you. If you do something you think is morally questionable I want to know about it, so I can help you figure out another way, if there is one, or support you, if there isn't." She released Harry from her hug but kept her at arm's length by her shoulders to say, "Now stop being dramatic and just tell me what's going on."

Harry let her mouth relax into a smile and began walking again. Yes, she could see why Archie liked this girl. "The place we're going is a clinic called Maywell, and it services those of the lower alleys who can't afford to go to St. Mungo's for their care. While the Healers there are very dedicated to their patients, they just don't have the resources the bigger hospital does, and that can make it difficult to get medicines that are expensive or rare."

"And Seifer's Solution is both," Hermione said, grim understanding in her eyes.

She nodded. "St. Mungo's subsidizes or provides the medicines when they can, since Maywell clinic is actually a charity project funded in large part by the hospital itself, but in this case they weren't able to get the medicine Cora needs in time to save her."

"So you stole it," Hermione finished, nodding sadly. "I wish you hadn't, Harry, but I completely understand why—"

"I didn't steal it," Harry said, huffing a laugh. "Honestly, 'Mione, you think I'm that good a thief? This stuff is guarded better than goblin gold, and that's if you can find it."

"You didn't… ?" Hermione swatted Harry's arm sharply. "You beast. Making me worry like that. Honestly."

Harry laughed again, but it faded when she glanced sidelong at the girl and confessed, "I brewed it."

Her mahogany gaze shot to Harry's face in shock. "Really? But that's so impressive, Harry. I knew you were better than average at potions, but that kind of skill is amazing. Oh, I'm just so proud of you for using you talents to help those less fortunate. I don't understand, though. What's wrong with brewing some medicine for a little girl? Is it because you're not a licensed Healer?"

"I'm not licensed to brew Seifer's Solution," she corrected, impressed that Hermione had come so close to guessing right. "There's a hefty fine for distributing it without leave."

Hermione waved her off with a relieved sigh. "I understand your caution, Harry, but next time please don't give me a heart attack unless you've committed a crime you can be sent to Azkaban for, all right?" Harry kept her face very relaxed and her eyes very still. She reevaluated her opinion of Hermione's guessing abilities and wished that Archie had become attached to someone slightly less clairvoyant. "Anyway, you can just get a license now, can't you? I mean, obviously don't tell them about this one, but then the next time someone needs it you can make it for them without feeling guilty, right?"

She nodded, a determined grin on her face. Hadn't she thought something similar? She would ask Master Hurst the next time she saw him what the procedures were for becoming licensed in difficult potions. As long as they didn't require a mastery, there was no reason she couldn't start expanding on her range of difficult potions while she had free time in which to do so.

"How did you get involved, anyway?" Hermione asked. "If you don't work for St. Mungo's, I mean."

"The woman who runs the clinic is married to the Aldermaster of the Potions Guild," Harry explained. "I know their son, and when the two of us stopped in to say hello to his mother the other day, we learned of Cora's predicament. So I offered to take a shot at it."

"That's really decent of you, Harry," Hermione said, eyes admiring. "I love the idea of a free clinic, too. We have things like that in the Muggle world, of course, but I'd never heard of a strictly charitable hospital for wizards. No one's even mentioned it as a career possibility at AIM."

"This is the only one that I know of," Harry said. "It's pretty small. I know there are a couple of general charity organizations, such as the Widows and Orphans Fund, that do offer subsidized medical treatment as part of their services, but that's done through St. Mungo's itself, not a separate facility."

"This makes so much more sense, though," Hermione said, walking slightly faster as she got more excited about what she was saying. "I doubt St. Mungo's takes a loss on services through a fund like that, which means the healthcare itself isn't any cheaper, it just gets paid for through the donations that people make to the fund, right? I'll bet that's a huge drain on the charity; if they could refer their recipients to a facility that was itself subsidized or discounted they'd be able to increase the effectiveness of their programs overall by diverting the funds that would have gone to paying premium prices for Healing at St. Mungo's to other, equally worthy endeavors."

"Maybe you should just re-design the whole Wizarding world," Harry said. It was hard to disagree with anything the other girl was saying.

"Maybe I will," Hermione said, amused. "You have to admit the inefficiency is staggering at times. I mean, having magic is one thing, but there's no excuse for wasting resources and not doing everything possible to economize and capitalize on the magic in the first place. "

"I think it has to do with wizards' natural inclination to resist change and preserve the mystery that magic represents," Harry said, having been struck by similar observations in the past. "I think some people are afraid of treating magic as anything less than a sacred blessing from the gods. It must be honored and preserved, but not manipulated or taken advantage of beyond a certain acceptable extent. This applies to magical society as well. Change in the form of progress must come so slowly that it's almost unnoticeable. To transform the world too quickly is to admit that something about it is wrong." At Hermione's blank look, Harry grimaced. "I know how it sounds, but you have to remember that a lot of wizards believe they were chosen to wield magic because of a quality that is innate in them, not because of a happy accident of genetics. They think there's something perfect about magic, something indelibly pure. To people who think that way, the idea of making magic and the world of magic efficient is unattractive; deciding which parts of their glorious tradition are useful and which are superfluous feels like playing god. The only time they accept sudden change is when it's a reversal of progress—suddenly barring Muggleborns from attending Hogwarts, for instance. If it's couched in a way that feels like a decisive act of restoration to the purity of the past, people can get behind it. Otherwise… every well-reasoned argument just sounds to them like an upstart indoctrinate telling a senior priest how to worship his god properly."

"But that's so insane," Hermione moaned, tugging on her own hair in frustration. "You can't treat real life like a religion. There are actual consequences in the physical world around them for their stubborn ignorance. Consequences for people like me. Like us."

"In their minds, they don't have a duty to protect us," Harry said quietly. "They only have a duty to protect magic itself and preserve the wise practices passed down by the great magic users of old. Individual lives don't mean anything in the scope of the ten-thousand-year tradition they imagine themselves to be heir to."

"Even the oldest families in the Book of Gold don't go back more than a thousand years," Hermione grumbled. "Don't they realize that even the purest of families, the purest magic, has to start somewhere?"

"Oh, they do," Harry said, smiling wryly. "In a perfect world the Muggleborns would have their own community, and marry one another until their children were sufficiently halfblooded, at which point they would marry other halfbloods until eventually their line became pure by definition, after which they would live in relative obscurity, a faceless, nameless family of pureblooded witches and wizards who listened to whatever the oldest and purest of families told them. Very few purebloods are fanatic enough to want to shut Muggleborns out of society completely. The wiser ones even recognize that they need fresh blood to survive in any genetically competitive sense. They'd still like to see outsiders integrated slowly, however, preferably with as little impact on the society at large as possible. What they fear above all is a Muggleborn or halfblood coming into their society for seven years and then, whether by skill, hard work, or accident, ascending to power rapidly and enacting widespread change in the culture at a pace that their traditions can't combat effectively."

"So they shunt us off to schools outside of the country where we can make no connections, so that when we enter the workplace—at those places not discouraged from hiring anyone schooled abroad—we are at a permanent disadvantage compared to our pureblooded coworkers," Hermione said, something like pained fury on her face. "It's rather brilliant, I have to admit. A few years ago I would have said no one would spend so much time and energy actively fighting to keep someone else down when they could be spending it on building themselves up, but… well, the Wizarding world has been nothing if not full of surprises, I suppose."

"Not all of them bad," Harry said, nudging the girl softly. She hadn't meant to get to involved in a conversation about politics while they walked. They were nearing Pendragon Alley, anyway, and there was no need to take a bad mood into the clinic with them.

Hermione smiled with the right side of her mouth. "Not all bad," she agreed. After a deep breath, she added, "Nothing can stay bad forever, anyway. Look at what we're doing now. You're going to take a potion to a little girl and make her healthy again. I firmly believe there's a cure for everything, if you look hard enough. We'll find the cure for the Wizarding world, Harry. I know we will."

She found a light blinking faintly in her chest that was something like hope and marveled at Hermione's ability to make an arguably impossible task sound like something the two of them just hadn't got around to yet.

Jason had reached the entrance to Maywell long before them, but he waited patiently for them to arrive before bursting through the doors with a whoop.

"Harry's here! Harry's here, Miss Eleni!" he called into the lobby.

Janice came around the front desk even as Mrs. Hurst poked her head out of a patient room and gestured her over with shaky expectation in her eyes. "In here, Harry. Did it work? Leo said you were entirely confident when he left."

Harry smiled widely as she and Hermione crossed the foyer. The good feeling she'd woken up with was back. "It turned out perfectly," she told the Healer. She carefully extracted the bottles from her bag and handed them over to the witch, who grasped the containers as though they were spun sugar rather than thick, sturdy glass.

"Thank you," Mrs. Hurst said softly, settling a very grateful gaze on her face before turning and moving back into the room. "Come see Cora—she wants to meet you. Your friend, too."

They followed her through the door into a space that looked smaller than it was, probably because of all the people crowding around the little bed that stood in the center. Leo was there, lounging in a corner so as to be out of the way of Healer Carol, who was monitoring the little girl's vitals. The blonde-haired child in the bed didn't appear to be paying the Healer any attention, though. She was blinking wide green eyes at Harry and Hermione, somehow managing to convey a sense of boundless energy without moving a single muscle. She had to wonder with a pang how long the poor child had been confined to a bed.

"You're Harry," the girl said. She was propped up on a number of pillows, and her gaze flitted around the room fast enough to compensate for her motionless body. "I'm Cora. Margo said you were nice."

"She said you were nice, too," Harry told the girl.

"Who're you?" Cora asked, her eyes landing on Hermione's wildly curly hair with something like fascination.

"This is my friend, Hermione," Harry said. "She wanted to come and make sure you got better. Hermione, this is Cora."

"It's lovely to meet you," Hermione said, the kindness in her eyes far outshining any pity she may have felt for the child.

"Harry and Hermione brought you a present, dear heart," Mrs. Hurst said. She had uncorked one of the bottles and scooped a dram of the congealed potion into a little cup. "It's going to make you better."

"It looks like garbage sludge," Cora said matter-of-factly.

"Just pretend it's pudding," Jason said encouragingly. "That's what I do when I have to eat mashed peas."

"You drop your peas on the floor and everyone knows it," Cora said absently, still inspecting the cup of greenish-grey medicine suspiciously. "I think it's troll boogies."

"I'll turn you into a boogie if you don't eat it," Mrs. Hurst threatened.

Gulping, Cora gingerly tilted her head back and allowed the Healer to squeeze the contents of the cup into her mouth without further delay. She shuddered and grimaced but nonetheless swallowed the full dose.

"How long until it takes effect?" Leo asked from his corner. She didn't miss the way he eyed Hermione with undisguised curiosity and began brainstorming ways of putting that meeting off as long as possible.

"She'll have to take one dose an hour for the next twelve hours," Mrs. Hurst said briskly. "We'll know it's working when she can wiggle her fingers and toes; it'll pull the magic out of the extremities first."

"So I'll be able to juggle again, soon," Cora said, eyes lighting up. "I'm almost up to five knives at once!"

Hermione looked vaguely alarmed, but kept her thoughts to herself at Harry's reassuring look. Mrs. Hurst was not so circumspect. "No knife juggling for at least two weeks," she said sternly. "When your muscles are completely recovered you may start with balls and pins only." Cora groaned as much as she was able without moving, but Mrs. Hurst would not be moved. "You'll have to relearn some of your dexterity before you're back in top form."

Cora sighed, but appeared altogether satisfied that she would at least be back to her old self eventually. Seeing that all was well, Harry said a quiet goodbye to Cora and Jason and took Hermione back out to the lobby. She was hoping to declare their errand complete and get the Muggleborn girl back to Diagon without delay, but when Mrs. Hurst followed them out, Hermione latched onto the older woman immediately, rattling off questions and soaking up their answers like a somewhat worshipful sponge.

"But why haven't I heard anything about places like this before?" Hermione bemoaned. "Even our professors at AIM never mentioned the possibility."

"AIM?" Mrs. Hurst blinked, looking at the girl more carefully. "Are you in the Healer track then?"

"That's right," Hermione said, smiling brightly. "I'm in the same class as Harry."

Mrs. Hurst looked a little confused, though she attempted to hide it as she delved into a discussion on the difficulties facing charitable projects in the Wizarding world. Harry recalled with a mental cringe that Mrs. Hurst had never believed her story about attending AIM during the school year. She must be very perplexed as to why a girl was now claiming to be her schoolmate. She wasn't worried about the Healer prying into the facts of their relationship; Mrs. Hurst was discreet, and there was nothing incriminating for her to find in any case. She did wonder if it would make her less suspicious of Harry's backstory or more suspicious of Hermione's, though.

It seemed as if their discussion was winding down, which was good news for Harry. She really wanted to get Hermione back to the upper alleys before Leo got around to meeting her. She was just about to suggest they get going when the brown-eyed girl uttered a question that nearly made her groan aloud in frustration.

"Do you need any part-time volunteers?"

"Volunteers?" Mrs. Hurst repeated, looking intrigued by the idea. "We've never had an intern before." A shadow crossed her face a moment later. "It's very kind of you to offer, my dear, but no. It's not safe for you to traverse the alleys if you aren't familiar with them."

"I could Floo in," Hermione insisted, looking quite eager. "You have a Floo, don't you? My parents' house is connected. They'll be thrilled at the idea; they work in a branch of the Muggle healthcare system, and they're very keen on the virtues of public service."

"Well, I don't know," Mrs. Hurst said, looking torn. Harry could see she liked the idea of having a young would-be Healer to train. It was probably only the reluctance to expose the girl to the lower alley way of life that kept her from agreeing immediately.

"I'll work very hard, Ma'am," Hermione assured her. "I'm the top of my class—well, sometimes Harry is, but I'm sure I can be of use in complementary ways. Harry is excellent with blunt trauma and with potions, of course, but I'm told I have a very delicate touch with soft tissues."

Mrs. Hurst laughed softly. "You certainly sound well-qualified. I suppose… if you're sure you want to."

Harry was hard pressed to hide her horror as the two finalized the arrangement. They had just met and suddenly there was an air of deep camaraderie between them. How had events spiraled so quickly out of her control? There was no way she could keep Leo and Hermione from meeting if she was spending an unknown amount of time at Maywell. How long until they started comparing notes on her?

She could feel something like despair creeping up on her even as she kept a pleased expression pasted on her face for the sake of her 'friend.' Somehow when she'd analyzed the idea of bringing Hermione along in order to make the errand seem less suspicious she had been entirely focused on the possibility that Leo would become curious about a friend of Harry's from school. Somehow it never occurred to her that Hermione might be curious about something in Leo's world.

The only saving grace was that Leo stayed in the patient room keeping Cora company until Harry managed to drag Hermione away from the clinic. At the least, that interaction had been postponed.

Hermione chatted the whole way back to Diagon, speculating about the types of cases she'd be likely to see and how much broader a range of experience it would be compared to what they were exposed to at AIM. Harry hummed agreeably in all the right places, but Hermione seemed to know that her placidly interested face hid a deep discomfort.

"Have I upset you, Harry?" Hermione asked abruptly, interrupting her own train of thought as she glanced over and caught a glimpse of something in Harry's eyes that derailed it.

"No, not at all," she said, putting a greater effort into projecting a relaxed sort of cheer. "I had no idea you'd be so interested in the clinic, or I would have mentioned it before."

She frowned. "I'm not stupid, Harry. It's kind of obvious you were reluctant to share that with me. Is it… is it because they think you're a boy here, too?"

"Some people do," Harry admitted. "And almost no one knows my last name is Potter. I have a kind of… anonymity here, I suppose, that I value. Maybe I was afraid that if I brought someone from my normal life down here I would lose… something. I'm not explaining it well. I wasn't trying to hurt your feelings."

"I know," Hermione said. "I understand that you probably need somewhere you can be yourself over the summer, away from your family, I mean. I want you to know that I wasn't trying to force my way into this part of your life, even though it might seem that way. I mean, I want to be part of your life, obviously, but if it makes you uncomfortable I'll keep to the clinic and you'll hardly ever see me."

"You are a part of my life," she said, casting about for a sentiment she thought Archie would exhibit. "The best part."

Hermione looked slightly uncomfortable, but Harry couldn't tell if it was because she could detect the note of insincerity behind the words or of there was some other reason. She really didn't known enough about Archie's relationship with Hermione to make this work properly.

"Well," the other girl said after a long moment of silence. "This was certainly more than I expected from our outing today. Wait until mother hears that I went out for ice cream and came home with an internship."

"I'm sure she expects nothing less of you," Harry said, attempting the teasing tone that she might use with her own friends. "You have already finished the summer assignments, after all. Even your no doubt ambitious reading list won't be able to fill your whole summer. In fact," she mused, tapping her chin thoughtfully, "I wouldn't be surprised if your parents were rather relieved."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Hermione demanded on an amused huff.

"Just that a Hermione Granger with too much time on her hands can't be good for the household equilibrium," Harry said innocently. "You do enjoy projects, don't you, 'Mione?"

"Are you insinuating that I meddle in other people's lives in order to fill a boredom-induced-void that otherwise aches in the absence of constructive work to satisfy my industrious nature?" Hermione squinted at her in a way that was as intimidating as a baby squirrel.

"I thought I'd said it pretty bluntly, actually," Harry said, inspecting her fingernails.

They exchanged affected looks of suspicion and nonchalance respectively before breaking into matching grins.

"Let's get ice cream, Harry," Hermione said, linking her arm with Harry's happily. Harry relaxed into her grip, feeling content that she'd at least been able to smooth things back into a semblance of companionship. She thought that with a couple more meetings like this, she'd have a good enough handle on the Muggleborn girl's personality to get on well with her. Hermione certainly wasn't overbearing or rude, which is more than she could say about many of her other acquaintances. On the other hand, a large part of her hoped she never got the chance. As impractical as the sentiment was in the long term, she wished she could just leave the other girl to Archie.

Shaking her head internally, she berated herself. Being friends with a smart, well-meaning girl was far from the worst thing she would do in the course of their ruse. Who was she to complain? She was lucky to get the chance to solidify her cover at AIM in such an unassuming way. Hermione would be a fountain of information and small details—the kind that really sold a lie, the kind that she would need if she were ever asked in detail about her experiences in America. With that in mind, she shook off the uneasy feeling that lingered at the idea of Hermione traipsing around the lower alleys unattended. She had to take advantage of this opportunity while she could.

Pulling herself out of her own thoughts, she bent her mind more readily to the girl beside her. Archie was counting on her to keep his relationship with Hermione strong. She'd done a poor job of it so far, having been caught off-balance from their first, unexpected encounter. She could do better. She would have to, for both of their sakes.

-0

[HpHpHp]

-0

Between pursuing her independent research and training with Leo, the long summer days passed swiftly. Before she had even grasped how quickly the time was moving it had already slipped through her fingertips. The first day of the lower alley tournament arrived, if not unexpectedly, at least impetuously soon.

She woke early, taking care to eat a small but dense breakfast of grains and eggs. She left before her parents even woke, scratching a note on a spare bit of parchment in her lab for her mother to find in case she thought to look for her. Aside from her wand and knife, she carried nothing in her pockets. Her clothes were… sturdy, for lack of a better description. The plain red tunic was sleeveless and belted close to her waist to minimize any loose material that might snag at an inopportune moment. Her breeches were tucked snugly inside her trusty boots, and she thought, as she caught her reflection in the kitchen window, that even if she didn't look intimidating, she had an air of general competence about her. The determined look in her eyes didn't hurt. She was ready to finally get a real feel for her abilities.

Before she ducked into the Floo, she tucked her hair under a soft brown cap and added a pair of thick dueling goggles to the top of her head. They were much less likely to be broken in a scuffle than her usual glasses, and the slight tint they afforded her eyes had the added use of disguising their color to the casual observer. She wouldn't call herself paranoid, but knowing that Bill Weasley, Regulus Black, and Hermione Granger were all wont to traverse the lower alleys made her reluctant to advertise her presence in the competition overtly.

If the goggles themselves had a few spells embedded for clear sight and long-distance magnification, well, it was anything goes in a freedueling tournament, wasn't it?

By the time she'd reached Kyprioth Court, she could feel the excitement mounting in the air of the lower alleys. Even if she hadn't known about the tournament, she felt it would be obvious that something was going on. There were many more people about than usual for the early hour, and the people she saw wore smiles and anticipatory grins more often than not.

The closer she got to Pendragon Alley, the more overt the signs became, until she was walking through a wide swath of tents and stands selling food, drink, flags, and souvenirs. Some stalls had simple games set up with prizes for the skilled and lucky. From others came music in every form imaginable, all lively and energetic. She shook her head a bit, wondering if they thought the Ministry was really so unobservant. She supposed anyone not here for the tournament wouldn't have reason to come down this way, but still… the atmosphere was positively alive with exhilarated expectation.

The large intersection over which King Arthur's statue presided was conspicuously empty compared to the myriad booths that surrounded it. At least, she thought it was. It was difficult to look at the intersection for very long, and she gave up after a few moments when her head began complaining at the effort. She had to hand it to Regulus—those were some powerful wards.

She wove her way toward where a pair of huge flags—one blue one red—were planted in the dirt at slanting angles, forming an archway through which a slow trickle of people was moving. There were a couple of youths wearing the Rogue's sigil standing next to the entryway and collecting admission fees in exchange for golden bracelets. She assumed they would allow one to pass in and out of the wards for the duration of the tournament—or perhaps they would charge admission each day and vary the colors of the bracelets. She wouldn't have to worry about it—as a competitor she had been given a patch to sew to her clothes that designated her with the number fifteen. When the guards caught sight of it, they waved her through.

A zinging sensation, and then she was hard-pressed not to gape at the sight before her. If she didn't know how internal expansion wards worked, she would be tempted to believe she'd just been transported to another place entirely. The enormous square before her was dominated by a rectangular platform raised about five feet off the ground. She estimated it to be fifty meters long and perhaps thirty wide. It was immense, at least compared to the little dirt courtyard in the Phoenix she'd been practicing in all summer. She had to wonder what they were supposed to do with all that space. Run away, perhaps?

On either side of the dueling platform rose stands that towered over the stage like looming goliaths. Were they really expecting so many spectators? She shied away from the implications of so many rows of bleachers. She had played Quidditch in front of this many people at school. It was no different, she told herself, ignoring the little voice that was pointing out that there she had been one of fourteen people on the Quidditch pitch, not one of two.

Behind the stands on both sides were more tents, belonging to those lucky vendors who'd been allowed or could afford a spot inside the wards. Concessions abounded between more stands with flags and souvenirs. She wondered why all the flags were red or blue—those weren't exactly the colors of the Court of the Rogue. As her eyes caught sight of a grand board set up on the far end of the stage, however, she realized it was by design; the bracket for the tournament was blown up in huge lettering, and next to each name or blank space was either a red dot or a blue dot. Walking closer, she scanned the list for her name and spotted it next to a crimson circle. She grinned, fingering her tunic. That was certainly lucky. Looking around at all the people carrying red or blue flags, she realized it was a clever way to give people a competitor to cheer for in the event that they didn't know either one personally.

Behind the bracket board, next to a green tent with a large medical cross on the top, there was an immense pavilion with the words 'Duelers' Tent' on a sign across the front. She wasn't the first one there, but it was far from full. Sliding her goggles over her eyes, she meandered her way inside and took a look around.

Leo wasn't hard to spot. He was surrounded by people asking questions and complaining about various things, demanding he attend to this problem or that. Beside him, his cousin Rispah looked quite irritated at the clamoring.

"Leave off, will you? I told you, take it all up with Aled Flint!" the rouged woman shouted. "Leave Leo be, you vultures, he hasn't got time for it today."

"I must prepare for the competition myself," Leo said, raising his voice just enough to be heard without sounding strident. "I'm certain that the tournament organizers can handle any issue that arises. You will know them by the sigils on their shirts."

Gradually, the group disgruntledly dispersed and Leo was left at a small round table with Rispah and Marek, who was also competing. She made her way over and took a seat, grinning as it took them a moment to recognize her.

"That you, Harry?" Marek said, looking amused. "Trying to seem mysterious?"

"That's right," Harry told him. "Today it's 'Harry the Hidden.'"

"That's awful. How about Harry the Hollerer? It sounds like you have a war cry." Marek waggled his eyebrows unhelpfully.

"How about you, then?" Harry asked. "Are you Marek the Magnificent?"

"I want to be 'Marek the Mighty.'" He laughed.

"What about Leo?" Rispah asked, eyes amused. Leo rolled his eyes, prompting the woman to suggest, "Lionel the Listless."

"Leo the Loser!" Marek cackled. "Today you bow to Marek the Mighty!"

"More like Marek the Misguided," Leo smirked. "I'll be… "

"Leo the Lovesick," Rispah cut in, a wicked smile curling her lips.

"Oh, that's a good one," Marek said seriously. "I bet the favors will pour in for such a romantic-type hero. I should have thought of that."

"Marek the Mopey?" Harry wondered.

"Mooning Marek," Rispah said, nodding with insincere approval.

Marek made a face. "Never mind, then. That just sounds wrong."

Rispah stood with a feminine flick of her fingers. "I've just decided which bet I want to place," she said, glancing out of the large pavilion to where Harry supposed someone was taking wagers. "Marek Swiftknife gets pantsed before the tournament is out. I'll personally reward anyone who manages it with my favor, in fact."

"Oi! You can't do that." Marek scrambled after the woman, leaving Leo and Harry to laugh at the ignominy of their friends.

"Feeling ready?" Leo asked. He eyed her attire with approval, hazel gaze easily picking out the imprint of the knife at her waist and the wand along her thigh.

"If I'm not prepared by now, I've no business being here," Harry said, attempting to sound optimistic. Somehow it came out slightly worried, instead.

"You'll do great," Leo said firmly. "You're better than you think."

"Two matches for each competitor today, right?" Harry clarified.

Leo nodded. "For the ones who defeat their first opponents, at least. Then two tomorrow, and one each the following two days—those matches will be harder, so it's best not to tire out the final two competitors by making them finish it the third day."

"That, and you can bring in more gold if there's a grand finale on the fourth day," Harry said.

"Also we can make a lot more gold," Leo agreed shamelessly. "Did you eat?" he asked after a moment.

She nodded. "Couldn't sleep, so I just decided to get going and head over."

"Let's get you a pint, then," Leo said, making to stand. "It'll calm your nerves."

"It's seven in the morning," Harry said, rolling her eyes. "I'm not drinking before the matches."

"Oh, matches, is it? You're pretty confident after all," Leo said archly. "I suppose you think you can lull me into going easy on you if you play the nervous rookie card."

"As if we'll even get to fight," Harry scoffed. She did stand, though. "I'll have a glass of milk, I suppose—if you're buying."

"Oh yes, I'm sure that will make a big difference," Leo said drolly.

"Milk is very soothing, actually." Harry sniffed. "We give it to my little sister all the time to help her sleep."

"Are you planning to snore your competitor to defeat?" Leo asked, amused.

"I might drool on him," she said thoughtfully. "I don't want to reveal too much of my strategy beforehand, though."

"Mother forbid," Leo said.

"Speaking of mothers, where's yours?" Harry asked. "Is she working the Healers' tent?"

"That's right," Leo said, nodding. "She's left the clinic in very capable hands today—you're familiar with them, I think."

"Hermione?" she guessed, trying not to wince. She'd seen the girl a couple of times around the clinic, though she hadn't exactly gone out of her way to visit. She seemed to be enjoying her volunteer work immensely. At least she was working at the clinic and not at the tournament today. She could just imagine how that particular conversation would go.

"Mhmm," Leo hummed. "Interesting girl, that Hermione. You've got a good friend in her; she adores you, judging by the frequency with which she references you in casual conversation."

"I know," she said. After deciding that sounded arrogant, she added, "I mean, we are very good friends."

"You don't visit her often," Leo said, an idle tone to his voice that didn't fool her for a moment.

"I'll see her all day, every day at school," she said, shrugging a bit. "We're both quite busy this summer, in any case."

"She doesn't seem to know what you're so busy with, though," Leo pointed out.

Harry had to give him that. The other girl knew neither that she was training for the freedueling tournament nor that she was working on experimental potions research in correspondence with Professor Snape. "We'll catch up at school," she said again. Leo let it go, knowing without her having to say or do anything obvious that she didn't really want to talk about it anymore.

Outside one of the concession stands, a girl with vibrant curls tied up on top of her head caught up to them with a large smile. She curtseyed, and it was surprisingly graceful despite the basket she carried. "Good morning, Highness. Morning, Harry."

"Margo," Leo said, nodding his head gravely. "I see you are up with the sun as usual. Very industrious. How are your flowers today?"

"Unsurpassable," Margo said, stifling a giggle in an effort to look solemn. "I shall have this basket emptied by lunch."

"See that you do," Leo intoned. After a moment in which he and the little girl gazed sternly at one another, they both relaxed into grins. "Are you excited for the show? Will you cheer for me?"

"Of course!" Margo said, bouncing a little on her heels. "And for you, Harry," she added, smiling impishly. "Would you like another flower for good luck?"

Harry smiled. "Why not? Which one is lucky?"

Leo leant forward and picked out a short-stemmed red flower while dropping a coin in Margo's pocket. "This one," he said, presenting it to her with a flourish. She immediately recognized it as a common ingredient in Headache Relief Potions.

"That's a chrysanthemum," Margo said, giggling as Harry took it carefully. "Some people think it's unlucky, but actually it's a really strong kind of flower. Know why?"

She shook her head, shooting Leo an amused look. Trust him to pick the only unlucky flower in the bunch. "Why?"

"The chrysanthemum blooms in the fall," Margo told her earnestly. "Lots of spring and summer flowers are really delicate—if a strong wind comes, they blow right off the branch! The chrysanthemum won't, though, and that's why it can grow in a season when most flowers just die."

"I didn't know that," Harry said, folding the stem flat against the back of the flower and tucking the many-petaled bloom into the fold of her hat. A quick murmured Sticking Charm saw that it wouldn't fall out while she fought.

The little girl tilted her head, causing her curls to spill over her cheek as she added, thoughtfully, "That's also why it's a symbol of love. 'Cause it hangs on even when other flowers let go."

Harry kept her smile firmly in place and very pointedly did not look in Leo's direction. At all. "You sure know a lot about flowers," she remarked calmly.

"Of course," Margo said primly. "It's my job to know. Good luck in the tourney, Highness, Harry." She skipped off toward a group of people deliberating over a selection of turkey legs.

"Precocious, isn't she?" Leo said, drawing her unwilling attention. She didn't know why she was so embarrassed—it was just a flower, and he'd probably picked it at random. Or to make fun of her. That would be just like him.

"Very," Harry agreed lightly. They'd reached the front of the line, so Leo ordered an ale—"it's watered down, stop looking at me like that, Harry,"—and Harry asked for milk. She was told politely that they didn't sell milk, much to Leo's amusement, so she settled for a cup of water.

They returned to the Duelers' Tent, which was slowly beginning to fill with people. It wasn't cramped, exactly, but with sixty-four competitors there weren't a lot of empty seats, either. She caught sight of a burly-armed man wearing the number sixteen and had to smile at his white tunic and blue bandana. He really did look a little like a pirate.

The crowd outside steadily grew louder. Leo nudged her into limbering up as the opening ceremony began. Rispah had apparently been in charge of the entertainment, and while Harry couldn't see exactly what was going on up on stage, the spectators certainly seemed to be… entertained.

Leo had the first match, and he stepped out onto the platform to riotous applause. He took it amiably, if not entirely humbly. Harry moved to stand under the bracket board with the other competitors to watch the tournament begin. If anyone was hoping to see a spectacular match right off, however, they were to be disappointed. Leo won almost embarrassingly quickly. Before he'd even broken a sweat he was descending the steps and handing the armband that let him through the platform's wards off to one of the next competitors.

He sauntered over to her with a grin that was entirely entreating. "So?" he said, crossing his arms as he came to a stop in front of her.

She pretended to think. "Your opponent had good footwork."

His face slid into a playful scowl. "Not as good as mine."

"Hmm? I didn't notice," she shrugged.

"You're the worst, Harry," Leo sighed.

She let herself smile. "Great match, Leo. Do try not to humiliate your next opponent too much."

"Don't you want me to do my best?" Leo asked, affecting a wounded expression.

"Don't you want to make money from this thing?" she shot back. "No one wants to watch a shut-out."

He smirked. "You're right. It's almost unfair that I'm even competing."

She shoved him in the direction of a water cooler. "Go cool down, Highness."

"You aren't allowed to call me that," Leo complained over his shoulder.

She turned her attention back to the arena without bothering to respond. The next match was already underway, which she supposed made sense, as they had a whopping forty-eight matches to get through before it ended today; all the winners of the first thirty-two bouts would have to compete again before the day was out. While most of the first matches were short-lived, this would still be easily the longest day of the tournament. Once the numbers had been whittled down, she was sure each match would begin with a great deal more pomp and ceremony.

Her turn came before she had time to make herself too nervous. She accepted the somewhat sweaty armband from competitor number thirteen and put it on. As she stepped through the wards, the noise of the crowd dampened considerably. That was rather considerate, she thought, wondering if it was something the organizers had requested or if Regulus simply had a lot of experience erecting arena-style wards.

She pulled her mind back to the moment as her opponent took a ready stance. She palmed her knife in a reverse hammer grip and settled her wand comfortably in her right hand. They waited for the sound that would signify the start of their match, watching one another carefully. Fearless Frank seemed to be living up to his moniker, at least. He looked not the least bit afraid, and she wasn't sure if that should make her nervous or not. Then he grinned at her, and it wasn't anything like a pirate's grin. It was friendly and open, the grin of a man who was looking forward to having fun. That was when she realized his lack of nerves stemmed from a disinclination to take the match too seriously, not from complete confidence in himself.

The gong went off and Harry moved diagonally at once, both closing the distance between them and attempting to flank him. He turned with her and shot off a Tripping Jinx that she simply sidestepped while firing a Tarantallegra back at him. He conjured a simple shield instead of dodging, so she darted even closer while he was unable to attack. Realizing his mistake, he dropped the shield and retreated, only to raise it hurriedly once more as she shot off two stunners in quick succession.

The shield rippled after the first stunner struck it but reformed before the second could slip through. She had been advancing all the while, and because he couldn't or wouldn't move while his shield was up, she was now close enough to bombard his defenses physically. Her knife came stabbing down at the shield on the left side while her foot lashed out in a roundhouse kick to strike on the right. The shield rippled from both points and, where the ripples met, destabilized completely.

Her wand was in motion even before his shield fell to her bastardized physical improvisation of a Ward Disruptor. Before he could blink the surprised look from his face she had him utterly trapped in an Incarcerous. She summoned his wand for good measure and straightened from her dueling crouch.

"Winner: Harry!" came the call over the roar of the crowd. She grinned, unable to believe it had been so easy. She released her opponent and handed him back his wand once he'd straightened.

"Good match," she offered as they walked toward the stairs.

"It were indeed," the big man said, nodding jovially. "Not sure how you knew to ripple my shield like that, but it were right clever, lad."

"Thanks," she said, grateful for his good sportsmanship.

They handed off their armbands to the next set of competitors and shook hands before going their separate ways. On her way back into the Duelers' Tent she saw a couple of other men catch up with 'Fearless Frank' and rib him good-naturedly about his loss. He didn't seem much bothered by losing to someone as young and small as she, merely smiling cheerfully and shrugging in a what-can-you-do- sort of way.

Leo pressed a cup of water into her hand when he found her. "Not bad," he said. "Not bad at all. What did you think of your first real duel?"

"It was surprisingly easy," she said, frowning a little. "He didn't seem to have any hand-to-hand experience, and his casting was pretty slow." Very slow, actually, compared to some of her friends from school. Compared to Remus, well… it wasn't even a contest.

"I told you," Leo said, shaking his head. "You're better than you think. He was just an amateur, anyway. Your next opponent will be more interesting."

"Fourteen, right?" she said, glancing at a table not far away. A pair of goblins sat with tankards in front of them, both clad chin to toe in golden armor and carrying swords. It was difficult to tell with goblins, but she thought one was male and the other female. She'd watched the female's match while waiting for her own and knew that her opponent favored a defensive style and was much quicker than she ought to be in such heavy-looking armor. Her first match had lasted all of five minutes before she'd landed a nasty gash on her competitor's wand arm and he'd forfeited ruefully.

"Greystrike and Goldflame. They're brother and sister," Leo said, eyeing the pair subtly as well. "Twins, maybe. Those swords they carry aren't just for slicing people open—they can deflect spells with them."

She nodded. She'd seen the female goblin reflect a stunner right back at her opponent and send him scrambling to dodge. It wouldn't be a simple matter of bombarding the wandless goblin with magic. She'd have to be smart about how she fought.

"Time for that later, though," Leo said, clapping his hands together decisively. "Let's grab a bite. They're only half through the first matches, so we've got time before I need to be back here."

They left the pavilion and made their way through throngs of cheerful people. Every now and then someone would catch sight of their numbered patches or recognize Leo and wish them good luck in the next round. They found a stall outside the wards selling sandwiches and ate them as they walked about the alley, Harry marveling at the sheer energy of the crowd around them and Leo looking entirely satisfied at the amount of business even the outer booths seemed to be doing.

When they returned to the pavilion, they found Merek sitting alone at their table.

"I can't believe you didn't watch my match!" he exclaimed when he caught sight of them. "You should be sizing me up! Don't take me lightly this time, Leo, I—is that for me?" He snatched the sandwich from Leo's outstretched hand with a gleeful grin. "This is why we're still friends despite your grossly arrogant disregard for the threat I represent, Highness."

Leo sighed. "I've already seen you fight a thousand times, Marek, against better opponents than that fellow I'm sure you pummeled into the dirt, too. I wasn't going to learn anything new about your style watching that match."

Marek appeared mollified. "That's why I didn't watch your first match, either."

Harry and Leo exchanged an amused look that Marek missed, being very involved in devouring the chicken sandwich in his hands. Marek certainly had watched Leo's first bout, and the both of them knew it.

After a lengthy intermission following the match between numbers 63 and 64, Leo was called for the beginning of the second round. Harry and Marek found a good enough vantage point and settled in to watch. She sincerely hoped it would last longer than the first round had.

It did.

Leo must have been a dancer in a previous life—that's all she could think. He wove around his opponent as though he'd known every move she would make ahead of time and had choreographed a routine to take full advantage of her every aborted gesture. His reaction time was so swift one could almost imagine him living three seconds in the future at all times. He carried two knives instead of the usual single knife and wand, almost as though his magic was something superfluous to his real skills. The way his movements resembled an art form, she could almost believe it was true.

There was something off about the knife in his right hand, though. It wasn't a flat blade, but a long triangular prism made of some kind of crystal and likely reinforced with runes. She'd seen him fight with it once before—when she witnessed Marek challenging him for the Kingship last year—but she still didn't know what was special about it. The shape was such that he constantly adjusted his grip on it, spinning the three edges into different positions with clever dexterity as he met his opponent's blade again and again. The man he fought had a wand but didn't seem to rely on it much. Was that why Leo wasn't using his? Did he know his opponent preferred weapons to wands? It would be just like Leo to play on another's terms simply because he could.

He slipped around the scant few spells his competitor shot off and, while his quick movements should have looked frantic, instead he made them look easy—cool, even, if she was being honest. After the bout had gone on long enough to get the energy in the stadium fevered once more, a jet of red light came from nowhere and struck the man in his chest. His legs collapsed beneath him and Leo relaxed into a casual pose as the magnified voice rang out. "Winner: King Leo!"

"The knife is hollow," Marek said, chuckling at her flummoxed expression.

She tried to get a good look at what he was talking about, but Leo had already stowed his blades. "He can keep his wand inside of it?" she clarified.

Marek nodded. "He only uses that knife when he's fighting seriously, and he only conceals his wand inside it when he's fighting very seriously. I suppose he can't take any chances on losing in this tournament. The crystal it's made from is stronger than dragon scale, I'd wager. It magnifies the magic that passes through it, as well; hideously expensive, but it's saved Leo's life more times than he'd probably admit."

She considered that for a moment and decided she was impressed. It was exceedingly clever to encase the wand so that it was not only defended against physical attacks (always a weakness for even those wands made of the strongest wood) while simultaneously making it into an offensive physical weapon in its own right. Add in the amplification factor, and it was a tool to be reckoned with—for those wizards who could use a knife in combat, at least.

Leo strode jovially over to fish for his usual allotment of compliments. Harry wasn't even stingy this time—it really had been a good bout. There were two matches in between Leo's and Harry's, and she found that was barely enough time to warm up her body once more. She took her armband key distractedly, mind racing with inane reminders that wouldn't help her at all. If her body didn't know what to do by now, no amount of telling it what to do with her brain was going to make up for it.

The sun was still high overhead when she and the female goblin took the stage. The light glared on the polished gold of her opponent's armor, making her glad she wore goggles that filtered the light efficiently. The goblin gave her a grin that was almost cruelly anticipatory before donning her helmet and drawing her weapon. The sword she carried wasn't long—the goblin's arms would be too short to support a true broadsword—but it was wider than she'd expected. Most of those entered in the tournament carried only knives or occasionally clubs as auxiliary weapons. With only those weapons to contend with, there was no need for a competitor to wield a sword of such breadth. Perhaps it was simply the only weapon the goblin had trained with.

She lowered herself into a ready stance, a little lower than she normally would, for the goblin was much smaller than her usual opponent—and Leo was not a giant by any measure. When the gong sounded, the goblin sprang forward, sword tip outstretched. She moved as if the armor she wore was nothing, cementing Harry's suspicion that she herself wouldn't be able to win the match with superior speed alone.

So much for favoring a defensive style, she thought as she leapt backwards out of range. The goblin must have been holding back in her first match. Well, so was I.

She sprang away in a series of backwards leaps as the goblin moved through a vicious-looking combination of slashing arcs. Harry let her set the pace at first, concentrating on getting a feel for the speed at which the goblin could maneuver. It was more difficult to avoid the long range of the goblin's sword than it was to dance around Leo's knife in the practice ring, but it was not impossible. She just had to keep one eye on the length of the blade. She was lucky the goblin needed two hands to wield her sword and could not use a wand in any case—facing an opponent with a blade so large and magic would have been beyond her, she suspected.

She tested the goblin's strength a couple of times, meeting her blade for blade with her left hand. As she feared, the goblin had a grip like stone and struck with the momentum of a sledgehammer. She would never be able to match her force for force, but with the right consideration of angles she found she could push the blade away from her without losing an arm. That was something, at least. Once satisfied that she could avoid the goblin's sword even without her entire focus devoted to dodging, she brought her magic into play.

She skipped sideways to avoid a biting side-sweep aimed at her right side and pushed off of her left foot where it landed to twist around behind the goblin. The goblin spun with her, twirling on intricate footwork to face her—but she'd already let loose an Impedimenta at point blank. The goblin had no time to avoid it, instead bringing up her sword instinctively to protect her. Harry grinned—she'd been counting on that. The Impedimenta would slow the goblin's sword to a non-threatening speed until it wore off. That would give her time to—what?

The spell struck the flat of the goblin's sword and dissipated with a fizzle even as the entire blade lit up with what looked like dozens of runes. Not static runes, either—they moved over the weapon's surface, as though they were swept on a rowdy breeze rather than etched in immutable metal.

Harry barely scrambled out of the path of the goblin's retaliation. The sword had certainly not slowed in the slightest. The blade doesn't just reflect offensive magic, it absorbs general effect magic, too, she thought, frowning behind her goggles as she went on the defensive once more. That's… inconvenient. She supposed she ought to have guessed that a goblin wouldn't enter a dueling competition if it didn't have some way to circumvent all aspects of a wizard's magic.

She'd just have to work around the sword, then. She watched the pattern of sweeps as she dodged, noting the time it took the goblin to switch the direction of her sword once it was in motion. Magic moved faster than metal. If she timed it right, she ought to be able to slip a spell past the goblin's ferocious guard. After several attempts, however, she was forced to admit that the goblin was better at catching her spells than she had anticipated. Every time she thought she'd found an opening, the sword moved faster and intercepted the magic. She wondered briefly if the goblin was toying with her, but decided it was more likely that she simply couldn't keep up that speed for a long period of time, and so was reserving bursts of speed for those times she could not move out of the path of a spell.

Resigned to doing something stupid, Harry moved to close with the goblin. She braced her right forearm against her left wrist and met the goblin's blade with all the strength of both arms. They locked and Harry grunted in exertion even as the goblin pressed forward, sensing an advantage, no doubt. Careful to look as though all her attention was on keeping the goblin's sword away from her chest, Harry readied a spell and twisted her wand arm at the last moment, sending the bolt of a Bombardment Hex directly into the goblin's chest plate. Doing so undermined any pressure she could have continued to bring against the goblin's sword, so she disengaged and ducked into a dive-roll to escape the blade's rapid descent. She straightened a few meters away, expecting to see the goblin blasted back to the other side of the arena. Instead, she was leaping right for her.

Harry leapt out of the sword's path again, thoroughly bewildered. There was not a single scratch on the goblin's armor, but she knew the spell had connected.

As she bent low beneath a sweep that could have divested her head from her shoulders, she heard the goblin growl with gravelly amusement. "You think I wear this armor for fun, boy?"

Of course the armor is impervious to magic, too, Harry thought, annoyed at herself for not having considered that possibility.

She put on a burst of speed to get more space between them, then tried a spell she'd been reluctant to use in a friendly match. "Confringo." She put a fair bit of magic behind it, confident that, if it did connect, the runes would muffle its effects. With luck, just enough explosive power would get through to knock the goblin to the ground. A disadvantage of armor was how difficult it was to fall gently while inside it.

The goblin caught the spell easily, and while her sword shook slightly as it absorbed the magic, it didn't reverberate enough to loosen the goblin's grip. Harry and the goblin both paused for a moment to catch their breath, the distance between them not one that could be closed in an instant. Now what? She could try an even more powerful spell, but she didn't really want to hurt the goblin. This wasn't a fight to the death, and escalating the power involved would only look like an admission that she couldn't win on skill alone.

She decided to try a little ranged action. With the distance between them, she finally had enough time to pull off more complicated magic. Time to get creative. She whipped her wand to the fore, moving it as fast as she dared without sacrificing the exactness necessary for the spell. Rocks were conjured into existence from the ground beneath her, hovering like a loosely constructed wall before her chest. The goblin was dashing near, but Harry was already banishing the first few toward the goblin's approaching form, bombarding her with Quaffle-sized rocks that forced her to slow and either avoid them or strike them out of her way. From the ringing of sound as stone met metal, she deduced that the armor was not spelled to repel physical attacks the same way it dissipated magical ones. That meant she still had a chance.

The goblin fought through the rocks impressively fast, closing once more in hand-to-hand—or rather, knife-to-sword—combat. Harry was starting to feel her muscles complain, but she still had a little while before they would go on strike and abandon her completely. Judging by the way the goblin kicked up some of the dust that had accumulated on the stage deliberately the next time they turned around one another, she was tiring as well. Leo said most people would start resorting to dirty tricks once they were sufficiently fatigued—it was a sign of haste and meant the fighter was hoping to end things quickly.

Unfortunately for the goblin, Harry's goggles were spelled for clear sight. No amount of dust in the world would cloud her vision. She slid under, over, and around the goblin's blade with the ease, causing the goblin to grumble something in annoyed Gobbledegook under her breath. As Harry turned her next stroke aside with her knife, the goblin kicked out unexpectedly and caught her right between the legs. She stumbled backwards with the force of it, but recovered to flawlessly twirl around the thrust that followed and go in for an attack of her own aimed at the goblin's vulnerable neck gap.

The goblin leapt backwards easily, but Harry caught the growl of frustration from beneath the golden helm. She smirked in response. It would have been a punishing move, had she had anything between her legs to debilitate. As it was, she'd probably be incredibly sore there later, but her brain hadn't shut down involuntarily as the goblin no doubt expected.

The crowd was booing, but both of them ignored it. All was fair in freedueling, after all. There was no referee to step in and politely reprimand her opponent for 'ungentlemanly conduct.'

They kept on, Harry largely on the defensive. She was hoping she'd be able to tire the goblin out. It was probably sweltering in that armor, and Harry knew that stamina was one of her strengths. If she could draw the match out long enough, she might be able to overwhelm the goblin at the end. In theory.

The goblin was obviously not planning to carry this on much longer, however. She came at Harry with an overhead slash, but even as Harry sidestepped it, the goblin let go of her sword with her left hand, wielding it one-handed for the first time. Her other hand went to her belt and drew a small knife, the sheath of which had been very effectively hidden until now. Harry attempted to bring her knife up to bat the little blade away before the sword could change direction and come back around, but the goblin twisted the tiny knife at the last minute and swept it up toward her face. Harry flinched away from it, but felt a burning trail of cold fire across her cheek—she hadn't been able to avoid it completely.

She retreated instinctively, the back of her hand coming up to her face to check the damage. Before she'd taken two steps backward, however, she felt a sliding sensation across her cheek and her vision went black. Blindly, she rolled out of the way of what she was sure would be a swift follow-up attack, fumbling to remove the obstruction from her eyes as she hastened as far from the sound of clinking armor as she could.

The strap of her goggles had been severed, and she belatedly realized the true reason for the goblin's slash at her face as she detangled the remains from her face and tossed them aside. When she looked up, the goblin was further away than she'd thought she'd be. She realized why when she saw her opponent readying the small knife in her left hand for a throw.

Several things went though her head in quick succession. The goblin had cut away her goggles because she assumed Harry needed them to see clearly—not a bad assumption, as they were the type of goggles usually used in place of glasses in a duel. She had no way of knowing that Harry's vision was corrected by the Modified Polyjuice she was always under, which meant her goggles were merely for the benefit of those who knew Harry should wear glasses. The next thing she thought was that the goblin must assume she was nearsighted. That was why she kept her distance. She was going to throw the knife and take advantage of Harry's blurry vision; if her vision was sufficiently bad, she'd be helpless to dodge the projectile. The last thing she thought before the knife was released was that this was the chance she'd been waiting for.

Harry kept her gaze unfocused, moving her head back and forth slightly as though disorientated. She stumbled forward a couple of steps, then back again, unsurely. She eventually settled into a defiant stance, her head turned to a spot several feet from where the goblin actually stood. She knew she looked utterly idiotic—the groans and gasps from the crowd, even muffled by the barrier, were enough to tell her she presented the picture of a deer about to be run down by a carriage.

It was hard to hold back a grin as she watched the goblin line up her shot almost lazily. She kept the knife in her peripheral vision even as she frowned and squinted into the empty air with a frightened expression. She brandished her wand in the goblin's general direction, whispering a Summoning Charm at a register too quiet for anyone to hear. The goblin didn't react to the wand, no doubt assuming the lack of visible magic meant Harry hadn't done anything yet. The helmet on her head probably muffled the sounds around her—if she was right, the goblin wouldn't notice the effects of her spell until it was too late.

The goblin released the knife, and it soared in a beautifully straight line toward her torso. If Harry didn't move at all, the knife would strike her in the left shoulder. It made her think better of the goblin, that she wasn't aiming to kill her supposedly blind opponent. That didn't mean she was going to let the goblin win, however.

It went against her every instinct to stand perfectly still as the knife flew toward her. She was trained to take out threats as soon as she could, to give herself time to react to whatever came next, but in this instance she waited until the very last moment before dropping her own knife to the dirt and plucking the goblin's little blade out of the air a hairsbreadth from her chest. It was the work of an instant to fling the knife back at the goblin, pushing a Banishing Charm in its wake without pause.

The crowd gasped and cheered dramatically, but Harry couldn't spare a moment to be gratified by their surprise. She scooped her knife up and ran full tilt toward the goblin. Her opponent had her hand up to catch the knife, but when the Banishing Charm caught up to the projectile it rocketed forward with a sudden burst of speed. Shocked, the goblin ducked backwards hastily to avoid the terrifyingly fast-moving weapon. Harry was there in its wake, however. She came in fast, sweeping her knife out before her like a viper. The goblin retreated to recover her balance, but thanks to Harry's earlier Summoning Charm, she backed into the path of several large rocks. With a grunt of surprise, the goblin stumbled wildly, unable to find stable ground. In that moment, Harry tackled her, using her superior height and the leverage of her sure footing to topple the goblin to the dirt.

The goblin attempted to bring her sword to bear, but Harry, by virtue of being literally above the goblin, now had the advantage of position and momentum she needed to knock the blade back. She knelt on the goblin's arms and came to a stop with her blade and wand crossed in clear threat at the goblin's exposed neck. The goblin froze for a long moment, then growled angrily as the announcer's voice cried out, "Winner: Harry!"

They both relaxed, Harry just managing to move off the goblin before collapsing tiredly on the ground. She was completely out of breath and every inch of her ached. She thanked the gods this was her last match for the day—there was just no way she'd be able to muster the energy for anything beyond scarfing down some food after this. Groaning at the effort, she forced herself to stand up and stow her weapons properly. The goblin was sitting up, struggling to remove her helmet with arms that were obviously weak from exertion.

When she had it off, she stood with a clanking sigh and glared up at Harry. "You tricked me, girlie," she spat. "Twice."

Harry grinned a bit apologetically. "To be fair, you assumed I was a boy on your own."

"You entered under a male pseudonym," the goblin scowled, sheathing her sword and starting toward the stairs.

"It's a nickname," she told her, catching up and holding out a hand. "Short for Harriett."

The goblin considered her, then slapped a mailed hand against hers briefly. "Goldflame."

"That's a lovely name," Harry offered.

"It's an exceedingly common name, for a goblin," her defeated opponent drawled.

"Harry is pretty common for humans, too," Harry said with a smile.

The goblin scoffed. "There's nothing common about you, girlie. You're as tricky as a sphinx."

"Thanks?" she rubbed her dirt-encrusted neck awkwardly.

They descended from the stage and passed off their armbands to the next competitors. Goldflame's brother—Greystrike, she remembered Leo saying—clapped his sister on the armored shoulder with a clang. "Good bout, Goldflame."

"Nothing good about losing," Goldflame snorted. She stalked off toward one of the water dispensaries with a last, annoyed glare at Harry.

The other goblin paused before going after her. He looked at Harry appraisingly, then said, "Don't mind my den-sister. She hates to lose. Still, it is better to lose to cunning than to be outclassed in skill."

Harry didn't think she'd been particularly cunning so much as she had simply taken advantage of the assumptions of her opponent, but she nodded in any case. "It was a difficult win. I'm glad to have fought your sister."

"Good luck in your next match," the goblin said gruffly, heading off to join his sister.

"You as well," she called after him, waving tiredly.

"Making new friends?" Leo had come up behind her some time while she was talking to the goblin siblings.

"Hey," she said. The greeting was almost a sigh, she was so exhausted. "How was that?"

"Terrifying," Leo said, ducking down to haul her right arm over his shoulders. He began walking slowly toward the Duelers' Tent, hauling most of her weight. "You never told me you can see just fine without your glasses. I thought she was going to impale you, and my promise about you not getting stabbed would be dust in the wind."

Harry smiled apologetically. "Didn't mean to worry you." She stopped walking suddenly, causing Leo to stumble as he took her full weight without warning. "My goggles… "

"Here," Leo said, pressing the remains of her eyewear into her hands. "Aled collected it from the arena when he cleared it for the next match. Don't know why you bother, though—you obviously don't need them." Aled must be who the third ward key was given to, she thought idly as she turned the goggles over in her hands. They were dirty and a bit scuffed, but the lenses looked okay. She would repair the strap when she had more energy.

She tucked them away into her pocket and let Leo escort her the rest of the way, mumbling, "They're spelled to magnify long distances. Plus, they make people underestimate me."

"Not after today," Leo chuckled. "Your next opponent is going to be very wary, I daresay."

"They should be," she muttered halfheartedly. "I'm ferocious."

"As ferocious as a kitten at the moment," Leo said, shaking his head as he deposited her at a table under the pavilion. "I'll get you a water."

She lifted her head to thank him, but he was already gone. She blinked tiredly around her and caught sight of Rispah sitting across from her. "You're not a competitor," she said blankly.

Rispah laughed. "I'm the entertainment," she said, looking very out of place lounging in her tightly laced corset amidst a group of tired, dirty freeduelers. "Anyway, there are plenty of seats, now. How does it feel—making top 16?"

She grinned at that. She had, hadn't she? "Feels… unexpected," she said after a moment of poking her brain until it came up with an adjective.

"Unexpected?" Leo was back, with a full cup of water that she half-drank, half-spilled over herself. "Give yourself a little credit, Harry—or rather, give me a little credit. I trained you, after all."

"You gave her the knife skills," Rispah said with a languid smirk. "The cleverness is all our Harry, though—devilishly tricky, she is." Harry made a noise of protest at the female pronoun, but Rispah waved her off with a pitying look. "Little late for that now, Harry, dear. The whole stadium saw you haven't got the bollocks to back that up."

Harry had to laugh at that. She supposed her little deception was well out of the bag, now. Ah, well. It had been useful while it lasted. Hopefully the others wouldn't treat her any differently knowing she was female. She thought Marek might be a bit miffed at the way she and Leo had yanked him around over her gender, though. She'd have to make it up to him, somehow.

She stayed until the other matches had ended, by which time she felt recovered enough to make the trip home. She knew she garnered a few looks as she trudged back through Diagon Alley to the Floo; she was filthy, too tired to bother hiding her slumped posture, and she probably reeked to high heaven. The only saving grace was that it wasn't quite five o'clock yet, which meant she would have time to shower the filth from herself before her parents got home.

She stumbled into the Floo room and barely caught herself before she tipped headfirst into the mantelpiece. The house was quiet, so she didn't think to be quiet herself as she dragged her way toward the stairs.

"Harry?"

She bit back a curse and swayed to a stop. What were the odds that today Remus decided to watch Addy at their house? Sometimes Sirius watched her, so… one in three? She shook the vague calculations from her head distractedly and turned to see Remus observing her from the kitchen doorway.

"Hi Remus," she said, cocking her head casually. "Where's Addy?"

His eyes swept her from head to boot. "Still napping—she had trouble getting to sleep today after Sirius slipped her a sugar wand at lunch. What happened to you?"

She shrugged. "What do you mean? It was just really dusty in Diagon today, so—"

"You look like you've been in a brawl." Remus' voice was flat.

"Oh, that," she said, smiling sheepishly. "Well, I was practicing my dueling with a friend—I'm getting really good, Remus!"

"I know, I see you in action every weekend," Remus said, alluding to their training sessions while looking unimpressed with her explanation. "That looks like a knife cut," he said, gesturing to her face.

She winced, bringing up a hand to finger the dried blood awkwardly. She'd forgot that was there. "Oh."

"An explanation, please," Remus said, deceptively mild. "And don't bother lying."

"I don't know what to say," she said. She was really too tired to think up a convincing explanation.

"Allow me, then," Remus said softly. "You spend most of every day out of the house, ostensibly running errands in Diagon or spending time with your friend Leo. Most days you don't come home with any packages or shopping bags. This isn't the first time you've shown up sweaty, dirty, and tired. Judging by the annoyed expression on your face when I mentioned it, your face is cut up because you simply forgot it was there and so neglected to heal it before coming home, not because you've never been injured before. Just what are you up to, Harry?"

"Just practicing with Leo," she said. "Honest. He's been helping me with my dueling, too."

"Does his help involve you spending the entire lesson in the dirt?" Remus asked.

"He has a… unique style of dueling," she said, a bit helplessly.

"Not—" Remus broke off, searching her face and eyeing the cut on her cheek in particular. "Freedueling?" The last was a bare whisper. His expression said he was both shocked and concerned. "Harry, that's… well, it's illegal, for starters."

"Technically only tournaments are illegal," she said weakly.

"It's also very dangerous," Remus said, his voice a little stronger as his visage grew sterner. "If you don't know what you're doing, you could get really hurt. You shouldn't be messing around with that sort of thing."

"I'm not," she promised. "Leo is really good. He'd never let me get hurt." Remus gazed pointedly at the blood on her face. She flushed. "That was someone else. It was a practice bout against a… friend. I won," she added, grinning with pride.

Remus sighed. "Your parents are not going to like this."

"We don't have to tell them," Harry said quickly. "They don't know about our dueling lessons, right?"

"Of course they do," Remus said slowly.

"Oh," she said. "They… never mentioned it."

"Neither did you, apparently." Remus sighed. He rubbed his temple somewhat forlornly. "Harry, you really ought to communicate better with your parents. Do they have any idea you're putting yourself in harm's way so cavalierly?"

"I told you it isn't like that," Harry said, frowning. "I'm just learning a new skill from my friend. Leo is an expert at this stuff. I'm learning a lot, okay?"

"But why?" Remus pressed. "What's the point if you can never use it in practice? As you said, freedueling in any formal sense is illegal."

Harry looked away. "I'm not learning it for its formal virtues, Uncle Remus. I'm learning for self-defense. Same as my training with you."

"Why this concentration on self-defense?" Remus asked. "I know I asked you before, when we started, but you answered a little vaguely."

"It's just… common sense, isn't it?" she said. She had no real reason to give Remus, at least no reason Harry could give him. Rigel on the other hand… he had plenty of reasons to want to be able to defend himself.

Remus looked as though he wanted to press her, but in the end decided on a different angle. "Where are these lessons taking place, exactly? Are you at his house every day?" She could tell he was thinking ruefully that James would throw a fit if that were the case.

"Not exactly," she said. "I really do go to Diagon every day. There's a place there where we practice."

"In Diagon Alley?" Remus looked incredibly skeptical.

"Nearby," Harry confirmed vaguely.

Remus stared at her for a long moment. "Harry, I'm not trying to get you in trouble. You know that, right? This isn't about busting you for anything. I just want to know you're safe. You come home looking like you've lost a bar fight and I… well, what am I to think?"

She grimaced. She wasn't trying to be unreasonable, she just didn't know how to explain what she'd been doing without revealing everything about her activities in the lower alleys. Her uncle looked like he knew she was holding back quite a bit and was debating forcing her hand. She held up a hand to let him know she needed a moment and slumped against the wall, thinking hard. Should she tell him? She didn't think he'd be thrilled, exactly, but… it was Remus. Not Sirius, who never took anything seriously and wouldn't understand why she needed this. Not James, who was so overprotective he wouldn't even hear her explanations out before forbidding her from going back. It was Remus. Remus, who already supported her learning self-defense: Remus, who taught dueling and encouraged self-betterment in any form: Remus, who understood about the darker places a person's mind could take them to, whatever the reason: Remus, who knew all about personal demons and how to keep them at bay. Maybe… he would get it.

She looked up at him cautiously, consideringly. "Remus… if you had a choice between knowing something but having to keep it a secret from your friends or not knowing and being able to say honestly that you didn't know… which would you choose?"

"Is this your way of telling me that you'll only tell me what's going on if I keep it from your parents?" Remus asked wryly.

"Subtle, I know," Harry smiled weakly. "So? Which way do you want it?"

"What makes you think I won't ask you to tell me and then turn around and tell your parents anyway?" Remus asked, a curious glint in his eyes.

"You respect people's confidences," Harry said immediately. "It's one of your principles. When Uncle Sirius had to go see a Mind Healer after Aunt Diana passed, you covered for his absences until he was ready to talk about it with Mum and Dad."

"You knew about that, huh?" Remus didn't seem too surprised. She simply nodded and waited for him to make his decision. He grimaced lightly. "I feel like you've put me in a tight spot, here. In the end, though… I'd rather someone know what you're up to. Then if you need help, you have someone to come to without having to worry about explaining yourself first."

Harry searched his face, but he seemed certain, so she let out a long breath. "Okay. I need to shower, and then I need to eat all of the food in the kitchen. After that, we can talk."

Remus nodded his acceptance and retreated into the kitchen to wait. She hauled her aching body up the stairs and into the bathroom to clean up. As she scrubbed away the dirt, she tried to organize in her mind the things she'd tell Remus. He didn't need to know everything she'd ever done in the alleys, and she could probably be vague about the timeline in most instances. She also didn't want to reveal too much about the Court of the Rogues—for all that Leo was a huge part of her time in the alleys, he was also technically a criminal, and her father was technically the head of the Auror Department. There was no need to put Remus in an even more uncomfortable position than he already was.

Part of her debated the wisdom of getting into all of this with her uncle, but he made a good point. It would be nice to have someone she could go to, if she or someone she knew needed help. It also meant that if something happened to her while she was in the alleys, at least one person would have an idea of where to look. When Archie came back, it would be two people; that was practically a safety net.

She entered the kitchen to find that her uncle had been busy while she was upstairs. There was a veritable spread of food on the table, and it was all she could do to refrain from falling on it with an embarrassing amount of eagerness. When she'd put at least half of it into her stomach she slowed, then stopped and turned her attention to Remus, who was waiting very patiently in the chair across the table.

"So, I suppose you've guessed I'm not spending all my time actually in Diagon Alley," she began, pausing to swish a gulp of milk down her gullet before continuing. "How much do you know about the lower alleys?"

Remus frowned slightly. "No more than necessary. It's home to all sorts of less than savory characters, and James often has to send a team down that way to raid shops suspected to be operating on the black market."

"Anything else?" she prompted when he stopped to think.

"It's also the site of a good amount of low-income housing, I believe," Remus said, a bit unsurely. "I think I've heard there's a coven that claims part of the territory as their own, as well."

"Two, actually," Harry said, "but the majority of the residents are low-income humans, like you said. There's a high percentage of Squibs and orphans, compared to the general population statistics. There's the shady part of the lower alleys, off of Knockturn, which is what most people think of when they hear the term, but beyond Knockturn there's an entire community of Wizarding folk who just want to keep to themselves. They have their own shops, markets, neighborhoods, and sense of citizenship. There's a loose educational system in place for children, a clinic that sees to their healthcare needs, and a sort of… government that they all contribute to. It makes sure the streets are clean, sets up public facilities like Floo and Apparition points, and keeps the peace when it can."

"How do you know all this?" Remus asked, leaning forward across the table on his elbows. He looked torn between being fascinated and overwhelmed.

"I've sort of become a… peripheral member of this community," she said carefully. "I know a lot of the people who live there, and some of my friends help contribute to the organization that keeps the whole thing self-sufficient."

"Leo?" Remus looked skeptical again. "Isn't he the son of the Aldermaster of the Potions Guild?"

"He is," Harry said, attempting to shrug off Leo's exact role as unimportant. "His mother runs the clinic in the lower alleys, though, so they know almost everyone there. Mrs. Hurst used to work in the children's ward at St. Mungo's, which is how she got the hospital to subsidize a large part of the clinic's expenses—she even knows Sirius."

"That sounds like a respectable endeavor," Remus said. He looked a little relieved that there were parts of her explanation he could check himself.

"It is," she said, trying to give him every reason to accept her activities as not-that-dangerous. "My friend Hermione—from AIM—even volunteers there as an assistant Healer."

"Really?" Remus looked mildly surprised. "My, this new generation is certainly more altruistic than we were at your age."

"It's important to help people when you can," Harry said seriously. "That's what the lower alley community is all about. Everyone helps one another however they can. Bakers and grocers donate food, which is then redistributed to those in need. People with special skills donate their time to teaching the alley's children. Everyone looks out for one another. I know when people think about the lower alleys they think thieves and cutthroats, and I'm not saying none of that ever happens, but it's mostly outsiders who are in danger down those alleys. If you contribute to the community, the community looks out for you."

She was laying it on a bit thick, not to mention glossing over the entire sub-community of violence and crime that existed inescapably wherever poverty and desperation did, but she thought it was working—Remus at least seemed to be considering what she was saying.

"What do you contribute, then?" he asked. "Why would they look out for you, as you say, if you are an outsider?"

"Ah, right," she said, looking a bit sheepish. "I actually have a job at an apothecary there, and my employer pays a tithe on my behalf that goes toward the community. Also, like I said, I know a lot of people through Mrs. Hurst and her son. Everyone comes through the clinic eventually."

That was slightly misleading, since the reason she knew so many people was because Leo ran the Court, but he didn't need to know the exact progression of events, just the outcomes.

"You… have a job?" Remus appeared to be stuck on that point.

"I brew potions," she said, nodding cheerfully. It was nice to say it so candidly.

"James mentioned that you were going to try marketing your creations commercially," Remus said, looking a little confused. "He just brought it up recently, though."

"That's true," she said, a bit sheepishly. "I've just started letting my employer sell the Protection Potion, but in truth I've been working for him for a while. It's not that I need the money," she said quickly, interpreting Remus' expression as largely bewildered. "It's just satisfying, using my skills for something other than practice. It's how I got Master Hurst's attention, actually, and since then Horace Burke has started commissioning some of my potions, too, so it's actually been really good for building up experience and credibility in the potions community—"

"Slow down, Harry," Remus said. He looked both amused and exasperated. "Is that why you spend so much time in your lab? You're brewing as a full-time job?"

"Not full-time," Harry said thoughtfully. "I'm a pretty efficient brewer, so it doesn't take me nearly that many hours a week to fill my quota. Anyway, don't look at me like I'm wasting my youth; I like brewing. I'd be brewing potions all the time anyway, and this way I can make some gold and establish a name for myself."

"How have we not heard about this?" Remus asked. "It's not exactly usual for a thirteen-year-old to be running her own brewing company."

"It's nothing so involved," she said, chuckling a bit. "I just brew a few potions and pass them off to others. They do all the distribution work. Anyway, it's not unusual for people to start working young in the lower alleys."

"Do they know who you are?" Remus asked next. "I know they're your friends, Harry, but… your family is in the Book of Gold. And they have a lot of gold. For some, that might be temptation enough. Add to that your status as Heiress to the line and… "

She shook her head. "Most people don't. Leo, of course, and my employer. That's about it. I just go by Harry there."

His lips quirked. "At least you aren't entirely foolish."

"Don't pass judgment yet," Harry said, a mischievous grin coming to her face. "I haven't told you about the friends I made in the vampire coven yet."

Remus blanched, but recovered when he saw the joking smile on her face. "That isn't funny, Harry. You're going to give me grey hairs." After a moment's pause, he said, "You still haven't explained about the freedueling."

"Well, it is dangerous to walk around the alleys if you don't have some form of self-defense," she said reasonably. "One of the first things that happened when I joined the community was Leo teaching me hand-to-hand and then knife fighting."

"Knife—"

"We practice with blunted blades," Harry said quickly. "It's really quite safe. And educational." Her uncle gave her a look that said he was not impressed with her attempt to appeal to his occupational sensibilities. "Anyway, lots of people in the lower alleys learn freedueling, so it's nothing unusual. Actually, between Leo's lessons and yours, I'm getting pretty skilled. I won both of my matches today and—"

She broke off with an awkward cough, mentally kicking herself for getting excited. She could have skipped that part without alerting Remus to anything untoward, but no, she had to get carried away, didn't she? This was why it was better to just keep all of your secrets, because as soon as you told one the others got easier to spill somehow, the way taking a couple of stones out of a wall could cause the whole castle to come crumbling down.

"Go on," Remus said, tone deceptively light. "You were saying something about matches. I'm very curious to know what, after you attempted to convince me earlier that freedueling wasn't technically illegal as long as it wasn't practiced formally."

"Well, I may have misled you about what I was doing today," she admitted with a wince, "but this is the first time! Before this it really was just practicing."

"Harry, your father will have to arrest you if he finds out about this," Remus groaned, putting his head into his hands and rubbing his eyes.

"So it's really great that I have such an understanding uncle who supports his niece's hobbies even when they conflict with certain family members' oaths of office," she said, laughing nervously. She didn't think Remus would really say anything about the tournament to her dad, since it would mean turning her in to be charged as well, but she really hadn't meant to so carelessly reveal that card.

"Is it over now, at least?" Remus asked, lifting his head to reveal a pained expression on his face.

"Almost," Harry said brightly. "I have two matches tomorrow, but the second one is against Leo if I win the first one, so it's very unlikely I'll still be in after that."

"What's ironic is that all of James' irrational fears about Leo being a bad influence on his precious little girl are completely vindicated, but for reasons even he couldn't have imagined," Remus said. Harry thought he was taking it all rather well, if he still had time to find the dramatic irony in the situation. "What time is the first match?"

Harry verbally backpedaled as fast as she could. "Oh, it's really early. You wouldn't want to come, it's quite a hike and they don't really welcome outsiders to this kind of thing. Security is probably pretty tight, too, and you shouldn't get involved in anything illegal anyway, in case my dad does find out. It would be a shame if Addy lost both of her favorite people in one fell swoop." That was sheer exaggeration. Addy adored Remus these days, but was largely indifferent to Harry's presence—probably because she was never around.

Remus waited patiently for her to wind down, then asked again. "What time is it?"

"Mine's the second match," she admitted ruefully. "I'll have to get there when it starts at eight. Don't you have to watch Addy, though? She won't like all the noise."

"Sirius has her tomorrow," he said, narrowing his eyes at her. "You won't leave without me."

"I really don't think you'll find it interesting—"

"You won't leave without me." Remus's quiet certainty was as intimidating as if he'd shouted.

"Right," Harry said. Really, she knew better than to argue with Remus. Anyone else she could talk into or out of almost anything she wanted. Remus, however, could be very stubborn when he wanted. "I'll just meet you in the Leaky Cauldron, shall I?"

"We may as well," Remus said, looking troubled once more. "No need to prompt your parents to ask awkward questions like where are you going and what are you doing and who are you doing it with, is there? That would be entirely too normal."

"I think avoiding those questions is incredibly normal for a teenager," Harry said thoughtfully.

"And James still thinks you're the responsible one." Remus sighed.

"He's easily bored by me," Harry corrected the man. "And he equates boredom with rule-following and risk-aversion and maturity. That's why it was so easy to blame Archie for everything when we were young. Sirius and James both expect troublemakers to be boisterous and emotional, because that's how they are. They understand the kind of mischief that makes your eyes laugh and your toes tap with impatience. They don't understand the kind of trouble you can get into quietly and methodically and carefully."

Remus looked at her, and it wasn't the amused understanding she'd expected. Usually he appreciated dry observations about the relative immaturity of their most playful family members. This time, he only looked regretful. "You call him James," he said quietly.

She blinked. Had she? "Not all the time," she assured him. "Just when it's 'James and Sirius.' They're like a paired set, right?"

Her uncle didn't return her smile. "I don't think your father is bored by you," he told her seriously.

"Not me personally," she said, shaking her head. He was twisting what she'd said. "Just my interests bore him. You know he hates Potions."

"That's not… " Remus looked unsure how to explain. "It isn't as simple as simply disliking the subject. It carries a lot of negative connotations for him, from school, and it's hard for him to think about it without thinking about other things, too."

"I know," Harry said, frowning. "He hates Master Snape for something to do with Mum that no one ever bothers to really explain beyond the fact that they were friends and then suddenly everyone hated one another." She waved off Remus' uncomfortable look. "I'm not asking for the details. It's not my business. I'm just saying I get it. I don't blame Dad for his opinion on the subject. That doesn't mean I don't see it when it affects me, though. I still remember him 'accidentally' using my first stirring rod as a fire poker and twisting it beyond recognition."

"Not his finest moment," Remus admitted with a grimace.

"Look, it doesn't matter," she said. "I love my dad. He has a lot of great qualities that make him an excellent father and role model. I just… see him clearly. It's not a bad thing. I think it means more to love people for who they are—maybe even despite it—not because of some ideal you have of them in your head. I think caring about someone after you've seen the flaws is an advantage. It means you can love them without ever being taken by surprise."

"Maybe you're right," Remus said. He leaned back, and seemed to cast around for something to lighten the mood before settling on, "What are my flaws, then?"

"You're too observant," she groaned at once. "All summer I've got away with my excuses, and then you take one look at me and tear my misdirections to pieces."

"It was a great deal more than a single look," her uncle laughed. "This realization has been a long time coming. I just didn't have the final piece until today."

And she'd handed it over without a fight, of course. Every time she thought her deceptions had grown to a level that was nearly impenetrable, something like this happened to remind her that, for all her experience in weaving illusions, there were those who had at least an equal capacity for unraveling them.

"Mum and Dad should be home soon," she said, glancing at the clock on the wall. She looked at the decimated remains of food on the table regretfully. "They're going to wonder why I ate right before dinner."

"I'll tell them you didn't feel well," Remus said, reaching for the dishes. "Just go upstairs and rest—you look exhausted."

She frowned. "I don't want you to lie for me, Remus. That's not why I told you."

"I know," her uncle said, waving off her attempts to help him clear the dishes. "I'm the adult, though, and that means I get to decide which circumstances to involve myself in. Let me take care of things tonight."

It felt… odd, she decided. She felt guilty that he would go to the trouble on her behalf, but also strangely gratified. "Thanks, Remus," she said. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"See you tomorrow," he agreed.

On her way out, a thought struck her. "It might be a good idea to wear a disguise," she said thoughtfully. "In case Regulus Black shows up or something."

"What?" Remus' voice called after her with panic lacing every syllable. "What does that mean, Harry?"

"Shh," she frowned at him over her shoulder. "You'll wake Addy. It probably won't happen, but just in case, okay?"

A defeated-sounding groan was her only answer. She headed upstairs and collapsed on her comforter with a tired sigh, letting go of the cheerfully unrepentant attitude she'd been channeling. She thought she'd done a good job convincing her uncle that her activities in the alley were harmless—the thoughtless adventure of a teenaged kid, rather than a deep commitment to a world that freed her from the pressures of maintaining multiple façades at once.

Things had grown both more and less complicated in the past hour. More, because she'd involved Remus in a part of her life she was starting to see could never have remained entirely separate from her regular existence. It would have been too easy, she supposed. Things were also less complicated, though, because as the two spheres merged, the lies she told became fewer. She could count on Remus' help now, too, and that was not something to be counted lightly.

She buried her filthy clothes in the laundry hamper and set about repairing the strap on her goggles for the next morning. It was a simple bit of magic, and before long she was able to close her eyes and drift off into a well-earned sleep.

-0

[HpHpHp]

-0

Her nervousness the next morning easily rivaled the anxious excitement she'd felt the day before, but it was for entirely different reasons. She glanced sidelong at the scruffily dressed man walking beside her through Kyprioth Court. Uncle Remus had opted to don a faded black over-robe that hung open lazily to reveal plain grey trousers and a white T-shirt. He'd left his face uncovered apart from where his sandy brown hair fell across his brow, but she supposed the odds of someone recognizing him were pretty slim. It wasn't as though he was going to be up on stage; it was astronomically unlikely that someone he knew would happen to pick him out of the crowd.

His reactions were subtler than Hermione's had been—sharper, too. He seemed to take in more than just a visual impression of the landscape his eyes were soaking in. From the outside he looked unassuming enough, she supposed. With a relaxed, hands-in-his-pockets posture, he strolled leisurely, as though it were a walk he took daily rather than a trek through unfamiliar terrain. He didn't react when a pair of dusty children wove between him and Harry on their way to the tournament grounds. When one of them called, "Hiya Harry!" over his shoulder, Remus ignored that, too. Unlike Hermione, he asked no questions and appeared to require no explanations.

Upon reaching the outskirts of tents and stalls, Remus did perk up with interest slightly. His eyes moved a little faster and his mouth relaxed further into a pleasant smile. She had to break off her careful observation when she heard her name called from the shade of a nearby fruit stand. She glanced apologetically at her companion and motioned for him to wait a moment while she went to see what Mrs. Fairlay wanted.

-0

[RlRlRl]

-0

He watched curiously as Harry trotted off to converse with the middle-aged woman running one of the many stands that surrounded them. Harry laughed softly at something the woman said, looking both embarrassed and pleased as she was handed a pair of apples. His niece attempted to exchange a coin for the fruit, but the stall keeper waved her off with an admonition that it was for good luck.

Harry ducked her head in an endearing show of gratitude and jogged back to where Remus was standing. "Sorry," she said. "Mrs. Fairlay is rather insistent. Want one?" She held out an apple. He took it with a smile, holding it up in a 'cheers'-ing motion that made Harry laugh and clink her apple to his before taking a large bite.

"Quite a crowd here," he commented, taking a bite himself. It was surprisingly good for an apple that had been given away for free.

"This is nothing," Harry said, eyes alight. "Up ahead, see the flags? That's where the real fairgrounds are."

Remus peered in the direction she'd indicated and felt his eyes attempt to drift without his impetus. A ward, then. Subtle, he thought, fighting against the compulsion to ignore it as he adjusted his Sight to see the magic itself. He could feel it pushing back against his concentration and admitted to some difficulty keeping track of the patterns of magic his perception afforded him. A ward that disrupted even the attention of those actively bending their minds to paying attention to it—that was no easy feat.

A suspicion crept over him. Hadn't Harry mentioned Regulus Black in a glaringly facetious manner the previous evening? Had she been serious about his involvement in this? The quality of the wards they were approaching said yes, most probably.

"Oh—there's an entrance fee," Harry said, looking suddenly uncomfortable.

"I brought my money," he assured her, amused. His niece was not usually so scatterbrained. She was either very nervous or very focused on something else.

He paid for his wristband, noting how one of the guards waved Harry through without even glancing at her competitors' patch. Did he recognize her on sight because of the matches she'd been in the day before or because he knew her? Harry didn't seem to pay any attention to the man, eyes turned ahead and already scanning the interior of the wards with anticipation.

Remus shrugged off a shiver as the magic in the wards slid over him and whistled low as the stadium itself was revealed to him. It was nothing compared to many professional Quidditch stadiums he'd visited, but that wasn't to say it didn't make quite a statement against the backdrop of otherwise quaint streets and alleys. To say he was surprised at the sheer scale of the operation wouldn't quite do his opinion justice. He was having a hard time wrapping his head around the level of organization the intricacy and scope of the spectacle around him suggested.

He followed a pace or two behind Harry. Despite his admittedly parental reasons for accompanying her, he didn't actually want to embarrass the girl by appearing to be hovering. He knew how sensitive teenagers could be about associating with family members while around their peers. Take Archie's near-avoidance behavior the previous year while Remus taught at Hogwarts; if any kid could have been immune to such embarrassment, it ought to have been Sirius' son. Instead, he'd hardly seen his nephew in the nine months he'd been his instructor.

Harry was stopped several more times as they walked around the back side of the stands. He was amazed to realize she hadn't been exaggerating when she said she knew a lot of people around here. One older gentleman even thanked his niece profusely for some advice she'd apparently given him on a chronic cough. That was a point in favor of her spending time around the clinic as she'd said. It wasn't that Remus didn't trust Harry, exactly. It wasn't easy to take everything the girl said at face value, however, especially after learning that she had in fact been essentially misleading them for… actually, he wasn't sure on the exact timeline. Somehow she'd manage to explain things without him noticing that oversight until now.

He supposed it served the Marauders right to end up with such mischievous children. Clearly Lily's influence was mitigating at best.

"This is the duelers' pavilion," Harry said, gesturing to the large covered area behind the stage. "There are only sixteen competitors left, so we can bring friends in if we want." He nodded easily. It didn't matter much to him where they went. "You can meet Leo," the girl added, and the open, somewhat hopeful look on her face told Remus exactly why James' face turned sour whenever the young man was mentioned.

He had to say that the youth who materialized at Harry's shoulder not five minutes later was both everything and nothing like what Remus had expected. The young man had looks enough to tempt, he supposed, and the charm was hard to look past, it was true, yet… how James had so completely misclassified the threat this boy represented was utterly beyond him.

"One of Harry's infamous uncles?" Leo gave up a grin that was as much challenge as invitation. "I'm honored. Come to see our Harry compete, have you?" His stance radiated energy despite its laidback posture. He rested on his heels as if to dare the world to take its best shot. Remus had not missed the way he said 'our' Harry, either. It was a subtle but strong reminder that his niece now belonged to a world her family, for all its wealth and connections, had no place in.

Oh yes, James was right to worry. Not for the reasons he thought, however. Certainly Leo was taken with Harry—any fool could see the way his eyelids lowered slightly when he looked at her, as though her presence alone was enough to relax him—but that fact should have been eclipsed by the presence and authority the boy let off unconsciously. He moved like a fighter and held himself as a leader did. This was no ordinary young man. The fact that James had described him to Remus in terms of his ostensible designs on his daughter's time told him that the Auror had let his fatherly paranoia cloud his ability to judge a man's character.

"The honor is mine," Remus said, amiably enough. "When I heard Harry had found herself a supplementary instructor, I had to see what the fuss was about. Looks like quite a show."

There. Let the boy take that as it was meant: a warning that, no matter whom Harry chose to associate with now, her family would always be the foundation upon which her future was built. If Leo sought to sever that connection and bring Harry into his sphere irrevocably, he had severely underestimated her family's tenacity.

"The show hasn't even started yet," Leo said. His voice was entirely causal, but Remus could tell his message had been received loud and clear. "I hope you see something worth the trip, Mr. Lupin."

"Please, call me Remus," he told the boy. "After all, I feel as though we'll be seeing a lot of one another from here on out."

"I hope that's true," Leo said, holding out a hand to shake his firmly.

Harry looked as though she could tell something had passed between them but couldn't quite grasp the import of the interaction. "Your match should be starting soon, Leo," she said after a pause. "Are you ready?"

"What do you think?" Leo asked, tilting his head in a teasing manner.

Harry rolled her eyes. "Don't take it so lightly. By now, the competition should be really serious."

"Worried for me? I'm touched." It was said in a way that suggested he knew just how to get a rise out of his friend.

"Touched in the head if you think I'm going to the trouble of finding a new sparring partner when you die," Harry shot back. "It would be easier to reanimate your corpse and use it for target practice."

Leo winced, and Remus could sympathize. His niece had always been sharp in her banter—it came from growing up with Lily, James, Sirius, and, he admitted, himself—but at some point she appeared to have grown a tad macabre in the imagery she invoked.

"I'll just, ah, not die then, shall I?" Leo was attempting, and failing, to regain the conversational equilibrium, so Remus took pity on him.

"Is mortal injury likely?" he asked. "Harry came home with quite a nasty cut yesterday, so you can understand my concern."

Leo's posture straightened slightly and he looked directly into Remus' eyes when he said firmly, "Very unlikely. The most serious injury so far was a bloke whose wand arm was disabled by a sword stroke, and Harry already beat the goblin responsible for that. Everyone remaining in the tournament has enough experience to avoid hurting their opponents unduly. The prize is a pretty penny, but it's not worth anyone killing for it. Harry will be fine. If anything happens, we have a team of Healers standing by."

"That's good to know," Remus said, relieved that things did appear to be well in hand. He'd been imagining some sort of back alley knife-fighting club, to be perfectly honest, so the obviously well organized and provisioned event came as a pleasant surprise. Harry hadn't mentioned that goblins were involved, however. Just how big an event was this? "Please convey my respects to the tournament organizers."

Leo's face smoothed into a deceptively blank expression and Remus immediately wondered what he'd done to prompt such a transformation. Leo inclined his head easily enough, however, and, after flicking his eyes briefly in Harry's direction, told him, "You'll know them by the insignia on their shirts. They'll be glad to know all their work is appreciated."

A warning bell went off somewhere over the stands, and Leo bowed to the two of them briefly. "That's my cue. I must warm up. It was a pleasure, Remus. I hope we can talk more after the matches."

"Good luck, Leo!" Harry called after the older youth. She turned to Remus and smiled. "Come on, let's get a good viewing point. The opening entertainment should be starting now."

He followed her to a place beneath a large board depicting the progress of tournament brackets. There was an elevated platform that gave a good view of the raised stage. By the plurality of people with numbered patches on their clothing, he supposed it was meant for competitors who wanted to watch the matches without climbing up into the stands.

Music began to play and his eyes lit on a group of women making their way onstage. Dancers, he decided, as the handful of them took up their positions. The music leapt into a complicated melody that set the women to stepping and twirling in a set of exquisitely choreographed moves designed to ensnare the imagination of all red-blooded men in the audience—and there were quite a few, if the raucous response from the stands was any indication.

He had to admit, they were talented. One in particular seemed to draw the eye without any overt attempt on her part to stand out from the others. There was something subtle to it—just the slightest suggestion of intent in her expression that had Remus thinking she knew exactly what she was doing.

"That's Rispah," Harry said softly from beside him. He turned his head toward her but had trouble tearing his eyes away from the scene before them for a moment longer.

"What?" he asked, finally sparing his niece a glance.

"The one in red," Harry clarified, and Remus realized she was talking about the lead dancer. He wasn't sure if he ought to be embarrassed that his niece had noticed him watching that woman in particular or not. As Harry went on, Remus supposed he could as easily assume she had pointed the woman out for her own reasons. "She's Leo's older cousin. Don't let her pretty face fool you. In addition to being an incredibly talented player, she heads the organizational responsibilities for all the women of the lower alleys."

"Hmm." He acknowledged Harry's words but came up with nothing to say in response. His eyes stayed on the woman in red—Rispah—however. If nothing else, she really was one hell of a dancer.

The entertainment didn't last as long as the crowd might have wished, but their disappointment was fickle. As Leo and his competitor took the stage, tension built back up to a fever pitch. Leo seemed to be the crowd favorite, and it was easy to see why. He was young and eager, all relaxed confidence to his older opponent's rigid stoicism.

As soon as the match began, it was clear who held the advantage. To the casual observer, it might seem that Leo was letting his opponent control the pacing, merely responding passively to whatever moves his larger counterpart made. Remus could see the truth, though. Leo's every response determined the next move his opponent would have to make. The young man drew the match out admirably, no doubt aware that everyone here had paid for a good show, but that's all it was—a show. He could see after the first few minutes why Harry's friend carried himself with so much self-possession. He was incredibly skilled for his age. It was no wonder Harry had sought him out as an instructor.

"Your friend certainly does seem to know what he's doing," Remus commented as Leo's opponent began to flag.

"He's the favorite to win the whole thing," Harry said. There was pride in her voice, and Remus could tell she admired Leo Hurst greatly. Whether that admiration would ever evolve into anything else was unclear. He doubted Harry had any interest in such things as yet. She was more than old enough, of course, but it was more a personality barrier than a physiological one in her case, he thought. He quickly turned his thoughts back toward the match with a grimace. There were some things he just didn't need to be contemplating, and his niece's love life was one of them.

He knew James would try to skin him if he ever found out that Remus had essentially sanctioned what Harry was up to, but Remus found he couldn't begrudge her this little slice of freedom. Who was he to say whom she ought to befriend, really? If she didn't want to spend her time in high society, well, she'd probably be better off for the things she experienced in this world. Many young ladies of her station would never consider involving themselves in a sphere that hadn't been tailor made for them. To be unsatisfied with the station life handed you—to carve out your own place in the world—was no bad thing, in his mind.

When Leo finally finished toying with his opponent and ended it, Harry jumped lightly down from the platform to meet her friend as he descended the stairs. Watching her, it occurred to Remus that Harry moved a bit like a fighter, too. When exactly had that happened? He found himself looking forward to seeing just what his niece was capable of.

-0

[HpHpHp]

-0

Things were going well, she thought. Remus and Leo seemed to be, if not getting along like old friends, at least amiably interacting. Not that she'd expected otherwise—everyone liked Uncle Remus. He simply never gave anyone a reason not to.

Leo won his match almost ridiculously easily. She wondered briefly if the bracket had been stacked in his favor, then swiftly dismissed the idea—he was just that good, rather. She tried to psych herself up by telling herself that, as his pupil, she must have picked up some of Leo's skill. It was hard to take that sort of argument seriously, though, especially once she'd laid eyes on her opponent.

He was huge. Not Hogwarts gamekeeper huge, of course, but certainly bigger than the average man at six-foot-four. His shoulders spanned an impressive breadth and the only thing keeping him from being completely intimidating was the sort of nervous energy he exhibited, bouncing in place on the balls of his feet and shifting and fidgeting in a show of incurable restlessness. When he caught her sizing him up, he grinned, lifting his chin in a friendly challenge. She merely raised an eyebrow and waved a bit halfheartedly.

"Is that your opponent?" Remus asked. There was an odd note in his voice that made her look up at him questioningly.

"Yes," she said. "I haven't been watching his matches, so I'm not sure what to expect. He has at least two knives on him that I can see, and the fact that he's got this far means he has some skill, at least. He's big, so maybe I can out-pace him."

Her uncle shook his head slowly. "I don't think you should assume he's slow, in this case."

She eyed him sharply. "You know something."

"I suspect he may be… like me," Remus admitted, eyeing the man carefully. "I can't tell for certain without getting closer, but my intuition is growling at him, if that makes sense."

"All right," she said, grimacing. "I'll assume he's both fast and annoyingly resilient, then." A quick calculation told her it was nowhere near a full moon. His human body would be at full strength, then. She supposed it would be a bit beyond the pale for her to procure a silver knife before the match and be done with it. There had to be some way for her to take advantage of this information, though. His senses would be acute, but there were ways of turning that into a weakness. She settled her goggles over her eyes with a grim smile. If she'd known beforehand that she would be fighting a werewolf, she would have brought a few of the Marauders' stink pellets and a flashbang or two. As it was, she'd have to work with what her wits could provide her.

Leo handed over the armband and gave her shoulder a quick pat for luck. Remus smiled encouragingly. She summoned her determination and smiled back. She ascended the stairs first, followed closely by her opponent. According to the brackets, his name was Ralph. Well, it actually said 'Rabid Ralph,' but she thought it was safe to assume he'd got creative with the first part.

They faced off under a thousand eyes, both breathing slowly and deeply to center themselves for the fight to come. "Don't think I'll go easy on you, little miss," her opponent said, dark eyes amused. "I caught your fight with that goblin yesterday—you'll have a harder time tricking me."

"That's good," she said, a smile playing on her lips as she dipped into a crouch. "I like a challenge."

He chuckled appreciatively and took up his stance as well, unsheathing a knife from his belt and drawing his wand with his left hand. She gritted her teeth. Of course he would be left-handed. This was going to throw off all of her knife stances. The only southpaw she'd practiced against was Old Solom, and he never took their bouts too seriously.

The gong rang out and she was leaping back from a horizontal slash before she'd taken her next breath. She dodged two follow-up strikes with quick, efficient movements. It was lucky Remus had warned her, or she would have been taken completely off-guard at the man's speed and agility. It shouldn't be possible for such a large man to maneuver his body so rapidly, but the proof was in front of her, pushing her to retreat. It was a matter of moments to decide that she did not want this to be a close-range fight.

He pursued her tenaciously, likely knowing the advantage was to him if he could keep close enough to press her physically. Annoyed, Harry tossed a low-powered Reducto at the ground between them, stopping him in his tracks as wood exploded and the floor fell out from under his feet. She darted backwards as far as she could while he circumvented the large hole in the stage. From a safe distance, she fired an Impedimenta and a Sticking Charm in quick succession. Her best bet was to slow him down first and then see about taking him out.

She expected him to shield against the first spell—it was why she'd cast the second, almost invisible spell in its wake, with just enough time between them to tempt him into releasing his shield after the first one connected. Instead, he ran right into it. A moment later, she saw why—it hadn't affected him at all, unless she counted the annoyed shudder he gave as he continued running toward her. The sticking charm gave him momentary pause, but he wrenched free of it ridiculously fast, shaking it off like a dog snapping a frayed leash.

Cursing, she twisted away from his lunge and used the turning motion to send herself into the tube of Apparition with a grunt of discomfort. She really hated resorting to the shudder-inducing new skill, but the discomfort was worth not getting disemboweled, she told herself firmly. She reappeared on the other side of the large stage and barely stopped to blink before firing off an Incarcerous across the field at her opponent. His eyes narrowed in on her position, and then he had Disapparated with a crack, avoiding the spell easily and reappearing to her left. She propelled a shield charm into existence between them and skipped away. The werewolf barreled right into the physical shield charm and apparently just shouldered his way through it, as though it were a very heavy door rather than the solid wall it was supposed to be. Clearly the basic shields were not going to cut it here.

She Disapparated again, appearing on the other side of the stage and reading her next spell in transit. When her opponent appeared before her a moment later, her wand had already begun to emit an extremely over-powered Lumos Charm. Something like a miniature sun burst into existence between them and the werewolf hissed in pain as he shut his eyes and stumbled backwards. Her goggles absorbed most of the light automatically, so Harry didn't pause a whit in darting forward and zeroing in on her target. She slammed the inside of the man's right wrist with the butt of her knife as hard as she could. It would have broken the wrist of a normal man, but the werewolf merely lost control of his grip momentarily. It was all she needed. She had summoned his knife before he could even blink the tears from his sensitive eyes to see where she was, and even though he lashed out with his empty fist in blind retaliation, he only clipped her shoulder as she leapt backwards out of reach.

She Disapparated to a safe distance and tossed the knife down the hole she'd created earlier in the stage. Hopefully if he didn't know what she'd done with it, he wouldn't be able to summon it back to himself—most people needed to know the general location of the thing they were summoning, at least for a Summoning Charm to work over any significant distance.

Her opponent was rubbing his sleeve against his streaming eyes in frustration on the other side of the arena. Part of her wanted to attack him from behind while he couldn't defend himself, but that felt a little cheap. It was bad enough she'd come dangerously close to blinding him with that spell. Still, that didn't mean she would waste the time she had now to prepare.

Quick as a snake, she crouched and etched with her wand the smallest possible runic circle she could into one of the floorboards. It was incredibly simple, consisting of runes requiring no more than a stroke or two each, and she had connected the cardinal points and imbued it with a sliver of magic before her opponent had fully recovered. She scuffed her boot in the built-up dust on the stage beside her runic configuration, hiding it from casual sight. Then she made careful note of its location and promptly charged the werewolf as he turned to glare at her from across the stage.

It was less than terrifying, as he was squinty-eyed and had tear tracks on both cheeks, so she smiled innocently in response before dropping abruptly into a leg sweep meant to send him stumbling backwards. Instead, he kicked his own foot sideways and stopped her leg in its tracks, jarring her hip muscles something awful. She rolled, relinquishing her position before he decided to step on her, and came up with an arching slash of her knife to keep him at a distance.

She thought he would be at a disadvantage in the fight without his knife. She was mistaken. He caught her left forearm as though it was a twig, squeezing hard enough to let her know he could have broken it if he'd wanted to before shoving her backwards with the force of an avalanche. She hit the ground hard and rolled away with a groan. Message received, she thought wryly. She was certain the next time she tried to cut him he would break her arm.

Back on the defensive, she brandished her wand sharply and erected the strongest shield she felt comfortable using in a friendly match—it was no Depasco, but she wasn't willing to use a barrier that would dissolve the man's arm if he wasn't familiar enough with it to keep his distance. The Fortis shield was no pushover, though—it was the one she imbued in her Protection Potion, which meant that while many wizards would have difficulty maintaining the high-level shield for longer than a few moments, she was incredibly practiced in casting it efficiently.

Ralph came to a stop on the other side of the shield, either recognizing it or being sensitive enough to magic that he could feel the power radiating from the visible barrier. "Bet you can't hammer your way through this one," she called out, a sly grin on her face.

He smiled back slowly. "Why do I feel that you would like me to try?" He shook his head, tilting it slightly to consider the shield with intense concentration. He tossed a couple of offensive spells lazily at the ward between them, tensing after the first time in case it was a reflection shield that tossed his spell back at him. The shield simply absorbed the spell, however, without even a ripple of interest. "Powerful," the werewolf acknowledged. He lashed out with a spinning kick without warning, but it simply bounced off the shield gently. He frowned, but slowly relaxed. "You cannot keep that up for long. It will tire you immensely. The longer you stay in there, the easier you will be to beat when you release it."

She pretended to think about that. Normally, he would be right. Anyone with average levels of magic would already be shaking with the effort of maintaining the shield against three powerful attacks. She was not most people, however, and she had a feeling that Ralph didn't know what the biggest advantage of this particular shield was. She lunged toward him without warning, as though she were going to break through the shield herself from the inside. Instead of her coming up against the barrier, however, the shield moved with her, crashing into the unsuspecting man with a crunch. He was knocked backwards into the dirt, cursing and growling and he rolled out of the way of her oncoming dash.

It was difficult to maneuver the shield around her, but unlike her Protection Potion, which tied the shield to the potion it was imbued within and therefore created an immovable barrier once the potion was poured, this Fortis shield was centered on her wand. As long as it moved, the ward would move. She couldn't move as quickly with it as she could without it, of course—it was a bit like dragging a large balloon around behind her; there was a noticeable lag, and a lot of forward force was lost in resistance, but that didn't matter when the shield itself was what amounted to an unstoppable force. It would run over anything in its way, simply because its magical properties absorbed all attempts to push back against it.

Ralph discovered this quickly the first time he attempted to stand his ground against her shield's assault. He crossed his arms in front of him and braced his feet, but it didn't matter. The shield's implacability combined with Harry running as fast as she could toward him meant that his strength was nullified, outclassed completely as he was thrown backwards once more.

She admitted to having more fun than she should, herding him about the arena from the safety of her little bubble. She wondered how absurd it looked from the audience's perspective. There was a purpose behind this, however, beyond driving her opponent mad as he retreated over and over before her crushing onslaught. She had the stage mapped very carefully in her mind, and by the time the werewolf was glaring at her as if he regretted not breaking her arm after all, he'd already been maneuvered to precisely where she needed him.

She pretended to sway slightly, as though she was running out of steam. In fact she felt as though she could do this all day, but that wouldn't get her any closer to winning. Ralph readied himself, poised to strike to moment her shield fell. She shook her head in dramatic denial, affecting a desperately determined expression and taking a single step forward. The werewolf took one step back, caution warring with impatience. She stumbled forward another step and he mirrored her again—stepped backwards directly onto the runic circle that had been lying in wait.

The trap configuration activated on contact, sparking beneath his foot and popping with a loud bang that let off a burst of smoke and fire. It was nothing dangerous—she had underpowered the fire-starting configuration, and instead of a bonfire springing to life around him it looked more as if he'd stepped on a firecracker. The loud noise it produced coupled with the sudden heat was more than enough to take him completely off guard, however.

He yelped and stamped his feet frantically, likely wondering why on earth the floor beneath him had just experienced spontaneous combustion. In that moment of distraction, Harry dropped her shield and sent an Incarcerous straight toward his chest. She put as much magic as she could without the structure of the spell falling apart. His instincts had him looking up in time to see the spell coming, but there was no time at all to avoid it. Ropes sprang up around him from all angles and converged, shrinking to force his arms into his side and his legs together.

He toppled backwards even as Harry sprang forwards with her wand outstretched. This was the moment. If she could just get the tip of her wand to his throat, the duel would be—

The werewolf shifted his weight as he fell, rolling somehow despite the ropes that should be constricting even the smallest movements. Before she could get close enough to end it, he seemed to shrink all of a sudden, pulling in his arms in a sharp movement that she recognized as the trick Leo had taught her for getting out of that exact situation. He'd managed to puff up his form enough to fool the ropes before they caught him, then.

She aborted her lunge and backpedaled quickly, barely getting out of range before he shrugged an arm out of the ropes and swiped his fist at her face. She felt the rush of air as her nose avoided a nasty break by a hairsbreadth. She steadied her footing, hoping to recover before he could counterattack, but the werewolf was fast. He had palmed a knife—the one she'd seen tucked into his sleeve back when she first assessed him, the second knife she'd been waiting for him to use since she relieved him of his first—and sliced through the ropes as if they were old and frayed already instead of new and magically reinforced.

The incredibly annoyed look on his face as he regained his feet—now singed around the edges—did not bode well for her. She Disapparated.

He followed. She Apparated three more times in a row before she was too dizzy and disoriented to continue. She caught him with a stunner as he appeared in front of her, but he shrugged it off and kept coming. She evaded a series of merciless slashes courtesy of his back-up blade and focused all her energy on keeping away from his strikes and planning her next move. She was running out of tricks to try, and as he barreled through a Tarantallegra she thought it was looking increasingly as though he would be able to shrug off whatever she threw at him. The only spells he even bothered wasting energy to dodge were area-effect spells that his superior physical resilience wouldn't protect him from.

Her eyes widened as something occurred to her. The reason he could afford to take spells directly was because he recognized which ones wouldn't hamper him unduly and chose not to avoid them. To hit him with something that could actually take him down, she had to make him think it was something else.

She risked another string of Apparitions while she ran through her repertoire of spells as fast as she could. She needed a spell that could get around a werewolf's spell-immunity and then a spell that wouldn't, but which looked the same.

Her muscles were burning with fatigue and sweat dripped from what felt like everywhere on her body, but she managed to keep the pace up long enough to settle on two spells that ought to work. She shot a Trip Jinx at the werewolf's feet to make him hop backwards, giving her enough distance for her next play.

She had never tried something like this before, but there wasn't time to wonder if it could work. She opened her mouth and cried, "Flipendo!" The Knockback Jinx was not the spell she summoned her magic to cast, however. She separated her attention into two parts; one half of her focused on enunciating the Knockback Jinx oh-so-clearly. The other was weaving a Vertigo Jinx and releasing it with enough power to make even a werewolf lose his lunch. Both spells would emit a blue light when cast, and while the Vertigo Jinx typically travelled through the air with a distinctly twisting trajectory, it would take an extremely experienced dueler to pick out the physical discrepancy when his ears had already told him which spell his opponent had cast.

Ralph was a skilled and fierce combatant, but he relied heavily on his knives and fists in a duel. His wand work was supplementary at best, limited to a couple of high-powered offensive spells for emergencies. He took the spell coming for him entirely at face value and didn't give it another thought beyond bracing his muscles for the impact—until it struck his shoulder and, instead of pushing against his body, launched an assault on his mind.

He stumbled sideways with a slack expression on his face and lurched drunkenly in a clumsy attempt to catch himself before he fell. It probably felt as though the world had tilted sideways beneath him, however, as he barely managed to land on his knees without collapsing in the dust. His face betrayed the nauseating sensations the spell was inflicting on his perception.

Harry allowed herself a grin as she cautiously approached. A werewolf might be blessed with near-immunity to physical spells, but the curse had the opposite effect on their minds. Unless a werewolf worked tirelessly to bulk up his mental resilience through lengthy meditation sessions and the dedicated study of Occlumency and the other Mental Arts, he would always be more susceptible than the average wizard to magic that affected the mind.

Most people wouldn't know that, of course, but Harry had made a dedicated study of lycanthropy both through her investigation of the Wolfsbane Potion and through simply living with Remus her whole life. Ralph had made an unlucky draw for an opponent.

She caught up to the man quickly, despite the attempts he was making to stumble away from her. Having been under the Vertigo Jinx before, she knew it had the effect of making one's limbs seem to be in all the wrong places. It was difficult to coordinate any sort of movement, and harder still to summon the mental acuity to cancel the spell on your own. A quick Expelliarmus divested him of his wand and knife, and Harry closed in with her wand outstretched to level it between his eyes. Crossed and unfocused as they were, he seemed to recognize the situation he was in, for he froze.

For an instant, she thought she'd won. Before the match could be called, however, her opponent jerked his left hand up between them, palm flexed, as though to ward her off with his bare hand alone. She frowned and opened her mouth to demand his capitulation when a hissing noise erupted from the werewolf's sleeve and a cloud of noxious gas came spitting into her unsuspecting face.

She'd inhaled before she had even registered what happened. Coughing and gasping on the burning cloud, she stumbled backwards as quickly as she could and attempted to wheeze up as much of whatever she'd inhaled as possible. She narrowed her eyes at the werewolf, who was coughing a bit himself, though nowhere near as violently as she was. He was still fighting off the Vertigo Jinx, so she turned her wand on herself and cast a quick diagnostic charm on her lungs.

Definitely poison, she grimaced. It wasn't highly toxic, however. She monitored her vitals while her opponent struggled to his feet. It looked like the Vertigo Jinx was wearing off. Her diagnostics were telling her what she could have guessed. Her heart rate was fluctuating and her respiratory system was being forcibly suppressed. Her potassium levels were also elevated. The low-level of toxicity combined with the sluggish dizziness that accompanied a depressed central nervous system pointed to one thing: sleeping gas.

It was clever, she had to give him that. As a werewolf, he had a much greater ability to physically overcome the gas, so what would be a double-edged sword in anyone else's arsenal was a guaranteed advantage for him. She wasn't out of tricks just yet, however.

She directed her magic carefully to her lungs. Sleeping gas wasn't difficult for the body to metabolize naturally, as long as the dosage wasn't too high. Since she wasn't under a constant inundation of the gas, there was little risk of her actually falling unconscious. It would slow her down immensely, however, and all but eliminate her ability to keep fighting if she didn't speed up the process significantly.

The process at a chemical level was relatively simple. She only had to convert the sleeping gas into carbon dioxide and exhale it—it was the same thing her lungs would do on their own, given enough time. Granted, some of the poison had already been absorbed into her system, but metabolizing the rest of it would certainly help. Her magic got to work, and she divided her attention between it and her opponent, who had regained his equilibrium at last, it seemed.

He was walking slowly toward her, wheezing slightly. She could tell his breathing was already beginning to level out, however. She wondered at the speed of his recovery, even allowing for werewolf physiology, until he smiled a bit ruefully and said, "Sorry, kid. That wasn't meant for you, but you've pressed me harder than I expected." He took a deep breath and let it slowly out, coming to a stop above her. "Don't worry if you're feeling sleepy—it's not deadly. Just a little knockout gas. I've inoculated myself against this particular mixture, as you may have noticed. I remember how it feels, though. Really drains you, doesn't it?"

She favored him with an annoyed look. Who inoculated themselves against poison just so they could use it freely against others? "What are you, a professional assassin?" she grunted between coughs.

He looked surprised. "It's very impressive that you can still talk."

"I can do… more than talk," she huffed. Summoning her strength, she stood shakily, forcing her body into a ready position. She would be slower, that was inevitable, and she couldn't use her wand on him as long as she needed it to flush the toxins from her lungs, but she'd already disarmed him entirely, so they were even in that regard.

He regarded her uncertainly. "It would be best to forfeit at this point. The toxin is in your bloodstream by now; soon all aspects of your nervous system will be compromised."

Well, at least he was well informed about the poison he carried around. He was less well informed about her, however, if he really thought she would just forfeit. She brought her knife up in her left hand, the familiar reverse hammer grip making the blade a clear threat as she brought it across her body in the guard position. "You'll have to finish this the old fashioned way, I'm afraid," she told him.

"So be it."

He lunged. She twirled past one fist and turned aside the second with the flat of her blade. His foot kicked toward her knee but she slid her leg inside of his and knocked it off course with her hip. Her other leg came up toward his groin—a feint, not that he knew that—and forced him into leaping back.

He seemed bewildered that she was still on her feet at all, a frown marring his normally open features as they traded blows. Well, more like he took her hits with barely a wince while she avoided letting any of his blows connect at all costs. She wasn't able to defend herself well enough with one hand tied up healing herself, so it wasn't surprising that she took a series of glancing hits to her torso. Her legs were begging her to just sit down and give up, but it wasn't in her nature to stop just because it was becoming increasingly clear she fought a losing battle. If she could just hold out a few more minutes, until her lungs were clear, the outlook would be less bleak; with her wand back in play, she would have the advantage again.

She swept her knife toward his side, hoping to make him overbalance when he turned to block. Instead, he caught her arm in one hand and twisted her wrist until she dropped the knife with a grunt of pain. She abandoned healing her lungs in favor of getting her wand between them, but she wasn't fast enough. He used the arm he held as leverage and jerked her forward. His head came toward her, almost like he was going to buss her brow, but it was moving too fast and the angle was all wrong. A starburst of pain erupted in her forehead and the world cut out like the signal had gone—

-0

[HpHpHp]

-0

She found herself lying on a golden sea, the sun warm on her skin and bright against her eyes as she blinked them open slowly. The sea moved beneath her lazily and she turned her head slightly to take in its roiling movements. It wasn't a sea, she realized dimly. It was sand. She pushed against it, struggling to sit. She was lying on the crest of a large sand dune. What on earth… ?

She struggled to her feet and squinted against the bright landscape, looking for some sign as to what exactly was going on. There in the distance was a shape, triangular, she thought, though it was hard to be sure with the mirage-like haze that blurred its edges to her sight. What… oh. She sighed. It was a pyramid. She was just in her mindscape. Thinking back to what she could remember, that must have been a hell of a head butt. She rubbed her forehead ruefully. No doubt that was going to hurt like the dickens when she woke up.

"Have you come to see my progress?"

She turned to see the Jewel-construct standing on the dune behind her, hands in its pockets and a tilt to its head that was eerily familiar. It was getting better at mimicking people, she noted. "I actually got knocked unconscious and ended up here by accident. Sorry," she added as the construct's face morphed into a petulant scowl.

"Go on, then," the boy construct said, scuffing his foot in the sand with an annoyed huff. "If you stay unconscious too long they'll send in the Mind Healers, and then you'll have quite a bit of explaining to do, I'd imagine."

"You mean it isn't normal to have voices in my head?" she asked, affecting an innocent tone that was belied by the ironic twist to her mouth. "Anyway," she said, dropping the tone as easily as she'd donned it, "I'll come check out the new additions, soon. Scout's honor."

"You are not a 'scout,'" the construct said, voice unimpressed.

"I promise, then," she said, waving him off distractedly. She focused carefully on willing her avatar toward the conscious realm.

"Why did someone knock you into oblivion, anyway?" it asked, unable to stifle its curiosity.

She spared it a glance as her consciousness began to drift back to reality. "I lost a fight."

Her vision faded to mist, and then she could hear her name being called over and over. "Harry." "Harry." It sounded like different people, she thought absently, still fighting her way back to the physical realm. "Harry, come on, you can't sleep all day. You'll miss my match." That was Leo. Trust him to twist her injury into some kind of passive aggressive attempt on her part to annoy him.

"Shudup, Leo," she slurred. The pain hit her sharply as she came back to herself and opened her eyes. "Ow," she commented. "Why is it always the face?"

Hands helped her sit up and she blinked blearily at Remus and Leo, then past them to where Rispah and Marek were hovering anxiously. She was in the Healers' tent, she reckoned, taking in the pallet she was lying on and the wrinkling her nose at the smell of especially harsh cleaning charms.

"All right, there, Harry?" Remus asked, giving her a look that was only mildly laced with concern. She supposed the Healers must have already told him she would be all right.

"Headache," she complained on a sigh. "Otherwise, I'm fine." She patted her pockets for her wand, though; it wouldn't hurt to run a quick diagnostic just to be sure.

"Here," Leo passed her the wand, along with her knife and her goggles, which she realized belatedly were not in fact on her face. Mrs. Hurst must have taken them off.

Speaking of, the woman ambled over from the back of the tent to bless Harry with a disapproving expression. "My child," she said, exasperation in every syllable. "When you inhale poison, the recommended course of action is to seek immediate medical treatment. Not continue a pointless fight of attrition until a blow to the head does what the toxic gas couldn't quite manage on its own."

Harry smiled sheepishly. "I did immediately give myself medical treatment, though," she said. "That has to count for something, right? I almost had all the gas out of my body when he caught me on the noggin. If I'd had just a few more minutes… ah, well. I'd only have lost to Leo in the next round anyway, I suppose."

"I'll wipe the floor with that man," Leo promised cheerfully.

"Please don't seek revenge on my behalf," she said seriously. "It was a good match. I don't begrudge him the win."

"You were quite spectacular, Harry," Remus said, pride in his gaze as he ran a hand over her hair gently. "Your strategies were ingenious, if a little unorthodox at times."

"You didn't like the bubble of doom?" Harry chuckled. "Tell me truly, did it look as funny as it felt?"

"More," Rispah piped up with a laugh. "It's a shame you lost in the end, as I've no doubt you converted a good number of spectators to your side with that particular maneuver."

"Oh, good," Harry said, sighing in facetious satisfaction. "I live to entertain."

"As long as you live," Leo said, frowning slightly. "You were pretty reckless a time or two, lass."

Harry shook her head slowly, so as not to upset her headache any more than necessary. "He wouldn't have really hurt me."

"Don't be naïve, Harry," Marek said.

"Really," she said earnestly. "He was competing on the same level I was—we were trying to win, but neither of us wanted to seriously injure the other."

"Is that why you underpowered the rune set?" Remus asked curiously. "I thought I recognized the array for a good sized fire, but all it did was spark a bit."

"Didn't want to burn down the stadium," she said, chuckling a bit. "Bad enough I blew a hole in the floorboards. Did they fix that?"

"We're currently in intermission until they get it patched up," Leo said. He didn't look upset with her, though. That was good.

"In that case, I need food," she decided, levering herself up off the pallet. "I'm cleared to go, right, Mrs. Hurst?"

The Healer warned her not to strain herself and to come back if she noticed any symptoms of a concussion, but in the end let her leave the tent. Rispah and Marek, assured of her continued health, left to attend to the festivities and prepare for their upcoming match, respectively.

Ralph-the-incredibly-hard-headed-werewolf was waiting outside the tent, anxiety all over his face. It morphed into a sort of awkward relief when he saw her emerge and he stepped over to look her up and down carefully, as though making sure he hadn't accidentally broken her.

"Good match," she said, offering a hand.

He took it gently, peering down at her with something like grateful confusion on his face. "It was. I admit I underestimated you."

"I get that a lot," she assured him. She couldn't be too upset about her loss when she was so exhausted and sore. She had no idea how the winning competitors were expected to fight another match that afternoon, and she could honestly say she was kind of glad she didn't have to try. "I'm Harry," she said as she released the large man's hand. "It's nice to officially meet you."

"Ralph," he said, smiling almost shyly. "I, uh, wanted to ask you—are you a werewolf?" It came out bluntly and a bit hurried, as though he were embarrassed to ask but still eager to know the answer.

She shook her head slowly. "What makes you think that?"

He shrugged, visibly disappointed. "You're pretty fast, for your age. And you threw off that poison like it was nothing—even I had a lot of trouble getting my body used to it. I just thought… well, never mind. Thanks anyway, Harry."

She eyed him for a moment, then sent Remus a sidelong look. He returned it with a resigned expression that she knew was as good as permission, so she said, "Remus is, though."

"Is what?" Ralph blinked, following her pointed finger to where her uncle was standing.

"Is a werewolf," she said, a slight smile in her voice. The big man's eyes lit up with something like disbelieving hope.

"Ah—really? That's great! I mean, it's not great, obviously," he faltered, shifting nervously as he babbled. "I'm new. I mean, as a werewolf. I was turned a year ago and I haven't met any others yet, or at least I don't think I have, but it's kind of hard to tell because my senses are a little confused still—"

"That will settle about two years after the initial bite," Remus said quietly, drawing the man a little way away to give them a semblance of privacy. "Eventually, you'll be able to tell other werewolves by their scent alone, and if you have good instincts, by sight alone… "

"So," Leo said, drawing her attention to his curious face. "Your uncle, huh?"

She flushed slightly. "It would have been impossible to mislead him after he saw the knife cut on my cheek. He's not going to tell my parents… I think."

Leo nodded slowly. "I think it's good. You should have someone in your immediate family who knows what you're up to. I keep things from my da for his own good, but my ma knows all about my life here. It's important to have people you can depend on when you need them."

"Remus said something similar," she murmured, watching her uncle speak soothingly to the werewolf beside him as though he were giving a lecture to a very large child.

"First Hermione, now Remus." Leo laughed at her somewhat sullen expression. "I feel like I'm meeting a whole new side of you this summer, Harry."

"From here it just feels like the world is collapsing around my ears," Harry sighed despondently. "I used to think I was so good at keeping secrets."

"You keep the ones that count," Leo said, a shrewd look in his eyes. "I don't doubt if you ever had something really worth concealing that it would never see the light of day. This," he gestured to the spectacle around them, "is not in itself a secret worth trying too hard to keep. Its existence, and your place in it, are well established in casual knowledge. You don't need me to tell you this, though. The fact that you told your uncle about all this without revealing my position here tells me you understand well enough the difference between secrets and knowledge that other people simply don't happen to have yet. I will tell you not to worry so much, though. It'll give you grey hair."

"I'll just wear this hat so you can't see it," she said, shrugging.

"Please don't," Leo said, looking pained. "I didn't want to say anything, but… that hat is horrible, Harry. That shade of brown doesn't go with your skin tone at all. Plus it's, you know, droopy on one side. It looks even more ridiculous with the flower."

"You're the one who picked out the flower," she reminded him.

"I didn't know you were going to pair it with that headpiece," he groaned. "Promise me you'll take it off after the tournament is over."

She hesitated. "You just want to be able to ruffle my hair when you tease me," she accused.

Leo shrugged. "My motivations have no bearing on the ugliness that is the limp brown sack currently nesting above your eyebrows."

Her eyebrows rose. "I see you feel very strongly about this, Leo."

"I do."

"I'll take it under consideration," she assured him dryly.

"I'll buy you a new hat," Leo said fervently. "A dashing cap in black or maybe white that you can wear anytime you're trying to look less like yourself."

"You spoil me, truly." She rolled her eyes.

Remus finished his conversation with Ralph, who waved again to Harry as he wandered off, and came back to them. "So. Apparition, Harry?"

She winced. Right. "Sorry?" she tried. His blank expression prompted her to try again. "I only use it for dueling?"

He sighed quietly. "Acceptable, I suppose. It did serve you in good stead today. Just please don't get arrested for Apparating without a license," he begged her.

She smiled in a way she was sure came off reassuring, no matter what her uncle's expression said to the contrary. "I promise not to get caught Apparating without a license."

Remus grumbled something about karmic retribution for teenaged hijinks, but didn't press further on the subject of illegal skills. She supposed he knew that the penalties for participating in a freedueling tournament were harsher than Apparating without a license, in any case, so harping on about that transgression in particular was rather missing the mark.

They went to find food, and afterwards she and Remus left Leo to prepare for his next bout while they found a seat in the stands to watch the rest of the matches. Harry grabbed a red flag (to support Leo), while Remus bought a blue one and they had a lot of fun staging a wild cheering competition over the participants they didn't know.

Marek won his match fairly handily. He was fast and ruthless as a fighter, always seeming to know exactly where his opponent's weak spots were. Harry had been dumped on her butt more times than she cared to admit while sparring with Marek.

Leo's match with Ralph was frankly a bit brutal. For all that the werewolf was enormous, he was clearly fatigued from their earlier fight, and Leo seemed to be having a little too much fun cutting him down to size. She had to shake her head ruefully as her friend executed a perfect running flip over the werewolf and knocked the legs out from under him on the landing. The knife was poised over Ralph's throat from behind before he quite knew what had hit him. It seemed to Harry that Leo took a little longer than necessary to help his opponent to his feet, but she knew Leo was much more competitive than she was. It made sense that he would lose himself a little in the heat of the exchange.

She and Remus left as the sun began to set, bidding goodbye to a good number of people who hailed her on their way out—some of them Harry wasn't even sure she knew, but she had expected to obtain some level of notoriety if she made it far enough in the tournament. It was why she bothered with her disguise, after all. She returned every greeting regardless on her way back through the alleys. More friends could only help her, at this point.

As they neared the Leaky, she asked Remus what he thought of it all, after seeing it first hand. He thought about it for a long moment before saying, somewhat cautiously, "I think you're growing into a very interesting young woman, Harry."

She smiled softly. "Well, what did you expect? With such interesting influences, it was sort of preordained, don't you think?"

"I can't deny James deserves you, if that's what you're saying," Remus said dryly.

She paused for a moment, then grinned slyly. "Does this mean you guys are going to start teaching Archie and me how to become Animagi soon?"

Remus spluttered. "Not likely!"

She brought out a pout Rispah had taught her personally. "But Remus, weren't Dad and Sirius our age when they started learning?"

"They were incredibly irresponsible," Remus said, frowning. "If I'd known then what they were up to, I'd never have allowed it."

"I see," she said, feigning understanding. "So it's James and Sirius we need to ask."

"That's not—" her uncle broke off as he caught the amusement in her gaze. "Must you attempt to give me a heart attack, Harry? Have we not had enough surprises today?"

"I suppose I can wait a while before springing the next one on you," she said, a reasonableness to her tone that she knew would make Remus incredibly suspicious. "It's not as though you need to know about… hmm, yes, it would be better to wait."

"Stop it." His eye twitched helplessly. "You're a cruel kid, Harry."

"There, there." She patted his arm. "Would you like me to help you through the Floo?"

He grimaced. "And now the old man jokes. Remind me why you're my favorite, again?"

"Because I keep you on your toes?" she guessed.

"No," he said flatly. "I really don't think that was it."

She laughed and sent him through the Floo ahead of her. Whatever he pretended, she thought Remus had had a lot of fun in the lower alleys. The gleam in his eye as he watched the matches spoke of a man fully engaged in an activity near to his heart. Maybe she should get him tickets to an exhibition match on the formal dueling circuit for his next birthday. He certainly deserved a reward for being so understanding and supportive; he didn't even freak out when she managed to get herself knocked unconscious—heck, he'd befriended the man who'd done it afterwards.

As she whizzed through the Floo, she considered the day a success, despite the fact that she'd been bumped out of the tournament. The next two days of matches would be even more intense than what she'd witnessed for far, she knew, and that level of fighting was just not something she was comfortable with yet.

She whistled as she made her way through the house to her room to shower before dinner. The pressure of participating in the tournament had finally melted away, and now she could enjoy the rest of the summer in a more leisurely fashion. She would have more time for her potions research, which was coming along very nicely, if she did say so herself. She even had time to work out what to get Archie for his coming-home-birthday-present before the end of July.

She smiled as she wrung the dirt from her hair and watched the water around the drain turn a greyish brown. She just loved having free time.

-0

[HpHpHp]

-0

The matches on the third day were marathons. Both were exhausting to watch in their own way—she couldn't imagine what the participants themselves must be feeling. The crowd around her seemed to enjoy the protracted violence, but Harry found she personally couldn't keep her blood up for so long. It was fun at first, but after a while she just wanted it to end. Perhaps she wasn't a very good spectator, she decided as she congratulated Leo on his fifth win. She certainly hadn't got sick of it when she was the one fighting.

Marek lost his match, which meant the two Rogue favorites wouldn't be facing off in the finals as they'd hoped. The boisterous knife fighter left the stadium immediately after his loss, so she didn't have the chance to tell him that she'd thought he fought well, though privately she though he wasn't as focused as he ought to be. His opponent, a masked outsider who called himself 'Scar,' had simply taken advantage of his inattention.

The fourth and final day of the tournament started with a bang. As the festival was on its last legs, nothing was spared in making it a show to remember. The entertainment went on for what seemed like hours before the final match, and in the Duelers' Tent the bout was preceded by a round of raucous pre-gaming for the fighters and their friends. Leo and a number of the regular members of the Rogue drank and caroused in high spirits. Harry stepped into the jovial atmosphere with amused disbelief, immediately zeroing in on the merry king and eyeing his cup with open disapproval.

"What?" Leo asked, poking her in the forehead as she made to sit down. "What's with this frown? Aren't you looking forward to the match?"

"I'd like to see a decent fight, not just you keeling over drunk," she hissed. "How long have you been drinking?"

Leo laughed. "Harry, this is why you're my favorite. I suppose if it was up to you there'd be nothing but warm milk and bickies in this tent, eh?"

She narrowed her eyes at her ridiculous friend. Milk and bickies indeed. "Your opponent doesn't appear to be partaking. Do you think that's because he has a lick of sense?"

They both glanced over to the corner of the pavilion, where the man with a cloth mask that covered his entire face sat alone, a cup of tea on the table in front of him the only sign that he was even staying hydrated, much less celebrating prematurely like certain people.

"I bet if he had any friends he would be," Leo said. His tone was perfectly reasonable but his eyes held too much mirth to be taken seriously.

She sighed and let her head drop to the table with a thump. "If you lose your crown because of this overconfidence I shall not be responsible for the state into which your kingdom plunges," she muttered.

Leo patted her head. "There, there. Don't fret for your king, dear maiden. You see, this is all… " he leaned in close, "a ruse." She opened one eye and waited for him to continue. "It's important that the king appear relaxed and confident before the big joust, yes? He must be seen nonchalantly making merry with his entourage. It's good for morale. Plus, it intimidates his enemies."

"So… you're not really drinking?" she clarified, sitting up. She felt a bit sheepish knowing it was all for show. She had to admit it was an effective ploy, however, if she'd bought it so readily.

"Oh, I am," Leo said, his grin wickedly teasing. At her affronted look he laughed again. "Kidding, Harry, honestly. Take a whiff."

She leaned in and sniffed. "That's rum."

"It does smell like that, doesn't it?" Leo hummed happily. "This stuff has no alcohol in it, though. It's all flavoring. Every time I dramatically call for more spirits, one of the kitchen lads from the Phoenix refills it from a special pitcher just for me." He took a large gulp and sighed ostentatiously in satisfaction. "Getting to drink piss-flavored toilet water while all your friends get steadily more drunk around you and then going on stage to get beaten up for half an hour in front of hundreds of people. It's great to be the king."

"Yes, yes, we all feel very sorry for you," she said absently, her eyes looking around the pavilion carefully. "Where's Marek? He fought this Scar fellow yesterday—he should be here giving you the inside scoop, shouldn't he?"

"Haven't seen him yet," Leo said, losing his fake blissful expression to be serious for a moment. "I'm afraid he might be taking yesterday's loss pretty hard."

She frowned. Marek was generally vocal in his disappointment, but he wasn't one to sulk. She stood. "I'm going to look for him." Leo gazed imploringly at her, but she only rolled her eyes. "I'll be back before your match."

She left the pavilion and began a methodical search of the grounds within the wards. Whatever Marek's mood, there was no way he'd miss the finale. He had to be around somewhere. She asked any mutual acquaintances she came across if they'd seen the man, but although a couple thought they'd seen him in passing, no one could say where he was now.

Eventually she found Aled overseeing the stage inspection—attempts at sabotage were apparently not uncommon—and asked if he'd seen Marek.

"Swift?" Aled nodded distractedly. "Said he was headed over to Knockturn. Had to follow up on a lead for… something. I don't think he mentioned exactly. He should be back soon, don't worry. The final fight is in ten minutes, and he wouldn't miss Leo's bout for anything."

She nodded, vaguely troubled. What business would Marek have all the way over in Knockturn Alley on a day like today? It must have been urgent to make him cut his timing so close. She made her way back to the competitor's tent, and felt more than a little exasperated when she saw the very man she'd been looking for at Leo's table, head bent close to his king in intense conversation.

She wanted to say something pithy about his irreverent timing, but the words died in her throat when she got a look at Marek's face. It was wan and tense, his bloodshot eyes underlined by dark circles that hinted at what sort of night he'd had. She couldn't believe he'd really taken the loss so badly. It was only a tournament, after all.

"—telling you, Leo, this is serious. He's not who he says he is. I've tracked his appearance as far as the Cesspool, but the trail vanishes after that. It's like he came out of nowhere." Marek was speaking with deadly earnest, but Leo didn't seem to be listening very closely.

"The Cesspool?" Leo wrinkled his nose. "Hate that place. Why'd you go there? Why would anyone go there? Should've burnt the whole district to the ground years ago."

Harry had vaguely heard reference to a series of dingy streets called collectively the Cesspool that branched off of Knockturn's many side alleys. It was by far the poorest and most violent of the areas considered part of the lower alleys. She had never had occasion to go there, only venturing as far as the tangential alley the Lamia Hotel called home.

"Leo, listen, you can't trust this man," Marek said urgently, reaching out a hand to forcibly catch Leo's wandering attention by snapping in his fingers before his face. "He won't fight fair. He's got some sort of… of power. He doesn't say any spells out loud, but he can make you see things that aren't there. Shadows, and twisting lights that blind and confuse and…Leo, be careful, are you listening?"

Leo blinked slowly at his friend. "Why are you being so serious, Marek? It's a party. Have a drink."

"Damn it, Leo!" Marek slapped his hand on the table and upset Leo's drink, which spilled all over the floor.

"Look what you did," Leo sighed morosely.

"I think you've had enough to drink," Harry cut in, gently placing her hand under Leo's elbow and prying him out of the seat. He was really laying on the drunken king routine a little too thick. "Marek, help me get him to the stage; his match starts in a few minutes—look, Scar's already left."

Marek shot a look to the corner where Leo's opponent had so recently sat. He looked both frustrated and terribly worried. He helped her haul Leo out of the pavilion. "What is wrong with him?"

"I believe he's lulling his opponent into a false sense of security," she said wryly.

Marek frowned at his friend, who was stumbling and weaving between the two of them. "Leo, is that true?"

"Is what what?" Leo looked confused for a moment, then smiled. "You worry so much, Marek. It'll make you—make you—something."

Harry frowned as well, now. "Leo, that's enough. You need to start warming up."

"Mmm, warm me up, Harry," he slurred, throwing his arms around her shoulders abruptly.

She spluttered. "That's not funny, Leo. Come on, you've made your point. Everyone thinks you're relaxed and confident. Now you have to get serious."

"I am serious," Leo said, his face very close to hers. "I'm very serious about—about you."

She blinked at him, wide eyed. "Marek, I think there's something actually wrong with him."

"No shit!" Marek growled, taking Leo by the shoulders and shaking him. When that only served to make his head flop back and forth he proceeded to slap his king several times. "Snap out of it, Leo. What has he been drinking?" he demanded of Harry.

"Nothing but fake rum," she said, seriously troubled. The five-minute warning had already been given and the spectators were settling into the stands. "Wait here."

She raced back to the pavilion and searched the floor until she came to the cup Leo had been drinking out of. She brought it to her nose and sniffed. It wrinkled reflexively at the smell of stale rum, but… there was something else there, too. It hadn't been there before, she was sure of it. She dipped a pinky in the residue and brought it to her tongue—it was reckless and stupid, but she had no faster way of determining what Leo had been dosed with.

She grimaced as she recognized the taste of the foreign additive. Ephedra. Probably a very potent extract, if she was going by the extent to which Leo had been affected. She pocketed the cup as evidence and rushed next door to the Healers' tent. "Mrs. Hurst," she called urgently. "Mrs. Hurst, do you have a Sobering Potion?"

"Do we?" Mrs. Hurst huffed wryly. "With the amount of ale being sold at this event, of course we have—"

"Accio!" Harry snapped, catching the bottle deftly as it flew into her hand. "No time to explain now, thanks!"

She ran as fast as she could back to the stairs, where Marek was propping Leo up awkwardly. His masked opponent was ascending the stairs nonchalantly, so Harry slowed down and pasted a cheerful, utterly undistressed look in her face and made a show of wishing Leo luck until Scar was out of earshot. She uncorked the Sobering Potion and shoved it in Leo's mouth, pinching his nose closed until he swallowed unhappily.

"What's that for—ouch!" He clutched his head and gasped, blinking his eyes rapidly and wincing as they watered slightly. "What the bloody hell, Harry?"

"You've been drugged," she said quickly, snatching the competitor's armband as Aled came over with it and dragging it up Leo's bicep to disguise the real reason she was leaning close. "Someone put Ephedra extract in your drink after I left. It mimics a relaxed, drunk-like state, and the dose was unfortunately too high to completely cure with the Sobering Potion. You're going to feel a little off-balance until your system processes it completely, and unfortunately I do not have time to metabolize it for you with magic. You have to compete now, do you understand?"

"I—yes," he said, hissing out the word slightly. She knew he had a hell of a headache now but that couldn't be helped. It was better than sending him out to fight utterly trashed. "Who?"

"It doesn't matter now," she said, "Concentrate on the match. Marek, tell him now what you were trying to tell him earlier—quickly, before he's disqualified."

Marek nodded, looking grim. "Leo, Scar doesn't play on the level, got it? He uses illusions to trick your eyes into misjudging the position of his hands and feet. Don't look him in the eye—he can get in your head—and don't be fooled by anything that doesn't look real. He'll try to distract you with visions of things. Sometimes other people, sometimes creatures or just shadows. Keep telling yourself nothing is real unless you feel it. Keep him close—you'll only know where he really is if you keep hitting him."

Leo still looked pained and slightly confused, but his eyes were focusing hard. He set his mouth in a determined expression and nodded once to Marek. "Thank you."

"Leo, you must go," Aled said, gesturing to the stage.

Leo took a steadying breath and ascended the stairs. He was slightly unsteady, but Harry knew the effects of the ephedra would lesson as the match went on—the exercise would help burn it off faster.

She and Marek hurried to the viewing platform, both scowling openly with anger and concern as they watched the competitors face off in the center of the arena. The announcer dove into a dramatic introduction of the two competitors, throwing around flowery and amusing epithets for each fighter to hype the crowd further.

"Who would do something like this?" Harry asked in a low voice.

"Scar," Marek said shortly. "It's an alias, and not for some random outsider. He's from around here—I know it. He knows the alleys too well to be a stranger. He comes out of nowhere, somehow hears about the tournament despite supposedly being an outsider, wins a spot—nearly killing the organizer he fought to qualify, mind you—and then moves into the shadiest part of the alleys, changing locations every two weeks, always in places in or around the Cesspool, never giving any information beyond the name Scar. It's suspicious as hell, and he's too good a fighter for no one to have heard of him before. He's disguising himself so we don't recognize him."

Harry let out a shaky breath. "How did he get that into Leo's drink, though? I saw him; he was sitting in plain sight on the other side of the pavilion. There's no way he wouldn't have been noticed approaching Leo in front of all those members of the Rogue. Leo said his cup was filled separate from the others in the tent, anyway—by a boy from the Phoenix's kitchen staff, no less."

"The inn has taken on a lot of new people this week, to keep up with the increased traffic around the alleys and to help run the Phoenix's concession stall," Marek said darkly. "Any one of them could have been a plant."

"We'll figure it out after the match," she said.

"Yes," Marek agreed, a lethal promise in his voice. "We will."

They fell silent then, because the introductions were finally finished. The signal rang out and the match began, and there was nothing left to do but watch and wait. And pray.

It was clear from the start that this match would be different from all the others. Scar set the tone with a stabbing lunge that brought his knife plunging toward Leo's right eye. Even though Leo parried it, the crowd still booed and grumbled at the play. Going for the eyes in a spectacle match was a level beyond even kicking toward the groin. Scar was aiming to maim, at the least, and that meant Leo was in serious trouble.

Her friend radiated concentration, but Harry could tell it was the hyper-focused tension of someone compensating desperately and not the calm, collected determination it should be. He was impossibly fast, as usual, but he was rigid in places he ought to be loose, and it was obvious he was forcing what normally came naturally.

"He's all over the place," Marek muttered unhappily.

She looked closer, and realized he was right. Leo's strikes and counterstrikes were quick and strong but lacked precision. Every so often his limbs reacted in a way that didn't make any sense at all, and she could tell by the annoyed way he shook his head sharply when it happened that they were either moves he had not meant to make or he was reacting to something that wasn't entirely real, as Marek had warned him might happen.

Leo stumbled, but managed to recover lighting fast and turn the clumsy movement into a surprise weave and bob that landed him a solid slash to his opponent's wand arm. Scar's grip held firm, but she noticed the number of times Leo reacted incorrectly to Scar's movements decreased sharply. The little tiny wand twitches the masked man had been exhibiting must take a great deal of muscle control, then.

"At least he's unpredictable," she said weakly. Even mentally compromised, Leo was a formidable foe. It was hard to be confident in his ability to win, however, given his opponent's unconscionable ferocity. Every strike seemed to be aimed at disabling or killing Leo, and Harry's hands shook as she witnessed a dedicated attack for the first time. This was not a tournament match any longer. Scar was fighting to kill, and that changed everything.

It wasn't the flashy, impressive match the crowd had been expecting. It was ugly and brutal as the weapons clashed over and over. Scar was using his wand solely for something only Leo could perceive, and Leo seemed to have decided to disregard his own wand completely. He wielded the crystal knife like any other blade, not bothering to position it in a way that enabled casting, just slicing and blocking and stabbing as though that was the only thing left in the world he could understand.

The crowd was discontent at first as the audience realized the competitors weren't showing off like they ought to. The disgruntlement settled into something like disturbed fascination after a while, however. The whole stadium grew quiet and solemn as the two men on the stage hacked away at one another in the most primal and ancient of contests—survival.

Harry was terrified for Leo, not only because his opponent was so obviously trying to kill him, but also because the King of Thieves was visibly struggling to maintain his alertness. He seemed to be running on reflex and muscle memory, only occasionally showing signs of the brilliant and devious tactical mind she knew he possessed.

The two fought so closely that it was difficult for even those nearest to the wards to see exactly what was going on. At one point it looked as though Leo had deflected a stab at his stomach only to suddenly drop back a step, face contorted in pain as his other hand made an aborted movement to defend the area. He had lunged back toward Scar a moment later, though, his face a blank study in focus as he followed Marek's advice and kept his opponent as close as physically possible.

It didn't seem possible for a purely physical fight to last so long. Even in free dueling, there was normally time for each dueler to recover physically by switching over to a long-range magic-driven contest periodically. The spectacle in front of her was pure madness, though. Both men drove their bodies beyond advisable limits, muscles straining at every pass, postures communicating a stone-like detachment from the pain and punishment they were inflicting upon themselves and one another.

Finally, the tide turned. Scar brought his knife in a quick sweep toward Leo's right side. Instead of deflecting it, Leo turned his back toward the blow and absorbed it with a growl, using his two free knives in a deadly crossed formation to trap and decapitate Scar's wand ruthlessly before the man could free his knife to stop it from happening. They disengaged and Leo stumbled backwards, a darkly satisfied grin on his face. There was no doubt his back was bleeding, even though it was hard to see blood against his red tunic, but his opponent's wand was cut in two, utterly useless now.

Scar howled, tossing the wand pieces aside and charging Leo with reckless hate. Leo was visibly weakened by his injury, so perhaps Scar thought he still held the advantage, but it was obvious after the next few exchanges that the masked man could not keep up with Leo in terms of skill without his illusions and mind tricks. The fight was already decided, and Harry let out a slow breath of relief as Leo herded his opponent into position and then disarmed him deftly, finally ending the horrific show with both knives at Scar's jugular.

The crowd roared its approval, but Harry couldn't hear anything but the sound of her own breathing and heartbeat as she rushed toward the stairs. Scar stormed off the platform, and Aled had to physically hold Marek back from going after him. The armorer was saying something about needing proof first, but Harry wasn't listening to that, either.

Leo descended the stairs with slow, even steps. His body language was strong and relaxed, but the paleness in his face spoke of blood loss and nausea. She approached with her wand out, ready to do a diagnostic spell and figure out how bad his injuries were, but Leo waved her off with a sharp look. He walked past her, smiling stiffly and waving to those who called out to him or cheered. His mother waved him toward the Healers' tent sternly, but he grinned and shook his head.

"I'm going to the Phoenix to celebrate!" he called out, loud enough for everyone in the immediate vicinity to hear. "First round is on me!"

A cry went up, and word quickly spread that the after party would be at the Dancing Phoenix. Leo put on a good show of leisurely making his way through the crowd. The mass of people exiting the wards moved incredibly slowly, and after the third time someone slapped Leo on the back and he covered a wince, Harry stepped in.

For the sake of his ridiculous pride, she made a show of throwing her arms around him gleefully. "You won!" she yelled happily. "I knew you could do it."

He groaned quietly as she looped an arm around his waist, subtly pressing on his back wound as she leaned into him as though too pleased to let him go. In reality she was applying pressure to the gash in hopes that stemming the bleeding would allow her friend to get himself as far as the Phoenix under his own power.

"What are you doing?" he complained quietly, still smiling, though it was more like a grimace at this point.

"Keeping you alive until you sit your stubborn arse down," she hissed. She palmed her wand inside her billowing sleeve and hid its movements by turning her body towards his with a sappy expression on her face. She muttered numbing spells through her smiling lips and watched as the stress lines on his face relaxed slightly.

"Thanks," Leo said, grinning down at her.

"I haven't fixed anything yet," she warned him. "You can't feel the pain, but that doesn't mean you aren't doing damage to yourself with every step you take, so take it easy, ok?"

"Yes, Mother," Leo said.

She sniffed. "You'd better come up with something better to say to your actual mother when she realizes you went for a stroll with a shredded latissimus dorsi."

"She'll understand," Leo said. He was short of breath, but she knew anyone close enough to notice would assume he was still worn out from his fight, not bleeding out onto the pavement. "Image is very… important."

"Except when it gets confused with reality," she said drolly.

Leo grimaced. "Yes, it was rather bad of me act so inebriated that I actually allowed myself to be drugged into inebriation. In my defense, though, it's a wonder he even bothered—my acting is phenomenal, you know."

She ignored his nonsense, knowing that he was probably woozy with low blood pressure by now. "You're certain it was Scar who arranged to have you poisoned, then?"

He nodded tiredly. "Seemed much to annoyed and surprised when I could stand without falling over. Thanks for the save on that, by the way. I can't say I'd recommend the transition, but that potion saved my life, I think."

"We wouldn't have let you compete in the state you were in," Harry said. Did he think they would just shrug and send him off to embarrass himself? If the sobering potion hadn't worked, she would have knocked him unconscious with a sleeping spell and pretended to scream shrilly that he'd been poisoned until there was such a fuss raised they postponed the match. At least, that had been her backup plan at the time.

"No choice," Leo said, shaking his head. "There's a heavy penalty for those who don't show up to their matches."

"What?" she asked. "No one told me that."

Leo huffed a weak laugh. "I knew you'd show. It's to dissuade people from chickening out; the crowd paid good money to see a show, after all."

"What is the penalty?" she prompted when he trailed off.

"Let's just say it's as humiliating as getting your arse handed to you in front of hundreds of people would be and leave it at that," Leo muttered.

She sighed. Boys and their stupid rules. Not to mention their stupid pride, she added as Leo stumbled slightly and elected to pretend he was hugging her rather than leaning on her for support. She was practically the only thing propping him up by the time they made it to the inn. There was a table of honor by the empty fireplace with a plush chair at its head that was upholstered—thank the gods—in red. She steered Leo subtly toward it and let him sink bonelessly into the cushion while she pulled a chair close beside it and set about subtly casting diagnostic charms while his Highness smiled and accepted praise and ordered drinks for all those who wanted them.

Solom seemed to have anticipated a crowd, because tankards were already being passed from the kitchen. Soon the party was in full swing and Harry was hard at work patching up the worst of Leo's wounds, all while pretending to be relaxing in the seat beside him, curled up as though drowsy to better hide her wand movements. Leo made a good show of chatting amiably with everyone around them even as she wove skin and muscle and sinew back together.

Her half-lidded eyes hid the unfocused glaze they'd taken on as she focused her senses on what her magic was telling her. He had a fairly deep puncture wound in his belly that had thankfully not significantly perforated any of his intestines. The gash along his back was awful, jagged and deep. She could handle both given a little time, though, and the rest of his bruises and cuts were nowhere near life threatening, so she'd leave those for his mother to fuss over. It was difficult to heal through a person's clothes, but by no means impossible. It just meant you had to rely more heavily on the picture your magic mapped out in your head as it seeped into the patient.

By the time Leo had descended on his second helping of shepherd's pie with ravenous attention, she was finished. She uncurled herself from the chair and feigned a yawn, stretching one hand up lazily to distract from the way she tucked her wand away with the other.

"All better?" Leo asked mildly. To anyone watching, he could easily have been inquiring after her.

"No major malfunctions," she said, lips quirking.

He smiled widely. "You're good, Harry. I knew there was a reason I kept you around."

"Whatever will you do without me?" she drawled.

"If the heavens smile on me, I'll never have to figure that out," Leo said.

She laughed. "Unfortunately, I have greater ambitions than King's lackey."

"It wouldn't be like that," Leo protested, grabbing her wrist suddenly. He looked uncommonly serious.

She extracted her hand gently with a raised eyebrow. "It was a joke, Leo. I'll be your personal plaster provider as long as you want." She stood, rolling her neck to get rid of its soreness. "I'm going to see if Solom has any milk."

The common area was packed with people. The door to the street was wide open and she could hear a riot of celebration noises outside as well. It was hopeless to think of flagging down a kitchen boy in the mayhem, so she reckoned her best bet would be to duck into the kitchen herself and try to snag a glass without getting underfoot. As she wove through the crush, she kept her eyes peeled. A crowd of happy drunks was likely a great temptation for any cutpurses not aligned with the Rogue itself.

Because of her vigilance, she spotted Regulus Black before he saw her. In a smooth movement that didn't draw any odd glances, Harry slipped her goggles out of her pocket and donned them. She'd left her hat at home that day, since she no longer had to worry about being up on the tournament stage, but the eyewear should be enough to disguise her features as long as she was just one face in a sea of many.

She was almost to the kitchen door when a man in a black hooded cloak stepped in front of her, cutting off her path. She tilted her head and peered into the folds of his hood, but even her goggle-enhanced vision couldn't penetrate the shadows. There was some sort of spell involved, she supposed, which blurred and twisted the air around his face. Like the Unspeakables, only less… professional.

"Yes?" she said after it became clear he was waiting for her to speak first.

"We saw your match," the man said. His voice was deep and carried easily through the noise around them.

Oh good, she thought, what I really need right now is a mysterious royal we.

"We noticed your talent," the hooded man went on. His voice held a mild tone that didn't sit with his whole surreptitious image. "It was a cheap ploy that werewolf employed."

She honestly didn't know what to make of this. A ploy that was employed? She had met so many sinisterly well-spoken bad guys that this one's plebian speech patterns were more disappointing than anything.

"It was a fair win," she offered, shrugging a bit. "I don't mind."

He was silent for a moment, as though her response had derailed some imagined track the conversational train was supposed to take. "My… patron is very interested in talent like yours," the hooded man said eventually. She was relieved he'd dropped the weird 'we' thing, but disturbed by what exactly his words were driving at. "There could be opportunity for someone of your skills. Gold, too. You could put your gifts to use for more than petty entertainment."

She held back a scoff and said, as politely as she could manage, "My skills? You mean fighting. That's not a skill anyone should be looking to use in real life."

"Sometimes fighting is necessary." The man sounded perplexed. She supposed he might be a little slow. "You learned this for a reason, didn't you?"

"For self defense," she said shortly. "If you're looking to hire a mercenary, you've got the wrong person."

"Your loss," the hooded man growled, turning to stalk away through the crowd.

"I'm sure," she muttered, annoyed. She'd have to tell Leo someone was trying to recruit tournament participators for transparently nefarious purposes. Her good mood had taken a sour turn. She knew the world had a lot of problems. There would always be people with unhappy natures looking to take advantage any way they could. The only thing for it was to avoid those miserable souls where possible and work against them where not.

For now, she would simply enjoy the company of her friends. One of the benefits of coming into contact with shitty human beings was that it made it so easy to appreciate the good ones.

-0—0-0

-0—0

-0

[end of chapter three].

A/N: Whew, this was a doozy. Sorry it took so long to get out, but I wanted to get all of the tournament in this one. Next time: the Quidditch World Cup! Thanks to everyone for reading this (admittedly a bit overwhelming) chapter! Boy, 47,000 words just flew by, eh?

I know my sister has hinted there may be a time in the near future when I'll have to take a three-month break from writing due to some personal circumstances. Nothing to worry about, I'll come back and finish the book! There just may be a longer wait than usual between chapters four and five (I predict). I fully encourage everyone who likes the story to take a stab at writing some fanfiction about the characters they like or something they want to see happen in the mean time. It'll fill the void for everyone if there are other stories to read about Rigel and her friends. For those of you who don't know, there are some really good ones already out there that you can find either through the forum or just via google search. Anyway, thanks to everyone for supporting the story this far!

All the best to everyone out there who is reeling from the Pulse massacre, as well. I hope everyone who has loved ones in the Orlando area found them safe and sound.

-Violet Matter